++The United States has danced around the Armenian genocide for years, fearing alienating Turkey. Every year there is a new excuse.
++This year the Washington correspondent for Haaretz said he had it from a good source who had it from another good source that President Obama would use the G word in commemorating the death of 1.5 million Armenians 100 years ago.
++Yesterday President Obama commemorated the occasion and whiffed. He did not use the G word. A terrible disappointment.
++ Mean while Rand Paul caught people's attention when he referred to John McCain and Lindsey Graham as being "Obama's Lapdogs" backing his every move. He said they support Hillary Clinton's War in Libya ( something else to hang on Hillary) and Obama's bombing of Syria.
++Ed Kilgore was intrigued whether Paul is gong to advocate a more anti-interventionist policy abroad. I doubt it. He just wanted to get his licks in on McCain and Graham. Graham said that Paul would be worse than Obama on foreign policy.
++Jeb Bush made some intriguing statements. He said he wouldn't do anything different on the Iraq invasion of his brother and he said the "best thing Obama has done" is to expand NSA data-gathering ability.
++Senator Corker doubts the Authorization to use Military Force can get very far with this administration. McCain fears that it unduly restricts the Commander-in-Chief. But somehow the Iran bill doesn't.
++Former Mossad Director Efraim Haley told Bibi to bug out of interfering with the Iran nuke talks. He criticized Bibi for abandoning diplomacy for a "pure military approach." He called the situation "regrettable". He said that consequences of de-railing the talks would be untold.
++He called on Israel to heal whatever needs to be healed in its relationship with the United States.
++The wars over TPP have intensified. President Obama criticized Elizabeth Warren over misconstruing the content of the trade agreement.
++This is an argument that will run through the primaries.
++Gina McCarthy of EPA said the new rules for the ozone will be done by October. The question is at what level the scientists put the mark.
++Rick Scott is suing President obama in order to get the Medicaid extension money without actually extending Medicaid. It seems he has a huge budget shortfall and his tax cuts for the wealthy are in jeopardy. And lo and behold,the missing hole in the budget can be filled with the Medicaid money. Presto Change-o.
++At the Daily Beast,Mike Tomasky takes a peek at Clinton Cash and says Hillary isn't a crook. He takes the case of a contribution from a Colombian businessman to the Clinton Foundation and finds out that the author has his timeline all wrong. Hillary hadn't even started running for President in the 2008 election yet and she ran across the Free Trade Agreement with Colombia. Then fast forward she's defeated and hadn't become Secretary of State yet. President Obama wants to use the Colombia Free Trade agreement as a test case for strings labor and environmental requirements. Then Hillary supports it. That's beyond a stretch that she was influenced by the donation some years before.
++Expect alot of these things with this book. Remember his great revelation that Al Gore, while he campaigned against climate change,he received royalties from a zinc mine on his property. Actually years before he did but the mine had closed.
++Mother Jones has a piece entitled "Raiders of the Lost Archives" by Tim Murphy about the GOP opposition team descending on Little Rock Arkansas to find of what remains from the series of bogus scandals from the past. Murphy writes about meeting some of Clinton's old adversaries and finds out they are either bored with the subject or enthusiastically endorse Hillary.
++Josh Marshall seems to be challenging Steve Benen for this year's champion at finding out how GOP candidates lie. Remember Steven earlier on in 2012 discovered that Mitt Romney lied about everything and he detailed this to great credit to his work. Josh has zeroed in on Ted Cruz as a "Stone Cold Liar" pointing out that Ted Cruz never contacted John McCain about holding hearings on guns at military bases. McCain later had fun with this. Remember John thinks Cruz and Paul are a bunch of "whacko birds". Go for it, Josh.
Showing posts with label Rick Scott. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rick Scott. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Sunday Clean Up
Sorry about the spacing of the previous post but Google must have hit Santorum.
++We got to see Florida's Governor Rick Scott over the last few days. He said the next president would be the winner of the Straw Poll so I guess that means it's Herman Cain, who has an 8% chance of living another 5 years. But Rick is embroiled in another controversy--the drug testing of people receiving unemployment benefits. 93% of the first batch passed the test. But now it's come to the attention of the state that the drug testing alone costs more than they would save if they suspended payment to those who failed the test.
++If I have refrained from my Israel-Palestine post because I was stunned by Rick perry's invasion of the UN turf to argue that the American position should be for a Greater Israel, making him more Zionist than the Israelis. Bill Clinton opined that Perry's position was in harmony with the Bible Belt. Perry also appeared at the UN with two members of the Knesset, who represent the settlers. Not to be outdone, Romney said that there could be not an inch separating the United States and Israel. Meanwhile, President Obama was trying to bail out Bibi, who got himself into a terrible mess. Obama said the United States would veto the Palestinian state at the Security Council but Abbas' speech at the UN drew cheers on the West Bank. Netanyahu claimed to want talks and, if course, attacked the United Nations. But, all is not lost, the United States and the EU have been working behind the scenes to hammer out a plan for renewed talks and a deadline for completion of a deal. Hopefully, something will be agreed to or else Israel and the United States will stand isolated in the time of the Arab Spring.
++Much has been made out of flagging Jewish support for Obama. It's hard to believe it could come from not backing Israel, despite all the propaganda. Obama gave Israel the highest increase in military assistance in decades, provided the new missile defense system,allowed the Army Corps of Engineers to work along the Gaza border to build structure to prevent further tunneling and it was revealed last week provided Israel with bunker-busting bombs, something the Bush Administration wouldn't do. The reason the Bush Adinistration won't do it was because of their fear that the technology would end up in China. Parse that one out.
++ Color me cynical but I can't seem to get worked up about the possibility that there might be a government shut-down this week. Talk about cynics, the House GOP passed a continuing resolution needed to keep the government open but with cuts to the auto industry to offset FEMA funding. Talk about the original job killers! And the Senate Democrats didn't fall for it. So the mud-wrestling continues tomorrow.
++The Telegraph (U.K.) reported that Europe is preparing a multi-trillion dollar package to save the Euro and create a firewall around Greece, Portugal and Ireland. The United States has been pleading with Angela Merkel to finally step up to the plate, warning her about the collapse of the stock market. One commentator noted that for all the parochial issues being debated in the United States, this will result in something bigger than Pearl Harbor and make all the nonsense here moot. Remember the Great Depression started in the U.K. The World Bank and the IMF is warning almost on an hourly basis that the world stands on the edge of the abyss.
++While President Obama continues his campaign for the American Jobs Bill, Republicans on the Hill are saying nothing is going to happen for 14 months. They are just running out the clock. It is a stunning lack of responsibility. But so far Republicans have not been penalized for their obstructionism. And polling for the House shows that 2012 will be a tough time for Democrats trying to get back on top. The Greenberg poll shows that Democrats are being hit with the negative approval of Congress as well and that while their chances are better than the Republicans in the 60 swing districts it's not a slam dunk.
++Yes, the great Mariano Rivera did save the game that clinched the Division Title for the Yankees. But now that he's broken the record and become immortal, I will wait until the championship series to tune in again.
++We got to see Florida's Governor Rick Scott over the last few days. He said the next president would be the winner of the Straw Poll so I guess that means it's Herman Cain, who has an 8% chance of living another 5 years. But Rick is embroiled in another controversy--the drug testing of people receiving unemployment benefits. 93% of the first batch passed the test. But now it's come to the attention of the state that the drug testing alone costs more than they would save if they suspended payment to those who failed the test.
++If I have refrained from my Israel-Palestine post because I was stunned by Rick perry's invasion of the UN turf to argue that the American position should be for a Greater Israel, making him more Zionist than the Israelis. Bill Clinton opined that Perry's position was in harmony with the Bible Belt. Perry also appeared at the UN with two members of the Knesset, who represent the settlers. Not to be outdone, Romney said that there could be not an inch separating the United States and Israel. Meanwhile, President Obama was trying to bail out Bibi, who got himself into a terrible mess. Obama said the United States would veto the Palestinian state at the Security Council but Abbas' speech at the UN drew cheers on the West Bank. Netanyahu claimed to want talks and, if course, attacked the United Nations. But, all is not lost, the United States and the EU have been working behind the scenes to hammer out a plan for renewed talks and a deadline for completion of a deal. Hopefully, something will be agreed to or else Israel and the United States will stand isolated in the time of the Arab Spring.
++Much has been made out of flagging Jewish support for Obama. It's hard to believe it could come from not backing Israel, despite all the propaganda. Obama gave Israel the highest increase in military assistance in decades, provided the new missile defense system,allowed the Army Corps of Engineers to work along the Gaza border to build structure to prevent further tunneling and it was revealed last week provided Israel with bunker-busting bombs, something the Bush Administration wouldn't do. The reason the Bush Adinistration won't do it was because of their fear that the technology would end up in China. Parse that one out.
++ Color me cynical but I can't seem to get worked up about the possibility that there might be a government shut-down this week. Talk about cynics, the House GOP passed a continuing resolution needed to keep the government open but with cuts to the auto industry to offset FEMA funding. Talk about the original job killers! And the Senate Democrats didn't fall for it. So the mud-wrestling continues tomorrow.
++The Telegraph (U.K.) reported that Europe is preparing a multi-trillion dollar package to save the Euro and create a firewall around Greece, Portugal and Ireland. The United States has been pleading with Angela Merkel to finally step up to the plate, warning her about the collapse of the stock market. One commentator noted that for all the parochial issues being debated in the United States, this will result in something bigger than Pearl Harbor and make all the nonsense here moot. Remember the Great Depression started in the U.K. The World Bank and the IMF is warning almost on an hourly basis that the world stands on the edge of the abyss.
++While President Obama continues his campaign for the American Jobs Bill, Republicans on the Hill are saying nothing is going to happen for 14 months. They are just running out the clock. It is a stunning lack of responsibility. But so far Republicans have not been penalized for their obstructionism. And polling for the House shows that 2012 will be a tough time for Democrats trying to get back on top. The Greenberg poll shows that Democrats are being hit with the negative approval of Congress as well and that while their chances are better than the Republicans in the 60 swing districts it's not a slam dunk.
++Yes, the great Mariano Rivera did save the game that clinched the Division Title for the Yankees. But now that he's broken the record and become immortal, I will wait until the championship series to tune in again.
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Wing-Ding News from the States
To get a handle on the "ignoramitocracy" governing our states, I suggest reading Ross MacDonald's 1947 detective novel Blue City. The novel chronicles corruption in a small Midwest town and highlights the intersection of the business and crime communities. MacDonald writes an imitation of the local Chamber of Commerce's attack on trade unionists as communists, provocateurs and of course, thugs. Meanwhile the reformer Mayor as well as the initially good-intentioned are being blackmailed by the crime bosses.
I gave up waiting for Carl Hiaissen and so recommend Dailykos' poster "perplexed" for regular updates on Rick Scott's Florida. "perplexed" captures the mundane lunacy of the new governor such as deciding the Agriculture Department should take control of school lunches because the prohibition of chocolate milk might hurt Florida's dairy farmers. Or Rick Scott deciding to invest millions in enlarging the port of Miami to capture the traffic coming from the Panama Canal. But others have been capturing the highlights also. Besides gutting the school systems and giving amazing tax benefits to corporations--all in the name of cutting the deficit, Scott also wants to close all public hospitals. He also wants to privatize Medicaid for the poorer citizens. He also has announced random drug tests for public employees and welfare recipients. They don't call him Sick Rott for nothing.
Before we ascribe ideological motives to him, it's best to remember that Rick Scott is a bonafide criminal. His fortune was made by Medicare fraud and he paid the largest fine--$1.5 billion--in United States history for fraud. So it should not surprise us that the company that would conduct the random drug tests would be his wife's ,Solantic. Steve Benen of Washington Monthly caught this and noted that the same "Solantic" company would immediately reap the benefits of any privatization of Medicare. Apparently,this Rick Scott created company took advantage of the 2005 Medicare pilot project on privatization. So now they are all set up to reap the profits.
Rick Scott's Florida will also prohibit public employees from purchasing health insurance that could pay for abortions. Now there is a larger move in all of Florida to prohibit all citizens from buying health insurance to cover abortions. The war against the uteri continues.
