In reality only Joe Biden thinks that Joe Biden is something other than a village idiot. Biden has a long history of making ridiculous and stupid statements.

Click here to view the embedded video.

And here he demonstrates his math prowess:

Click here to view the embedded video.

And here is his health advice:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Now Joe Biden says that the Taliban is not our enemy:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Jay Carney then tried to defend Biden.

Click here to view the embedded video.

We’re fighting the Taliban, but they’re not our enemy??

Glad we got that straightened out.

Oddly, it wasn’t always this way:

Obama: Step up effort against Taliban, al-Qaida

Obama: Taliban and al Qaeda must be stopped

SAN DIEGO —

Senator Barack Obama is proposing that the United States deploy about 10,000 more troops to battle resurgent forces in Afghanistan, a plan intended to shift the American military focus from the Iraq war to the marked rise in violence from the Taliban.

Making peace treaties with the Taliban was once a bad thing- according to Obama.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I have said repeatedly that democrats depend heavily on their supporters having zero long term memory and once again it proves to be true. One thing that is hard to forget, though, is that Joe Biden is not just stupid, he is dangerously stupid.

Ann Coulter has accurately described the selection of Joe Biden for VP as “assassination insurance.” At times Joe Biden is is a doofus and the rest of the time he is incomprehensibly stupid.

He can’t count.

Click here to view the embedded video.

He tends to lie. A lot.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The facts:

• Biden got in trouble in 1965, during his first year in law school. He wrote a paper in which he lifted five pages verbatim from the Fordham Law Review. He was given an “F” in the course. He managed to avoid being bounced from law school, retook the course and earned a B.

• He claimed that he was “the only one in my class to have a full academic scholarship.” He didn’t. He did have a half scholarship that was need-based.

• He did not graduate from law school in the top half of his class. He graduated 76th out of 85 — and he was near the bottom of his class all three years.

• If he won the moot court competition — and he claimed at the time that he actually did — he did not put it on his resume, surprising for a man prone to so egregiously exaggerating his accomplishments.

• He did not win the award for being the outstanding student in the political science department at Delaware, and he graduated with one degree, not three. He had a “C” average and graduated 506th in a class of 688.

And he is a plagiarist.

A Dukakis staffer noticed and fed to Maureen Dowd, then a New York Times reporter rather than columnist, that Biden had lifted almost verbatim his closing remarks at a debate at the Iowa state fairgrounds in August 1987. The lines were lifted from a passionate speech delivered by British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock.

Now as part of an effort to promote Barack Obama’s jobs bill, Biden makes dark overtures about an increase in robberies and sex crimes if Obama’s bill does not pass.

“Well let me tell you, it’s not temporary when that 911 call comes in and a woman’s being raped, if a cop shows up in time to prevent the rape. It’s not temporary to that woman,” said Biden. “It’s not temporary to the guy whose store is being held up and there’s a gun pointed at his head, if a cop shows up and he’s not killed. That’s not temporary to that store owner. Give me a break! Temporary. ”

And he just can’t stop. The WaPo Fact Checker scrutinizes Biden’s claims:

“Let’s look at the facts: in 2008, when Flint had 265 sworn officers on their police force, there were 35 murders and 91 rapes in this city. In 2010, when Flint had only 144 police officers, the murder rate climbed to 65 and rapes–just to pick two categories–climbed to 229. In 2011, you now only have 125 shields.”

–Vice President Biden, October 18, 2011

“In Flint, Michigan, they cut their force in half; murder rates have doubled in the last year…Police departments, as I said, in some cases literally cut in half, like Camden, New Jersey, and Flint, Michigan. In many cities, the result has been — and it’s not unique — murder rates are up, robberies are up, rapes are up…I said rape was up, three times in Flint. There are the numbers. Go look at the numbers.”

–Biden, October 19, 2011, on Capitol Hill

They observe:

Murder did go up—though the rate did not double from 2009 to 2010, as Biden claimed. But rape has gone down. Biden actually asserted it had tripled.

And conclude:

The Pinocchio Test

Biden, when he was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1994, was author of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, the largest crime bill in U.S. history. On the face of it, a threefold increase in rape in two years—when other violent crime statistics show relatively modest increases in the same city—should raise serious questions for anyone knowledgeable about crime or statistics. Clearly, the city of Flint supplied bad data, and either Biden or someone in Biden’s office should have caught it.

