Republican plans for budget cuts

The US budget deficit for 2010 is 2.7 Trillion. The DEBT is 14 Trillion. Yep. Cut NPR. That will make a dent... 

Corporation for Public Broadcasting Subsidy. $445 million annual savings.

Save America's Treasures Program. $25 million annual savings.

International Fund for Ireland. $17 million annual savings.

Legal Services Corporation. $420 million annual savings.

National Endowment for the Arts. $167.5 million annual savings.

National Endowment for the Humanities. $167.5 million annual savings.

Hope VI Program. $250 million annual savings.

Amtrak Subsidies. $1.565 billion annual savings.

Eliminate duplicative education programs. H.R. 2274 (in last Congress), authored by Rep. McKeon, eliminates 68 at a savings of $1.3 billion annually.

U.S. Trade Development Agency. $55 million annual savings.

Woodrow Wilson Center Subsidy. $20 million annual savings.

Cut in half funding for congressional printing and binding. $47 million annual savings.

John C. Stennis Center Subsidy. $430,000 annual savings.

Community Development Fund. $4.5 billion annual savings.

Heritage Area Grants and Statutory Aid. $24 million annual savings.

Cut Federal Travel Budget in Half. $7.5 billion annual savings.

Trim Federal Vehicle Budget by 20%. $600 million annual savings.

Essential Air Service. $150 million annual savings.

Technology Innovation Program. $70 million annual savings.

Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) Program. $125 million annual savings.

Department of Energy Grants to States for Weatherization. $530 million annual savings.

Beach Replenishment. $95 million annual savings.

New Starts Transit. $2 billion annual savings.

Exchange Programs for Alaska, Natives Native Hawaiians, and Their Historical Trading Partners in Massachusetts. $9 million annual savings.

Intercity and High Speed Rail Grants. $2.5 billion annual savings.

Title X Family Planning. $318 million annual savings.

Appalachian Regional Commission. $76 million annual savings.

Economic Development Administration. $293 million annual savings.

Programs under the National and Community Services Act. $1.15 billion annual savings.

Applied Research at Department of Energy. $1.27 billion annual savings.

FreedomCAR and Fuel Partnership. $200 million annual savings.

Energy Star Program. $52 million annual savings.

Economic Assistance to Egypt. $250 million annually.

U.S. Agency for International Development. $1.39 billion annual savings.

General Assistance to District of Columbia. $210 million annual savings.

Subsidy for Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority. $150 million annual savings.

Presidential Campaign Fund. $775 million savings over ten years.

No funding for federal office space acquisition. $864 million annual savings.

End prohibitions on competitive sourcing of government services.

Repeal the Davis-Bacon Act. More than $1 billion annually.

IRS Direct Deposit: Require the IRS to deposit fees for some services it offers (such as processing payment plans for taxpayers) to the Treasury, instead of allowing it to remain as part of its budget. $1.8 billion savings over ten years.

Require collection of unpaid taxes by federal employees. $1 billion total savings.

Prohibit taxpayer funded union activities by federal employees. $1.2 billion savings over ten years.

Sell excess federal properties the government does not make use of. $15 billion total savings.

Eliminate death gratuity for Members of Congress.

Eliminate Mohair Subsidies. $1 million annual savings.

Eliminate taxpayer subsidies to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. $12.5 million annual savings.

Eliminate Market Access Program. $200 million annual savings.

USDA Sugar Program. $14 million annual savings.

Subsidy to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). $93 million annual savings.

Eliminate the National Organic Certification Cost-Share Program. $56.2 million annual savings.

Eliminate fund for Obamacare administrative costs. $900 million savings.

Ready to Learn TV Program. $27 million savings.

HUD Ph.D. Program.

Deficit Reduction Check-Off Act.

GOP trend setters: New Hampshire straw poll picks future hopeful dictator

A straw poll of Republican Party wannabees (and haz-beens) in New Hampshire shows that Willard "Mitt" Romney has bought 35 percent of those citizens polled.

A full 11 percent support former newsletter publisher and rascist lunatic Ron Paul.

Eight percent support future laughing-stock fodder Tim Pawlenty, and seven percent support GOP Best Bet freak - Sarah Palin. Newt (Newtie) Gingrich is circling the drain. Mike (Huckleberry) Huckabee and Mitch Daniels at three percent.

