State of the Union time, baby! Let’s get it on!

9:07 This is, of course, the most important part of the speech. Who’s on the center aisle? Who transcended party labels and waited literally HOURS to get his picture taken with the President!? Obviously, Sheila Jackson-Lee, that’s who. Christ.

9:08 Just in case you’re watching along at home, we should point out that we’re watching on MSNBC. If you’re watching on FOX News, you’re probably seeing a different feed. There are not actually horns on Obama’s head.

9:09 Obama greets the Joint Chiefs. Totally cool to ask if they’re gay now.

9:10 Wow, Pelosi’s wearing a lot of makeup tonight. And a suit! Weird!

9:12 Oh man, big hand for the new Speaker! And an even bigger hand for Gabby Giffords! Hooray for everyone!9:13 WTF, Obama!? One week after telling us to stop fighting, you’re defending fighting!? I’m confused.

9:14 Ugh, really shouldn’t have read the draft of the speech. This is totally boring now. Yawn.

9:15 Saxby Chambliss is totally cool with working with Democrats now. Just not if they’re war heroes and wounded veterans, in which case they must be defeated for opposing freedom.

9:16 Anyone know what’s up with the crazy spider sculpture in front of Boehner?

9:17 John Boehner is playing with fire drinking water during this sucker. Everyone knows water is just tear fuel!

9:19 With all the beautiful bipartisan couples at this year’s State of the Union, can we get a kiss cam?

9:20 We were the first nation founded based on an idea? That doesn’t sound right. Could’ve sworn Iceland was founded for AWESOMENESS.

9:21 This strikes me as one part of the Speaker’s job he won’t be liking. No easy way to sneak a smoke from there.

9:23 Only scattered applause for facebook? Doesn’t bode well for The Social Network’s Oscar hopes.

9:24 “Sputnik moment” was a line the White House actually released ahead of time. Turned out to get zero applause. Seems about right. (What’s a Sputnik?)

9:26 And there they are!! Gillibrand and Thune! Tonight’s prom king and queen!

9:28 Oh man, this integrated seating is killing me! I can’t tell at all what I should be happy about anymore!

9:30 “We’ll show you the money!” First facebook reference, check. And now the first Jerry McGuire reference, check. Big big day for Hollywood.

9:34 Joe Biden can’t even stop relaxing during this speech. Has anyone ever taken the State of the Union less seriously? (Yes, George W. Bush)

9:36 Yeah, you want to take up illegal immigration? That’s your big plan for bringing people TOGETHER!? You’re doing it wrong.

9:38 America may be the country that built the transcontinental railroad, but that was Chinese people. Just sayin’

9:40 Glad I’m not sitting in Boehner’s seat. I’d have spray-on tan all over my pants. Kidding! It’s because I’m bored.

9:43 Not surprisingly, Rep. Paul Broun is one of Obama’s biggest critics tonight. Of course, he’s a moron.

9:45 Barack Obama: totally willing to compromise on aspects of health care, as long as it doesn’t mean changing anything in the health care bill. So suck it, you guys.

9:47 Interesting that Obama’s forward-looking speech is now focusing on legislation that was passed last year and repealed last week.

9:50 What!? No applause for Dwight Eisenhower!? What is wrong with this Congress!?

9:52 Sorry to go back to Paul Broun’s twitter feed, but the guy just keeps tweeting the same four things. It’s like a Paul Broun sound board. We get it: you have a balanced budget amendment.

9:53 Oh snap! Millionaires should have to give up tax cuts!? What’s next? Are we gonna make John McCain stop being an asshole? These are pretty unrealistic asks, Mr. President.

9:53 Obama says the last major reorganization of government happened during the age of black and white TVs. Pretty sure the last reorganization was adding the Department of Homeland Security after 9/11… Soooo…

9:55 Everyone laughed at Obama’s salmon joke the same way I laugh at my dad’s jokes. Out of politeness and in hopes that the awkwardness will go away quickly.

9:56 Obama just took a strong stand against earmarks, making exactly two people in America really happy: Jeff Flake and Walnuts McCain.

9:58 Cheap applause line: “Hey, check it everyone…SOLDIERS!”

9:59 Some of these seating arrangements are awkward. Kerry-McCain, Schumer-Coburn, but is there anything creepier than Strom Thurmond and Robert C. Byrd? Talk about a political odd couple!!

9:59 Haha, Obama’s actually trying to talk about Iraq! That’s funny!

10:00 To al Qaeda: “We will not relent, we will not waver, and we will defeat you.” Where’ve we heard that before? Oh right, every single year since 2001.

10:02 Hill Dawg looks so FIERCE, y’all!!

