CPAC 2011: DNC Blasts Republicans Over Talking Points (VIDEO)

DNC Blasts Republicans Over CPAC Talking Points (VIDEO)

HuffPost- First Posted: 02/14/11 10:03 AM Updated: 02/14/11 10:23 AM

The Democratic National Committee launched a new web video over the weekend meant to portray the GOP as a party committed to driving regressive policies.

Pulling clips from some of the biggest speeches at the Conservative Political Action Conference, the video shows leading Republicans arguing for such things as abolishing the Department of Education and the Environmental Protection Agency, repealing the health care law, and pushing for the privatization of Social Security.

In one of the DNC’s first official forays into the forthcoming campaign, their video argues that the messages given in the speeches by top conservatives and potential 2012 candidates such as Tim Pawlenty, Newt Gingrich, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) don’t work toward the GOP’s stated goal of addressing jobs and the economy.

The video then contrasts these snippets with footage of some top-talking Democrats, including President Barack Obama during his State of the Union address, discussing plans to stimulate job growth and domestic production, promising to “do big things.”

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Afternoon Jukebox- Grammy Winners: Muse- Train- Arcade Fire- Eminem

Congratulations to the 53rd Annual Grammy Winners!  Here are a few:

Album of the Year: “The Suburbs,” Arcade Fire

Pop Performance by a Duo or Group: “Hey Soul Sister,” Train

Rock Album: “The Resistance,” Muse

Rap Album: “Recovery,” Eminem

Arcade Fire- The Suburbs

Train – Hey, Soul Sister

Muse- Resistance

Eminem – Love The Way You Lie ft. Rihanna

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Boehner Brings Home Pork-Barrel Defense Project That Pentagon Doesn’t Want

Despite Earmark Ban, Boehner Brings Home Pork-Barrel Defense Project That Pentagon Doesn’t Want

Think Progress- By Zaid Jilani at 9:58 am

Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) likes to tout his opposition to earmarks. Indeed, since first entering Congress in 1991, the congressman has never requested a single earmark. And one of his caucus’s first moves in the new Congress has been to renew a voluntary earmark ban in the House of Representatives, making good on a major campaign promise.

Yet as CAP Senior Fellow Scott Lilly reveals in a new analysis, “No, He Wouldn’t—Would He?,” Boehner and House Republicans appear to have included an earmark-in-all-but-name for the new Speaker’s district in the newly released House Appropriations Continuing Resolution (CR). The CR includes massive cuts to important programs like Head Start and LIHEAP, but one thing it doesn’t cut is $450 million stashed away for the construction of a Joint Strike Fighter engine the Pentagon doesn’t even want.

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Giffords Doctors Work To Help Brain Rewire Itself

Gabrielle Giffords Brain Injury: Doctors Work To Help Giffords’ Brain Rewire Itself

AP/The Huffington Post First Posted: 02/14/11 02:26 AM Updated: 02/14/11 10:30 AM

NEW YORK — Compared to a sleek new laptop, that three-pound mass of fatty tissue called the brain may not look like much. But when it’s injured, it adapts and rewires its circuits in new ways.

That’s the kind of flexibility that doctors and rehabilitation specialists hope to encourage in Gabrielle Giffords, the brain-injured Arizona congresswoman.

Details about her recovery have been thin. But members of her staff say she recently began speaking for the first time since the Jan. 8 attack by a gunman in Tucson. Brain injury patients who regain speech typically begin to do that about four to six weeks after the injury, experts say.

Last week, the Congresswoman asked for toast while while having breakfast, her chief of staff told the “CBS Evening News.” That was within a month of being shot in the head. The Houston Chronicle noted that doctors at TIRR Memorial Hermann have used the phrase “lightning speed” to describe her recovery thus far.

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