Yep. It has have never looked so favorable for Fred Thompson.

Both parties do it...

"Only one side has made the rhetoric of armed revolt against an oppressive tyranny the guiding spirit of its grassroots movement and its midterm campaign. Only one side routinely invokes the Second Amendment as a form of swagger and intimidation, not-so-coyly conflating rights with threats. Only one side's activists bring guns to democratic political gatherings. Only one side has a popular national TV host who uses his platform to indoctrinate viewers in the conviction that the President is an alien, totalitarian menace to the country. Only one side fills the AM waves with rage and incendiary falsehoods. Only one side has an iconic leader, with a devoted grassroots following, who can't stop using violent imagery and dividing her countrymen into us and them. Any sentient American knows which side that is."
 -- George Packer, on the "Both parties do it" horseshit
<Via New Yorker Magazine>

Three years in the slammer

For the Hammer. There may well be a God after all.

Help me, Jeebus

Best Blog Post of 2010

An open letter to conservatives.

Dear Conservative Americans,

The years have not been kind to you. I grew up in a profoundly Republican home, so I can remember when you wore a very different face than the one we see now. You've lost me and you've lost most of America. Because I believe having responsible choices is important to democracy, I'd like to give you some advice and an invitation.

First, the invitation: Come back to us.

Now the advice. You're going to have to come up with a platform that isn't built on a foundation of cowardice: fear of people with colors, religions, cultures and sex lives that differ from your own; fear of reform in banking, health care, energy; fantasy fears of America being transformed into an Islamic nation, into social/commun/fasc-ism, into a disarmed populace put in internment camps; and more. But you have work to do even before you take on that task.

Your party -- the GOP -- and the conservative end of the American political spectrum have become irresponsible and irrational. Worse, it's tolerating, promoting and celebrating prejudice and hatred. Let me provide some examples -- by no means an exhaustive list -- of where the Right as gotten itself stuck in a swamp of hypocrisy, hyperbole, historical inaccuracy and hatred.

If you're going to regain your stature as a party of rational, responsible people, you'll have to start by draining this swamp:

Undocumented 'Illegals, Black Presidents, Showering With Homos, Islamic Community Centers, Blacks Who Aren't Presidents, Americans Having Access to Health Care...'

Right-wing loons are ascared of everything. Recently, however, Science has explained that it's Not Their Fault!

A study to be published next year at University College London suggests that conservative brains are structured differently than the brains of other people.... Specifically, the research shows that people with conservative tendencies have a larger amygdala and a smaller anterior cingulate than other people. The amygdala—typically thought of as the "primitive brain"—is responsible for reflexive impulses, like fear. The anterior cingulate is thought to be responsible for courage and optimism. This one-two punch could be responsible for many of the anecdotal claims that conservatives "think differently" from others.

 Poor dears.

Media Matters for America Presents: Misinformer of the Year!

Ruin your child's Xmas with these awesome trading cards!

Could not pass this up! Went over to this kids internet site thingy where you can make your own collectible Poke style trading cards. Seemed a good idea to celebrate the end of a year full of Republican Senate Obstructionism...with some cool trading cards of the Senate's top obstructionists!

Lindsey Graham

Mitch McConnell

John McCain

Tweet of the Day

Baby's first war criminal...

Comedian Haley Barbour is no racist.

 He just remembers life in the Deep South during the Civil Rights movement as easy and breezy.

The Rude Pundit on Haley Barbour's moronic comments about how life in the Jim Crow South wasn't that bad for a white man.

    There's a particular delusion that Confederacy apologists have. They have to be in deep denial about secession and the war because it prevents them from acknowledging that it's just fucking racist to honor the Confederacy. And they'd have to acknowledge that it wasn't the honorable beliefs of citizens being oppressed by the federal government. It was just a bunch of traitorous, rich scumbags who didn't want to lose their biggest moneymaking asset: free labor. Remember: when you honor Confederate soldiers, you honor terrorists. Having a party to celebrate secession is not unlike a group of extremist Muslims in a Pakistan cave hosting a let's-fuck-this-goat party every September 11.