Then we travel back to Wisconsin. A Wisconsin court had ordered a stay on the Attorney General from publishing the new union-busting law because of complaints it violated the open meeting law. Not to worry, Senate leader muscles the non-partisan Legislative Bureau to publish it. So Governor Walker proclaims its now officials even though it has not been officially published by the Attorney General as required by law. Forget the issue at stake, the thuggery by the state legislators and Walker during this whole process has been amazing. Now the Legislative Bureau claims the bill isn't official, the Fitzgerald brothers, who control the Senate and the Assembly, proclaim it is. And the Governor says he is going to enforce it immediately. I like the rule of law also.
The Associated Press finally got all the e-mails sent to Walker during this debate. Walker had claimed that the "vast majority" of them supported his position. An AP investigative report found that in fact the majority opposed him. But one of the e-mails was very interesting. A state prosecutor from Indiana urged him to fake an assassination attempt so as to smear the unions. Walker claims he never read this e-mail but the prosecutor was discretely told to resign.
A University of Wisconsin professor named William Cronon wrote a blog critical of Scott Walker's new bill but suggested a "moderate" alternative. The Republicans are demanded all of the professor's e-mails, claiming that he was tantamount to lobbying and that would violate the conditions of his employment since he is a state employee. Prof. Cronon sent a letter about this to Talking Points Memo , which kicked off a firestorm in the state. The Republicans claimed that such actions by the professor--mind you--had a "chilling effect" on legislators trying to get at the truth.
Wisconsin voters have passed the 50% mark for signatures to recall the 8 Republican Senators. Top of the list is our man Randy Hopper, whose mistress now works for the state and he no longer lives in his district. The story of the mistress has legs. Apparently she got a job and recieved a $12,000 increase over the previous person who held this. Not great advertisement for a budget cut debate. It gets worse. She never went through the state procedure to apply for a job. Poor Randy. Now everyone in his district knows all the dirty details.
The race for the Supreme Court position in Wisconsin has really heated up. The winner of the April 5th vote will be the deciding vote on the whole union-busting bill. Scott Walker's candidate is a sitting judge David Presser, who drew attention this week for screaming at the female Chief Justice "you're a bitch" and "I'm going to destroy you." Opponents of Presser unleashed a barrage of attack ads that made note of his failure to investigate the sexual molestation of two children by a Catholic priest. To avoid scandal for the Catholic Church,Presser went to the bishop, who quietly had the priest transferred within Wisconsin. And the priest continued his wanton ways.
Of course, the Senator who spearheaded the bill that killed the ability of children to seek redress from the Catholic Church was none other than our man Randy Hopper. With the Fitzgeralds in charge of the Senate and Assembly and the Fitzgerald brothers drafting their dad to get the top job of the State Police,you get the picture of corruption gone out of control.
Do the Koch Brothers bidding much, Scott? Remember Republicans everywhere are against regulation. But Scott Walker seems very concerned to tighten the regulations against wind energy. In essence, his new regulations--the toughest in America--cancel the wind development turbines planned by one of the largest wind turbine companies in the country--Invenery. Besides refusing the high-speed rail project, Walker's latest move kills another $1.5 billion in the state. Walker also wants to eliminate Wisconsin's state target of having 5% of the state's energy pprovided by alternative sources. But he can still sell off the state's power plants in non-competitive bidding.
New Hampshire is now debating a union-busting law, which exceeds the demonic dimensions of Wisconsin. Reading the law, I had to wonder whether these mental midgets really want a school system and government where employees can be fired at will? Can you imagine having to plan on a year to year basis never knowing who your employees are? Luckily, democratic Governor Lynch promises to veto this nonsense.
Meanwhile in the state of Maine,teabag Governor LePage wants to strip a labor mural from the Department of Labor because the state views business and labor equally. He also wants to rename the conference rooms in the building so they do not reflect a bias to labor. The mural was done by a Maine artist, who won a 2008 competition for the project. Since citizens always liked it,they have raised questions whether it is legal to move it.
There are two states where property taxes have been lingering political issues for years--Maine and New Jersey. With Teabag Le Page and Chris Chrissie promising to address this during their campaigns, we should note that in both states property taxes have increased.
For those of us planning on medical exiles because of the state of our national healthcare system, we welcome the new that Vermont's House passed a single-payer plan. The news that Vermont will adopt a single-payer healthcare system has caused 20,000 doctors to volunteer to move to Vermont to work. Perhaps, there is hope yet.
The hero of our detective novel falls in love with a local woman and must decide whether to move away for a fresh start. He decides to stay in the corrupt city to clean it up. But remember that was written before Ross MacDonald became realistic.
I gave up waiting for Carl Hiaissen and so recommend Dailykos' poster "perplexed" for regular updates on Rick Scott's Florida. "perplexed" captures the mundane lunacy of the new governor such as deciding the Agriculture Department should take control of school lunches because the prohibition of chocolate milk might hurt Florida's dairy farmers. Or Rick Scott deciding to invest millions in enlarging the port of Miami to capture the traffic coming from the Panama Canal. But others have been capturing the highlights also. Besides gutting the school systems and giving amazing tax benefits to corporations--all in the name of cutting the deficit, Scott also wants to close all public hospitals. He also wants to privatize Medicaid for the poorer citizens. He also has announced random drug tests for public employees and welfare recipients. They don't call him Sick Rott for nothing.
Before we ascribe ideological motives to him, it's best to remember that Rick Scott is a bonafide criminal. His fortune was made by Medicare fraud and he paid the largest fine--$1.5 billion--in United States history for fraud. So it should not surprise us that the company that would conduct the random drug tests would be his wife's ,Solantic. Steve Benen of Washington Monthly caught this and noted that the same "Solantic" company would immediately reap the benefits of any privatization of Medicare. Apparently,this Rick Scott created company took advantage of the 2005 Medicare pilot project on privatization. So now they are all set up to reap the profits.
Rick Scott's Florida will also prohibit public employees from purchasing health insurance that could pay for abortions. Now there is a larger move in all of Florida to prohibit all citizens from buying health insurance to cover abortions. The war against the uteri continues.
Then we travel back to Wisconsin. A Wisconsin court had ordered a stay on the Attorney General from publishing the new union-busting law because of complaints it violated the open meeting law. Not to worry, Senate leader muscles the non-partisan Legislative Bureau to publish it. So Governor Walker proclaims its now officials even though it has not been officially published by the Attorney General as required by law. Forget the issue at stake, the thuggery by the state legislators and Walker during this whole process has been amazing. Now the Legislative Bureau claims the bill isn't official, the Fitzgerald brothers, who control the Senate and the Assembly, proclaim it is. And the Governor says he is going to enforce it immediately. I like the rule of law also.
The Associated Press finally got all the e-mails sent to Walker during this debate. Walker had claimed that the "vast majority" of them supported his position. An AP investigative report found that in fact the majority opposed him. But one of the e-mails was very interesting. A state prosecutor from Indiana urged him to fake an assassination attempt so as to smear the unions. Walker claims he never read this e-mail but the prosecutor was discretely told to resign.
A University of Wisconsin professor named William Cronon wrote a blog critical of Scott Walker's new bill but suggested a "moderate" alternative. The Republicans are demanded all of the professor's e-mails, claiming that he was tantamount to lobbying and that would violate the conditions of his employment since he is a state employee. Prof. Cronon sent a letter about this to Talking Points Memo , which kicked off a firestorm in the state. The Republicans claimed that such actions by the professor--mind you--had a "chilling effect" on legislators trying to get at the truth.
Wisconsin voters have passed the 50% mark for signatures to recall the 8 Republican Senators. Top of the list is our man Randy Hopper, whose mistress now works for the state and he no longer lives in his district. The story of the mistress has legs. Apparently she got a job and recieved a $12,000 increase over the previous person who held this. Not great advertisement for a budget cut debate. It gets worse. She never went through the state procedure to apply for a job. Poor Randy. Now everyone in his district knows all the dirty details.
The race for the Supreme Court position in Wisconsin has really heated up. The winner of the April 5th vote will be the deciding vote on the whole union-busting bill. Scott Walker's candidate is a sitting judge David Presser, who drew attention this week for screaming at the female Chief Justice "you're a bitch" and "I'm going to destroy you." Opponents of Presser unleashed a barrage of attack ads that made note of his failure to investigate the sexual molestation of two children by a Catholic priest. To avoid scandal for the Catholic Church,Presser went to the bishop, who quietly had the priest transferred within Wisconsin. And the priest continued his wanton ways.
Of course, the Senator who spearheaded the bill that killed the ability of children to seek redress from the Catholic Church was none other than our man Randy Hopper. With the Fitzgeralds in charge of the Senate and Assembly and the Fitzgerald brothers drafting their dad to get the top job of the State Police,you get the picture of corruption gone out of control.
Do the Koch Brothers bidding much, Scott? Remember Republicans everywhere are against regulation. But Scott Walker seems very concerned to tighten the regulations against wind energy. In essence, his new regulations--the toughest in America--cancel the wind development turbines planned by one of the largest wind turbine companies in the country--Invenery. Besides refusing the high-speed rail project, Walker's latest move kills another $1.5 billion in the state. Walker also wants to eliminate Wisconsin's state target of having 5% of the state's energy pprovided by alternative sources. But he can still sell off the state's power plants in non-competitive bidding.
New Hampshire is now debating a union-busting law, which exceeds the demonic dimensions of Wisconsin. Reading the law, I had to wonder whether these mental midgets really want a school system and government where employees can be fired at will? Can you imagine having to plan on a year to year basis never knowing who your employees are? Luckily, democratic Governor Lynch promises to veto this nonsense.
Meanwhile in the state of Maine,teabag Governor LePage wants to strip a labor mural from the Department of Labor because the state views business and labor equally. He also wants to rename the conference rooms in the building so they do not reflect a bias to labor. The mural was done by a Maine artist, who won a 2008 competition for the project. Since citizens always liked it,they have raised questions whether it is legal to move it.
There are two states where property taxes have been lingering political issues for years--Maine and New Jersey. With Teabag Le Page and Chris Chrissie promising to address this during their campaigns, we should note that in both states property taxes have increased.
For those of us planning on medical exiles because of the state of our national healthcare system, we welcome the new that Vermont's House passed a single-payer plan. The news that Vermont will adopt a single-payer healthcare system has caused 20,000 doctors to volunteer to move to Vermont to work. Perhaps, there is hope yet.
The hero of our detective novel falls in love with a local woman and must decide whether to move away for a fresh start. He decides to stay in the corrupt city to clean it up. But remember that was written before Ross MacDonald became realistic.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Isn't It Grand, Isn't It Fine
If you want a good overview of the politics going on in the states right now, Rachel Maddow is in a groove. Last night's show highlighted the bizarre legislation in Michigan. Governor Snyder, who had vowed not to be a partisan,has raised taxes on the middle class and seniors, while cutting corporate taxes. His budget proposal would impoverish local and city governments. Not to worry, the Governor would be allowed to declare a "fiscal crisis" and appoint an overseer or corporation to run the beleaguered municipality. It's the most recent version of creating "Company Towns". The corporation or overseer then could remove from office any democratically elected officials. Sounds a little unconstitutional but that was in the old days.
To vent, I listen to Mike Malloy Truthseeker on progressive radio stations. The other night he raised an issue about Wisconsin that totally escaped me. Since his broadcast, leftwing blogs have picked it up. Scott Walker, the governor, talks to Jesus Christ every day in the morning and Walker says that Jesus tells him what to do--literally. Jesus Christ told him when he was a younger man to get a job at IBM even though he didn't want to. The same applies to his abandoning his last campaign for governor--Jesus told him to quit. The son of a Baptist minister Scott Walker revealed these sensitive moments to the Christian Businessmen's Group. He is only doing on the budget bill what Jesus wants. Interesting, however, that all the Christian denominations have come out against his budger repair bill. How does this square with what Jesus has been telling him?
This Saturday Wisconsin farmers will be riding their tractors and combines into Madison to protest the Budget Repair Bill. It's not union solidarity we're seeing here--well,some of it is. The farmers are pissed that the bill repeals a state-run insurance scheme that was created by progressive Republicans--remember them--during the insurance frauds of the early twentieth century. The plan pays for itself and has no budgetary consequences. Older farmers depend on this program. The other bone the farmers have is that their wives supplement the family income and keep the small farms going by being teachers or nurses. The budget repair bill would lead to greater unemployment.
