Rupet Murdoch Is A Liar

Earlier this year Beck accused Obama of exhibiting racism "...over and over and over again." This prompted a campaign to encourage advertisers to boycott his show.

Then Rupert Murdoch (Fox News is part of his media empire.) stepped in and said that although Beck was right factually about Obama's racism, Beck should not have said such a thing about the President. (Yet another point of disagreement here; if a President is guilty of such a thing, then the media have a responsibility to cover it!!!)

Now, of course, Murdoch is backpedaling through the cowardly use of a spokesperson. He says that Obama made a racist comment, so Beck was right to make such a claim although he, Rupert Murdoch, does not agree.

So, just what is this racist comment? The two of them keep insisting that he has done racist things, and they never back it up with anything substantial. Just like the rest of their "news"...

Please visit this site to complain to advertisers about Murdoch's complicity in promoting racism and other misleading news coverage. It's time to pull their plug.



But also take a minute to enjoy Stewart revealing yet another example of the unprincipled, deceptive practices employed at Fox News.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Sean Hannity Uses Glenn Beck's Protest Footage
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

Priceless

I just saw this video at thedailydish.

More Ravings From a Conservative Wingnut

Yesterday I posted about a conservative effort to retranslate the Bible and purge it of suspect "liberal" corruptions. Not content with rewriting history, conservatives now have the Bible on their list. Astonishingly, they would like to leave out the story about Jesus protecting the adulterous woman from being stoned to death! They also have problems with Jesus saying, "Forgive them, for they know not what they do." I imagine "Judge not lest ye be judged" is probably on their list to things to omit.

It really seems like they want to create a document that would justify biblical punishments against gays, liberals, feminists, atheists or abortionists. Curiously, while professing to be Christian they seek to dismiss all the teachings that promote gentleness, compassion, humility and generosity, and instead seem to long to "go Old Testament on peoples' asses".

Here, in their own words, are the benefits of this undertaking. (My use of boldface)

Benefits include:

* mastery of the Bible, which is priceless
* mastery of the English language, which is valuable
* thorough understanding of the differences in Bible translations, particularly the historically important King James Version
* benefiting from activity that no public school would ever allow; a Conservative Bible could become a text for public school courses
* liberals will oppose this effort, but they will have to read the Bible to criticize this, and that will open their minds

Why on earth the author believes that this new text would be acceptable material for public school, I have no idea. But then, he is not very smart. Check out his understanding of the concept of open-mindedness! I copied this large tract just in case he decides to remove it for some reason----like someone convinces him people are laughing at him!

Essay: Quantifying Openmindedness

We quantify intelligence (IQ), academic performance (grades), body weight (pounds or kilograms), running speed, and all sorts of other personal characteristics. But perhaps more useful than any of those numbers would be a measure of open-mindedness.

By "open-mindedness" I mean a genuine willingness to consider the evidence before rejecting an idea. I do not mean tolerance, or a rejection of absolute truth, or skepticism. Open-mindedness means here what the dictionary says: "receptive to arguments or ideas."[1]

One way to measure open-mindedness is to test for close-mindedness, and then take the converse. A subject for our measurement can be asked if he views certain proposals as impossible. By impossible I do not mean mathematically impossible, but so unlikely as to be considered absurd. Belief in impossibility is a sign of close-mindedness, because it reflects the unwillingness of the subject to be "receptive" to the possibility.
Contents
[hide]


Example Questions and Topics

1. Do you resist admitting the possibility that a conservative approach to education is far more effective for students than a liberal one?
2. Do you resist admitting that something you accepted for over a decade is, in fact, completely false?
3. Do you resist the possibility that Hollywood values result in significant harm for those who believe in them, and to innocent bystanders?
4. Do you think it is impossible that increased gun ownership reduces the rate of crime?
5. When President Ronald Reagan told Mr. Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall, did you think that it was impossible for the Berlin Wall to be torn down?
6. Did you think, or still think, that the Strategic Defense Initiative ("Star Wars") is impossible?
7. Do you think that it is impossible that the Shroud of Turin is authentic?
8. Do you think that there must be a material explanation for remarkable homing and migration behavior of birds and butterflies?
9. Do you think that it is impossible for the speed of light to have been different in the past?
10. Do you think that it is impossible to measure openmindedness?
11. Do you think that evolution [2] must have occurred?
12. Do you think that is impossible for the power of 2 in Newtonian gravity, whereby the gravitational force is proportional to 1/r2, to be more precise with an exponent that is slightly different from 2, such as a gravitational force proportional to 1/r2.00000001?
13. Do you resist admitting that some things taught to you in school are completely false, and even known to be false by some responsible for the material?