 [...] Barbour, though, is just another incarnation of the Confederacy apologists. Of course it was a wonderful life for Barbour. He was white and ignorant. You put on blinders as a kid, but you're supposed to realize when you're an adult, "Oh, shit, Mom and Dad weren't blissfully happy all the time. Oh, shit, blacks in my town were treated like shit." So, one has to wonder, is being white and ignorant still his excuse now?

Faux News viewers the most uninformed people on the planet

Science has finally proven it: People who get their news from Fox News are the most stupid fucking idiots to ever exist. These dumbshits have not clue number one wtf is going on -  with anything. Evah.

Say like believing that Republicans opposed TARP. Christ Jesus...it was a Big Business Republican program created by the Big Business Republican administration of George W. Bush. A Republican. Shit like that. Fox News viewers are dangerous because these loons don't just quietly meditate on all the wrong shit they know — they have to talk about it, to everyone. Which explains why you have had to endlessly tell complete strangers who stop you on the street every day to shut the hell up about Barack Obama being an African Soviet or whatever.

Science proves that Fox News viewers believe completely wrong-ass-twisted-around junk about the stimulus, the economy, taxes, health care, the automobile industry bailout, unemployment, science, math and weather. Fox News viewers also have terrible taste in clothing, houses/trailers, music and religion. But that part got left out of the report.
<via TPM>

Alien Obama

SPLIT RUN. Ole Perfesser Instapundit:

PEJMAN YOUSEFZADEH: “It is not any kind of orthodox Republican talking point that Barack Obama is ‘an alien and a threat.’”

Elsewhere and previously:

The Alien in the White House -- Dorothy Rabinowitz, Wall Street Journal

Obama the Alien -- Larry Kudlow, National Review

Alien Obama... The heartland of America, the small towns and suburbs, the "baseball, apple pie and Chevrolet" that forms the core of our cultural experience is alien to Barack Obama. He cannot love it, share it, or reflect it, because he does not know it. -- Confederate Yankee

CHRIS MATTHEWS: He [Obama] wasn’t born here and he’s never gone through a naturalization that you know of, right?
G. GORDON LIDDY: Not that I know of.
MATTHEWS: Therefore he’s here illegally. You’re saying he’s an undocumented alien.
LIDDY: Illegal alien.

John Boner cries on Teevee - again

 <via TPM>

America’s single greatest achievement, John Boehner, was interviewed on last night’s 60 Minutes. Thanks to his stage mom standing off-stage, yelling at him to cry on cue, he didn’t disappoint.

“I’ve never been in a tanning salon in my life, I’ve never used a tanning product in my life,” he said, his tears  tuning orange as they flowed down his orange cheeks. 

“Burnt Sienna,” not “Peach,” is the natural skin color of white people, right? Despite what five-year-olds coloring with a box of crayons say. Other things John Boehner says that will make him cry on teevee: walking into a school — something he will never do again because of the tears, so our education crisis is now solved...Christ - and Barack Obama said he is a mean hostage man.

“Some things, there are some things that are very difficult to talk about. Family, kids — I can’t go to a school anymore, I used to go to a lot of schools. You see all these little kids running around, can’t talk about it,” Boehner said. “Making sure that these kids have a shot at the American dream, like I did, is important.”

These children - pointing at him and making fun of him for crying - well, it just hurts his feelings even worser. Stahl asked him why he got choked up on election night.

“Talking, trying to talk about the fact that I’ve been chasing the American dream my whole career,” Boehner said.

In an interview with Leslie Stahl of “60 Minutes” for broadcast Sunday night on CBS, Boehner said Obama showed him “disrespect” by calling him a hostage-taker.

“Excuse me, Mr. President I thought the election was over,” Boehner said, according to a transcript obtained by POLITICO. “You know, you get a lot of that heated rhetoric during an election. But now it’s time to govern.”

So the president chose not to lie about how you gasbags negotiated in bad faith. Boo fucking hoo. Dipshit.

Wikileaks is a Foreign Terrorist Organization, sez Teabagger

 <via Harpers>

Knowing a Terrorist When You See One

Discussing the Wikileaks disclosures last week, New York Congressman Peter King urged Attorney General Eric Holder to designate the organization as a “foreign terrorist organization,” saying it “posed a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States.” A chorus was struck up almost immediately, with commentators and politicians following up on King’s demand.

