Tea Party Convention Is Canceled

Tea Party Convention Is Canceled

New York Times – September 24, 2010, 11:04 am

By KATE ZERNIKE

The Tea Party is off.

At least, the National Tea Party Unity Convention that was being planned for mid-October in Las Vegas is off. It was supposed to be a repeat of the convention in Nashville last February, which drew 600 “delegates” (and almost as many reporters) and an adoring audience for Sarah Palin, the keynote speaker.

Sponsored by Tea Party Nation, a social networking site, the convention was supposed to emphasize Tea Party groups working together — a contrast to the convention in February, which was plagued by infighting among groups, with sponsors and speakers dropping out right up until its opening hours. Organizers chose Las Vegas not least because it is the center of the Senate race that Tea Party activists would most dearly love to win: Sharron Angle, a Republican supported by Tea Party groups, is challenging Harry Reid, the leader of the Democratic majority.

Barbee Kinnison, a Tea Party activist in Las Vegas who had been helping organize the convention, sent an e-mail to supporters saying that it was with “deep sorrow” that she had to announce “the convention is just not going to happen.”

Tea Party Nation still draws scorn from some other Tea Party groups, which have raised eyebrows at asking people to spend more than $200 to attend a convention, so it was not clear what this said about the strength of the movement. Tea Party Patriots, a large umbrella for about 2,700 local Tea Party groups nationwide, had criticized the media attention on the convention in February, saying it was not a real representation of Tea Party activism.

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Glenn Beck vs. Fox News: ‘Tension’ Between Beck & Network

Glenn Beck vs. Fox News: ‘Tension’ Between Beck & Network

Huff Post- Posted: 09-29-10 11:11 AM

Glenn Beck appears on the cover of this weekend’s New York Times Magazine in a lengthy profile written by Mark Leibovich.

In the profile, Leibovich touches on tensions between Beck and Fox News, the network that catapulted him to stardom.

News of tension between Beck and his network colleagues (and bosses) is nothing new — in March, the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz described Fox News as “a network divided” over Beck, which prompted network boss Roger Ailes to issue a stern “no trash-talking” message to his DC bureau — but Leibovich’s article sheds new light on the extent to which Beck and Fox News have clashed.

Leibovich reports that Ailes “has complained about Beck’s hawking his non-Fox ventures too much on his Fox show” and that Ailes believes Beck “does not fully appreciate the degree to which Fox News has made him the sensation he has become in recent months.” Leibovich also notes that Beck is “the only major personality at the network whose office is not at Fox News headquarters.”

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AZ Sheriff’s Dept Reopens Case Of Deputy Allegedly Shot By Drug Smugglers

Sheriff Paul Babeu

AZ Sheriff’s Dept Reopens Case Of Deputy Allegedly Shot By Drug Smugglers

TPM Muckraker

Eric Lach | September 27, 2010, 3:35PM

The Pinal County, Arizona Sheriff’s Office has announced that it is reopening the case of a sheriff’s deputy who was shot on April 30, after an article last week raised questions about the deputy’s story that he’d been involved in a shoot-out with drug smugglers — and just hours after telling TPM that the department stood by the original investigation.

In April, the case of Deputy Louie Puroll received widespread media attention, as it came at the height of the debate over the state’s controversial new immigration law. The tale was seized upon by anti-immigration activists to whip up support for the state’s new law. Puroll said that he was shot by drug smugglers during an altercation in the Arizona desert.

Last week, a Phoenix New Times article solicited the opinion of several experts (who were then also contacted by the Associated Press), who said that the wound suffered by Puroll looked like it had been made by a close-range shot, not one fired from 25 yards away, as Puroll had claimed.

“Two individuals reported to a Phoenix media outlet that they felt Deputy Puroll had been shot at a close distance (“within a couple of inches”) and not at a distance as the investigation has determined,” the sheriff’s department said in a statement. “In an effort to maintain the transparency of our criminal investigation, we are reopening this case.”

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US Helicopters Attack Pakistan, Killing More Than 50

NATO Confirms Apache Helicopters Launched Attacks Against Pakistani Territory

by Jason Ditz, Antiwar.com,  September 26, 2010

NATO spokesmen are confirming tonight that a pair of US Apache helicopters crossed the border from Afghanistan into Pakistan, launching an attack against tribesmen in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) which killed over 50.

NATO says that the tribesmen they attacked were believed to be the same ones responsible for an attack against a NATO base in the Khost Province of Afghanistan. The Khost Province borders FATA’s North Waziristan Agency, a regular target for US drone strikes.

Though it is not the first time US forces have crossed the border and launched attacks into Pakistan, such attacks have been exceedingly rare (and followed by angry reactions from Pakistan’s military and civilian government). NATO has also repeatedly tried to distance itself from previous attacks, insisting there is no basis for crossing the border.

NATO depends on Pakistani territory as a supply route for its troops in land-locked Afghanistan, and following a pair of 2008 raids by US troops into Pakistan the nation’s government briefly blocked the supplies. With many, many more NATO troops in Afghanistan now than in 2008 the supply route is all the more vital, though simultaneously all the more fragile.

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Christine O’Donnell: ‘Evolution Is A Myth. Why Aren’t Monkeys Still Evolving Into Humans?’ (VIDEO)

Christine O’Donnell: ‘Evolution Is A Myth. Why Aren’t Monkeys Still Evolving Into Humans?’ (VIDEO)

The Huffington Post |  Nicholas Graham
First Posted: 09-25-10 11:01 AM   |   Updated: 09-25-10 11:07 AM

Bill Maher has so far kept his promise to air an embarrassing clip of Tea Party favorite and Delaware Republican Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell every week that she refuses to be a guest on his HBO show, “Real Time.”

Last night Maher showed a video from an appearance she made in 1998 on his old program “Politically Incorrect” in which she calls evolution “a myth” and backs up her claim with the question: if evolution is real, “why aren’t monkeys still evolving into humans?”

This latest uncovered statement comes on the heels of a clip unearthed from an old “Scarborough Country” episode in which she insists that we stop the whole nation from having sex.

Since she was a guest on Maher’s previous show 22 times, it’s unlikely that the steady stream of past statements coming to light will stop any time soon.

For more on Christine O’Donnell’s controversial statements and positions, click here and here.

WATCH: (via ThinkProgress)

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SNL: Christine O’Donnell As First Political Target With Masturbation Parody – 9/25/10 (VIDEO)

SNL Returns with Christine O’Donnell as First Political Target with Masturbation Parody

Crooks & Liars- By Heather

September 26, 2010 04:00 AM

Saturday Night Live started off their season premier with having a bit of fun at Delaware Republican Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell’s expense and her remarks on witchcraft and masturbation. I await her response where she again plays the victim card like her mentor Sarah Palin and comes on Fox and tells the rest of us how that “liberal mainstream media”, otherwise known as a comedy show on NBC is picking on her.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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Obama’s Massive Power Struggle With The American War Machine

Obama’s Massive Power Struggle with the American War Machine

Asia Times / By Pepe Escobar

Even if Barack Obama is seriously betting on his exit strategy, the Pentagon wants infinite war.

September 24, 2010 |

As that self-appointed court stenographer Bob Woodward reveals in his latest court opus Obama’s Wars – conveniently leaked to the Washington Post and the New York Times – the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is shelling out the moolah for its own, 3,000-assassin-plus Murder Inc to roam in AfPak. These paramilitary – brigade-size – outfits, “elite and well trained”, have been branded Counter-terrorist Pursuit Teams (CPT).

Much is being made in US corporate media that this shady CPT posse is able to “cross-over” to the tribal areas in Pakistani territory and, like in that famous Heineken ad campaign, reach the parts US intelligence are not able to reach. Aware Latin Americans – with a shrug – will see this as Bad Joke redux: the “Salvador option” is back. As much as these Afghan assassins have been flown to the US for training, the infamous School of the Americas in the 1970s and 1980s trained death squads of natives to kill their compatriots from Chile to El Salvador. The CIA not exactly excels on thinking outside the box.

Old Afghan hands will also be thrilled; this is a small-scale remix of the Afghan mujahideen fighting the anti-Soviet 1980s jihad. Everyone knows what happened afterwards to those bad asses Ronald Reagan called “freedom fighters”; they turned against the US. Maybe some enterprising CIA analysts should share a kebab with their old pal on a payroll, former Afghan prime minister Gulbuddin “bomb, bomb Kabul” Hekmatyar, an eternal mujahid today on Washington’s most wanted list.