10:03 This speech is boring, but I appreciate the cutaways to McCain. Appreciate the frequent reminders of what terribleness could be speaking to us.

10:05 Someone should really talk to Boehner after this speech and let him know that next year he should try to douche it up a little less.

10:06 Oh man, John Boehner can’t even clap for not discriminating against gay people? Wow. Wake up, mofos. It ain’t 1950.

10:08 There’s a big applause line! Can we all clap for being Americans!? No Doubt! America F— Yeah!

10:09 Full on assault on John Boehner! Make. Him. Cry! Make. Him. Cry!

10:11 Big whoop. This guy helped the Chilean miners!? How about something someone did this year?

10:13 Obama employing his dramatic whisper voice…getting close to the big finish!

10:13 And the state of our union is… STRONG!! Hooray!

10:17 What’s with all the autograph requests going on now? Those suckers are going on ebay!!

Yes, on a day dedicated to teaching justice, equality, togetherness and unity, the future governor of Alabama took it upon himself to say that although he doesn’t see color, he just can’t be friends with someone who’s different than him.

I was elected as a Republican candidate. But once I became governor … I became the governor of all the people. I intend to live up to that. I am color blind,” Bentley said in a short speech given about an hour after he took the oath of office as governor.

Then Bentley, who for years has been a deacon at First Baptist Church in Tuscaloosa, gave what sounded like an altar call.

“There may be some people here today who do not have living within them the Holy Spirit,” Bentley said. ”But if you have been adopted in God’s family like I have, and like you have if you’re a Christian and if you’re saved, and the Holy Spirit lives within you just like the Holy Spirit lives within me, then you know what that makes? It makes you and me brothers. And it makes you and me brother and sister.”

Bentley added, ”Now I will have to say that, if we don’t have the same daddy, we’re not brothers and sisters. So anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I’m telling you, you’re not my brother and you’re not my sister, and I want to be your brother.”

Got that? You can be his brother or sister – you just have to give up something fundamental in your own life, change your religion, and become Christian. It’s the kind of message you’d expect someplace like Afghanistan or Iran – the kind of thing that gets a pass in fundamentalist Muslim countries – but increasingly it’s also what you get right here at home from the Republican Party.

The same people who grumble about the Muslim world and bash their intolerance – the same people who decry their way of life and criticize (often rightly) that part of the world for fostering oppressive societies – are doing the same thing at home. Juxtapose this speech with Barack Obama’s speech last week in Tucson. One was about overcoming differences and working together. It was about working together toward a better tomorrow, bridging differences of all kinds along the way. It was about treating opponents with respect and recognizing that, despite our differences, we all are brothers and sisters.

The other was an overt refutation of that message. Be like me or pack your bags. Alabama: more and more like Iran every day.

[Political Wire]

Issue ONE: Apparently the Census data was released today, and crummy crazy-person states are poised to pick up like a million seats in Congress because everyone is leaving New York and moving to Utah. (What?) Maybe it’s for the warm weather or open spaces. Maybe it’s to get away from traffic or to find cheaper housing.

WRONG!

According to disgraced diaper-wearing, prostitute-frequenting Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), his state is poised to lose one of its House seats because of, you guessed it, illegal immigrants! SERIOUSLY!

Louisiana Sen. David Vitter (R) blamed illegal immigrants for his state’s having lost a congressional seat in the Census Bureau’s reapportionment.

Vitter said that Louisiana had lost a seat because other states were welcoming of illegal immigrants, who were in turn counted in population totals used to determine the number of seats in Congress each state is allowed in the next 10 years.

Oh right, I’m sure it was the illegals. I’m sure it has nothing to do with the devastating hurricane that wiped out an entire massive city in Louisiana! It probably has nothing to do with all of said city’s residents picking up and moving to Houston (which, incidentally, is in one of the state’s that is gaining seats in Congress. You’re probably right, David Vitter; it’s probably because of the illegal immigrants.

He’s white, fat, and like the most recent Republican president, can’t really figure out what the big deal was about civil rights. I mean, really, why are all those black people still so bent out of shape!? Can’t they just stop holding a grudge, already!?

Here’s Haley Barbour – the popularly-elected governor of a southern state – on the pre-civil rights era in Mississippi:

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour says he doesn’t remember the Civil Rights era being “that bad,” citing his attendance at a Martin Luther King Jr. rally nearly 50 years ago.

“I just don’t remember it as being that bad,” Barbour (R), 63, told the conservative Weekly Standard, which did a lengthy profile on the governor. “I remember Martin Luther King came to town, in ’62. He spoke out at the old fairground and it was full of people, black and white.”

And, to be fair, for a white kid in Mississippi, that time period probably wasn’t “that bad.”

