VIDEO- Dick Armey: GOP Purity Test Is Not A Purity Test!

By GottaLaff

Nah, that small-minded prerequisite RNC list isn't a litmus test, or a purity test, or any kind of test at all. Of course it isn't. How wrong of everyone who read it to jump to the identical conclusion.

I'd be willing to stipulate that it's not a driving test, personality test, or pregnancy test either. However, one might call it a con-test, emphasis on con.

It's just one more way of forcing the Rushpublics to either march in lockstep by holding funding over their heads... or get out of the way.


Watch CBS News Videos Online

My weekly note to Dickle Me Armey: It's "Democratic" party, not "Democrat".

Why won't any of the punditiots or show hosts ever call them out on that (with the exception of Chris Matthews, who did it once, as I recall)? If the political talk show hosts were called schlock show hosts to their faces, you can bet they'd say something then.

The Rushpublics continue to shrink their own party, both in numbers and credibility, far better than anyone else could. Keep up the good work, guys.

Justice Dept. Says Acorn Can Be Paid

By GottaLaff

Happy Friday!

The Justice Department has concluded that the Obama administration can lawfully pay the community group Acorn for services provided under contracts signed before Congress enacted a law banning the government from providing funds to the group.

Yeah, hmm, right, that would have been a little-- What's the word again? Oh yeah -- unconstitutional.

You can read the memorandum (image above) here.

A Housing and Urban Development lawyer asked the Justice Department whether the new law meant that pre-existing contracts with Acorn should be broken. But in a memorandum signed Oct. 23 and posted online this week, Mr. Barron said the government should continue to make payments to Acorn as required by such contracts.

The new law “should not be read as directing or authorizing HUD to breach a pre-existing binding contractual obligation to make payments to Acorn or its affiliates, subsidiaries or allied organizations where doing so would give rise to contractual liability,” Mr. Barron wrote.

Acorn has been doing a lot of great work, a little factoid that should get as much attention as the negative press it has gotten for months:

“We are pleased that commitments will be honored relative to Acorn’s work to help keep America’s working families facing foreclosure in their homes,” he said. [...]

Founded in Arkansas in 1970, Acorn describes itself as the nation’s largest grass-roots community organizing group. It provides financial services to poor and middle-income families, conducts voter registration drives, and advocates for higher minimum wages and more affordable housing.

But the Rushpublics will have none of that! Nosirreebob, they'd much rather cut off the nation's voters' noses to spite their nasty, negative, self-serving faces.

At Least 40 GOP Lawmakers Fail ‘Purity Test’ with Bonus VIDEO!

By GottaLaff

Kick more people out of the Party of WTF in the name of Ronald Reagan! What a plan! Except, oops:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Here is my original post on the resolution that denies funding to any member of the party that bucks the hallowed Purity rules.

But, d'oh! Those wacky impure Rushpublics! All 40 of 'em. If they're not careful they'll become an endangered species:

ThinkProgress has conducted an analysis that finds at least 40 current Republican members of Congress have violated at least one principle of the purity test.

I'll give you an excerpt of one of my faves, but go here for the whole endangered list:

Purity Pledge #5) We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants

– The McCain-Kennedy 2006 immigration bill would have “legalized millions of undocumented immigrants already in the U.S. if they paid fines, paid back taxes and learned English.” Republican Senators John McCain (R-AZ), Dick Lugar (R-IN), George Voinovich (R-OH), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Bob Bennett (R-UT), Sam Brownback (R-KS), Susan Collins (R-ME), Judd Gregg (R-NH) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) voted for the bill.

John McCain his very own self? Ohh nooo!!! Not a headliner!

H/t: Alan Colmes

Disagree with the RNC? No funds for you!

By GottaLaff

Lockstep, brought to you by the Gipper:

The resolution would prohibit RNC money from flowing to any candidate who disagrees with more than two itemized planks of the GOP platform -- playing off Reagan's maxim that anyone who agreed with him 80% of the time is not 20% an enemy. [...]

There is a lot more for you to read in the piece, but here is the resolution:

Text from Jim Bopp's resolution, as circulated among several RNC members:

"THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the Republican National Committee identifies ten (10) key public policy positions for the 2010 election cycle, which the Republican National Committee expects its public officials and candidates to support:

(1) We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama's "stimulus" bill;

(2) We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run healthcare;

(3) We support market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;

(4) We support workers' right to secret ballot by opposing card check;

(5) We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;

(6) We support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;

(7) We support containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat;

(8) We support retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;

(9) We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and

(10) We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership; and be further

RESOLVED, that a candidate who disagrees with three or more of the above stated public policy position of the Republican National Committee, as identified by the voting record, public statements and/or signed questionnaire of the candidate, shall not be eligible for financial support and endorsement by the Republican National Committee; and be further

RESOLVED, that upon the approval of this resolution the Republican National Committee shall deliver a copy of this resolution to each of Republican members of Congress, all Republican candidates for Congress, as they become known, and to each Republican state and territorial party office.

