It's only 9 am on the West Coast, and the Obama-hating Radical Right is already having its worst day in 2012 so far.
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Harold's Blog
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Great Day For America, But a Horrible Day For the GOP
» Harold's BlogFirst, we hear that the U.S. economy added a net of nearly 250,000 jobs in January (exceeding expectation by almost 100,000), and now we find out that Susan G. Komen For the Cure cancelled its plan to cut funding for Planned Parenthood.
It's only 9 am on the West Coast, and the Obama-hating Radical Right is already having its worst day in 2012 so far. -
Will the GOP Base Stay At Home in November?
» Harold's BlogWhat are the three most important things for the Republicans in 2012? That's easy: turnout, turnout, and turnout -- and they're coming up short on all three:
I think it is interesting that South Carolina, which gave Newt a big win, actually had pretty good turnout (i.e., the GOP base showed up at the polls) whereas Florida, a state Mitt won handily, had a low turnout, as did New Hampshire and Iowa.Underneath tonight’s big win for Mitt Romney in the Florida Republican primary, is a statistic that might suggest enthusiasm is flagging among GOP voters in this large and crucial swing state: turnout was actually down significantly from 2008.
In the 2008 Republican primary in Florida, in which John McCain beat Romney by a margin of 36%-31%, a total of nearly 1.95 million votes were cast.
But in tonight’s primary, turnout was actually much lower. At time of writing, with 98% of precincts reporting, the total turnout is only about 1.65 million — a drop-off of 15% in terms of the raw number of voters. * * *
Republicans just aren't all that excited about Romney, and the numbers are reflecting this lack of enthusiasm. But I think there is something else going on here, namely, I don't believe there is enough hatred for Obama right now. Sure, members of Radical Right hate him (or should I say, hate the Fantasy Version of him), but that's about it.
And that's a problem for Republicans. They don't hate Obama enough. They need to work on that if they want their people to show up at the polls in November, because Romney sure isn't going to bring them in.
UPDATE: Even the Idiot Limbaugh understands this. Here's what he said this morning about Romney's "I'm not concerned about the very poor” comment:“Everybody knows what he's trying to say but he didn't say it and he makes himself a target with this stuff. He comes across as the prototypical rich Republican. And it's gonna make it harder and harder and harder and harder to go after Obama because this turns around on him. You know, all these Wizards of Smart in the Republican establishment say, ‘We can't have Newt out there! Why, Newt's gonna be the topic. We need Obama to be the topic. We need Obama to be the guy campaign's about. If Newt's out there, it's only gonna be about Newt.’ Well, what evidence is there that it's not gonna be about Romney with these kinds of statements?”
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Best Attack Line of the Campaign So Far
» Harold's Blog
- Newt Gingrich (yes, he actually said that)."Romney cut off kosher food to elderly Jews on Medicare."
I am loving this. About a year ago, I told a friend that I was really going to enjoy the GOP presidential primaries; but to be honest, I had no idea they'd be this good. I really like how Santorum and Newt are attacking Romney for being a moderate. I never thought I'd see the day when politically moderate people would be attacked for their lack of extremism, but there it is. -
Fantasy Obama
» Harold's BlogInspired by recent Republican debates, I was going to write a post on this exact topic. But Bill Maher said it better than I ever could, so check it out.
My favorite part:
This "Fantasy Obama" to which Maher refers is apparently a big hit with the Barack-hating radical right-wing extremists who attend the GOP debates and who wouldn't vote for Obama if you held a gun to their heads. But do Republicans really think that General Election voters, especially Independents, will buy into this?Republicans have created this completely fictional president. His name is "Barack X," and he's an Islamo-Socialist Revolutionary who's coming for your guns, raising your taxes, slashing the military, apologizing to other countries, and taking his cues from Europe, or worst yet, Saul Alinski.
And this is how politics has changed. You used to have to run against an actual candidate. But now, you just re-create him inside The Bubble and run against your new fictional candidate. That's how Bush won in 2004 -- by running against John Kerry, a French war criminal.
And speaking of Bush, I know conservatives are saying, "Oh Bill, come on -- Democrats did the same thing to him." No. Say what you will about the Left's hatred of Bush. At least we were hating on the real guy. We didn't invent a bogeyman who tanked the economy, took us to war on false pretenses, and tortured prisoners -- that was the actual guy.
But run down the list of complaints about Fantasy Obama: He wants to raise your taxes (even though he's lowered them), confiscate your guns (even though he's never mentioned it), and read terrorists their rights -- yeah, like he did Tuesday in Somalia. -
So Much For Romney's Florida Firewall
» Harold's BlogFrom The Weekly Standard:
The next few weeks are going to be very interesting. Newt's got the momentum, but Romney's got the money and it remains his race to win.A new poll from Florida conduced by InsiderAdvantage/Majority Opinion Research finds 34.4 percent of Republican voters going for Newt Gingrich and 25.6 percent for Mitt Romney. Ron Paul has support from 13.1 percent, while Rick Santorum gets 10.7 percent.
The poll is "Among Registered Voters Who Will be Voting in Florida's Republican Presidential Primary," and was conducted the day after Gingrich handily won the South Carolina contest.
My only concern now is Newt's big mouth, which gets him in trouble every time. But if Newt can avoid saying something stupid just for a few weeks (a tall order, I know), then I think we'll have a real race here.
UPDATE: The latest Rasmussen poll gives Gingrich a nine-point lead in Florida (Gingrich 41% and Romney 32%). Expect to see Romney really go on the attack against Gingrich in tonight's debate. -
Bonus Quote of the Week
» Harold's Blog
- Stephen Colbert“First Mitt won Iowa, then he lost Iowa? It’s a classic Romney flip-flop.”
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Quote of the Week
» Harold's Blog
- Mitt Romney."I get speaker’s fees from time to time, but not very much.”
The New York Times, however, reports that "in the most recent year, Mr. Romney made $374,327.62 in speaker’s fees, at an average of $41,592 per speech, according to his public financial disclosure reports."
The average working family might find it interesting that Romney considers $374,327.62 to be "not very much" money. I'll bet you $10,000 that this statement will come back to haunt him. -
Gingrich Is Atop The Polls in Virginia
» Harold's BlogFrom Quinnipiac:
Great news for Newt, right? Well, not really:Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich jumps into a slight 30 - 25 percent lead over former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney among Virginia Republicans in the race for the GOP presidential nomination, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today. No other candidate tops 9 percent.
Perry not making the ballot is no big surprise, given that he is an idiot. Gingrich, however, is supposedly the intellectual leader of the GOP. But given that recent history indicates the the Republican Party is made up almost entirely of morons, maybe this is Gingrich's ploy to appear more like a dumb-s**t to the GOP base.In a major blow to their presidential campaigns, both Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich will not be on the ballot for Virginia’s March 6 primary.
Both candidates failed to meet the state’s requirement of 10,000 signatures, according to the state party, and thus do not qualify.
“After verification, RPV has determined that Newt Gingrich did not submit required 10k signatures and has not qualified for the VA primary,” the state GOP said via Twitter on Saturday. Perry’s rejection was announced late Friday.
UPDATE: The">[http] stupidity continues:
Merry Christmas, Newt.After not making the ballot in Virginia, Newt Gingrich's spokesman said he would "work with the Republican Party of Virginia to pursue an aggressive write-in campaign to make sure that all the voters of Virginia are able to vote for the candidate of their choice."
But there's a problem, CNN notes: "Virginia state law specifically prohibits voters from writing in candidates not on the ballot in primary elections." -
Clever
» Harold's Blog -
Quote of the Year
» Harold's Blog
- Chief Obama strategist David Axelrod, on Newt Gingrich."The higher a monkey climbs up a pole the more you see of his butt. The Speaker is very high up the pole right now and we'll have to see if people enjoy the view."
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Quote of the Week
» Harold's Blog
Barack Obama, responding to insinuations from some GOP presidential candidates that he is an appeaser.“Ask Osama bin Laden and the 22 out of 30 top Al-Qaeda leaders who have been taken off the field whether I engage in appeasement… or whoever’s left out there.”
More please.
One thing that has pissed me off about Obama is his reluctance to tout his many foreign policy achievements. If George W. Bush had this many successes under his belt less than three years into his presidency, we would have seen him prancing around in a flight suit on the deck of an aircraft carrier screaming "mission accomplished" over and over again as he repeatedly pissed himself.
Maybe Obama thinks his successes speak for themselves, but if the GOP is stupid enough to go after him on foreign policy, I expect to see more of this from him.
By the way, isn't it great to have a president who isn't a pussy when it comes to foreign policy, particularly when it comes to dealing with Pakistan? Bush and Cheney's weakness in this area basically rose to the level of treason. -
Quote of the Week
» Harold's Blog
Class Warrior Newt Gingrich, defending his previously-stated position that child labor laws should be repealed (no wonder the Democrats are praying that this guy gets the GOP nomination)."Really poor children, in really poor neighborhoods, have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works so they have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day, they have no habit of I do this and you give me cash unless it is illegal."
And in a completely related story, GOP pollster Frank Luntz gives this advice to his fellow Republicans:
Luntz is also counseling Republicans not to use the word "capitalism." It sounds like the Occupy Wall Street movement might actually be having an effect.Don’t say that the government ‘taxes the rich.’ Instead, tell them that the government ‘takes from the rich.’
“If you talk about raising taxes on the rich,” the public responds favorably, Luntz cautioned. But “if you talk about government taking the money from hardworking Americans, the public says no. Taxing, the public will say yes.”
Republicans should forget about winning the battle over the ‘middle class.’ Call them ‘hardworking taxpayers.’
“[Democrats] cannot win if the fight is on hardworking taxpayers. We can say we defend the ‘middle class’ and the public will say, I’m not sure about that. But defending ‘hardworking taxpayers’ and Republicans have the advantage.” -
Sam Brownback Hates America
» Harold's BlogNot only should Ms. Sullivan refuse to apologize, she should attack Brownback for being a spineless wimp as well as an enemy of free speech (and the high school principal should be ashamed of himself). Via the AP:
UPDATE: Good for her:A Kansas teenager who got into hot water last week over a disparaging tweet about Gov. Sam Brownback said she has received so much support from around the country that now she’s leaning toward rejecting her high school principal’s demand that she apologize to the governor in writing.
Since word of her tweet and the reaction by Brownback’s office and her school was reported in the media, people from across the U.S. have reached out to Emma Sullivan — mostly to encourage her to stand her ground, The Wichita Eagle reported.
“I knew it would cause some uproar, but I definitely didn’t think it would get to a national level or that I would have so many people tweeting at me,” she told the newspaper Friday.
The Shawnee Mission East senior was taking part in a Kansas Youth in Government program in Topeka when she sent out a tweet from the back of a crowd of students listening to Brownback’s greeting: “Just made mean comments at gov. brownback and told him he sucked, in person #heblowsalot.”
She actually made no such comment and described the tweet as “joking around.”
Brownback’s office, which monitors social media for postings containing the governor’s name, saw Sullivan’s post and contacted the Youth in Government program. Soon she was in the principal’s office for an hourlong scolding and a demand she send Brownback an apology letter.
The principal, who later called the situation a “disciplinary issue” that was not a public matter, even suggested talking points for the letter she was supposed to write.
Many have urged the 18-year-old to not write the letter, suggesting instead that Brownback or his representatives need to apologize to Sullivan for reporting her to school officials.
“I’m really glad most people have been supportive of me, regardless of their political views,” she said. “They’re standing up for the fact that it’s my … right to express myself.”