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12 Of America’s Most Crooked Candidates On The Ballot In The 2010 Election

12 of America’s Most Crooked Candidates on the Ballot in the 2010 Election

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington

Here are some of the absolutely least deserving candidates for high office.

September 16, 2010 |

Since 2005, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), has compiled a list of the dirtiest, most corrupt critters to scurry across the halls of Congress. The annual report shines some light on the double-dealing and back-scratching of some shady characters, and its release generally gets good play among political reporters.

But 2010 is the year of the upstart, insurgent candidacies — with dozens of “outsiders” on the scene dedicated to “cleaning up Washington,” “taking our country back,” etc. It’s the year of the Tea Parties, and no incumbent is safe. So it’s entirely appropriate that CREW should release a new list this year, one that looks not at the worst sitting members of Congress but at the dirtiest candidates — the people most likely to rank among the most corrupt in Congress if they go on to win their elections.

From James Traficant, running as an independent candidate in Ohio just 14 months after his release from prison on charges of bribery, racketeering and filing fraudulent tax returns, to Alvin Greene, an unemployed and apparently indigent Democratic Senate candidate out of South Carolina who can’t explain how he came up with the $10,000 fee required to file — here are 12 of the absolutely least deserving candidates for high office.

Roy Blunt — Running for U.S. Senate, Missouri

Roy Blunt is a candidate in the Republican primary for the United States Senate in Missouri. For the last 14 years, Rep. Blunt has served in the U.S. House of Representatives in the state’s 7th congressional district. As a member of Congress, Rep. Blunt came under fire for a variety of issues including employing the same corrupt tactics that forced his mentor, former Texas Rep. Tom DeLay, to resign. Rep. Blunt’s ethical issues were documented in CREW’s 2006 report on the most corrupt members of Congress.

In 2003, Rep. Blunt divorced his wife of 31 years to marry Philip Morris (now Altria) lobbyist Abigail Perlman. Before it was known publicly that Rep. Blunt and Ms. Perlman were dating – and only hours after Rep. Blunt assumed the role of Majority Whip – he tried to secretly insert a provision into Homeland Security legislation that would have benefitted Philip Morris, at the expense of competitors. Notably, Philip Morris/Altria and its subsidiaries contributed at least $217,000 to campaign committees connected to Rep. Blunt from 1996 to 2006.

Also in 2003, Rep. Blunt helped his son, Andrew Blunt, by inserting a provision into the $79 billion emergency appropriation for the war in Iraq to benefit U.S. shippers like United Parcel Service, Inc. and FedEx Corp. Andrew Blunt lobbied on behalf of UPS in Missouri, and UPS and FedEx contributed at least $58,000 to Rep. Blunt from 2001 to 2006.

Family connections have also helped another of Rep. Blunt’s sons, former Missouri Governor Matt Blunt. Gov. Blunt received campaign contributions from nearly three dozen influential Missouri lobbyists and lawyers when he ran for governor of Missouri in 2004, half of whom had provided financial support to his father. Earlier in 2000, when Matt Blunt was running for Secretary of State, Rep. Blunt was involved in an apparent scheme, along with Rep. DeLay, to funnel money through a local party committee into Matt Blunt’s campaign committee.

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How Right-Wing Billionaires And Business Propaganda Got Us Into The Economic Mess Of The Century

How Right-Wing Billionaires and Business Propaganda Got Us into the Economic Mess of the Century

AlterNet / By Joshua Holland

Holland’s new book shows how the corporate Right obscured how they’ve rigged the “free market” so they always come out on top.

September 15, 2010 |

Editor’s note: AlterNet is proud to present this excerpt from senior writer Joshua Holland’s new book, The Fifteen Biggest Lies about the Economy (And Everything Else the Right Doesn’t Want You to Know about Taxes, Jobs, and Corporate America). Holland’s research-rich but entertainingly written book slices and dices the latest talking points, explaining the issues with depth and nuance. The book tells an important story about the American economy that you won’t read in the Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal. It’s one that is vitally important to understand as we grapple with some new economic realities. It’s a story about how the corporate Right has obscured the ways in which they’ve rigged the “free market” so they always come out on top. Ultimately, it goes a long way toward explaining how so few Americans noticed as a new Gilded Age emerged under a haze of lies, half-truths and distortions.

*****

The Great Recession that began in 2008 wiped out $13 trillion in Americans’ household wealth —in home values and stocks and bonds—stoking the kind of anger we’ve seen from pissed off progressives and from the Tea Partiers who dominated the news in the summer of 2009.