The Republicans don't seem to think the Wisconsin recall laws are legal. Interesting. Efforts to mount recall campaigns are picking up steam and there are enough signatures to recall at least one Republican. Eight are targeted by this campaign.
Reversing Wisconsin's entire history, Republican legislators passed a law that regulates who can come in and out of the Capitol building and it warrants metal detactors and the usual security apparatus. To outsiders this would seem normal but it is a source of pride to people in the state that Wisconsin keeps its capitol open to everyone 24/7.
It turns out that the report of some $7 million in damages to the Capitol was bogus and put out by the Right to defame the demonstrators. Anyway the Painters' Union offered to repair any damage done for free.
Americans for Prosperity, the Koch-funded astroturf organization run by Abramoff's old lobbying buddy, held a bus tour of the state. Joe the Plumber, who is not named Joe nor is he a Plumber, asked the people of Wisconsin whether they sided with socialist America or the real America. The bus tour topped out at 600 in Madison, not a great showing for teabag nation.
Felon Rick Scott,Governor of Florida, managed to win a bipartisan court case that challenged his refusal to accept federal funds for the high-speed rail project from Tampa to Orlando, a project that has been on the drawing boards for a decade. Scott also managed to alienate the entire state with his budget address. As Rachel Maddow has pointed out twice so far, he's cutting $1.75 billion from public education and slashing property and corporate taxes by $1.68 billion, which will mean squat to the deficit. Demonstrators at the capitol are now far outdrawing the past teabag crowds by several thousand.
The first Iowa Republican events have started. Five would-be Presidential contenders spoke before a Faith Forum. New favorite Buddy Roemer, former Democratic senator and Governor from Louisiana, spoke about faith and didn't address his previous three marriages. But Newt was there railing against all the secular socialists in the Obama Administration. In a quiet moment, Newt talked to a Christian radio station and admitted that he did let his wallace flop out, as Captain Beefhart would say. Newt admitted he was working so hard to save the nation that he slipped and committed adultery. I'm sure Callista was pleased to hear she was an accident in his life. Unlike Scott Walker,Newt speaks with God and graciously God forgave him his adultery and rewarded him with a wonderful marriage. So if God forgave him, then there's no problem. As Newt said, if his past mattered, he would be irrelevant now but since the future is at stake then all bets are off.
Andrew Sullivan in his Daily Dish opined two days ago that the Republican Party no longer exists. He gave a detailed taxonomy of the fragments of the Republicans and the conservative movement and I agree with him. Proof of this is the sad spectacle of Dick Lugar now coming around to accepting the House budget proposal even though he had openly opposed them. Lugar is frightened of a teabag primary. Also only 33% of Maine Republicans now believe that Olympia Snowe should be renominated--this about a woman who won with over 70% of the vote last time. There really is no there there.
Dana Milbank said that John Boehner is using Richard Nixon's Mad Bomber strategy on the budget, using the insanity of the House proposals to muscle greater concessions from the Senate and the White House. I prefer the incompetence argument and that he has no control over the House Republicans. Hapless Harry Reid is miffed that he thought he had a budget deal with the Republicans only to see Mitch McConnell walk away. The Democrats today are trying to force a vote on the House budget proposal to get sitting Republicans to go on record for cuts to the most basic of programs.
Rep. Peter King is holding his I Hate Islam hearings on the House side. The irony of this is that when Ronald Reagan was going to speak at the Nassau Coliseum in new York the Secret Service put King on a watch list because of his fervent support of the IRA, who were then at their bombing best. King is trying to demonstrate that the Muslim community is not cooperating with law enforcement authorities. Unfortunately for him, Duke has done a study and the FBI confirms that over half the terrorists suspects are picked up on tips from the Muslim community. However, this doesn't deter anyone. One witness tried to implicate Rep. Ellison, the only Muslim in the House, and the Democratic Party in aiding terrorism.
The off shoot of this Islamophobia is the resurgent attacks on Sikhs, who have nothing to do with Islam. After 9-11, Sikhs here in Virginia and in Texas were killed as a reaction to the bombings. Now this has started up again in southern California. At Divinity School, one of the fun things was to see Sikhs unravel their turbans and after cleaning,hang them down five flight of stairs.
With the war continuing in Libya, Newt Gingrich appeared on Fox News as "a friend" to announce that if he were President he would have created a No-Fly Zone last night. This is the type of rhetoric which got us into boatloads of trouble the last administration. As Secretary of Defense Gates pointed out, creating a No-Fly Zone entails preliminary bombing and disabling Libya's air force--which in former days was considered an act of war.
While President Obama continues calls for Muammar Qaddafhi to step down,Michael Scheuer, whose Bin Laden book I liked, reverted to his old obnoxious self and called Obama a "racist". He said that Obama was like "Kipling and Woodrow Wilson" in calling for democratic cghange in Libya. Scheuer said that Qaddafhi represented "zero" threat to the stability of the region. But only days before in a Washington Post op-ed he said that the unrest in the Arab world benefited Al Qaeda.
I don't know why organizations such as Planned Parenthood and NPR fall for the stunts of conservopunk Jim O'Keefe. NPR's chairperson resigned today after a video surfaced that their major fund-raising believed that the teabaggers were racist and maybe NPR was better off without federal funding.
President Obama's decision on Gitmo was terrible, even though understandable. Under the last Defense Bill, Democrats and Republicans prohibited Gitmo detainees from being tried in civil courts or if innocent being transferred to another country. Obama's decision to reinstate the flawed military commission process is being challenged by House Republicans, who want to eliminate the review process being proposed. What this all this means is that the United States has abandoned its own history and now accepts holding people indefinitely without trial. At issue are 45 cases, which could not be tried because we tortured the detainees and their testimony would not be admissable in a court of law.
But have good cheer, Canadian professors are teaching Omar Kadr at Gitmo so he won't go home hating our guts. They have developed a home schooling program for the child soldier who has been languishing there all these many years.
Meanwhile Bradley Manning still sleeps naked. Having been in solitary for the last seven months and only charged--some 59 of them--last week, Manning has been subjected to sleep deprivation and having to stand at attention naked at the morning roll calls. I bet money on the fact that he did not leak the diplomatic posts to Wikileaks. He did leak the footage of our armed forces killing civilians and reporters with gunships as well as the Iraq and Afghanistan files. Basically, his treatment is to send us and everyone in the military a lesson. But it might have been nice if the military had followed some rudimentary legal guidelines.
Oh by the way, Michelle Bachmann will decided whether she's going to run for President in June. Sarah Palin is going on a Faith tour and is scheduled to miss the first real Republican debate at the Reagan Center. The Donald really does have people in Iowa scouting out the feasibility of a Presidential run. While the faith gang was in Iowa, Ron Paul was running from town to town. This suggests that the Love Revolution might be back.
Client Number 9--Eliot Spitzer--is rumored to be exploring a run for the Mayor of New York.
To vent, I listen to Mike Malloy Truthseeker on progressive radio stations. The other night he raised an issue about Wisconsin that totally escaped me. Since his broadcast, leftwing blogs have picked it up. Scott Walker, the governor, talks to Jesus Christ every day in the morning and Walker says that Jesus tells him what to do--literally. Jesus Christ told him when he was a younger man to get a job at IBM even though he didn't want to. The same applies to his abandoning his last campaign for governor--Jesus told him to quit. The son of a Baptist minister Scott Walker revealed these sensitive moments to the Christian Businessmen's Group. He is only doing on the budget bill what Jesus wants. Interesting, however, that all the Christian denominations have come out against his budger repair bill. How does this square with what Jesus has been telling him?
This Saturday Wisconsin farmers will be riding their tractors and combines into Madison to protest the Budget Repair Bill. It's not union solidarity we're seeing here--well,some of it is. The farmers are pissed that the bill repeals a state-run insurance scheme that was created by progressive Republicans--remember them--during the insurance frauds of the early twentieth century. The plan pays for itself and has no budgetary consequences. Older farmers depend on this program. The other bone the farmers have is that their wives supplement the family income and keep the small farms going by being teachers or nurses. The budget repair bill would lead to greater unemployment.
The Republicans don't seem to think the Wisconsin recall laws are legal. Interesting. Efforts to mount recall campaigns are picking up steam and there are enough signatures to recall at least one Republican. Eight are targeted by this campaign.
Reversing Wisconsin's entire history, Republican legislators passed a law that regulates who can come in and out of the Capitol building and it warrants metal detactors and the usual security apparatus. To outsiders this would seem normal but it is a source of pride to people in the state that Wisconsin keeps its capitol open to everyone 24/7.
It turns out that the report of some $7 million in damages to the Capitol was bogus and put out by the Right to defame the demonstrators. Anyway the Painters' Union offered to repair any damage done for free.
Americans for Prosperity, the Koch-funded astroturf organization run by Abramoff's old lobbying buddy, held a bus tour of the state. Joe the Plumber, who is not named Joe nor is he a Plumber, asked the people of Wisconsin whether they sided with socialist America or the real America. The bus tour topped out at 600 in Madison, not a great showing for teabag nation.
Felon Rick Scott,Governor of Florida, managed to win a bipartisan court case that challenged his refusal to accept federal funds for the high-speed rail project from Tampa to Orlando, a project that has been on the drawing boards for a decade. Scott also managed to alienate the entire state with his budget address. As Rachel Maddow has pointed out twice so far, he's cutting $1.75 billion from public education and slashing property and corporate taxes by $1.68 billion, which will mean squat to the deficit. Demonstrators at the capitol are now far outdrawing the past teabag crowds by several thousand.
The first Iowa Republican events have started. Five would-be Presidential contenders spoke before a Faith Forum. New favorite Buddy Roemer, former Democratic senator and Governor from Louisiana, spoke about faith and didn't address his previous three marriages. But Newt was there railing against all the secular socialists in the Obama Administration. In a quiet moment, Newt talked to a Christian radio station and admitted that he did let his wallace flop out, as Captain Beefhart would say. Newt admitted he was working so hard to save the nation that he slipped and committed adultery. I'm sure Callista was pleased to hear she was an accident in his life. Unlike Scott Walker,Newt speaks with God and graciously God forgave him his adultery and rewarded him with a wonderful marriage. So if God forgave him, then there's no problem. As Newt said, if his past mattered, he would be irrelevant now but since the future is at stake then all bets are off.
Andrew Sullivan in his Daily Dish opined two days ago that the Republican Party no longer exists. He gave a detailed taxonomy of the fragments of the Republicans and the conservative movement and I agree with him. Proof of this is the sad spectacle of Dick Lugar now coming around to accepting the House budget proposal even though he had openly opposed them. Lugar is frightened of a teabag primary. Also only 33% of Maine Republicans now believe that Olympia Snowe should be renominated--this about a woman who won with over 70% of the vote last time. There really is no there there.
Dana Milbank said that John Boehner is using Richard Nixon's Mad Bomber strategy on the budget, using the insanity of the House proposals to muscle greater concessions from the Senate and the White House. I prefer the incompetence argument and that he has no control over the House Republicans. Hapless Harry Reid is miffed that he thought he had a budget deal with the Republicans only to see Mitch McConnell walk away. The Democrats today are trying to force a vote on the House budget proposal to get sitting Republicans to go on record for cuts to the most basic of programs.
Rep. Peter King is holding his I Hate Islam hearings on the House side. The irony of this is that when Ronald Reagan was going to speak at the Nassau Coliseum in new York the Secret Service put King on a watch list because of his fervent support of the IRA, who were then at their bombing best. King is trying to demonstrate that the Muslim community is not cooperating with law enforcement authorities. Unfortunately for him, Duke has done a study and the FBI confirms that over half the terrorists suspects are picked up on tips from the Muslim community. However, this doesn't deter anyone. One witness tried to implicate Rep. Ellison, the only Muslim in the House, and the Democratic Party in aiding terrorism.
The off shoot of this Islamophobia is the resurgent attacks on Sikhs, who have nothing to do with Islam. After 9-11, Sikhs here in Virginia and in Texas were killed as a reaction to the bombings. Now this has started up again in southern California. At Divinity School, one of the fun things was to see Sikhs unravel their turbans and after cleaning,hang them down five flight of stairs.