Chief Sponsor:
James Bopp, Jr. NCM IN

Sponsors:
Donna Cain NCW OR
Cindy Costa NCW SC
Demetra Demonte NCW IL
Peggy Lambert NCW TN
Carolyn McLarty NCW OK
Pete Rickets NCM NE
Steve Scheffler NCM IA
Helen Van Etten NCW KA
Solomon Yue NCM OR"

Welcome to the Soup Nazi Party.



H/t: Markos Moulitsas

President Obama doing what Bush wouldn't

By GottaLaff

Let's compare and contrast. Here's what President Obama is doing today:

Expand the Veterans Administration's number of "centers of excellence" in specialty care:

The Obama administration's proposed 2010 budget outlines a plan to increase funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs by $25 billion over the next five years, starting with an 11 percent increase in discretionary funding next year.

According to a fact sheet prepared by the White House Office of Management and Budget, the president's Veterans Affairs budget "enables VA to create Centers of Excellence and provides additional veteran-oriented specialty care in areas including prosthetics, vision and spinal cord injury, aging, and women’s health."

Of course the Rushpublics will rant about socialism and government takeovers. They're such Compassionate Carls and Carols.

Here's something else they can scream about. Their bffs are now only going to make a measly $200K-plus a year. Waaah!

U.S. to Order Steep Pay Cuts at Firms That Got Most Aid:

Responding to the growing furor over the paychecks of executives at companies that received billions of dollars in federal bailouts, the Obama administration will order the companies that received the most aid to deeply slash the compensation to their highest paid executives, an official involved in the decision said on Wednesday.

Under the plan, which will be announced in the next few days by the Treasury Department, the seven companies that received the most assistance will have to cut the cash payouts to their 25 best-paid executives by an average of about 90 percent from last year. For many of the executives, the cash they would have received will be replaced by stock that they will be restricted from selling immediately.

And for the 25 best-paid executives, the total compensation, which includes bonuses, will drop, on average, by about 50 percent.

The companies are Citigroup, Bank of America, the American International Group, General Motors, Chrysler and the financing arms of the two automakers.

Obama: The UnBush. Suh-weet!

H/t: DAKGirl

"Absolutely independent" Anti-ACORN Videographer Funded by Conservative Investor

By GottaLaff



I'm shocked, shocked, I tells ya!

James O'Keefe, the activist filmmaker who achieved sudden fame for a series of undercover videos recording ACORN workers, has repeatedly said that he is "absolutely independent" and received no outside funding to make his films.

But the Voice has learned that O'Keefe, in fact, has had heavyweight conservative backers who funded the young filmmaker as recently as a few months before his ACORN films were made.

The ACORN videos are actually just the latest of several films O'Keefe has produced and uploaded to YouTube. An earlier film posted in February, "Taxpayers Clearing House" featured nonwhite, working class people being duped by O'Keefe, who led them to believe they had won money in a sweepstakes.

That video was produced with the help of a grant -- said to be about $30,000 [Thiel's spokesman says closer to $10,000 -- see update] -- from Peter Thiel, one of the founders of PayPal and an early investor in Facebook -- an investment which made him a billionaire. [...]

O'Keefe, meanwhile, has repeatedly claimed to be financially independent. In an interview with the New York Post shortly after the ACORN videos hit the Internet, O'Keefe claimed to be "absolutely independent." Giles said she had "drained my entire savings" to spend the summer making the undercover videos. O'Keefe estimated his budget at $1,300, and said that Giles had paid for her own plane ticket to California. The couple said they lived off of Power Bars and Subway sandwiches for two months.

But O'Keefe turns out to have a substantial history of being funded by conservative figures. [...]

Thiel, who co-runs the Founders Fund, is a hedge fund manager, web entrepreneur and venture capitalist worth $1.2 billion. Fortune magazine referred to him as the "don" of "the Pay Pal Mafia." Thiel is also co-author of The Diversity Myth: 'Multiculturalism' and the Politics of Intolerance at Stanford. He was also co-founding editor of the conservative Stanford Review and was a member of the Federalist Society, the conservative legal circle that has included Clarence Thomas, Robert Bork and Antonin Scalia. [...]

Though Thiel denies directly funding O'Keefe's latest videos, Thiel may have made them financially possible anyway. O'Keefe has, in the past, used support from one project to fuel another. [...]

O'Keefe is a former member of the Leadership Institute, the conservative think tank that has turned out such graduates as Bush strategist Karl Rove, Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed, Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist, and "Talon News" fake White House blogger Jeff Gannon (real name: James Dale Guckert). The Institute has been involved in setting up conservative newspapers at colleges across the country, and gave O'Keefe a $500 "Balance in Media" grant to begin the Rutgers Centurion in 2005.

On his personal blog (quoted at Daily Kos, O'Keefe has taken the original link down), O'Keefe thanks "LI" for a $4,000 monitor to help him make his movies.

Same old story, new players. Will we see this reported by the corporate media? Of course we will....

.... when pigs fly.

Follow the link for much more.

H/t: Gr8RDH