Paint It Black*

*Rolling Stones

**Bill Maher read verbatim the exchanges between Anthony Weiner and a Las Vegas casino worker. That actually was the scandal. Check it out on YouTube or Democraticunderground. You'll see what I mean. Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats called on Weiner to resign after it was discovered he innocently tweeted an under-aged girl. Even though it was innocent, in light of the past week the texting sounded hinky. But how can you have a Boehner in the House, if you don't have a Weiner.

**Jack Germond appeared again in the Daily Beast and wrote a column suggesting that even though all news is terrible, President Obama may not have a worry in the world given his GOP competitors. Germond mentions that Mitt Romney suffers from the same disease his father did, the inability to explain policy changes in a convincing manner. He likens Dad's Vietnam gaffe with Mitt's evasion on the individual mandates in his Massachusetts health care law. So far Jack says that Mitt is front-runner solely because he was second to McCain last time and that's how it works in Republican circles. Germond says it's still true that you have to have something or somebody in order to beat President Obama.

**The fallout from the Newt implosion continues. Apparently, the staff didn't want to sell books and films and told Newt to get rid of the souvenir stand of Newt,Inc.

**The next Very Serious Person--Republicans seem to generate alot of them these days--is Texas Governor Rick Perry. He is charming and has swagger. He has one of the best employment records in the nation. He is a natural fund-raiser. I suggest he run with Todd Palin, the first secessionist ticket since the Civil War. Mark MacKinnon is saying that there is no reason for Perry not to run. His wife and children want him to and Newt's two top campaign aides are in his inner circle. Beltway operatives said quietly that he's crazy as a loon. Others whisper that there are some things that haven't come out yet. And we do know he has a long history of courting the most extreme right entities in the country. He is hosting a Prayer meeting with AFA, the extreme Right Christian organization that showcases the rantings of Bryan Fisher. Making a guest appearance at the meeting is Rev. Hagee,who is more of a Zionist than Bibi and is rabidly anit-Catholic. Stay tuned. If Perry runs, he could be highly dangerous to the nation.

**The Other Very Serious Person is Tim Pawlenty, who seems to have become delusional with his economic plan. Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post gutted it by suggesting that the United States has never seen a 5 percent growth rate for 10 years as TPaw imagines. Marcus also goes on to reproduce the independent economic think tank analysis of TPaw bankrupting the country. Perhaps conservatives are beginning to wake up. The Manhattan Institute's Josh Barro in the City Journal slams Pawlenty's plan noting that America hasn't had 5% growth rates for a ten year period since 1941 to 1959, which saw WWII, the recovery from the Great Depression and massive exports to Europe for reconstruction. He de-constructs Pawlenty's fiscal proposals even if we had high growth rates and concludes with great precision how they would not succeed. Bruce Barlett has already crossed the Rubican saying that the United States only had a ten year growth period from President Bush through Clinton. The concern is that Pawlenty will spark more tax-cutting madness from Mitt Romney, who in his 4th incarnation claims we are on the brink of losing our free market system.

** New Jersey's Governor Chris Chrissie is already in trouble with the courts for stealing $1 billion from the public school system. Now he wants to privatize it and has offered public schools in under-performing districts to private corporations. This comes at the same time he has announced a $400 million cut in Medicaid. The disease seems to be spreading throughout the country with the newly elected Republican governors.

**We will all look back on the 2009-2010 Congress as the high water mark of legislative activity. The Senate now literally spends one-third of its time doing nothing. After two and a half years, the Obama Administration still lacks key personnel because of the constant GOP threats at filibustering. Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell had reached a gentlemen's agreement at the end of last term that the GOP would use the filibuster sparingly on nominations to the executive branch. Apparently, this hasn't worked. Also, President Obama has seen the fewest of his judicial nominees approved since the days of Jimmy Carter.

