Quote of the Day

Yeah yeah, scary socialists, we know. Via Taegan-

"The way that it was presented as some kind of marketing ploy, I don't like that, but I think there's real substance here. I mean you don't have to put a name on it, but I think it's gone far beyond anything that's liberal."

-- Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), in an interview with the St. Petersburg Times, defending the recently leaked RNC fundraising presentation that claimed President Obama was taking the country towards socialism.

Reinventing theTea Partiers: No more Obama as Hitler, Joker signs

By GottaLaff

Wearing wigs and three-cornered hats, Bill O'Connor and Ruger Rusnak share a quiet word at the national Tea Party convention in Nashville on Friday.
(Stephen Crowley, The New York Times )

Yeah, they wouldn't want to look, you know, crazy:

But at the inaugural National Tea Party Convention here this weekend, gone were the placards that protesters carried last year with Mr. Obama’s face wearing a Hitler mustache or superimposed on the Joker. Gone, really, were any placards, unless you count the poster of Sarah Palin in her signature red jacket that hung from one of the wrought-iron balconies of the Opryland Hotel and Convention Center.

Organizers said that anyone “looking too crazy” would have been tossed out. They had a goal that turned out to be shared by pretty much everyone here: to turn the Tea Party into a serious political force, rather than the angry fringe group they say it had been branded as.

"They say it had been branded as." Had been branded? When a group of so-called revolutionaries dress up like loons, carry hostile, hateful signs, lie, fear-monger, and scream their way through town hall meetings, they kinda invited that whole "branding" thing.

Poor them. They've been unfairly branded.

Angry fringe is exactly what they are. It's a little late to shake off that label, although it's just swell of them to try to tone it down. Good for them! Wow. Putting that toothpaste back in the tube. Magic!

In fact, you can see how successful they were at that if you watched Palin's "serious political" speech last night. Not angry fringe-y at all. No, she's her usual knowledgeable, rational self, full of constructive ideas, compassionate, wise, and not at all snide or nasty. In fact, CliffNotes McTelePalmer was as well-prepared as she's always been.

Nope, the Tea Tantrumers don't look "too crazy" any more. They've completely reinvented themselves.

Attack No Longer Inevitable?

By GottaLaff

Running on empty:

Bob Shrum: "The last recourse of the rear-guard, the only answer they have left, is that at least the nation has not been attacked at home since 2001. This is a blatant shift in their argument that reflects their fall from power. In office, they constantly warned that another attack was inevitable; now, if it comes, the convenient implication is that Obama's policies will have caused it."

The Rushpublics may have tried to set a trap for the ObamAdministration, but how effective is a trap if it's exposed for all to see?

L-Word loses its sting

It never scared me before. Via Taegan-

The New York Times notes "that 'socialist' has supplanted 'liberal' as the go-to slur among much of a conservative world confronting a one-two-three punch of bank bailouts, budget blowouts and stimulus bills. Right-leaning bloggers and talk radio hosts are wearing out the brickbat. Senate and House Republicans have been tripping over their podiums to invoke it. The S-bomb has become as surefire a red-meat line at conservative gatherings as 'Clinton' was in the 1990s and 'Pelosi' is today."

Hardball-Joan Walsh & David Korn - Cheney as Dr. Strangelove

Appropriately mocking.

Obama making U.S. less safe, Cheney says

By GottaLaff

(this should say "worst", but I had no time to edit)

Because Cheney has so much credibility, let's take everything he says extra seriously, starting with this: The terrorists are gonna get us, because President Obama is weak and wants to help them get us, so they're gonna get us!

The Obama administration's new policies on Guantanamo Bay prison and the treatment of detainees makes it more likely a terrorist attack against the United States will succeed, former Vice President Dick Cheney said Tuesday.

In an interview with Politico, the former vice president issued a stringent defense of the Bush administration's record on the war on terror, and said he worries the President Obama has already made the country more vulnerable.

But Bush and the Nation of Dick didn't. Nah. Let's count the ways they didn't make us more vulnerable: On their watch, we were attacked. On their watch, we tortured innocent people. On their watch, we couldn't obtain vital information, because torture produces lies. On their watch, we our economy tanked. On their watch, we shredded the Constitution. On their watch, we lost credibility with the entire world. Yeah, right, and it's Obama's who's going to get us killed.

“When we get people who are more concerned about reading the rights to an Al Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry,” Cheney said in the interview published Wednesday.

That old talking point? Again? Really?

Cheney also predicted the Obama administration is likely to backtrack on its pledge to end coercive interrogation techniques, since the protection of the United States from terrorists is a "tough, mean, dirty, nasty business.”

"These are evil people. And we’re not going to win this fight by turning the other cheek," he said.

Evildoers. Fear. Noun, verb, 9/11. Here's an idea, Dick: Go Cheney yourself.

In the interview, Cheney suggested Obama was irresponsibly adhering to “campaign rhetoric,” and called Guantanamo Bay a “first-class program.”

If that's "first class", I'd hate to see coach.

Don't Forget To Be Afraid!!

Jeebus, and Frances Townsend as the mouthpiece. Bob is right.

Right-Wing Group Distributing Hundreds Of Thousands Of DVDs Attacking Obama In Swing-State Newspapers

When did newspapers decide that whoring themselves out for political fearmongering was their journalistic duty? Remember, this isn't the first time. Via TPM, more at the link.

Citizens United, the conservative group headed by notorious Whitewater scandalmonger David Bossie, is distributing hundreds of thousands of DVDs attacking Barack Obama's associations with Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers in newspapers in Ohio, Nevada, and Florida this week, a group spokesperson confirms to us.

A reader in Ohio reports to us that she received a copy of the DVD, called "Hype: The Obama Effect," in her copy of the Columbus Dispatch this morning.

We checked in with Citizens United spokesperson Will Holley, who confirmed to us that the DVD was distributed in the Dispatch today, and will be disseminated in copies of the Cincinatti Enquirer and Plain Dealer tomorrow, followed by the Palm Beach Post and the Los Vegas Review Journal on Friday.