Morning Must Reads: Palace Intrigue

That Open Secrets article is great, thanks.
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It amazes me how many conservatives complain about the money George Soros spends without realizing how it is absolutely dwarfed by the money the Koch brothers spend on lobbying for conservative causes and funding astroturf organizations like the Teatards.
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This one graph really says it all:
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http://www.opensecrets.org/news/assets_c/2010/09/Koch%20vs%20Soros%20Lobbying%20Expenditures-2178.html
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And given how closely the Republicans are aligned with corporate lobbyists these days, it’s worth remembering who pulls the strings.
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http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_09/025783.php

If only some of you are half the journalist that Bob Woodward was…..
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Instead, all we get is some proto-fascist Village idiots and their moronic self-promotional “Takes”.

WDYM?
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Merit pay $ doesn’t increase standardized test scores.

http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2010-09-21/story/thrasher-brady-respond-study-merit-pay

And we should pay attention to the new Woodward book because…?

Woodward’s first two books about the Iraq War were very sad things from the man who helped break Watergate. He basically was a stenographer for the Bush-Cheney meme. I know he tried to defend the first two volumes by stating that he always planned a trilogy (the last book did take a bit more of an objective view) but the swan song in his series doesn’t change the fact that the first two were love notes to the Bush administration.

Anti-business? THIS bunch?

I wish Time wouldn’t uncritically repeat the “anti-business” charge. It ignores the charge by many of us on the left that the economic team is coddling businesses at the expense of the citizenry. Why should Time give a complain by the right wing Chamber of Commerce more currency than complaints by left wing readers and voters? That’s not a rhetorical question, by the way, it actually deserves an honest answer.

“And given how closely the Republicans are aligned with corporate lobbyists these days, it’s worth remembering who pulls the strings”

This is comical since Andy Stern had more meetings with Obama than the he had with the GOP leadership. Or the fact that he was the largest recipient of BP cash (new meaning to dirty money.

And how many Demos are in front of the ethics committee at this point? Hard to drain the swamp when you are the swamp.

Perhaps it’s because they work for a ;large corporation and had to bring Anna Marie Cox in to explain that bloggy stuff to them lest they miss what ‘those crazy kids’ are up to.

Obama is so stupid that he actually thinks that “Mexican” people were present on United States soil even before Washington, Hamilton, Franklin, Jefferson, et al., considered establishing the United States of America.

In Obama’s predictably racist screed to his mind-numbed, cult followers in the equally racist Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Obama asserted (falsely): “Long before America was even an idea, this land of plenty was home to many peoples. To British and French, to Dutch and Spanish, to Mexican — (applause) — to countless Indian tribes. We all shared the same land.” http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2010/09/15/remarks-president-congressional-hispanic-caucus-institutes-33rd-annual-a

Predictably, there has been total, complete, absolute silence of Obama’s idiocy from his useful idiots (i.e., the Washington/New York/American/Arab press corps).

This is comical since Andy Stern had more meetings with Obama than the he had with the GOP leadership.
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I’m sorry, not being a member of the cult of conservatism, I have no idea what this means, or what it has to do in the slightest with the Republicans taking their marching orders from corporate lobbyists. Can you translate it from wingnut to English for us?
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Or the fact that he was the largest recipient of BP cash
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And this means … what? I thought conservatives were furious with Obama for strong-arming BP into setting aside $20 billion for the clean-up effort and letting Holder prep a massive lawsuit against BP. Are you now saying he’s in their pocket?
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I guess conservative propaganda only works if you just parrot it mindlessly rather than asking questions.

“All fa**ots must die”
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It was never about unit cohesion. It was never about the quality of our military. It was never about national security.
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It’s all about institutionalized bigotry.
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http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2010/09/someone_to_spend_more_time_with_family.php#more?ref=fpblg

Christ, this might be the stupidest thing you’ve ever written, textee.
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I can’t stop laughing.

freeinpa:
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People who are so jaded like little kevie can only see the trees despite the forest lying right in front of them. He simply regurgitates the liberal talking points given to him by those at the Daily Kos, Huffington Post, Media Matters, and all the rest of the George Soros funded liberal entities.
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The fact is kevie cannot produce any documentation what-so-ever that the Koch Brothers have had anything to do with the Tea Party movement. His touting of the far left libtard extremists that this great grassroots movement is somehow funded by the Koch Brothers is one big fat lie given to the dweebs like little kevie to go on sites like this to spew out more lies.
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Take it for a fact. Nancy Pelosi, the individual who professed the Tea Party movement as “Astro-turf” has found out not only how this movement is the largest grassroots movement in American history, but is also funded by those of us ourselves who are actively involved in this great group.
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I urge anyone to go to a local Tea Party meeting. Find out for yourselves who is and who is not right on this matter. You will quickly see that the Koch Brothers are not behind this movement. It is everyday citizens. Regular Joe’s and Jane’s of America. People who know when something is simply wrong. When someone like Barack Obama is totally out of touch.

Shhhh, destor, not too loudly. Remember:
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The Dems are hippies and socialists.
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The Republicans are Christians and patriots.
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Don’t mess with their script.

“Mexican!”, kevin, he said “Mexican”! Stop the presses! The Union is in peril!
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Its funny how all the railing against illegal immigration from the right-wing always seems to narrow rapidly towards one ethnic group. I wonder why that is?

“I’m sorry, not being a member of the cult of conservatism, I have no idea what this means, or what it has to do in the slightest with the Republicans taking their marching orders from corporate lobbyists.”
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I agree you know nothing about conservatism. But try to follow along here. You whine about Republicans taking marching orders from corporate interests as if Democrats only do the right. Demos take marching orders from special interests groups and as I noted primarily unions. Obama and the left complained about Republicans offered nothing for health care but he held more meetings with Andy Stern (Unions) than he did with Republicans.
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And this means … what? I thought conservatives were furious with Obama for strong-arming BP into setting aside $20 billion for the clean-up effort and letting Holder prep a massive lawsuit against BP. Are you now saying he’s in their pocket?”
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It means they are hypocrites about this and everything else. Well is capped and we hardly hear about BP or the clean-up. I guess everything is cleaned-up and all the people are back to work since the boot is now off their throat.

“The fact is kevie cannot produce any documentation what-so-ever that the Koch Brothers have had anything to do with the Tea Party movement.”
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You’re making this too easy, Rusty.
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The Billionaires Bankrolling the Tea Party
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/opinion/29rich.html
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and more at
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Covert Operations: The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer
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Of course Rusty will say this is not evidence. After all, nothing can pierce his undying loyalty to the Tea Party. The Tea Party can do no wrong. All Hail the Tea Party.

The fact is kevie cannot produce any documentation what-so-ever that the Koch Brothers have had anything to do with the Tea Party movement.
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I not only can, I have already. Repeatedly. I posted the New Yorker article here, and the New York Times story as well.
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As both relate in detail, David Koch founded and funded Americans for Prosperity, which funded and organized the Tea Party. Two whole degrees of separation, Rusty.
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And Tea Party activists have admitted as much. Here’s just one example:

Venable—a longtime political operative who draws a salary from Americans for Prosperity, and who has worked for Koch-funded political groups since 1994—spoke less warily. “We love what the Tea Parties are doing, because that’s how we’re going to take back America!” she declared, as the crowd cheered. In a subsequent interview, she described herself as an early member of the movement, joking, “I was part of the Tea Party before it was cool!” She explained that the role of Americans for Prosperity was to help “educate” Tea Party activists on policy details, and to give them “next-step training” after their rallies, so that their political energy could be channelled “more effectively.” And she noted that Americans for Prosperity had provided Tea Party activists with lists of elected officials to target. She said of the Kochs, “They’re certainly our people. David’s the chairman of our board. I’ve certainly met with them, and I’m very appreciative of what they do.”

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And another:
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Americans for Prosperity has worked closely with the Tea Party since the movement’s inception. In the weeks before the first Tax Day protests, in April, 2009, Americans for Prosperity hosted a Web site offering supporters “Tea Party Talking Points.” The Arizona branch urged people to send tea bags to Obama; the Missouri branch urged members to sign up for “Taxpayer Tea Party Registration” and provided directions to nine protests. The group continues to stoke the rebellion. The North Carolina branch recently launched a “Tea Party Finder” Web site, advertised as “a hub for all the Tea Parties in North Carolina.”
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The anti-government fervor infusing the 2010 elections represents a political triumph for the Kochs. By giving money to “educate,” fund, and organize Tea Party protesters, they have helped turn their private agenda into a mass movement. Bruce Bartlett, a conservative economist and a historian, who once worked at the National Center for Policy Analysis, a Dallas-based think tank that the Kochs fund, said, “The problem with the whole libertarian movement is that it’s been all chiefs and no Indians. There haven’t been any actual people, like voters, who give a crap about it. So the problem for the Kochs has been trying to create a movement.” With the emergence of the Tea Party, he said, “everyone suddenly sees that for the first time there are Indians out there—people who can provide real ideological power.” The Kochs, he said, are “trying to shape and control and channel the populist uprising into their own policies.”
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A Republican campaign consultant who has done research on behalf of Charles and David Koch said of the Tea Party, “The Koch brothers gave the money that founded it. It’s like they put the seeds in the ground. Then the rainstorm comes, and the frogs come out of the mud—and they’re our candidates!”