In any case, the vice president should know better than to spout off half-baked facts in service of a dubious argument. Even if one believes there is a link between crime and the number of police—which is debatable and subject to many caveats—there is no excuse to make the dramatic claim that more people will die or be raped without additional funds for police. When making such a breathtaking charge, you had better have your facts straight.

They give Biden Four Pinocchios.

The White House says about Biden claims:

“I think it would be hard to find anyone that doesn’t agree,”

When there is no conscience there is no embarassment.

Hat tip: Guy Benson

You just had to know this administration was going to pull these kind of acrobatics regarding the Vice President’s remarks on China’s “one-child” policy:

As I mentioned in my previous post, I contacted the White House this afternoon for an explanation of Vice President Biden’s stunning remarks regarding China’s odious one-child policy. Moments ago, I received the following on-the-record statement from Biden’s press secretary, Kendra Barkoff:

“The Obama Administration strongly opposes all aspects of China’s coercive birth limitation policies, including forced abortion and sterilization. The Vice President believes such practices are repugnant. He also pointed out, in China, that the policy is, as a practical matter, unsustainable. He was arguing against the One Child Policy to a Chinese audience.”

Oh. So when he said “Your policy has been one which I fully understand — I’m not second-guessing — of one child per family.” that really meant he was against it.

Who do they think they are trying to kid here?

He never once argued that the One Child Policy was unsustainable…just that expecting one child to support four elderly grandparents is unsustainable. He never once argued against the policy’s outcome…forced abortions and sterilization

If he does believe, as the White House states, that the policy is “repugnant”…do ya think he might of brought that up in the speech?

He didn’t….I wonder why? (h/t Hot Air)

…we owe ‘em a ton of money. Which means you can figure for yourself the likelihood of an American vice-president standing up in public and expressing his repugnance at the wholesale slaughter of China’s baby girls. A few lines before the passage above, I quote Jonathan Swift’s “Run Upon The Bankers”: “They have his soul, who have his bonds.” China has our bonds, and thus in a certain sense they have our soul. Or at any rate Joe Biden’s. The big theme of my book’s prologue is that it starts with the money but it never stops there. For three decades, US foreign policy “realists” have assured us that China’s economic liberalization would inevitably lead to political liberalization. As Biden’s wretched remarks suggest, the inverse was always more likely: the reality of China’s economic dominance is western acquiescence in its repulsive politics.

Just more evidence that one, Biden is a moron, and two, the left loves it when the government can force you to do anything. This time its forced abortions:

What we ended up doing is setting up a system whereby we did cut by $1.2 trillion upfront, the deficit over the next 10 years. And we set up a group of senators that have to come up with another $1.2 to $1.7 trillion in savings or automatically there will be cuts that go into effect in January to get those savings. So the savings will be accomplished. But as I was talking to some of your leaders, you share a similar concern here in China. You have no safety net. Your policy has been one which I fully understand — I’m not second-guessing — of one child per family. The result being that you’re in a position where one wage earner will be taking care of four retired people. Not sustainable.

So hopefully we can act in a way on a problem that’s much less severe than yours, and maybe we can learn together from how we can do that.

He fully understands forcing people sterilized against their will:

Health authorities are planning to sterilise nearly 10,000 people in southern China over the next four days as part of a population control programme.

Some of the people in Puning City will be forced to have the procedure carried out against their will.

…Chinese newspaper reports say that those who refuse to be sterilised have seen their elderly mothers or fathers taken away and detained.

Hundreds of people in Puning are said to have been locked up.

…More than 1,300 people in the city have been held in local government buildings where they were given “lectures” on China’s family planning regulations.

Or forced abortions?

During the past week, dozens of women in southwest China have been forced to have abortions even as late as nine months into the pregnancy, according to evidence uncovered by NPR.

more:

Sources in Linyi City and its surrounding counties claimed that up to 120,000 women had been coerced into submitting to the procedures and that some of them were in the ninth month of their pregnancies.

The arrests follow the detention on 6 September of a local activist, Chen Guangcheng. Mr Chen had claimed that women with two children were being forced to undergo sterilisations, while women pregnant with their third child were required to have abortions.

Human rights groups have long insisted that China used compulsory abortions and sterilisations as a way of enforcing its one-child policy, which restricts couples to just one child and was introduced in 1979 as a means of controlling the growth of its population.

