Deatheaters Swarm D.C.

With President Obama plunging to 50% in the polls and Congress soaring to 8%, the table is being set for the entrance of the most extreme right House in our history. The previous Republican House member had a 92% Conservative Union rating, now you must exceed 95% of be considered a RINO (Republican In Name Only). This past week teabaggers made it clear that former Virginia Governor and Senator George Allen was not fit to run because he was "too moderate" at a 92% rating.

Flying back from Hawaii, President Obama displayed his remarkable cool in telling a pesky news corps that Republicans will be playing to their base for the next couple months before they settle down and actually get serious. It's a good lesson to everyone who is panicking to try and maintain some calm as the insanity hits the fan.

The Signpost Up Ahead says you are about to enter "The Twilight Zone". Just a sample of the attitudes of congresscritters awaiting the President. 53% of all Republicans believe there is no evidence the earth is warming. Over 70% of the tea party believe this. Of the 38% who still believe in global warming, only 16% believe humans have anything to do with it. In 2007 (you read that right), over 62% of Republicans said that solid evidence existed for global warming. In today's GOP, over 50% are creationists and do not believe in the science of evolution.

FYI-- Believe or not the idea of Cap and Trade was originally a Republican idea as was regulating carbon emissions. This coming House wants to neutralize the EPA's efforts to regulate carbom emissions.

The new non-rationality will be on full display this week. Incoming freshmen will be lectured about the Constitution by Fat Tony Scalia. Tony just said that the 14th Amendment does not guarantee that women have any constitutional rights against discrimination. The American Taliban will be proud. Tomorrow the House will read the full constitution, if John Boehner doesn't confuse it with the Declaration of Independence. I think it will come as a shock because it won't be the Articles of Confederation.

Just an aside--Don't you find it odd the America's leading guru on Constitutional Originalism is a member of the Catholic secret society "Opus Dei"? Do you think maybe this clouds Scalia's thinking?

If we're lucky this year, the Christian fundamentalists will turn out to be right--that the world is going to end on May 21,2011. The sad thing is that there is virtually no biblical basis for rapture--either the word or concept. All these folks will be left all alone.

Remember how Republicans spent the last two years complaining about the thousands of pages of laws the Democrats passed. They've gone to the Ernest Hemingway School of Legal Drafting. On the 12th, they will introduce two, 2-page bills to repeal all of healthcare. See if you run on dismantling all of government, you don't need alot of words.

What is fantastic about this move--not only it's direct slap at the President before his State of the Union Address--is how the new Republicans suspended all rules about accounting for the repeal's cost. According to the CBO, which was used as a hammer against the Democrats for the last two years,repeal would add $143 billion to the deficit through 2019 and over a $1 trillion during the life of the bill. The Republican leadership waived any mention of the cost.

In future discussions of any bills, they have moved to accept figures from other sources than the CBO. So be prepared to hear the authoritative numbers from the Heritage Foundation and the Petroleum Institute in the future.

The Democrats, who are more liberal now than before with the defeat of all the Blue Dogs, will be introducing amendments to the bill trying to put Republicans on record as against the most popular aspects of the reform--like insuring adult children on a parent's account until 26 , eliminating exclusion of prior conditions, and eliminating the lifetime caps for coverage. The Democrats failed the first time around to focus on these aspects of the bill and instead opposition was really based on the sausage-making process of the legislation.

Democrats are being a little smug because this repeal will not pass the Senate or the president's desk. But the Republicans want to establish the optics that government is crooked and can not work to solve problems. They do not care about governing but campaigning. There is no intention to have any Republicans do any heavy lifting. They just don't care. They are not that into you--sorry.

The new House will zero in on the money being spent to enforce the Food Safety Bill, which the last time I looked passed the Senate with 75 votes. The first reform of our food safety system since the Great Depression was thought to be way overdue.

Darrell ("Grand Theft Auto") Issa hit all the talk shows about how President Obama is the most corrupt President in history. Wow, that was quick--less than two years and he made another record. Issa, who has a record of stealing cars during his wayward youth, plans to investigate the $1 trillion "walking around money" Obama received with the TARP funds, which he forgot was passed during George W. Bush, something that ignited the Tea Party Movement. He has to keep the false narrative alive. Watch for more racial dogwhistles this year--"walking around money" being one of them.

Unfortunately,by the time Issa starts on TARP all the money will have been paid back to the Treasury. But, never fear, Issa wants to examine the vast $1 trillion waste of the stimulus package. Only it was about $800 billion--over half of it was the largest middle class tax break in history. And the Administration has a website where you can follow the stimulus money. Undoubtedly, there will be a couple of wasteful projects, which will be highlighted 24/7 on Fox News. Issa claims the stimulus did not create or save any jobs. He says that an example of waste was that it took $175,000 to create a teacher's job. So Obama's great act of corruption so far is hiring teachers--who are target number 2 this year.