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And some more:
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Whatever its size, the Kochs’ political involvement has been intense; a former employee of the Cato Institute told me that Americans for Prosperity “was micromanaged by the Kochs.” And the brothers’ investment may well have paid off: Americans for Prosperity, in concert with the family’s other organizations, has been instrumental in disrupting the Obama Presidency.
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In January, 2008, Charles Koch wrote in his company newsletter that America could be on the verge of “the greatest loss of liberty and prosperity since the 1930s.” That October, Americans for Prosperity held a conference of conservative operatives at a Marriott hotel outside Washington. Erick Erickson, the editor-in-chief of the conservative blog RedState.com, took the lectern, thanked David Koch, and vowed to “unite and fight . . . the armies of the left!” Soon after Obama assumed office, Americans for Prosperity launched “Porkulus” rallies against Obama’s stimulus-spending measures.

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http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=all

I am not sure it proves anything other than both groups may have incompetent teachers and only a small portion of the teachers are truly motivated. It seems teachers only want more money if it comes with no strings attached, so the complaints of being underpaid may be just another red herring.
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I have not found anything in the study (yet) how many of the control group may or may not have qualified for bonuses.
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It also is unclear as to whether the gains were compared solely of those earning merit bonuses vs the control group or was it the entire group of those eligible versus the control group.
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Some 296 middle-school math teachers in the Nashville school district — two-thirds of the total of middle-school math teachers — volunteered to participate in the experiment. About half were placed randomly in a control group, while the rest were eligible for bonuses of $5,000, $10,000 or $15,000 if their pupils scored significantly higher than expected on the statewide exam known as the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program.

One-third of the eligible teachers — 51 of 152 — got bonuses at least once. Eighteen teachers received bonuses all three years.

Except for some temporary gains for fifth-graders, though, their students progressed no faster than those in classes taught by the other 144 teachers.

Obama and the left complained about Republicans offered nothing for health care but he held more meetings with Andy Stern (Unions) than he did with Republicans.
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You mean the president met more often with the representative of millions of working class Americans who elected him and wanted to see health care reform enacted than he did with a group of lobbyist-whored a$$holes who vowed to oppose that reform at any cost?
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Stunning. Just stunning.

If Obama made a factual error, it isn’t exactly news breaking. That being said, Mexico did exist and claimed some of the land we do now before our current borders were settled. I find the argument you’re making at the least shallow…
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I don’t think its the stupidest thing you ever said though.

Kochs pale compared to Soros:

Organizations that, in recent years, have received direct funding and assistance from George Soros and his Open Society Institute (OSI) include those in the list below. To view a comprehensive profile of any particular organization, click on its name.