Because those are most assuredly the results of any government policy that requires couples have no more than one child.

From NRO:

“China’s One Child Policy causes more violence to women and girls than any other official policy on earth. To merely mention the economic consequences is to turn a blind eye to the terrible human suffering caused by forced abortion. Chinese women are literally dragged out of their homes, strapped to tables and forced to abort.”

At least Boehner had the balls to speak out against this cruelty when he met with the Chinese President:

…And finally, we raised our strong, ongoing concerns with reports of human rights violations in China, including the denial of religious freedom, and the use of coercive abortion as a consequence of the ‘one child’ policy. When it comes to guaranteeing the freedom and dignity of all her citizens, including and especially the unborn, Chinese leaders have a responsibility to do better, and the United States has a responsibility to hold them to account.”

But not our Vice President.

I can’t shake the feeling that it was a trap. A set-up. An ambush.

And that Obama bought it. And Joe Biden made it all possible.

There was no end to self-adulation of Barack Obama following the raid in which Osama Bin Laden was killed. In the revelry, the brainiac that is the Vice President opened his mouth and identified those who carried out the Bin Laden raid.

He can tell you more about and understands the incredible, the phenomenal, the just almost unbelievable capacity of his Navy SEALs and what they did last Sunday.

Following the Biden outing, SecDef Gates made clear that increased security was necessary to protect the SEALS and their families. He also noted that the Obama administration could not shut the hell up.

Frankly, a week ago Sunday, in the Situation Room, we all agreed that we would not release any operational details from the effort to take out bin Laden. That all fell apart on Monday, the next day.”

Gates turned out to be prophetic:

“There is an awareness that the threat of retaliation is increased because of the attacks – because of the action against bin Laden,” he said.

Obama then let everyone know where the SEAL Team was.

(Reuters) – President Barack Obama, basking in U.S. public approval for the killing of Osama bin Laden, flew to a military base in Kentucky on Friday to thank special forces who carried out the deadly raid and led a rally filled with cheering troops.

By the end of May, the Taliban was promising revenge.

Nicholas Schmidle wrote a highly detailed play by play of the raid. He’ll probably get a Pulitzer Prize for it. He also helped the Taliban devise a trap.

“One option entailed flying helicopters to a spot outside Abbottabad and letting the team sneak into the city on foot. The risk of detection was high, however, and the SEALS would be tired by a long run to the compound. The planners had contemplated tunneling in — or at least, the possibility that bin Laden might tunnel out…Eventually, the planners agreed that it made the most sense to fly directly into the compound. ‘Special operations is about doing what’s not expected, and probably the least expected thing here was that a helicopter would come in, drop guys on the roof, and land in the yard,’ the special operations officer said.”

“Forty-five minutes after the Black Hawks departed, four MH-47 Chinooks launched from the same runway in Jalalabad. Two of them flew to the border, staying on the Afghan side; the other two proceeded into Pakistan. Deploying four Chinooks was a last-minute decision made after President Barack Obama said he wanted to feel assured that the Americans could “fight their way out of Pakistan.” Twenty-five additional SEALs from DEVGRU, pulled from a squadron stationed in Afghanistan, sat in the Chinooks that remained at the border; this “quick-reaction force” would be called into action only if the mission went seriously wrong. The third and fourth Chinooks were each outfitted with a pair of M134 Miniguns. They followed the Black Hawks’ initial flight path but landed at a predetermined point on a dry riverbed in a wide, unpopulated valley in northwest Pakistan. The nearest house was half a mile away. On the ground, the copters’ rotors were kept whirring while operatives monitored the surrounding hills for encroaching Pakistani helicopters or fighter jets. One of the Chinooks was carrying fuel bladders, in case the other aircraft needed to refill their tanks.

In the detailed description, there is more prophecy

One month before the 2008 Presidential election, Obama, then a senator from Illinois, squared off in a debate against John McCain in an arena at Belmont University, in Nashville. A woman in the audience asked Obama if he would be willing to pursue Al Qaeda leaders inside Pakistan, even if that meant invading an ally nation. He replied, “If we have Osama bin Laden in our sights and the Pakistani government is unable, or unwilling, to take them out, then I think that we have to act and we will take them out. We will kill bin Laden. We will crush Al Qaeda. That has to be our biggest national-security priority.” McCain, who often criticized Obama for his naïveté on foreign-policy matters, characterized the promise as foolish, saying, “I’m not going to telegraph my punches.”

