Disability Advocates Accept Rahm Emanuel's Apology For 'Retarded' Comment

It's an Attributive Verb



"In grammar, an attributive verb is a verb which modifies (gives the attributes of) a noun, rather than expressing an independent idea as a predicate.



In English, verbs may only be attributive as participles: the walking man; a walked dog; uneaten food."



The retarded Liberal Democrats.
About Rahm Emanuel
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Reality Lends Credit To Abdulmutallab Interrogation

Can't we at least torture him psychologically? Call him names, pick him last for every team, and exclude him from our reindeer games?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Neo-Nazis, Militants Eye Tea Party for Recruitment (VIDEO)

There was a Ron Paul Tea Party in 2007. That didn't start anything. It was a singular event. The modern Tea Party movement was initially conceived by the Illinois Libertarian Party at the end of 2008. It was then co-opted by Rick Santelli as well as a group of online activists.
About Tax Day Tea Parties
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

How Massachusetts Can Turn Out to Be a Blessing for Democrats

It's not a blessing so much as it is the long game.



Think about it. This only strengthens the conservative fallacy that America is a center-right nation and that the majority of Americans are in their camp. Believing their numbers to be stronger than they actually are, communities across the nation will field Ultra-Conservative or Tea Party candidates, and the field will be absolutely swamped. They'd have to pick some elections to focus money on and leave others out to dry. Not to mention that Michael Steele hasn't done much for the GOP's coffers (less than nothing actually).



And the kicker will be when they lose those elections, not because they didn't campaign well enough or spend enough money but because Scott Brown's election has twisted their perception of reality yet further.
About Joe Lieberman
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

How Massachusetts Can Turn Out to Be a Blessing for Democrats

The Administration really needed a swift kick in the ass with a steel-toed boot.



They needed someone to knock some sense into them.



Much better for this to happen now than twelve months from now.



Slap me once, shame on you. Slap me twice...
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Operation Steele/Armey: GOP, Tea Party Movement Co-Opt Each Other

Originally published in the Huffington Post

Today Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele and Dick Armey, head of tea party support groupFreedomWorks, held a joint conference call expressing their willingness to work together.

The call was held at 11am and included various members of the right-wing media. According to Politico:

The call is the first joint effort between Steele and the tea party movement -- which Republican candidates have been trying to court since the widespread anti-tax rallies in April that launched the populist uprising. "The two have connected on the matters of this health care bill," said an RNC source.

According to live-Tweeting from Dana Mozie of RockStarPolitics, the two spoke of how Congress had "flipped the bird" at the American people. Michael Steele also mentioned that"the fix is in" as far as health care is concerned. There was also talk about this morning's 1 am 60-40 vote for cloture on the bill being a cowardly move by Democrats. Armey ultimately said that no one can claim to be the leader of the Tea Party movement.

The implicit connection between the two groups is a new and distinctive development that stands in stark contrast to the Tea Party movement's prior aversion to the GOP. Eric Odom is a self-proclaimed founder of the modern Tea Party movement and an organizer of the Chicago Tax Day Tea Party, at which Michael Steele attempted to speak on tax day.

When Steele requested to address the event, however, Odom rebuffed him publicly, going so far as to post his response online. In regards to Steele, Odom wrote:

[I]t appears that he has only just decided to reach out after realizing how big the movement has gotten and how much media is now involved.

During the October ruckus surrounding the special election in NY-23, the GOP endorsed moderate Republican Dede Scozzafava while the Tea Party movement ran its own candidate, Doug Hoffman. Odom flew out to help coordinate the offensive, and even accused the GOP ofopen war against the Tea Party movement:

Not only is the NRCC going to waste donor dollars on a failed candidate with no hope of winning the race,they're also going to attack the actual conservative in the race! At this point, the only logical conclusion is that the NRCC (a huge hub of establishment consultants who leech off of donor money) and the rest of the old guard will arm itself for battle and wage war against the grassroots base rather than give it control.