* Air America Radio: Now defunct, this was a self-identified “liberal” radio network.
* Alliance for Justice: Best known for its activism vis a vis the appointment of federal judges, this group consistently depicts Republican judicial nominees as “extremists.”
* America Coming Together: Soros played a major role in creating this group, whose purpose was to coordinate and organize pro-Democrat voter-mobilization programs.
* America Votes: Soros also played a major role in creating this group, whose get-out-the-vote campaigns targeted likely Democratic voters.
* American Bar Association Commission on Immigration Policy: This organization “opposes laws that require employers and persons providing education, health care, or other social services to verify citizenship or immigration status.”
* American Civil Liberties Union: This group opposes virtually all post-9/11 national security measures enacted by the U.S. government. It supports open borders, has rushed to the defense of suspected terrorists and their abettors, and appointed former New Left terrorist Bernardine Dohrn to its Advisory Board.
* American Constitution Society for Law and Policy: This Washington, DC-based think tank seeks to move American jurisprudence to the left by recruiting, indoctrinating, and mobilizing young law students, helping them acquire positions of power. It also provides leftist Democrats with a bully pulpit from which to denounce their political adversaries.
* American Family Voices: This group creates and coordinates media campaigns charging Republicans with wrongdoing.
* American Federation of Teachers: After longtime AFT President Albert Shanker died in in 1997, he was succeeded by Sandra Feldman, who slowly “re-branded” the union, allying it with some of the most powerful left-wing elements of the New Labor Movement. When Feldman died in 2004, Edward McElroy took her place, followed by Randi Weingarten in 2008. All of them kept the union on the leftward course it had adopted in its post-Shanker period.
* American Friends Service Committee: This group views the United States as the principal cause of human suffering around the world. As such, it favors America’s unilateral disarmament, the dissolution of American borders, amnesty for illegal aliens, the abolition of the death penalty, and the repeal of the Patriot Act.
* American Immigration Council: This non-profit organization is a prominent member of the open-borders lobby. It advocates expanded rights and amnesty for illegal aliens residing in the U.S.
* American Immigration Law Foundation: This group supports amnesty for illegal aliens, on whose behalf it litigates against the U.S. government.
* American Institute for Social Justice: AISJ’s goal is to produce skilled community organizers who can “transform poor communities” by agitating for increased government spending on city services, drug interdiction, crime prevention, housing, public-sector jobs, access to healthcare, and public schools.
* American Library Association: This group has been an outspoken critic of the Bush administration’s War on Terror — most particularly, Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act, which it calls “a present danger to the constitutional rights and privacy rights of library users.”
* The American Prospect, Inc.: This corporation trains and mentors young leftwing journalists, and organizes strategy meetings for leftist leaders.
* Amnesty International: This organization directs a grossly disproportionate share of its criticism for human rights violations at the United States and Israel.
* Arab American Institute Foundation: The Arab American Institute denounces the purportedly widespread civil liberties violations directed against Arab Americans in the post-9/11 period, and characterizes Israel as a brutal oppressor of the Palestinian people.
* Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now: This group conducts voter mobilization drives on behalf of leftist Democrats. These initiatives have been notoriously marred by fraud and corruption.
* Bill of Rights Defense Committee: This group provides a detailed blueprint for activists interested in getting their local towns, cities, and even college campuses to publicly declare their opposition to the Patriot Act, and to designate themselves “Civil Liberties Safe Zones.” The organization also came to the defense of self-described radical attorney Lynne Stewart, who was convicted in 2005 of providing material support for terrorism.
* Brennan Center for Justice: This think tank/legal activist group generates scholarly studies, mounts media campaigns, files amicus briefs, gives pro bono support to activists, and litigates test cases in pursuit of radical “change.”
* Brookings Institution: This organization has been involved with a variety of internationalist and state-sponsored programs, including one that aspires to facilitate the establishment of a U.N.-dominated world government. Brookings Fellows have also called for additional global collaboration on trade and banking; the expansion of the Kyoto Protocol; and nationalized health insurance for children. Nine Brookings economists signed a petitionopposing President Bush’s tax cuts in 2003.
* Campaign for America’s Future: This group supports tax hikes, socialized medicine, and a dramatic expansion of social welfare programs.
* Campaign for Better Health Care: This organization favors a single-payer, government-run, universal health care system.
* Campus Progress: A project of the Soros-bankrolled Center for American Progress, this group seeks to “strengthen progressive voices on college and university campuses, counter the growing influence of right-wing groups on campus, and empower new generations of progressive leaders.”
* Casa de Maryland: This organization aggressively lobbies legislators to vote in favor of policies that promote expanded rights, including amnesty, for illegal aliens currently residing in the United States.
* Catalist: This is a for-profit political consultancy that seeks “to help progressive organizations realize measurable increases in civic participation and electoral success by building and operating a robust national voter database of every voting-age American.”
* Catholics for a Free Choice: This nominally Catholic organization supports women’s right to abortion-on-demand.
* Center for American Progress: This leftist think tank is headed by former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta, works closely with Hillary Clinton, and employs numerous former Clinton administration staffers. It is committed to “developing a long-term vision of a progressive America” and “providing a forum to generate new progressive ideas and policy proposals.”
* Center for Community Change: This group recruits and trains activists to spearhead leftist “political issue campaigns.” Promoting increased funding for social welfare programs by bringing “attention to major national issues related to poverty,” the Center bases its training programs on the techniques taught by the famed radical organizer Saul Alinsky.
* Center for Constitutional Rights: This pro-Castro organization is a core member of the open borders lobby, has opposed virtually all post-9/11 anti-terrorism measures by the U.S. government, and alleges that American injustice provokes acts of international terrorism.
* Center for Economic and Policy Research: This group opposed welfare reform, supports “living wage” laws, rejects tax cuts, and consistently lauds the professed achievements of socialist regimes, most notably Venezuela.
* Center for Reproductive Rights: CRR’s mission is to guarantee safe, affordable contraception and abortion-on-demand for all women, including adolescents. The organization has filed state and federal lawsuits demanding access to taxpayer-funded abortions (through Medicaid) for low-income women.
* Center for Responsible Lending: This organization was a major player in the subprime mortgage crisis. According to Phil Kerpen (vice president for policy at Americans for Prosperity), CRL “sh[ook] down and harass[ed] banks into making bad loans to unqualified borrowers.” Moreover, CRL negotiated a contract enabling it to operate as a conduit of high-risk loans to Fannie Mae.
* Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: Reasoning from the premise that tax cuts generally help only the wealthy, this organization advocates greater tax expenditures on social welfare programs for low earners.
* Center on Wisconsin Strategy (COWS): Aiming to redistribute wealth by way of higher taxes imposed on those whose incomes are above average, COWS contends that “it is important that state government be able to harness fair contribution from all parts of society – including corporations and the wealthy.”
* Change America Now: Formed in December 2006, Change America Now describes itself as “an independent political organization created to educate citizens on the failed policies of the Republican Congress and to contrast that record of failure with the promise offered by a Democratic agenda.”
* Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington: This group litigates and brings ethics charges against “government officials who sacrifice the common good to special interests” and “betray the public trust.” Almost all of its targets are Republicans.
* Coalition for an International Criminal Court: This group seeks to subordinate American criminal-justice procedures to those of an international court.
* Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund: Defenders of Wildlife opposes oil exploration in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It condemns logging, ranching, mining, and even the use of recreational motorized vehicles as activities that are destructive to the environment.
* Democracy Alliance: This self-described “liberal organization” aims to raise $200 million to develop a funding clearinghouse for leftist groups. Soros is a major donor to this group.
* Democracy 21: This group is a staunch supporter of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, also known as the McCain-Feingold Act.
* Democracy Now!: Democracy Now! was created in 1996 by WBAI radio news director Amy Goodman and four partners to provide “perspectives rarely heard in the U.S. corporate-sponsored media,” i.e., the views of radical and foreign journalists, left and labor activists, and ideological foes of capitalism.
* Democratic Justice Fund: DJF opposes the Patriot Act and most efforts to restrict or regulate immigration into the United States — particularly from countries designated by the State Department as “terrorist nations.”
* Democratic Party: Soros’ funding activities are devoted largely to helping the Democratic Party solidify its power base. In a November 2003 interview, Soros stated that defeating President Bush in 2004 “is the central focus of my life” … “a matter of life and death.” He pledged to raise $75 million to defeat Bush, and personally donated nearly a third of that amount to anti-Bush organizations. “America under Bush,” he said, “is a danger to the world, and I’m willing to put my money where my mouth is.” Claiming that “the Republican party has been captured by a bunch of extremists,” Soros accuses the Bush administration of following a “supremacist ideology” in whose rhetoric he claims to hear echoes of “Nazi slogans.”
* Earthjustice: This group seeks to place severe restrictions on how U.S. land and waterways may be used. It opposes most mining and logging initiatives, commercial fishing businesses, and the use of motorized vehicles in undeveloped areas.
* Electronic Privacy Information Center: This organization has been a harsh critic of the USA PATRIOT Act and has joined the American Civil Liberties Union in litigating two cases calling for the FBI “to publicly release or account for thousands of pages of information about the government’s use of PATRIOT Act powers.”
* Ella Baker Center for Human Rights: Co-founded by the revolutionary communist Van Jones, this anti-poverty organization claims that “decades of disinvestment in our cities” — compounded by “excessive, racist policing and over-incarceration” — have “led to despair and homelessness.”
* EMILY’s List: This political network raises money for Democratic female political candidates who support unrestricted access to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand.
* Energy Action Coalition: Founded in 2004, this group describes itself as “a coalition of 50 youth-led environmental and social justice groups working together to build the youth clean energy and climate movement.” For EAC, this means “dismantling oppression” according to its principles of environmental justice.
* Fair Immigration Reform Movement: This is the open-borders arm of the Center for Community Change.
* Feminist Majority: Characterizing the United States as an inherently sexist nation, this group focuses on “advancing the legal, social and political equality of women with men, countering the backlash to women’s advancement, and recruiting and training young feminists to encourage future leadership for the feminist movement in the United States.”
* Four Freedoms Fund: This organization was designed to serve as a conduit through which large foundations could fund state-based open-borders organizations more flexibly and quickly.
* Free Exchange on Campus: This organization was created solely to oppose the efforts of one individual, David Horowitz, and his campaign to have universities adopt an “Academic Bill of Rights,” as well as todenounce Horowitz’s 2006 book The Professors. Member organizations of FEC include Campus Progress (a project of the Center for American Progress); the American Association of University Professors; theAmerican Civil Liberties Union; People For the American Way; the United States Student Association; theCenter for Campus Free Speech; the American Library Association; Free Press; and the National Association of State Public Interest Research Groups.
* Free Press: This “media reform” organization has worked closely with many notable leftists and such organizations as Media Matters for America, Air America Radio, Global Exchange, Code Pink, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, the Revolutionary Communist Party, Mother Jones magazine, and Pacifica Radio.
* Funding Exchange: Dedicated to the concept of philanthropy as a vehicle for social change, this organization pairs leftist donors and foundations with likeminded groups and activists who are dedicated to bringing about their own version of “progressive” change and social justice. Many of these grantees assume that American society is rife with racism, discrimination, exploitation, and inequity and needs to be overhauled via sustained education, activism, and social agitation.
* Gamaliel Foundation: Modeling its tactics on those of the radical Sixties activist Saul Alinsky, this group takes a strong stand against current homeland security measures and immigration restrictions.
* Gisha: Center for the Legal Protection of Freedom of Movement: This anti-Israel organization seeks to help Palestinians “exercise their right to freedom of movement.”
* Global Exchange: Established in 1988 by pro-Castro radical Medea Benjamin, this group consistently condemns America’s foreign policy, business practices, and domestic life. Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Global Exchange advised Americans to examine “the root causes of resentment against the United States in the Arab world — from our dependence on Middle Eastern oil to our biased policy towards Israel.”
* Grantmakers Without Borders: GWB tends to be very supportive of leftist environmental, anti-war, and civil rights groups. It is also generally hostile to capitalism, which it deems one of the chief “political, economic, and social systems” that give rise to a host of “social ills.”
* Green For All: This group was created by Van Jones to lobby for federal climate, energy, and economic policy initiatives.
* Health Care for America Now: This group supports a “single payer” model where the federal government would be in charge of financing and administering the entire U.S. healthcare system.
* Human Rights First: This group supports open borders and the rights of illegal aliens; charges that the Patriot Act severely erodes Americans’ civil liberties; has filed amicus curiae briefs on behalf of terror suspect Jose Padilla; and deplores the Guantanamo Bay detention facilities.
* Human Rights Watch: This group directs a disproportionate share of its criticism at the United States and Israel. It opposes the death penalty in all cases, and supports open borders and amnesty for illegal aliens.
* I’lam: This anti-Israel NGO seeks “to develop and empower the Arab media and to give voice to Palestinian issues.”
* Immigrant Defense Project: To advance the cause of illegal immigrants, the IDP provides immigration law backup support and counseling to New York defense attorneys and others who represent or assist immigrants in criminal justice and immigration systems, as well as to immigrants themselves.
* Immigrant Legal Resource Center: This group claims to have helped gain amnesty for some three million illegal aliens in the U.S., and in the 1980s was part of the sanctuary movement which sought to grant asylum to refugees from the failed Communist states of Central America.
* Immigrant Workers Citizenship Project: This open-borders organization advocates mass immigration to the U.S.
* Immigration Policy Center: IPC is an advocate of open borders and contends that the massive influx of illegal immigrants into America is due to U.S. government policy, since “the broken immigration system […] spurs unauthorized immigration in the first place.”
* Independent Media Center: This Internet-based, news and events bulletin board represents an invariably leftist, anti-capitalist perspective and serves as a mouthpiece for anti-globalization/anti-America themes.
* Independent Media Institute: IMI administers the SPIN Project (Strategic Press Information Network), which provides leftist organizations with “accessible and affordable strategic communications consulting, training, coaching, networking opportunities and concrete tools” to help them “achieve their social justice goals.”
* Institute for America’s Future: IAF supports socialized medicine, increased government funding for education, and the creation of an infrastructure “to ensure that the voice of the progressive majority is heard.”
