James O'Keefe, a conservative activist who had posed as a pimp in order to set up ACORN has been arrested by the FBI for having attempted to commit a felony. O'Keefe and two others, wearing telephone company uniforms, were busted last night for allegedly wiretapping the phones in Senator Mary Landrieu's New Orleans office.
Landrieu said: "This is a very unusual situation and somewhat unsettling for me and my staff. The individuals responsible have been charged with entering federal property under false pretenses for the purposes of committing a felony. I am as interested as everyone else about their motives and purpose, which I hope will become clear as the investigation moves forward."
Brace yourselves folks as the list of Texas Republicans who honored James O'Keefe is quite long. My U.S. House Rep. John Culberson is on the list. Is your representative? See the list below the fold.
Gee whiz. I sure hope, for their own sorry sakes, right wing Republicans have decent health care coverage. I mean, at the rate at which they are blowing fuses and blood vessels over literally everything proposed by President Obama, good health care coverage sure is necessary for one's survival in avoiding and overcoming strokes and heart attacks.
OK, so the latest hysteria emanating from the right has to do with a speech President Obama will make to school children about staying in school, working hard to achieve good grades and taking personal responsibility for one's actions. This should be music to a parent's ears, especially in Texas where we have the highest number of school dropouts and our schools rank second to last nationwide.
But oh no, au contraire and God forbid, should a child work hard to stay in school, earn top notch grades, graduate with honors and gain acceptance in a top tier university.
It seems that the right has plenty of problems with staying in school, at least according to comments posted by on-line readers of the The Houston Chronicle.
Some object to Obama speech to students
According to the right President Obama will "indoctrinate" and "brain wash" students.
About?
Getting good grades? Taking responsibility?
No one howled when President G.W. Bush read to school children on the day our nation was horribly and ruthlessly attacked.
Nick Anderson, the Houston Chronicle, 9/3/09.
And where were these very same wingnuts when President George H.W. Bush spoke to school children at the eve of his campaign in 1992?
I guess a little ol' indoctrination and spin is harmless when it comes from a really rich white guy.
So, we've been hearing a lot of chatter on cable TV this week about a Fox News/GOP Tea Party Revolution. Fox News and the right wing fringe of the GOP have obviously gone completely bat bleep crazy over something. They are screaming day in and day about something. I am not sure what it is at this point. I've heard rants like "taxation without representation."
Huh? As I've mentioned before, we had an election recently that did not require lawsuits or recounts. This week President Obama has a 66% approval rating. The Democratic Party is at 51% while the Republican Party has a 26% approval rating. A majority of Independents and some moderate Republicans support President Obama's agenda.
So why is there so noise spewing from the right? Is this tea party thing merely a childish tantrum thrown by a bunch of sore losers and clowns?
Let's explore a few events of this past week to try to find an answer.
Let's talk bias. The number one dig on blogs and bloggers is that we are a bias bunch who can't be trusted because of are blatant partisan agenda. This is the same tag traditional media was given with the rise of radical Republican right, and some how the faux label stuck. The truth is, print media is a conservative bunch.
Media Matters has released a report on media bias, and the results might surprise you. We need to give a hat tip to Elise Hu over at KVUE-- seems irony is not without a sense of humor.
Sixty percent of the nation's daily newspapers print more conservative syndicated columnists every week than progressive syndicated columnists. Only 20 percent run more progressives than conservatives, while the remaining 20 percent are evenly balanced.
It appears that not only is there a natural conservative bias in national reporting, not surprisingly, there is a strong conservative slant in Texas.
Conservative syndicated columnists appear a total of 180 times per week in Texas newspapers. Centrist columnists appear a total of 46 times, while progressive columnists appear a total of 102 times.
Those conservative columnists reach Texas readers 1,683,857 more times than their progressive counterparts.
The top nationally syndicated columnists published regularly in Texas consist of seven conservatives, two centrists, and two progressives. The top conservative columnists appear regularly two times as often as do progressives.
How many times have you heard in the media that America is a conservative country and becoming more conservative every day? It's a claim that has been repeated so often by the media, it's become conventional wisdom. Well, Media Matters for America and the Campaign for America's Future have examined 20 years of independent, nonpartisan polling data to prove that this claim is FALSE.
In our new joint report -- "The Progressive Majority: Why a Conservative America is a Myth" -- we disprove the assumption that Americans are overwhelmingly conservative and demonstrate that, in contrast to the conventional wisdom that Americans are overwhelmingly conservative, a majority of Americans agree with progressives on issue after issue and have for decades.
One area we cover in our report is on immigration. Here are some of our key findings:
