Pat Buchanan regularly serves as Morning Joe's lone conservative in the show's self-described 10:1 ratio sea of lib to conservative guests.  But Buchanan this morning demonstrated that he is anything but a Republican partisan.  

Sounding more like Barney Frank after a bad night's sleep, Buchanan blasted President George W. Bush, claiming 43 "broke the Republican party and frankly he broke the United States as a superpower."  View the video after the jump.

I'll be back with a transcript, but in the meantime watch lefty professor Jeffrey Sachs gleefully agree with Buchanan's Bush-bashing.

PAT BUCHANAN: The great blunder was made by George W. Bush when he had the whole country and the world behind him, and he went up to Congress and declared now we're going after an Axis of Evil: Iraq, Iran and North Korea, and we're plunging into that part of the world instead of fighting al Qaeda and handling it the way he should have. And as a consequence of that I think he broke the Republican party, and frankly he broke the United States as a superpower.  We are a diminishing superpower today and there's no doubt China is a rising one because of the last decade

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Wow.

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Wow.  Thank you, Pat!

BUCHANAN: I got to say, though. I got to say, though, in George W. Bush's defense.

JEFFRY SACHS: Hey, Pat: that's exactly right!
 

The childishness on the left in Wisconsin continues.

In Wausau, GOP politicians aren't welcome in this year's Labor Day parade, as noted in a news brief at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (bolds are mine):

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Wausau bars GOP from Labor Day parade

Community parades often feature local politicians waving to the crowds, but this year's annual Labor Day parade in Wausau may be short a few elected officials.

That's because the head of the group that sponsors the Wausau Labor Day Parade, the Marathon County Central Labor Council, is telling Republican lawmakers from the area that they're not welcome Sept. 5.

"Usually they've been in the parade, but it seems like they only want to stand with us one day a year, and the other 364 days they don't really care," said Randy Radtke, president of the council.

The council is made up of about 30 local unions from the Marathon County area.

In a statement, Radtke added that the parade is intended to celebrate working men and women and what the labor movement has given them: weekends, a 40-hour workweek, child labor protection and a safe working environment.

"It should come as no surprise that organizers choose not to invite elected officials who have openly attacked worker's rights or stood idly by while their political party fought to strip public workers of their right to collectively bargain," Radtke said.

What seems foolish about this is that the sponsors could have achieved their goal by doing nothing. Because of safety concerns, it seems likely that many GOP pols would have backed out anyway.

After all, memories of death threats (ignored by the broadcast media, of course), other threats, shoving, being chased down and trapped by hecklers, and other items detailed by Brent Bozell six months ago during the ultimately successful attempt to pass Governor Scott Walker's budget repair and collective bargaining reform bill are surely fresh in every state GOP legislator's mind. Even if you were personally up for the risk, why would you expose your spouse, children, or extended family to the potential ugliness?

A related unbylined Associated Press item, which is currently (and appropriately, in my view, as there's only one such situation) being carried as a local story, is here.

It will be interesting in the coming week before the holiday to see if this becomes a Badger State trend, and how much media attention outside of Wisconsin it gets if it does.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.

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When I first saw a brief Associated Press report asserting that Rick Perry, at an event in Des Moines, Iowa today claimed, in AP's words, that "he's created 1 million jobs while governor of Texas," I thought to myself, "Wow, that's a pretty egotistical thing to say — as if he did it all by himself."

Then I remembered that I was reading an AP report. Of course Perry didn't say that, and, oddly enough (no, not really), a longer AP report proves it.

First, here's the opening half of the unbylined shorter item (bolds are mine):

Perry blasts Obama, notes own job-creating record

Texas Gov. Rick Perry blasted President Obama's handling of the economy and says his own record of creating jobs qualifies him for the White House.

Perry told nearly 400 activists that he's created 1 million jobs while governor of Texas, all during a stretch where the nation was losing 2.5 million jobs. Perry says he'll take a record of cutting taxes and regulation to Washington and says the Texas rebound proves that it works.

It turns out that the shorter item is a brief synopsis of a longer story with the same title by AP reporter Mike Glover. Glover's longer report has the same opening characterization of what Perry said. Ten paragraphs later, a direct quote from the Texas governor completely contradicts what Glover claimed Perry said. Here are paragraphs 1, 2, 3, and 13 of that report:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry warned during an appearance in Iowa that President Obama has driven the nation's economy into a ditch, arguing that his own record as governor qualifies him to lead the way out.

"Instead of eliminating our economic crisis, he worsened it," said Perry. "Instead of addressing the debt, he exploded it."

Perry told nearly 400 activists that he's created 1 million jobs while governor of Texas, all during a stretch where the nation was losing 2.5 million jobs. Perry said he'll take his record of cutting taxes and regulation to Washington and he said the Texas rebound proves that those efforts work.

… "Since I've become governor, Texas has created more than 1 million jobs, while the rest of the country has lost 2.5 million jobs," said Perry.

This is far from a quibble. The difference between the actual quote and the way the AP's opening paragraphs describe it is further than the distance from Corpus Christi to Amarillo (which, by the way, is over 650 miles).

Only the most self-centered man or woman would actually try to claim that "I created a million jobs." Rick Perry is surely not suffering from an ego shortage (no one is who believes that he or she is qualified to be this nation's chief executive), but he didn't say what Glover has led readers of his short report or people who would only read or hear the first few paragraphs of his longer effort to believe. What Perry really said is that "Texas" (i.e., the people of Texas) did it, at least partially in response to whatever steps he claims to have taken to improve and maintain the Lone Star State's favorable business climate.

By contrast, the only good thing you can say about the country's Egotist in Chief, President Barack Obama, is that when attempting to favorably describe the economy's historically pathetic pace of job creation since the recession ended, he at least doesn't go to the first person singular. What he usually says (examples here, here, and here) is that "we've created" whatever number of jobs with which we the American people are supposed to be impressed — as if his administration alone did it all.

At my home blog back in June, I strongly reacted Obama's "we've created" garbage, which in that particular instance relating to a statement about private-sector jobs, and then compared his administration's credit-hogging to two other presidents' credit-giving:

The heck you have. Businesses have created them.

Say what you will about Bush 43, but he understood that government doesn’t create private-sector jobs (except occasionally for some economically inefficient crony-capitalist jobs emanating from federal largesse, which amount to very little in the grand scheme of things):

• State of the Union Address, 2007 — “We are now in the 41st month of uninterrupted job growth, a recovery that has created 7.2 million new jobs so far.“
• State of the Union Address, 2008 — “To build a prosperous future, we must trust people with their own money and empower them to grow our economy. As we meet tonight, our economy is undergoing a period of uncertainty. America has added jobs for a record 52 straight months, but jobs are now growing at a slower pace.”
• State of the Union address, 2006 — “In the last two-and-a-half years, America has created 4.6 million new jobs — more than Japan and the European Union combined.”

Ronald Reagan, of course, had that same understanding, and was more blunt about who got the credit:

• State of the Union Address, 1986 — “Tonight the American people deserve our thanks for 37 straight months of economic growth, for sunrise firms and modernized industries creating nine million new jobs in three years, interest rates cut in half, inflation falling over from 12 percent in 1980 to under 4 today, and a mighty river of good works – a record $74 billion in voluntary giving just last year alone.”
• State of the Union Address, 1987 — “The unemployment rate – still too high – is the lowest in nearly seven years, and our people have created nearly 13 million new jobs.“

With Obama, it’s all about him and his supposedly wondrous federal government. Apparently, nothing happens without his and their involvement.

Hmm — maybe that’s why almost nothing happens.

Memo to the AP's Mike Glover: Your early paragraph asserting that Perry himself claimed credit for Texas's job growth is wrong. You've got it backwards. Perry said it's not about him, it's about the people of Texas and how they have responded to an atmosphere of relative freedom. Your direct quote of Perry later in your report proves it. Were you just lazy, or did you deliberately set out to make Rick Perry look like an insufferable, self-centered credit hog?

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.

Nobel laureate Al Gore claimed on Friday that scientists involved in advancing the theory of global warming wouldn't do it just for the money.

Without recognizing the hypocrisy, he also told FearLess Cottage consumer advocate Alex Bogusky that scientists espousing a skeptical view of his money-making theory are exclusively doing so for their own financial benefit (video follows with transcript and commentary):

ALEX BOGUSKY, CONSUMER ADVOCATE, FEARLESS COTTAGE: Well, they also funded and created some think tanks that would release reports, and there were scientists that worked there, but they were funded by the tobacco industry.

AL GORE: Yeah, yeah.

BOGUSKY: And some of those are, are now, have gone to work for oil and gas, or oil and coal.

GORE: What a lot of people don’t realize, this is so astonishing, some of the same people…

BOGUSKY: Yeah.

GORE: …who took money from the tobacco companies to put out lies about the science of smoking and health are now taking money from the coal and oil companies to put out lies about the science of global warming.

BOGUSKY: Yeah.

GORE: And those lies in this new communications environment gain a much larger audience on a regular basis than what the real scientists are actually saying.

BOGUSKY: Well, and, and, and you talk about the special interests, but there’s more and more special interest in government.

GORE: Yeah.

BOGUSKY: At least that’s, you know, my analysis.

GORE: For sure.

For sure? Was Gore actually agreeing that there’s more special interests in government?

I think Bogusky caught him off-guard with that, and the Nobel laureate didn’t realize what he was saying “for sure” to.

But in this instance, he was right. As Sen. Jim Inhofe's (R-Ok.) former communications director Marc Morano reported in 2007:

Newsweek reporter Eve Conant was given the documentation showing that proponents of man-made global warming have been funded to the tune of $50 BILLION in the last decade or so, but the Magazine chose instead to focus on how skeptics have reportedly received a paltry $19 MILLION from ExxonMobil over the last two decades.

Two years later, the Science and Public Policy Institute updated and confirmed these numbers:

The US government has spent over $79 billion since 1989 on policies related to climate change, including science and technology research, administration, education campaigns, foreign aid, and tax breaks. [...]

Meanwhile in a distracting sideshow, Exxon-Mobil Corp is repeatedly attacked for paying a grand total of $23 million to skeptics—less than a thousandth of what the US government has put in.

Despite the overwhelming majority of funds concerning this matter going to climate alarmists, Gore claimed it's skeptics that are willing to lie for money.

Moments later, he ironically said the folks on his side would never do this:

BOGUSKY: Governor Perry suggests that scientists have gotten together to foil the American public, or the global public.

GORE: Yeah.

BOGUSKY: There aren’t even movie scripts like that, where every, it’s, it’s, it’s, it seems difficult for me to understand how people would believe that. Yet there are actual incidents – tobacco being the most recent – of industries that have set out to continue to perpetrate a lie.

GORE: Yeah.

BOGUSKY: Scientists in general don’t really like to agree. That’s not what science does. Right?

GORE: Right, right, right. Yeah, and, and, and sometimes contrarians in science have become famous by overturning an accepted view.

BOGUSKY: That’s how you get reputations.

GORE: Yeah, there’s a natural respect for that impulse, absolutely.

Okay, so there are incidents when industries "have set out to continue to perpetrate a lie." But Bogusky doesn't consider that since Gore has huge investments in companies that benefit from global warming activism, he himself might be less than honest with his assertions.

As is typical, the motivation of liberals is never questioned.

As for the Nobel laureate, he admitted a "natural respect" for "contrarians in science [who] have become famous by overturning an accepted view."

But not when they go against his view:

GORE: But this is different. This is an organized effort to attack the reputation of the scientific community as a whole, to attack their integrity, and to slander them with the lie that they are making up the science in order to make money. Look, first of all, these scientists don’t make a lot of money. They’re comfortable, and as they should be, but they don’t make a lot of money. That’s not their motivation for doing what they do.

So, through July 2009, there was almost 3500 times more money spent by the U.S. government to spread global warming alarmism than what ExxonMobil dished out to fight it.

Yet, all those receiving funds to advance the theory are saints and all those on the other side are corrupt liars.

Even more hypocritical, in virtually the same breath, Gore said it's the skeptics attacking the "reputation of the scientific community," attacking "their integrity," and slandering them "with the lie that they are making up the science in order to make money."

The only attacks and slander going on here is what Gore and his followers regularly do against anyone that dares to disagree with this still unproven theory.

I know many people who would be prompted to flee at the prospect of an Obama speech.  But were words from the World's Greatest Orator really responsible for Maryland residents threatened by Hurricane Irene to follow evacuation orders?  Yes, according to Dem Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley.

Clearly in abject Obama suck-up mode, O'Malley also spoke of the "new professionalism" at FEMA and even claimed that the economy was improving.  Video after the jump.

The Early Show played not once but twice President Obama's pedestrian remarks encouraging people to evacuate.  Does anyone really believe his comments, read from a script and delivered outdoors as he took a few minutes off from his Martha's Vineyard vacation, played a significant role?