THE MOVEMENT CONSERVATIVES AREN'T GOING AWAY

Richard Viguerie heads ConservativeHQ and had a post-election conference with other extremists at the National Press Club on 11/7/2012 to do a post-mortem.  In addition to Viguerie, L. Brent Bozell, Alfred Regnery, Marjorie Dannenfelser and Jenny Beth Martin also spoke. C-SPAN has the podcast here and if you listen to it, you'll learn that these 5 conservatives were still clueless about the real implications of the 2012 election.   One or more of them blamed the loss on the failure to emulate St. Ronnie, the fact that Mitten$ didn't promote social conservatism, and their own failure to get the conservative message out to more of the American people.

ROGER AILES LIES AGAIN?

You may recall that when Karl Rove threw a hissy fit about FAUX News calling Ohio for Pres. Obama, Megyn Kelly walked off the set to talk with the Faux News projection guys.  Just before she got to their area, she made a interesting comment:

KELLY: Try to get to the bottom of this. Right out the door. They used to keep them right here with us in the studio. And then for some reason, whoa, careful. Then for some reason they moved them down the hall. We were too close. We were thinking this wouldn't be necessary. But, as it turns out. So you can see this is sort of all the folks behind the scenes who have been watching the program from back here.

Hi, guys. Arthur Aidala decided to join. They're way down the hall we'll do interrogation and see this they stand by their call not withstanding the doubts that Karl Rove has attempted to place. Keep coming. Here we go. Now, when we practiced this before -- there is the beautiful Jenna Lee. When we practiced this before in our rehearsals, we lost all audio in our ears. Right about here. That's happening again.

Dylan Byers reports that Roger Ailes is taking credit for making a spur of the moment decision to let the cameras follow Kelly.
SOURCE:
Fox News Network
November 6, 2012 Tuesday
SHOW: LIVE EVENT 11:00 PM EST
2012 Election Coverage
BYLINE: Megyn Kelly, Bret Baier, Brit Hume, Kirsten Powers, Juan Williams, Ed Henry, Chris Wallace, Karl Rove, Joe Trippi, Carl Cameron, Chris Stirewalt, Charles Krauthammer, Michael Barone
GUESTS: Stephen Hayes
SECTION: NEWS; Domestic
LENGTH: 8908 words

IT WASN'T JUST MITTEN$

Let's not forget that a Republican president gets to appoint conservative wackos to posts in his administration.  Raygun let Mark Levin, Bill Bennett and Hugh Hewitt obtain influential positions and karoli at Crooks & Liars finds a couple more Raygun-era freakshows, Floyd Brown and Scott B. MacKenzie, who Mitten$ may have found room for.

A GREAT REASON (IF TRUE)...

to nominate Susan Rice for Secretary of State:

What's more, she has already attraced the ire of neocon circles as she is perceived as hostile to the Jewish state.

SO MUCH FOR THE GUN NUTS...

Even a Heritage Foundation hack admits that the UN isn't trying to steal our guns:

Heritage Foundation Shoots Down Right-Wing U.N. Gun Grab Conspiracy
Blog ››› November 15, 2012 12:11 PM EST ››› TIMOTHY JOHNSON
MEDIA MATTERS

The right-leaning Heritage Foundation has thrown cold water on the revival a conspiracy theory pushed on Fox News by contributor Dick Morris and the National Rifle Association that the United Nation's Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) is actually a sinister Obama administration plot to eliminate the right of private individuals to own a firearm.

During a Heritage Blogger Briefing, senior research fellow Ted Bromund stated, "I don't think that the ATT is a gun confiscation measure for a variety of reasons. First, because I don't regard that as within the bounds of possibility in the United States and secondly, because that is not what the text says."

POUNCING ON MITTEN$

I was a little surprised that several GOP governors (Jindal, Christie and Martinez) reprimanded Mitt Romney for his claim that Pres. Obama bribed his way to re-election but I wasn't prepared for a Major Wingnut, John Podhoretz, to also turn on Mitten$. 

MARTIN LUTHER KING ON SOCIAL JUSTICE

Glenda Beck has told his audiences that King rejected social justice and as usual, Glenda is wrong.  Ntodd found an excerpt from King's 1967 speech, "Where do we go from here":

What I'm saying to you this morning is that Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the Kingdom of Brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of Communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both.

