No, No, No. Hell NO!

I watched this last night and couldn't agree more. Please share this everywhere.
Rachel Maddow rocks.

I realize this is not the most important thing in the world that guys like Paul Wolfowitz still writes articles about U.S. wars, but please, Jesus, can there be some accountability in American politics? Can there be a penalty for being wrong about the biggest things in the world to be wrong about? If you were an architect of the Iraq war, you don't ever get an opportunity to talk about what is a good idea when it comes to war ever again. Deal? Deal.
Dick Cheney, I don't want to hear from your anymore about wars. George W. Bush -- no. Donald Rumsfeld, not interested.
Condoleezza Rice, I'm sorry. I'm sure your new book is awesome. I would still like to interview you about it. But when it comes to being part of our collective conversation about war in this country, you had your chance -- blew it. No. Wrong. You are not going to be consulted on the next big idea since you got the last one so wrong.
Take up another hobby. Try to convince us to listen to your big ideas on some other subject. Take up macrame. Confess before the cleric of your choosing. Buy stock in little black combs and lick them and make a fortune.
But war advice, no. Seriously, "Foreign Policy" magazine, you went looking for a plan for Afghanistan and for that plan, you went looking to Paul Wolfowitz?
The answer is no, no, no. Ten years of hell, no. Not again.

Watch it here.

Must Read

I haven't finished this post, yet. But it should be shared far and wide as well.

As Michael Lind has compelling argued, the Tea Party movement is the latest echo of the Southern Confederacy. In all, they are neo-Secessionists whose language of “States Rights’,” “nullification” and “Second Amendment remedies” hearkens back to that of the old Confederacy. Because the Tea Party are in fact neo-Confederates, the federal government is viewed with deep hostility, and they are heirs to a political tradition that views the preservation of Jim Crow segregation in the name of “States’ Rights” as more important than civil rights for black Americans.

Tea Party representatives such as Rand Paul have echoed this suspicion of the civil rights laws which brought down Jim Crow; the Tea Party faithful have made repeated efforts to (quite literally) white wash the U.S. history curricula of the Arizona and Texas school systems; and in their creative reimagining of the U.S. Constitution, the Tea Party GOP has conveniently removed all of the “bad parts” (i.e. references to slavery) as a function of a feigned and convenient “colorblindness” that actively avoids the full complexity of the country’s past and present.

In keeping with their oversimplification and flattening of history, even the Tea Party’s Revolutionary War era costumes and histrionic railings against a “tyrannical government” speak to an embrace of Lost Cause ideology. Not coincidentally, the Confederacy also embraced the same symbolism, and imagined themselves as the true heirs to the founding fathers, the real champions of the U.S. Constitution.

I gotta find a way to get this to Dennis G over at Balloon-Juice.......

look what the cat dragged in.....

As usual, Matt Taibbi nails it....

Given the monstrous political influence of Murdoch and his companies – this idiotic game of chicken our government is now playing with America’s credit rating is one of countless policy disasters that I believe can be traced directly or indirectly to the insane propaganda that is a consistent by-product of Murdoch's nihilistic quest for profits – that would be a world-shaking development.

So let's review. Rupert Murdoch, CEO/LORD ALMIGHTY/Whatever....has reigned supreme on 3 continents for decades. News Corp has done this by debasing our societies to the lowest base form of humanity that we as humans can be. And as poorly as our education system has performed since the Reagan years, is it any wonder that the electorate don't care about anything but simple, bumper sticker politics? And I won't even go on a tangent about the Texas School Board text book guidelines for history books for all grade levels, full of magical thinking.....you can google it...

Moving back to Taibbi, he makes a point I have been saying for years.

Once the media business made the collective decision to always put money above editorial judgment, I think scandals like the News of the World affair became inevitable. Because once media companies abandoned the notion that their business was somehow different from other money-making businesses, that there were no longer places they wouldn’t go to generate product, it became inevitable that the corporate media game would become nothing more than an all-out, relentless quest for sensational, titillating material.

When the 3 major networks decided to make their News Division's 'profit' divisions, all bets were off. It had once been for the good of the country. To investigate and keep tabs on our government and our businesses. And how did that work out? It was a smashing success. Journalists were considered well for their tenacity in keeping politicians and corporations honest.

But then they had to have more money, because by this time, corporations owned the big 3. And corporations are greedy bastards.

Go read the whole Taibbi piece here....

true dat

"I simply cannot accept that there are, on every story, two equal and logical sides to an argument." - Edward R. Murrow

must read....

The most casual participant in the political process knows exactly what they will get when they vote for and elect Tea Party types and the more extreme right Republicans in general. No, he never came out and said "Hey, I'm gonna ream you public employees so hard you won't walk right for years!" on the campaign trail. He might even have said a lot of sweet sounding things to the contrary. Only a voter lying to himself or completely ignorant of politics, however, would actually believe it. It's time to stop being angry with Scott Walker, which makes no more sense than being angry at a dog for barking and chasing cars. Instead, our anger is more fairly directed at the swing voters who decide American elections – the kind of mushy, ill-informed "independent" who would vote for him and then be shocked to learn how extreme his brand of governance is. People like Walker will continue to get elected so long as there are voters who are willfully ignorant of what candidates really stand for or so easily duped that a few sound bites can overwhelm all available evidence that the Governor-to-be supports an agenda of the kind of corporate cronyism and pathological hatred of government that defines people of his ideological stripes.

via Gin and Tacos