In fact, the term “foreign terrorist organization” (FTO) is established in section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which empowers the Secretary of State (not the attorney general) to apply that label to foreign organizations, with immediate and severe consequences for those so labeled and those who communicate or deal with them in any way. The Secretary of State does not have carte blanche in this process. To qualify as an FTO, an organization must have been engaged in “terrorist activity” or “terrorism,” which are defined to include multiple acts of violence threatening U.S. persons or the national security of the United States. An organization cannot plausibly qualify as a “terrorist organization” simply by publishing documents that embarrass the government or particular politicians.

Breaking: BBQ restaurants 'safest' becuz Muslims don't eat pork!

A uniquely American art form - offensive messages on the signboards of churches and dive bars - is great for business in the land of the loon. This masterpiece comes to us from an electronic repair shop in Podunk, Alabama:
 

BBQ PORK RESTURANT [sic] IS SAFEST.NO MUSLIMS INSIDE.SEWER CAM REPAIR.
 

Let's interpret this...and there's no WRONG way to interpret it: each and every Muslim in the world goes to a restaurant at least once a day and blows himself up. But he does not do that where they serve pork, because his lips could shoot out from his exploding jaw and land on someone’s plate of pig butt, and silly Muslims and Jews and the like - they think putting pig butt in your mouth is unclean or whatever. LOL.
BTW: 'Sewer Cam Repair' was the worst pron movie ever made...

Unforgiven

From the Cheezburger Network

Shorter David Broder

'Power corrupts. Ultimate power corrupts Democrats ultimately'

<via WaPo>

David Broder fires up his old Underwood and as usual, hilarity ensues. Yet another 'I'm-so-disappointed' essay about all the corruption of politicians. Boo hoo. But in all his centuries of observing the Beltway, he can only conjure up two Democrats -  Charlie Rangel and Dan Rostenkowski to compare and contrast.

Oh, yeah. Hey David! BTW - last week Tom Delay was convicted of money laundering in Texas, where that is practiced almost as a sporting event.

Oh Dick...

Dick Morris and Ellen McGann:
"Hillary is up to her old tricks"

And we know that Dick Morris is the go-to guy when it comes to old tricks. Just ask one of his prostitutes.

The Wikileaks documents show that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has, as Voltaire said about the Bourbon kings of France, learned nothing and forgotten nothing.

Exactly, Dick which is why she is Secretary of State and you a a bottom-feeding troll. 
Why is Dick wetting himself as though his $20 date just pulled out a rolled up newspaper?

The Wikileaks documents show that you cannot only not teach an old dog new tricks, but you can't stop her from doing the ones she has always done.

 The Wikileaks information indicates that Hillary -- and her predecessor, Condolleeza [sic] Rice -- instructed American diplomats to gather information about "office and organizational titles; names, position titles and other information on business cards; numbers of telephones, cell phones, pagers, and faxes," as well as "Internet and intranet 'handles'; Internet e-mail addresses, website identification-URLs; credit card account numbers; frequent-flier account numbers; work schedules, and other relevant biographical information."

Once upon a time, Dick put his name on a book promoting Condi as the next Republican President. Apparently Dick can't be bothered to tell whoever wrote his column to spell her name correctly.

Of course, Dick has to explain why it was rad for Condi to datamine the private information of foreign diplomats, but for Secretary of State Clinton to do so - holy shit. Old tricks again! (And he can't just blame it on his impotence.)

Dick's has built a cottage industy on Hillary hate. He's been doing it for years and years. So why isn't he any better at it?

Sarah Palin declares war on South Korea

<via ThinkProgress>

Mama Sasquatch Sarah Palin made a special appearance on Glenn Beck’s famous radio program this morning, and W.T.F???  When asked by one of Beck’s radio groupies how she would “handle a situation like this thing in North Korea” after she becomes president, Sarah Palin went with the “obvious” answer: “Obviously, we’ve got to stand with our North Korean allies.”

 So basically Sarah Palin would throw diplomacy in the garbage can and immediately declare war on our “real allies,” the South Koreans, without even talking to them first. Christ. What a dumbshit.