Artist – David Fitzsimmons
In other news, 2 more aides to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker were charged today for illegally fundraising while working on the taxpayer’s dime. This brings the total to 5 the number of former Walker henchmen facing charges.

Another GOP clown car debate will take place tonight at 8 pm EST on CNN featuring the Worst Political Team on Television.

http://bobcesca.com/blog-archives/2012/01/the-arizona-summit.html

Copyright 2012 Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog! Go!

Gotta love Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer.

The tough-on-immigration governor got a little animated Wednesday in talking to President Barack Obama after he arrived at the Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport.

She got up close to the president and shoved her right index finger in Obama’s face.

For Republicans, it’s only the latest example of how they want to publicly disrespect the president. Expect this image to get plenty of “atta-girls” from GOP supporters.

For Democrats, the photo will be circulated to get their blood boiling, that someone like the odd governor of Arizona would disrespect the office of the president.

Here’s the reason behind the pointed finger, essentially having something to do with how Brewer felt Obama was condescending to her during an earlier meeting at the White House. Now she reportedly wants to talk to him again.

Yes, governor, and getting uppity with the president was exactly the right thing to do to get yourself invited to another meeting. Not.

Those who are ideologically predisposed to criticize President Obama contort themselves to overlook inconvenient facts.

The fact is that, under President Obama’s leadership, we have seen 22 straight months of private sector job growth.

While Republicans are accusing the President of being a job killer, the fact is that President Obama has created 3.2 million new private sector jobs. More private sector jobs were created in 2011 in America than any year since 2005.

Oddly, Mitt Romney wants to claim credit for a hundred thousand jobs that were created after his Bain investment (and not count the many more jobs he killed but Republicans refuse to be honest about President Obama’s record of creating jobs and, slowly but surely, bringing our economy back from the brink.

Facts don’t lie, folks.

And so, in tonight’s State of the Union Address, our president will accurately lay out the steps he has taken to help our economy recover and the additional steps he plans to take going forward.

This is what presidents, Republicans and Democrats, have done at such addresses for generations.

But Republicans, realizing that stubborn and dishonest attacks on Obama’s policy ideas are backfiring on their own party, will make a desperate attempt to portray the president as “campaigning” during the State of the Union. Somehow, what was defensible under George W. Bush is borderline treasonous under Barack Obama.

The fact is that half of voters — and, importantly, more than half of self-identified independents — believe that Republicans in Congress are intentionally sabotaging our economy to hurt President Obama’s re-election prospects.

Another poll asked voters which statement they agree with more: “President Obama is making a good faith effort to deal with the country’s economic problems, but the Republicans in Congress are playing politics by blocking his proposals and programs.” Or this: “President Obama has not provided leadership on the economy, and he is just blaming the Republicans in Congress as an excuse for not doing his job.”

Not only do the majority of voters agree with the first statement over the second, but the difference is more pronounced among moderate and independent voters. Independents favor the first statement by a 54 to 40 margin. Moderates favor the first statement by a 57 to 37 margin.

In other words, if the majority of Americans believe that President Obama is trying to lead our economy and our nation forward but Republicans are putting politics ahead of patriotism and actively sabotaging our economy, the president is absolutely right to deliver a strong, bold and sharp-elbowed State of the Union Address that calls out Congressional Republicans for blocking every bipartisan idea that crosses their desks and stubbornly refusing to compromise for the good of the nation.

Frankly, if the president did not deliver such a firm rebuke tonight, that would be a clear failure of leadership.

Republicans will continue to throw every imaginable criticism plus the kitchen sink at our president. Republicans will call Obama “the food stamp president” — a racially-tinged charge that ignores the fact that food stamp enrollment was twice as high under President George W. Bush.

Republicans will accuse Obama’s health care reform law of destroying the economy — even though jobs are rebounding and most of the law won’t take effect until 2014.

Republicans will say regulation under Obama is stifling the private sector — even though, in a key report, small business owners across the United States said it was a lack of consumer demand and not regulations that are hurting their business.