With the war continuing in Libya, Newt Gingrich appeared on Fox News as "a friend" to announce that if he were President he would have created a No-Fly Zone last night. This is the type of rhetoric which got us into boatloads of trouble the last administration. As Secretary of Defense Gates pointed out, creating a No-Fly Zone entails preliminary bombing and disabling Libya's air force--which in former days was considered an act of war.
While President Obama continues calls for Muammar Qaddafhi to step down,Michael Scheuer, whose Bin Laden book I liked, reverted to his old obnoxious self and called Obama a "racist". He said that Obama was like "Kipling and Woodrow Wilson" in calling for democratic cghange in Libya. Scheuer said that Qaddafhi represented "zero" threat to the stability of the region. But only days before in a Washington Post op-ed he said that the unrest in the Arab world benefited Al Qaeda.
I don't know why organizations such as Planned Parenthood and NPR fall for the stunts of conservopunk Jim O'Keefe. NPR's chairperson resigned today after a video surfaced that their major fund-raising believed that the teabaggers were racist and maybe NPR was better off without federal funding.
President Obama's decision on Gitmo was terrible, even though understandable. Under the last Defense Bill, Democrats and Republicans prohibited Gitmo detainees from being tried in civil courts or if innocent being transferred to another country. Obama's decision to reinstate the flawed military commission process is being challenged by House Republicans, who want to eliminate the review process being proposed. What this all this means is that the United States has abandoned its own history and now accepts holding people indefinitely without trial. At issue are 45 cases, which could not be tried because we tortured the detainees and their testimony would not be admissable in a court of law.
But have good cheer, Canadian professors are teaching Omar Kadr at Gitmo so he won't go home hating our guts. They have developed a home schooling program for the child soldier who has been languishing there all these many years.
Meanwhile Bradley Manning still sleeps naked. Having been in solitary for the last seven months and only charged--some 59 of them--last week, Manning has been subjected to sleep deprivation and having to stand at attention naked at the morning roll calls. I bet money on the fact that he did not leak the diplomatic posts to Wikileaks. He did leak the footage of our armed forces killing civilians and reporters with gunships as well as the Iraq and Afghanistan files. Basically, his treatment is to send us and everyone in the military a lesson. But it might have been nice if the military had followed some rudimentary legal guidelines.
Oh by the way, Michelle Bachmann will decided whether she's going to run for President in June. Sarah Palin is going on a Faith tour and is scheduled to miss the first real Republican debate at the Reagan Center. The Donald really does have people in Iowa scouting out the feasibility of a Presidential run. While the faith gang was in Iowa, Ron Paul was running from town to town. This suggests that the Love Revolution might be back.
Client Number 9--Eliot Spitzer--is rumored to be exploring a run for the Mayor of New York.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Afternoon Laughs at the Last Manatee
It didn't take long before the House turned into amateur hour.
Remember the New Republican Party won the House last November and they ran on their Pledge to America so they've had enough time to get their acts together. Budget mogul Congressman Ryan, considered the GOP's fiscal wunderkind, appeared on Fox and could not name a single program the Republicans were going to cut. Congressman Pence appeared today on Fox News and was asked about the pledge to cut $100 billion from the budget and he said he didn't know whether that was going to be possible. The Fox anchor said that the American people would realize that it might take a year, can you promise in a year you would cut $100 billion. Pence couldn't even make that commitment.
As a personal note, when I ran the International Republican Institute, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee was Bob Livingston, who later had to resign as speaker because of a sexual affair. But in terms of budgetary matters, Livingston and his staff were dynamos. I always enjoyed sitting around the table talking to his staff, which had years of experience. They could recite the entire budget backwards and forwards. They were real pros. They also could have cut the budget with a scapel and you wouldn't know the difference.
Asked who would help him cut programs, Ryan said he was proud to have hired someone from the National Review. If you think the Bush administration was run by ideological know-nothings, you ain't seen nothing yet.
If I were Tom Donoghue of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce,I would be on the phone every minute asking the House leadership to find some professional help. After all, this was the Congress the corporations bought. Maybe that was the real thinking of having real corporate lobbyists and not political operative take up staff positions. Did you notice that Donoghue said he would not fund a campaign against President Obama? Maybe even he understands there has to be one sane person in town.
The reading of the U.S. Constitution only cost taxpayers about a $1 million. And it was censored at that. They abridged it to exclude those slightly embarrassing passages on slavery. I'm sure the teabaggers would have cheered. There was some discussions whether the teabaggers would boo the parts of the Constitution they didn't agree with. A Birther had to be removed after she cried out on the natural born citizen requirement for President,"That's not Obama, Jesus Help us."
John Boehner says that he will hold the Debt Ceiling law hostage to budget cuts. It's clear the Obama Administration is already preparing budget cuts. Today Bob Gates announced cuts that will save billions over ten years. Two more reports like that and Boehner will have his deal--and Ryan won't have to work.
Matt Tiabbi has written a new piece on John Boehner in the new Rolling Stone. Tiabbi is a bit harsh on Boehner saying he is a corporate shill. But the good news is that he's lazy. His ideal is to drive to the White House and make a deal and the Obama Administration officials will have to fgure out how to implement it. That saves him heavy lifting and doesn't embarrass the House Republicans.
For all his campaigning about "Where are the Jobs?", he did not mention one job creation idea in his opening speech. It was Nancy Pelosi who said that if the Republicans came up with job-creating ideas Democrats would be willing partners. Crickets, so far.
Boehner did the first diss of the CBO today. The CBO announced that the repeal of "The Job-Killing Healthcare Bill" will add $300 billion to the national debt over 10 years. The healthcare reform actually will create an estimated 400,000 jobs. But Boehner said the CBO was entitled to their own estimate but had to observe the Budget Act. Sounds clever, heh? Well,the Budget Act doesn't break Boehner's way. It actually mandates that CBO estimates have to be in every bill. This is just the first shot in this war.
What's amazing is that the once well-run Republican machine is in tatters. They have even forgotten how to spin. Yesterday, Boehner was introduced by a freshman who talked about Boehner struggle to get a college education and his having to sweep floors to earn his tuition. News commentators remarked how it took 7 years for Boehner to earn his degree. Then another broke into ask who was more powerful-- Boehner or Issa? This started a lengthy discussion of how many times Issa had been arrested for car jacking and how he burned down his own business for an insurance payoff. This would never had happened if Karl Rove was still alive. This discussion then went off to Rick Scott assuming the governorship of Florida. Then we had a whole discussion of how many times Rick Scott invoked the fifth amendment during his grand jury testimony. One time, he said he had to invoke the Fifth or else the jury would have to indict him. This led to a discussion of Tom DeLay convicted of money laundering but how aides to DeLay had been re-hired by the House.
The theme throughout the day was on criminal behavior and how much could corporations really expect from the House. If you remember Nancy Pelosi had vowed to "drain the swamp" of corruption. Now we have 12 sitting GOP member with serious ethical issues and at least four incoming freshman already have their hands full with allegations over their campaign funding.
Then we have the Koch Brothers hosting a cocktail party for the freshman. This was preceded by a fund-raising dinner for freshman that featured that country-western darling and champion of family values Ms. Rimes, who only the week before talked about how she was cheating on her husband with another married man. Welcome to Tea Bag America!
A little war has broken out among conservatives as groups have come to defend CPAC from the accusations by Frank Gaffney that it had been infiltrated by the Moslem Brotherhood. On the other hand, Heritage pulled out of the CPAC conference because they had invited GOProud, the Republican gay group. As the Family Research Council said, "Homosexuality is not a conservative value." Actually, from my experience during the Reagan Revolution, I thought it was. Leading conservative groups were all led by gays. But I digress.
Michelle Bachmann has slipped the leash. Despite being assigned to the intelligence committee where mum's the word, she has hinted at running for President. This allows her to opine on everything under the Sun. Which really raises the question about how much control can Boehner and his bad copy Ricky Cantor exert on the teabaggers. Even if Boehner reaches a deal with the White House as he did on tax cuts, could he enforce any other deals as Speaker?
A colleague commented on my State of the Union remarks saying that this year it will be raucous with teabaggers shouting down the President. With Boehner up behind the President,how's that going to look? Maybe they will be able to step on the President's message. If true, then he should address the nation from the White House anyway.
Progressives are up in arms about the appointment of William Daley as Obama's chief of staff. While Daley opposed Obama's reforms of healthcare and the consumer protection agency, he's not in the post to liason with Washington insiders but to outside of the Beltway constituents. I expect you will see some other surprises before the State of the Union. Most of Obama's circle are being moved out to start the preparations for the 2012 election.
Bruce Bartlett, the renegade supply sider and deputy secretary of the Treasury, wrote a piece in Salon how absolutely insane the teabaggers and Rand Paul are on the debt ceiling vote. I'll write a blog in the next two days about the Congressional Research Service's analysis from last year about what would happen if Congress didn't pass the debt ceiling law. And it's not good stuff.
The Manatees are fleeing the cold waters around Florida and swimming into iinlets around power plants in the state to keep warm.
And Rafael Palmeiro did not make the Hall of Fame. He still claims the steroids discovered in his testing were from a contaminated dose of vitamin B Manuel Tejada gave him. I think Rafael could run for Congress.
Remember the New Republican Party won the House last November and they ran on their Pledge to America so they've had enough time to get their acts together. Budget mogul Congressman Ryan, considered the GOP's fiscal wunderkind, appeared on Fox and could not name a single program the Republicans were going to cut. Congressman Pence appeared today on Fox News and was asked about the pledge to cut $100 billion from the budget and he said he didn't know whether that was going to be possible. The Fox anchor said that the American people would realize that it might take a year, can you promise in a year you would cut $100 billion. Pence couldn't even make that commitment.
As a personal note, when I ran the International Republican Institute, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee was Bob Livingston, who later had to resign as speaker because of a sexual affair. But in terms of budgetary matters, Livingston and his staff were dynamos. I always enjoyed sitting around the table talking to his staff, which had years of experience. They could recite the entire budget backwards and forwards. They were real pros. They also could have cut the budget with a scapel and you wouldn't know the difference.
Asked who would help him cut programs, Ryan said he was proud to have hired someone from the National Review. If you think the Bush administration was run by ideological know-nothings, you ain't seen nothing yet.
If I were Tom Donoghue of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce,I would be on the phone every minute asking the House leadership to find some professional help. After all, this was the Congress the corporations bought. Maybe that was the real thinking of having real corporate lobbyists and not political operative take up staff positions. Did you notice that Donoghue said he would not fund a campaign against President Obama? Maybe even he understands there has to be one sane person in town.
The reading of the U.S. Constitution only cost taxpayers about a $1 million. And it was censored at that. They abridged it to exclude those slightly embarrassing passages on slavery. I'm sure the teabaggers would have cheered. There was some discussions whether the teabaggers would boo the parts of the Constitution they didn't agree with. A Birther had to be removed after she cried out on the natural born citizen requirement for President,"That's not Obama, Jesus Help us."
John Boehner says that he will hold the Debt Ceiling law hostage to budget cuts. It's clear the Obama Administration is already preparing budget cuts. Today Bob Gates announced cuts that will save billions over ten years. Two more reports like that and Boehner will have his deal--and Ryan won't have to work.
Matt Tiabbi has written a new piece on John Boehner in the new Rolling Stone. Tiabbi is a bit harsh on Boehner saying he is a corporate shill. But the good news is that he's lazy. His ideal is to drive to the White House and make a deal and the Obama Administration officials will have to fgure out how to implement it. That saves him heavy lifting and doesn't embarrass the House Republicans.
For all his campaigning about "Where are the Jobs?", he did not mention one job creation idea in his opening speech. It was Nancy Pelosi who said that if the Republicans came up with job-creating ideas Democrats would be willing partners. Crickets, so far.
Boehner did the first diss of the CBO today. The CBO announced that the repeal of "The Job-Killing Healthcare Bill" will add $300 billion to the national debt over 10 years. The healthcare reform actually will create an estimated 400,000 jobs. But Boehner said the CBO was entitled to their own estimate but had to observe the Budget Act. Sounds clever, heh? Well,the Budget Act doesn't break Boehner's way. It actually mandates that CBO estimates have to be in every bill. This is just the first shot in this war.