* Institute for Policy Studies: This think tank has long supported Communist and anti-American causes around the world. Viewing capitalism as a breeding ground for “unrestrained greed,” IPS seeks to provide a corrective to “unrestrained markets and individualism.” Professing an unquestioning faith in the righteousness of the United Nations, it aims to bring American foreign policy under UN control.
* Institute for Public Accuracy: This p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; }anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-Israel organization sponsored actor Sean Penn’s celebrated visit to Baghdad in 2002. It also sponsored visits to Iraq by Democratic Congressmen Nick Rahall and former Democrat Senator James Abourezk
* Institute for Women’s Policy Research: This group views the U.S. as a nation rife with discrimination against women, and publishes research to draw attention to this alleged state of affairs. It also advocates unrestricted access to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand, stating that “access to abortion is essential to the economic well-being of women and girls.”
* International Crisis Group: One of this organization’s leading figures is its Mideast Director, Robert Malley, who was a President Bill Clinton’s Special Assistant for Arab-Israeli Affairs. His analysis of the Mideast conflict is markedly pro-Palestinian.
* Joint Victory Campaign 2004: Founded by George Soros and Harold Ickes, this group was a major fundraising entity for Democrats during the 2004 election cycle. It collected contributions (including large amounts from Soros personally) and disbursed them to two other groups, America Coming Together and the Media Fund, which also worked on behalf of Democrats.
* LatinoJustice PRLDF: This organization p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; }supports bilingual education, the racial gerrymandering of voting districts, and expanded rights for illegal aliens.
* Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law: This group views America as an unremittingly racist nation; uses the courts to mandate race-based affirmative action preferences in business and academia; has filed briefs against the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to limit the wholesale granting of green cards and to identify potential terrorists; condemns the Patriot Act; and calls on Americans to “recognize the contribution” of illegal aliens.
* League of United Latin American Citizens: This group views America as a nation plagued by “an alarming increase in xenophobia and anti-Hispanic sentiment”; favors racial preferences; supports the legalization of illegal Hispanic aliens; opposes military surveillance of U.S. borders; opposes making English America’s official language; favors open borders; and rejects anti-terrorism legislation like the Patriot Act.
* League of Women Voters Education Fund: The League supports taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand; supports “motor-voter” registration, which allows anyone with a driver’s license to become a voter, regardless of citizenship status; and supports tax hikes and socialized medicine.
* Lynne Stewart Defense Committee: IRS records indicate that Soros’s Open Society Institute made a September 2002 grant of $20,000 to this organization. Stewart was the criminal-defense attorney who was later convicted for abetting her client, the “blind sheik” Omar Abdel Rahman, in terrorist activities connected with his Islamic Group.
* MADRE: This international women’s organization deems America the world’s foremost violator of human rights. As such, it seeks to “communicat[e] the real-life impact of U.S. policies on women and families confronting violence, poverty and repression around the world,” and to “demand alternatives to destructive U.S. policies.” It also advocates unrestricted access to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand.
* Malcolm X Grassroots Movement: This group views the U.S. as a nation replete with racism and discrimination against blacks; seeks to establish an independent black nation in the southeastern United States; and demands reparations for slavery.
* Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition: This group calls for the expansion of civil rights and liberties for illegal aliens; laments that illegal aliens in America are commonly subjected to “worker exploitation”; supports tuition-assistance programs for illegal aliens attending college; and characterizes the Patriot Act as a “very troubling” assault on civil liberties.
* Media Fund: Soros played a major role in creating this group, whose purpose was to conceptualize, produce, and place political ads on television, radio, print, and the Internet.
* Mercy Corps: Vis a vis the Arab-Israeli conflict, Mercy Corps places all blame for Palestinian poverty and suffering directly on Israel.
* Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund: This group advocates open borders, free college tuition for illegal aliens, lowered educational standards to accommodate Hispanics, and voting rights for criminals. In MALDEF’s view, supporters of making English the official language of the United States are “motivated by racism and anti-immigrant sentiments,” while advocates of sanctions against employers reliant on illegal labor seek to discriminate against “brown-skinned people.”
* Meyer, Suozzi, English and Klein, PC: This influential defender of Big Labor is headed by Democrat operativeHarold Ickes.
* Midwest Academy: This entity trains radical activists in the tactics of direct action, targeting, confrontation, and intimidation.
* Migration Policy Institute: This group seeks to create “a North America with gradually disappearing border controls … with permanent migration remaining at moderate levels.”
* Military Families Speak Out: This group ascribes the U.S. invasion of Iraq to American imperialism and lust for oil.
* MoveOn.org: This Web-based organization supports Democratic political candidates through fundraising, advertising, and get-out-the-vote drives.
* Ms. Foundation for Women: This group laments what it views as the widespread and enduring flaws of American society: racism, sexism, homophobia, and the violation of civil rights and liberties. It focuses its philanthropy on groups that promote affirmative action for women, unfettered access to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand, amnesty for illegal aliens, and big government generally.
* NARAL Pro-Choice America: This group supports taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand, and works to elect pro-abortion Democrats.
* NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund: The NAACP supports racial preferences in employment and education, as well as the racial gerrymandering of voting districts. Underpinning its support for race preferences is the fervent belief that white racism in the United States remains an intractable, largely undiminished, phenomenon.
* The Nation Institute: This nonprofit entity sponsors leftist conferences, fellowships, awards for radical activists, and journalism internships.
* National Abortion Federation: This group opposes any restrictions on abortion at either the state or federal levels, and champions the introduction of unrestricted abortion into developing regions of the world.
* National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty: This group was established in 1976 as the first “fully staffed national organization exclusively devoted to abolishing capital punishment.”
* National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy: This group depicts the United States as a nation in need of dramatic structural change financed by philanthropic organizations. It overwhelmingly promotes grant-makers and grantees with leftist agendas, while criticizing their conservative counterparts.
* National Committee for Voting Integrity: This group opposes “the implementation of proof of citizenship and photo identification requirements for eligible electors in American elections as the means of assuring election integrity.”
* National Council for Research on Women: This group supports big government, high taxes, military spending cuts, increased social welfare spending, and the unrestricted right to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand.
* National Council of La Raza: This group lobbies for racial preferences, bilingual education, stricter hate-crime laws, mass immigration, and amnesty for illegal aliens.
* National Council of Women’s Organizations: This group views the United States as a nation rife with injustice against girls and women. It advocates high levels of spending for social welfare programs, and supports race and gender preferences for minorities and women in business and academia.
* National Immigration Forum: Opposing the enforcement of present immigration laws, this organization urges the American government to “legalize” en masse all illegal aliens currently in the United States who have no criminal records, and to dramatically increase the number of visas available for those wishing to migrate to the U.S. The Forum is particularly committed to opening the borders to unskilled, low-income workers, and immediately making them eligible for welfare and social service programs.
* National Immigration Law Center: This group seeks to win unrestricted access to government-funded social welfare programs for illegal aliens.
* National Lawyers Guild: This group promotes open borders; seeks to weaken America’s intelligence-gathering agencies; condemns the Patriot Act as an assault on civil liberties; rejects capitalism as an unviable economic system; has rushed to the defense of convicted terrorists and their abettors; and generally opposes all U.S. foreign policy positions, just as it did during the Cold War when it sided with the Soviets.
* National Organization for Women: This group advocates the unfettered right to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand; seeks to “eradicate racism, sexism and homophobia” from American society; attacks Christianity and traditional religious values; and supports gender-based preferences for women.
* National Partnership for Women and Families: p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; ThTTThis organization supports race- and sex-based preferences in employment and education. It also advocates for the universal “right” of women to undergo taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand at any stage of pregnancy and for any reason.
* National Priorities Project: This group supports government-mandated redistribution of wealth — through higher taxes and greater expenditures on social welfare programs. NPP exhorts the government to redirect a significant portion of its military funding toward public education, universal health insurance, environmentalist projects, and welfare programs.
* National Security Archive Fund: This group collects and publishes declassified documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act to a degree that compromises American national security and the safety of intelligence agents.
* National Women’s Law Center: This group supports taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand; lobbies against conservative judicial appointees; advocates increased welfare spending to help low-income mothers; and favors higher taxes for the purpose of generating more funds for such government programs as Medicaid, food stamps, welfare, foster care, health care, child-support enforcement, and student loans.
* Natural Resources Defense Council: One of the most influential environmentalist lobbying groups in the United States, the Council claims a membership of one million people.
* Pacifica Foundation: This entity owns and operates Pacifica Radio, awash from its birth with the socialist-Marxist rhetoric of class warfare and hatred for capitalism.
* Peace and Security Funders Group: This is an association of more than 50 foundations that give money to leftist anti-war and environmentalist causes. Its members tend to depict America as the world’s chief source of international conflict, environmental destruction, and economic inequalities.
* Peace Development Fund: In PDF’s calculus, the United States needs a massive overhaul of its social and economic institutions. “Recently,” explains PDF, “we have witnessed the negative effects of neo-liberalism and the globalization of capitalism, the de-industrialization of the U.S. and the growing gap between the rich and poor …”
* People for the American Way: This group opposes the Patriot Act, anti-terrorism measures generally, and the allegedly growing influence of the “religious right.”
* Physicians for Human Rights: This group is selectively and disproportionately critical of the United States andIsrael in its condemnations of human rights violations.
* Physicians for Social Responsibility: This is an anti-U.S.-military organization that also embraces the tenets of radical environmentalism.
* Planned Parenthood: This group is the largest abortion provider in the United States and advocates taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand.
* Ploughshares Fund: This public grantmaking foundation opposes America’s development of a missile defense system, and contributes to many organizations that are highly critical of U.S. foreign policies and military ventures.
* Presidential Climate Action Project: PCAP’s mission is to create a new 21st-century economy, completely carbon-free and based largely on renewable energy. A key advisor to the organization is the revolutionary communist Van Jones.
* Prison Moratorium Project: This initiative was created in 1995 for the express purpose of working for the elimination of all prisons in the United States and the release of all inmates. Reasoning from the premise that incarceration is never an appropriate means of dealing with crime, it deems American society’s inherent inequities the root of all criminal behavior.
* Progressive States Network: PSN’s mission is to “pass progressive legislation in all fifty states by providing coordinated research and strategic advocacy tools to forward-thinking state legislators.”
* Project Vote: This is the voter-mobilization arm of the Soros-funded ACORN. A persistent pattern of lawlessness and corruption has followed ACORN/Project Vote activities over the years.
* Pro Publica: Claiming that “investigative journalism is at risk,” this group aims to remedy this lacuna in news publishing by “expos[ing] abuses of power and betrayals of the public trust by government, business, and other institutions, using the moral force of investigative journalism to spur reform through the sustained spotlighting of wrongdoing.”
* Proteus Fund: This foundation directs its philanthropy toward a number of radical leftwing organizations.
* Public Citizen Foundation: Public Citizen seeks increased government intervention and litigation against corporations — a practice founded on the notion that American corporations, like the capitalist system of which they are a part, are inherently inclined toward corruption.
* Rebuild and Renew America Now (a.k.a. Unity ’09): Spearheaded by MoveOn.org and overseen by longtime activist Heather Booth, this coalition was formed to facilitate the passage of President Obama’s “historic” $3.5 trillion budget for fiscal year 2010.
* Secretary of State Project: This project was launched in July 2006 as an independent “527″ organization devoted to helping Democrats get elected to the office of Secretary of State in selected swing, or battleground, states.
* Sentencing Project: Asserting that prison-sentencing patterns are racially discriminatory, this initiative advocates voting rights for felons.
* Shadow Democratic Party: This is an elaborate network of non-profit activist groups organized by George Soros and others to mobilize resources — money, get-out-the-vote drives, campaign advertising, and policy iniatives — to elect Democratic candidates and guide the Democratic Party towards the left.
* Sojourners: This evangelical Christian ministry preaches radical leftwing politics. During the 1980s it championed Communist revolution in Central America and chastised U.S. policy-makers for their tendency “to assume the very worst about their Soviet counterparts.” More recently, Sojourners has taken up the cause of environmental activism, opposed welfare reform as a “mean-spirited Republican agenda,” and mounted a defense of affirmative action.
* Southern Poverty Law Center: This organization monitors the activities of what it calls “hate groups” in the United States. It exaggerates the prevalence of white racism directed against American minorities.
* The American Prospect, Inc.: The American Prospect, Inc. (TAP) is a not-for-profit, tax-exempt organization that effectively owns and publishes the left-liberal magazine The American Prospect.
* The Nation Institute: The Nation Institute since 1978 has worked in conjunction with The Nation magazine to recruit, train and influence journalism interns who will carry the Institute’s leftist politics into the mainstream.
* Thunder Road Group: This political consultancy, in whose creation Soros had a hand, coordinates strategy for the Media Fund, America Coming Together, and America Votes.
* Tides Foundation and Tides Center: Tides is a major funder of the radical Left.
* U.S. Public Interest Research Group: This is an umbrella organization of student groups that support leftist agendas.
* Universal Healthcare Action Network: This organization supports a single-payer health care system controlled by the federal government.
* Urban Institute: This research organization favors socialized medicine, expansion of the federal welfare bureaucracy, and tax hikes for higher income-earners.
* USAction Education Fund: USAction lists its priorities as: “fighting the right wing agenda”; “building grassroots political power”; winning “social, racial and economic justice for all”; supporting a system of taxpayer-funded socialized medicine; reversing “reckless tax cuts for millionaires and corporations” which shield the “wealthy” from paying their “fair share”; advocating for “pro-consumer and environmental regulation of corporate abuse”; “strengthening progressive voices on local, state and national issues”; and working to “register, educate and get out the vote … [to] help progressives get elected at all levels of government.”
* World Organization Against Torture: This coalition works closely with groups that condemn Israeli security measures against Palestinian terrorism.
* YWCA World Office, Switzerland: The YWCA opposes abstinence education; supports universal access to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand; and opposes school vouchers.

