Crooks & Liars

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Two related videos tied for spot number 13 in the countdown. Both relate to the OWS protests, and both involve excessive force and aggression on the part of the NYPD. In the first video, a Fox NY News crew is hit with mace and batons while simply standing with a crowd of peaceful protesters.

Luckily for our intrepid Fox News NY reporters, Iraq veteran Shamar Thomas was also among the OWS protesters, and he spoke forcefully straight to the NYPD for the right of the protesters to peacefully gather and demand redress under the Constitution.

Here he is discussing why he was so angry and why he was inspired to speak out after witnessing the police brutality earlier in October.

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One of Mitt Romney's sons did his best on Thursday to promote the rumor that the nation's first black president may not be a U.S. citizen.

Stumping for his dad in Concord New Hampshire, Matt Romney told a group of senior citizens that the multimillionaire candidate might not release his tax returns until President Barack Obama releases his birth certificate, a document that was made public long ago.

"He has not said that he will not do it," the younger Romney said of the tax returns, sounding like the son of a politician. "He has also not said that he will. I think it's just a matter of time until that issue comes up. So, I don't know the answer to that. I'm not sure he knows the answer to that."

While it wasn't a particularly insightful answer, things probably would have been fine if Matt Romney had just stopped there -- but he didn't.

"I heard someone suggest the other day that as soon as President Obama releases his grades and birth certificate and sort of a long list of things then maybe he'd do it," he added.

Sensing that Matt had gone to far, the slightly-older Tagg Romney, one of the candidate's other sons, volunteered that his dad had not personally made that remark.

"No, no," Matt Romney agreed. "That's just a guess from someone else."

The president's Twitter account wasted no time in responding: "Mitt Romney's son thinks President Obama should release his birth certificate. Guess he doesn't have one of our mugs?"

Earlier this year, Public Policy Polling found that the former Massachusetts governor was in fourth place among so-called birther Republican voters who believed that Obama was born in another country.

In April, the candidate declared that "the citizenship test has been passed."

"I believe the president was born in the United States," Mitt Romney told CNBC's Larry Kudlow. "The man needs to be taken out of office but his citizenship isn't the reason why."

The tax return issue may have become a sore point for the Romney family after the Democratic National Committee (DNC) suggested the candidate had something to hide.

"It would show that on the millions of dollars in income he enjoys each year, Mitt Romney pays a lower tax rate than teachers, fire fighters, police officers or other middle class wage earners," DNC National Press Secretary Melanie Roussell predicted in a media advisory.

"Mitt Romney will tell you that it's not required by the law that he release his returns but when he's advocating for policies that benefit the wealthy and the well-heeled, voters have a right to know what conflicts he might have with his own finances."

(H/T: Concord Patch)

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The one thing that makes me sad about Sarah Palin not running in 2012 is that Tina Fey will not be called upon to do her Palin impression. But you can catch her in this sketch from May, before the Republicans decided to hold 150 bazillion debates and make us all long for the days when they were all Fox News commentators instead of candidates for the GOP nomination.

Excellent impressions done by all, but it's Fey's Palin impression that grabs the 14th spot in the countdown.

[Ed. note: We break into our countdown of top videos for a few notable videos of the past 24 hours]

Here we have Republican Newt Gingrich tearing up as he recalls times with his mother, who struggled with mental illness and died of cancer in 2003 - or - here we have Republican Newt Gingrich desperately trying to save his floundering campaign by crying a couple of days before voting starts. Your call.

"You'll get me all teary-eyed, Callista will tell you, I get teary-eyed every time we sing Christmas carols. My mother sang in the choir and loved singing in the choir," Gingrich said, referring to his wife, as he fought back tears.

"But I identify my mother with being happy, loving life, having a sense of joy in her friends, but what she introduced me to, is late in her life she ended up in a long-term-care facility. She had bipolar disease, and depression, and she gradually acquired some physical ailments, and that introduced me to the issue of long-term care, which I did with Bob Kerrey for three years, and that introduced me to the issue of Alzheimers, which I did with Bob Kerrey for three more years, and my whole emphasis on brain science comes indirectly from dealing with the real problems of real people in my family," the former House Speaker continued, at moments stopping to cry.

