Mozart

Mozart’s birthday was January 27th. Here’s a taste. If you click to YouTube, you can hear the subsequent movements of this piece.

Comedians, artists and certainly political cartoonists tend to possess an anti-authoritarian, skeptical, irreverent streak. This makes the staunchly conservative cartoonist an especially odd bird. Flipping the traditional journalist ethos of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable, rightwing cartoonists tend to ridicule the disenfranchised and excuse the abuses inflicted by the powerful. In some cases, their pieces literally spout the latest GOP talking points, revealing the cartoonists to be not independent voices, but merely members of the vast GOP echo chamber - not wits or critics as much they are hacks and shills.

Back by popular insistent demand, it’s Rightwing Cartoon Watch! This is a special, super’sized edition to cover some of the prime wingnuttery in comicdom that occured during our hiatus. This lucky 13th installment covers cartoons published from 12-18-06 to 1-28-07, although most of them appeared in January. Be warned! It might take fortitude to get through all the contents!
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What is Glenn Beck saying about Conservatives? He says he doesn-t know anyone who hates Muslims…………and he knows a lot of Conservatives. So does that mean he assumes Conservatives hate Muslims? See Glenn tap dance to try not to lose his ABC contract below.

From RadioandRecords.com

Glenn Beck: ‘I Don’t Hate Muslims!’
Responding to recent calls for his ouster as a contributor to ABC-TV’s “Good Morning America” by several Arab activist groups for what they termed “blatant anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bias,” Premiere Radio Networks talk host and CNN Headline News Prime personality Glenn Beck fired back at his accusers, saying, “I want to make it very clear, I don’t hate Muslims. In fact, I don’t know anybody who hates Muslims — and I know a lot of conservatives.”

After airing several video clips from previous editions of his nightly CNN program that clearly supported the talk host’s claim of fairness, Beck told viewers he’s been consistent and anything but biased on both his radio and television shows.

“I offer you a challenge,” said Beck to his critics. “When you see the big rally happening, with the Muslims marching in the streets saying, ‘They’re hijacking my religion,’ you call me. I’ll give you my private phone number. We will set up satellite trucks to cover it.”

H/T to Joe for this post

Olbermann talks to Howard Fineman about the discrepancy in troop numbers involved in an escalation.
Bush lies again. His escalation is not for 21,500 troops but rather closer to 40,000 troops. When will he be held responsible for the lies he has been telling us.

H/T Joe for this video!

Terror Terror Terror Terror
From Tony Snow’s press briefing today:

Q Tony, yesterday Dana said these resolutions send mixed signals to our troops and our enemies. Should we really be so concerned that the misunderstanding of the exercise of our form of government by the enemy would cause us to not pass resolutions?

MR. SNOW: Well, if one came to the conclusion that it emboldened an enemy and placed people in harm’s way and increased the risk. It’s something — look, the thing is, when you talk about this, you’re trying to read states of mind. And these are things that are important to keep — at least to consider when you’re doing these things. As you know, and I’ve said many times, Osama bin Laden thought the lack of American resolve was a key reason why he could inspire people to come after us on September 11th. I am not accusing members of the Senate of inviting carnage on the United States of America. I’m simply saying, you think about what impact it may have.

But we also — look, they’re a separate and co-equal branch of government. And they will do what they think is appropriate. The most important thing to do is for everything to realize — I’ll finish up and then you can come back at me.

Full transcript here

He did say in the SOTU address that he’s sending MORE THAN 21,000 troops. He didn’t say how many more……

President Bush and his new military chiefs have been saying for nearly a month that they would “surge” an additional 21,500 troops to Iraq, in a last, grand push to quell the violence in Baghdad and in Anbar Province. But a new study by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office says the real troop increase could be as high as 48,000 — more than double the number the President initially said.

That’s because the combat units that President Bush wants to send into hostile areas need to be backed up by support troops, “including personnel to staff headquarters, serve as military police, and provide communications, contracting, engineering, intelligence, medical, and other services,” the CBO notes.