The turd is now right where it should be -- in the pockets of Brownback and the school principal. Your move, assholes.An American teenager who wrote a disparaging tweet about Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback said Sunday that she is rejecting her high school principal's demand for a written apology. Emma Sullivan, 18, said she isn't sorry and doesn't think such a letter would be sincere. ***
UPDATE II: Looks like somebody gave Brownback some good advice:Gov. Sam Brownback apologized Monday for his office's reaction to a Kansas high school senior's disparaging tweet about the Republican during a visit to the Statehouse. ***
"My staff over-reacted to this tweet and for that I apologize," Brownback said. "Freedom of speech is among our most treasured freedoms." -
No Surprise Here
» Harold's BlogFox News makes people dumb:
My experience is that Fox News viewers -- like the asshole who occasionally responds to this blog -- actually think that being informed on the issues is anti-American. In fact, these people seem to celebrate their idiocy on a regular basis.According to the latest results from Fairleigh Dickinson University's PublicMind poll, some news sources make us less likely to know what's going on in the world. In the most recent study, the poll asked New Jerseyans about current events at home and abroad, and from what sources -- if any -- they get their information. The conclusion: Sunday morning news shows do the most to help people learn about current events, while some outlets, especially Fox News, lead people to be even less informed than those who say they don't watch any news at all.
What did Herman Cain say the other day? He said that the American people "need a leader, not a reader." I bet you Fox News viewers loved that one. -
Why Do So Many NASCAR Fans Hate Our Troops?
» Harold's Blog -
What Perry's Brain Freeze Really Tells Us About The GOP Mentality
» Harold's BlogOK, I admit that I've watched Rick Perry's screw-up in the debate over and over again. It was hard to watch the first time, but it got more hilarious with repeated viewings.
I recently told a friend that the reason Perry forgot the Department of Energy when he said he'd get rid of three agencies of government -- but could not remember the third one -- was because every GOP presidential candidate is competing with each other to demonstrate who hates government the most; and in Perry's zeal to out-hate the rest of the field, he jumped right in without really thinking about what he was going to say. It is this thoughtless approach to the issue of governing, I argued, that pretty much defines the GOP these days.
E.J. Dionne takes this basic idea and runs with it:
F**king-A.* * * Would Perry end all federal aid to education? Would he do away with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the part of the Commerce Department that, among other things, tracks hurricanes? Energy was the department he forgot. Would he scrap the department’s 17 national labs, including such world-class facilities as Los Alamos, N.M., Oak Ridge, Tenn., or — there’s that primary coming up — Aiken, S.C.?
I’m not accusing Perry of wanting to do any of these things because I don’t believe he has given them a moment of thought. And that’s the problem for conservatives. Their movement has been overtaken by a quite literally mindless opposition to government. Perry, correctly, thought he had a winning sound bite, had he managed to blurt it out, because if you just say you want to scrap government departments (and three is a nice, round number), many conservatives will cheer without asking questions.
This is a long way from the conservatism I used to respect. Although I often disagreed with conservatives, I admired their prudence, their affection for tradition and their understanding that the intricate bonds of community are established with great difficulty over time and not easy to reweave once they are torn asunder. At their best, conservatives forced us to think harder. Now, many in the ranks seem to have decided that hard and nuanced thinking is a telltale sign of liberalism. * * * -
Perry Is Finished
» Harold's BlogThis is tough to watch, but it's pretty clear that Rick Perry's campaign for the GOP nomination ended tonight:Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
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Bonus Quotes of the Week
» Harold's Blog
- Herman Cain (note to Cain: China has been "nuclear capable" for about a half a century -- it currently has around 3000 nuclear warheads in its arsenal)."I do view China as a potential military threat to the United States....They've indicated that they're trying to develop nuclear capability and they want to develop more aircraft carriers like we have. So yes, we have to consider them a military threat."
It troubles me that Cain is imploding so badly as of late because I really would like to see him give Romney a run for his money. But I love how radical right wingers like Limbaugh and Coulter are trying to blame Democratic operatives for leaking the Cain sexual harassment story, which makes no sense politically given that every Democrat knows that Cain has no chance of getting the nomination (i.e., every Democratic operative out there would do everything in his or her power to keep Cain viable for as long as possible because it hurts Romney, who will almost certainly be the GOP nominee).
Either this leak came from a rival GOP campaign (somewhat likely) or from someone who worked for or was once a business associate of Cain and has a grudge against him (highly likely).
And here is another quote from this week that I liked. It's from retired Sen. Alan Simpson (R-WY), and he made these remarks yesterday while testifying in front of the so-called Super Committee:
Grover Norquist is, of course, the anti-tax crusader who has secured pledges from a majority of Republican members of Congress -- including all six GOP Super Committee members -- to never vote to raise taxes under any circumstances, even during times of war (which goes a long way to explaining why we have such a huge deficit right now). I've long felt that signing such a pledge displayed a deep hatred for America, and I'm glad to see that the GOP is starting to pay a political price for such lunacy.“Just a quick note about Grover Norquist. If Grover Norquist is now the most powerful man in America, he should run for president. There’s no question about his power. And let me tell you, he has people in thrall. That’s a terrible phrase. Lincoln used it. It means your mind has been captured. You’re in bondage with a soul.
“So here he is. I asked him. He said, ‘My hero is Ronald Reagan.’ I said, ‘Well, he raised taxes 11 times in his eight years.’ And he said, ‘I know. I didn’t like that at all.’ I said, ‘Well, he did it. Why do you suppose?’ He said, ‘I don’t know. Very disappointing.’ I said, ‘He probably did it to make the country run, another sick idea.’” -
Quote of the Week
» Harold's Blog
Ann Coulter."Our blacks are so much better than their blacks. To become a black Republican, you don't just roll into it. You're not going with the flow...and that's why we have very impressive blacks in the Republican party."
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Why So Many Foreign Policy Victories For Obama?
» Harold's BlogFormer DNC Communications Director Karen Finney said it best: "Look at the foreign policy successes -- that is what President Obama can get done when the GOP cannot obstruct him."
This should be the central theme of Obama's reelection campaign. -
"What The F**k Is Wrong With You People?"
» Harold's Blog
-- Jon Stewart."Is there no Republican that can be gracious and statesmanlike in this situation? We removed a dictator in six months, losing no American soldiers, spending like a billion dollars rather than a trillion dollars, and engendering what appears to be goodwill to people who now have a prideful story of their own independence to tell -- not to mention oil (they have oil!). * * *
"What the f**k is wrong with you people? Honestly, what is wrong with you? Are you that small?"
The Fox segment -- starting at 8:40 -- is particularly funny. Those poor FoxNews bastards are livid that Obama actually pulled off this thing in Libya! I think it is hilarious that there are people in this country who are furious today because Obama keeps handing America one foreign policy success after another (and it probably doesn't help that their guys -- Bush and Cheney -- were so utterly incompetent in this area).The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook -
Bonus Quote of the Week
» Harold's Blog
Steve Benen, noting that in their rush to not give the hated Obama credit for his success in Libya, Republicans couldn't even bring themselves to thank the U.S. servicemen and women for the part they played in taking Qadaffi out.Remember hearing about the “blame America first” crowd? Well, say hello to the “thank America last” crowd.
I know these characters hate America and all, but their hatred for this country usually isn't so prominently on display (except, of course, when they intentionally try to bring down our economy, like they did last summer). -
Quote of the Week
» Harold's BlogFrom Andrew Sullivan:
F**king-A."To rid the world of Osama bin Laden, Anwar al-Awlaki and Moammar Qaddafi within six months: if Obama were a Republican, he'd be on Mount Rushmore by now."
UPDATE: Marco Rubio is a steaming pile of excrement as well as a hater of American servicemen, apparently -- and it turns out he's also a goddam foreigner (yes, the Birthers are back!).
BTW, how do you know that Republicans hate Obama with the white hot intensity of a thousand suns? Because -- as the above Rubio link indicates -- they'd rather give the f**king French credit for the victory in Libya than give any credit to Obama (or to our men and women in uniform), and Republicans hate the French.
Of course, this isn't surprising -- they spent the last several months criticizing the Obama Administration's Libya policy, so what the hell else can they do, admit they were wrong?
UPDATE II: Well, at least two Republicans still have some honor:“It’s a great day,” Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, said on CNN on Thursday morning. “I think the administration deserves great credit. Obviously, I had different ideas on the tactical side, but the world is a better place.”
Senator Mark Steven Kirk, Republican of Illinois, added, in a statement, referring to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, “The administration, especially Secretary Clinton, deserve our congratulations.”
UPDATE III: Kevin Drum nails it:I understand the left's problem with Obama's national security policy. But the right? What the hell is their problem? Obama has escalated our presence dramatically in Afghanistan; he created a massive drone air force that's all but wiped out al-Qaeda in Pakistan; he killed Osama bin Laden; he approved a multilateral military operation in Libya that ended up killing Muammar Qaddafi; he sent a SEAL team out to kill Somali pirates; he assassinates U.S. citizens in foreign countries who are associated with al-Qaeda; and he's done more to isolate and sanction Iran than George Bush ever did. Crikey. Just how bloodthirsty do they want the guy to be?
Of course, it's also true that Obama has suggested that Israel should halt new construction in West Bank settlements, and he hasn't yet turned Iran into a glassy plain. I suppose the former is enough to make him the second coming of Neville Chamberlain all by itself, and the latter is something to keep pushing for. Hope springs eternal.
But seriously guys. How much more militaristic do you realistically think an American president can be, especially after the military fiascoes of the past decade that you so enthusiastically backed? Get a grip. -
The Vote Was A Setback For Obama?
» Harold's BlogMcClatchy is usually pretty good at political analysis, but its take on the GOP filibuster of Obama's Jobs Bill misses the mark:
WTF? I thought everybody knew that there was absolutely no chance of the bill passing in the Senate because that particular body now requires 60 votes to get anything done, and the GOP is filibustering everything these days. Christ, if Obama proposed a bill that both banned abortion and outlawed the ACLU, and the GOP thought that such a bill might help Obama politically, every Republican would still vote against it.Senators voted 50-49 on a procedural move to take up Obama’s plan, but 60 votes were required under Senate rules for lawmakers to proceed on the measure. * * *
The vote was a setback for Obama, who has been crisscrossing the country trumpeting the bill and predicting that its defeat would be the fault of obstructionist Republicans. * * *
That's the whole point of last night's exercise. Get these America-hating GOP motherf**kers on the record, then attack them for not only opposing job creation, but also opposing higher taxes on the rich, something that a vast majority of Americans -- and a clear majority of Republicans -- actually support.
What I found particularly troubling about the McClatchy piece was that the word "filibuster" is found nowhere in it, even though that is exactly what happened last night. Pull your heads out of your asses, McClatchy-folk -- you're usually much better than this.
UPDATE: The Cincinnati Enquirer appears to get it:
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I Agree With Romney On This
» Harold's BlogFrom TPM:
I actually think this is going to work. Everyone is worried about Romney's record of flip-flopping, but I predict that it won't play much of a part in the general election. As Clinton famously said during the run-up to the 1992 election, "It's the economy, stupid." Bottom line: If the economy improves over the next few months, Obama will win. If it doesn't improve, then we'll have a real fight on our hands.Here’s how Mitt Romney is deflecting the flip-flopper charge this time around:
“In the private sector, if you don’t change your view when the facts change, you’ll get fired for being stupid,” Romney told a town hall in New Hampshire, according to ABC News. * * * -
Quote of the Week
» Harold's Blog
-- From Gawker.In perhaps the most gratuitously — and joyously! — dickish move of his presidency, Barack Obama has scheduled a primetime congressional address next week at the precise moment Politico and MSNBC will be hosting a debate for the GOP presidential candidates.
UPDATE: Obama backs down. Wow -- I didn't see that coming. -
No, This Is Not An Onion Article
» Harold's BlogIt's from the New York Times, and yes, Virginia, there actually is a tax cut that the GOP opposes:
OK, look -- I get it: We have an election that is a little over 14 months away, so I understand that the GOP doesn't want to support anything Obama proposes. Given the current political climate, Obama could even propose a constitutional amendment banning abortion and the GOP would probably oppose it because Obama supports it.It is hard to find a tax cut that Congressional Republicans dislike. Unless it is a tax cut pushed by President Obama.
In a turning of the tax policy tables, Democrats are increasingly hammering on Republicans who oppose the president’s proposal to extend for a year a payroll tax cut passed last year with bipartisan support.