Obama did. So did Biden. And so did Schmidle.

They offered the Taliban an outline of how high value target raids are conducted. And it was another high value target they were after.

KABUL—U.S. Special Operations troops were closing in on a clandestine Taliban meeting thought to include a high-value commander in Afghanistan’s rugged Tangi Valley when they ran into an insurgent patrol that pinned them down.

Rangers just happened to “run into” an insurgent patrol that just happened to be there in a position to pin them down??

Bin Laden’s remains were necessary to provide DNA evidence of his death. The alleged “target(s)” of this disastrous raid must also have been very high value as the raid bears a striking similarity to the Bin Laden raid. This time they knew the SEALS were coming and they were prepared for them.

Bin Laden was located from threads of intelligence gathered over four years, and it all derived from a phone call.

So now thanks to the eager press the Taliban knew how Bin Laden was found, they knew who participated in the raid and they knew how it went down. All they needed to do was set bait that someone at the top could not refuse.

The Taliban could leak information about a high value target- it had to be someone high on the food chain, someone else whose DNA would be be required for a positive ID- someone like Ayman Al-Zawahiri. Then they could pin down the first team looking for the high value target and hold out for reinforcements. And they came. The Taliban KNEW SEAL Team 6 comes after high value targets and could well be involved. They KNEW the equipment that would be used. They KNEW pretty much how it would be done. They KNEW how to furnish the fake intel.

It all fits. I believe the Taliban got its revenge by playing the game and I cannot help but wonder who made the decision to send in Special Ops and then the SEALs instead of using a drone. That decision probably came from the top. Perhaps someone was looking for another trophy- someone who needs a boost at the polls.

We still don’t know who got Khalid Sheik Muhammad.

I wrote this well before the following appeared.

UPDATE: Yes, it was a trap.

The Taliban lured US forces into an elaborate trap to shoot down their helicopter, killing 30 American troops in the deadliest such incident of the war, an Afghan official said Monday.

In every community there is a guy who doesn’t seem to be wrapped too tight or whose bubble is a little off center. In the Peace county we had one of our own: everyone called him Clueless Joe and he seemed to enjoy the nickname, as if he felt validated. Joe inherited a great ranch, but within 20 years of poor business decisions, the stock, the equipment, and most of the land was gone. Instead of being a wealthy rancher, he lived on 160 acres of stumps and willows and survived with a small garden and a few chickens. The old homestead house had fallen into disrepair, mainly because couldn’t fix anything or he was just too lazy, but when the spring rains came, the roof leaked so bad there was no getting around it, the house had to have a new roof or it was going to collapse.

The funny thing about roofs, you need to wait until it stops raining to repair them; that is one of those things nature does for us, she makes us so miserable with a leaking roof, that we are more likely to remember to fix it when the rain stops. Sadly, there are those amongst us who see no need to fix roof if it isn’t leaking. Thus the leaking roof is ignored for several rain cycles, until it is out of control and the whole roof needs to be replaced.

Joe was at that point. There was a sale in town and Joe loaded up on asphalt shingles. As a rule, a rancher can build or repair almost anything, but if they avoided work while growing up and neglected their practical education, they don’t have the practical knowledge that allows them to study a project they have never done and then put it together in a professional and workmanlike manner.

Poor Joe studied his roof and the shingles and began nailing on shingles. He worked with a fierce dedication and finished the roof after a week of hard labor. When you put on a roof, it is imperative to start at the bottom and lay on row after row of shingles. Joe studied the job and started at the top and laid on row after row of shingles in an upside down position, so that the water couldn’t flow down the roof: instead it was trapped in tens of thousands of little openings between shingles so that it was forced onto the plywood and into the house. Joe realized his error during the next rainstorm and then laid roll roofing over the shingles, it is an inferior type of roof, but this time time he started at the bottom and worked his way up and the roof didn’t leak.

That my friends, was why Clueless Joe was called Clueless. Joe left this world years ago, but his legacy lives on. We now have a vice president, who is coincidently named Joe and in his own way, deserves the nickname Clueless.

In Egypt, there is increasing violence to bring down the regime of President Mubarak. Eight protesters and one policeman have died during the demonstrations.

The US provides $1.3 billion/year in military aid to Egypt; obviously, we have a vested interest in supporting the dictator, President Mubarak.