A dozen such questions can be posed, and one's closed-mindedness can be scored based on how often they answered "yes" above. Answering more than half as "yes" reflects acute closed-mindedness.

Seems rather like his definition for open-mindedness is gullibility for notions without any evidence or support whatsoever. What a tool!

An "Updated" Conservative Bible ?

Conservatives are eyeing the bible with suspicion as it does not really fit in all that well with their belief system. (Too much sharing, caring & forgiving and not nearly enough judging, stone throwing and smiting!) Some of them are now proposing to update it, to make the conservative values more apparent, and to eliminate the "liberal bias" that permeates many translations.

I'm not making this up!

Included in the list of ways to improve the bible is the following suggestion.

Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning

Gee, so much for teaching about the love of money being the root of all evil. They also reccommend:

Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness: preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio; avoid compound negatives and unnecessary ambiguities; prefer concise, consistent use of the word "Lord" rather than "Jehovah" or "Yahweh" or "Lord God.

"
"Liberal wordiness"! This is funny especially because just a few lines before they object to the "dumbing down" in many other modern bibles. Another linguistic peeve of theirs is the inclusion of so many "liberal" terms in the Bible:

Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: using powerful new conservative terms as they develop;[4] defective translations use the word "comrade" three times as often as "volunteer"; similarly, updating words which have a change in meaning, such as "word", "peace", and "miracle"........(Socialistic terminology permeates English translations of the Bible, without justification. This improperly encourages the "social justice" movement among Christians. For example, the conservative word "volunteer" is mentioned only once in the ESV, yet the socialistic word "comrade" is used three times, "laborer(s)" is used 13 times, "labored" 15 times, and "fellow" (as in "fellow worker") is used 55 times.)

It does not seem to bother them that 'volunteer' means something very different from 'laborer', that is that laborers are supposed to get paid------perhaps that's against their conservative principles. (And don't even get me started about their need to use pomp-speak------they used the bombastic "utilize' where 'use' would have been sufficient.)

And then there's this:

Combat Harmful Addiction: combating addiction by using modern terms for it, such as "gamble" rather than "cast lots";[5] using modern political terms, such as "register" rather than "enroll" for the census

Sure, it makes sense to use modern words like 'gamble' or whatever. But they just might want to run this one by Conservative word smith and spin guru, Frank Luntz, who earned a pretty penny from the casino lobbies by spearheading the campaign to have 'gambling' referred to as the more innocent sounding 'gaming'. And how on earth is using the modern term 'register' rather than 'enroll' supposed to "combat harmful addictions"? Their logic on this point escapes me.......

The writing throughout their proposal suffers from poor grammar, inferior structure, faulty logic and questionable style. Given their evident inability to write well, this new Bible should be a doozie! Given their audience it will probably be a bestseller.

A Fresh Outrage In The Campaign Of Deception

A new poll sent out as part of a national Republican fund raising effort features the following question:

"It has been suggested that the government could use voter registration to determine a person's political affiliation, prompting fears that GOP voters might be discriminated against for medical treatment in a Democrat-imposed health care rationing system. Does this possibility concern you?"

Oh, really? Suggested by whom? Was this before or after they doffed their protective, foil headgear?

For Steele to release materials like this suggests to recipients that there is a legitimate reason for people to worry about this issue. This is how these crazy rumors get started. People at the very top of the Republican party are orchestrating this frenzied panic over the possibility of healthcare reform using horrific and baseless lies.

The fact that they won't discuss the options honestly and openly reveals their lack of any ability to attract voters to their side with the truth.

Another Day, Another Lying Republican

Now Steele joins the procession of Republicans using scare tactics and outright lies to smother healthcare reform. Frankly I have misgivings about the implementation of a European style healthcare system here only because I suspect that we would bungle it. (I agree that their programs are much better than ours.) But I don't want the American initiative to be torpedoed over a bunch of lies. I want the kind of honest debate that would spur the development of a system that could work here.

Watch Steele claim that veterans here are given pamphlets encouraging them to commit suicide. Why don't republicans seem to care that their leaders are such brazen liars? The pamphlet to which he refers makes it clear that suicide is illegal in this country, and encourages the readers to make clear what their choices would be in a variety of different circumstances-----one of the options presented was even to have one's clergyman contacted to make sure what choices were consistent with one's religious principles.