The audience sympathetically cheered for Gingrich as he spoke about his mother.

"I do policy much easier than I do personal," Gingrich joked.

Republican pollster Frank Luntz asked how his mother would react if she was at the event Friday, Gingrich said she would have been working the crowd.

"She'd be talking to all these people, and she'd be telling them how nice I was," Gingrich said to laughter.

[Video via TPM]

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Number 15 in our countdown is a tie between several related videos. We like to call it "debate hate."

The video at the top is from the September 22, 2011 debate, where a gay soldier asked Rick Santorum whether he would roll back the repeal of DADT and the progress gays have made in the military under President Obama. Before Santorum could answer, some in the audience booed the soldier loudly. No candidate spoke up.

But that isn't the first time debate hate has reared its ugly head. On September 7th, the audience cheered Rick Perry's record of executing a record number of prisoners in Texas, including at least one who was innocent.

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I was there. It was sickening and hateful.

And finally, the last example of debate hate comes to us via the first CNN Tea Party debate, where the audience cheered the idea of a sick person being left to die with no insurance or access to health care.

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There you have it. Number 15, debate hate in three movements.

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One thing is for sure: Michele Bachmann offers late-night comedians some real opportunities, which Jimmy Kimmel isn't shy about taking. This video may go down as one of the all-time classic Bachmann collections of historical gaffes and blunders.

Love Kimmel's description of Bachmann: "Kind of like Sarah Palin without the charisma or marksmanship."

She misses the mark, but still lands in 16th place on our countdown.

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Bill Maher excels at giving a real-life view of the insanity that is the GOP field. One of his best is this one, where he just completely eviscerates Rick Perry.

BooMan's post on Thursday sums it up nicely:

One things troubles me, however. If God ordains the president, then we have no reason to worry. Why exercise our reasoning thingies and let our stress hormones fly when we are assured that whomever is elected president is God's choice?I don't have to knock doors or make phone calls or donate money. I don't even need to have a preference.

...Paul makes clear in v. 1, “[T]here is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.” Every politician, whether he knows it or not, is using delegated power, delegated authority, authority delegated to him by God himself.

Nothing can go wrong.

Of course not.

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Number 18 on our countdown is actually a video from 2009, but with Shawna Forde going on trial earlier this year, it resurfaced as one to watch again.

It's a shame her trial didn't get more attention from traditional media outlets. Whether it was the fact that the victims weren't the right color for some media outlets, or a reluctance to shine a bright light on the danger of fringe militia groups, I don't know. But C&L's Dave Neiwert covered the whole trial, up to and including the verdict and sentencing, where Forde finally got what she deserved for shooting a nine-year old child in cold blood.

Rest in peace, Flores family.

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Alan Grayson takes P.J. O'Rourke to school on the Occupy Wall Street movement.

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From June of 2011 -- Stewart tells Chris Wallace that Fox News is like 'ideological regimes'.

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You have to be a real C-Span junkie like Karoli to catch some of the fireworks that come out on the House floor. On what is basically like the congressional version of Open Mic Night in the House of Representatives, Rep Pete DeFazio decided to use his time to slap down the GOP's draconian budget cut proposals, eliminating small potato programs in terms of fiscal impact in favor of raising defense spending, without regard for the very meaningful impact these programs have on Americans.

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The Norway shooting rampage was a horrific event, without question. In a country as small and with relatively little violence as Norway, this tragedy rocked them to their core. And naturally, the question that bubbled to everyone's mind was "why?"

As Karoli noted, even Fox News wanted to get to the core of shooter Anders Behring Breivik...as long as they didn't have to bring up his right wing extremist beliefs and the influence of American sites like StormFront had on him. Is it any wonder why Fox News viewers are the most uninformed?

Mad Mike's America: A really good reason to buy Girl Scout Cookies this year.

Mike B: Perhaps a Golden Age of Gun Control awaits....

