Iowa Liberal

Limbaugh swears he’ll leave the US if health care passes. Where will he go, considering the rest of the modern world already has socialized medicine? He tries to suggest Costa Rica, but, naturally, he’s wrong. They’ve got socialized care too.

Oh, by the way, Rush, the U.S. today already has a heavily socialized medical system, so get the hell out already, whydon’tcha? I’m sure Somalia or somebody has a free market paradise waiting for you.

Isn’t it already pathetic enough that this mega-millionaire thinks that a) health care reform would affect him and b) that whatever happens to him (again, nothing) has anything to do with working class people?

-hw

You know what’s more offensive than comparing the FLOTUS to a chimpanzee? Pointing out that this guy is a bigot!

Here come the liberal thought-police, trying to make us feel bad for calling black people apes.

-mg

This good NYT piece on Scientology, a cult of shysters that openly fleeces its members for everything they have, reveals that the membership in the US has dropped by fifty percent since 2001, down from 55,000 to 25,000.

And hey, it’s America…you can get 25,000 people to believe anything. Proof? Scientology has 25,000 members! These guys make Mormons look normal. Their “religion” was concocted by a bad science fiction author (Hubbard’s Wikipedia page has a lot on his shocking criminality) who started it bragging to other sci-fi authors that it was a get-rich-quick scheme, their mythology sounds like bad science fiction, and being a member is like going to a college where the tuition is however much you got, except at the end instead of a certificate in honor of your intelligence and hard work, you receive a head full of patently absurd shite. Oh, plus there’s no end! You just keep paying.

Sadly, they’re even worse than that. The article, which focuses on defectors, gives us another look at the controlling tactics, beatings, and shunnings that are part of life for Scientologists. Not to mention the pressure placed on some members to have abortions…

Scientology seems to have some basic self-help foundation that incorporates a lot of strategies for successful living, much like what you’d get from a Tony Robbins book (or thousands of other books clogging the bookstore). Some of the defectors profiled have actually continued some of the practices of the church independently.

Of course, when asked for comment, the Scientologist asshole crooks themselves say that you can’t be a Scientologist if you don’t belong to the church, because obviously they aren’t getting your money if you’re out there on your own. Virtually every quote from the Scientology reps sounds like Newspeak, Rovian-style big lies that are too absurd to be believed…except by 25,000 people.

-hw

NYT:

Reconciliation was intended to be a narrow procedure to bring revenues and spending into conformity with the levels set in the annual budget resolution. But it quickly became much more. The 22 reconciliation bills so far passed by Congress (three of which were vetoed by President Bill Clinton) have included all manner of budgetary and policy measures: deficit reductions and increases; social policy bills like welfare reform; major changes in Medicare and Medicaid; large tax cuts; and small adjustments in existing law. Neither party has been shy about using this process to avoid dilatory tactics in the Senate; Republicans have in fact been more willing to do so than Democrats.

Really, can anyone believe anymore that the Republican Party would let itself be restrained by the truth?

-hw

Just a friendly reminder for those who frequently hear from the right that the health care reform is being rammed/jammed/forced down our throats…

…that is not true.

The Senate bill was passed by a 60 vote filibuster-breaker, and the reconciliation package that will be passed must get 51 votes. The congressmen and president responsible represent a majority of voters, and they openly ran for election on health care reform as an issue. Reconciliation is also the precise method the Bush administration used to get their precious tax cuts for the rich.

So it’s not even remotely possible that Republicans could believe a single thing they’re saying. With them it’s always about trying to figure out some message that will “work” and then saying it over and over again. As the recent RNC fundraising memo made entirely clear, they really do have a low opinion of people, especially those who vote Republican, and they’ve devoted decades to the art of honing their pitches and soundbites to manipulate the masses as crassly and effectively as possible.

That’s why rightwingers don’t like getting stuck in a comment war at Iowa Liberal, because soundbites only get you so far. The essential and integral dishonesty with which these guys operate simply cannot survive the gauntlet of honest debate.

Disagree? Bring it on, bitches!

-hw

If you’re going to threaten to be the leader of the Democrats who would kill health care reform over the abortion issue, would it be too much to ask that you get your basic facts straight?

-hw

I’m just going to go ahead and assume from now on that all vehemently anti-gay representatives are themselves closeted homosexuals.

Ray Ashburn is exactly what Republicans expect of homosexuals; closeted, in denial and self-hating

-mg

An RNC PowerPoint presentation explains how potential Republican donors are susceptible to fear and flattery:

The Republican National Committee plans to raise money this election cycle through an aggressive campaign capitalizing on “fear” of President Barack Obama and a promise to “save the country from trending toward socialism.”

The strategy was detailed in a confidential party fundraising presentation, obtained by POLITICO, which also outlines how “ego-driven” wealthy donors can be tapped with offers of access and “tchochkes.”