Republicans will keep attacking Obama for raising taxes — even though not only has he lowered taxes for 99% of Americans but it’s been Republicans who have blocked vital tax breaks for the middle class.

These baseless smears may fire up a small fringe of the anti-Obama Republican base, but the fact of the matter is most Americans care about results and character. V

oters can tell the difference between a president who is making progress turning the economy around and being honest about the obstacles he’s facing versus desperate presidential contenders who want to sling nothing but mud to distract from their decades of failed leadership that put our country in this crisis.

Of course, as we recover from an historic recession with millions of Americans still unemployed or struggling to get by, no one can say that the state of our union is as strong as it should be or needs to be. But it is getting stronger.

The plan the president will outline tonight will make our nation stronger, instead of turning us back to the dark ages of Republican class warfare and an economy that only works for the 1%, building an American economy for the future on the foundation of American manufacturing and energy innovation, training American workers for good jobs and reinvesting in the values of fair opportunity that built our great nation.

I’m not saying the president is perfect nor that I or anyone will agree with everything he says tonight, as in the past. But fundamentally, these are good ideas that, frankly, conservatives in Congress would readily support if they came from a Republican president.

For once, it would be nice for Republicans to honestly listen to what President Obama has to say, using their patriotic hearts not their political brains — offering feedback based on facts and principles, not personal smears and partisanship.

But either way, make no mistake about it, the majority of American people have been listening carefully to the President all along — and liking what they hear.

Sally Kohn is a Fox News Contributor

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/01/24/president-obama-and-state-our-future/

©2012 FOX News Network, LLC. All rights reserved.

Last night:

GINGRICH: “When I was speaker, we had four consecutive balanced budgets.”

There were only two, not four, and only after negotiating a deal with President Clinton.

The “I’m an historian” line from Gingrich is usually the precursor to a phenomenal lie.

http://bobcesca.com/blog-archives/2012/01/gingrich-the-historian-flubs-history.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

 Copyright 2012 Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog! Go!

from underthemountainbunker.com

 Tex Shelters
Addicting Info
January 22, 2012

Newt Gingrich has cheapened the institution of marriage through his behavior, and the people who support Gingrich and allow him to get away with his womanizing, divorces and multiple marriages are damaging the institution even further.

The vows of marriage say “til death do us part”, but that was too long to wait for Newt.

Newt Gingrich admits that he sinned and his first marriage failed because, “all humans sin”.  So, when it comes to marriage, Mr. Gingrich is an admitted sinner. Adultery is a sin, and the Republicans who accept Newt and his sin should understand that adultery leads to man on dog sex, sex between gerbils and cats and other unholy matrimonies.

Moreover, while Gingrich cheapened his own marriage with non-wife blow jobs, he was working in the House to impeach President Clinton for his non-wife blow jobs.

Newt’s second wife recently accused him of wanting an open marriage. But that’s okay with Republicans in South Carolina, where Gingrich won the latest primary. If you don’t see the hypocrisy yet, imagine if Secretary of State Clinton had said, “Bill wanted an open marriage”? Republicans would have been on this like crap on shit. Open marriages and the Republican acceptance of them are ruining the sanctity of marriage like vampire on human sex.

And how did Republicans, those willing to vote for an adulterer, sinner, and divorcee, feel about the Weiner bulge of 2011. No, the Weiner bulge wasn’t a German Panzer attack in WWII, it was the photo that Democratic Representative Anthony Weiner sent of the outline of his penis in underwear to a female college student he had met online. It became a massive issue for Republicans wanting to rid themselves of this brash liberal Representative. So a few sexual innuendoes and attacks later (even Democrats asked Weiner to resign) he resigned for doing less than Newt has done to ruin the sanctity of marriage. As far as we know, Weiner kept his penis in his shorts, Gingrich did not.

By mixing faith, redemption and adultery, Mr. Gingrich has created a new form of politics where sinning is okay. “Newt is apparently trying to create a new hybrid form, Christian adultery.”

