Tidbits

Tom Tancredo, wingnut former Colorado congressman, says Obama withheld his long-form birth certificate as a strategy to make Republicans look bad. (Click here; HuffPo.) Tancredo has a long history of right-wing lunacy. Last October, he said Obama was a worse threat to the U.S. than al Qaeda.

Tancredo is joined in this belief by such Republican luminaries as Jonah Goldberg, Karl Rove, and Newt Gingrich.

Seriously? Obama and those scheming Dems are to blame for birthers' insanity?
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Click here for a HuffPo article about the over-the-top adulation of the media for George Bush eight years ago today over his "Mission Accomplished" carrier landing photo-op. Fawning admiration from Richard Perle, Chris Matthews, Gwen Ifill, Brian Williams, Bob Schieffer, Joe Klein, Elizabeth Bumiller, Michael Gordon, and Maureen Dowd. Dowd was being sarcastic with her reference to W as Maverick in Top Gun:

MAVERICK: What's your problem?

ICEMAN: Your ego's writing checks your body can't cash. You didn't need to take all that water survival training in the White House swimming pool. The Abraham Lincoln was practically docked, only 30 miles off shore, after 10 months at sea. They had to steer it away from land for you. If you'd waited a few hours, you could've just walked aboard. You and Rove are making a gorgeous campaign video on the Pacific to cast you as the warrior president for 2004, but back on shore, things are ugly. The California economy's bleeding, even worse than other states'. When you took office, the unemployment rate in San Jose was 1.7 percent; by February of this year, it had risen to 8.5 percent. Your motorcade didn't bother to stop in the depressed high-tech corridor in Silicon Valley. Every time you cut taxes and raise deficits while you're roaring ahead with a pre-emptive military policy, you're unsafe. National unemployment goes up to 6 percent and you just hammer Congress to pass your tax cut. The only guys sure about their jobs these days are defense contractors connected to Republicans and the Carlyle Group, which owns half of the defense plant you visited here. You're dangerous.

MAVERICK: That's right, Iceman. I am dangerous.

.... Like greed, aggression is good. Aggression has marked the upward surge of mankind. Aggression breeds patriotism, and patriotism curbs dissent. Aggression has made Democrats cower, the press purr and the world quake. Aggression -- you mark my words -- will not only save humanity, but it will soon color all the states Republican red. Mission accomplished.

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Montana GOP congressman Denny Rehberg told a town hall audience that he is "cash poor" and "struggling" as a small businessman; he says his wife, also a small businessman, hasn't taken a salary in ten years "as a result of business". Rehberg's 2009 net worth: $31 million.
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Medicare is forbidden by U.S. federal law to negotiate with drug companies for a lower price. Even though it could use its massive buying power as leverage, it is forced to pay market rates without negotiation.
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"Among OECD countries, the United States ranks second to last in social spending, ahead of only Turkey." (ThinkProgress)
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Laurence Lewis at Daily Kos:

This will be a shock to everyone, but in the 1970s The Donald's real estate company was sued by the federal government for discriminating against black renters. Three years after a settlement was reached, the government again had to step in because The Donald's real estate company wasn't holding up its end of the agreement.