What's amazing is that the once well-run Republican machine is in tatters. They have even forgotten how to spin. Yesterday, Boehner was introduced by a freshman who talked about Boehner struggle to get a college education and his having to sweep floors to earn his tuition. News commentators remarked how it took 7 years for Boehner to earn his degree. Then another broke into ask who was more powerful-- Boehner or Issa? This started a lengthy discussion of how many times Issa had been arrested for car jacking and how he burned down his own business for an insurance payoff. This would never had happened if Karl Rove was still alive. This discussion then went off to Rick Scott assuming the governorship of Florida. Then we had a whole discussion of how many times Rick Scott invoked the fifth amendment during his grand jury testimony. One time, he said he had to invoke the Fifth or else the jury would have to indict him. This led to a discussion of Tom DeLay convicted of money laundering but how aides to DeLay had been re-hired by the House.
The theme throughout the day was on criminal behavior and how much could corporations really expect from the House. If you remember Nancy Pelosi had vowed to "drain the swamp" of corruption. Now we have 12 sitting GOP member with serious ethical issues and at least four incoming freshman already have their hands full with allegations over their campaign funding.
Then we have the Koch Brothers hosting a cocktail party for the freshman. This was preceded by a fund-raising dinner for freshman that featured that country-western darling and champion of family values Ms. Rimes, who only the week before talked about how she was cheating on her husband with another married man. Welcome to Tea Bag America!
A little war has broken out among conservatives as groups have come to defend CPAC from the accusations by Frank Gaffney that it had been infiltrated by the Moslem Brotherhood. On the other hand, Heritage pulled out of the CPAC conference because they had invited GOProud, the Republican gay group. As the Family Research Council said, "Homosexuality is not a conservative value." Actually, from my experience during the Reagan Revolution, I thought it was. Leading conservative groups were all led by gays. But I digress.
Michelle Bachmann has slipped the leash. Despite being assigned to the intelligence committee where mum's the word, she has hinted at running for President. This allows her to opine on everything under the Sun. Which really raises the question about how much control can Boehner and his bad copy Ricky Cantor exert on the teabaggers. Even if Boehner reaches a deal with the White House as he did on tax cuts, could he enforce any other deals as Speaker?
A colleague commented on my State of the Union remarks saying that this year it will be raucous with teabaggers shouting down the President. With Boehner up behind the President,how's that going to look? Maybe they will be able to step on the President's message. If true, then he should address the nation from the White House anyway.
Progressives are up in arms about the appointment of William Daley as Obama's chief of staff. While Daley opposed Obama's reforms of healthcare and the consumer protection agency, he's not in the post to liason with Washington insiders but to outside of the Beltway constituents. I expect you will see some other surprises before the State of the Union. Most of Obama's circle are being moved out to start the preparations for the 2012 election.
Bruce Bartlett, the renegade supply sider and deputy secretary of the Treasury, wrote a piece in Salon how absolutely insane the teabaggers and Rand Paul are on the debt ceiling vote. I'll write a blog in the next two days about the Congressional Research Service's analysis from last year about what would happen if Congress didn't pass the debt ceiling law. And it's not good stuff.
The Manatees are fleeing the cold waters around Florida and swimming into iinlets around power plants in the state to keep warm.
And Rafael Palmeiro did not make the Hall of Fame. He still claims the steroids discovered in his testing were from a contaminated dose of vitamin B Manuel Tejada gave him. I think Rafael could run for Congress.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
And Now For Somethng Completely Different
The big loser today in the new House was Eleanor Holmes Norton, the representative from D.C. In the last Congress, she balked at the bill granting D.C. a vote in the House because the GOP had attached a number of restrictions on it having to do with gun rights. She should have taken it as I wrote then. Today, she as well as all representatives from D.C. and the American territories like the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Samoa,and Guam were stripped of their voting rights in committees by the Republican leadership.
The Heritage Foundation claims the new House is committed to cutting $100 billion from the budget this fiscal year. But the GOP is backing off that saying that half the fiscal year is already gone and that they will "aim" to bring down government spending to 2008 levels by 2012.
The House Republicans are planning on governing as if they have a mandate. The GOP did the same thing when they won in 2000 by one Supreme Court justice's vote. This is something Democrats have to learn--when you win, pretend it's a massive mandate. The House Republicans as well as the Senate Republicans are acting as if the 2010 mid-terms were a total repudiation of Barack Obama. This fits with their overall narrative that Obama was a mistake or ,as the base insists, the creature of ACORN.
But E.J. Dionne pointed out something in his column the other day that should make the GOP hesitate. He indicated that over 50 of the new GOP House members won in districts that Obama won in 2008. Not that Obama would win them again but the turnout of 41.5% in 2010 didn't match the 62% turnout in the presidential election. Even with redistricting, the GOP is very vulnerable if the Democrats come out in force.
Another columnist pointed out that the teabaggers didn't win any mandate--many of them didn't even receive a majority of votes. Instead, the tide was turned against the Democrats by massive amounts of money--particularly some $20 million from Hedge Fund managers--and a lack of turnout from key Democratic constituencies like the millenial voters.
The Chamber of Commerce should be delighted with the Congress they bought but they are uneasy because Republicans in the House are saying they are going to cut the funding for the highway fund and mass transportation. This was one area where the Chamber and President Obama agreed on and the Chamber thought they had Boehner on board. Infrastructure spending is key to some Chamber members and was seen as the next quiet economic stimulus.
The Republicans will be using the next 20 days to register symbolic votes to repeal everything President Obama has done. The object of this is to create the framework for the debate for the next two years. The White House would be stupid to fall for this. Republicans are emphasizing the need for austerity when the American people are not registering this in polls. If you take the GOP's two hobbyhorses--the deficit and terrorism, those are the last two concerns of the American people.
I would bet on President Obama coming up with a more realistic approach to budget cuts and reform of the entitlement programs. Unlike progressives, I feel that he will preserve Social Security and not undermine it as some have suggested. Meanwhile, Lindsey Graham and his sidekick John McCain are salivating to cut government spending and in particular social security--since both men are wealthy and have life-long pensions from the government while you don't.
The debate for the new RNC chair was disturbing to me because why would any grown person allow Grover Norquist and Tucker Carlson to moderate any debate for a major political position. What was particularly disturbing was that the RNC allowed Grover's outfit plus Maggie Gallagher's anti-gay marriage organization NOM to host the debate. With the RNC $20 million in debt, it doesn't look good for Michael Steele. Today, the money people weighed in with their objections to him. The debate demonstrated that all candidates loved Ronald Reagan, want a litmus test for the party,are against gay rights and same-sex marriage,some own many guns, and are for tax cuts. The debate was embarrassing. They should go back to smoke-filled rooms.
Meanwhile Jeb Bush says he is thinking about running for President in 2016, which should be enough time for the American people to forget his brother. PPP polling has shown that the most viable GOP candidate against Barack Obama is Mike Huckabee because he has the religious base and has high favorabilities. Mitt Romney does well and has a better organization but he faces problems with the base, which are evaneglicals, and the fact he is the father of Obamacare. GOP pundits are now weighing in with criticism of Sarah Palin, trying to head disaster off at the pass.
Frank Gaffney of the Center for Strategic Policies alerts us to the problem posed by the infiltration of CPAC by the Muslim Brotherhood. He blames Grover Norquist, the foremost apologist for Wahabhism in the United States as being the culprit. He claims that CPAC now supports Sharia Law--as opposed to Elena Kagan and Harold Koh. Frank has finally located the enemy on the Right.
It looks like Carl Hiaasen of "Strip Tease" fame has a new political target in Florida. But it looks like his bosses at the Miami Herald may want a monopoly of their own covering Governor Rick Scott, who unlike other newly elected Governors, hired former Bush event managers to throw a gala affair at his inaugural, which was considered by the Floridians as grotesque. People shouted "criminal" at him during what was seen as a failure of a speech. As Hiassen wrote previously, the highlight of Scott's resume was that he didn't go to jail. Scott vowed to cut 19% off property taxes, which will devastate local communities, but he says "It will be fun."
The Guardian (U.K.) covered the festivities today on the Hill and noted that the new Republicans were far-right, dullards, and corporate tools. The writer felt nostalgic for Newt Gingrich ,who at his swearing in spoke longingly of FDR. I personally recall talking to Newt about his love of dinosaurs. In those days, he didn't believe children played with them. The writer said that at least Newt enterained thinking out of the box. That was before the sex scandals and his mismanagement of the House.
We have to give Gentleman John Boehner credit for some savvy internal politics. Michelle Bachman wanted a leadership position but was denied, then she wanted a post on Ways and Means and was denied. Instead, Boehner put her on the Intelligence Committee, which is ironic and humorous. But his point was that she takes up the space in the room and makes all Republicans look crazier than they really are. At intelligence, she just can not talk about the subject. Boehner was hoping Bachmann's media exposure would be diminished. Good move.
The constitutional stunt wasn't a great success as the new members were on television ineptly trying to explain how Obama's policies were unconstitutional. They simply couldn't.
James Fallows at the Atlantic commented on the Jon Huntsman for president trial balloon. He preceptively said that Huntsman could not become a viable nominee because of being part of the Obama Administration. He thinks this was all a clever move to enhance Huntsman's cache as the United States enters a period of intense negotiations with China about a host of issues. The Chinese Premier will be meeting President Obama in about a month. Fallows quite cleverly says that rumors about a Huntsman's presidential drive makes him more serious in the eyes of the Chinese. He thinks Obama and Huntsman dreamt this up together.
Look for President Obama to sideswipe the Republicans with a number of dramatic budget cuts. Already Bob Gates is preparing for proposals to cut the Pentagon budget this year by $200 million.
Republicans are in a budget box of their own. Yes, the ideologues would love to completely dismantle the federal government. But they have vowed not to cut defense spending and all the entitlement programs--Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid--this year. So without additional government revenues, they are down to a budget of less than $400 billion for everything else the federal government does. A 25% cut of all this would be crippling and more so because it would have an immediate negative impact on the public. That's why you are only hearing vague noises about specific cuts. The two I have heard--cutting spending for Public Broadcasting in retaliation for their firing of Juan Williams and cutting Planned Parenthood. Now they are trying to sell their repeal of the healthcare bill as a cut in spending--when it means a rise in the deficit.
One Democratic congressman summed up the new Republican approach as "Enron-style economics." This puts the Hoodoo in the Voodoo Economics. You can't get more bizarre in economic thinking than the current House Republicans. They make George W's policies seem plausible.
The Heritage Foundation claims the new House is committed to cutting $100 billion from the budget this fiscal year. But the GOP is backing off that saying that half the fiscal year is already gone and that they will "aim" to bring down government spending to 2008 levels by 2012.
The House Republicans are planning on governing as if they have a mandate. The GOP did the same thing when they won in 2000 by one Supreme Court justice's vote. This is something Democrats have to learn--when you win, pretend it's a massive mandate. The House Republicans as well as the Senate Republicans are acting as if the 2010 mid-terms were a total repudiation of Barack Obama. This fits with their overall narrative that Obama was a mistake or ,as the base insists, the creature of ACORN.
But E.J. Dionne pointed out something in his column the other day that should make the GOP hesitate. He indicated that over 50 of the new GOP House members won in districts that Obama won in 2008. Not that Obama would win them again but the turnout of 41.5% in 2010 didn't match the 62% turnout in the presidential election. Even with redistricting, the GOP is very vulnerable if the Democrats come out in force.
Another columnist pointed out that the teabaggers didn't win any mandate--many of them didn't even receive a majority of votes. Instead, the tide was turned against the Democrats by massive amounts of money--particularly some $20 million from Hedge Fund managers--and a lack of turnout from key Democratic constituencies like the millenial voters.
The Chamber of Commerce should be delighted with the Congress they bought but they are uneasy because Republicans in the House are saying they are going to cut the funding for the highway fund and mass transportation. This was one area where the Chamber and President Obama agreed on and the Chamber thought they had Boehner on board. Infrastructure spending is key to some Chamber members and was seen as the next quiet economic stimulus.