But although a lot of people threw around some angry rhetoric—and even invoked the specter of armed revolution—the reality is that when the economy nosedived, we basically took it. We didn’t riot; we took the bailouts, tolerated our stagnant wages, and accepted that Washington wasn’t about to give struggling families any real relief.

Yet the meltdown was global in nature, and it’s worth noting that citizens of other wealthy countries weren’t so complacent. As the Telegraph, a British tabloid, reported, “A depression triggered in America is being played out in Europe with increasing violence, and other forms of social unrest are spreading. In Iceland, a government has fallen. Workers have marched in Zaragoza, as Spanish unemployment heads toward 20 percent. There have been riots and bloodshed in Greece, protests in Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary and Bulgaria. The police have suppressed public discontent in Russia.” Another British paper, the Guardian, reported scenes of “Burned-out cars, masked youths, smashed shop windows and more than a million striking workers” in France. French officials went so far as to delay the release of unemployment data, “apparently for fear of inflaming the protests.”

You might wonder why Americans are so docile compared to others in the face of such a brutal economic onslaught by a small and entitled elite. Any number of theories have been offered to explain the apparent disconnect. Thomas Frank argued eloquently in his book What’s the Matter with Kansas? that wedge social issues—“God, guns and gays”—that the American Right nurtures with such care, obscure the fundamental differences between rich and poor, the powerful and the disenfranchised. Class consciousness, common to other liberal democracies, has been trumped by social anxieties, according to Frank.

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10 Terrible Things Republicans Will Try to Do If They Take Over in November

10 Terrible Things Republicans Will Try to Do If They Take Over in November

AlterNet / By Devona Walker

Think things are bad now? Take a look at what could happen if Republicans retake Congress in November.

September 20, 2010 |

Democrats are in trouble come November. If current polling is any indication, Republicans have a good chance of reclaiming a majority in the House of Representatives and perhaps even the Senate (though the Senate is a less likely prospect). That’s not because people are wildly excited about Republicans. In fact, a recent poll shows that registered voters rate the GOP’s performance as worse than the Democrats’. But the enthusiasm gap between the parties gives the GOP an advantage; a nine-point advantage among likely voters, according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

Perhaps Americans should know what’s really at stake if this batch of Republicans takes over Congress in November. Here are 10 terrible things the GOP might do:

1) Shut down government to stop health care bill. “All the Republican Congress needs to say in January is, ‘We won’t fund it,” said former Speaker of the House and likely 2012 presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich, speaking about the GOP leadership’s intent to shut down the government to stop health care reform from being enacted. He should know. He did it before, back in 1995 when the Republicans reclaimed Congress during the Clinton administration. The GOP’s government shutdown was disastrous for millions of Americans.

Since Republicans can’t directly repeal the bill — President Obama would veto such an action — they may cut funding in order to hold up its implementation, forcing a stand-off with Democrats that could lead to government shutdown. Gingrich isn’t the only one sounding this threat. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said, “The endgame is a fight over funding.” Rep. Mike Pence called rolling back health reform a “mainstream GOP position.”

Meanwhile, in an interview with TPM, Donna Shalala, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services during the Clinton administration, discussed the consequences of government shutdown. Services would be stopped: “Social Security checks, Medicare reimbursements…welfare checks to the state, Medicaid checks to the state.” Federal employees would be furloughed. It would “stop all new enrollees into the [Social Security] system,” Shalala said. She continued, “It bounces through: it’s grocery stores, it’s farms […] It bounces through when people don’t have money at that scale.” Shalala also pointed out that the economy is in far worse shape today than it was during the Clinton years, so the impact of government shutdown would likely be worse than in the 1990s.

2) Attempt to privatize Social Security. Back in 2005, former President George W. Bush tried to privatize Social Security by creating independent spending accounts, similar to 401Ks. He failed. But unlike Republicans today, Bush did not have the advantage of Tea-Party backed ultraconservative Republicans, some of whom honestly believe the only role of the federal government is to fight wars and protect our borders. Among the GOP’s up and comers is Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the ranking Republican member of the House Budget Committee. He wants to create personal spending retirement accounts invested in the stock market, which sounds a lot like the current 401K system: You know, the one that lost nearly 40 percent of its value during the financial crisis.

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