Dick Armey himself stepped into the race, throwing the support of FreedomWorks behind Hoffman to such a degree that when Hoffman was interviewed by a local newspaper editorial board, Armey was seated right next to him. In fact Armey did Hoffman harm when, after Hoffman was asked about local issues, Armey dismissed the question, referring to such issues as "parochial" claiming this was an election about a national movement.

Scozzafava ended up dropping out of the race and supporting the Democrat, who was able to take a seat held by Republicans since Reconstruction thanks to the GOP and the Tea Party splitting the conservative vote.

Within two weeks of his movement's embarrassing loss, Odom's aggression was tempered. In a November 10 blog post entitled "It's Time to Take Over the GOP" Odom switched his strategy from something out of Rambo to something out of Aliens, seeing the GOP as a host to invade.

I know many of my fellow Tea Party activists are going to hate me for this, but it's time to face reality. The Republican Party must be our vessel in 2010...As a libertarian who voted for Bob Barr in 2008, I find it very difficult to state this in a public manner, but I will now be joining the Republican Party... I'm in no way advocating that we as a movement stand behind the existing Republican establishment. I am, rather, suggesting that we become the establishment... I know many of us in the movement have different goals. Some are to weaken the two party stronghold. This is understandable and a good long term goal... Love or hate the Republican Party... it's our only vessel in the short term. We either unify through it and make a stand strong enough to stop this madness in government, or we fracture over third party efforts and meet uncertain political demise.

Through his organization, American Liberty Alliance, Odom has worked with Armey and FreedomWorks since the spring, and has known Armey since at least 2007, when Odom organized a Conservative Leadership Conference at which Armey spoke. Both groups worked hand-in-glove to support Tax Day Tea Party rallies as well as town hall protests and marches on Washington. Now both organizations are working together to help plan the Tax Day 2010 protests, as well as a conference called the Patriot Caucus to follow immediately after tax day.

Eight months ago, Odom was chiding the GOP as johnny-come-lately tea-party crashers, calling out Steele specifically. Then Odom and Armey worked together against the GOP and Steele in trying to elect Doug Hoffman. Now Odom has capitulated and rejoined the GOP, while Armey and Steele are holding joint conference calls. As one snake bites into the tail of the other and vice-versa, it remains to be seen who will consume who.

Tea Party Movement Plans 2010 Caucus

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE HUFFINGTON POST


This story was produced by HuffPost'sEyes&Ears Citizen Journalism Unit.

The Tea Party movement hopes to calm dissension in its ranks in time for an April meeting of what is being called the Patriot Caucus. The conference will take place the weekend of April 16 in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania -- a site chosen to invoke the essence of George Washington, whose army held Valley Forge through the desolate winter of 1777-1778. Over that winter Washington lost over 2,000 men to such maladies as typhoid, jaundice, dysentery, pneumonia, and simple malnutrition. The Tea Party movement hopes for a more successful winter.

This is very possible. The Tea Party movement will use the next few months to develop and strengthen the bonds between its sometimes-warring factions, and, in fact, they have already begun. Four major groups have joined forces and pooled their resources, as evidenced by the top of the TaxDayTeaParty.com website. The result is the Patriot Caucus, a joint effort ofAmerican Liberty Alliance, FreedomWorks, the Nationwide Tea Party Coalition and Tea Party Patriots, the same groups working to plan a 2010 Tax Day Tea Party on April 15 -- one day before the Caucus. All four groups worked together this summer to support the Tax Day Tea Parties and the town hall protests but not in such a tight-knit coalition.

The Caucus identifies itself as not just another Tea Party organization but an "unbiased infrastructure" which will exist only to identify and facilitate communications between like-minded Tea Party groups. The Patriot Caucus Facebook group already boasts over 2,000 members. The group's oldest wall entry was posted December 4, but the Caucus itself did not "go live" for another four days, when their planning wiki went online. The founding conference will include "intense training, debate panels and general session special guests" as well as the first election of "the 155 delegation of the national Patriot Caucus." There's a [sic] in there somewhere.

Why start a non-organization to organize other organizations? Messaging, apparently. According to the overview published on the Caucus wiki,

"We believe a part of the problem is the fact that those who advocate in favor of one idea over another, or one effort over another, do so because of partisanship or bias for the group he/she is involved in. This, of course, is natural and expected. But it does us little good in the end.

