Some Thoughts For Your Morning

- Sarah Palin's sad attempt to hang onto any shred of notoriety found itself nestled in the odd confines of EBay recently. The disgraced former governor of Alaska was auctioning off a dinner with her to some poor sap willing to dish out more money than the average American makes in a year for the dubious "honor" of sitting across the table from her. However, this auction wasn't open to everyone. After all, this is about Palin donating money for tax-write-off purposes...........oh, I mean for "charity".

- A video has surfaced of a Fox"News" "producer" urging the crowd at the 9/12 rallies to cheer longer and louder when prompted. So, if Fox is allegedly impartial in these matters, then why would this woman be rallying the people? Oh, that's right..........

- Did you know that the CBO ( Congressional Budget Office ) that the right-wing conservative set has had such joy in referencing this past summer has released a new study that shows proposed Cap-and-Trade legislation would cost American families around $160 per year? That's 44 cents per day. Wonder why Mitt Romney is still using the already debunked $1761 per year number?

- Bill Moyers, whom my uber-conservative Aunt and Grandmother have been watching for years, recently did a piece on Dick Armey ( the point-man behind FreedomWorks ) and his current lawsuit to keep his government controlled healthcare plan. And, as we all know, Dick is also one of the point-men behind the "grassroots" Tea Party nonsense. But wait, don't they want government OUT of the healthcare industry? Ah, I love the smell of conservative hypocrisy on a Monday morning.

- Apparently, there was a wingnut convention somewhere in the US called the Values Voters Summit, and former governor Mike "I <3 Bass Guitar And Chuck Norris" Huckabee won the "straw poll" for potential presidential candidates. He even beat out Sarah Palin nearly 2 1/2 times over. Even though it's a poorly constructed and coneived idea ( because no matter what, a wingnut wins ) this just may say something of Palin's popularity at this point in the game.

- It seems that James O’Keefe, the VERY white guy that dressed completely unconvincingly as a pimp - yet somehow managed to dupe a few ACORN workers in the US - has a very interesting reason for going after the group. It doesn't sit well with him that ACORN registers minorites. And as we all know, most minorities are going to vote Democratic, as the Republican party has done nothing to make them feel like they were the same as white Americans since Lincoln ended slavery.

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Some Thoughts For Your Morning

- Having completely ripped president Carter's comments from their original and clearly understandable context, the conservative Right is doing any and everything it can to deny that there is a racist foundation within a great percentage of discussions of Barack Obama. Why are these people even attempting to protect racist hate speech?

- Apparently, Glenn Beck thinks that if you call out someone's racist hate speech then you are no better than an Al Queda member who uses children as suicide bombers.

- What does it say about David "Man Diapers" Vitter when he comes out against ACORN's alleged assistance in setting up a brothel?

- It seems like conservatives are ready to start back up with their distortions regarding Cap and Trade legislation. They're still trying to use the completely debunked meme that it's going to cost families over $1700 dollars a year. MIT economists have already proven this isn't true

- When are Fox"News" and all those that love them going to realize that high ratings do NOT equal accurate reporting?

Palintology: The Science Of Capping Your Standpoint

I don't know many people that can accurately explain all the nuances in the Cap and Trade programs that other countries use. But neither can Sarah Palin, or John McCain, or Michelle Malkin, or any of the twitching, conservative masses that are staunchly against it.

Do you remember the VP debate last year? Yeah, that was a fun night. Here's what she said about Capping carbon emissions then.



Check here for the full transcript.

But she's singing a new tune now:

Unfortunately, many in the national media would rather focus on the personality-driven political gossip of the day than on the gravity of these challenges. So, at risk of disappointing the chattering class, let me make clear what is foremost on my mind and where my focus will be:

I am deeply concerned about President Obama’s cap-and-trade energy plan, and I believe it is an enormous threat to our economy. It would undermine our recovery over the short term and would inflict permanent damage.

More from Think Progress

Shorter Ed Morrissey

Energy Czar hasn’t read cap & tax, either:

Don't ask if we've read the bill - we haven't. I'm just a blogger and they're just TV hosts, you actually expect us to read all that? Are we going to? Hell no!

Cap, Trade, And Spin

Recently, the RNC unleashed misleading info on Obama's proposed Cap-And-Trade program:

President Obama and the Democrats are planning to jack up energy prices and pass the cost on to you and your family...[C]an you and your family afford an additional $3,100 in higher energy taxes a year...if Obama and his liberal Democrat cohorts get their way, you and your family will be paying an additional $260 a month in energy taxes thanks to the Democrats' outrageous Cap & Trade legislation. That's $260 a month that you and your family should be allowed to spend, save or invest anyway you see fit.

The root problem with this misleading email is that the dollar figure is around

The information that the GOP is manipulating comes from a study done by MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change in 2007.

The study estimated that a cap-and-trade market for 2015 would be worth $366 billion in revenue. Republicans, figuring that that amount would be passed from the energy companies to consumers, calculated the average cost per household by dividing $366 billion by 117 million households (a population of 300 million divided into households of 2.56 persons) to get $3,128, or roughly $3,100.

The GOP has always had issues with science, and their interpretation of scientific studies is just as shining of an example of their inherent ignorance.

On April 1st, John Reilly ( Associate Director for Research at the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change ) sent a letter to House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) stating that their findings had:

...been misrepresented in recent press releases distributed by the National Republican Congressional Committee.

The GOP email, as well as the current round of talking-points being diseminated, did not reflect Obama's proposed plan of a rebate to comsumers to cushion the effect of any increased prices.

[M]any of the proposals currently being considered by Congress and as proposed by the Administration have been designed to offset the energy cost impacts on middle and lower income households and so it is simplistic and misleading to only look at the impact on energy prices of these proposals as a measure of their impact on the average household.

In follow-up communication with Boehner, Associate Director Reilly showed that the actual, annual, increase in cost to consumers was estimated at around $800. This, however, did not stop the GOP from continuing with the thouroughly debunked line of "$3100 per year" in increased energy costs.

Boehner's website posted an "alert" that read in part:

An MIT professor has questions about the $3,100 figure but his letter makes assumptions that are factually inaccurate...[W]e all know that Democrats have no intention of using a cap-and-trade system to deliver rebates to consumers; they want the tax revenue to fund more government spending.

In this, anyone that read the "alert" was left with a choice - believe John Boehner or an Associate Director of Research @ MIT. The choice, to myself at least, is clear.

In stark contrast to Boehner's claims, one has but to read the proposed 2010 Budget to see where, in fact, the money from Cap-And-Trade is going to go.

[T]his program will fund vital investments in a clean energy future totaling $150 billion over 10 years, starting in Fy 2012. The balance of the auction revenues will be returned to the people, especially vulnerable families, communities, and businesses to help the transition to a clean energy economy.

However, the study done by MIT was 2 years ago and the Obama Adminstration's Budget Proposal for Fiscal 2010 was just this year.

We could not anticipate what he would propose, and frankly the details of any current proposal are not completely specified and will change as things go through the Congress.

Still, Director Reilly was able to respond to Boehner's outrageous claims and correct them. So, the fact that the study was done 2 years ago poses little to no inherent issues.

An alternate Cap-And-Trade program ( H.R.2454 ) introduced by Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Edward Markey (D-Mass.) has recently passed in the House Committee on Energy and Commerce by a vote of 33 to 25.

More from Fact Check.