Fox's Shepard Smith Drops F-Bomb

It looks like someone over at Fox has a little morality after all. Shep Smith, who quite recently has been mocking Glenn Beck on air, went apeshit when one of his colleagues tried to justify torture from the Bush admin. 

Slams the table and everything. While I know he's working for Fox, he's growing on me. 

Dems Rebranding GOP

The Hill is reporting that the dems are trying to take the ugliest of the GOP and rebrand the uglies as the leaders. The three uglies being Cheney, Gingrich and Rove (I would throw Limbaugh in there as a seasoning.) Each of the three suck up huge amounts of media time and space whenever they talk. So people see them as leaders. The great thing about this is they are old, white and most of America doesn't like them.

The dems are also rebranding them as the part of "NO" and "No Ideas". This will also help to keep the GOP on the ropes for a long time to come. It is true that they have no credible ideas and they are severe obstructionists, but with dems hitting this theme home for the next year and a half until the midterm elections, I think the GOP is in real trouble. 

What has changed over the past several years? People see that the GOP screwed things up so badly that their old tactics seem childish. Not only are the cultural wars of the 90's and early 00's no longer affective. The labels as soft on national security don't stick to dems anymore. It is so bad for the repubs that Politico wrote how Obama doesn't care about any attacks coming out from the right.

Obama is on Leno. He has the Greatful Dead over to the Oval Office. And just today Usher was spotted at the white house. The right is in such a frenzy they will probably end up screwing themselves into the ground.

Cornyn Sees 60 Senate Votes for Dems Likely

Some honesty came out of the GOP's rosey-all-the-time machine. Texas Senator John Cornyn, the man responsible for electing repubs to the senate had an honest moment thinks its going to be "real hard" to try and prevent the dems from getting a 60 seat majority. 

From The Hill:

"that's going to be real hard, to be honest with you. Everybody who runs could be the potential tipping point to get Democrats to 60. We've not only got to play defense; we've got to claw our way back in 2010. It'll be a huge challenge."

Let us hope his proficy comes true. 

The Torture Damn is Breaking

Bush used torture and all his attempts at covering it up are coming out. The disclosure of the legal memos  showed that they tortured one guy 183. Jesus christ. This was not for information. It was payback.

Now, The Times shows a history of how the torture came about. And not because they needed info. The history started about a couple of months after 9/11.

"In a series of high-level meetings in 2002, without a single dissent from cabinet members or lawmakers, the United States for the first time officially embraced the brutal methods of interrogation it had always condemned."

No one stopped to say "Hey, maybe this is illegal or immoral or just wrong."

Then there's the stupidity of the players:

"They did not know that some veteran trainers from the SERE program itself had warned in internal memorandums that, morality aside, the methods were ineffective. Nor were most of the officials aware that the former military psychologist who played a central role in persuading C.I.A. officials to use the harsh methods had never conducted a real interrogation, or that the Justice Department lawyer most responsible for declaring the methods legal had idiosyncratic ideas that even the Bush Justice Department would later renounce.

The process was 'a perfect storm of ignorance and enthusiasm,' a former C.I.A. official said."

Obama needs to have an independent investigation into this whole thing. He NEEDS  to clean the closet on this one and many others. I hope this investigation will spill over into an investigation into wire tapping as well.

This Hit With a Thud

This is the first bad idea I've seen. Obama decided to tell his cabinet to save 100 million. A number so low that it was laughed at around the U.S. 

Very bad idea. It looks cheap and pandering. It felt almost staged. To date, while things might have been staged, it never felt staged. This whole thing felt staged.

And look what it left him open for:

"Budget analysts promptly burst out laughing. A reporter declared at the White House briefing that the initiative would become fodder for late-night talk show hosts. The Republican Study Committee, a group of fiscal conservatives, put out a news release with the headline 'Obama’s 0.0025% spending cut.'"

Sometimes he wants to educate the electorate too much. Just do the budget cuts and over time show what has been cut. Not the song and dance people laughed at. 

Darth Vader Just Will Not Shut Up

It seems that Cheney refuses to accept the crushing defeat  his party received for the past 2 election cycles. Now he's bemoaning Obama for shaking Chavez's hand. 

I don't really want to talk about the handshake. What is interesting is that whenever he opens his mouth it is only about national security. Why? He's positioning himself/repubs to say "I told you so" if anything should happen. 

It is the sickest of politics. He's gambling that the U.S. will get hit by terrorists and then he can say Obama made us less safe. 

Conspiracy alert: I would go so far as to say that he might of set a ball rolling before he even left office. 

This sad man needs to be prosecuted.