Now that there are machines that can keep people alive fairly indefinitely, it is important for people to understand how to make their wishes for end-of-life care known. Having doctors discuss these issues with patients helps people to control their own situations; labeling them 'death panels' is a dishonest misrepresentation.

If the White House were to support an initiative to help Americans lose weight, no doubt the Right would describe it as a campaign of forced mass starvation.

You're anti-abortion? I don't believe it. If you really wished abortions to disappear you'd allow them.

The more difficult it is to get an abortion in a locale the more abortions will happen, the more women will die, the more children will be left motherless. All you theoretically antiabortion people, unless you are actually helping reduce the number of abortions by providing comprehensive sex education and contraceptives you are evil lying creeps who hate women and only care about punishing them for imagined misdeeds involved with them actually having (vapors) sex, but not with you. So there.

Utah is not really all that pro-choice. So we find have a young girl who paid someone to beat her up to induce abortion. Fun, huh? Here's the story.

Want to prevent abortions? We know how to do it. We just have to follow the Netherlands' lead. Their rate of abortion is 11% that of ours. That's right. For every 10 abortions in the US, there's one in the lowlands. 10 to 1, hmmm. Maybe they're doing something right. Plus, there's plenty of peer-reviewed studies that show that, paradoxically, the more difficult abortions are to get, the more of them happen. Read about it here.

So, what was this post about again? Oh, yeah. It's painfully clear that the way to prevent abortions is to give females access to both birth control and abortion. The way to create way more abortions and way more dead/harmed/destroyed females is to outlaw it.

So all you anti-abortion folks--you don't care about actual abortions, you just hate women. Suck it up.

Now She's Gone and Done It!

For many months, djinn and I have been avoiding all mention of Sarah Palin even though it would have been fun to laugh at her antics. She was negotiating a book contract, and basically, the more interest in Sarah was shown on the web, the higher her fee would be. We just did not want to add anything to her bottom line.

But now, the contract negotiations are over, so we might as well enjoy ourselves while keeping track of her weaselly political maneuvering.

Naturally enough, the very first thing I ran across was so appalling that I wonder what I have been missing lo these many months.

Check out her new SarahPAC Independence Day message in this video.(Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan) (You'll just need to man up to get past the music, or turn your volume ALL the way off!) Make sure to watch at least until t=1:45

OMG, she has already taken the video down! (Today was it's debut!) I guess you won't have to suffer through the music after all. Can we consider this reaction to her flop a flip-flop?



Luckily I have some screen shots I took, because I figured something like this would happen. She starts off with fireworks and features the word 'Independence'. Is this meant as a coded message for the Independence Party of Alaska? Or did they just walk right into that unthinkingly?

She shows lots of pictures of missiles (threats? or foreplay?) and then has a couple of shots of herself in flight suit type gear a la Bush.





(I feel so safe now at the very thought her her protecting us from those bad, bad missiles ......NOT.)



Then after palling around with men in uniform near fighter jets, she proceeds with a montage of images from that ill advised PR shoot of Air Force 1 buzzing the Manhattan skyline interspersed with pictures of Obama smiling and laughing-----as if he were laughing in real time at the scare he was giving the citizens of NYC.

Obama did not even know about that photo shoot.


But then to top it all off, right after she shows yet another shot of Air Force One over the city, she cuts to this!


Can You F@cking Believe It?!? She compared Obama to King Kong! How could they not think that that was horribly racist? Who is running her PR? What are they thinking?!? Was that just some red meat that they were throwing to their base? Have they already gotten so much flack over that that they decided to pull the message?

This is just one more example of the Republicans at the highest levels of the Party making racist allusions, comments and images. Remember that GOP staffer that just a few of weeks ago sent this image to the "wrong people"? She did not apologize for sending the image, just for sending it to the "wrong people".


Sarah may have pulled the add within a day, but that can never undo what she did. What do you bet that Republicans will deny that there is anything racist about juxtaposing images of the president with King Kong. Remember how they all denied any racist content in this cartoon?

Update: Apparently this video was not official. One of Palin's misguided fans (Laura VW) uploaded it and put the SaraPac logo on it. I wonder if Laura VW has any connection whatsoever to the PAC.

Truly, these people are their own worst enemies.