This reminds me of the time when the then head of president Bush’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives David Kuo stated that evangelical groups were exploited by the RNC for political gain:

In his book, Kuo wrote that White House staffers would roll their eyes at evangelicals, calling them “nuts” and “goofy.”

Asked if that was really the attitude, Kuo tells Stahl, “Oh, absolutely. You name the important Christian leader and I have heard them mocked by serious people in serious places.”

Specifically, Kuo says people in the White House political affairs office referred to Pat Robertson as “insane,” Jerry Falwell as “ridiculous,” and that James Dobson “had to be controlled.”

I’d recommend looking at the presentation for yourselves. It leaves little doubt as to what buttons Republicans push in order to drum up support. It’s hardly anything new, though, as anti-government paranoia and Red Scare hysteria are always on the RNC play list when confronted by a strong opposition. But as Iowa Liberal has wondered out loud before; how effective can Cold War propaganda be in 2010? And will evangelicals believe John Boehner when he tells them that Obama is coming to take their bibles away? Or will these same, cartoony caricatures of “liberals” keep getting sillier as they get older?

-mg

200,000 people will lose their unemployment benefits this week because Republican Jim Bunning is using his power as a Senator to uphold the entire legislation temporarily extending benefits.

Why? Well, it would add $10 billion to the deficit. And according to Republican theology, that creates less incentive to work. In the race to replace Bunning, who was considered by many to be borderline senile when last elected, the Democratic candidate is passing around a petition against Bunning while the Republicans, including Rand Paul, support the block.

Now, Republican politicians actually in office are scrambling to stop Bunning, because this gaffe is all too revealing of actual Republican attitudes towards unemployment benefits and any other form of stimulus that helps working class people. If this serves to remind people of what Republicans actually stand for, then November just became a lot less inviting for the GOP.

-hw

Steve Benen delivers a perfect anecdote describing Paul Krugman’s frustration on as the other guests prattled on about D.C. gossip for most of the show.

Look, I realize that not every discussion on a show like this is going to be substantive, sophisticated, and policy focused. Not every post I write for this site is going to highlight critically important issues, either. There’s nothing wrong with including heavier and lighter subjects in the same public affairs forum.

But this panel discussion covered exactly four subjects this morning: health care reform, Charlie Rangel’s ethics problem, David Paterson’s latest troubles, and the fate of the former White House social secretary (and where she’s from, what her clothes looked like, what her next job is likely to be, etc.), which hardly seems relevant to anyone who doesn’t actually attend social events at the White House.

In this same discussion, there was nothing about the jobs bill that passed the Senate this week, nothing about the incredibly important Zazi guilty plea this week (and the fact that it makes Republican talking points look ridiculous), nothing about Jim Bunning single-handedly delaying unemployment insurance for those who need it.

You know, at least with Huffington Post and the rest of the internet, you have so many stories to print and endless pages on which to print them. On televised politics shows meant to bring the talk of the capital to American living rooms, the three or four topics that get talked about in an hour take up a lot of broadcasting real estate. Devoting it to cocktail circuit irrelevancies does Americans interested in good government a disservice.

Ben Nelson isn’t going to object to reconciliation?

Gosh, it’s almost like the argument that 51 Senators trumps 41 Senators feels defensible. Is he sure he doesn’t want to cower before Republicans a bit more?
I mean, arguing against reconciliation vs. the filibuster because it’s “procedural,” may be so instantly obvious a contradiction that there isn’t enough cover for the “centrists.” Our press would certainly like to join Mr. Nelson in trembling before The Republicans Who Will Say Mean But Bold Things, but that 7 1/2 hour summit was also such an obvious demonstration that the Republicans would accept no middle ground.

Is this Obama’s long game? He’s worn me out so many times, made me keep thinking he was just about to give it up, that he wasn’t fighting…but then he keeps coming back. Hell, he might demand a 12 hour summit next time. At some point, even Republicans have to start realizing they’re getting gamed. Boehner screaming, “It’s a trap!” wasn’t really an attack, it was too fearful. The Republican game is just this: NO. They’re left stalling until November, hoping that they can prevent a victory and then brag about it.

I dunno. I’m almost sure there’ll be another, “Ah, bloody hell…” moment coming soon, but I’m just as tired of being fooled by Obama’s long game. If he pulls this shit off and signs a bill before summer, it’ll be a pretty stiff lesson to the skeptics.

-hw

Thus is summed up a 305 page report clearing five Democrats and two Republicans on ethics violations for steering federal contracts towards big donors. Yet observe:

In fiscal 2008 alone, the seven lawmakers sponsored $112 million worth of earmarks for clients of the PMA Group while accepting more than $350,000 in contributions from the firm’s lobbyists and its clients, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, a watchdog group.