Kochs pale compared to Soros:
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Only if you refuse to actually read the article.
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Nice work. Keep sticking your fingers in your ears.

Quoting Open Secrets:
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VERDICT: When it comes to to the combination of institutional lobbying, 527 group donations and PAC expenditures, Koch Industries far out-spends Soros’ hedge fund and think tank, $57.4 million to $12.8 million. Most of this money is attributable to lobbying expenditures.

You’re probably right, gumonshoe. I keep forgetting textee thinks ESPN Classic and Ladies Home Journal are part of some evil liberal mind control plot.

“If Obama made a factual error, it isn’t exactly news breaking. That being said, Mexico did exist and claimed some of the land we do now before our current borders were settled. I find the argument you’re making at the least shallow.”
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I am not sure about shallow but it is just an ongoing pattern of Obama in minimizing America at the expense of .. really anyone else. A follow-up tohis apology tour.
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As far as factual being breaking news? When someone on the right does it, they are called a liar and its news for at least 3 days. You can argue the gravitas of the subject but at the heart its just hypocritical. If Bush mispronounced a word, well they still bring it up. But a scholarly Presidential candidate that visited 57 states was ignored.

Charles Lewis, the founder of the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan watchdog group, said, “The Kochs are on a whole different level. There’s no one else who has spent this much money. The sheer dimension of it is what sets them apart. They have a pattern of lawbreaking, political manipulation and obfuscation. I’ve been in Washington since Watergate, and I’ve never seen anything like it. They are the Standard Oil of our times.”

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0810/The_Koch_money.html

Even Koch’s own spokesperson has admitted they fund the Tea Parties.

Koch Industries, a major backer of myriad right-wing causes, issued an unsolicited statement last night in advance of Tax Day claiming it has never provided funding “specifically to support the tea parties.” But when TPMmuckraker followed up, a spokeswoman acknowledged that Koch funds one of the most prominent national groups that organizes … tea parties.

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/04/right-wing_backers_koch_industries_we_dont_specifi.php

“You mean the president met more often with the representative of millions of working class Americans who elected him and wanted to see health care reform enacted”

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Good one kevie, yeah the poor working man who has a cadillac HC plan that the majority of Americans don’t have. And he was negotiating a way for someone else to continue paying for their plans
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Same story-every time a liberal says they are arguing for the working man- Hold onto your watch and wallet..
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“The reconciliation bill pushes back implementation of a tax on so-called Cadillac health care plans from 2013 to 2018, and raises premium thresholds for plans eligible for taxation from $8,500 to $10,200 for individuals and from $23,000 to $27,500 for families. The value of vision and dental benefits would be excluded from those price ceilings, so only the cost of core health insurance will be used to determine which plans are subject to the excise tax.”

For me its about how long ago Mexico was formed, I had to go look it up. And yeah, it was formed after the U.S. was formed, but in the scope of things not recognizing that has a limited impact on policy making decisions. The value of that information is just limited in todays world.
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For what its worth I don’t think mispronouncing a word like nuclear is news worthy either. And the only reason the pretzel was news worthy was because the man almost died, not because it made him look like an idiot (which it didn’t to me).
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But that isn’t the same level as having factually incorrect perception about the state of the world today. Which is largely where a lot of the criticisms of Palin comes in. I don’t care that she makes up words or uses them incorrectly. Does it reflect well on her? No. I do care about her lack of foreign policy knowledge or basic understanding of how the world is set up today.
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We’re talking about the difference between a slip of the tongue related to history 200 years old (unimportant) vs. true ignorance about relevant details of the day (important).

“Only if you refuse to actually read the article.
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Nice work. Keep sticking your fingers in your ears
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Advice you should follow. Soros spent over $45 million on a campaign to change the judicial selection process. Seems to be higher than $12 million which brings into question how and what was counted.

“But that isn’t the same level as having factually incorrect perception about the state of the world today.”
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You mean like the 57 states in the US?
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“I do care about her lack of foreign policy knowledge or basic understanding of how the world is set up today.”

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And Obama’s is what? As Hillary said during the campaign, ” who do you want answering the red phone at 3am”. It took Obama how many months to come up with he surge strategy? Oh yeah that was exactly what Bush proposed.. Let’s not confuse thoughtfulness with clueless.