This reminded me of the system Sweden developed in the 1930s to chart a path between Capitalism and Communism. It is still in use.

MALKIN CHANNELS GELLER

Blue Texan at Crooks & Liars found this tweet and made a screencap:

FULL OF SOUND AND FURY, SIGNIFYING...

Like these folks, I still don't get what justifies the wingnut outrage about Benghazi/Petraeus/Rice.

NEAL BOORTZ == GASBAG COWARD

(h/t Atrios)

Neal Boortz issued an open challenge to debate a liberal on his radio show and a Media Matters staffer took him up on it.  A time was scheduled but Boortz chickened out and refuses to re-schedule.

I DON'T WANT TO GO TALK RADIO ABOUT THIS BUT...

Pres. Obama needs to get this straightened out pretty soon...

"No evidence" of classified information breach in Petraeus case: Obama

Petraeus mistress had "substantial" classified data on computer: sources

FIRST IT WAS BILL KRISTOL

and now Glenn Hubbard, Mitten$ chief economic adviser, says we should raise taxes on the rich.

Mitt Romney Economic Adviser Calls For Raising Taxes On The Rich, Contradicting Entire GOP Campaign
Posted: 11/13/2012 4:29 pm EST Updated: 11/13/2012 4:42 pm EST
Zach Carter
HuffPo

Mitt Romney's former economic adviser Glenn Hubbard published an op-ed in the Financial Times Tuesday calling for higher tax rates on the wealthy and urging Republicans to outline specific spending cuts rather than vague across-the-board reductions in government spending. Hubbard's comments are noteworthy because Romney resisted both policies during his run for the presidency.

MORE BAD CONSERVATIVE ARITHMETIC

CNS News is part of Brent Bozell's agit-prop empire so it's natural for wackos like Mark Levin to link to the site.  In this case, the article is another fraud:

6,125 Proposed Regulations and Notifications Posted in Last 90 Days--Average 68 per Day
By Penny Starr
November 9, 2012

The article gives a link to the government web site that has the number, www.regulations.gov. If you take the time to filter the results for only rules, you get 929 results. Of that number, only 836 are in fact rule making.

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE "VOTER FRAUD" WHINE?

I half expected the radio gasbags and their allies to try to stir up more trouble by falsely claiming that Pres. Obama's victory was due to voter fraud. So far, I've only heard a couple of talk show callers mention this fantasy and of course, there's always Joseph Farah. Does this mean there is an upper limit to the BS these guys will try to sell?

ROBERT SAMUELSON IS A MORAL CRETIN

In this bit of agit-prop against the modern welfare state, he writes:

Finally, there's a moral cost. It encourages "gaming" the system to maximize benefits."

Surely the Wall Street Banksters should be his target, not folks getting food stamps.

THOMAS RICKS HAS GREAT TIMING...

His new book, The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today, shows how our generals have become less competent:

But Korea also showed the first signs of an army leadership culture that neither punished mediocrity nor particularly rewarded daring. In the Vietnam War, the problem grew worse until, finally, American military leadership bottomed out. The My Lai massacre, Ricks shows us, is the emblematic event of this dark chapter of our history. In the wake of Vietnam a battle for the soul of the U.S. Army was waged with impressive success. It became a transformed institution, reinvigorated from the bottom up. But if the body was highly toned, its head still suffered from familiar problems, resulting in tactically savvy but strategically obtuse leadership that would win battles but end wars badly from the first Iraq War of 1990 through to the present.

And now we have the Petraeus & Allen scandals.

I'M POSTING THIS ONLY BECAUSE...

I'm tired of the wingnuts yakking about the racist Dixiecrats instead of looking at the beam in their own eye:

David Boaz Executive VP, Cato Institute :
During the civil rights era, conservatives - including party-switching Democrats such as Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms - adamantly resisted the push for equal rights and equal dignity for African Americans.

IS THIS WOMAN A MARK LEVIN FAN?

(h/t Pam Spaulding)

I heard this on local radio yesterday and here's the news report:

Holly Solomon Blames Husband for Obama's Re-Election, Allegedly Rams Him With Her Car
By Matthew Hendley Mon., Nov. 12 2012 at 11:06 AM
Phoenix New Times

Mesa resident Holly Solomon thinks it's her husband's fault that President Obama was re-elected last week, because he didn't vote.