That tax cut — which reduces workers’ contributions to Social Security this year to 4.2 percent of wages, from 6.2 percent — expires in December. The White House would like to extend it for another year. But Republicans in Congress are balking, arguing that such a cut adds needlessly to the nation’s budget deficit, and should be replaced with an overhaul of tax policy instead.***
But opposing a tax cut simply because it helps the middle class and poor people, while at the same time insisting that Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy be continued? That's pretty f**ked-up. -
Huntsman's Path To Name Recognition?
» Harold's BlogVia TPM:
Crazy? Maybe not, especially if Huntsman -- who really has nothing to lose -- decides to attack his fellow GOP presidential candidates for taking the bats**t-crazy positions that folks like Bachmann and Perry seem to take on pretty much a daily basis.The former Utah governor and Obama-appointed ambassador to China has appeared to take glee in poking the Republican base in recent days. Try to convince the base that his appointment by President Obama isn't a fatal handicap? Nah, just mock the base instead.
Huntsman's "Call me crazy" tweet was in response to two prominent blow-ups from Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Within the space of 28 hours he alleged that scientists were making up global warming for profit and had dismissed evolution as "a theory that's out there."
"To be clear," Huntsman tweeted. "I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy."
I would love it if, during the next GOP debate when Bachmann says something absurd (which will happen), Huntsman turns to her and says, "That may be the most insane thing I've heard yet during this campaign, and that's saying a lot."
I guarantee that if Huntsman says something along those lines, everybody in the country will finally know who he is. -
Quote Of The Week
» Harold's Blog
-- Rick "Love It and Leave It" Perry, Texas Governor and GOP Presidential candidate."I think you want a president who is passionate about America -- that's in love with America."
I only have one piece of advice for Gov. Perry: If you want to win the presidency, you really need to change the way you speak. You sound so much like George W. Bush that you'll probably creep out even hardcore Republicans:
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A Video That Perfectly Demonstrates Why The GOP Is Screwed Right Now
» Harold's BlogFirst, a little context: 21 out of 23 polls now show over sixty percent approval for raising taxes as part of a deficit reduction plan -- the two exceptions are the FoxNews poll (56% approval for raising taxes) and Reuters (59% approval). Now, watch this video from the recent GOP debate in Iowa:
Talk about being out of touch. The Republican Party is so afraid of the Tea-Baggers that every single GOP presidential candidate raised their hand saying they would refuse to support a debt deal that had a 10-to-1 ratio of spending cuts vs. tax increases. UnF**kingBelievable.
The problem with a Republican presidential candidate pandering to the bats**t-crazy wing of his or her party is that whomever gets the nomination is going to have shift back to the middle during the run-up to the General Election. Now that Pawlenty has dropped out of the race, there remains only two GOP candidates who can effectively pull off such a shift: Huntsman (who has no chance at the nomination even though he is probably the least crazy of the bunch) and Romney. Perry can't do that because he's just as much of a Tea-Bagger as Bachmann.
This is why Romney will get the nomination. I know he's raised flip-flopping to an art form, but his willingness to change his position on pretty much every issue will probably help him in the long haul, particularly when it comes to the debate over how to deal with the national debt. -
Holy S**t!
» Harold's BlogGiven how weak Obama's been looking as of late -- particularly during the Republican-manufactured Debt Ceiling "Crisis," where he pretty much gave the GOP and its Tea-Bagging Masters everything they wanted -- I figured he was going to get his ass kicked in the post-debt ceiling polls. After all, John Boehner openly bragged that he got 98% of what he wanted in the Debt Ceiling Deal. So imagine my surprise when I read the result of the most recent Gallup poll:
This flip in the polling made no sense to me, particularly given all the spin being put out by the GOP presidential candidates that the Debt Ceiling Debacle was all Obama's fault (and Obama's apparent unwillingness to aggressively counter-attack on this issue). Then I read the results from this CNN poll:According to the monthly survey, which was conducted from August 4 -7, Obama would win 45-39 against "the Republican party's candidate." The previous two polls from Gallup had the generic GOPer running strong with a 47-39 lead in July and 44-39 lead in June.
The same CNN poll also indicated that views of the Tea Baggers "have also turned more negative, with 51 percent saying they have a negative view of the two-year-old limited government and anti-tax grassroots movement, with favorable ratings dropping from 37 percent down to 31 percent."Fifty-nine percent say they have an unfavorable view of the Republican party, an all-time high dating back to 1992 when the question was first asked. The poll indicates that views of the Democratic party, by contrast, have remained fairly steady, with 47 percent saying they have a favorable view of the Democrats and an equal amount saying they hold an unfavorable view.
"The Democratic party, which had a favorable rating just a couple of points higher than the GOP in July, now has a 14-point advantage over the Republican party," adds Holland.
The same pattern holds for the parties' leaders in Congress. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the top Democrat in the chamber, have never had great numbers, but the public's view of them have remained essentially unchanged in the wake of the debt ceiling debate. But House Speaker John Boehner's favorable rating has dropped 10 points, and his unfavorable rating is up to 40 percent, a new high for him. On the Senate side, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell isn't faring much better - his unfavorable rating is 39 percent, a seven-point increase since July.
All these poll results tell me that the American People were actually paying attention to the Debt Ceiling Debate and were able to see through all the GOP/Tea-Bagger bulls**ttery. It also tells me that the GOP learned a tough lesson from this, namely, don't try to re-write history when (1) the history just happened within the last few weeks, and (2) lots of people where actually watching the history unfold.
But in any event, Obama and the Democrats really need to exploit this while the Debt Deal Fiasco is still clear in peoples' minds. They need to aggressively attack the Republicans for once again bringing this country's economy to the brink. When a political party f**ks up as bad as the GOP did on this issue, it is important to strike while the iron is hot and do so before FoxNews and the Republicans can re-write the history of what just happened. -
Best Cartoon Yet On America's Current Political Problems
» Harold's Blog
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F**king-A
» Harold's Blog
By the way, I know this might sound hard to believe, but it looks like the Democrats have finally come up with an effective talking point.
I never thought I'd see the day when the usually-lame Democrats actually succeed at framing an issue. The End Times must truly be upon us. -
Hilarious
» Harold's Blog -
Reagan Was Clearly An America-Hating Libral
» Harold's Blog
– RONALD REAGAN, 1983.“The full consequences of a default or even the serious prospect of default by the United States are impossible to predict and awesome to contemplate. Denigration of the full faith and credit of the United States would have substantial effects on the domestic financial markets and on the value of the dollar in exchange markets. The Nation can ill afford to allow such a result. The risks, the cost, the disruptions, and the incalculable damage lead me to but one conclusion: the Senate must pass this legislation before the Congress adjourns.”
Ronald Reagan also said, back in 1987: “The United States has a special obligation to itself and the world to meet its obligations.”
All the folks who are willing to take this country to the brink and think it’ll be OK for the U.S. to default on its debt have one thing in common – all of them love Ronald Reagan and think of him as nothing short of a conservative god. Yet the debt ceiling was raised SEVENTEEN TIMES during his presidency. Plus Reagan raised taxes several times while president.
I think it is hilarious that if Ronald Reagan showed up on the political scene today, the Tea-Baggers would instantly brand him as a socialist-commie Amerika-hating fascist/marxist evil-doer and then proceed to beat the crap out of him in an alley somewhere. Reagan was more liberal than even most Democrats are these days. -
This Has To Be One Of The Seven Signs Of The Apocalypse
» Harold's BlogFrom the Washington Post:
Stunning.WITH A HANDFUL of exceptions, every Republican member of Congress has signed a pledge against increasing taxes. Would allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire as scheduled in 2012 violate this vow? We posed this question to Grover Norquist, its author and enforcer, and his answer was both surprising and encouraging: No.
In other words, according to Mr. Norquist’s interpretation of the Americans for Tax Reform pledge, lawmakers have the technical leeway to bring in as much as $4 trillion in new tax revenue — the cost of extending President George W. Bush’s tax cuts for another decade — without being accused of breaking their promise. “Not continuing a tax cut is not technically a tax increase,” Mr. Norquist told us. So it doesn’t violate the pledge? “We wouldn’t hold it that way,” he said. * * *
By the way, you know things are screwed up when a piece in The Onion sounds more like real reporting than it does satire:Members of the U.S. Congress reported Wednesday they were continuing to carefully debate the issue of whether or not they should allow the country to descend into a roiling economic meltdown of historically dire proportions.
"It is a question that, I think, is worthy of serious consideration: Should we take steps to avoid a crippling, decades-long depression that would lead to disastrous consequences on a worldwide scale? Or should we not do that?" asked House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), adding that arguments could be made for both sides, and that the debate over ensuring America’s financial solvency versus allowing the nation to default on its debt—which would torpedo stock markets, cause mortgage and interests rates to skyrocket, and decimate the value of the U.S. dollar—is “certainly a conversation worth having.” "Obviously, we don't want to rush to consensus on whether it is or isn't a good idea to save the American economy and all our respective livelihoods from certain peril until we've examined this thorny dilemma from every angle. And if we’re still discussing this matter on Aug. 2, well, then, so be it.” At press time, President Obama said he personally believed the country should not be economically ruined. -
Asshole of the Week
» Harold's Blog
-- Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY)."The time has come for a balanced budget amendment that forces Washington to balance its books. If these debt negotiations have convinced us of anything, it’s that we can’t leave it to politicians in Washington to make the difficult decisions that they need to get our fiscal house in order. The balanced budget amendment will do that for them. Now is the moment. No more games. No more gimmicks. The Constitution must be amended to keep the government in check. We’ve tried persuasion. We’ve tried negotiations. We’re tried elections. Nothing has worked."
There's one thing you haven't tried, Mitch, and that is acting less like a dick. Only 21% of the country approves of how you and the rest of the GOP are handling this debt ceiling/budget negotiations process -- 71% disapprove. I guess you can expect numbers like that when most Republicans appear to have lost their f**king minds. -
From Mike Keefe of The Denver Post
» Harold's Blog
UPDATE: Only 21% of Americans back the GOP resistance to raising taxes. 71% disapprove of how Republicans are handling the Debt Ceiling/Budget negotiations. -
Quote of the Week
» Harold's Blog
-- Bill Clinton"The Republicans who control the House and have a lot of votes in the Senate have now decided -- having quadrupled the debt in the 12 years before I took office and doubled it after I left -- that it's all the sudden the biggest problem in the world."
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Finally . . .
» Harold's Blog. . . a Republican who actually remembers that the individual mandate was originally a Republican idea:
Judge Sutton, by the way, "is a George W. Bush appointee and a former law clerk to conservative Justice Antonin Scalia. He served as an officer in the conservative Federalist Society’s Federalism and Separation of Powers practice group, and was one of the nation’s leading crusaders for expanding the role of the states at the federal government’s expense."[Sixth Circuit Judge] Sutton concluded that the heart of the assault on the Affordable Care Act — the claim that a law encouraging people to buy insurance is unconstitutional because Congress cannot compel people to take this unwanted action — has no basis in the “text of the Constitution,” and it rests on a legal distinction that is utterly incoherent. And this comes from one of the most conservative members of the federal bench.
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Best Presentation Yet On Why This Country Is F**ked Politically
» Harold's BlogVisit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
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The Time Has Come To Do Nothing
» Harold's BlogAs I was watching coverage of the budget talks the other day, I realized that there is simply no way the Republicans and Democrats are ever going to come to an agreement on anything related to the budget. The problem is that too many Republican congressmen signed the Grover Norquist Pledge to never raise taxes under any circumstances, and any congressmen who violates this pledge and votes to raise taxes would have a very hard time winning a GOP primary let alone a general election.
Although I think signing such a pledge was tantamount to treason and demonstrated a genuine hatred for America, the whole thing made me wonder what would happen if Congress and Obama simply did nothing. After all, the Bush tax cuts are set to expire in 2012.
Well, the Congressional Budget Office crunched the numbers -- not only for a scenario where the Bush tax cuts are extended (which, of course, would lead to economic disaster) -- but also figured out what would happen if Congress and Obama did nothing:
Sounds good to me. The lack of "doc fixes" will, of course, be a big problem, but there is no way the Democrats or Republicans are ever going to come to a budget agreement anyway, so there it is.[T]he [CBO] forecast also presents another opportunity to remind people that the medium-term budget outlook is perfectly fine if Congress adheres to the law as it's currently written. That means no repealing the health care law, for one, but more significantly it means allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire, and (unfathomably) allowing Medicare reimbursement rates for doctors to fall to the levels prescribed by the formula Congress wrote almost 15 years ago. In other words, no more "doc fixes."
Helpfully, CBO juxtaposed these two alternative futures in a pair of graphs and, just as last time, it projects that deficits will disappear entirely by the end of President Obama's second term (if he gets a second term) if Congress were to just sit on its hands and do nothing.
UPDATE: Here is more on this from Steve Benen:*** The tax deal worked out in December, much to the left’s chagrin, extended all of the Bush-era rates. Obama has said he won’t allow this again — come hell or high water, the president won’t let the wealthy keep the tax breaks they don’t need and the country can’t afford.
This matters a great deal, of course, in the context of the current talks. Dems want more revenue, Republicans won’t even consider tax increases. But the president can generate all kinds of revenue later, and there’s nothing the GOP can do about it.
The White House will probably offer Congress a familiar deal: current rates up to $250,000, Clinton-era top rates for those over $250,000. If Republicans agree, taxes on the wealthy go up and the deficit shrinks. If Republicans refuse, demand Bush-era rates for everyone, and reject a deal that shelters the middle class, taxes go up across the board and the deficit shrinks a lot.
It’s something to keep in mind as the debt talks continue. -
Interesting Article
» Harold's BlogA reader referred this Washington Post article to me:This week, the War Powers Act confronts its moment of truth. Friday will mark the 60th day since President Obama told Congress of his Libyan campaign. According to the act, that declaration started a 60-day clock: If Obama fails to obtain congressional support for his decision within this time limit, he has only one option — end American involvement within the following 30 days.
Obama has not only failed but he hasn’t even tried — leaving it to Sen. Richard Lugar, the ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, to call for a “specific resolution that would give [the president] authority.” Neither the president nor the Democratic congressional leadership has shown any interest. They have been sleep-walking their way to Day 60. * * * -
Why Is Ronald Reagan Such A God To The Radical Right?
» Harold's BlogWhenever I get into a discussion with a conservative about tax policy, I mention two things: (1) Bill Clinton's 1993 budget -- which featured the biggest tax increase in modern U.S. history -- ushered in our country's greatest period of sustained economic expansion, and (2) Ronald Reagan signed into law the second biggest tax increase in modern U.S. History.
Let me repeat that last point: Ronald Freaking Reagan signed into law the second biggest tax increase in modern U.S. history:
What I find hilarious is that 99.99% of Republicans have no idea that Reagan raised taxes. The GOP clearly wants to keep this a secret, because if Republicans suddenly found out that Reagan was a chronic tax raiser, there would be mass suicides within the party, or, at the very least, an epidemic of spontaneous human combustion which would obliterate the GOP base.It's conservative lore that Reagan the Icon cut taxes, while George H.W. Bush the Renegade raised them. As [former Reagan Budget Director David] Stockman recalls, "No one was authorized to talk about tax increases on Ronald Reagan's watch, no matter what kind of tax, no matter how justified it was." Yet raising taxes is exactly what Reagan did. He did not always instigate those hikes or agree to them willingly--but he signed off on them. One year after his massive tax cut, Reagan agreed to a tax increase to reduce the deficit that restored fully one-third of the previous year's reduction. (In a bizarre bit of self-deception, Reagan, who never came to terms with this episode of ideological apostasy, persuaded himself that the three-year, $100 billion tax hike--the largest since World War II--was actually "tax reform" that closed loopholes in his earlier cut and therefore didn't count as raising taxes.)
Faced with looming deficits, Reagan raised taxes again in 1983 with a gasoline tax and once more in 1984, this time by $50 billion over three years, mainly through closing tax loopholes for business. Despite the fact that such increases were anathema to conservatives--and probably cost Reagan's successor, George H.W. Bush, reelection--Reagan raised taxes a grand total of four times just between 1982-84. -
Whatever You Say, Newt
» Harold's BlogUnbelievable:
The "Ryan Plan" is causing big problems for the GOP. Just last week, 42 House Republicans signed a letter to Obama asking him to tell the Democrats to stop their attacks on GOP members who voted for the Ryan budget, which included a plan to privatize Medicare and cap spending on it. Newt probably thought he had political cover to say what he said on Meet The Press last Sunday given how fast House Republicans were running away from the Ryan Plan. He must not have gotten the memo stating that the GOP now intends to fully support Ryan and his goal to eliminate Medicare. I guess that letter to Obama didn't work.Newt Gingrich's walk back tour reached its zenith Tuesday night, as Gingrich personally apologized to Paul Ryan for dismissing his Medicare plan as "right wing social engineering." In an added twist, Gingrich claims that the merest mention of his extensive condemnation of Ryan's budget from Sunday's Meet The Press by Democrats is now out of bounds as a result.
"Any ad which quotes what I said on Sunday is a falsehood, because I have said publicly those words were inaccurate and unfortunate," he told FOX's Greta Van Susteren. ""When I make a mistake, and I'm going to on occasion, I'm going to share with the American people that was a mistake because that way we can have an honest conversation."
Democrats have been giddy -- and Republicans terrified -- at the prospect of new ads and messaging featuring Gingrich's attacks on the Ryan budget as "radical change from the right" and "too big a jump" for America. Newt's comments to FOX suggest that he's well aware of what's coming.
What I find most amazing is that it was Newt Gingrich himself -- over two decades ago -- who told his fellow Republicans that they must be more nasty when it comes to dealing with Democrats. This is from a 1990 New York Times opinion piece:
In other words, the guy who pretty much invented the modern-day negative campaign is now asking his political opponents to tone things down and to not attack him for statements that he himself made on National TV."Sick." "Traitors." "Bizarre." "Self-serving." "Shallow." "Corrupt." "Pathetic." "Shame." The group that urged political candidates to use these epithets has since regretted suggesting the word ''traitors,'' in response to inquiries from the press. But the others were allowed to stand; they appear in a glossary that a conservative Republican group recently mailed to Republican state legislative candidates.
The group is Gopac, the G.O.P. Political Action Committee. Its general chairman is Representative Newt Gingrich. With the pamphlet, ''Language: A Key Mechanism of Control,'' comes a letter from Mr. Gingrich himself. Its message to candidates: Step up invective. Use words like these to describe opponents. These words work.
Mr. Gingrich's injunction represents the worst of American political discourse, which reached a low during the dispiriting Presidential campaign of 1988. Then, more than ever before, negative argument displaced reasoned discussion about how a nation might best be governed. ***
Good luck with that, Newt. -
Well, So Much For Doing The Honorable Thing
» Harold's BlogWhat an asshole:
Fastest flip-flop in history? Perhaps. Newt's flip-flop on Libya was fast, but not this fast.Newt Gingrich is condemning individual health insurance mandates today, finally ditching the policy after more than a decade of vocal support that he reiterated as recently as Sunday morning.
"I am for the repeal of Obamacare and I am against any effort to impose a federal mandate on anyone because it is fundamentally wrong and I believe unconstitutional," he said in a video posted on his website on Monday and apparently shot this morning outside a Washington, D.C., hotel where Gingrich was addressing an Alzheimer's convention.
In the early 1990s, Gingrich joined many Republican in backing a health care law featuring an individual mandate as an alternative to President Clinton's proposal. He supported a similar policy throughout the 2000s in several of his books, echoing President Obama and Mitt Romney in backing an individual mandate buttressed by financial support for those who can't afford health insurance.
He repeated his support for such a plan yet again on Meet The Press this Sunday after David Gregory played a clip of Newt calling for an individual mandate in 1993. -
My Apologies To The Corporate Media
» Harold's BlogThe other day I was critical of the Mainstream Press for not pointing out that conservatives who were once for the individual mandate are now opposed to ObamaCare, even though its central feature is an individual mandate. Well, David Gregory, on this morning's Meet The Press, pointed out to guest Newt Gingrich that Gingrich himself has a history of supporting the individual mandate. This exchange followed:
I've had my problems with Gingrich over the years, but I'll give him credit for not trying to run away from his record like so many other Republicans are doing with regard to Health Care Reform. You did the honorable thing this morning, Newt, and I applaud you for it.GINGRICH: Well, I agree that all of us have a responsibility to help pay for health care. And I think there are ways to do it that make most libertarians relatively happy. I have said consistently we ought to have some requirement that you either have health insurance or you post a bond, or in some way, you indicate you’re going to be held accountable.
GREGORY: But that is the individual mandate, is it not?
GINGRICH: It’s a variation on it.
GREGORY: So you won’t use that issue against Mitt Romney?
GINGRICH: No.
Needless to say, members of the radical right aren't all that happy with Gingrich right now. This is from RedState.com:
Gingrich's opposition to Ryan's proposal to gut Medicare should not be a problem for him, given the number of Republicans who are running away from Ryan like they'd run away from the plague.Newt Gingrich appeared on Meet the Press this morning and said two things that won’t exactly endear him to the Tea Party crowd or the reform minded movement sweeping the GOP.
First, he endorsed the individual mandate and said he would not bash Mitt Romney over the individual mandate.
Second, he went after Paul Ryan’s proposal to reform Medicare. Your mileage may vary on Ryan’s plan, but he is both offering up one and using the free market, individual choice approach favored by conservatives.
Newt was not happy with the approach.
Gingrich is already going to have to overcome the apprehensiveness of evangelicals and women in the primary. To also have to overcome the free marketers’ concerns may prove problematic.
But Newt's support for the individual mandate is another story because it now appears that there will be a debate amongst the 2012 GOP presidential candidates as to whether the individual mandate is the right approach. Doesn't the mere existence of such a debate seriously undercut the GOP argument that Obama is a socialist for signing a HCR bill which featured the individual mandate? The folks at Roaring Republican seem to think so:
Good question. One of the GOP strengths in the last two years has been its universal opposition to health care reform generally and its universal rejection of the the individual mandate specifically. It got so bad for Romney, in fact, that he actually had to argue the other day that the RomneyCare mandate was somehow different from the ObamaCare mandate. But Gingrich's re-embrace of the individual mandate this morning makes Romney look a lot less like a radical leftist than he did yesterday.Republican’s have major problems in 2012, not the least of which are our candidates. With Huckabee out, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich seem that much closer to headlining and that isn’t good for conservatives of any variety, especially on health care.
Romney made a name for himself with a signature Massachusetts health care reform that forced taxpayers to purchase care, known as an individual mandate. The measure is a centerpiece of the Obama federal plan and may prove to be the downfall of the entire legislation if the Supreme Court finds it unconstitutional. Not great for Romney, even worse for Newt Gingrich. Why?
In the past Gingrich has repeatedly supported an individual mandate, a point he reconfirmed this morning on Meet The Press. *** Essentially then, Gingrich and Romney have removed the lynchpin of the conservative argument. It is OK for the federal government to force individuals to purchase a private product. So then what is next? Carbon offsets? Forced higher education spending? Electric cars? Housing? Insulation? Where do we go from here?
My conclusion? Today was a very good day for both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. -
Romney Crashes And Burns On HCR Speech
» Harold's BlogI hope Mitt has good health care coverage because he's getting the s**t kicked out of him today, from both the right and the left. And I'm enjoying every minute of it.
I'm not enjoying it because I dislike Romney. I actually think he wouldn't make a bad president. Sure, he's turned flip-flopping into an art form, but the bottom line for me is that he's not f**king insane like most of the rest of the GOP presidential field is. He's a moderate voice within the party.
Romney's problem, however, is that the GOP -- in response to the Obama presidency -- decided to go even further to the right than it was before the 2008 election, meaning that moderates like Romney are now viewed as the enemy. And that is what I find hysterically funny.
