PRecommends: digby on media violence-pushing

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When the likes of Roger Ailes' personal kittylitterbox keep slavering over the ramp-up of violence-prompts and deeds and resort to blaming the victim mendacity, then questions must be asked...and answered.

Roger says it's just about the ratings.

digby has her thoughts

and Prairie thinks Roger's a self-loathing avatar taking the Murdoch empire's avarice out on the rest of us.
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Prairie Recommends: Robinson on Rightwing

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Eugene Robinson writes today in the Washington Post about the rising tide of violent thought, word, and incitement on the right. And cuts through the crapola of false equivalencies.
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Prairie Recommends: Frank Rich

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Just in case you didn't notice that the choleric rage from the right was about more than healthcare reform.
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Boehner-Cantor Tag Team

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The unabashed tag team of John Boehner and Eric Cantor have now spoken about the increasingly violent rhetoric and acts against Democrats who voted for healthcare reform, and Eric Cantor makes clear that it's red herring and blame-the-victim time. The false equivalencies are flying around, and political cowardice by the likes of John McCain excusing Sarah Palin's violence prompts are on full display.

It's a pretty wretched sight coming out of Washington these days. Will the media now further fuel the flames? Or will they referee the filibustering and blustering and fingerpointing and call them what they are?

Time will tell. But Mrs. McMahon will fit right in with this crowd if she wins in November.

Who knows, maybe she'd even call a tag team what it is....
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UPDATE: According to Eric Cantor, the Dems are flnning the flames of violence. Thus spake the arsonist.

Law of the Land

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The Rumpelstiltskins on the right can jump up and down and shout as loud as they want.

Healthcare reform is now the law of the land.

For Marcellus. For Natoma and her family. For President Obama. For the Kennedy family. For the Nixon family, even if he was not mentioned. For the Congress who made the hard votes. For the citizens who called, who wrote, who advocated. For you. And for me.
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What Change Looks Like

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Healthcare reform has passed.

All the hypocritical whining at the end of the day failed to overcome what President Obama and Speaker Nancy Pelosi led.

As Craig Ferguson would say, it's a great day for America.
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UPDATE: I called my Congressman today to say "thank you." How 'bout you?
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Good Ol' Boys

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If you missed Thursday night on Comedy Central, Jon Stewart's tour de force about the crazy that is Glenn Beck and Stephen Colbert's scintillating skewering of all things Republican hypocrisy are must see. Must think about, too.

If you've been working and not noticed the misogynistic mindset that drives the likes of Rep. Bart Stupak in his dismissive attitude toward women's healthcare issues and the on-record support by Catholic nuns of healthcare reform.

If you think it's just all talk and smoke and mirrors and something you don't need to think about, then take a look at what a Republican state legislator in little ol' North Dakota thinks about one woman.

And ask yourself, isn't it time to elect more Democrats, not less? To support progress and change, even if it's not moving as fast as you'd like, rather than allowing the status quo to drag us down ever lower?
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crossposted at firedoglake's The Seminal

Defiant Diehards

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John Boehner makes it clear. The Republicans are united. They will continue to obstruct. They will continue to be the Party of No.

Lesson learned since the 2008 election? Progressives have been aggressive about electing more and more Democrats in 2006. and 2008.

Obviously we aren't there yet. More Democrats in 2010.

We're on the right track, the Rumpelstiltskin status quo crowd that got US into this mess are still holding their tantrums and their obstruction.

Send 'em home.

Vote more Democrats in 2010.
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Meanwhile, the Old Corruption Unpeeled

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Like a rotting onion, Michael Lewis peels away the smoke and mirrors of Wall Street on 60 Minutes, and shows these guys as phony as onions pretending to be roses. Too big to fail? Apparently the message is, too stupid to indict.

Delusional? Whatever happened to accountability?

Oh, I forgot. That's just for the little scallions....
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Corruption's Newest Chapter

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So the Supremes rule that corporations are just like people and can give campaign money unfettered. And the wife of a Supreme starts up her very own Tea Party group which can rake in the big $$$$$.

Just affirms again.... It's not about the ideology.

It's the profiteering and power, ba-bee.....

From the LA Times article, about Virginia Thomas' group, which began before the Supremes decision from which Clarence Thomas did not recuse himself:

As a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, Liberty Central can raise unlimited amounts of corporate money and largely avoid disclosing its donors.

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Recommended: Frank Rich on Rove-Cheney Rewriting

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Even if they succeed in convincing a few [some of the people all of the time....], Karl Rove and the Cheney family's ongoing revisionist crusade to rewrite their history cannot change its truth.