But how about some perspective? How about next time, we ask Emmett Till. Or Jimmie Lee Jackson. Ask any of the 50 people who were hospitalized after being beaten by police trying to cross Selma, Alabama’s Pettus Bridge. Ask Medgar Evers, or ask the four little girls who were killed when the 16th Street Baptist Church was BOMBED.

Hey, Haley Barbour? Did you like being mentioned as a GOP presidential contender? I hope it was fun, because someone who thinks the pre-civil rights era in Mississippi wasn’t “that bad” won’t ever be anything but a contender. You asshole.

[The Hill]

Subhead: duh.

Yes, apparently political propaganda thinly disguised as news and shamelessly used to fearmonger does not make for the most informed viewers. Take it away science:

Those who watched Fox News almost daily were significantly more likely than those who never watched it to believe that most economists estimate the stimulus caused job losses (12 points more likely), most economists have estimated the health care law will worsen the deficit (31 points), the economy is getting worse (26 points), most scientists do not agree that climate change is occurring (30 points), the stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts (14 points), their own income taxes have gone up (14 points), the auto bailout only occurred under Obama (13 points), when TARP came up for a vote most Republicans opposed it (12 points) and that it is not clear that Obama was born in the United States (31 points). The effect was also not simply a function of partisan bias, as people who voted Democratic and watched Fox News were also more likely to have such misinformation than those who did not watch it — though by a lesser margin than those who voted Republican.

It shouldn’t require an explanation here, but because some of our readers are retarded, it’s worth noting that all of those assumptions are wrong. Barack Obama was born in the United States, Bush also bailed out the auto industry, and there is an overwhelming consensus in the scientific community that climate change is real and caused by people.

As Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.”

Of course, there should probably be a FOX News corollary: if you’re watching FOX News, you’re not entitled to any facts. In fact, you might just hear the PolitiFact Lie of the Year, over and over instead.

[Political Wire]

Of course, we digress. The point is: if the Republicans think having to, you know, do their job is some sort of religious persecution, what do you think they’ll think about gays in the military? Here’s a sampling.

This is from Duncan Hunter, who got his job after his dad – who has the same name – retired from the same seat:

The United States military is not the YMCA. It’s something special. [This is] a liberal crusade to create a utopia.”

A Village People reference…on the floor of the House…from a member of Congress. Lovely.

Louie “Terror Babies” Gohmert suggested gays in the military could bring down the entire American empire:

To my friend who said that history would judge us poorly, I would submit if you would look thoroughly at history — and I’m not saying it’s cause and effect — but when militaries throughout history of the greatest nations in the world have adopted the policy that “fine for homosexuality to be overt” — you can keep it private and control your hormones fine, if you can’t, that’s fine too — they’re toward the end of their existence as a great nation.

Rep. Mike Pence, in response to Rep. Barney Frank:

And let me say to the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts who just spoke who suggested that those of us who oppose a repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell would commit some libel against Americans with whom we differ on life-style choices, nothing could be further from the truth. As a conservative, I have a particular world view about moral issues. They do not bear upon this question. This is an issue exclusively that is about recruitment, readiness, unit cohesion, and retention because we are a Nation at war. Now, I am not a soldier, but I am the son of a combat soldier.

Two things on this one: no one decides to be gay (that’d be kinda crazy), and the fact that someone’s dad was soldier doesn’t mean his son knows a thing about the military.

Finally, here are Rep. Buck McKeon’s (real name) closing remarks arguing against repeal:

Mr. Speaker, today we have heard a few times from the other side to do the right thing. I think the right thing will be in the eye of the beholder.

I choose to feel that the right thing for me is to protect those in uniform. I prefer to listen to what those who are leading those men into combat have to say.

Now, we may all have different opinions–obviously, from this debate, we do–but these are the ones who are going to be affected. These are the guys who are on the line right now, and they are saying it will have a negative impact–67 percent. I don’t think it is worth the risk to put them in any further jeopardy than they are in right now.

In fact, he was not choosing to listen to what “those leading those men into combat have to say.” Colin Powell supports repeal. Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, supports repeal. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates supports repeal. The Navy’s senior officer, Gary Roughead sees “little impact” from repeal. The other Joint Chiefs all think the policy should be repealed as well, but they don’t want it to be done immediately.

Conveniently, the repeal bill the House passed yesterday (the one Republicans were arguing against) does not call for immediate repeal. It calls for repeal on the military’s own timetable. In fact, it repeals the policy ONLY after 1) receipt of the DOD study; and 2) a certification by the Secretary of Defense, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and the President that repeal is first, consistent with military readiness, military effectiveness, unit cohesion, and recruiting; and second, that the DOD has prepared the necessary policies and regulations to implement repeal.