A $350,000 investment returns $112 million dollars. How could anybody expect corruption to not occur? They could have spent $600,000, or six million, if they felt it would get better results. It’s practically printing money. And when you can move legislators with money, it’s not difficult to make the bribery legal, so these guys get off scott free.

Principle would expect Democrats to stand against this and fight corruption. Even if these seven were a mere statistical fluke, honorable men who simply held the positions that coincidentally led to piles of campaign cash, there’s work to be done here. But such a result is rather implausible. What’s plausible is that it happened, but it’s not different enough from what’s going on with every other politician who has to run without public financing.

Besides, do we really spend much time agonizing over whether mob bosses pay hit men to kill others, or whether they simply give money to men who kill the ones they hate?

-jb

Andrew Sullivan, who’s spent his whole life lovingly defending the right of Israel to exist, realizes what happens when you start disagreeing with Israel hawks. And he’s getting the flak from The New Republic.

Just when I was thinking Jonathan Chait was a pretty impressive guy, he goes and provides some cover for Leon Wieseltier’s baseless and almost campy accusation, suggesting there’s some actual substance there.

I think it’s like music sometimes. I used to listen to almost 75% rap…back in 1990. Not after 1993, when “hot” albums turned out to be lacking. The innovation had mostly transpired. Rap had stagnated. Like anybody who listened to 2 Live Crew, lowest common denominator wasn’t the issue, it was the music. Somewhere along the line the rap community had gone off in a different direction. Whereas I wanted awesome samples and dope-ass rhymin’, rap became about studio-produced pap with unmemorable rhymes and rhythms.

(Detractors: talk all the smack you want, then go back and listen to Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing or Straight Outta Compton, then realize you are wrong)

Andrew likes old school conservatives and can’t stand the racket these rightwingers are making nowadays. Obviously the racket will have its defenders, but he always has the upper hand in debate.

So they call him an anti-Semite. I’m pretty sure the “emotional” and “feelings as ideas” critiques are thinly veiled queer remarks, although Leon Wieseltier and Jonathan Chait would surely resent such an implication…

I’ve always engaged Israel hawks and come out just fine. Sometimes the anti-semite card has been played against me, but I shamed my accusers. I confound them, and leave them sputtering, because the truth is I’m a pretty big fan of Jewish people and I’m quite sure Israel would be an oasis in the desert if it weren’t for those pesky Palestinians living there. Really, if Hamas were building schools instead of bombing, life would probably improve. If Palestinians didn’t hate Jewish people so much, they’d start selling them property in their cities and provide goods and luxuries, get them to move in among them, assimilate, then claim their equal rights. Seriously, folks, Israel’s a western Democracy (for now), they can’t resist a real pursuit for equality.

So that position simply cannot be reconciled with any anti-Semitism. There isn’t an ounce of it in my bones. And my philosophy seeks to assiduously scrub every trace of bias, whether Palestinian or Israeli, which leaves me pissing off both sides at times. I’m so zoned out on it all, just approaching it like an alien observing one group of humans interacting with another.

Andrew will be fine. The good thing about reason is that you can feel confidence in your ideas, a sense of security. “It’s okay, I’m covered by Logic.” His positions are purely centrist, in a good way, and virtually everybody except TNR and the rightwingers they’re enabling who knows Andrew knows it’s a laughable claim. Most American Jews, especially, understand and would hardly disagree with much of what Andrew says. On top of that, most Israelis who aren’t Likudniks know it too. And those who aren’t quietly dreaming of ethnic cleansing.

-hw

It’s always good any time Republicans like Mike Pence start harping about Medicare fraud to keep in mind that one of their biggest supporters, Rick Scott, was CEO of a company that paid the highest fines in history for billions of dollars worth of Medicare fraud.

The effort has alarmed many Democrats and liberal health-care advocates, who are pushing back with attacks highlighting Scott’s ouster as head of the Columbia/HCA health-care company amid a fraud investigation in the 1990s. The firm eventually pleaded guilty to charges that it overbilled state and federal health plans, paying a record $1.7 billion in fines…

Scott, 56, seems unfazed by such criticism, emphasizing that he was never charged with any wrongdoing and that other health-care companies were also fined for overbilling problems. A lawyer with no formal medical training, Scott built Columbia/HCA into the largest U.S. health-care company before he was ousted by the board of directors in 1997. He was also once a partner in the Texas Rangers with George W. Bush. Scott now runs an investment firm and owns, among other things, a chain of walk-in urgent-care clinics in Florida called Solantic.

-mg

Holy crap.

I just really can’t imagine speaking to black people with this much contempt, but preaching it to millions on the air?

Holy smokes. He’s allowed the Republicans to get behind the summit idea and got them in front of the camera again. Niiice judo flip.

If it was Obama’s intention to make clear to the public that the Republicans simply were not going to play ball at all, no matter what, then it qualifies as a cast-iron success.