Worthless Wingnut Resolution In Oklahoma Legislature

This is the actual text of the resolution introduced in the Oklahoma legislative session. Don't feel like you have to read all of it, but I will highlight some words in boldface to make skimming it easier. Basically they are saying that our economic woes are because God is displeased with Obama's leadership of our debauched country. This resolution is basically a prayer of contrition so God will forgive us and make us prosperous again. Of course there is no acknowledgment that the economic troubles began before Obama took office.

Honestly, this whole tract is so religious in nature that it seems completely inappropriate to be a resolution in a legislature-----even in Oklahoma!

We the People of Oklahoma, Invoking the guidance of Almighty God, in order to secure and perpetuate the blessing of Liberty; to secure just and rightful Government; to promote our mutual Welfare and Happiness, do establish this proclamation and call upon the people of the great State of Oklahoma, and our fellow Patriots in these United States of America who look to the Lord for guidance, to acknowledge the need for a national awakening of righteousness in our land.

WHEREAS, "It is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the Principles upon
which Freedom can securely stand" (John Adams); and

WHEREAS, "We have no government armed with power capable of contending with
human passions unbridled by Religion and Morality" (John Adams); and

WHEREAS, "Our Constitution was made only for a Moral and Religious people" (John
Adams); and

WHEREAS, "We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the
power of government...but upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God" (James Madison); and

WHEREAS, "Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that
belongs to us by the laws of God (Benjamin Franklin); and

WHEREAS, "God who gave us life gave us liberty and can the liberties of a nation be
thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the
people that these liberties are of the Gift of God" (Thomas Jefferson); and

WHEREAS, "Whether any free government can be permanent, where the public
worship of God, and the support of Religion, constitute no part of the policy or duty of the state" (Joseph Story); and

WHEREAS, "We hold sacred the rights of conscience, and promise to the people...the
free and undisturbed exercise of their religion" (Roger Sherman); and

WHEREAS, "This great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians"
(Patrick Henry); and

WHEREAS, "When you...exercise the right of voting for public officers, let it be
impressed upon your mind that God commands you to choose just men who will rule in the fear of God" (Noah Webster); and

WHEREAS, "The principles of genuine Liberty and of wise laws and administrations
are to be drawn from the Bible" (Noah Webster); and

WHEREAS, the people of Oklahoma have a strong tradition of reliance upon the
Creator of the Universe; and thought secure when we have removed

WHEREAS, we believe our economic woes are consequences of our greater national
moral crisis; and

WHEREAS, this nation has become a world leader in promoting abortion,
pornography, same sex marriage, sex trafficking, divorce, illegitimate births, child abuse, and
many other forms of debauchery; and

WHEREAS, alarmed that the Government of the United States of America is forsaking
the rich Christian heritage upon which this nation was built; and

WHEREAS, grieved that the Office of the president of these United States has refused
to uphold the long held tradition of past presidents in giving recognition to our National Day of
Prayer; and

WHEREAS, deeply disturbed that the Office of the president of these United States
disregards the biblical admonitions to live clean and pure lives by proclaiming an entire month to an immoral behavior;

NOW THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that we the undersigned elected officials of the people of Oklahoma, religious leaders and citizens of the State of Oklahoma, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world, solemnly declare that the HOPE of the great State of Oklahoma and of these United States, rests upon the Principles of Religion and Morality as put forth in the HOLY BIBLE; and

BE IT RESOLVED that we, the undersigned, believers in the One True God and His
only Son, call upon all to join with us in recognizing that "Blessed is the Nation whose God is the Lord," and humbly implore all who love Truth and Virtue to live above reproach in the sight of God and man with a firm reliance on the leadership and protection of Almighty God; and

BE IT RESOLVED that we, the undersigned, humbly call upon Holy God, our
Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer, to have mercy on this nation, to stay His hand of judgment,
and grant a national awakening of righteousness and Christian renewal as we repent of our great sin.

Signed on the second day of July in the year of our Lord Christ Two Thousand and Nine.

A Helicopter, Pepper Spray, Lesbians,a PA System, Seven Deputies and a Canine Unit, ------This Story Has It All!

(This image is not part of the story, but reflects my take on the goofiness of the excessive police force in this case. This image is actually of Polish riot police-----hey hey hey, no polack jokes!)

A fund-raising party for a Democratic candidate for a Congressional seat in a strongly Republican district in the San Diego area was interrupted by an officer responding to a noise complaint.

