“REPUBLICAN PROGRESSIVE” KEN MEHLMAN

We have a saying about Republicans and that is they often do become progressive, reasonable, open to change, aware of the world around them, that’s when they stop being Republicans. The latest example; Ken Mehlman, who was George Bush’s campaign manager in ‘04, you remember that campaign with all the anti-gay local agendas in swing states such as Ohio and Florida. Ok, Ken’s out of that now and he had a realization that it was time to let people know he was gay. All right, he said it has taken him “43 years to come to terms with this problem in my life”. But they always come to these terms after their Republican term. And now he is an advocate for gay marriage, now he’s an advocate for reason for discourse, and now he is against labeling and slander and fear because he’s no longer an active Republican. Gees, can these guys go back and talk to their former party members and say, if you’re going to get rational, why not have a legacy? Be rational when you are with the party, so later with the clearest of conscience you can party.

THE VIRTUAL CONSCIENCE

Liz Cheney (Dicks daughter) recently complained about President Obama honoring the fallen soldiers by meeting their arrival at the air force base (this week 18 of then arrived). While there were cameras there, it was only after the President did a number of things that his predecessor never did. First, he checked with the soldiers families to find out what they wanted. Second, he chose to honor them as opposed to W whose respect was only virtual, never actual.

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IF HE HAD BEEN A TWEETER, WOULD HE HAVE BEEN SWEETER?

Look at the messages that people tweet, the broken grammar, the partial sentence...it's a phenomenon which has really grown over the past year. But think about it; if twitter had arrived 6, 7 or 8 years earlier, George W. Bush would have seemed articulate and "with it". Verbally, if he had been a tweeter, he would have come across as that much sweeter!

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SAVINGS FROM TORT REFORM? EVEN 1 IS THE PHONIEST NUMBER

Folks we have a new hero and he is Congressman Alan Grayson (D-FL). As you may have heard, in the health care debate in Congress he said the Republican plan is to get sick and die quickly. At least, that's what many people think he said. What he really said was to stay healthy and as a "fallback" if you get sick...then die quickly. He also pointed out that when the Bush people were fighting for tort reform, the sent their own committee to get the facts and prove what Mr. Bush wanted to prove, namely that the amount of the health care dollars wasted by trials for damages according to their figures (with all they could throw in) were 1% of the money spent. Others say it was less that .5%.

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TO PATRIOTISM THE RIGHTS OF YASSER

President Obama went to Denmark and attempted to persuade the Olympic committee to give the 2016 Olympics to Chicago. Alas, the feud between the world Olympic committee and the US still runs deep and for that and perhaps many other reasons even though the President did his best for his country, he failed to bring back the Olympics. Naturally, all patriotic Americans wished him well and feel let down for the country. Then there are the "Palestinian patriots" the Yasser Arafat's of the world who (as former Israeli Prime Minister said) hate others more than they love theor own. You want an example? Its on film all over the internet and cable. The right wing think tank called "Americans for prosperity" burst into wild applause when the news broke that Obama lost the bid for Chicago. If George Bush or Dick Cheney had tried to charm the Olympic committee they would have been all for it. So, are all patriotic Americans disappointed by the Olympics? We would say yes. These happy right wingers are just the Yasser patriots.

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THE DEATH AFTER DEATH PANEL

In 2003 President Bush signed into law an expansion of Medicare which included the same end of life counseling that the Democrats are proposing to make optional in the new health care reform bill. So, in all fairness we would have to consider that the first death panel. What we have now is (not life after death but) death after death. Somehow in 2003 no one seemed to mind this counseling and it was never termed a “death panel”.

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STILL STUCK WITH STICKY DICK

America stepped in it the day Dick Cheney found himself. What we mean is that he was put in charge of the committee created by the RNC to find Bush’s running mate, and he sifted through, looked in the mirror and said the best man must be himself. Now as it turns out that the White House memos may show that the waterboarding techniques actually didn’t work, Senator Carl Levin of Michigan said that after an investigation into the CIA tactics Dick Cheneys claims about them working is nothing but a bunch of lies. So either Mr. Cheney is truly trying to retake his place in history by lying to vindicate policies of torture, or he is getting some of the Reagan alzheimers and simply forgetting the truth. Either way, we can seem to shake of the stickyness of Dick.

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VALUES VS. VALUABLES

Listening to President Obamas rhetoric we note that he actually lives his rhetoric. He IS a great father, he IS a great husband, he DOES believe in education, he DOES believe in personal responsibility. The way he spoke to audiences and minority parents and said “good hospitals and a good armed forces is my responsibility, but taking care of your kids…that’s all yours, I have my own to care for”. That’s a values president. Lets look at who Mr. Bush was beholden to; the oil interests, Haliburton, donors who could run hedge funds and not pay their fair share of taxes. Mr. Bush was a valuables president, his focus wasn’t on values it was on valuables.