And Republicans defend him by stating that his three marriages prove that Gingrich is qualified to be president. One example of this is from Dr. Keith Ablow  (yes, his name really is Ablow).

So, here’s what one interested in making America stronger can reasonably conclude—psychologically—from Mr. Gingrich’s behavior during his three marriages:

1) Three women have met Mr. Gingrich and been so moved by his emotional energy and intellect that they decided they wanted to spend the rest of their lives with him.

2) Two of these women felt this way even though Mr. Gingrich was already married. 

3 ) One of them felt this way even though Mr. Gingrich was already married for the second time, was not exactly her equal in the looks department and had a wife (Marianne) who wanted to make his life without her as painful as possible. 

Conclusion: When three women want to sign on for life with a man who is now running for president, I worry more about whether we’ll be clamoring for a third Gingrich term, not whether we’ll want to let him go after one.”

I have another conclusion to make from the idea that sexual encounters qualify you for president. Why not vote for Wilt Chamberlain for president, who claims to have had 20,000 sexual encounters with women? Now that’s qualification!

Let’s look at Newt’s own excuse for his affairs. He says that he felt so passionately about the United States that it caused him to leave his cancer riddled wife and later, “while he was leading a party that was making the case that a U.S. President shouldn’t be having on-the-job sexual encounters with interns, using his staff and appointees to cover it up, and lying about it under oath in court, to commence a second extra-marital affair of his own.” 

And now when the media asks about his marriages, (after helping Republicans attack Clinton in the drawn out impeachment hearings) Newt is incensed,

“I think the destructive, viscous, negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder to government this country, harder to attract decent people to run this country and I am appalled that you would being a presidential debate on a topic like that.” 

And Republicans in Congress have spent Obama’s whole term using destructive, viscous and negative attacks against the President, thus making it hard for him to govern.

Newt continues, “Every person in here has had someone close to them go through painful things, to take an ex-wife, and make it (an issue) two days before the primary a significant question in a presidential campaign, is as close to despicable as anything I can imagine.”

I am so glad the media and the Republicans didn’t treat Clinton or Weiner so despicably.

So Newt Gingrich and South Carolina’s Republicans support the adulterer while blocking marriage for homosexuals who might “ruin the sanctity” of the institution. In the meantime, I will be passing around my “Wilt for President” petition.

This post is not condone extramarital affairs nor does it care if candidates have them. I am more concerned with liars and hypocrites running for office and those that would keep rights from others because of their religious bigotry.

Peace,
Tex Shelters

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/01/22/newt-gingrich-and-the-republicans-are-ruining-traditional-marriage/

 Copyright © 2012 Addicting Info. All Rights Reserved.

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http://thepoliticalcarnival.net/2012/01/15/cartoons-of-the-day-republican-infighting/

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I wonder if Mitt Romney has heard it.

As recently as two weeks ago, Romney had a fairly specific number in mind when it came to the jobs created by his vulture-capitalist firm.

“I’m very happy in my former life; we helped create over 100,000 new jobs.”

A few days ago, the total dropped.

“People here in the state know that in the work that I had, we started a number of businesses, invested in many others, and that over all created tens of thousands jobs.”

This morning, the Romney campaign unveiled a new ad, which moved the goal post again. Greg Sargent picked up on the new message:

The ad claims Romney only created “thousands of jobs,” which is the latest shift in his campaign’s claims.

So, over the course of two weeks, Romney has gone from “over 100,000 jobs” to “tens of thousands” to “thousands.”

By next week, I expect Romney to tell us, “I probably created a handful of jobs.”

The criticism and scrutiny of Romney’s record of mass private-sector layoffs appears to be taking a toll on the Republican’s rhetoric.

Steve Benen is a contributing writer to the Washington Monthly, joining the publication in August, 2008 as chief blogger for the Washington Monthly blog, Political Animal.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2012_01/how_low_can_he_go034735.php

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