Issa wants to investigate why Eric Holder ("Black man") hasn't arrested Julien Assange yet as a terrorist. What's fascinating to me is to see the conservative movement drop all pretense of law. Maybe Julien Assange hasn't been arrested yet because no one can figure out what law he broke.

Issa also wants to investigate waste in Afghanistan. One should welcome this and urge him to broaden his investigation into the years of waste in Iraq. Issa claims he wants to examine the Inspector Generals of the executive branch and claims he can save $250 billion a year in fraud alone. All he has to do is look across the Potomac at the Pentagon and he'll make his quota. But that's not going to happen.

Issa also invited all the corporate lobbyists in to list all the regulations they want eliminated. This includes the pharma companies, banks, oil and gas and banks.

The Republicans are not playing anymore. Instead of political operatives,the House leadership is hiring corporate lobbyists with financial experience as chief aides. They have also saddled the new Tea Party members with chiefs of staff who were prominent lobbyists on "K" street.

Corporate romancing is also being done at the Presidential level. President Obama is thinking of hiring MorganStanley's Vice President William Daley as his chief of staff. Before the congressional recess, President Obama met with leading CEO to try and persuade them to invest some of their $1.75 trillion in creating jobs in America. The counter offer seems to be American corporations aiming for a tax holiday for the additional $1.5 trillion in profits that they have squirreled away in tax havens.

As our corporations experience a V-shaped recovery, compared to the L-shaped recvery for the rest of us,I've noticed a new corporate refrain. We hear about "our international corporations" such as Dubai-based Halliburton and other American firms who have relocated overseas. The CEO of Chevron had the chutzpah the other day to talk about a $5 gallon of gas this year because "The Obama Administration is not fulfilling America's role to increase the global supply of oil." He was referring to the Obama Administration's ban on offshore drilling in light of the BP disaster. In other words, Drill Baby, Drill is now being couched as American doing its part for the well-being of planet earth. Quite clever, really.

Rep. Steve King, christianist from Iowa, has been made the chairman of the Immigration Committee. This is too rich since King only likes white people. King has been chatting up the possibility of investigating the payments to black farmers as "reparations", the New Panther Party, and ACORN's role in electing President Obama. Here he seems to crossing wires with other Republicans, who share his concerns and want to grill Eric Holder on these and why he's not enforcing the Voting Act for white people. I'm not making this up.

The other Rep. King from New York wants to grill Eric Holder on his trials of terrorists and why Holder is lax on terrorism or whatever crimes the attorney-general is committing.

I suggest the new House Republicans get Dan Burton back shooting at watermelons so he can prove Barack Hussein Obama really did kill Vin Foster.

Thomas Sowell, Hoover Institute scholar and black libertarian, shows how depraved people on the right--particularly once respected thinkers--have become in their thinking and writing. He claims President Obama hates America, taking his cues from Distort D'Newsa, and says that President Obama wants Sasha and Malia to grow up under Sharia Law. We are talking here about a man who has had many moments of insights and a prolific publishing career. Thomas Sowell used to be considered a nerd and a grind. Now he sounds like Glenn Beck.

Meanwhile I agree with Glenn Beck. America can not survive if it doesn't make fundamental changes. And the Pentagon budget should be cut in half. He is hyping his shows for the year, which indicate to me that he has had many GOP operatives writing his talking points to set the rhetorical tone for this year's attack on the President, his family and the rest of America. Apparently,Beck is having ratings problems with his radio show and now has been dropped from the New York market.

If you haven't see Elia Kazan "Face in the Crowd" with Andy Griffith as Lonesome Roads, make a New Year's Resolution to see it. The suggestion by Keith Olbermann that Beck is Lonesome is probably Keith's greatest contribution to our political understanding in many a year.

Elizabeth Warren is chugging along with the creation of the Consumer Protection Agency and has enlisted the help of Mrs. Petraeus, wife of General,to work on behalf of the military people who get ripped off by scam artists and car salesmen. The House is slated to go after the Consumer Protection Agency too. I perverse want to see them pull a Joe McCarthy on Elizabeth Warren, America's sweetheart. The contrast of thuggish men grilling her at a Congressional Hearing would sink the Republicans.

By the way has any one seen the hair coloring of Republicans lately. Jim DeMint has become a red-head, Darryl Issa has adopted the dark black Reagan look and then , of course Lindsey Graham wears too much make-up. But something has happened since eletion in the cosmetics department.

Afternoon coffee at the Last Manatee-Fall Edition

I decided to clean out my junk e-mail file this morning. 840 out of 850 were offers for Viagra and Cialis. Several of the remaining 10 were offers from Russian women. And only three were travel ads. It's not coincidental that I discovered the last time I did this that all sex e-mails were generated because of 'cookies" left by rightwing web sites.