The Republicans will be using the next 20 days to register symbolic votes to repeal everything President Obama has done. The object of this is to create the framework for the debate for the next two years. The White House would be stupid to fall for this. Republicans are emphasizing the need for austerity when the American people are not registering this in polls. If you take the GOP's two hobbyhorses--the deficit and terrorism, those are the last two concerns of the American people.
I would bet on President Obama coming up with a more realistic approach to budget cuts and reform of the entitlement programs. Unlike progressives, I feel that he will preserve Social Security and not undermine it as some have suggested. Meanwhile, Lindsey Graham and his sidekick John McCain are salivating to cut government spending and in particular social security--since both men are wealthy and have life-long pensions from the government while you don't.
The debate for the new RNC chair was disturbing to me because why would any grown person allow Grover Norquist and Tucker Carlson to moderate any debate for a major political position. What was particularly disturbing was that the RNC allowed Grover's outfit plus Maggie Gallagher's anti-gay marriage organization NOM to host the debate. With the RNC $20 million in debt, it doesn't look good for Michael Steele. Today, the money people weighed in with their objections to him. The debate demonstrated that all candidates loved Ronald Reagan, want a litmus test for the party,are against gay rights and same-sex marriage,some own many guns, and are for tax cuts. The debate was embarrassing. They should go back to smoke-filled rooms.
Meanwhile Jeb Bush says he is thinking about running for President in 2016, which should be enough time for the American people to forget his brother. PPP polling has shown that the most viable GOP candidate against Barack Obama is Mike Huckabee because he has the religious base and has high favorabilities. Mitt Romney does well and has a better organization but he faces problems with the base, which are evaneglicals, and the fact he is the father of Obamacare. GOP pundits are now weighing in with criticism of Sarah Palin, trying to head disaster off at the pass.
Frank Gaffney of the Center for Strategic Policies alerts us to the problem posed by the infiltration of CPAC by the Muslim Brotherhood. He blames Grover Norquist, the foremost apologist for Wahabhism in the United States as being the culprit. He claims that CPAC now supports Sharia Law--as opposed to Elena Kagan and Harold Koh. Frank has finally located the enemy on the Right.
It looks like Carl Hiaasen of "Strip Tease" fame has a new political target in Florida. But it looks like his bosses at the Miami Herald may want a monopoly of their own covering Governor Rick Scott, who unlike other newly elected Governors, hired former Bush event managers to throw a gala affair at his inaugural, which was considered by the Floridians as grotesque. People shouted "criminal" at him during what was seen as a failure of a speech. As Hiassen wrote previously, the highlight of Scott's resume was that he didn't go to jail. Scott vowed to cut 19% off property taxes, which will devastate local communities, but he says "It will be fun."
The Guardian (U.K.) covered the festivities today on the Hill and noted that the new Republicans were far-right, dullards, and corporate tools. The writer felt nostalgic for Newt Gingrich ,who at his swearing in spoke longingly of FDR. I personally recall talking to Newt about his love of dinosaurs. In those days, he didn't believe children played with them. The writer said that at least Newt enterained thinking out of the box. That was before the sex scandals and his mismanagement of the House.
We have to give Gentleman John Boehner credit for some savvy internal politics. Michelle Bachman wanted a leadership position but was denied, then she wanted a post on Ways and Means and was denied. Instead, Boehner put her on the Intelligence Committee, which is ironic and humorous. But his point was that she takes up the space in the room and makes all Republicans look crazier than they really are. At intelligence, she just can not talk about the subject. Boehner was hoping Bachmann's media exposure would be diminished. Good move.
The constitutional stunt wasn't a great success as the new members were on television ineptly trying to explain how Obama's policies were unconstitutional. They simply couldn't.
James Fallows at the Atlantic commented on the Jon Huntsman for president trial balloon. He preceptively said that Huntsman could not become a viable nominee because of being part of the Obama Administration. He thinks this was all a clever move to enhance Huntsman's cache as the United States enters a period of intense negotiations with China about a host of issues. The Chinese Premier will be meeting President Obama in about a month. Fallows quite cleverly says that rumors about a Huntsman's presidential drive makes him more serious in the eyes of the Chinese. He thinks Obama and Huntsman dreamt this up together.
Look for President Obama to sideswipe the Republicans with a number of dramatic budget cuts. Already Bob Gates is preparing for proposals to cut the Pentagon budget this year by $200 million.
Republicans are in a budget box of their own. Yes, the ideologues would love to completely dismantle the federal government. But they have vowed not to cut defense spending and all the entitlement programs--Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid--this year. So without additional government revenues, they are down to a budget of less than $400 billion for everything else the federal government does. A 25% cut of all this would be crippling and more so because it would have an immediate negative impact on the public. That's why you are only hearing vague noises about specific cuts. The two I have heard--cutting spending for Public Broadcasting in retaliation for their firing of Juan Williams and cutting Planned Parenthood. Now they are trying to sell their repeal of the healthcare bill as a cut in spending--when it means a rise in the deficit.
One Democratic congressman summed up the new Republican approach as "Enron-style economics." This puts the Hoodoo in the Voodoo Economics. You can't get more bizarre in economic thinking than the current House Republicans. They make George W's policies seem plausible.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
19 Days to Go--My How Times Flies!
So Electoral-Politics.com has today's polling at 50 Senate seats for the Democrats, 47 for Republicans and now 3 tied. For the first time, Republicans have a 203-202 lead over the Democrats with 30 seats tied.
Nate the Great lowered his percentage for Republicans taking the Senate to 18%. Personally, I have the Democrats winning between 52 and 56 seats right now. The Senate looks secure. Remember the Democrats started this cycle by basically ceding Arkansas, North Dakota and Indiana. So they start out at 55 seats. My high estimate is a fantasy of Democrats either taking Kentucky or another Democratic seat and holding all the rest.
Is the American voter acting rationally? For the past year with all the hype about the Tea Party and the full reign of insanity shown on the conservative websites and Fox News, one begins to wonder. The media narrative is that we are facing an enormous Republican tidal wave because Obama has govern from the Left. Since we are supposed to be a conservative country, Americans are so outraged that you could run an empty suit or pantsuit with an R by his or her name and get elected.
At this moment--prior to the final money frenzy--is there any evidence of this? One reassuring phenomenon is that there is a great deal of difference in many states between the governor races and the Senate and--to a lesser degree-the House races. For instance, Ohio ,which is a really strange state the more I travel in it, shows that the race between Gov. Strickland and John Kasich is neck and neck, while the Senate race shows Rob Portman (R) walking away with it. Portman is Bush's former OMB director but is running as a normal Republican in a state that votes this way. He would be replacing Voinovich, a moderate conservative who has strongly condemned the influence of the South on the GOP.
Once the avalanche of Chamber ads hit Washington State, Patty Murray started opening the gap against Republican Dino Rossi. The Chamber ads only reinforced the view that Rossi is a crooked businessmen.
In Connecticut, Linda McMahon was a woman issue. Women voters can't stand her. This was what brought down Sarah Palin. Women in Connecticut report being repulsed by seeing her ads everyday.
Another positive sign is that general election voters are beginning to turn off on the teabaggers. In Maine Tom LePage had a 15 percentage lead for Governor, opening his mouth a few times more and he only has a 1% lead. By election day, it will be the third parties who will determine whether Le Page will squeak to victory. But the momentum is now on the Democrat's side.
Alaska's Senate race could become the surprise of election night. Joe Miller is disintegrating. His former boss, a Republican, finally made a statement about what he knows about Miller's seven years part-time work as an attorney for the small borough. Miller used the public computers of government employees to try and rig the election for the Republican party chair by submitting proxy votes in these peoples' names. It was a serious violation of the town's ethical policy and was a firing offense. But the city manager intervened and wanted Miller around to complete one last project, having to do with the taxing of the gasoline project. Then he left his job. This was one of the issues Miller kept hiding. Before this, the more he spoke the more his approval ratings fell and he had a 1 pt. lead over Lisa Murkowski. Again it comes down to a three way race.
Unfortunately, in Colorado, voters have on occasion sent madmen to the Senate. Senator Hank Brown was a straight libertarian, who wanted to cut off all USAID funding and end the entire National Endowment for Democracy because we had won the Cold War and all this was unnecessary. Their own party chairman Bruce Benson sought the governorship and would have won if his physically violent fights weren't recorded and aired on television. So, it is conceivable that someone like Ken Buck, who wants to eliminate the Department of Education, privatize Social Security, and have women who have been raped bear the child, could get elected. However, his own ethics issues are surfacing and his failure to prosecute a rapist, because the victim previously had an abortion, is beginning to draw a reaction. This comes down to voter turnout.
Would Florida voters really vote Rick Scott, a man whom many Republicans have publicly said should be in prison? Now that Alex Sink is focusing on Scott's record, she has moved out in front and the momentum is going her way.
So the gubernatorial races will be a mixed bag on election day and the Senate will simply reflect the usual attrition for the President's party. So far, this doesn't appear to be Mark Halperin's scenario that "Obama is in the Jaws of Death."
But we still have no clue as to the House. The reason control of the House this year is vital is because Republicans intend not to fund the Healthcare and Wall Street Reform bills. They know they can't repeal it. Also, they want to conduct a series of prolonged investigations into the imaginary crimes of the Obama Administration. They know at this point they can't impeach because of the Democratic majority in the Senate. Also, the Republicans are still clueless about the economy. John Boehner released a new plan last week to create jobs but economic think-tanks have studied his proposal and said it would cause another 1.1 million jobs to be lost. Also, the continuation of the tax cuts for the wealthy would only cost another $80 billion for two years and if permanent at least $750 billion.
We know Boy Genius Karl Rove has thrown in the towel on the Senate because he announced a new push on House seats. This is also in coordination with the Chamber of Commerce. People who have been canvassing the districts have been reporting dread and fear about the deluge of ads coming. Some of the expenditures on House districts are over $10 million. With most Americans in wobbly financial shape, won't this ostentatious flaunting of wealth back-fire? 47% of Americans say that they are less likely to vote for a candidate who is aided by anonymous donors. Only 7% were more likely to vote for such a person. And if you really believe everyone is a Glenn Beck he made it publically clear he has donated $10,000 to the Chamber today.
We simply have never seen such media bombardment of the electorate in such a short time. To get some idea about the magnitude of the problem, Karl Rove's Crossroads America--the American Chamber of Commerce and the anonymous conservative front groups--will spend more than the entire DNC and all their election committees and the RNC and all its commitees combined. That is stunning and potentially destabilizing to the American political system. What you now have is a gigantic Third Force, with no transparency and accountability, trying to directly determine the outcome of the election.
Now the next problem with this is that the ads both Rove and the Chamber are running are false in their accusations against candidates. Many local news stations and the media are pointing this out. In Pennsylvania, some of the ads had to be pulled because they were so inaccurate. But oftentimes the damage is done. This takes Willy Horton to the next level. In many states, where some of Rove's ads have run, people note the fear-mongering aspect and the deliberate distortion of the candidate's record or ,many times, total non-record on the issue.
While we are used to this with the Swiftboaters and Willy Horton. Candidates could fight back--even though Kerry didn't--against the other party and the deliberate smears. Now we have anonymous assassins, who can smear politicians without consequence. One of the Republican candidates ,who has been endorsed by the Chamber, is getting nervous about this and called for the FEC to audit the Chamber on the source of its funds.
Shareholders in Fox and other corporations are demanding answers about the directors' use of funds for political purposes. But this will not affect anything for another two years and it may be too late.
The interesting aftermath of this anonymous money was brought home by Howard Fineman, now writing for Huffingtonpost.com. Fineman claims that this opens a bag of worms for the Republican presidential primaries. You will have all these secret front-groups launching ads against various candidates and saying anything they please. There will be utterly no accountability and no one will know who is backing whom. This is a recipe for total chaos. Fineman speculates on a Mormon-Harvard-Bain frontgroup to get behind Romney. But remember the teabaggers like Sharron Angle, Christine O'Donnell and Joe Miller will have scads of money left-over, which can be funneled into the presidential primary. In this case, Barack Obama will be the prime beneficiary. The odds this money will produce a real extreme rightwing Republican candidate.