When Mitt passed RomneyCare in Massachusetts a few years back, he thought he had all sorts of GOP political cover. After all, the whole thing was originally a Republican idea:
But we're not just talking ancient history here. As earlier reported on this blog, Jim Freaking DeMint supported individual mandates as recently as 2007, and so did Newt Gingrich. And, as noted here, a lot of other Republicans supported mandates at one time or another, including Robert Bennett, Christopher Bond, Robert Dole, Charles Grassley, Orrin Hatch, Richard Lugar, Alan Simpson, Arlen Specter, Daniel Coats, Judd Gregg, and Kay Hutchison.*** [T]he last time Congress debated a health overhaul, when Bill Clinton was president, [Orrin] Hatch and several other senators who now oppose the so-called individual mandate actually supported a bill that would have required it.
In fact, says Len Nichols of the New America Foundation, the individual mandate was originally a Republican idea. "It was invented by Mark Pauly to give to George Bush Sr. back in the day, as a competition to the employer mandate focus of the Democrats at the time." ***
Why have all these people suddenly flip-flopped on the individual mandate? Simple -- because Obama supported it, and the GOP made a group decision to aggressively oppose everything that Obama supported, even if it meant turning their backs on their own ideas.
I used to be critical of Obama for pushing a health care reform bill that was made up almost entirely of Republican ideas, but now I see the genius of it. I can't wait until the so-called liberal media finally gets off its ass and reports that folks like Jim DeMint and Newt Gingrich supported the individual mandate before they were against it.
By the way, this is pretty funny:
Wonderful.The Obama administration, on Friday, continued to apply a veritable death hug to likely Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, praising the health care law he passed as Massachusetts’ governor despite Romney’s insistence that there were major distinctions between his and the president’s approach.
“We have said before that health care reform that then Governor Romney signed into law in Massachusetts is in many ways similar to the legislation that resulted in the Affordable Care Act,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said in an off-camera briefing at the White House. “And as to the issue of flexibility, as you know, earlier this year we made quite a big deal out of the fact that the president wanted to move up to 2014 … the starting point at which states can ask for waivers to opt out of the Affordable Care Act as long as they, of course, demonstrate their capacity with their own ideas to achieve the same objectives.”
“We wholly endorse flexibility and we obviously feel that Massachusetts took a smart approach towards health care reform,” the press secretary added. “Its provenance was so mainstream, there are great similarities between Massachusetts' law, the Affordable Care Act and legislation proposed by then Rhode Island Republican [Senator] John Chaffee in 1993.” -
It Just Doesn't Get Any Better Than This
» Harold's BlogIt turns out that even Newt Gingrich was for the individual health insurance mandate before he was against it:
I think it speaks volumes that two of the most radical right-wingers in our country -- Newt Gingrich and Jim DeMint -- actually supported mandated insurance coverage for the United States. As noted last Sunday, DeMint even went so far as to state that RomneyCare is "something that I think we should do for the whole country."In his post-congressional life, Gingrich has been a vocal champion for mandated insurance coverage -- the very provision of President Obama's health care legislation that the Republican Party now decries as fundamentally unconstitutional. ***
In a June 2007 op-ed in the Des Moines Register, Gingrich wrote, "Personal responsibility extends to the purchase of health insurance. Citizens should not be able to cheat their neighbors by not buying insurance, particularly when they can afford it, and expect others to pay for their care when they need it." An "individual mandate," he added, should be applied "when the larger health-care system has been fundamentally changed."
And in several of his many policy and politics-focused books, Gingrich offered much the same.
In 2008's "Real Change," he wrote, "Finally, we should insist that everyone above a certain level buy coverage (or, if they are opposed to insurance, post a bond). Meanwhile, we should provide tax credits or subsidize private insurance for the poor."
In 2005's "Winning the Future," he expanded on the idea in more detail: "You have the right to be part of the lowest-cost insurance pool and you have a responsibility to buy insurance. ... We need some significant changes to ensure that every American is insured, but we should make it clear that a 21st Century Intelligent System requires everyone to participate in the insurance system." ***
If I was Obama, I wouldn't hesitate to mention this fact every time he discusses health care reform. After all, these guys are trying to paint ObamaCare as the most radical law ever passed in this country, which I find hilarious given that DeMint and Gringrich both supported mandated insurance coverage as recently as 2007!
I wonder what happened in 2008 to make these two extremists so radically flip-flop on this issue? -
It Just Doesn't Get Any Better Than This
» Harold's BlogIt turns out that even Newt Gingrich was for the individual health insurance mandate before he was against it:
I think it speaks volumes that two of the most radical right-wingers in our country -- Newt Gingrich and Jim DeMint -- actually supported mandated insurance coverage for the United States. As noted last Sunday, DeMint even went so far as to state that RomneyCare is "something that I think we should do for the whole country."In his post-congressional life, Gingrich has been a vocal champion for mandated insurance coverage -- the very provision of President Obama's health care legislation that the Republican Party now decries as fundamentally unconstitutional. ***
In a June 2007 op-ed in the Des Moines Register, Gingrich wrote, "Personal responsibility extends to the purchase of health insurance. Citizens should not be able to cheat their neighbors by not buying insurance, particularly when they can afford it, and expect others to pay for their care when they need it." An "individual mandate," he added, should be applied "when the larger health-care system has been fundamentally changed."
And in several of his many policy and politics-focused books, Gingrich offered much the same.
In 2008's "Real Change," he wrote, "Finally, we should insist that everyone above a certain level buy coverage (or, if they are opposed to insurance, post a bond). Meanwhile, we should provide tax credits or subsidize private insurance for the poor."
In 2005's "Winning the Future," he expanded on the idea in more detail: "You have the right to be part of the lowest-cost insurance pool and you have a responsibility to buy insurance. ... We need some significant changes to ensure that every American is insured, but we should make it clear that a 21st Century Intelligent System requires everyone to participate in the insurance system." ***
If I was Obama, I wouldn't hesitate to mention this fact every time he discusses health care reform. After all, these guys are trying to paint ObamaCare as the most radical law ever passed in this country, which I find hilarious given that DeMint and Gringrich both supported mandated insurance coverage as recently as 2007!
I wonder what happened in 2008 to make these two extremists so radically flip-flop on this issue? -
You've Got To Be Kidding
» Harold's BlogFrom TMP:
Wow -- talk about political cowardice.House Republican freshmen admit that their so-called "MediScare" attacks on Democrats helped them win a big majority in 2010. Democrats had voted for the health care law, which included $500 billion in "cuts" to Medicare -- primarily slashing overpayments to private insurers -- and Republican challengers never let them forget it.
Now, they say, it's time to let bygones be bygones.
Nearly a dozen House Republican freshmen held a press conference outside the Capitol Tuesday morning to "wipe the slate clean," and "hit the reset button."
"Yeah, I mean there's been -- again, this is a both-sides issue," said Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) when asked if GOP candidates and the NRCC had engaged in 'MediScare' tactics last year. "To say that one side is blameless in trying to use issues to win votes is just dishonest."
On Tuesday, Kinzinger and 41 of his colleagues sent a letter to President Obama, asking him to rein in Democratic attacks on GOP members who voted for the House budget, which includes a plan to privatize Medicare and cap spending on the program.
"We ask that you stand above partisanship, condemn the disingenuous attacks and work with this Congress to reform spending on entitlement programs," the letter reads.
To preempt the press conference, the DCCC responded to the letter with a long list of NRCC and candidate attack ads and statements from the 2010 election -- all of them targeting Democrats for cutting Medicare, all on behalf of GOP candidates who are now hoping for a truce on Medicare attacks.
Look folks: you all made a political decision to vote for the extreme right-wing policies set out in the Ryan budget, which called for -- among other things -- the end of Medicare, and you want Obama to bail you out just because the chickens have come home to roost? Let me get this straight: You want the very same president you have labeled a socialist and a fascist to come to your rescue? Good luck with that. -
Change We Can Believe In
» Harold's BlogIt was revealed today that it was President Obama who insisted that the assault force going into Pakistan last week to capture or kill bin Laden be large enough to fight its way out if confronted by hostile Pakistani police officers or troops (via the New York Times):
Well, so much for Cheney and others being able to continue criticism of Obama for being too weak when it comes to security issues. In fact, I have no doubt that Cheney, his bat-s**t crazy daughter Liz, and the rest of the right-wing establishment will soon be criticizing Obama for being too heavy-handed when it comes to national security generally and Pakistan in particular.*** Mr. Obama’s decision to increase the size of the force sent into Pakistan shows that he was willing to risk a military confrontation with a close ally in order to capture or kill the leader of Al Qaeda.
Such a fight would have set off an even larger breach with the Pakistanis than has taken place since officials in Islamabad learned that helicopters filled with members of a Navy Seals team had flown undetected into one of their cities, and burst into a compound where Bin Laden was hiding.
One senior Obama administration official, pressed on the rules of engagement for one of the riskiest clandestine operations attempted by the C.I.A. and the military’s Joint Special Operations Command in many years, said: “Their instructions were to avoid any confrontation if at all possible. But if they had to return fire to get out, they were authorized to do it.”
The planning also illustrates how little the administration trusted the Pakistanis as they set up their operation. They also rejected a proposal to bring the Pakistanis in on the mission.
Under the original plan, two assault helicopters were going to stay on the Afghanistan side of the border waiting for a call if they were needed. But the aircraft would have been about 90 minutes away from the Bin Laden compound.
About 10 days before the raid, Mr. Obama reviewed the plans and pressed his commanders as to whether they were taking along enough forces to fight their way out if the Pakistanis arrived on the scene and tried to interfere with the operation.
That resulted in the decision to send two more helicopters carrying additional troops. These followed the two lead Black Hawk helicopters that carried the actual assault team. While there was no confrontation with the Pakistanis, one of those backup helicopters was ultimately brought in to the scene of the raid when a Black Hawk was damaged while making a hard landing.
So be it. All I can say is that Obama's stance with regard to Pakistan is a refreshing change from what Bush and Cheney did when they ran the show. -
This Should Be Fun
» Harold's BlogGood luck on this, Mitt -- you're gonna need it:
On a related note, it looks like Romney isn't going to skip Iowa after all.Call it the first must watch moment of the 2012 presidential cycle. On Thursday, Mitt Romney, Republican frontrunner and one-time health care mandate advocate, will take on the issue dogging his campaign in a speech in Michigan.
According to his campaign, Romney will lay out "his plan to repeal and replace Obamacare with reforms that lower costs and empower states to craft their own health care solutions" at the the Thursday speech, which he'll give at the University of Michigan Cardiovascular Center in Ann Arbor.
The speech will give Romney a chance to change the narrative on a central storyline of his candidacy -- namely that the health care law he signed while governor of Massachusetts in 2006 is a potentially insurmountable political liability. For the man who's been running for the 2012 Republican nomination virtually since he dropped out of the 2008 nomination fight, the stakes really could not be much higher.
And by the way, here is an excellent piece from the Cato Institute explaining why the Bush Administration was unable to capture or kill bin Laden. A lot of the points made in the Cato article are also set out in this hunt for bin Laden timeline. Some highlights:
Definitely read the entire timeline.JANUARY 20, 2001: George W. Bush inaugurated.
JANUARY 29, 2001: Former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neil reports that 9 days after Bush was inaugurated “going after Saddam Huissein” was “Topic A.”
JANUARY 2001: Condoleezza Rice demotes terrorism czar Richard Clarke out of Cabinet access. [The 9/11 Commission Report. 7/22/04]
JANUARY 2001: During Bush’s first week in office, Richard Clarke requests cabinet level meeting on al Qaeda and Bin Laden. His request was denied.
JUNE 2001: Bush give speech to NATO allies on top five defense issues, and the “only reference to extremists was in Macedonia.” [Washington Post, 4/1/04]
AUGUST 6, 2001: Bush receives Presidential Daiy Brief entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike U.S.”
SEPTEMBER 11 2001: Rice has speech scheduled on “the threats and problems of today and the day after.”
SEPTEMBER 11 2001: Five hours after attacks, Rumsfeld asks aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq.On Sept. 11, 2001, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice was scheduled to outline a Bush administration policy that would address “the threats and problems of today and the day after, not the world of yesterday” — but the focus was largely on missile defense, not terrorism from Islamic radicals.
The speech provides telling insight into the administration’s thinking on the very day that the United States suffered the most devastating attack since the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor. The address was designed to promote missile defense as the cornerstone of a new national security strategy, and contained no mention of al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden or Islamic extremist groups, according to former U.S. officials who have seen the text.