**Alabama has surpassed Arizona with the most restrictive immigration act. Hispanic activists have told immigrants--legal and illegal--to get out of the state because it is so repressive. The state also just passed a "fetal pain" bill, which seriously restricts abortion,letting them join in the roll call of states that are waging a war against the uteri.

**If I'm not mistaken, Louisiana and Tennessee have basically over-ruled Roe v. Wade. Does anyone remember Griswold versus Connecticut? This was a case brought by a middle-class married couple to challenge that state's prohibition against contraceptives. I was very young when the case was decided and contraceptives were legalized by the Supreme Court. Now not only are abortion procedures under attack but with "personhood" bills the whole concept of contraception is being challenged at the state level. Why now?

**Remember the ads that said the most dangerous place for African-Americans is in the womb? Now pro-lifers are running these in Spanish saying the most dangerous place for Hispanics was in the womb. I thought it was Arizona and Alabama. This will be the meme used by the Republicans to try and suppress the Hispanic turnout for Democrats.

**We have the motherlode of e-mails from Sarah Palin's short tenure as Governor thanks to David Corn of Mother Jones. Corn liked the Alaska FOIA laws and decided to file suit during the 2008 campaign for all of Sarah Palin's e-mails. What looked like a relatively cheap and short enterprise only just ended because e-mails had to be acquired from state employees when Palin used her private e-mail accounts. The problem has been that Alaska published the e-mails on paper and provided the news media with all of them, which now have to be scanned for easy access. The highlights of Troopergate, the Bridge to Nowhere and the whole courting of Palin by the McCain campiagn are there. But it's what has been redacted seems to raise questions. The e-mail about Cheney's views on Alaskan oil all blacked out, the potential conflicts of interest by Todd Palin kept quiet, and assorted teasers on potential scandals. One I liked was that the Koch Brothers weren't making enough profit so they threatened Palin that they would cut jobs if she didn't reduce the state's share of their oil revenues. So far, there are no bombshells but they make for an entertaining read.

**The White House has requested that the debt ceiling be raised by July 4th. Now legislators are going to meet three days a week to resolve the issue of what cuts will occur. John Boehner is insisting on double the cuts to the amount raised. The Senate has one team working to propose a combination of cuts and revenue and the Vice President has another group working. Meanwhile China is claiming that we are already defaulting.

** A momentary default will cost the United States $1.2 trillion. But this stuff doesn't seem to faze the GOP in the slightest.

**Leftwing bloggers are writing fast and furious about the GOP's effort to sabotage the economy. I can't say I disagree. I really have not come to any conclusion yet whether the GOP really believes what it says these days or whether it is all a ploy. I am beginning to be concerned with the nutty proposals being made by the presidential candidates and the radical actions by GOP governors that they really might believe their Randian economics. It seems to me that a reporter should try and get these people to lay out the full implicatons of their policies. What kind of America will be left for anyone.

**Some wag got off a great line--"America can not afford the rich and corporations anymore."

"Americans, You've Gotten Too Expensive", Your Corporate Overlords

That's the message Americans are hearing at the Republican townhall meetings and it's just beginning to dawn on a few people. The Koch Brothers must be howling in laughter about naming their creation after a gay sex practice and now seeing these people express astonishment that their teabagger congressmen have voted to dismantle Medicare and Medicaid.

Remember Jack Germond, the veteran political writer. He reappeared in the Daily Beast with an article titled "Is Paul Ryan delusional?" Germond recounts the diasterous days of Newt Gingrich when he thought he could pull off a revolution. What astonishes Germond is the sense that the House Republicans, controlling just one small square of our political system, actually believe no one will notice their destructive behavior and that Americans will simply accept Paul Ryan's fantasy world.

Well, apparently, even with new Koch funded ads praising freshmen Republicans for voting for Ryan's plan,those citizens coming out to the town hall meetings feel they got suckered. Ryan himself had to escape through the back with a police escort and make a getaway in a different car than his own because his constituents were furious with his ideas.