Not only does Solomon, 28, have a thorough misunderstanding of our nation's electoral system, she also ran over her husband with her car because of this, according to Gilbert police.

"According to Daniel, Holly believed her family was going to face hardship as a result of President Obama's re-election," Sanger says.

AT FIRST...

I thought Cornel West was completely out of bounds for calling Pres. Obama a "Republican In Blackface" until Atrios linked to this story about Petraeus:

Prominent members of conservative, Washington-based defense think tanks were given permanent office space at his headquarters and access to military aircraft to tour the battlefield. They provided advice to field commanders that sometimes conflicted with orders the commanders were getting from their immediate bosses.

These people should NEVER be allowed anywhere near powerful people and brings to mind Petraeus' shaky op-ed in 2004.

A PET PEEVE

David Frum refused to give any names when asked by Joe Scarborough who are the members of the conservative entertainment media despite stating that they were named in his book and Ian Welsh refuses to give any names of the liberals he accuses of lying for Pres. Obama.  There's no sense taking a half-step when a full one is needed.

MORE ON THE SLOGAN "FORWARD"

The wingnuts tried to make a huge stink about this and at the time I completely forgot that it's part of the name of a radical wingnut group, Move America Forward.

MEGAN KELLY ASKED THE BEST QUESTION OF 2012

This is from the infamous Karl Rove meltdown about Ohio on election night:

ROVE: Well, I'm assuming North Carolina looks pretty good. But we haven't called it. Nobody's called it yet. But yes, it's -- look, this is back to where we were in April -- 3, 2, 1. Piece I wrote for The Wall Street Journal saying win the three historic Republican states, win the two big swing states, and then win one of anything else and you can get there.

And I wrote it not because it was a brilliant idea but because it was so obvious that's what the path for a Republican to regain the White House.

KELLY: Is this just -- is this just math that you do as a Republican to make yourself feel better, or is this real and you genuinely think people should be keeping an open mind?

SOURCE:
Fox News Network
November 6, 2012 Tuesday
SHOW: LIVE EVENT 10:00 PM EST
Special Coverage for November 6, 2012, 2200 Hour
BYLINE: Bret Baier, Megyn Kelly, Bill Hemmer, Stephen Hayes, Brit Hume, Juan Williams, Kirsten Powers, Greta Van Susteren, Sarah Palin, Karl Rove, Eric Shawn
GUESTS: Peggy Noonan, Robert Gibbs, Joe Trippi, Susan Estrich
SECTION: NEWS; Domestic
LENGTH: 8678 words

WAR WHORE INGRAHAM DOESN'T GET IT

(h/t Pam Spaulding)

Her version of conservatism is nearing the dustbin of history and almost nothing can stop that.   From The Raw Story:

“If the reaction to the election is let’s dig into our core principles and try to remake them, I think the GOP will lose even more seats in 2014,” Ingraham told Fox News host Chris Wallace. “If it becomes a bidding war with Republicans in either this group or that group — whether it’s Latinos or women — we’re going to give you more stuff or we’re going to do amnesty plus… it’s not going to work.”

“The Republicans have to take a lesson from — and I hate to bring up Reagan again — when Goldwater got shellacked in ’64, Bill Buckley and Brent Bozell Sr. and all these conservatives got together and they said, we’re going to figure out how to sell this idea of economic conservatism and the conservative framework to new voters. And they went into the South and they transformed Mississippi and Alabama, all these places where people had never voted Republican before.”

NEO-CON KRISTOL FLIPS ON TAXES

He says the country won;t be destroyed if we raise taxes "a little bit on millionaires."  I suspect that he's willing to say this because he doesn't want steep cuts to his precious war machine.

THE FUTURE LOOKS GOOD FOR THE DEMS

Ron Brownstein has a very informative analysis of the structure of the American electorate and I particularly liked this tidbit:

From 1968 to 1988, Republican nominees dominated the Electoral College so thoroughly that analysts spoke of a GOP lock. But with Obama’s victory, Democrats have now won 18 states—the “blue wall”—for at least the past six consecutive elections. That’s the most states Democrats have won consecutively for that often since the formation of the modern party system in 1828.

Those 18 blue-wall states (joined by the District of Columbia) now offer 242 Electoral College votes. So long as Democrats hold all of them, Republicans must navigate an extremely narrow and unforgiving pathway to reach a majority.