When he arrived after 9:00, there was no loud music, no one was using the PA system; (although the candidate says she did use a microphone between 8:00 and 8:30)there were just 30 or 40 elderly people chatting as the event wound down. Nevertheless, the officer decided to issue a citation for a noise disturbance. Interestingly enough, while the candidate was making her pitch, a heckler hidden in the bushes yelled obscenities about democrats and gay people------the hostess of the party and her lesbian partner have one neighbor who disapproves of their relationship.

All the other neighbors say the event was quiet and did not bother them at all.

So why did the officer think that it was appropriate to issue the citation based entirely on the say so of one angry caller who may have just been trying to cause trouble?

When the officer started to issue the citation, and asked the hostess her date of birth, in disbelief she turned to walk away, and the officer grabbed her roughly by the arm.......well, to read about the pepper spray, and the helicopter and the rest, just read the article.

A follow up article also reveals that the people at the party were also getting in trouble for using their cell phone cameras to document the incident.

This will be a story to watch. The local newspaper is reputed to have a republican bias, as does the sheriff's office as well. Read through the comments to the article and you'll get a sense of the local loathing of liberals.

Because of the local politics involved, the victims of the excessive force used in this case are hoping for outside involvement by perhaps the US attorney.

It will be a sad day for democracy when local law enforcement strives to serve the interests of just one political party.

The Republicans shoot themselves in their (choose vital organ of choice.)

G. Gordon Liddy (right wing talk show host) on Sonia Sotomayor:

"Let’s hope that the key conferences aren’t when she’s menstruating or something, or just before she’s going to menstruate. That would really be bad. Lord knows what we would get then."

Wow. Just wow. Way to insult half your (presumed) base.

Speaking of Republican women, how do they feel about Judge Sotomayor? Well, 33% of Republican women approve of Sotomayor, compared with 19% of Men according to this Gallup poll.

Newt Gingrich (remember him?) said, via twitter: "White man racist nominee would be forced to withdraw. Latina woman racist should also withdraw."

Tom Tancredo (R-suspicious vowel at end of name), not to be outdone, accused Judge Sotormayor of belonging to the "Latino KKK" only without hoods.
You can watch it here, if you like.


I just checked the US Census bureau website and discovered that Hispanics, as of 2006, make up 14.8% of the US population. Moreover, the Hispanic growth rate is 24.3%, compared to an overall US growth rate of a measly 6.1%.

Awesome. Infuriate Women (50% of the population, roughly), infuriate Hispanics more (male hispanics equal another 7.4% of the population, roughly), infuriate random sentient creatures (Uhhh, too difficult to count), but not angry white, Republican males. Infurated people = 50 + 7.4 + (unknown). This doesn't even take into account Democrats that give Judge Sotomayor an 81% approval rating. At this rate, Republicans will be unelectable next go round! I can't wait for the next intemperate comment!

{Oh, you Dems in Congress, suck it up for once, and don't buckle to this sorry Republican pressure. If you haven't noticed, Sotomayor is hardly a liberal. She's center, maybe a bit center-right.)

The last gasp of the Republican party

Everyone now, point and laugh. Not because it's a conservative rap--which theoretically could work, I think--but because it is so amazingly lame. Ha ha. /nelson.



My favorite line? "Jesus made me conservative and told me to waterboard." Good t-shirt. Plus, "Three things taught me conservative love: Jesus, Ronald Reagan, plus Atlas Shrugged." Oooh, aren't the Randians cuuute?



Here's the real thing: "La Rage," by the French kick-ass rapper Keny Arkana. I know, I know, they can't sing rock and roll, but oh, say can they rap.

Condi Rice Questioned by Law Students (They Are Better At Asking Questions Than Most Journalists!)

Condi Rice justified cooperating with the authorization of waterboarding because by definition "...if the President orders it it is not illegal..." (close paraphrase)
Listen for yourself! So much for no one being above the law. But yet she was quite emphatic that she had herself authorized nothing; she merely conveyed the Presidential authorization to other departments. I always thought she would have been a better tap dancer than this.

Bachmann: Too Ignorant To Represent Anyone

Bachmann went on Beck's radio show and made preposterous claims about the impact of other nations developing a hybrid reserve currency. She clearly does not not what she is talking about, but since most people don't either, Beck's audience probably feels threatened by this new menace. Bachmann wants Congress to draft legislation forbidding this new reserve currency, but does not seem to understand that other countries can use whatever they want to for their own financial reserves; Congress does not write law for the whole world.