SEPTEMBER 12, 2001: Bush to Richard Clarke “Go back over everything, everything. See if Saddam did this.”
OCTOBER 7 2001: U.S. and Great Britian start Operation Enduring Freedom, invading Afghanistan after Taliban refuses to give up Bin Laden.
NOVEMBER 21 2001: 72 days after 9/11, Bush directed Rumsfeld to begin planning for war with Iraq.
DECEMBER 16, 2001: Bin Laden’s voice heard on radio in Tora Bora.
EARLY DECEMBER 2001: Bin Laden escapes at Tora Bora.
JANUARY 27 2002: Cheney: Bin Laden “isn’t that big a threat.”The Bush administration has concluded that Osama bin Laden was present during the battle for Tora Bora late last year and that failure to commit U.S. ground troops to hunt him was its gravest error in the war against al Qaeda.
FEBRUARY 2002: Military and intelligence resources diverted to Iraq.
MARCH 13 2002: Bush on Bin Laden “I really don’t spent that much time on him.”
LATE MARCH 2002: Covert commando team assigned to Bin Laden loses 2/3 of its strength as resources are diverted to Iraq. [Washington Post, 10/22/04]
APRIL 6 2002: General Richard Myers, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, says “the goal has never been to get bin Laden.” [CNN, 4/6/02]
MARCH 19 2003: Invasion of Iraq begins.
LATE 2005: CIA closes unit focused on capture of bin Laden [un-f**king-believable].
2006: CIA officers with experience in Islamic world drained from al Qaeda hunt to Iraq.
SEPTEMBER 2006: Fred Barnes told by President Bush that the hunt for Bin Laden was “not a top priority use of American resources.”
JANUARY 24 2008: Bush says Bin Laden will be “gotten by a president,” but probably not him. [Fox, 1/24/08]
MARCH 19, 2008: Then-candidate Obama pledges aggressive effort to find Bin Laden in Pakistan.
OCTOBER 7, 2008: Obama: “We will kill bin Laden. We will crush al Qaeda. That has to be our biggest national security priority.”
NOVEMBER 2, 2008: Obama: “I think capturing or killing bin Laden is a critical aspect of stamping out al Qaeda.”
January 23, 2009: Days after inauguration, Obama fires at al Qaeda targets inside Pakistan.
2009: Obama authorizes more drone strikes against terrorist targets than during previous 5 years combined.
MARCH 28 2009: Obama says Bin Laden is in Pakistan, presses for action.
DECEMBER 7, 2009: Obama National Security Advisor James Jones stresses the urgency of finding Bin Laden and speaks “of a renewed campaign to capture or kill him.” [AP, 12/7/09]
AUGUST 1 2010: American intelligence locates unusual compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
MARCH 14-28, 2011: Obama hold series of National Security Council meetings to develop options for capturing or killing Bin Laden. [New York Times, 5/3/11]
APRIL 29 2011 Mr. Obama authorizes the operation against Bin Laden. [New York Times, 5/3/11]
MAY 1, 2011, 4-4:30PM ET: United States forces raid Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad around 1 a.m. Pakistan time. Bin Laden is killed. [New York Times, 5/3/11]
MAY 1, 2011, 11:35PM ET: Obama announces Bin Laden’s death. -
An Oldie But A Goodie
» Harold's BlogHere's a re-post of a blog post I did back on August 11, 2007:
Everyone who has talked politics with me over the last couple of weeks knows how pissed off I've been over the fact that Hillary, Dodd, Biden, Romney, and others have been attacking Obama for saying this:
Obama's statement made a lot of sense to me, particularly given that BushCo has, over the last several years, attempted to minimize Pakistan's involvement in 9/11 while at the same time falsely claiming that Saddam was somehow involved in those attacks. But Obama was instantly attacked by Hillary and others as "naive" for saying those things about Pakistan. Mitt Romney even compared Obama to "Dr. Strangelove."As President, I would make the hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid to Pakistan conditional, and I would make our conditions clear: Pakistan must make substantial progress in closing down the training camps, evicting foreign fighters, and preventing the Taliban from using Pakistan as a staging area for attacks in Afghanistan.
I understand that President Musharraf has his own challenges. But let me make this clear. There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will.
So let me see if I got this straight: Someone finally attempts to introduce some common sense into America's counter-terrorism policy, and he gets attacked for it by both Democrats and Republicans. Why?
Well, Josh Marshall figured it out:
I am certainly glad to see that Obama isn't backing down from his statements. I liked what he said at the debate the other night about how Hillary and some of the other candidates who are attacking him on this had actually voted to give Bush the authority to launch "the biggest foreign policy disaster in our generation."All Obama said was that if we have actionable intelligence about the whereabouts of high-value al Qaeda targets in Pakistan, and Pakistan won't act, we will act.
Clearly, no Republican can quibble with this. They're on the record for invading countries because they might become dangers to us at some point in the future. They're hardly in a position to disagree with Obama if he says we'll hunt down people who committed mass casualty terror attacks within our borders. And I'm not sure Democrats are in much of a position to do so either.
The unspoken truth here, I suspect, is that Obama has struck on the central folly of our post-9/11 counter-terrorism defense policy -- strike hard where they aren't and go easy where they are. I think everyone can see this. But Obama got there first. So they need to attack him for saying it.
That was a good start, but he needs to stay on the offensive on this. Hillary's vote to authorize the Iraq War was, in my opinion, one of the greatest acts of political cowardice in recent memory, and voters need to be constantly reminded of this. -
Jim "Waterloo" DeMint Has A RomneyCare Problem
» Harold's BlogSen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) famously said in 2009 that "[i]f we're able to stop Obama on [health care reform], it will be his Waterloo. It will break him. . . ."
I have longed been intrigued by the GOP opposition to Health Care Reform, particularly given that the bill finally enacted into law was full of Republican ideas and was essentially patterned after RomneyCare. But it never occurred to me that Senator Jim Freaking DeMint -- an Obama-hating radical right-winger who openly called for the "breaking" of the President over health care reform -- would have ever expressed support for anything like RomneyCare.
Well -- incredibly --he did (via TPM):
Hilarious.Flashback to January 2007. RomneyCare is such a well known achievement that Romney wins DeMint's endorsement because of the law's success.
"[Romney] has demonstrated, when he stepped into government in a very difficult state, that he could work in a difficult partisan environment, take some good conservative ideas, like private health insurance, and apply them to the need to have everyone insured," DeMint said. "Those kind of ideas show an ability to bring people together that we haven't seen in national politics for a while. We don't need the nation to be more polarized."
Then in February of that year DeMint explained on Fox News that Romney should do for America what he had done for Massachusetts with health care: "Well, that's something that I think we should do for the whole country." -
Wrong -- But Thanks For Playing Anyway
» Harold's Blog
-- A comment fom a reader."Obama taking (or being given) any credit for the death of Bin Laden is akin to giving credit to Nixon for putting men on the moon. True, it happened while Nixon was President, but as everyone knows..."
Really?
-- Dick Cheney.“The administration clearly deserves credit for the success of the operation.”
-- Rep. Peter King (R-New York)"There are going to be political benefits to the president from this. He deserves it. If this had gone wrong, he would have been hurt very bad politically. It goes right, he should get the benefit of it. We can debate other issues, but no one in our country, in our party should debate or question what the president did here. He did the right thing. He did it brilliantly and he deserves all the credit for it."
-- Rudolph Giuliani“I admire the courage of the president.”
-- Paul Wolfowitz, Bush/Cheney's deputy secretary of defense"President Obama's decision to order the strike on bin Laden also required courage; not the bravery of the battlefield but the courage to live with the consequences of a risky decision. Since the mission went well, he is being justly praised, and his political standing has risen. But there can never be a guarantee that a mission of this kind will not go tragically wrong. We are all the beneficiaries of Obama's decision, but in the end the buck stops at one man's desk."
-- Rush F**king Limbaugh (who still couldn't resist putting in a note of sarcasm because . . . well, he's an asshole)."Ladies and gentleman, we need to open the program today by congratulating President Obama. President Obama has done something extremely effective, and when he does, this needs to be pointed out."
-- John Ullyot, a former Marine intelligence officer who served as a Republican spokesman on the Senate Armed Services Committee."[The operation was] a gutsy call because so much could have gone wrong. The fact that Obama approved this mission instead of the safer option of bombing the compound was the right call militarily, but also a real roll of the dice politically because of how quickly it could have unraveled.”
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Failed Senator Rick Santorum: Asshole of the Week
» Harold's Blog
-- Santorum, on Hate Radio today."9/11 families and everybody else in America should be furious at this president that he’s walking around taking credit for, you know, getting Osama bin Laden. He didn’t get Osama bin Laden!"
When I first heard the early reports that bin Laden had been killed, I thought it would end up being from something akin to a drone attack and that Obama had little-or-no involvement in the operation. Don't get me wrong -- this still would have been a huge victory for the President even if his actual involvement was minimal.
But that wasn't the case. This victory stemmed directly from a policy he put into place, namely, a reversal of George Bush's "We Don't Think About bin Laden Much" Policy to a policy that made the capture/killing of Osama our top priority. Bush's policy was based at least in part on the notion that bin Laden had been maginalized in a cave somewhere and wasn't involved much in al Qaeda's operations. But the intelligence obtained from the raid is showing that he was still very involved in al Qaeda's operations. It is merely icing on the cake for me that Obama kept close tabs on this operation from the beginning and gave the final order to proceed.
This was a huge political risk for the President on several levels. Had this mission failed, folks like the Asshole Santorum would have been calling not only for Obama's impeachment, but also for his execution and deportation. Had this mission failed, there would have been a huge backlash from the Pakistanis instead of the huge embarrassment now being experienced by these so-called "allies." The President's advisors were telling him that the operation only had about a 68% chance of success, but Obama decided to pull the trigger anyway.
I don't think our Commander-in-Chief is taking enough personal credit for the killing of bin Laden, given that a failed operation would have turned Obama into the new millenium's version of President Jimmy Carter. Obama did in less than two-and-a-half years what Bush and Cheney couldn't do in eight. And don't forget: the 9/11 attacks happened on Bush and Cheney's watch -- even though the outgoing Clinton people told the incoming Bush people eight months prior to September 11, 2001 that Al Qaeda would be their top national security priority -- and that Bush himself was warned a month before 9/11 that bin Laden was "determined to strike within the U.S."
The GOP is clearly weak when it comes to national defense. To hell with the notion that the killing of Osama transcends party politics. I openly question the Republican Party's ability to keep this country safe. -
Well, So Much For Trump's Chances of Getting the Republican Nomination
» Harold's BlogDonald Trump wrote this in 2000 (from his book, The America We Deserve):
You're fired, Mother-F**ker.“We must have universal healthcare. I’m a conservative on most issues but a liberal on this one. We should not hear so many stories of families ruined by healthcare expenses. Doctors might be paid less than they are now, as is the case in Canada, but they would be able to treat more patients because of the reduction in their paperwork."
UPDATE: Karl Rove said this on FoxNews last Friday:
Rove also referred to Trump's idea that Obama's parents would arrange birth notices to ensure his presidential eligibility as “full-throated . . . nuttiness.”[Trump's] full embrace of the birther issue means that he’s off there in the nutty right and is now an inconsequential candidate. I’m shocked. The guy’s smarter than this. And you know, the idea that President Obama was not born in Hawaii, being — you know, making that the centerpiece of his campaign, means that he’s just a joke candidate. Let him go ahead and announce for election on “The Apprentice.” The American people aren’t going to be hiring him, and certainly, the Republicans are not going to be hiring him in the Republican primary.
I agree with Rove that Trump is now an inconsequential candidate, but it isn't his embrace of the Birthers that made him so -- it's because he was for health care reform before he was against it. Trump's cozying up to the Birthers was actually a good move politically, given that 51% of GOP primary voters believe that Obama was born outside of the United States (21% said they were "not sure" on this issue).