For a different opinion, Karl Rove claims that the Center for American Progress, which released their investigations into the Chamber, doesn't release its own donors and is run by John Podesta, who was on the transition team of Barack Obama, who knows Bill Ayers, who blew up the Pentagon's toilets. Unfortunately for Karl and the Chamber, Think Progress continued its investigation and found even more foreign funders for the Chamber, despite their assurances they received only $100,000 from abroad.
There is one other thing about the media narrative. How do we get to a massive republican landslide with one party significantly lower in approval than the current party in power? Also, why is it a great things for billionaires and businesses and banks to secretly fund campaigns when this class of people have significantly less respect than politicians. It's like the slime leading the slime.
Hopefully, in the words of Woody Guthrie "You fascists will lose."
Nate the Great lowered his percentage for Republicans taking the Senate to 18%. Personally, I have the Democrats winning between 52 and 56 seats right now. The Senate looks secure. Remember the Democrats started this cycle by basically ceding Arkansas, North Dakota and Indiana. So they start out at 55 seats. My high estimate is a fantasy of Democrats either taking Kentucky or another Democratic seat and holding all the rest.
Is the American voter acting rationally? For the past year with all the hype about the Tea Party and the full reign of insanity shown on the conservative websites and Fox News, one begins to wonder. The media narrative is that we are facing an enormous Republican tidal wave because Obama has govern from the Left. Since we are supposed to be a conservative country, Americans are so outraged that you could run an empty suit or pantsuit with an R by his or her name and get elected.
At this moment--prior to the final money frenzy--is there any evidence of this? One reassuring phenomenon is that there is a great deal of difference in many states between the governor races and the Senate and--to a lesser degree-the House races. For instance, Ohio ,which is a really strange state the more I travel in it, shows that the race between Gov. Strickland and John Kasich is neck and neck, while the Senate race shows Rob Portman (R) walking away with it. Portman is Bush's former OMB director but is running as a normal Republican in a state that votes this way. He would be replacing Voinovich, a moderate conservative who has strongly condemned the influence of the South on the GOP.
Once the avalanche of Chamber ads hit Washington State, Patty Murray started opening the gap against Republican Dino Rossi. The Chamber ads only reinforced the view that Rossi is a crooked businessmen.
In Connecticut, Linda McMahon was a woman issue. Women voters can't stand her. This was what brought down Sarah Palin. Women in Connecticut report being repulsed by seeing her ads everyday.
Another positive sign is that general election voters are beginning to turn off on the teabaggers. In Maine Tom LePage had a 15 percentage lead for Governor, opening his mouth a few times more and he only has a 1% lead. By election day, it will be the third parties who will determine whether Le Page will squeak to victory. But the momentum is now on the Democrat's side.
Alaska's Senate race could become the surprise of election night. Joe Miller is disintegrating. His former boss, a Republican, finally made a statement about what he knows about Miller's seven years part-time work as an attorney for the small borough. Miller used the public computers of government employees to try and rig the election for the Republican party chair by submitting proxy votes in these peoples' names. It was a serious violation of the town's ethical policy and was a firing offense. But the city manager intervened and wanted Miller around to complete one last project, having to do with the taxing of the gasoline project. Then he left his job. This was one of the issues Miller kept hiding. Before this, the more he spoke the more his approval ratings fell and he had a 1 pt. lead over Lisa Murkowski. Again it comes down to a three way race.
Unfortunately, in Colorado, voters have on occasion sent madmen to the Senate. Senator Hank Brown was a straight libertarian, who wanted to cut off all USAID funding and end the entire National Endowment for Democracy because we had won the Cold War and all this was unnecessary. Their own party chairman Bruce Benson sought the governorship and would have won if his physically violent fights weren't recorded and aired on television. So, it is conceivable that someone like Ken Buck, who wants to eliminate the Department of Education, privatize Social Security, and have women who have been raped bear the child, could get elected. However, his own ethics issues are surfacing and his failure to prosecute a rapist, because the victim previously had an abortion, is beginning to draw a reaction. This comes down to voter turnout.
Would Florida voters really vote Rick Scott, a man whom many Republicans have publicly said should be in prison? Now that Alex Sink is focusing on Scott's record, she has moved out in front and the momentum is going her way.
So the gubernatorial races will be a mixed bag on election day and the Senate will simply reflect the usual attrition for the President's party. So far, this doesn't appear to be Mark Halperin's scenario that "Obama is in the Jaws of Death."
But we still have no clue as to the House. The reason control of the House this year is vital is because Republicans intend not to fund the Healthcare and Wall Street Reform bills. They know they can't repeal it. Also, they want to conduct a series of prolonged investigations into the imaginary crimes of the Obama Administration. They know at this point they can't impeach because of the Democratic majority in the Senate. Also, the Republicans are still clueless about the economy. John Boehner released a new plan last week to create jobs but economic think-tanks have studied his proposal and said it would cause another 1.1 million jobs to be lost. Also, the continuation of the tax cuts for the wealthy would only cost another $80 billion for two years and if permanent at least $750 billion.
We know Boy Genius Karl Rove has thrown in the towel on the Senate because he announced a new push on House seats. This is also in coordination with the Chamber of Commerce. People who have been canvassing the districts have been reporting dread and fear about the deluge of ads coming. Some of the expenditures on House districts are over $10 million. With most Americans in wobbly financial shape, won't this ostentatious flaunting of wealth back-fire? 47% of Americans say that they are less likely to vote for a candidate who is aided by anonymous donors. Only 7% were more likely to vote for such a person. And if you really believe everyone is a Glenn Beck he made it publically clear he has donated $10,000 to the Chamber today.
We simply have never seen such media bombardment of the electorate in such a short time. To get some idea about the magnitude of the problem, Karl Rove's Crossroads America--the American Chamber of Commerce and the anonymous conservative front groups--will spend more than the entire DNC and all their election committees and the RNC and all its commitees combined. That is stunning and potentially destabilizing to the American political system. What you now have is a gigantic Third Force, with no transparency and accountability, trying to directly determine the outcome of the election.
Now the next problem with this is that the ads both Rove and the Chamber are running are false in their accusations against candidates. Many local news stations and the media are pointing this out. In Pennsylvania, some of the ads had to be pulled because they were so inaccurate. But oftentimes the damage is done. This takes Willy Horton to the next level. In many states, where some of Rove's ads have run, people note the fear-mongering aspect and the deliberate distortion of the candidate's record or ,many times, total non-record on the issue.
While we are used to this with the Swiftboaters and Willy Horton. Candidates could fight back--even though Kerry didn't--against the other party and the deliberate smears. Now we have anonymous assassins, who can smear politicians without consequence. One of the Republican candidates ,who has been endorsed by the Chamber, is getting nervous about this and called for the FEC to audit the Chamber on the source of its funds.
Shareholders in Fox and other corporations are demanding answers about the directors' use of funds for political purposes. But this will not affect anything for another two years and it may be too late.
The interesting aftermath of this anonymous money was brought home by Howard Fineman, now writing for Huffingtonpost.com. Fineman claims that this opens a bag of worms for the Republican presidential primaries. You will have all these secret front-groups launching ads against various candidates and saying anything they please. There will be utterly no accountability and no one will know who is backing whom. This is a recipe for total chaos. Fineman speculates on a Mormon-Harvard-Bain frontgroup to get behind Romney. But remember the teabaggers like Sharron Angle, Christine O'Donnell and Joe Miller will have scads of money left-over, which can be funneled into the presidential primary. In this case, Barack Obama will be the prime beneficiary. The odds this money will produce a real extreme rightwing Republican candidate.
For a different opinion, Karl Rove claims that the Center for American Progress, which released their investigations into the Chamber, doesn't release its own donors and is run by John Podesta, who was on the transition team of Barack Obama, who knows Bill Ayers, who blew up the Pentagon's toilets. Unfortunately for Karl and the Chamber, Think Progress continued its investigation and found even more foreign funders for the Chamber, despite their assurances they received only $100,000 from abroad.
There is one other thing about the media narrative. How do we get to a massive republican landslide with one party significantly lower in approval than the current party in power? Also, why is it a great things for billionaires and businesses and banks to secretly fund campaigns when this class of people have significantly less respect than politicians. It's like the slime leading the slime.
Hopefully, in the words of Woody Guthrie "You fascists will lose."
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Forget the Hope and Change--Vote the Criminal Class
The post below was a celebration of IDS'15th anniversary and a thank you to all the human rights activists who have donated their time and ideas generously over the years. It also carried my thoughts on my 60th birthday. Since it was written on another computer, I guess it got scrambled by the National Security Agency. The long and short of it is that I now should be called by the Swahili honorific Mzee. So from now on , Mzee McColm if you please. No more Senor Bruce.
A follow-up note about Karl Rove's appearance at Oberlin. Rove has very strict clauses in his speaking contracts that any who might disrupt his speeches must be removed or he personally will leave and you have to pay. So one person sought to make a citizens' arrest and was himself arrested. Protestors were disrupted beforehand based not on the First Amendment but Karl's contract. He basically forces his host to break the law. Anyone remember what used to happen if someone in a George W. Bush audience asked him a hostile question, even politely. They were bodily removed and arrested. That's Karl's signature.
I was planning to attend the One Nation Rally at the Lincoln Memorial this Saturday at noon. But, should I? Glenn Beck has gone all chalkboard on this one showing that the organizers are all devotees of V.I. Lenin and want to takeover America for Marxism. Since Organizing for America is urging people to attend, Beck wants Obama to denounce socialism and Marxism once and for all. Apparently, Beck didn't hear President Obama in his Wisconsin speak address this criticism of his policies. I haven't been accused of being a Marxist or Socialist for decades so to bring things full circle I'm going and hope everyone who is able can.
But there is an alternative for this year's mid-terms. The nation has a chance to vote for a unique type of candidate this year--the thoroughly criminal. Forget that corporations are pouring anonymous millions into front organizations, forget that the Koch Brothers are trying to buy whole states, including California, forget that the GOP now has a 6-1 funding advantage in terms of advertising. This is your chance to vote for a criminal. And they are everywhere. The criminal profile allows a certain authenticity, a roughness that shows the person isn't a slick politician. With teabagger types, the public can sympathize with their financial difficulties because they are just like you and I, except we would be in jail. We have the run-of-the-mill grifter type like Christine O'Donnell and Joe Miller. We have the Northeast quasi-mobster like Carl Paladino and we have the amazing corporate criminal type like Florida's Rich Scott. The array this year is truly amazing.
Carl Paladino has made Youtube fame with his beef with New York Post veteran, Albany editor Fred Dicker, where he threatens to take Fred out. Fred may have been out of bounds because he went to interview Paladino's "love child", whom Paladino openly accepts and even campaigns with. Paladino has a superstar staff. One senior official is a woman who was forced to quick her government job because she was siphoning off public funds to private businesses. Another was Michael Boomberg's manager for a $1,000,000 GOTV effort the first election and just walked off and bought a house with the money. Another just got out of prison for a DUI accident. But Carl is going to "clean up Albany". Carl received notoriety with his racist e-mails photoshopping President Obama as a pimp and First Lady Michelle Obama as his prostitute. But his more egregious e-mails were discovered by reporters in Buffalo--hard core porn streams to business colleagues and political cronies.
Rick Scott in Florida is also one for the record books. When he beat Bill McCollum in the Republican primary, Bill would not endorse him, saying "I don't know why he isn't in jail." Scott, the CEO of a hospital chain, had to be removed--of course with about a $20 million golden parachute--after federal authorities caught his company in the largest Medicare fraud case in history. The company was forced to pay over $1.1 billion in fines for the crime. But, the kicker is that the criminal part of the case continued all the way until about one month before the elections. Scott in secret testimony is alleged to have invoked the 5th Amendment over 100 times. Then the man has the chutzpah to declare his candidacy for Governor a few weeks later.
Ron Johnson, who is against all government subsidies for business except for his own, testified in Wisconsin against a bipartisan child abuse bill, which would have extended the statute of limitations on pedophilia. He testified as a business man and community leader concerned that law suits would put constraints on many good organizations. Missing was that he was sitting on the Catholic Diocese Board, which was concerned with a rash of cases emerging against priests involved in child abuse. Apparently, this did not involve just one priest, who eventually went to jail, but a bunch through the Green Bay Diocese. He's running against Russ Feingold as the non-politician.