Is there a responsible Republican anywhere that will put Beck's audience's minds at ease about this non-threat?

Below, read this transcript (from Matt Yglesias) of part of her interview on Beck's show:

BACHMANN: Let me tell you, there’s something that’s happening this week in Congress that could be the eventual unraveling for our freedom, and it’s this. I had asked the Treasury Secretary and Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve Chair, if they would categorically denounce–

BECK: I know.

BACHMANN: –taking the United States off of the dollar and putting us on an international global currency. Because as you know, Russia, China, Brazil, India, South Africa, many national have lined up now and called for an international currency, a One World currency. And they want to get off the dollar as the reserve currency.

BECK: Most people don’t understand what that means.


BACHMANN: What that means is that all of the countries of the world would have a single currency. We would give up the dollar as our currency and we would just go with a One World currency. And now for the first time, we’re seeing major countries like China, India, Russia, countries like that, calling for a one world currency and they want this discussion to occur at the G20. So I asked both the Treasury Secretary and the Federal Reserve chair if they would categorically denounce this. The reason why is because if we give up the dollar as our standard, and co-mingle the value of the dollar with the value of coinage in Zimbabwe, that dilutes our money supply. We lose country over our economy. And economic liberty is inextricably entwined with political liberty. Once you lose your economic freedom, you lose your political freedom. And then we are no more, as an exceptional nation, as we always have been. So this is imperative.

Why Bachmann feels the need to allude to American exceptionalism is anyone's guess. I suspect it is because it has a lot of syllables, The Alaskan Governor talked about it a lot, and people don't know what it means, but it sounds patriotic.

It's embarrassing to have such an idiot in Congress although I expect there are many.

Torture! Or, it's about time.

[NO PIC THIS TIME]

We now have proof (minutes from a meeting in Guantanamo in 2002, released by Sen. Levin's office) that we tortured,

money quote: (not for even the remotely squeamish, and from among many possibilities)

Yes, if someone dies while aggressive techniques are being used, regardless of cause of death, the backlash of attention would be extremely detrimental. Everything must be approved and documented.

and that there was a coverup.
money quote:

We may need to curb the harsher operations while ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross -- added by transcriber] is around. It is better not to expose them to any controversial techniques. We must have the support of the DOD.

Daily Kos link here.
Good news? Well, Nancy Pelosi has decided that criminal investigations about torture are no longer off the table.

MADDOW: ... you support a call for a criminal investigation, potential investigation.
PELOSI: Absolutely.

From Glenzilla, here.

So, just maybe.....

Republican Distortion

The stimulus bill was attacked by Republicans for having lots of pork and excessive earmarks. One particular complaint came from Congressman Pence.

The stimulus has "$30 million in there to protect mice in San Francisco."
(Mike Pence on Thursday, February 12th, 2009 in a statement on Fox News Channel.)

Senator Boehner's office jumped on the band wagon with this statement,"This sounds like spending projects that have been supported by a certain powerful Democrat in the past. And it certainly doesn't sound like it will create or save American jobs."

A closer look at the actual project tells a different story. According to Angie Drobnic Holan,

But the projects themselves — the South Bay Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project , the Napa Plant Site , and the Napa Salt Marsh restoration — are intended to do more than just benefit wildlife. It's major construction work to create recreation areas and to restore marshland that will resist flooding and storm surge.

"This is bulldozers, front-end loaders, backhoes. These are major earth-moving projects to break down levees, to resculpt the landscape and to make sure nature can do its thing," Ritchie said. "Right now, we just have these lousy little salt pond levees and they break."

"These are real jobs, and these are truly ready to go," he added. "We can definitely spend this money for construction by Nov. 30, 2010."

Given this description of the projects, which were first reported in the San Jose Mercury News , it's a serious distortion to say there's money in the bill to protect San Francisco mice. The bill doesn't even list the San Francisco projects by name. And the funding agencies — the Corps of Engineers or NOAA — could still decide to fund the projects or not. The bill passed a final vote in the House on Feb. 13, with no Republicans supporting it.

So Pelosi did not put an earmark in the bill to save the mice.

I really think there ought to be penalties for politicians who engage in this sort of distortion and outright lying. We can only hope that they will be voted out of office, but how likely is that when stories such as this one get so little coverage?