The regime has shut down the internet, and the use of instant messaging on cell phones: while organizers of the protests are calling for massive demonstrations after the noon day prayers on Friday, thus calling for an end to Mubarak’s reign.

The reaction to this latest call for protests may or may not end the regime, time will tell.

NewsHour’s host Jim Lehrer asked our Vice President Joe Biden, if the time had come for Mubarak to step down:

Biden answered: No. I think the time has come for President Mubarak to begin to move in the direction that – to be more responsive to some… of the needs of the people out there.

Asked if he would characterize Mubarak as a dictator Biden responded: “Mubarak has been an ally of ours in a number of things. And he’s been very responsible on, relative to geopolitical interest in the region, the Middle East peace efforts; the actions Egypt has taken relative to normalizing relationship with – with Israel. … I would not refer to him as a dictator.”

In typical Clueless Joe fashion, seemed to be unaware of the demands of the protesters: an end to police torture, freedom, democracy, and a committed effort by the government to address the poverty that is afflicting the people of Egypt.

Biden urged non-violence from both protesters and the government and said: “We’re encouraging the protesters to – as they assemble, do it peacefully. And we’re encouraging the government to act responsibly and – and to try to engage in a discussion as to what the legitimate claims being made are, if they are, and try to work them out.” He also said: “I think that what we should continue to do is to encourage reasonable… accommodation and discussion to try to resolve peacefully and amicably the concerns and claims made by those who have taken to the street. And those that are legitimate should be responded to because the economic well-being and the stability of Egypt rests upon that middle class buying into the future of Egypt.”

The demands of the protesters may seem to be counter productive and outrageous to our current administration, for they are calling for an end to poverty, an end to the authoritarian police state, and the establishment of democracy it is no wonder that Joe can’t recognize these claims as legitimate.

After listening to Biden, if the protesters are willing to listen to someone as clueless as Biden, they must be wondering which of their demands are illegitimate, as they listen or read the words of Biden and see the equivalent of a roof with the shingles on backwards.

Hillary weighs in on the situation with her lack of insight and emotion.

Remember this? (2:50 mark)

Joe Biden – “Washington, right now, is broken,”

Back in February when he uttered those words the Democrats has majorities in the House and the Senate. But still they complained they couldn’t get anything done. They then passed Socialized Health Care. Took over companies they had no business taking over. Passed a treaty with Russia that makes us infinitely less safer. Pushed through a stimulus for “shovel ready” projects that did absolutely nothing for the economy. But still they whined they couldn’t get anything done.

Byron York:

Democrats and their partisans in the press complained about Washington being broken only at those times when their agenda was imperiled. Vice President Biden’s statement, for example, came after the election of Massachusetts Republican Sen. Scott Brown took away the Democrats’ filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Just a few weeks later, when Barack Obama signed the national health care bill into law, Biden was all smiles.