Which suggest that Obama has learned the central method to handling rightwing talking points: Stick Republicans in a room and watch them sweat. Make them look for a retort. Exhaust their lines. Undermine their paradigms.

Look, folks, the only real critique of Obama is from the left. The GOP’s new star fiscal conservative is Paul Ryan, who voted for Medicare Part D. It’s rhetorical posturing that will translate into a party-line vote for the next Republican President.

The critique from the right is simply too staggered with money and propaganda to take seriously. America has to move forward.

As the Bush advisor said, “We’ll make history and you’ll be trying to analyze it, and just when you figured it out, we’ll make history again!”

And how can one do worse than Bush?

This article suggests Democrats may finally be convinced they’ve earned the political cover. Will that be true? There’s a bizarre reverse effect where the longer this goes on, the worse it becomes for Democrats to turn on the bill. Though they keep trying…

-hw

Except that it isn’t.

One thing the issue of tort reform does do is give Republicans another opportunity to use trial lawyers as a punching bag. Whoops, I mean trIALlawyers. See, it all depends upon how you say it. If you say it without emphasizing the word “trIAL” it loses maximum impact. Anyway, it’s familiar territory for Republicans because they used it extensively to attack John Edwards who, incidentally, was also regarded as an effete lady boy, another favorite jeer fat, impotent old men like Limbaugh use to hector librulz. (I’m guessing those insinuations aren’t working so well now that it’s common knowledge that he knocked up some camerawoman.) If it weren’t for trIAL lawyers, Big Government wouldn’t have robbed us of our constitutional right to bear lawn darts, eat lead paint or lose the ability to hold a job after a quack doctor blinded or maimed us permanently. Valerie Lakey’s mistake was getting disemboweled by a faulty swimming pool pump. John Edward’s mistake was representing her in court.

Jeb Bush criticizes Sarah Palin’s lack of intellectual curiosity.

Bill O’Reilly says that she needs to go to college.

Why can’t they just let Sarah be Sarah?

These guys are telling you how to do something right and get re-elected for it:

Marvin Bohn, (pictured at right) a 57-year-old former executive chef in Ohio, is another American who wants to work for his money. He’s been getting unemployment checks since June 2008.

“You keep wondering what’s gone wrong. Is there something wrong with you? You apply for jobs you’re overqualified for and you don’t get ‘em, and you get chided for making too much on unemployment.”
Story continues below

By contrast, a government job sounds good to him. “Instead of receiving the unemployment checks, even if it’s a fill-in job, it’d be doing good,” he said. “I would be very happy to do that.”

Christopher Hardin of Valdese, N.C., (pictured at right) said he, too, would jump at the opportunity to work rather than put up with the indignity of a futile job search in return for unemployment benefits. “Being 55, I haven’t been able to find any work,” said Hardin, whose most recent job was loading and unloading trucks for an auction house. “I apply for jobs all the time. I don’t get any return email or phone calls.”

Of course. People like to look at the classifieds, see a good job with decent pay, apply, and get hired. Americans work. These guys are sitting around waiting for somebody to put them to use. Of course…

Blackburn, Hardin and Bohn — and however many other Americans want the government to put them back to work, too — don’t have many champions on Capitol Hill or in the White House.

Democratic leaders, increasingly worried that members of their party will get swept out of office in the November elections, are desperate to do something about job creation. But the packages they are seriously considering are a mishmash of ineffective or inefficient measures, distinguished only by their political safety.

Yeah, because they’re awesome that way. Start out compromising with Republicans before you even get into the ring, and then act helpless when they pull you further to the right than you wanted to go.

ACT: Win. SIT AROUND AND GET YOUR THROATS CUT BY PROCEDURE: Go down in infamy as the cowardly Democrats who fell down when the country needed them.

Republicans have overextended their bullshit. It’s been a year and they haven’t cleaned up their act at all. Though if this is Obama’s ground game for November, it might be a good time to start kicking it in. Reconcile, attach a jobs bill to the defense bill, issue an executive order, but above all get people working again, like we did once before. Guys, Roosevelt got elected four times.

-hw

What we are constantly told we can’t have, we once had.

The Great Depression did not begin with predatory mortgage lending, but economic conditions predictably led to a foreclosure crisis. More than 250,000 families lost their homes to foreclosure in 1932. And every day brought a thousand new foreclosures in the early months of 1933.

As part of its initial legislative barrage on the economic crisis, the Roosevelt administration created the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (“HOLC”) in June of 1933, just three months after entering office. The HOLC purchased distressed mortgages from banks, and then negotiated new, more affordable mortgages with the homeowner. Before it ran out of capital in 1935, the HOLC purchased a little more than one million mortgages, or about one in six of the urban home mortgages. (There was a similar program for farm mortgages).