Joe Miller from Alaska first started his grifter act in Kansas where he received farm subsidies. Then he moved to Alaska and applied and received hunting and fishing licenses for the indigent. These are meant for people who must fish and hunt for their daily food and might be excluded because of the limited number of regular licenses. Joe at the time was a lawyer making $70,000 a year. Joe is mandated by law to file with the Federal Elections Commission a statement of his personal income or face upwards of $70,000 in fines. He was supposed to have done this last year but so far he hasn't. Joe also wants to eliminate Social Security. His father survives on Social Security. But you can say Joe knows how to game the system. I personally think he doesn't believe a word he says.
Christine O'Connell makes my own higher education look pretty bad. She's amazing--she has a master's from Princeton, went to Oxford and studied constitutional law at Claremont. And this was all before she even received her B.A. a few weeks ago. I wonder if she's for Sharia Law. Unfortunately, all said institutions issued strong denials of her educational prowess. Apparently she went to none of the above except Farleigh Dickinson. But this makes her more authentic--we all want such an education but we can't afford it. So just make it up. Apparently, she also made up a multi-year law suit on sex discrimination against a conservative organization. This eventually got John Fund to condemn her for lying to him. But John had no problem with her using campaign funds to pay her rent, her mother, her bowling games and her personal gas. "I have no problem with that," John said, invoking the new high standards of conservatives. Now, Christine's own pseudo-Christian non-profit is in jeipardy of losing its legal status because it failed to submit the usual legal papers to the state--and that's a very lax state. But remember Glenn Beck says Chris Coons, the Democrat, is a Marxist.
Meg Whitman has joined the criminal class--probably years before. At her losin debate effort against Jerry Brown, she opined that the law should crack down on employers who hire illegal immigrants. The next morning her former housekeeper filed suit for damages saying that Queen Meg knew she was illegal for over nine years. Whitman fired her just before she announced she was running for Governor. This all has made the Whitman campaign go Glub,Glub, Glub.
Sharron Angle, who already has made record books for her John Birch views, wants to eliminate government healthcare programs. One slight problem, she is covered by her husband's healthcare plan he got as a government employee. In fact Sharron's main source of income is her husband's goverment pension. Also her father gets both Medicare and VA benefits.
Rand Paul with his bogus medical credentials had a little problem at Dairy Queen the other day. He was supposed to answer questions from local voters but was startled when he saw they were local union guys. He bolted to the car and refused to answer questions. What they wanted to know was how he could suggest a $2,000 deduction for Medicare, when everyone in that neck of the words depended on social security and Medicare.
The avoid questions m.o. makes sense. If you only have to report to the major corporations, why should you have to answer questions from a bunch of voters or , worse, journalists. This is the beauty of the Roberts Court decision on Citizens United. You don't have to disclose the source of your donations and you really don't have to campaign. Just buy alot of air time and make up all your credentials. Want to go to Oxford or Cambridge. Why not? The corporations don't really care what you say. There is a beauty to this.
David Plouffe was on NPR today explaining the real stakes in this election. He did a superb job. But I think the Obama people are making a mistake about Republicans wanting to turn back the clock to the last administration. They want to turn the clock back to the 1890s.
Read another analysis of the House races by a NYU poli sci professor who ran all his computer scenarios and came up with the Democrats keeping the House.
The polling data shows that all the races except in the headline contests in California are tightening up. That good news for Democrats in some places and bad news elsewhere. The Senate will be touch and go throughout the evening.
I am mortified that I got one question wrong on the Pew Survey on Religion. Top scorers were atheists, agnostics, Jews, Mormons, mainstream protestants, then the less knowledgeable evangelicals and Catholics. Catholics were the least savvy in terms of the quiz, even getting their own doctrines wrong. This survey drew all sorts of dismay from pundits. But as someone this morning wrote--the Surveys shows that Americans are more knowledgeable about religion than history or science. Scary.
My wife's note on my birthday card was that she was amazed that she has known me since the age of 21. I find it incredible also but then we are really people of Traditional Family Values instead of the phonies who don't know their own religion.
For the record, I may embrace my inner Teabagger and declare that I am Dr. R. Bruce McColm, expert in Neuroscience. I always liked neuroscience and believe it will yield amazing discoveries in the near future. So why not get ahead of the curve. If Glenn Beck can be a Doctor of Humanities and he lacks all semblence to the humane, why not.
A follow-up note about Karl Rove's appearance at Oberlin. Rove has very strict clauses in his speaking contracts that any who might disrupt his speeches must be removed or he personally will leave and you have to pay. So one person sought to make a citizens' arrest and was himself arrested. Protestors were disrupted beforehand based not on the First Amendment but Karl's contract. He basically forces his host to break the law. Anyone remember what used to happen if someone in a George W. Bush audience asked him a hostile question, even politely. They were bodily removed and arrested. That's Karl's signature.
I was planning to attend the One Nation Rally at the Lincoln Memorial this Saturday at noon. But, should I? Glenn Beck has gone all chalkboard on this one showing that the organizers are all devotees of V.I. Lenin and want to takeover America for Marxism. Since Organizing for America is urging people to attend, Beck wants Obama to denounce socialism and Marxism once and for all. Apparently, Beck didn't hear President Obama in his Wisconsin speak address this criticism of his policies. I haven't been accused of being a Marxist or Socialist for decades so to bring things full circle I'm going and hope everyone who is able can.
But there is an alternative for this year's mid-terms. The nation has a chance to vote for a unique type of candidate this year--the thoroughly criminal. Forget that corporations are pouring anonymous millions into front organizations, forget that the Koch Brothers are trying to buy whole states, including California, forget that the GOP now has a 6-1 funding advantage in terms of advertising. This is your chance to vote for a criminal. And they are everywhere. The criminal profile allows a certain authenticity, a roughness that shows the person isn't a slick politician. With teabagger types, the public can sympathize with their financial difficulties because they are just like you and I, except we would be in jail. We have the run-of-the-mill grifter type like Christine O'Donnell and Joe Miller. We have the Northeast quasi-mobster like Carl Paladino and we have the amazing corporate criminal type like Florida's Rich Scott. The array this year is truly amazing.
Carl Paladino has made Youtube fame with his beef with New York Post veteran, Albany editor Fred Dicker, where he threatens to take Fred out. Fred may have been out of bounds because he went to interview Paladino's "love child", whom Paladino openly accepts and even campaigns with. Paladino has a superstar staff. One senior official is a woman who was forced to quick her government job because she was siphoning off public funds to private businesses. Another was Michael Boomberg's manager for a $1,000,000 GOTV effort the first election and just walked off and bought a house with the money. Another just got out of prison for a DUI accident. But Carl is going to "clean up Albany". Carl received notoriety with his racist e-mails photoshopping President Obama as a pimp and First Lady Michelle Obama as his prostitute. But his more egregious e-mails were discovered by reporters in Buffalo--hard core porn streams to business colleagues and political cronies.
Rick Scott in Florida is also one for the record books. When he beat Bill McCollum in the Republican primary, Bill would not endorse him, saying "I don't know why he isn't in jail." Scott, the CEO of a hospital chain, had to be removed--of course with about a $20 million golden parachute--after federal authorities caught his company in the largest Medicare fraud case in history. The company was forced to pay over $1.1 billion in fines for the crime. But, the kicker is that the criminal part of the case continued all the way until about one month before the elections. Scott in secret testimony is alleged to have invoked the 5th Amendment over 100 times. Then the man has the chutzpah to declare his candidacy for Governor a few weeks later.
Ron Johnson, who is against all government subsidies for business except for his own, testified in Wisconsin against a bipartisan child abuse bill, which would have extended the statute of limitations on pedophilia. He testified as a business man and community leader concerned that law suits would put constraints on many good organizations. Missing was that he was sitting on the Catholic Diocese Board, which was concerned with a rash of cases emerging against priests involved in child abuse. Apparently, this did not involve just one priest, who eventually went to jail, but a bunch through the Green Bay Diocese. He's running against Russ Feingold as the non-politician.
Joe Miller from Alaska first started his grifter act in Kansas where he received farm subsidies. Then he moved to Alaska and applied and received hunting and fishing licenses for the indigent. These are meant for people who must fish and hunt for their daily food and might be excluded because of the limited number of regular licenses. Joe at the time was a lawyer making $70,000 a year. Joe is mandated by law to file with the Federal Elections Commission a statement of his personal income or face upwards of $70,000 in fines. He was supposed to have done this last year but so far he hasn't. Joe also wants to eliminate Social Security. His father survives on Social Security. But you can say Joe knows how to game the system. I personally think he doesn't believe a word he says.
Christine O'Connell makes my own higher education look pretty bad. She's amazing--she has a master's from Princeton, went to Oxford and studied constitutional law at Claremont. And this was all before she even received her B.A. a few weeks ago. I wonder if she's for Sharia Law. Unfortunately, all said institutions issued strong denials of her educational prowess. Apparently she went to none of the above except Farleigh Dickinson. But this makes her more authentic--we all want such an education but we can't afford it. So just make it up. Apparently, she also made up a multi-year law suit on sex discrimination against a conservative organization. This eventually got John Fund to condemn her for lying to him. But John had no problem with her using campaign funds to pay her rent, her mother, her bowling games and her personal gas. "I have no problem with that," John said, invoking the new high standards of conservatives. Now, Christine's own pseudo-Christian non-profit is in jeipardy of losing its legal status because it failed to submit the usual legal papers to the state--and that's a very lax state. But remember Glenn Beck says Chris Coons, the Democrat, is a Marxist.
Meg Whitman has joined the criminal class--probably years before. At her losin debate effort against Jerry Brown, she opined that the law should crack down on employers who hire illegal immigrants. The next morning her former housekeeper filed suit for damages saying that Queen Meg knew she was illegal for over nine years. Whitman fired her just before she announced she was running for Governor. This all has made the Whitman campaign go Glub,Glub, Glub.
Sharron Angle, who already has made record books for her John Birch views, wants to eliminate government healthcare programs. One slight problem, she is covered by her husband's healthcare plan he got as a government employee. In fact Sharron's main source of income is her husband's goverment pension. Also her father gets both Medicare and VA benefits.
Rand Paul with his bogus medical credentials had a little problem at Dairy Queen the other day. He was supposed to answer questions from local voters but was startled when he saw they were local union guys. He bolted to the car and refused to answer questions. What they wanted to know was how he could suggest a $2,000 deduction for Medicare, when everyone in that neck of the words depended on social security and Medicare.
The avoid questions m.o. makes sense. If you only have to report to the major corporations, why should you have to answer questions from a bunch of voters or , worse, journalists. This is the beauty of the Roberts Court decision on Citizens United. You don't have to disclose the source of your donations and you really don't have to campaign. Just buy alot of air time and make up all your credentials. Want to go to Oxford or Cambridge. Why not? The corporations don't really care what you say. There is a beauty to this.
David Plouffe was on NPR today explaining the real stakes in this election. He did a superb job. But I think the Obama people are making a mistake about Republicans wanting to turn back the clock to the last administration. They want to turn the clock back to the 1890s.
Read another analysis of the House races by a NYU poli sci professor who ran all his computer scenarios and came up with the Democrats keeping the House.
The polling data shows that all the races except in the headline contests in California are tightening up. That good news for Democrats in some places and bad news elsewhere. The Senate will be touch and go throughout the evening.
I am mortified that I got one question wrong on the Pew Survey on Religion. Top scorers were atheists, agnostics, Jews, Mormons, mainstream protestants, then the less knowledgeable evangelicals and Catholics. Catholics were the least savvy in terms of the quiz, even getting their own doctrines wrong. This survey drew all sorts of dismay from pundits. But as someone this morning wrote--the Surveys shows that Americans are more knowledgeable about religion than history or science. Scary.
My wife's note on my birthday card was that she was amazed that she has known me since the age of 21. I find it incredible also but then we are really people of Traditional Family Values instead of the phonies who don't know their own religion.
For the record, I may embrace my inner Teabagger and declare that I am Dr. R. Bruce McColm, expert in Neuroscience. I always liked neuroscience and believe it will yield amazing discoveries in the near future. So why not get ahead of the curve. If Glenn Beck can be a Doctor of Humanities and he lacks all semblence to the humane, why not.
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