Wonkette: Apocalypse Now

Best pic of the week from Thump and Whip -- Way to push a narrative, Ron Paul Warriors!

Round Up by Blue Gal of the (newly updated) Professional Left Podcast. Send tips to mbru AT crooksandliars DOT org.

Blast from the past: 2009 when Pat Buchanan struggled with pronouncing "Barack Obama." Open Thread below....

Man this sh*t is smoking! Bernard Purdie for president.

This is my segment on yesterday's the David Pakman Show. Enjoy!

The 99 Percent Choir forecloses on Bank of America's Seattle Headquarters whilst caroling about naughty bankers and their outrageous holiday bonuses.

The expressions on the faces of the security personnel as they realize what is happening is just priceless! Beautifully done, Occupy Seattle!

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Polls and the corporate media's immediate instinct to jump all over their results in order to push one of their favorite memes, that America is a "center-right" country, is yet another example of why we do not have a liberal media in the United States. Gallup and USA Today recently released a new poll which you can read the results of here -- Americans See Views of GOP Candidates Closer to Their Own.

Naturally Mrs. Greenspan was more than happy to report that this is supposed to show that most Americans are ideologically aligned with Mitt Romney and that President Obama was further to the left than most of the public.

The poll by Gallup did not ask anyone what their views on specific issues were. They asked them to self-identify what their ideology is. Media Matters did a lengthy report on this back in 2007 showing why polls like the one cited by Andrea Mitchell here don't paint an accurate picture of what most American's political leanings are which you can read here -- The Progressive Majority: Why a Conservative America is a Myth.

There are lots of charts and data there, but this portion sums up some of their findings very nicely:

Conclusion

If Americans are so progressive, why don't more say so?

When asked for evidence, advocates of the idea that America is a conservative country will often cite the fact that polls show more people labeling themselves as "conservative" than "liberal." [...]

Yet there are a number of reasons to conclude that the data on self-labeling tells us relatively little about the actual ideological positioning of the public. First, as political scientists have understood for more than 40 years, most Americans simply don't think in ideological terms. To take one example, the National Election Studies has asked respondents in the past, "Would you say that either one of the parties is more conservative than the other at the national level?" The number answering "the Republicans" seldom exceeded 60 percent when the question was asked in the past; after a 12-year hiatus, the NES asked the question again in 2004, when two-thirds of the public, an all-time high, gave the correct answer. This means that, at a time when the parties are more ideologically distinct than ever, one-third of the public can't name correctly which party is more conservative. If this bare minimum of knowledge is unavailable to such a large proportion of the population, it is fair to say that their self-placement on ideological scales will not be a particularly reliable gauge of their actual beliefs on issues.

There is an understandable assumption within Washington that if survey respondents answer the ideological self-placement question by choosing "liberal" or "conservative," then their positions on issues roughly correlate with those of the Democratic and Republican parties, respectively; and that if they choose "moderate," then their issue positions are midway between those of the two parties. But in fact, this is not the case. According to the NES, 56 percent of those who call themselves moderates associate with the Democratic Party, while only 31 percent associate with the Republican Party. As one of the authors of this study wrote previously:

"And it isn't just party identification; on issue after issue, moderates have opinions almost exactly mirroring those of liberals. In the NES survey, 64 percent of liberals say we should increase spending on Social Security, as do 68 percent of moderates-while only 47 percent of conservatives agree. Eighty-eight percent of liberals and 84 percent of moderates say federal funding on education should be increased, compared to only 58 percent of conservatives. Seventy-three percent of liberals and 66 percent of moderates want more spending for child care-but only 38 percent of conservatives agree. Sixty-two percent of liberals and 57 percent of moderates want to spend more on aid to the poor, compared to only 39 percent of conservatives."53

Another reason people don't use the liberal label is that the term "liberal" has been victim to a relentless conservative marketing campaign that has succeeded in vilifying liberals and liberalism. The consequence is that only strong liberals are willing to identify as such. But many people who hold liberal issue positions call themselves moderates, or even conservatives. As Christopher Ellis wrote in a recent study of ideological labeling, "[M]any conservatives are not very conservative":

"... nearly three-quarters of self-identified conservatives are not conservative on at least one issue dimension [size and scope of government, or abortion and homosexuality], and considerably more than half hold liberal preferences on the dominant dimension of conflict over the size and scope of government. Simply put, many conservatives are not very conservative"54

When people do use ideological labels, they often apply them inconsistently. In 1967, Hadley Cantril and Lloyd Free famously observed that Americans were "ideological conservatives" but "operational liberals."55 They didn't like the idea of government, but they liked what government does and can do.