Homeowners applied to the HOLC to buy their mortgage, so the HOLC was able to pick and choose salvageable mortgages. HOLC mortgages required less equity than banks required (20 percent instead of 35 percent) and had lower interest rates (five percent instead of eight percent). The HOLC was indulgent of late or missed payments, and patiently worked with struggling borrowers to prevent default. Still, times were hard and almost 20 percent of HOLC’s mortgages ended in foreclosure.

When the last mortgage was paid off in 1951, the HOLC had turned a slight profit. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., wrote that the HOLC “averted the threatened collapse of the real estate market and enabled financial institutions to return to the mortgage-lending business. … Most important of all, by enabling thousands of Americans to save their homes, it strengthened their stake both in the existing order and in the New Deal. Probably no single measure consolidated so much middle-class support for the Administration.”

Geithner and the elitist Republicans who would block such a measure today can go to Hell.

-hw

It appears that the online devoted are saddened by Scott Brown’s deviation from strict right-wing orthodoxy:

It wasn’t so long ago that Fox News was jubilantly celebrating the election of their golden boy Scott Brown. He broke the super majority and was going to bring the Obama administration to its knees, stop Romney/Obama Care, re-anoint George W. Bush as the country’s rightful fuhrer and get the country back on track for Das Dritte Reich (or the permanent Republican majority, if you will). Then reality set it. Scott Brown is a centrist Republican who beat a miserably inept opponent and now he represents a blue state packed with left of center voters with left of center expectations who already enjoy an established universal health care system. Scott Brown, considering these facts, voted with the president on his jobs bill. In a party driven solely by ideology Senator Brown made a pragmatic decision and I have no doubts that his constituents would have expected anything less. Roger Ailes may feel a little less vindicated but I’m sure he’ll get over it.

-mg

My money is still on Limbaugh but it didn’t take these ghouls long before Dilbert’s last plane ride became a symbol of protest.

The way they see it, “he did the ultimate flipping of the bird to the man,” said JJ MacNab, a Maryland-based insurance analyst who is writing a book about tax protesters. “He stuck it to the man, and they love that.”

It is not surprising Stack would be portrayed as a hero on fringe Web sites such as stormfront.org, a forum for white supremacists. But admirers also are expressing their appreciation on mainstream sites such as Facebook, where a fan page supporting some of the things he said in his six-page manifesto had more than 2,000 members Monday.

Thank Allah that Stack wasn’t a Muslim or this story would have played out a lot differently. Has anyone heard of Stack being described as a suicide bomber? Has the liberal media been condemned as terrorist sympathizers for not condemning him fast enough? Has the president been accused of going soft on the enemy for not responding to the attack publicly? How many hours of air time has Fox News devoted to delving into the past of Stack and asking the administration why he wasn’t stopped before he decided to martyr himself?

-mg

Yglesias stops and takes a look at this never-quite-explained meme:

Are there any centrist Democrats or moderate Republicans who are going to claim that had Obama backed off on health care they would have voted for substantial additional short-term stimulus measures? Do any sources at the Federal Reserve think that had Obama not attempted health reform that Ben Bernanke would have implemented a more expansionary agenda? As far as I know, the answer to both of those questions is “no” so nothing was actually traded off when Obama decided to focus on health care. But even though everyone in the media is very interested in second-guessing Obama these days, nobody seems interested in looking in to these issues.

Obama and the Democrats were certainly a bit busy this past year. After all, Republicans managed to filibuster 80% of the bills Congress tried passing. Of course, I would have wanted a robust public works bill last year, but that would have been filibustered also. So what exactly are people talking about? As usual, so much noise, so few solutions.

-hw

How many tea party folks liked Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story?

I got ten on “7-10%.” Given that 70% will probably refuse to watch it outright, I’d advise you to shoot low.

If you actually watch it, though, it nails all the things that are making them unhappy, but since teabaggers are mostly just Republicans, all they can come up with for a solution is, “Uh, no, just lower taxes CAPITALISM RULES OBAMAISTEHSOCIALIST!!!”

-hw

Greenwald sums up the DOJ report on Yoo/Bybee et al:

That Bush officials have to cling to the harsh condemnations of Margolis as “vindication” reveals just how wretched and lawless their conduct was. Essentially, the current posture of the U.S. to the world is this:

Yes, we implemented a worldwide torture regime that we justified with lawyers’ memoranda that were false, wrong, shoddy, lawless, sloppy and extremist, but because those lawyers were such warped radicals, they probably believed what they were saying at the time, so we’re going to declare that we had the right to do what we did and are shielded from all consequences, even though we’ve signed treaties agreeing to prosecute anyone who authorizes torture and constantly demand that other nations prosecute their own torturers. Besides, we have important things to do and so we want to Look Forward, not Backward.

I guess we hanged war criminals because they lacked sufficient conviction? Ah, well. Our system is completely gamed.