Now, after the lame-duck session, Democratic leaders are happy again. But it’s only temporary. As the new year approaches, get ready for a new round of Democratic Washington-is-broken grumbling.

~~~

It’s also why you’re hearing new rumbling about what many Democrats consider the ultimate fix for the Washington-is-broken problem: eliminating the filibuster. A perennial complaint, unhappiness with the filibuster is likely to reach new heights among Democrats in the next few months. Already, the entire returning Democratic caucus has signed a letter by Sens. Carl Levin and Mark Warner calling for rules changes that will make it easier to kill filibusters. Some are also hoping to make it possible to change the Senate’s rules with a simple majority vote, rather than the two-thirds vote required now. That way, Democrats could do anything they want, even without that 60-vote majority.

It won’t happen; there aren’t the votes. It could even be that Democrats are pushing the anti-filibuster argument so loudly because they know it won’t happen. That way, they can position themselves as favoring “filibuster reform” with the comfort of knowing they’ll still have the filibuster the next time they’re in the minority, which might be soon.

Meanwhile, new voices are taking up the Washington-is-broken crusade. At the recent New York rollout of the Democratic-leaning group No Labels, speaker after speaker pushed the idea that “hyperpartisanship” in Washington has prevented elected leaders from “getting things done.” They’re looking for some still-unspecified new approach to break the partisan deadlock.

But Byron makes the point that it SHOULD be difficult to pass legislation that will fundamentally change millions of American lives. The last two years Democrats had enough members to pass whatever the hell they wanted and look where it got us. Rising interest rates, increasing unemployment, and rising consumer prices. They printed money and passed bills that spent more.

We got screwed.

…in a divided government, there must be some agreement between the parties before legislation can move forward. And if there isn’t agreement, then maybe the legislation shouldn’t move forward. When that happens, Washington isn’t broken. It’s working.

Amen.

Of course Obama will be too busy this year to compromise on anything since he will be in campaign mode….if he ever left that mode: (h/t JammieWearingFool)

President Obama will spend more time outside of Washington, D.C., next year engaging with he public, according to a top White House adviser and close friend of the president.

One year before Obama faces reelection, he is expected to make a greater effort to connect with potential voters after facing charges being too aloof during his first two years in the Oval Office. The president’s “biggest regret” was that because of economic turmoil, ”He had to spend almost every waking hour in Washington working on solving that crisis,” senior adviser Valerie Jarrett said during an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “And what he missed sorely was engagement with the American people.

Sooooo….he spent every waking hour in Washington because of the economy and his solution to the problem now is to NOT pay any attention to it and instead go schmooze with voters 2 years before the next Presidential election. But wasn’t it just three days ago that he pledged a “singular focus” on the economy?

He’s getting out of town because he knows the days of being able to force any agenda item down the throats of Americans are long gone. Instead of actually becoming a somewhat mediocre President and working towards REAL bipartisanship he will flee, shake hands, and whine that Washington is again, broken.

A leader this man is not.

Liberals:

When asked about the President’s aloofness, Joe Biden responded: “And I find nothing, nothing about him that’s aloof…I think what it is, is he’s so brilliant. He is an intellectual.”

Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner: “It is very important to keep politics out of monetary policy.”

Jame  Floyd, former Clinton advisor, on MSNBC, giving what apparently passes for careful political analysis: “The governor says that she [Sarah Palin] is an extraordinary asset to her party; I say she is an extraordinary ass.”

Lisa de Moraes of the Washington Post made the following claim: “Sarah Palin hopes to lure her daughter Bristol’s 20 million viewers to her own, far less popular, reality TV series this coming Sunday.”

Lisa de Moraes “Sarah Palin’s new TLC reality series attracted TLC’s biggest series-debut audience ever, that amounted to only 5 million viewers.” [emphasis mine].  3 people who would die for 5 million viewers: Jon Stewart, Rachel Maddow, and Keith Olbermann.  These are how many people tune in to watch Katie Couric on network television.

Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller: “[We should have a] slimmed down channel packages that better respect what we really want to watch.” and “I hunger for quality news. I’m tired of the right and the left. There’s a little bug inside of me which wants to get the FCC to say to Fox and to MSNBC, ‘Out. Off. End. Goodbye.’ It’d be a big favor to political discourse, our ability to do our work here in Congress, and to the American people, to be able to talk with each other and have some faith in their government and, more importantly, in their future.”  The FCC does not regulate cable, by the way.

George Soros: “We have just lost this election, we need to draw a line.  And if this president can’t do what we need, it is time to start looking somewhere else.”

Chris Dodd tweet: ‘U love torturing me w this sh*t’
Chris Dodd’s 2nd tweet moments later: ‘From Dodd Staff – Apologies to Dodd’s followers, last tweet was not from Chris Dodd.’