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RIGHT WING INTEGRITY ON DEFENSE SPENDING, CUT AND RUN

All over the commentator world (the radio, news papers and of course FOX News), there is a running condemnation of the defense budget “cuts”. Yes, we know some programs were cut, but 50% of our budget is for current warfare, 10% for regular and 40% for a combination. So now lets explain “cuts” in numbers that even the right wingers can understand; it went from 534 billion dollars “down” to 513 billion. Even former President Bush (who we all know was a bit fuzzy and math) can probably figure out that 534 is greater than 513, right?

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POOR KOREA GUIDANCE, THE THIRD ARM WAS NOT A CHARM

So last week Korea launched a missile intending to show the world their ballistic capability, and it fell harmlessly into the sea. Understandably everyone is concerned, but we just have one question. They are concerned about Korea which has yet to launch its first successful weapon, and they are concerned about Iran which has yet to develop its first nuclear weapon, but why is no one concerned about Pakistan which has dozens of nuclear weapons? The right wing conservatives are so concerned about Iran and N. Korea since Bush called them the “axis of evil”, but why do we see no concern for the “axis of armed”?

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A BUSH LEGACY; NO BAND AID FOR BRAIN AID

In 2007 the federal AIDS budget was 22.8 billion dollars, Parkinson’s disease research received 250 million and (as was recently released) only 8.5 million was allocated to treat traumatic brain injury. It was also just released that former President Bush had even suggested eliminating the program altogether. This is an often sad subject, but you have to fund a chuckle where you can. Think about it; George Bush proposed ending funding for brain injuries, as conservatives obviously don’t want funding for anything at which they are (or will be) at risk.

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THE RACKET OVER THE (FIRST) BRACKET

Many people are upset that President Obama took the time to fill out a basketball bracket for the NCAA games. For those that shoot from the flip (as we do here at the Faux), that typically takes about 15-20 minutes. Those people probably prefer a President who took 77 vacations and only had 47 news conferences. And one of the good things about Obama filling out a bracket is that he will make mistakes and admit them, unlike his predecessor. That’s the beauty of putting yourself out there even for something as trivial as a March madness bracket. Now just think, if Bush had filled out a bracket (and can never be wrong), they would have had to go back and revise those games and scores lest they be deemed unpatriotic.

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AIG = AINT I GREEDY

For those of you out in Fauxvia who may consider this title a bit flip, remember we are describing a bunch of flops. Because all we have to do is watch the actions this week of the AIG Board of Directors. After being kept afloat by $170 billion dollars in bailout money, they are planning this week to give out 165 million dollars of employee bonuses. This they say, is required by pre-existing contracts, and also enabled by their friend George Bush who gave them bailouts with no preconditions. President Obama isnt pleased (to put it mildly), and Larry Summers was on record this weekend as to the administrations intent to explore every legal means to limit or eliminate this junk bonding (our words, not his) between executives and their own interests while remaining oblivious to the performance levels of their companies. This is why we now call it AINT I GREEDY.

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THE BUSH BOOM GOTTA GO TO MO(TEL)S

An interesting trend lately in California, Colorado and a host of other areas is that due to the real estate collapse and mortgage crisis many couples are losing their homes and many families of 5-6 people are living in a single hotel room. Its more cramped than camping but they’ve really got no choice (and obviously there is a certain element of motel life that small children shouldn’t see). It is definitely better than living in a cardboard box and clearly the hotel industry is booming and we have noticed price hikes as well. Families have stayed together even if they have divorced because they are too poor to break up. This is just another aspect of the Bush boom…when you gotta go, you go to mo(tel)s.

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GOP = GRUMPY OLD PARTISANS

A gentleman named John Huntsman from Utah had some real problems with the Republican response to President Obama speech last week to Congress. John says that he wont listen to the Republican response because he claim they are inconsequential, he says they are ignoring whats happening in this country. Who is this guy who seems to be so anti Republican? Well, he actually happens to be the Republican Governor of Utah. We at the Faux feel that this indicates that the old guard of the GOP is now Grumpy Old Partisans, which is bad for this country because we need a 2 party system.