-hw

Picked up on this Limbaugh quote from a certain Iowa blogger who trolls this site periodically:

“This health care plan is being prepared in defiance. This health care plan is being revived to ram it down your throat and my throat and everybody’s throats to show us who’s boss.” – Rush Limbaugh

In case you’re wondering, that’s all the actual blog post consists of, just a quote from Rush Limbaugh. Aside from the dumb simplicity, it answers the question definitely as to who does all the thinking for these guys. From his doughy ass to their mealy mouths. But the quote is a good example of what drives Republicans. Any action by government seen as going against their tribal desires is described as an act of defiance regardless of who holds the majority. More than that, it’s often characterized as an act of treason by craven usurpers.

Health care reform deserves a simple up or down vote because voters knew in 2006 and 2008 that the Democratic party intended to enact real reform. Democrats campaigned on health care reform during both elections and it’s been a part of the party platform for years. They didn’t elect Democrats in huge majorities to sit on their hands and bide the wishes of Republican lawmakers whose only desire is to see Obama fail. They haven’t even pretended to be interested in suggesting any meaningful ideas that would help solve our countries health care issues. Jim DeMint expressed this sentiment clearly when he stated that health care reform would be Obama’s Waterloo. That’s not bipartisanship. That’s simple obstructionism. And every bill that has been proposed over the past year has been a dilution of a compromise and still Republicans are ready to rely on a procedural trick to block any and all efforts.

There’s a billboard in Cedar Rapids that says “How’s That Hope and Change Working Out For Ya?” Not bad for the person that can afford to erect politically charged billboards on the highway I would guess. But what bitter, well-heeled Republican advertisers fail to understand is this; voters aren’t upset because Obama is defying the will of conservatives and the center they unscrupulously lay claim to. They’re upset because he hasn’t repudiated Republicans and stomped on their heads enough.

-mg

The New Rules are good, but wait til Maher makes the comparison between the Tea Partiers and cults :

In a recent poll almost ninety percent of Tea Baggers said that they thought taxes had either gone up or stayed the same under Obama. Only two percent thought they went down. But the reality is taxes have gone down for ninety five percent of working families taxes went down.

Think about that. Only two percent of the people in a “movement” about taxes named after a tax revolt have the slightest idea what’s going on…with taxes.

Transcription from Crooks & Liars, though I swear I had the idea to blog this clip before I saw it there.

As one strips away the claimed motivations of the teabaggers, the list of possible explanations just grows darker and uglier.

-hw

I personally care about the innocents killed in Obama’s drone attacks, but rightwingers don’t, so his steady success rate in whacking terrorists and Taliban leaders (the two are not the same) is painting them into a corner on a stepladder:

“That doesn’t mean I think they are not illegitimate,” he added. “No, we have every right to kill the other side’s warriors. But at what cost? When we do not have an effective detention policy the only option we have is to kill them before we can detain them. And if we don’t detain them, we don’t know what they know and what they are up to.”

And the only way we can know what they know according to the right, despite all evidence, is torture.

Marc Thiessen’s attempt to justify torture as something consistent with Catholic doctrine, which specifically forbids torture, has been sparking a firestorm, on the Daily Dish and, shockingly, at National Review, where a writer named Mike Potemra has broken from the pack and admitted what anybody who wasn’t mainlining Republican doctrine already knew, that waterboarding is torture (the Washington Post’s shark-jumping addition of Thiessen to its op-ed page has been a story unto itself). Andrew Sullivan guides Potemra toward the obvious:

If an American merely suspected of being a spy were captured in Iran, if he were then shackled in a stress position for hours on end, if he were tied to a post in a yard in freezing conditions and regularly doused with cold water and beaten (as happened under Stanley McChrystal’s Camp Nama in Iraq), if he were slammed against a ply-wood wall repeatedly by a collar around his neck, if he were strapped to a waterboard and nearly drowned 183 times, and then confessed that he was indeed a spy, and was planning to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program, would the New York Times say he was subjected to “enhanced interrogation techniques” and that his confession roved that those techniques worked? Would National Review? Would Dick Cheney?

Look, Bush/Cheney introduced and legitimized torture, and it’s become part of the Republican Party’s plank. Intellectual honesty just doesn’t fit into their calculus anymore. It’s a pretty natural result of the rightwinger’s authoritarian lust for power and control. “Six of one, half dozen of the other!” so-called-centrists need to step off the balancing beam to Hell.

-hw

WBC Tries to Protest at Twitter from Ed Hunsinger on Vimeo.

Sarah Palin’s comical quest to attack anybody who seems liberal making retard jokes (but not Republicans like Rush Limbaugh) is some serious weak sauce:

My name is Andrea Fay Friedman. I was born with Down syndrome. I played the role of Ellen on the “Extra Large Medium” episode of Family Guy that was broadcast on Valentine’s day. Although they gave me red hair on the show, I am really a blonde. I also wore a red wig for my role in ” Smudge” but I was a blonde in “Life Goes On”. I guess former Governor Palin does not have a sense of humor. I thought the line “I am the daughter of the former governor of Alaska” was very funny. I think the word is “sarcasm”.