Over the past few years , DoD’s practice has been to deploy a total of about 9,500 personnel per combat brigade to the Iraq theater, including about 4,000 combat troops and about 5,500 supporting troops.

DoD has not yet indicated which support units will be deployed along with the added combat forces, or how many additional troops will be involved. Army and DoD officials have indicated that it will be both possible and desirable to deploy fewer additional support units than historical practice would indicate. CBO expects that, even if the additional brigades required fewer support units than historical practice suggests, those units would still represent a significant additional number of military personnel.

To reflect some of the uncertainty about the number of support troops, CBO developed its estimates on the basis of two alternative assumptions. In one scenario, CBO assumed that additional support troops would be deployed in the same proportion to combat troops that currently exists in Iraq. That approach would require about 28,000 support troops in addition to the 20,000 combat troops-a total of 48,000. CBO also presents an alternative scenario that would include a smaller number of support personnel-about 3,000 per combat brigade-totaling about 15,000 support personnel and bringing the total additional forces to about 35,000.

Read more here

From The Hill

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Wednesday that President Bush’s funding request for additional troops in Iraq would receive a “fair hearing.”

Pelosi, who discussed her recent trip to Iraq and Afghanistan on National Public Radio, said Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had told her that the troop surge would be successful only if billions of dollars were poured into the effort.

Pelosi called the situation in Iraq “chaotic” and said few good options remain to address the problems there.

“Everyone that we spoke to said that this escalation that the president is engaged in was the one last chance,” the Speaker said. “Many did not believe it would be successful.” A spokesman later explained that Pelosi was referring to Americans she talked to on the trip.

The Speaker advocates that Iraq now take responsibility for its own reconstruction and security.

“We have paid a big enough price,” she said.

Based on Maliki’s assessment of the situation, Pelosi said there could be a drastic reduction of U.S. forces in Iraq this year and predicted that legislation would be taken up in the House regarding such a cut in troop levels.

Despite quoting Maliki’s views, Pelosi conveyed her dissatisfaction with his performance as prime minister.

“Mr. Maliki is the elected leader in Iraq,” she said. “He has an opportunity to amend the constitution, to relieve the civil strife and, therefore, the violence. No initiatives have been taken. He has a responsibility to reach out to other countries diplomatically in the region and have them help Iraq. Those initiatives are not coordinated and have not been successful.”

McCain The Insane……
This blow hole needs to shut up. This guy is a disgrace to the military. Is there anyone in the military, or any veterans who would vote for this jerk? I would hope not. Now, according to him, Bush and Rumsfeld’s hands are clean. It’s all the fault of the military.

I’m with Feingold…..the resolution does nothing to actually stop the war.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid may be hoping for “near” unanimous Democratic support for the Levin-Warner anti-escalation resolution, but Russ Feingold says he’s not on board.

Feingold, who has introduced legislation that would cut off all funding for the war in Iraq, says in a statement: “I oppose the weak Warner-Levin resolution as currently written because it misunderstands the situation in Iraq and shortchanges our national security interests. The resolution rejects redeploying U.S. troops and supports moving a misguided military strategy from one part of Iraq to another. The American people have rejected the president’s Iraq strategy and it’s time for Congress to end our military involvement in this war. We must redeploy our troops from Iraq so that we can focus on the global threats that face us.”

Source

Casey Under Fire

ATTACKS/BOMBINGS KILL 62 ACROSS IRAQ

AFGHAN COUNCIL URGES WAR CRIMES AMNESTY

CHIRAC MUSES ON IRAN, THEN RETREATS

GORE NOMINATED FOR NOBEL PEACE PRIZE

BIDEN KICKS OFF CAMPAIGN BY KICKING EVERYONE

POLICE QUESTION BLAIR A SECOND TIME

PUTIN CRITICIZES U.S. ANTI-MISSILES IN EUROPE

VA ROLE IN MARINE’S SUICIDE INVESTIGATED