In other words, it’s not Congress forcing the military to do something it doesn’t want to do; it sets the framework for them to do something they want to do. It sets the framework for the military to do the right thing.

The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein posted a telling chart today that demonstrates the difference between the two plans. The brackets are virtually identical in each income bracket with people actually getting more money back under the Democrats’ plan – that is, until you reach the top earners. Check it out (after the jump).

That staggering difference aside, it looks like that’s what the Democrats are going to do. And why shouldn’t they? After all, 26 percent of Americans are in support of that course of action.

Meet Andrew Pendergraft of The Andrew Show, a Web production from WhitePrideTV.com. We’re not sure who this kid’s parents are, but they’re probably friends with these people.

[Wonkette]

Wrap your empty little Teabagger head around that one, fatty! The people you’re sending to Washington to cut government waste and fight against the man are, not surprisingly, part of the problem. The ridiculous things they claim to stand for…well, those are all new positions they’ve taken to save their own jobs. Take it away, Hotline:

According to a Hotline review of records compiled by Citizens Against Government Waste, the 52 members of the caucus, which pledges to cut spending and reduce the size of government, requested a total of 764 earmarks valued at $1,049,783,150 during Fiscal Year 2010, the last year for which records are available.

“It’s disturbing to see the Tea Party Caucus requested that much in earmarks. This is their time to put up or shut up, to be blunt,” said David Williams, vice president for policy at Citizens Against Government Waste. “There’s going to be a huge backlash if they continue to request earmarks.”

All that said, this whole earmark moratorium/ban is political theater. It doesn’t save money, and actually takes allocation power away from people who actually know the districts they represent, giving it instead to Washington bureaucrats. The money has already been appropriated, and an earmark ban doesn’t actually add up to savings. But hey, as long as the Teabagger Congressmen Fat America voted for are living in La-La Land, Teabaggers might as well continue living there, too.

Full list of Teabbagers’ earmark requests is after the jump.

NAME                EARMARKS        AMOUNT

Aderholt (R-AL)        69        $78,263,000
Akin (R-MO)             9        $14,709,000
Alexander (R-LA)       41        $65,395,000
Bachmann (R-MN)         0                  0
Barton (R-TX)          14        $12,269,400
Bartlett (R-MD)        19        $43,060,650
Bilirakis (R-FL)       14        $13,600,000
R. Bishop (R-UT)       47        $93,980,000
Burgess (R-TX)         15        $15,804,400
Broun (R-GA)            0                  0
Burton (R-IN)           0                  0
Carter (R-TX)          26        $42,232,000
Coble (R-NC)           19        $18,755,000
Coffman (R-CO)          0                  0
Crenshaw (R-FL)        37        $54,424,000
Culberson (R-TX)       22        $33,792,000
Fleming (R-LA)         10        $31,489,000
Franks (R-AZ)           8        $14,300,000
Gingrey (R-GA)         19        $16,100,000
Gohmert (R-TX)         15         $7,099,000
T. Graves (R-GA)       11         $8,331,000
R. Hall (R-TX)         16        $12,232,000
Harper (R-MS)          25        $80,402,000
Herger (R-CA)           5         $5,946,000
Hoekstra (R-MI)         9         $6,392,000
Jenkins (R-KS)         12        $24,628,000
S. King (R-IA)         13         $6,650,000
Lamborn (R-CO)          6        $16,020,000
Luetkemeyer (R-MO)      0                  0
Lummis (R-WY)           0                  0
Marchant (R-TX)         0                  0
McClintock (R-CA)       0                  0
Gary Miller (R-CA)     15        $19,627,500
Jerry Moran (R-KS)     22        $19,400,000
Myrick (R-NC)           0                  0
Neugebauer (R-TX)       0                  0
Pence (R-IN)            0                  0
Poe (R-TX)             12         $7,913,000
T. Price (R-GA)         0                  0
Rehberg (R-MT)         88       $100,514,200
Roe (R-TN)              0                  0
Royce (R-CA)            7         $6,545,000
Scalise (R-LA)         20        $17,388,000
P. Sessions (R-TX)      0                  0
Shadegg (R-AZ)          0                  0
Adrian Smith (R-NE)     1           $350,000
L. Smith (R-TX)        18        $14,078,000
Stearns (R-FL)         17        $15,472,000
Tiahrt (R-KS)          39        $63,400,000
Wamp (R-TN)            14        $34,544,000
Westmoreland (R-GA)     0                  0
Wilson (R-SC)          15        $23,334,000

TOTAL                 764     $1,049,783,150