As all the data presented in this report make clear, whatever Americans choose to call themselves, on issue after issue -- economic, social, security, and more -- majorities of the public find themselves on the progressive side. And on many of the most contentious "culture war" issues, the public has been growing more progressive year after year. Much of the news media seems not to have noticed. But the facts are too clear to ignore.

Heaven forbid someone like Andrea Mitchell would ever take any of that into consideration before using the Gallup poll to portray Mitt Romney as the wonderful "centrist" whose more aligned with the American public than that "leftist" Obama. So who needs Fox, huh? I'm sure they'll all be doing similar stories before the week's over.

In a way, I find it oddly reassuring that the British security state is just as insane as ours:

A protester associated with Occupy London was barred from boarding his flight home to Malaga for Christmas because he was carrying “anarchist” literature, according to a report in the U.K. newspaper The Independent. The demonstrator was kept off the flight because the pilot worried that he would distribute literature and “upset” other passengers.

Police claimed that John Charles Culatto, 34, was “acting suspiciously” when he stopped to talk to other passengers. He was taken into custody as security officials contacted Ryanair, the airline with which Culatto has booked his flight.

Culatto claims he heard security personnel using the word “terrorism” as they searched his belongings. When he arrived at the gate, airport security refused to let him board, saying that the flight’s captain had determined that the protester might disrupt the flight by distributing leaflets to other passengers.

The airline denies it. But we already know how cops treat protesters, right? What are the odds that he's making it up?

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Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum says that everyone but gay men and lesbians can stay out of poverty by just getting married.

At a campaign event in Muscatine, Iowa Thursday, a questioner asked Santorum how his anti-poverty plan would help the gays who can't legally marry in 45 states.

"If you graduate from high school, you get married before you have children, and of course you work -- that's sort of a given, you have to work -- you do those three things, there's a 2 percent chance you'll be in poverty," the candidate said, referring to a 2009 Brookings Institution study.

"It's important to value the institution of marriage. Because the institution of marriage is where men and women bond together for the purposes of having and raising children, and giving children their birthright, which is a mom and a dad," Santorum explained. "And so what we need to have is have a society that promotes that because that has an intrinsic value that is better than every other relationship."

"I love it when the left says, 'Quit trying to impose your morality on us!' What's that? That's their morality and they are now imposing it on us," the Pennsylvania conservative said of declining marriage rates. "They want to drive faith and faith and moral conclusions that come from faith out of the public square and out of the public law and replace it with their values. Don't give me this idea -- I hear this: 'Oh, you're a moralist. You're trying to impose your values.' Everybody's trying to impose their values. That's what America's about."

"You're trying to impose your values," the candidate said, pointing to the young man that asked the question. "You have every right to do so. Come into the public square. Make your case as to why same sex marriage should be the law of the land. I have no problem with that at all, but accept the fact that other people that disagree with you don't hate people that disagree with them. They just happen to believe that marriage is a good that should be preserved."

But a recent study (PDF) by Economic Policy Institute indicated that Santorum may have things backwards.

"Continually high poverty rates among blacks and Latinos are the result of high unemployment and incarceration rates and declining shares of good jobs in the American economy," report author Algernon Austin wrote. "The decline in marriage among these groups is a collateral consequence of these negative economic conditions."

A 2009 Williams Institute report found that same sex couples were significantly impacted by marriage discrimination because they could not jointly file federal tax returns, transfer property, receive Social Security survival benefits and other factors.