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WHERE “THIS WEEK” IS WEAK

The program “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” is growing in prestige and importance and will soon be on the level of Meet the Press. But when interviewing Republicans they consistently forget the ask the 2 most important questions. 1. When discussing small business, Mr. Stephanopoulos keeps forgetting to mention that fact that one of the first actions of George W. Bush was to cut the small business bureau in half. 2. When they criticize the budget of President Obama, he fails to respond religiously that Bush’s budget didn’t include the Iraq war at all, could it get any more misleading than that? Additionally, he should point out that 90% of debt in this country happened under Reagan, Bush 41 and Bush 43. So while we love the program, there are some areas in which “This Week” is weak.

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BUSH’N BOO

Every so often looking back on the Bush economy, we thing of a particular mantra. No, we are not thinking of “Uniter, not divider”, we are referring to his constant promise to restore “dignity” to the Whitehouse. It seems that dignity isn’t what the country needed, Boo also had dignity…he just wasn’t a great economic theorist.

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THE BROOKS OF BABBLE-ON

David Brooks is in his own way "streaming" again. Lest we forget, Mr. Brooks was briefly for Al Gore, before he endorsed his Republican opponent as more fiscally responsible among other things. George W. Bush more responsible? Anyway in 2004 he was impressed by the "veteran" presence at the Democratic Convention and was for Mr. Kerry before he was against him, but then even by Swift boat standards the Brooks flowed in another direction rather quickly. In fact one of his primary reasons for switching (within 24 hours) on Mr. Kerry was that he flip-flopped...OK.

This past year Mr. Brooks was favorably impressed by Senator Obama (briefly, of course), leaned a bit towards Senator Clinton but is now for Senator McCain. Are you folks surprised yet?

With that as background we need to appreciate (and read) quickly Mr. Brooks' glowing end assessment of Joe Biden for Barack Obama's possible VP choice. We at the Faux can't argue with a simple reason given for extolling Mr. Biden's word and capability and predict it will take David Brooks at least several days to reverse himself should Senator Biden actually be the Democratic VP nominee. Oh, rumor has it that Fox News has signed up Joe Lieberman as their senior core loyalty reversal expert. Joe, Dave-you should study together.

BROOKS BABBLE UPDATE

Due to Shabbos, our prediction on Joe Biden was published after the Obama campaign announced it. We're glad on all levels, smart choice, smart man.

CHANGE YOU CAN DECEIVE IN

One of the great lines (there weren't that many) in the Republican primary debates was by John McCain in derisively addressing Mitt Romney. Referencing to the truth, that Romney had changed his position on taxes, energy, pro-choice and many other hot (push?) button issues, McCain quipped (to Romney) "You are indeed the agent of change." So why then would the McCain folks have Mr. Romney representing them on the national talk show circuit, most recently the center stage on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos?" Why indeed. Well, possibly because Senator John McCain in an election year where the mantra is on "change" has in fact done the most changing of all, not from the current administration with which he is a in knee jerk reflex but from himself. That's right, John McCain's "Straight Talk Express" with regular access available to reporters across the spectrum has become the "Straight Talk Digress." Consider the "Straight Talk" 2000 and after version of John McCain trying to insulate (as opposed to emulate) the nation from George W. Bush. He opposed Bush's tax plan as unfairly tilted to the rich (maybe he hadn't seen Cindy McCain's actual financials) and was against, strongly (then) the "agents of intolerance" of the religious right. Today, all that's changed. He stood against the lobbyists who ran Republican policy, but his he's hired many of them to run his campaign now. In 2003 he was all approving of the Iraq war and only after the insurgency showed the mess we had "accomplished," as in "mission" (not), did he take a stand against the Bush Bunch's approaches.

Thanks to Frank Rich for pointing out that 4 in 10 Americans feel they don't know John McCain well enough. Also the story that the McCain campaign has received "strong" support financially from a "group tied closely to Al Qaeda" was broken by Mr. Rich this past Sunday. The source of this information interestingly is Jerome Corsi who has produced works to smear John Kerry, "Draft to Command" and Barack Obama "The Obama Nation." The web site (again, a right wing bastion) which has broken the news on Mr. McCain's financial Al Qaeda ties is www.worldnetdaily.com.

And hey there Mitt Romney, when you were campaigning and your five healthy sons were headed around our nation, but nowhere near Iraq, you explained they were defending this country by getting you elected president. Now that you're no longer running, how many have enlisted so far?

40 ACRES AND A MULE, NO, IT'S 68 MILLION ACRES AND NO DRILLS

68 million acres, now that's a lot of land, and that's how much land the oil companies now have leased on which they're not drilling. Why, well we'd have to ask them, but as to why they (Mobile and Exxon) want more just ask yourselves. That's because the more land they can get before Mr. Bush leaves the more they can leverage for their profits and our peril. Can anyone be surprised?