In my family we think laughing is good. My parents raised me to have a sense of humor and to live a normal life. My mother did not carry me around under her arm like a loaf of French bread the way former Governor Palin carries her son Trig around looking for sympathy and votes.

-Ms. Friedman

See, liberals understand that even people with Down’s Syndrome are smarter than Sarah Palin. Sarah has always used Trig as a political prop and this is nothing more than profitable concern-trolling from her. And it takes a special kind of retard not to see that: A Republican.

-hw

g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.

I am glued to the brilliance of human invention.

-jb

When I read this part of Joseph Stack’s rambling farewell letter the alarm bells went off:

Some friends introduced me to a group of people who were having ‘tax code’ readings and discussions. In particular, zeroed in on a section relating to the wonderful “exemptions” that make institutions like the vulgar, corrupt Catholic Church so incredibly wealthy. We carefully studied the law (with the help of some of the “best”, high-paid, experienced tax lawyers in the business), and then began to do exactly what the “big boys” were doing (except that we weren’t steeling from our congregation or lying to the government about our massive profits in the name of God). We took a great deal of care to make it all visible, following all of the rules, exactly the way the law said it was to be done.

I’ve had my share of dodgy friends in the past so I’ve heard dozens of stories that start out with some sort of variation of “all I was trying to do was…” in defense of something that turned out to be at best unscrupulous behavior. At worst it was a recounting of an unhappy run-in with the law. Maybe I’m cynical but the above passage has the right amount of opacity and derision to indicate that there’s more to the story than just Stack getting hosed by the IRS for having innocent ambitions.

Any bets on who will be the first to blame this on Obama and turn this nut into an anti-government hero? I’m guessing Limbaugh since the field of competition for craziest right-wing media crazy is pretty crowded and simply deriding apostates as liberals and liars doesn’t cut the ratings mustard these days. You really gotta go full-metal paranoid to make it into the headlines.

Having your own cable news network devoted to your party.

GOP Senators top the list for congressional earmarks.

They’ve skyrocketed in the past ten years and they’re going nuclear soon:

California officials say 700,000 households face increases averaging 25 percent overall and as high as 39 percent for some.

The HHS report found that those numbers are in line with increases sought by insurers in other states – at a time of robust profit growth for the companies and a lack of competition in most states.

For example, Anthem in Maine was denied an 18.5 percent increase last year and is now requesting that state regulators approve a 23 percent rise. Maine is home to Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, Republican moderates whose support Obama would like to have for his health care legislation.

Michigan’s Blue Cross Blue Shield plan requested approval for premium increases of 56 percent in 2009. And in the state of Washington, rates for some individual health plans increased by up to 40 percent until regulators cracked down.

Other states cited in the report were Connecticut, Oregon and Rhode Island.

I don’t know, do you think it could be the Republican plan to try getting back in office so they can pass essentially the same thing as the Democratic health care reform bill and take the credit? That if they actually had the power they crave so much, they’d be able to look at it and say, “Oh, wait, it’s already completely compromised to please us”? It’s already Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts plan with some cost control seed programs, so if he’s elected it shouldn’t be a big maneuver for him, should it?

Any way you come at it, the plane is diving into the mountain, and Republicans are fighting over how to properly fasten our seat belts. It’s already spooked several Democrats, including Diane Feinstein, into supporting the reconciliation deal with the House and getting reform efforts going.

Of course, watch those expected premium increases come along and then tune into BeckPalinLimbaughbots to hear how it’s all Obama’s fault. They got millions to make off the destruction of the middle class.

-hw

Get rid of these two dumb bastards. I’m sorry, but if you’ve heard anything from these guys that didn’t sound like Forrest Gump on acid, you might be high on something yourself.

The best line these guys have been able to come up with is that Obama wasn’t televising health care deliberations, and now that he’s happily obliged, they’re busy stammering and whining about “traps” and now they swear it’s a jobs summit they want televised.

Until they don’t, I guess. Of course, it’s just another football to pull away as soon as Democrats try to kick it. Anybody who thinks otherwise at this point is either blinkered or naive.

It’s been tough times for most people in this country, and I’ve only recently managed to pull myself out of a financial tailspin (contrary to popular rumor, liberals are quite good at pulling themselves up by their bootstraps…for a good example, check out Barack Obama’s life story, then contrast it with George W. Bush). Yet the only perceptible thought going on in the heads of Boehner, Cantor, or any other Republican politician has been, “If I just keep screaming NO and blocking anything Democrats try, people will be so pissed they’ll throw out more Democrats than Republicans, and then-”

Nothing exists past that point. These guys got nothing. They only know they want more Republicans in office. Who even knows why any more? Like I said, have any of you actually listened to these weak sauce fools speak lately? Any liberal worth their salt is a bit raw over Obama’s centrism, for which he gets no recognition, but he’s worth more than every Republican in Congress put together, and that’s as simple as it gets.