Joe Biden: “the stimulus did exactly what it was supposed to do, but it wasn’t enough.”

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi: “Our position in the House has been that we support the tax cut for the middle cl-, for everyone, but not an additional tax cut at the high end.”  Democrats are not offering any tax cuts; Republicans are not offering any tax cuts.  No one, apart from the debt reduction commission, is speaking about tax cuts.

BBC’s Katty Kay suggests that Tea Partiers are willing to go against the “country’s interest” rather than to “deal” with President Obama:  “And if there is going to be a wing of the Republican Party that says, do not on any issue, on any case, even on its merits, compromise with the President, it’s gonna be the Tea Party. And if the Tea Party is driving the energy in the Republican Party … Republicans in Congress are going to have to look very carefully at how they deal with them. And the Tea Party is saying we don’t care about whether it’s in the country’s interest, in our foreign policy interest, in our economic interest necessarily to deal with the President.”

Liberals making sense:

Ed Henry CNN tweets: “POTUS a little punchy — comes to press cabin on AF-1 and jokes he’s stopping in South Am on way home from Europe to see Chavez”

Rep. Harold Ford, Jr., says President Obama needs to make some “halftime adjustments” including “order[ing] his department heads and agency chiefs to declare a moratorium on new regulations until further notice.”

Crosstalk:

Ted Koppel, ex newsman, in an editorial: “While I can appreciate the financial logic of drowning television viewers in a flood of opinions designed to confirm their own biases, the trend is not good for the republic…Fox News and MSNBC [are]…to journalism what Bernie Madoff was to investment: He told his customers what they wanted to hear, and by the time they learned the truth, their money was gone.”

Mary Katharine Ham: “Ted Koppel yearns for the old days when 3 or 4 white guys with the same background told us what the news was.” (Quoted from memory).
____________________

Charles Krauthammer: “Are you denying that Democratic leaders have accused Bush of lying us into war?”

Mark Shields: “I have never heard a Democratic leader, we have to define who Democratic leaders, I never heard a Democratic candidate for president say this, or anybody who was in question for that.”  Excluding Howard Dean, or John Kerry, that is.

____________________

The following as a fake interview which ran on NPR (something which they do as a lark; and, surprisingly enough, these “interviews” denigrate conservatives only.

SAGAL (NPR “interviewer”): Thank you, everybody. With President George W. Bush’s memoir, “Decision Points,” coming out this week, naturally we reached out to invite the president on for an interview. Now this was the response we got, for real, from his former press secretary Dana Perino, quote, “That’s hysterical. You guys are so funny,” and then a smiling emoticon. So instead, we’ll be interviewing George W. Bush’s audio book. So welcome to WAIT WAIT, this is a big honor for us. Now, you tell some great stories in the book. Tell us about your first week as president.

BUSH: I had a few beers with the guys on Monday night. On Tuesday, I’d fix my favorite after dinner drink, Benedictine and brandy. I had a couple of bourbon-and-Sevens after I put Barbara and Jenna to bed on Wednesday.

SAGAL: Well, yeah, you’ve earned a celebration, I guess. But then you got down to business, right? Tell us what you did next.

BUSH: Thursday and Friday were beer-drinking nights. (Laughter)

SAGAL: Well that’s remarkable, that’s some first week. How did you manage to fit all that in while being president?

BUSH:  You put your teeth on the edge of the mug, tilt your head back and the beer goes down your throat.

SAGAL: There’s a really touching story, Mr. President’s audio book, in your book about your meeting your wife. What went through your mind the first time you saw the future Laura Bush?

BUSH: Here’s the head and here’s the body. It’s a girl.

SAGAL: President Bush’s audio book, thank you so much for joining us on WAIT WAIT…DON’T TELL ME!

But I got to say, you’ve gone from the nation’s highest office to a quiz show on NPR, of all places. So what’s going through your head right now?

BUSH: Bush, what did you do wrong?

SAGAL: Thank you so much. President Bush’s audio book joining us. (Soundbite of applause)

[This is the same NPR game show that joked in 2006 that Karl Rove ordered the killing of liberal Rep. Jack Murtha, and that Rove's rear end is Dick Cheney's undisclosed location. In 2009, Obama adviser David Axelrod appeared on the show and joked that one of the contenders for White House dog was conservative beauty queen Carrie Prejean.]

Taken from:

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-graham/2010/11/16/npr-game-show-aired-fake-interview-bush-audio-book-smeared-bush-white-ho

____________________

From a Howard Kurtz article: “[Katie Couric] is touring what she calls ‘this great unwashed middle of the country’ in an effort to divine the mood of the midterms.”

Howard Kurtz: “Drudge jumped on Katie Couric’s comment to me about “great unwashed middle of the country,” but I can tell you she was not being disparaging.”

Conservatives:

Charles Krauthammer: “Out of all this, an American hero emerges, a guy refusing the pat-down and scanning by saying, ‘Don’t touch my junk.’  That’s the banner of the year 2010. It doesn’t have the elegance of “Don’t tread on me,” but that was the age of the musket. This is the age of Twitter.”

Ben Stein: “Government spending is like heroin; when you try to get off of it, it’s really painful.”

Conservatives from the past:

Ronald Reagan: “Those who have known freedom and lose it, never know it again.”

From this week’s Conservative Review (#153) (HTML)  (PDF)