It's one thing to ignore a bunch of lunatics when they only make up a small percentage of the group you are trying to get to vote for you. But when the lunatics actually make up a majority of the electorate you are targeting, you ignore such people at your peril. Mike Huckabee recognizes this as well -- that's why he recently said that Obama grew up in Kenya, then clumsily tried to convince people that he merely misspoke. Huckabee knew that Obama did not grow up in Kenya, but he also knows that such comments play well with the Birther crowd.
And although I believe that Rove also knows the importance of playing to your base, it is clear that he sees the danger of embracing lunacy when it comes to the General Election. Republicans are apparently more than willing to go along with the whole Birtherism thing, partly because it gives them an opportunity to indirectly express their continuing outrage over the fact that a Black man was elected President of the United States. But independents are not interested in such things, and Rove knows that independents will be turned off by this issue during the run-up to the General Election. -
Quote of the Month
» Harold's Blog
-- President Obama."When Paul Ryan says his priority is to make sure, he's just being America's accountant ... This is the same guy that voted for two wars that were unpaid for, voted for the Bush tax cuts that were unpaid for, voted for the prescription drug bill that cost as much as my health care bill -- but wasn't paid for. So it's not on the level."
Yes, that's right -- Obama actually said this (along with a bunch of other things that were very critical of the GOP). My only problem with the comment is that he said it during what he thought was a private chat. He needs to be saying this stuff openly. He needs to repeat this in every speech that he makes on the budget.
The GOP caused the mess that we're in and the country should be constantly reminded of this. As Bill Maher once said, the Republicans are just like some guy who throws s**t on you and then tries to sell you relief from the flies.
UPDATE: It been suggested that Obama knew the microphone was on when he made his comments, which makes me feel a little better. For example, Jed Lewison at Daily Kos stated:
I still think he should be saying this stuff openly instead to pretending that he didn't know the microphone was on. But it is definitely a step in the right direction.[I]f this was indeed a classic open mic incident, it sure was a convenient one. I'll put it this way: I don't know if the audio was left on intentionally or not, but there's not a chance in hell Fox News is going to do much reporting on what President Obama said, because what he said about Republicans was tough as nails.
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Quote Of The Week
» Harold's Blog
-- David Stockman, President Reagan's first budget director, on the House Republican budget plan."I think the biggest problem is revenues. It is simply unrealistic to say that raising revenue isn't part of the solution. It's a measure of how far off the deep end Republicans have gone with this religious catechism about taxes."
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There Will Be No Government Shutdown . . .
» Harold's Blog. . . because the GOP cannot afford it politically (via Slate):
And with regard to the Government shutdown, here's one Republican who is finally telling the truth about it.An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released Wednesday found that 40 percent of voters would blame Republicans if the government shut down, 20 percent would blame Obama, and 20 percent would blame congressional Democrats. Compare that with the poll that was conducted in October 1995, the last time the government shut down. Sixteen years ago, 43 percent of voters said a shutdown would be Republicans' fault, and 32 percent said it would be Bill Clinton's fault. And that was the high watermark for Republicans. They lost ground once the shutdown started.
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Here's A Great Quote For You
» Harold's Blog
-- Bryan Fischer, a top official at the American Family Association (I was going to add that the AFA is a right-wing organization, but why point out the obvious).Welfare has destroyed the African-American family by telling young black women that husbands and fathers are unnecessary and obsolete. Welfare has subsidized illegitimacy by offering financial rewards to women who have more children out of wedlock. We have incentivized fornication rather than marriage, and it's no wonder we are now awash in the disastrous social consequences of people who rut like rabbits.
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Yes!
» Harold's BlogVia Political Wire:
BTW, this may be one of the funniest quotes ever:Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) will form a presidential exploratory committee, CNN reports.
"The Minnesota Republican plans to file papers for the committee in early June, with an announcement likely around that same time. But a source close to the congresswoman said that Bachmann could form the exploratory committee even earlier than June so that she could participate in early Republican presidential debates."
Bachmann tells the Des Moines Register: "The Iowa Straw Poll I think will be a key for us. That will be a focal point. And so we'll have to make the decision so we can meaningfully participate in the Iowa Straw Poll."
-- John Stossel on FoxNews, who obviously defines the word "help" a lot differently than most folks."... No group in America has been more helped by the government than the American Indians."
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Curveball Admits to Fabricating Iraqi WMD Story
» Harold's Blog[The following is a re-posting of a piece I published in November 2005. I thought it appropriate that I re-post this given the recent news that the Iraqi WMD source known as "Curveball" -- whom Colin Powell heavily relied on during his now-infamous speech to the U.N. Security Council during the run-up to the Iraq Debacle -- has now admitted that he made the whole thing up. In case you're interested, the Iraq War has so far cost American taxpayers $775,000,000,000, resulted to date in the deaths of 4,436 American military personnel, and caused 151,000 Iraqis to lose their lives just in the first three years of the war alone].
Why Does Dick Cheney Like Torture So Much? Because there is no need to "cherry-pick" intelligence when you can grow your own cherries. Atrios sums it up this way:
But sometimes you still need to cherry-pick, particularly when your goal is to dupe a country into going to war. That's why the Bush Administration had no problem accepting what a source named "Curveball" had to say despite the fact that his German handlers had told U.S. officials that Curveball's information was "not proven" (from The LA Times):Bush administration needs evidence to support their war. They use torture techniques designed to extract false confessions to obtain that "evidence," which they then use to sell the war despite knowing full well of the lack of reliability of the information.
But none of that mattered to members of the Bush Regime, and they certainly didn't care that torture produced unreliable results. All they needed to do was simply find some crazy person like Curveball to tell them exactly what they wanted to hear, then torture enough people to supplement what Curveball was telling them, and that would be sufficient to take the United States to war against a fourth-rate military power. It didn't matter whether the "intelligence" they used was complete crap -- all that mattered to BushCo was the quality of the propaganda.According to the Germans, President Bush mischaracterized Curveball's information when he warned before the war that Iraq had at least seven mobile factories brewing biological poisons. Then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell also misstated Curveball's accounts in his prewar presentation to the United Nations on Feb. 5, 2003, the Germans said.
Curveball's German handlers for the last six years said his information was often vague, mostly secondhand and impossible to confirm. "This was not substantial evidence," said a senior German intelligence official. "We made clear we could not verify the things he said."
The German authorities, speaking about the case for the first time, also said that their informant suffered from emotional and mental problems. "He is not a stable, psychologically stable guy," said a BND official who supervised the case. "He is not a completely normal person," agreed a BND analyst.
The latest edition of Rolling Stone has this long but excellent article on how the Pentagon propaganda machine really works [link no longer active]:
I guess that if you are going to lie and manipulate a country into a war, the least you could do is manage the war competently. And, needless to say, that is where BushCo really messed the whole thing up.By law, the Bush administration is expressly prohibited from disseminating government propaganda at home. But in an age of global communications, there is nothing to stop it from planting a phony pro-war story overseas -- knowing with certainty that it will reach American citizens almost instantly. A recent congressional report suggests that the Pentagon may be relying on "covert psychological operations affecting audiences within friendly nations." In a "secret amendment" to Pentagon policy, the report warns, "psyops funds might be used to publish stories favorable to American policies, or hire outside contractors without obvious ties to the Pentagon to organize rallies in support of administration policies."
The report also concludes that military planners are shifting away from the Cold War view that power comes from superior weapons systems. Instead, the Pentagon now believes that "combat power can be enhanced by communications networks and technologies that control access to, and directly manipulate, information. As a result, information itself is now both a tool and a target of warfare."
I mean, if the BushCo/PNAC coalition would have invaded Iraq with enough troops, secured the borders and the ammo dumps, not disbanded the Iraqi army, not tortured pretty much everyone they got their hands on and then took pictures of it, etc., then this country wouldn't have cared one bit if the dominant rationale for invasion was made up out of whole cloth. Success has a way of making people forget about stuff like that.
Unfortunately for BushCo, unparalleled expertise in prevarication, press manipulation, and discrediting of political enemies could not overcome simple idiocy.
UPDATE: Josh Marshall asks an important question:This is one of those media questions for which there is no real way to provide a concrete answer. But it is at least worth asking: How many of the stories coming out now under the very broad heading of botched or manipulated intelligence could have been reported and written at more or less any time over the last two years? I suspect the answer is, the great majority of them.
They're getting written now because the president's poor poll numbers make him a readier target.
I know I'm not saying anything most of you don't know. And better late than never, of course. But all working reporters and editors should consider what that says about the profession. -
Exactly
» Harold's BlogThis statement from One Wisconsin Now nicely sums up how I feel when Republicans like Paul Ryan -- who gave the GOP rebuttal to last night's SofU speech -- rant about runaway spending:
Oh, and by the way, why are all my top hopefuls for the GOP 2012 presidential nomination taking themselves out of the race? My first choice -- Sarah Palin -- recently ruined any chance she had for the nomination, but at least I thought I could rely on my second choice -- Michele Bachmann -- to continue making an effort for the nomination.“I hope that Paul Ryan explains to us why we should trust him and his conservative allies with our finances after they nearly bankrupted the nation with reckless tax cuts for the rich and deregulation schemes to reward companies which put America’s working families last. Paul Ryan himself voted for eight straight Republican budgets that increased spending by a staggering 50 percent. Let’s not forget the so-called fiscal conservatives, like Ryan, who put trillions of dollars in war spending and the unfunded $8 trillion Medicare Part D boondoggle on the checkbooks of our children. Paul Ryan’s ‘Road Map’ would hand our government over to big business and Wall Street speculators, and silence the voices of working families. America needs jobs, not Paul Ryan’s budget-busting, recycled corporate special interest wish list.”
But Bachmann's chances are also in the toilet thanks to last night's disastrous attempt to respond to Obama's SotU address, which followed closely on the heels of an idiotic speech she gave a couple days ago when she said -- among other equally-moronic things -- that the Founding Fathers "worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States" and wherein she praised "[m]en like John Quincy Adams, who would not rest until slavery was extinguished in the country."
It seems to me that both Palin and Bachmann have given up on any plan they each had for the 2012 nomination in favor of trying to out-bats**t-crazy each other, and that makes me sad.
And speaking of Bachmann, this exchange is hilarious.
UPDATE: Sarah Palin, now that you are finished as a viable presidential candidate, could you do us all a big favor and just go the f**k away. Your idiocy was hugely funny at first, but those of us in the Reality-Based Community have grown tired of it (and please don't tell us that you're one of those people who think that we really didn't land men on the moon). -
Romney And The Tea-Baggers
» Harold's BlogFrom The Boston Globe:
Romney has about as much of a chance of getting the 2012 GOP presidential nomination as does Sarah Palin, and the chances for both are slim-to-none. In fact, I find the whole situation to be nothing short of hilarious.New Hampshire Tea Party movement activist Andrew Hemingway is not lacking in contact with likely presidential candidates. He’s talked hockey with Tim Pawlenty. He sat down with former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum at the Concord Country Club. And plans are in the works for Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour to appear before a group of Hemingway’s fellow conservatives.
A notable exception among the field of would-be GOP presidential contenders? Mitt Romney. “Romney for the most part is inaccessible,’’ said Hemingway, a Bristol resident who is chairman of the state’s Republican Liberty Caucus. “Pawlenty, I could call him right now and say, ‘Let’s have coffee.’ ’’
As the former Massachusetts governor lays the groundwork for a possible second presidential run, he has largely shunned Tea Party activists in key primary states, including the state he must win if he enters the race, New Hampshire. Thus far, Romney is on track to present himself as the establishment candidate — a responsible, mainstream Republican leader with the necessary financial resources and credentials to beat President Obama. ***
Palin shot herself in the foot the other day with her incredibly tone-deaf "Blood Libel" remarks, and is now more unpopular than she ever was (which is saying a lot). And Romney, of course, was the author of RomneyCare in Massachusetts, which is in many respects identical to the ObamaCare legislation that was passed last year. Given that the Tea-Baggers view ObamaCare as the worst thing to happen to our country since, well . . . the election of Obama, I have no doubt that they are going to crucify Romney in the coming months for being a socialist/fascist/marxist with regard to RomneyCare.