Teacher pay should be increased at all levels but that’s separate from “merit” pay. It should never be based on results of one test. In FL the FCAT is used ostensibly to base merit bonuses, but the application of it (and the fact that the state doesn’t have much $) doesn’t prove anything one way or the other. The “A”-rated schools continue to get more $ from the state (bonuses, supplies, etc.) and the “D” and “F” schools get $ that they desperately need taken away–vouchers for parents and more $ to “good” schools is a self-fufilling prophecy for failure.

Mr. Biden called Mr. Holbrooke “the most egotistical bastard I’ve ever met.”
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I believe it was about that quote that Chuck Todd said “the next line in the quote was ‘But he’s the right man for the job.’”
Funny how the news media insists on making things sound more scandalous than they are. Imagine that.

You’d have to prove Obama actually thought there were 57 states. I’ve seen the clip and the justifications go from campaign fatigue to verbal slip. Most people acknowledge the president has on numerous occasions that there are 50 states (before and after that one unfortunate slip).
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That’s another important difference. Do the people that say these things believe them? If Obama had actually believed there were 57 states, bad on him, but if he meant to say forty instead of fifty before the seconds long pause after which he uttered the word seven and was referring to the number of states he had actually visited on his campaign then I don’t find the argument you’re making has much merit.
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Also, the 3am phone call was and remains a horrible argument. Hillary was stupid to make it.

Some time we run out of things to say. I think today is it, some people just don’t know it. So this is my two bits.

Yep. That idiot Ed Henry was on CNN this morning practically p!ssing his pants with glee over all the “divisions in the White House” in discussing foreign policy.
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Because we all remember how well things turned out when the Bush White House marched in unison to get us into Iraq.

“Teacher pay should be increased at all levels but that’s separate from “merit” pay. It should never be based on results of one test”
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That has been the call for the last 40 years. Teachers salaries, benefits and retirement packages have grown faster than private sector and have produced at best flat results. So if its not based on results of a test, what will it be based on? Performance evaluations? Then school districts can spend millions defending lawsuits trying to rid unqualified teachers.
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“vouchers for parents and more $ to “good” schools is a self-fufilling prophecy for failure.

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What is the self fulfilling prophesy is putting more money into schools with no accountability is a recipe for wasting tax payer dollars and failing the children.

I can only imagine Woodward’s book is going to go in a wide logic circle to nowhere… much the way the pop media takes us.
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The military brass argue that to “win” in Afghanistan we need to double the troops and keep them there for thirty years. That ignores the political component.
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The administration argues at first that they want to start pulling out by an early deadline. That ignores reaching a sustainable military benchmark… if that’s possible to do.
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The compromise is to surge and then pull back at a gradual but sustained pace, as fast as practical, with probably an unconditional end date two years out.
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So what solution is Woodward going to argue? No one votes for him. What path not taken does he and the rest of the US have the stomach for?

I never said let’s not have accountability. Let’s just not put all our eggs in one basket and pretend we’re doing something to improve learning when we’re really not.
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And might I add it’s much more pleasing to debate when there’s no namecalling. Thanks.

.” I’ve seen the clip and the justifications go from campaign fatigue to verbal slip”
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The key word is “justifications”, allowances that Bush never received.

He has made factual errors besides that on and yet he gets a pass. The Supreme Court ruling he bashed, he was wrong on the facts and wrong on the law.
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“Also, the 3am phone call was and remains a horrible argument. Hillary was stupid to make”.
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And the reason is … you say so? The left goes on that the world loves him. They do. Reason? He bashes the US to them and the leading despots think he is a joke. Iran, N Korea, Venezuela, Russia. All legitimate global threats. Hillary was right but instead in focusing on the inexperience of soneone elected President, the left focuses focus on someone who is not in any office (Palin)

OOOO! OOOO!! Division! Cross words!
Civil debate versus marching in lockstep towards an unjustified war. I’ll take the former for $1000, Alex.

What did I miss?

“I don’t care what you say, and I don’t care what others say.”

“The juvenile old pr!ck might as well have stuck his fingers in his ears and said ‘LALALALALALA I CAN’T HEAR YOU’ during the interview. The contempt was undeniable.”

(Video at the link)

Irony is still dead.

“After years of sending in their regrets, Republicans are RSVPing yes to gay causes more than ever.

Prominent GOP lobbyists, activists and Members of Congress will attend or lend their names to two big gay rights events tonight, including one co-hosted by Ken Mehlman, the former Republican National Committee chairman and George W. Bush campaign manager who recently announced he was gay.

In his first gay rights political event since going public with his sexual orientation, Mehlman is hosting a fundraiser for the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which is spearheading the court battle for gay marriage.”

“I never said let’s not have accountability”
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No you didn’t. That is the point. The answer is usually more money and no tests. Fine that is the carrot what is the stick (accountability).

PS I usually respond in kind with the exception of about 2 or 3 here who have earned their spot in the no respect hall of fame.

Of course, there’s no way that this could have been done to Joe (Gang of Me) Lieberman.

“Senate Republicans just said they will move tomorrow to strip Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, from her post as ranking Republican on the Senate Energy Committee.

Republicans say Wednesday they will vote to elect an acting ranking member and then the full GOP conference will ratify the vote.

Republicans will also vote to elect a replacement for Murkowski in the leadership. She resigned Friday as vice chair of the Senate GOP conference.

National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman, John Cornyn, R-Texas, told CNN this is, ‘the appropriate thing to do. When you chose not to accept the judgment of the primary voters and run as a write in… it has consequences.’”

“I’m proud of what I did at HP.”

“The spot shows Fiorina boasting about having laid off 30,000 workers, and sending jobs to China. All the while, Fiorina tripled her own salary, and bought a million-dollar yacht and five corporate jets. And unlike so many critical ads this year, Boxer’s spot actually stands up well to fact-checking scrutiny.

I realize it’s looking like a Republican year, and voters in California are deeply frustrated with the weak economy, but a campaign ad like this one — to my mind, one of the most effective of the cycle — seems hard to overcome.”

Boxer ad:
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freeinpa:
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We will never convince the libtards as represented here by little kevie or momentoad. They have already made up their minds. However, I for one will not allow them to keep spreading their Media Matters lies as you say so eloquently “funded by George Soros”.
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Koch Brothers may………that is MAY have funded or put some money into AFP – Americans for Prosperty, one of the early Tea Party groups to basically “seed” the movement, but the Tea Party movement has since taken on a complete life of it’s own.
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The current Tea Party organizations, Tea Party Patriots in particular, are not funded by anyone other than our own member’s dollars. However, Tea Party Patriots did receive yesterday a donation of ONE MILLION dollars. This is a far cry from what our big labor unions donate, 50, 60 and more millions per year, and what Georgie Soros has donated over the past 10 years or so as well which freeinpa has identified.
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The problem with little kevie and momentoad also lies in the fact, what was the Tea Party movement is no longer relevant to what we are now citing as facts.
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Over the past year, this grassroots movement has grown beyond the early days when AFP and those “Corporate” types were involved. Even Tea Party Express does not hold the same level of influence they once had with this movement.
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The best way to understand what is currently going on, is not through biased newspapers like the NY Times. What people can do is go to their local Tea Party groups and find out for themselves first hand.

Get off his lawn already…

The Other Klein on cutting Medicare costs and reducing the deficit.

“Unfortunately, the party that professes to care about balancing the budget is mainly interested in repealing the few laws we’ve made to control health-care costs. Which gets to the reality of this discussion: We’re not really talking about balancing the budget, at least not most of the time.

Some people want to cut Social Security, and the deficit gives them a reason to do that. Some people want to roll back the health-care law, and they don’t care if they’re rolling back provisions that would reduce the deficit. Some people want to extend the Bush tax cuts, deficits be damned. In Washington, the deficit’s value is that it’s a broad problem that allows politicians to do what they already wanted to do, and it is ignored when it doesn’t serve that purpose.”

Speaking of Fiorina, does anyone else see the resemblance between her and the woman in the Mountain Dew commercial who screams and breaks glass?

This argument is inane and unimportant & I’m done with it. Have fun!

fa**ots = fat tots? far pots? fanbots??

For those that don’t speak right-wing: The “George Soros spent $45 million to take over America” meme is a hot one in the Koch-funded circles right now.
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Of course that $45 million figure includes a donation to George Mason University. I guess donating to a university now makes you a Maoist in the right-wing’s eyes. Go figure.
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Oh but wait! George Soros, George Mason. There IS a conspiracy! And what about Georgetown! And George Washington University!
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They’re everywhere!

A word bad enough that its banned from use on Swampland. As it should be.

“Of course that $45 million figure includes a donation to George Mason University. I guess donating to a university now makes you a Maoist in the right-wing’s eyes. Go figure”
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Well that certainly explains how the left comes up with how Kochs outspends Soros. You selectively count the money. And of course there is never any left wing whackos at any university, right?

No one mentioned Maoist, all is pointed out the facts don’t add up and you are trying a misdirection to that fact. That does conveniently fit into the “left’s meme” about how only the right has billionaires supporting their causes.