Or as any dystopian near-future movie will show you, even if the rats outlive us, they're still rats.
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Better Late

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...than never, I suppose.

Finally.

Howell Raines joins the likes of Niemoller and Joseph Welch.
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It Happened Again....

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There we were, in line for lunch, a circle of women, achievers, successes in our fields, of a creeping certain age, and we shook our heads in bafflement.

Get it done, Washington.

Get it done, Democrats...it's why we worked so hard to elect you.

Get healthcare reform done. Now.

Stop dithering. Stop jumping at shadows.

Get it done.

Because job-building needs doing, too.

Now.
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"Hang it around their necks"

The Republicans have their talking point down. Todd the talking strategist told Chris Matthews this afternoon that if Democrats pass healthcare reform, come November, "we're going to hang it around their necks."

Hmmmmm.

Seems to me I saw something being hung around necks not so long ago ... gold medals.

In Sarah Palin's favorite healthcare destination.

Works for me....
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crossposted at firedoglake's Seminal

Meanwhile....

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Stephen Colbert's smackdown of Sean Hannity's smear and distort crusade against ACORN. Priceless. Here's the full episode, because you can never have too much Stephen....

North Dakota blogger's take on the Republicans' fear campaign powerpoint.

E.J. Dionne's deconstruction using Hatch of the Republicans' distortion of health care reform....

Seeing a pattern here? I thought you would.

Uppity Blogger Book Leave

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Thanks for stopping by my blog from time to time. I'm taking a bit of a sabbatical, directing more attention to a long-term project that hasn't had its just due for a while.

In other words, Prairie's on book leave.

Be good to yourselves. Work for change.

Be the change.
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Fili-bluster Flood Factor

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Senator Bunning's hold-up action has another consequence. FEMA funding for flood insurance is stopped. New policies cannot be written, existing policies cannot be renewed.

And right now in Fargo, we're looking at a 96% chance of major flooding this spring (did I mention there's a 30-day waiting period for policies to go into force?).

The cities of Fargo-Moorhead are gearing up to fill nearly 2 million sandbags. But in the meantime, it's been 13 years since the major flood of 1997, one year since the 500-year flood of 2009, and nothing has been done on Fargo flood-protection infrastructure.

The Republican mayor of Fargo was quick out of the box to endorse the Republican Governor, John Hoeven, to run for the open seat after Senator Dorgan announced his retirement. And on the east side of the river there's that wanna-be-prez Pawlenty....

Oh, we have a nice new fancy-schmancy hockey arena on the South Side. But infrastructure to protect that south side, hmmmmm, no such luck.

So we'll roll up our sleeves, but the powers-that-be better roll up their sleeves, too, because the once-vaunted shoo-in candidacy of the incumbent Governor could take a real hit in the rising rivers of North Dakota. The Flood Factor this spring could have its consequences come November.
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crossposted at firedoglake's Seminal

Fili-bluster

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Senator Bunning's mean-spirited, contentious, and highly damaging little stunt filibuster...which he should be forced to actually stand and do till he wets his tighty-whities...reached a new low today...but tomorrow still awaits.

After all, he's too-obviously being point man for the entire Republican side of the aisle. Why else would they not join with the Democrats to break his filibuster? Senator Kyl was quick to defend the cause, attacking struggling jobless Americans in the process.

There's a whole lotta tighty-whitey in Washington these days. You see it on Faux News where they try to link reconciliation with the "nucular option." Where that quaint old concept of democracy, simple majority, up-or-down vote is under siege by the very people who for eight years jumped up and down like Rumpelstiltskin demanding their right to majority—not super majority—rule.

Among all the arguments about filibuster these days, it takes a small state legislator who is the only announced candidate thus far against the presumed-for-now Republican shoo-in to replace Senator Dorgan to hit on the simple truth.

North Dakota state Senator Tracy Potter said the filibuster has made senators “too important” compared to the House and the federal executive and judicial branches.

“I have sometimes chastised my colleagues (in the North Dakota Senate) that they are overreaching,” Potter said. “We have to have limitations on our power, and recognize our appropriate roles in the system.”

Appropriate roles. What a concept.

And maybe what a condemnation. All those tighty-whiteys have been overreaching ever since, oh, Inauguration Day 2009. The spike in use—abuse—of the filibuster. The endless, mind-numbing screeching of dissonant lies out of rightwing radio and Fox "News." The Tea Party fringe element. The increasingly violence-prodding screeding out of Fox "opinion."

But maybe pointing that out is uppity. I don't know. What do you think, Cokie? Because it's out there....
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crossposted at firedoglake's Seminal