2010: Clear out the Republican roadblockers. Give the Democrats a chance to actually pass a bill without 40+ Republicans constipating the process like the miserable clump of compressed turds they’ve been. Nothing else makes a lick of sense, and it’s gonna take more than “I HATE INCUMBENTS!!!” to fix what ails this country. I mean, if any of you can tell me of doctors who deal with a gall bladder by replacing the heart, lungs, liver, spleen and kidneys, by all means. But things don’t work that way. Wake up, folks!

-hw

Rich, old, white, Republican men dislike Barack Obama. In other words, real Americans.

Why elections matter.

Can anybody explain why their junior and senior years were really that necessary? I’m sure it was a fantastic time for Johnny Football Hero but for most of us we couldn’t wait for it to be over so we could finally get out of town and go to college.

I’m glad to see the administration getting it’s act together and pushing information like this out there. The Obama team’s reluctance to utilize their OFA channels to stay on top of messaging has been disappointing to say the least. When you cut taxes for 95% of the country and only 12% believe that you have they’ve only got themselves to blame because Republicans certainly aren’t going to make the case for you.

Synth pop gets a BBC documentary.

This is the type of behavior that gets you called “rude” and “shrill” by Republicans. Maddow pointed out that Schock was taking credit for stimulus dollars locally that he publicly derided in DC.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The chances that David Gregory would have called out Rep. Schock on this type of hypocrisy is precisely zero. As he’s stated before, it’s not a journalists job to raise scrutiny over the claims of politicians. That’s why it’s always enjoyable to see an actual liberal on a Sunday morning talk show who isn’t deathly afraid of being thought of as unreasonable by David Broder.

A recent monster truck rally at the Five Season’s Center in Cedar Rapids was covered by the local Gazette newspaper with this photo featured on the front page. Predictably, the comments section atracted the usual “it doesn’t mean what you think it means!” rationalizers. As one commenter correctly pointed out, the Confederate flag means exactly what it’s intended to invoke; the belief that state’s should have the right to legalize human bondage.

Anybody talking about the snowstorms disproving global warming is either a huckster or a fool, plain and simple.  Either they know the science and are trying to spread propaganda to counter it, or they simply don’t know the science. Help me out on a third option if you can think of one…

-hw

A Republican Senator breaks from the pack.

GOP Sen. Bob Corker said he “absolutely” would be willing to buck his party to pass a bill cracking down on financial market abuses and creating new rules to prevent firms from becoming “too big to fail.”

The Tennessean, who is in the middle of his first Senate term, and Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd of Connecticut, announced Thursday that they would negotiate the wide-ranging legislation. The move came after Dodd reached an impasse with the panel’s top Republican.

Corker, in an interview to run on C-SPAN on Sunday, suggested the regulatory overhaul discussions on Capitol Hill have not always been in good faith. “Do you want to get to ‘yes’ or do you want to get to ‘no’ as quickly as possible?” Corker said, suggesting he believes he and Dodd can craft legislation that receives “overwhelming” support from members of both parties.

Even if this is only for an instant, it’s an important event. Republicans are going to have a hard time in November if Democrats actually choose to campaign against them on the issues. Being devoted servants of Wall Street in today’s times isn’t an easy sell. There’s gonna be a whole mess of double talk.

-hw

Morally and intellectually barren Limbaugh continues to blame the mortgage crisis on the CRA. How long before the staggering corpses start shambling onto right-wing blogs again?

(Oh, and pointing out that blaming the CRA is an obvious racist dog-whistle is actually worse than blaming the mortgage crisis on black people, btw. Thanks.)

Republicans are lucky that they don’t have to face this type of questioning from cable news networks:

Republicans get to have shin-digs in states that have near universal coverage and not be questioned about it. Scott Brown gets to run an anti-health care reform campaign message from a state that already enjoys a variant of Obama Care and not be called out on it. Are journalists that petrified of being called liberal that they’ll let glaring examples of hypocrisy like this slide?

But we already know what happens when you ask questions like this, don’t we? When backed into a corner they’ll immediately focus on how “rude” you are since acting offended is a Republican’s most effective line of defense.

What are Democrats in the house waiting for, again?  Passing the Senate health care reform bill is morally right, popular, and political gold.  Everybody knows it’s a significant step forward in coverage and patient safety, especially the Republicans trying to prevent it from happening.

How’s everybody doing tonight?  My name is Henry Whistler and it’s time to party.  And I’m proud to join the ultimate blog for Iowans who like to party.  I’ve butted heads with both Mike and Jeromy, literally, because life in small town Iowa is so boring people have nothing else to do but hit each other.  Talking about the weather gets old.

-Henry Whistler