That’s liberal-speakj for I can’t defend what I wrote so I quit.

Good idea. You can only slam Palin but you can’t defend Obama.

“Some people want to cut Social Security, and the deficit gives them a reason to do that. Some people want to roll back the health-care law, and they don’t care if they’re rolling back provisions that would reduce the deficit.”
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No matter how you cut it, entitlements are the problem today and will be more so in 20 years. And 3 of the biggest lies (repeating them doesn’t make them fact) are:
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HC will bend the cost curve
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HC will lower the deficit
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If you like you insurance or doctor will can keep them.
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Even Chris Tingles has figured out its the people’s money not the governments. The “it will cost the government….” Nothing is the only and correct answer. The left makes it sound like the tax cuts was a government loan to people and now they come to collect.
..

When your premises are wrong your argument has only one way to go and that’s downhill which is the direction liberals are headed.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/09/graph_for_the_day_for_septembe_1.html

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Here is an interesting time line. After Bush dealt with the Clinton recession (remember that one) and 9/11, jobs had growth right up to around Demos controlled both houses and began the mischief. Recession followed shortly and it was downhill after the Obama election. Summer of Recovery is an oxymoron.
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Net jobs gained during GOP Congress fiscal years (Oct. 2003 to Oct. 2007): 7,625,000

Net jobs lost during Dem Congress years (Oct. 2007 to Aug. 2010): 7,442,000

Change in net jobs since recession ended (Jun. 2009 to Aug. 2010): -329,000

Change in net jobs in “Recovery Summer” (May to Aug. 2010): -283,00

No just you bra-burning feminists see it. IT is actually a delusion from all of your pot smoking and LSD days.

How does it feel to know that the American people reject all you liberal/progressives?

Thanks Newfreedom. It’s all coming back to me now…

I see a radical difference between the giving of the Koch brothers and the giving of George Soros.
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First, many of the places Soros gives are organizations which already exist.
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Second, Soros gives to far more charities.
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Third, the organizations Soros gives to are attempting to reach the media and less direct than Koch brothers. (Why is it when they have the same last name as former NYC mayor they want to pronounce it “Coke” rather than how it looks? My name is Sartor, but, I would like it if you pronounced that as Keenan – why not?)
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Fourth and most importantly, the Koch brothers have gotten talking points repeated verbatim nationwide by people who insist that they will not be told what to do by big government say everything exactly the way billionaires tell them to say.
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It is the irony of billionaires selling people to do what these billionaires want the people to do, but, to say in slogans about how this is greater freedom.
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Don’t let the government tell you what to do! That’s the job of big corporations! Don’t let the government think for you! Let big business think for you! Don’t let the government use it’s power to alter the economy! That’s what monopolistic mega corporations do!
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Watch out though – Soros has taken control of LIBRARIANS! You know how wild and crazy those people get.

Freeinpa,
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One of the major thinkers of the 20th century on business management who revolutionized the way managers (outside of the big three American Auto makers – which was his goal and, instead, ended up creating the Japanese car revolution of the 1970s and 1980s) was Arthur Deming.
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One of his major principals was – and this was for all work, private for profit, private non-profit and government – was that an incredibly large majority (I believe the number was 98% – so practically all) people who work at a job truly enjoy doing it well. Doing their work well increases job satisfaction far, far more than pay increases do.
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You bring up 40 years ago as a benchmark for teachers. That is just about the right time when women got out of teaching. When my grandmother was a teacher in Brooklyn in the 1920s, being a teacher for a woman was the equivalent to being a doctor or a bank vice president for a man. It was the highest ranking job a woman could expect.
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By the 1970s, with so many options, only the most traditional women and the the least academic achieving women went into teaching. By the 1990s when I was in college, when I met a girl who was studying elementary education, I suspected (too often correctly) that she was the least intelligent girl in the dorm.
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So, attracting men and women to teaching requires that they meet the pay of non-teaching jobs with the same educational requirements so that people who may otherwise choose to work for a bank would, instead, teach.
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Your never endign mantra that employees- especially government and unionized, – wake up in the morning dying to screw as badly as possible is just unfounded.
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Yes, there are some people who were not cut out to teach who must not remain teachers. However, that is not the norm. Now with standards, the teachers who have the best improvement should show the more average and mediocre teachers how to improve.
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Pay is about recruitment. Teacher improvement is about getting the best teachers to show those many who want to teach better how to do it.
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Merit pay makes the presumption that teachers don’t try unless bribed into it (as they would see it – including a member of a my family who is a teacher).

Agreed, but, they were, also, condemned by Dubbya and the Republicans as too critical – especially Plan of Attack (the one I have).

I see a radical difference between the giving of the Koch brothers and the giving of George Soros.
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Of course you do no surprise there
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First, many of the places Soros gives are organizations which already exist.
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And that means what? He is corrupting a larger group than just politicians. Cash-starved “charities” are always more susceptible to influence when you have a big donor.
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Second, Soros gives to far more charities.
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And the majority are left wing fringe orgaqnizations
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Third, the organizations Soros gives to are attempting to reach the media and less direct than Koch brothers.
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Right NARAL, NAACP, ACORN, Brookings, American Federation of Teacher just try to reach the media.
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Delusional at best

Freeinpa,
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There were two kinds of Dubbya screw ups which his father did neither one of. First, there were factual errors about current events such as WMD in Iraq and putting three countries two of whom hated each other (Afghanistan, which was extremist Sunni Muslim and Iran which was extremist – but somewhat less so – Shiite Muslim) and Atheist Marxist Socialist North Korea into the Axis of Evil.
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That would be like my proclaiming the similarity of bananas, mushrooms and peas. Why? Those are three foods I do not like, but, otherwise, have nothing at all in common.
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The other was when he went totally off script and said several consecutive words in a row (like “we won’t get fooled again” which were lyrics from a song by the Who rather than the well known completion of the saying “fool me twice shame on me”) which had people falling out of their chairs laughing.
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Obama’s little verbal slips are almost identical to the ones by Bush Sr -a slip of the tongue.
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Spain had colonized Mexico before the Pilgrims arrived. However, conservatives are correct that it was not called The United States of Mexico (yes, that is the official name of the country) until after the United States of America was independent from England.
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Hence, not amusing, not important to policy and not totally incorrect.

Mr. Deming “beliefs” aside it seems the workers disagree.
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“Even Americans who are lucky enough to have work in this economy are becoming more unhappy with their jobs, according to a new survey that found only 45 percent of Americans are satisfied with their work.

That was the lowest level ever recorded by the Conference Board research group in more than 22 years of studying the issue. In 2008, 49 percent of those surveyed reported satisfaction with their jobs.”
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If they are unhappy they probably aren’t doing it well. But I would suspect if you asked them, they would say they are doing it well.
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“teacher for a woman was the equivalent to being a doctor or a bank vice president for a man”
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Which there should be less teachers? And they should work unlimited hours? And if they do a poor job they should be fired? Do bank VPs have tenure? What you are arguing is the tired and nonsensical equal pay for comparable skills meme that the NRA has been pushing for years.
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“At the nation’s Catholic schools, pay averaged $22,000 last year, 45 percent below the public school average. At other private schools, teachers averaged about $35,000, 11 percent below public school levels.”
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By your logic private schools and catholic schools would have the dumbest least dedicated teachers and the schools would have the poorest results .And yet just the opposite is true. Once again despite your long winded nonsensical narrative that has no factual basis, you only serve to prove the failure of the public school system despite billions being poured into it.

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NRA should read NOW

“. First, there were factual errors about current events such as WMD in Iraq”
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One tiny piece of info you and the left always leave out. There were Democrats who read the intelligence reports who concluded the same thing. So its not a “factual” error as you so quaintly put.
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The rest is just your long winded twaddle.

“No matter how you cut it, entitlements are the problem today and will be more so in 20 years. ”
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Welfare was 557. 3 B – about 15% of the budget.
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Health care 829 B
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Education 157 B
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http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_welfare_spending_40.html#usgs30280
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This is out of $3.552 Trillion. Combined this is less than one third.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_federal_budget
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“And 3 of the biggest lies (repeating them doesn’t make them fact) are:
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HC will bend the cost curve”
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So far has proven true.
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“HC will lower the deficit”
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So far has proven true
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“If you like you insurance or doctor will can keep them.”
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Unless your employer changes company (of course), unless your doctor quits medicine or retires (of course) your employer changes heath insurers (of course) your doctor loses his license (of course) your doctor dies (of course) or your doctor is arrested for murder (or course).
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So, excluding complete idiots who , this is 100% true. A true idiot may have thought that the president was promising that every single doctor would be with all of the insurers, never quit medicine, never retire, never be forced to leave medicine and – better yet – some real idiots think that this promise means that no doctor will ever again die.
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“The left makes it sound like the tax cuts was a government loan to people and now they come to collect.”
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No. Of course not!
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It was a bribe for vote deal. If the wealthy voted for Bush, he couldn’t legally send them thank you checks, so, instead, he found a way for the federal government to send checks to the group most likely to vote for him (the top 2%).
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We can no longer afford to bribe people into voting Republican in this situation.