As an example, there are constant emails floating around within the movement that say, "why is your group doing that when our group is doing the same thing?" These are perfectly legitimate emails and great questions. But the more important question is, why did the two groups not conference with each other before the plans were made? We can't fault a group for making plans. We can, however, fault the movement for not properly communicating about potential plans as they're brewing."

Another way to put this is that the Caucus is designed to keep all the various Tea Party groups marching to the beat of just one drum, with Eric Odom as the little drummer boy.
Odom is Executive Director of American Liberty Alliance, the logo of which sits atop ThePatriotCaucus.net, a website registered to Odom. As well as being a member of theTemporary Patriot Caucus Development Committee, Odom is a self-proclaimed founder of the Tea Party movement (though the Libertarian Party of Illinois and Ron Paul devotees would beg to differ). American Liberty Alliance worked hand-in-hand with FreedomWorks this summer to utilize the Tea Party Movement as a weapon against health care reform.

FreedomWorks is run by Dick Armey, former Republican House Majority Leader and the very epitome of partisanship. Armey was recently forced to resign his lobbying position at the firm DLA Piper when journalists pointed out that FreedomWorks tended to support causes which happened to intersect with the interests of certain DLA clients. On December 15, Armey was among the few who addressed the crowd at a woefully under-attended "Die In" organized by the Tea Party Patriots, in which protesters were supposed to flood Congressional offices in Washington en masse, then pretend to die as a result of government-run health care. Did it work out? Not so much. Dave Weigel of the Washington Independentcalled the die-in "very gentle" and estimated the crowd at upwards of "a few dozen." No dying-in is reported to have occurred. The event was organized by Caucus coalition partner Tea Party Patriots.

The Patriot Caucus wiki offers visitors a series of campaign resources, including a link to asample press release that happens to be on dtv.gov - a project of the Federal Communications Commission. This, despite the Tea Party movement's antipathy towards the government. The campaign page also encourages potential candidates to start a blog at "blogovists.com", a twice-misspelled link which takes you to Blogivists, another Eric Odom operation which functions as a hub for conservative bloggers.

The event is advertised as taking place at the Valley Forge Convention Center. However, despite the event's heavy promotion on through Tax Day Tea Party, 73Wire.com and American Liberty Alliance, it appears that the Convention Center has no such event on their books. Megan Tomlinson, National Sales Manager, told the Huffington Post, "there was a group with a name similar to [Patriot Caucus] who called, and the matter was discussed, but nothing has been planned as of yet." Despite Odom hyping up the Caucus on 73Wire.com and TaxDayTeaParty.com and AmericanLibertyAlliance.com, and despite the support of Tea Party Patriots, Nationwide Tea Party Coalition and FreedomWorks, no one person or organization has yet to make reservations.

According to a post on 73Wire.com -- yet another Odom project, which purports to be the right wing's answer to the Huffington Post -- planners wanted the conference to be free. However, they felt required to impose a five dollar fee "because we had to expand the size of the venue and we wanted to try and minimize the risk of registrations that do not actually attend."

In a December 13 email to ALA's listserv, Odom wrote that "anyone can run for delegate of the Patriot Caucus." On December 4 Odom posted on TaxDayTeaParty.com that "There will be no charge for attending the three day event, but there will be a credentialing process." However, the Caucus registration page itself advises you to "not even bother" registering if you are "considering attending, but you're not quite sure yet." Other disqualifiers:

• You believe government has the ability to solve our economic problems


• You believe bailouts, either by Bush or Obama, are justifiable under certain circumstances


• You believe an incumbent who voted for the stimulus, healthcare and cap-and-trade legislation should be given a pass


• You're considering attending, but you're not quite sure yet (You need to be certain and we may ask for travel plans in February to ensure it)


• You believe the Twin Towers fell as a result of government involvement on 9/11 (ok this one is not real, but come on... let's not go there. Deal?)


• You are not willing to campaign like your life depends on it in 2010 and 2012


• You believe that taxes in place to support government expansion are ok


• You think we're all nutty