In New Hampshire, ethically challenged Frank Guinta who rode the teabagger faux outrage to victory confronted real outrage at his town hall meeting. A 73-year old asked him whether he was in his right mind when he voted for the Ryan Plan. Guinta, trying to do the new GOP shuffle about how it won't affect seniors, said that these changes would be phased in. Whereupon, one Joe Platte, an eight grader, piped up and asked,"I'm 14, what am I supposed to do?

In North Dakota, a freshman congressman tried to explain to his constituents that everyone over 55 will be covered and protected. He said that the GOP was reforming Medicare to save it. People weren't buying it. A younger constituent said that if the GOP plan was so terrific why doesn't it affect seniors now. This got great applause.

I am absolutely delighted to see that Americans are demanding answers to my question,
"Who is going to insure the elderly under this plan?" So far no Republican has been able to answer this question. But Col. West come up with a uniquely American solution,arrest the constituent asking the question. A liberal blogger happened to ask him this very question, was hauled off, taken to jail and maced.

Paul Krugman in his "Conscience of a Liberal" blog keeps coming back to the Ryan Budget like a mongoose to the cobra. Krugman notes that the question is not that the Ryan Plan reduces the deficit in the right way--on the backs of all Americans except the wealthy--but whether it reduces the deficit at all. Good point. It is simply an ideological exercise to prepare the American people for being absolutely and finally ripped off.

Glenn Kessler writing in today's Washington Post does a fact check on the GOP's talking point that Americans will now have the same health care as members of Congress. Actually, this would be true if the GOP would fund the health exchanges President Obama supports. But in the Ryan Plan, Kessler notes that the government subsidizes the congressional health plans and under the Ryan Plan the whole point was to jettison health costs from government expenses. Kessler, not the first to point this out,notes that the Ryan plan shifts trillions of expenses on the elderly who can least afford it.

In Michigan , "El Duce" Rick Snyder unveiled his educational program. Here he dramatically cuts educational spending in the state, thus weakening the state's educational districts to the point where he will be able to appoint his platoon of emergency managers. The idea is to make the educational system profitable--that is to sell it off like an asset. This remarkable plan has been the brainchild of the De Vos family of Amway fame and the Princes of Blackwater fame, two Christianist families. A similar plan has just been adopted in Florida where we will have a "voucher" educational system, which will defund public education, for one run by profit-making corporations and religious organizations.

Pennsylvania's new Governor Tom Corbett has gutted that state's excellent college system,which was seen by state residents as a magnificent resource. He has told colleges that if they have natural gas under their campuses that they should exploit it to make up for the differences.

Alan Simpson appearing on panels around the country has become quite cranky as people are demanding increased taxes on the wealthy. He rightfully points out that we can confiscate all the wealth of the top 1% and not eliminate our debt. True, but, Alan, we can at least try.

The one who is really enjoying the spectacle of these popular reactions to the Ryan Plan is leftwing radio broadcaster Mike Malloy. Mike, who can be very dyspeptic about the state of the nation, has been enjoying watching all the white-haired teabaggers finally waking up to the fact that ,while they were protesting the Kenyan Muslim President, their corporate handlers have made them commit economic suicide.

And that is what the teabagger phenomenon is --a Ghost Dance to national economic suicide.

Mike Malloy raised a question that should be asked of Mike Huckabee when he declares for the presidency. Malloy pointed out correctly that the religious Right or American evangelicals almost all vote for Republicans, who favor the rich and act against the poor. Now this is against the teachings of the Messiah of these people. So does that mean that everytime the religious Right votes Republican, they are voting themselves into Hell. A theologically good point. This should be asked of former Baptist preacher Mike Huckabee.

What the outrage over the Ryan Plan shows is that some Americans are beginning to under the Republican Party and their corporate overlords believe they are just too expensive. They don't really bother to blame the blacks and the "welfare queens" anymore or the poor or undocumented workers as the cause of our economic woes. It's the American Middle Class. Now get used to it.

Make sure you get your "vouchers" at the door. Think they'll give you one for a time-share?