Well the right wing was rejected in 2006 and 2008, so, if we lose this one, we will feel the same way you do right now.

“If they are unhappy they probably aren’t doing it well. But I would suspect if you asked them, they would say they are doing it well.”
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So, you are an accountant and 10 out of your 50 clients, despite having their accounting done perfectly went out of business.
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How do you feel?
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Depressed.
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You’re skill are less wanted, you are less busy and, therefore, you are less happy.
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There is no implication that the accountant is at fault if a business can not find customers any longer.
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“”teacher for a woman was the equivalent to being a doctor or a bank vice president for a man”
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Which there should be less teachers? And they should work unlimited hours? And if they do a poor job they should be fired? Do bank VPs have tenure? What you are arguing is the tired and nonsensical equal pay for comparable skills meme that the NRA has been pushing for years.”
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I am not arguing for identical pay. I am saying that there will be an equilibrium point when, say, 20% of all people applying for banks will be the strait A students and 20% of those applying to be teachers will be straight A students. This, in theory, may demand higher wages for teachers than for bankers if teaching is more onerous than banking. Since most would agree with you that teaching is less unpleasant than banking for many people, the equilibrium pay would be somewhere between what it is now and what the best paying private sector jobs earn.
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I am sure that there are statisticians and economists figuring out how high the wages for teachers should be to reach this equilibrium, but, I have always told you that I never, ever pretended to be a PhD – just somebody who knows his undergraduate economics.
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“By your logic private schools and catholic schools would have the dumbest least dedicated teachers and the schools would have the poorest results .And yet just the opposite is true.”
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With relatives who are teachers and many family members who got a Catholic education you are missing one huge factor: Catholic schools expel all trouble children/students. I was in a Catholic Summer school when I was six years old and I loved it. The misbehaving children are removed once and for all and never return to the campus for the rest of their lives making teaching or studying in such schools far more pleasant.

“One tiny piece of info you and the left always leave out. There were Democrats who read the intelligence reports who concluded the same thing. So its not a “factual” error as you so quaintly put.”
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Many Democrats were cowardly about their doubts, but, John Kerry gave a fifteen minute long speech before casting his vote for the Iraq War saying that he wished he could make his vote contingent on UN approval because he was not sure of how reliable the intelligence he has seen was and that for winning the peace the UN or at least NATO would have more moral authority than the US going with England and a small number of troops form Poland and the Netherlands.
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Doubts were very clear in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, Woodward’s book and from Richard Clarke’s book and some – unfortunately too few- Democrats had the balls to vote against it or, in Kerry’s case, at least one testicle to make a speech about his reluctance.

“This is out of $3.552 Trillion. Combined this is less than one third.”
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The US Financial Report of the US Government -2008 seems to disagree with you. Or you just can’t bring yourself to face realities—again.
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“The report says that in 25 years the portion of the population 65 and older will increase from 12 percent to 20 percent, while the share of the population that is working and paying taxes will decrease from 60 percent to 55 percent. If Medicare spending continues to grow, as it has for four decades, more than one and a half times as fast as the economy, the big three entitlements, which currently are 44 percent of all federal expenditures (excluding interest costs of the national debt), will be 65 percent by 2030. Under current law, 30 years from now government revenues will cover only half of anticipated expenditures.”
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“It was a bribe for vote deal. If the wealthy voted for Bush, he couldn’t legally send them thank you check”
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Sure you can- call it a stimulus just like Obama did with the unions. The only difference with the high income earners it was their own money. With Obama it was other tax payers money But that is liberal MO use other peoples money.

“… the big three entitlements, which currently are 44 percent of all federal expenditures.”
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I used both wikipedia for the total budget and the actual government numbers for the remainder.
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This 44% number may have been excluding discretionary spending, I don’t know.
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“Sure you can- call it a stimulus just like Obama did with the unions.”
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The differences being is that since rank file union members in order to feed their children spend a huge portion of their income giving directly to store owners, indirectly to producers of goods which are usually large businesses and let the businesses distribute to everybody from it’s CEO down to hiring a new minimum wage worker while the tax cut was money “invested” in over priced mortgage backed securities which later tore our economy to shreds and the one and only way a union member’s pay would increase is if he spent more hours working while all a person has to do for a tax break bribe is to vote Republican and contribute more in legal graft by donating to Republican elections.
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Which would you rather do:
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1) Be an unemployed union member who, in order to get $40k per year needs to go out and work 40 hours per week usually in all weather conditions to fix sewers, pave roads build schools, fire houses and police stations and the like
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Or
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2) Be a part of the top 2% and in order to get that $25k bribe per leave the house once a year to vote Republican and toss in one or two thousand to Republican campaigns to make sure that your bribe keeps on coming?
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The unions both work for their additional money while the right wingers just vote for their money and the union members spend it back into the economy giving back to all income brackets while the wealthy get involved in lateral wealth redistribution through secondary markets such as the stock market, the futures market and derivatives getting nobody new hired at all.

” He is corrupting a larger group than just politicians. Cash-starved “charities” are always more susceptible to influence when you have a big donor.”
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No, all of these organizations will, under some circumstances return money most importantly if it requires them to go against their charter.
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Founding an organization means it takes orders from you, the founder. You, as the founder wright the charter and determine who gets to donate, participate and who gets their check sent back to them.
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“He is corrupting a larger group…”
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If donating = corrupting then founding an organization with your mission in mind is creating a corrupt organization.
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I would not call donating “corrupting” since corrupt organizations like the Mafia are closed with it’;s membership arrested under the RICO laws.
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I might call it “putting an ideological focus on” in which case all of the Koch organizations exist to promote the Koch brother ideas while Soros contributes to very old and established ideas which were founded from the bottom up such as the NAACP.
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In other words, Soros sees existing ideas considered to be liberal and supports these organizations with grass roots origins while the Koch brothers have a top down management system trying to get the gullible to vote against their own best interests through campaigns of misinformation.

I have book marked the Open Secrets article. It has valuable information.
It amazes me that the reactionary right on this site can’t even bother to read the article and data.
Ignorance keeps them ignorant.

As a Californian, I can confidently state that Boxer will be reelected and Brown will win. Few are impressed by the ego led campaigns of Fiorina and Whitman. They may want to purchase a political position but it aint gonna work.
First of all CA is a blue state. We have had enough of the state being run by the corporate shill Ahnold. We have serious problems that require more than the vanity asperations of 2 unqualified candidates.

So true grape_crush.

Note: the dotcom bust resulted in a collapse in value of some stock portfolios, no adverse impact on housing values, a very temporary negative impact on other securities and no impact at all on the banking sector. The banking sector is responsible for lending money to companies to build up capital goods (ovens for restaurants, pickup trucks for landscaping businesses and back hoes for construction firms among many others) as well as home equity loans giving consumers to buy things (such as ovens for homes and pickup trucks for homes and big screen TVs among many other things).
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It was a far, far easier recession to get out of since the banks which the equivalent to FEMA (that is FEMA under Democrats where Clinton appeared at disasters to say “I feel your pain” not FEMA under Republicans which exists for a crony to get a free, big government paycheck for nothing) were unharmed.
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It would be like comparing Katrina to the Haiti earthquake. In the Haiti earthquake (ignoring that Haiti had little infrastructure to begin with) the police stations, fire houses and hospitals, instead of giving aid were destroyed and in need of aid.
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So, the difference being, instead of Bush letting the banks be banks and letting the fed drop the prime rate as he did during the dotcom bubble burst, in order to clean up the Bush financial meltdown, Obama and Democrats have to get the banks to lend to start the cleanup and to get people to work which, among other things, will bring housing prices back.

One tiny piece of info you and the left always leave out. There were Democrats who read the intelligence reports who concluded the same thing.
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Correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t the intelligence briefings limited to a “Gang of Seven”, with no note-taking allowed, and NO ONE allowed to see anything the admin didn’t want them to see? Not much of a chance for the remainder of the legislature to make an informed vote on the use of force, IMHO.
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Not sure it could be said that ANYONE in Congress that was a “D” saw the totality of the evidence, and it is widely accepted NOW that anything that did not serve to prove the case for military action (including doubts by others about the validity of some of the evidence) was left out of the presentation.
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I’m no attorney but that scenario would just scream “cherry-picking”. Allow me to pick and choose what you can see (or not) and I’m pretty sure I can convince you of ANYTHING I want to.

THERE IS NO ‘PRESIDENT’OBAMA:
http://www.thepostemail.com/2010/08/17/there-is-no-president-obama/
http://americangrandjury.org/public/

OBAMA is a fraud and a traitor!
18USC,Part 1,Chapter 115,Sec.2381