On the book shelf this morning are two dreadful reads. The first is Dinesh D'Souza's The Roots of Obama's Rage, Regenery (2010). Dinesh channels his inner V.S. Naipul but only comes up with his own racism. Our President can't be understood unless you understand he's a Luo tribesmen with an anti-Colonial mentality. Dinesh travels territory I remember so well--Franz Fanon and Amilcar Cabral--and only comes up with something truly incomprensible. P.S. I voted for Obama particuly because of his Luo background. I always found the Luo to be one of the best technocratic tribes in Africa. And we sure needed one. Dinesh seems a little confused about the United States' historic attitudes toward colonialism. Born in Mumbai, D'Souza forgets that we didn't look kindly even on British colonialism.

The second is Tears of a Clown: Glenn Beck and the Teabagging of America by Washington Post's Dana Milbank (Doubleday, 2010). Apologies to Dana. Dreadful should refer to the subject. Milbank takes you on a tour of Beck's fixation with Woodrow Wilson, Adolf Hitler, and Barack Obama as well as his dependence of Mormonapocalyptic thinking and John Birch Society conspiracy theories. Thrill to the government's plan to put all conservatives in FEMA camps and the imminent demise of the United States because progressives are planning their Reichstag moment. The book raises the issue of what today's writer should focus on. Was it the advance to get one's kid through college? Was it that this would be an easy bestseller? But I wonder whether someone with Dana Milbank's talent should really exhaust his energies with this guy. I know it's very tempting. Anyone reading this blog knows I spend too much attention on this lunatic.

Shame on White women. The Christian Science Monitor reports that the enthusiasm gap among Democrats is rapidly ending. African-Americans and Hispanics are roaring back to levels usually unknown in mid-terms. The younger voter is coming back. But the one sector of our society in both parties not enthused by the elections are the White women. If there is one election where women's rights are truly threatened, it's the 2010 midterms. Reproductive rights, even the use of birth control, mammograms (unbelievably),single women teaching in schools, equal pay for equal work, childcare, child nurition, child healthcare--let alone adult healthcare. This is all up for grabs this year. Democrats are beginning to run ads against the slew of candidates against rape in the case of incest and rape--a no brainer in the rational world. You don't have to be enthused, just vote.

The DNC reported its monthly take, which was its best month so far--topping $16 million in small donations, 90% of which are $25. But the shadowy non-profits are laundering over $100 million from unknown donors. This is several times the amount in past elections thanks to the Citizens United decision.

James Clyburn's House numbers are Democrats retain with 234. That's like 30 more than Nate the Great. Clyburn pointed to several unexpected Democratic pick-ups in the offing. Keep that number in mind, knowing that he has to put the best spin on it.

Queen Meg canceled her next debate with Governor Moonbeam. She is following this year's Republican tradition of avoiding debates, especially if her polling goes down every time she opens her mouth.

I received another fund-raising letter from Sharron Angle this weekend. It said that Jim DeMint would be there for her when she comes to Washington. How horrifying is that! The neo-confederate (that's not a smear but an accurate description) DeMint this past week declared himself King of the United States. He wants prior approval of every bill before the Senate or he won't allow it to be debated or discussed. In a sick way, he can do this through a misuse of Senate rules. So we don't even have to a filibuster threat anymore.

Meanwhile Super-Christian Tom Coburn has put a hold on the $1 billion aid to Haiti because he fears that $5 million might be wasted. I guess he changed his mind since the Iraq War which saw billions on pallets disappear into the Mesopotamian night.

Remember how in Iraq and Afghanistan we were supposed to increase the ability of the State Department and USAID to handle post-war issues to faciliate a drop in our military presence. Apparently, Congress didn't get the memo--Republicans are trying to gut such aid because they still don't like the State Department or USAID. For once, Michael Gerson wrote a sensible column explaining how counterproductive such actions are.

You'll recall my cheers when Obama's Justice Department decided to settle the Indian Trust case, which has gone on for a generation. Big problem, the Senate doesn't want to pay. Well, not really, Senators have told Indian groups they want to pay but it's combined with the settlement of the claim by African-American farmers, which also has gone on a generation. The Senators told the Indian groups they didn't want to pay the black farmers because they thought too many of the cliams were fraudulent.

It used to be that the debate over minimum wage was whether to raise it or keep it at the same level. Now we have a new talking point--eliminate it. This is sweeping tea baggers and candidates like Linda McMahon in Connecticut. Joe Miller in Arkansas argues it's unconstitutional. I guess he never heard of the "general welfare" wording in the Constitution.

And Senator Feingold really is in political trouble.