So it makes complete sense to me that Romney is staying away from the Tea-Bagging crowd. What's the point of trying to cozy up to them? The only chance Romney has to keep the Tea-Baggers at bay is to immediately come out with a statement condemning RomneyCare as the biggest mistake he ever made -- even though he once touted it as his "crowning achievement" -- and then begging the Tea-Baggers for forgiveness. He could tell them that he made an honest mistake, given that RomneyCare was based on ideas originally formulated by Republicans.
Such an apology could work, given that the Tea-Bagging horde just might be dumb enough to fall for it. But I don't see Romney going that route. He probably thinks his best chance it to attempt to argue -- as he has previously done -- that RomneyCare works on the state level while ObamaCare cannot work on the national level.
Good luck with that, Mitt. The Tea-Baggers are idiots, but they're not that stupid. Nobody is. -
Sorry To Go Off On A Rant Here, But . . .
» Harold's BlogA friend of mine posted on Facebook today that the desire for "a return to civility" incorrectly suggests that there was some period of civility in American politics. I agree that it should probably be expressed as a need to return to more civility, given that American politics has definitely been uncivil to some extent since the founding. That's the nature of our system.
But you can't deny the last couple years have been profoundly uncivil (and that is a nice way to put it). I mean, you have a major-party candidate for the U.S. Senate openly calling for the use of "Second Amendment remedies" while in the same breath expressing a need to "take Harry Reid out." I couldn’t believe that one.
Or you have political operatives openly – and quite successfully – instructing people on how to disrupt town hall meetings, and then having right wing activists actually bringing guns to these gatherings.
Or, you have that guy who was arrested yesterday for threatening Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) by saying:
Sure, this guy is clearly a nut-job -- as was the shooter in Arizona – but don't try to tell me that he was not influenced by all the inflammatory rhetoric from Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Michelle Bachmann, and the rest of the Radical Right.“And you let that f**king scum bag know, that if he ever f**ks around with my money, ever the f**k again, I’ll f**king kill him, okay. I’ll round them up, I’ll kill them, I’ll kill his friends, I’ll kill his family, I will kill everybody he f**king knows.”
I think Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) – who got a brick through her office window last year and a bullet through her head last Saturday – said it best a few months ago when she responded to Sarah Palin’s targeting of her district with gun site crosshairs: “When people do that, you got to realize there are consequences to that action.”
If Sarah Palin really thinks she is the actual victim in all this – as she suggested yesterday in her now-infamous “Blood Libel” speech – then why the hell did she take down from her website the gun site crosshairs display after Rep. Giffords was shot in the head?
Well, I guess I'm a fool for expecting some sort of consistency from Palin, who now -- thanks to her idiotic and profoundly ill-timed speech yesterday -- has as much of a chance of being the 2012 GOP presidential nominee as I do of being the first man to walk on the surface of the Sun. -
F**king-A
» Harold's BlogGeorge Packer sets the record straight (via Political Wire):
Anyone who's read this blog can probably figure out how I feel about the suggestion from America's Radical Right that both sides are guilty of using inflammatory rhetoric. In fact, my main complaint over the years has been that the American Left is weak in this regard and doesn't hit back hard enough when the Extreme Right pulls this crap. To argue that there is some sort of parity between the two sides is more than disingenuous -- it's laughable.[I]t won’t do to dig up stray comments by Obama, Allen Grayson, or any other Democrat who used metaphors of combat over the past few years, and then try to claim some balance of responsibility in the implied violence of current American politics. (Most of the Obama quotes that appear in the comments were lame attempts to reassure his base that he can get mad and fight back, i.e., signs that he’s practically incapable of personal aggression in politics.)
In fact, there is no balance—none whatsoever. Only one side has made the rhetoric of armed revolt against an oppressive tyranny the guiding spirit of its grassroots movement and its midterm campaign. Only one side routinely invokes the Second Amendment as a form of swagger and intimidation, not-so-coyly conflating rights with threats. Only one side’s activists bring guns to democratic political gatherings. Only one side has a popular national TV host who uses his platform to indoctrinate viewers in the conviction that the President is an alien, totalitarian menace to the country. Only one side fills the AM waves with rage and incendiary falsehoods. Only one side has an iconic leader, with a devoted grassroots following, who can’t stop using violent imagery and dividing her countrymen into us and them, real and fake. Any sentient American knows which side that is; to argue otherwise is disingenuous. -
Quote Of The Day
» Harold's Blog
John Boehner, reacting to an outburst from a birther during the reading of the Constitution in the House gallery."The state of Hawaii has said that President Obama was born there. That's good enough for me."
And speaking of the Constitution, this is pretty funny:Two House Republicans have cast votes as members of the 112th Congress, but were not sworn in on Wednesday, a violation of the Constitution on the same day that the GOP had the document read from the podium.
The Republicans, incumbent Pete Sessions of Texas and freshman Mike Fitzpatrick, missed the swearing in, but watched it on television from the Capitol Visitors Center.
"That wasn't planned. It just worked out that way," said Fitzpatrick at the time, according to local press on hand, which noted that he "happened to be introducing Texas Congressman Pete Sessions while glad-handing his supporters in the Capitol Visitor Center that he secured for them when the House swearing in began."
There is no provision in the Constitution for a remote swearing-in by television. On Thursday, Fitzpatrick was one of the members who read the Constitution from the dais. -
Harry Reid Sets Record
» Harold's BlogThis is quite an accomplishment:
And by the way, I have a feeling this is going to backfire, particularly if Obama's approval numbers continue to rise:Sen. Harry Reid set a record during the 111th Congress by becoming the chamber’s most successful Majority Leader in history at killing attempted filibusters.
Though the Nevada Democrat’s batting average took a nose dive in 2010, Reid won 69 percent of his total attempts to shut down threatened filibusters in the two years of the 111th Congress that began January 2009.
Two former Majority Leaders — Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and Mike Mansfield (D-Mont.) — share the next best record; both won 63 percent of the time in the 109th Congress and the 94th Congress, respectively. * * *
Now I've had my problems with Obama's first two years in office, but calling his administration "one of the most corrupt" seems a bit over the top, even for a f**king asshole like Issa.The Republican congressman who is taking over responsibility for congressional oversight called President Obama's administration "one of the most corrupt administrations" on Sunday and predicted that the investigations he is planning over the next two years could result in about $200 billion in savings for U.S. taxpayers.
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the incoming chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, was bullish in laying out his agenda for the new Congress with Republicans in control of the House.
Issa, who as chairman will have subpoena power, said he will seek to ferret out waste across the federal bureaucracy. While he used fiery rhetoric in describing the Obama administration in a series of television interviews Sunday, he said he will focus on wasteful spending, not the prosecution of White House officials. -
Quote Of The Century
» Harold's BlogFrom Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah):
Two problems with this quote: (1) fourteen other judges have upheld this provision, and (2) Orrin Hatch (are you ready for this) actually supported a bill that would have required an individual mandate.U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) today applauded the decision by U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson in Virginia that Congress exceeded its constitutional authority in mandating that every American purchase health insurance or face a fine.
“Today is a great day for liberty,” said Hatch. “Congress must obey the Constitution rather than make it up as we go along. Liberty requires limits on government, and today those limits have been upheld.”
Isn't it great to be a Republican? You can pretty much say or do whatever you want, and nobody in the so-called liberal media will ever call you on it. If a Democrat pulled a flip-flop of this magnitude, you'd never hear the end of it from FoxNews. -
Palin Even Sucks At Hunting
» Harold's BlogGeesus:
Look, how hard is it to find a hunting expert up in Alaska to tell you how to do it right. It would be one thing if this was the first hunting trip that she'd even been on, but Christ -- she's held herself out as being the greatest hunter evah."Sarah Palin took shots at a caribou on her TLC reality show; now critics are taking aim at Palin's hunting skills," the Wall Street Journal reports.
"A piece on The Awl pointed out several rookie mistakes that Palin apparently made during a hunting trip with her father that she filmed for Sarah Palin's Alaska. Among them was Palin's failure to sight her rifle before shooting and not personally loading shells into the gun she used. PETA is predictably responding negatively to the hunting footage as well."
Of course, Palin's performance as a hunter "would likely not be an issue if she hadn't touted her hunting experience in previous interviews." -
4th Amendment Underclothes
» Harold's Blog -
Throwing Cans Of Worms In Glass Houses
» Harold's BlogI love this:
I bet Virginia Thomas is beginning to regret her decision to ask Anita Hill for an apology. Oh yes.In the wake of news that Virginia Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, recently contacted Anita Hill, the woman behind a sexual harassment scandal that almost derailed the Justice during his confirmation hearings, Thomas's ex-girlfriend is now seeking to enter the fray with serious new allegations about his demeanor in the years before the Hill controversy. In an interview with the Washington Post, Lillian McEwen says Hill's allegations fit a pattern:
"He was always actively watching the women he worked with to see if they could be potential partners," McEwen told the Post, adding that he was particularly "partial to women with large breasts" and even would ask woman about their bra size.
"He was obsessed with porn," McEwen also said of Thomas, a claim that is particularly relevant to Hill's allegations that the then-chairman of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had repeatedly relayed scenes from pornographic movies to her. "He would talk about what he had seen in magazines and films, if there was something worth noting," McEwen continued. -
God Help Us
» Harold's BlogFrom The AP:Republican Senate nominee Christine O'Donnell of Delaware on Tuesday questioned whether the U.S. Constitution calls for a separation of church and state, appearing to disagree or not know that the First Amendment bars the government from establishing religion.
The exchange came in a debate before an audience of legal scholars and law students at Widener University Law School, as O'Donnell criticized Democratic nominee Chris Coons' position that teaching creationism in public school would violate the First Amendment by promoting religious doctrine. Coons said private and parochial schools are free to teach creationism but that "religious doctrine doesn't belong in our public schools." "Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?" O'Donnell asked him.
When Coons responded that the First Amendment bars Congress from making laws respecting the establishment of religion, O'Donnell asked: "You're telling me that's in the First Amendment?" Her comments, in a debate aired on radio station WDEL, generated a buzz in the audience. "You actually audibly heard the crowd gasp," Widener University political scientist Wesley Leckrone said after the debate, adding that it raised questions about O'Donnell's grasp of the Constitution.
Erin Daly, a Widener professor who specializes in constitutional law, said that while there are questions about what counts as government promotion of religion, there is little debate over whether the First Amendment prohibits the federal government from making laws establishing religion. "She seemed genuinely surprised that the principle of separation of church and state derives from the First Amendment, and I think to many of us in the law school that was a surprise," Daly said. "It's one thing to not know the 17th Amendment or some of the others, but most Americans do know the basics of the First Amendment." * * * -
Please God -- Let This Happen
» Harold's BlogFrom Political Wire:In an interview on Fox News, Sarah Palin (R) said she'd "offer herself up" to run for president in 2012 -- if no other good candidate stepped forward.
Said Palin: "A reason to run is if nobody else were to step up with the solutions that are needed to get the economy back on the right track and to be so committed to our national security that they are going to do all that they can, including fighting those on the extreme left who seem to want to dismantle some of our national security tools that we have in place. If nobody else wanted to step up... I would offer myself up in the name of service to the public." -
I Love This
» Harold's BlogFrom CQ Politics:
Murkowski, of course, isn't really losing much given that she's out of the Senate anyway if her write-in candidacy fails. Her five-word response to the GOP Senate leadership for doing this to her should simply be: Go Piss Up A Rope.Senate Republicans on Wednesday were expected to name a temporary replacement for Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski as their party leader on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, to punish her for launching a write-in campaign after losing the GOP primary election. * * *
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What A Mess
» Harold's BlogBoehner really stuck his foot in it this time:
Ironically, I think Boehner is on the right track here. After all, if the Dems propose a middle class tax cut, would the GOP really be stupid enough to oppose it simply because rich people don't get one as well? That would be political suicide.Democrats are calling it a game-changer that might just save their butts in November. Republicans are shouting loudly from the rooftops they want the Bush-era tax cuts to be made permanent and that they think that means they will win this fall.
Whichever happens on Nov. 2, it all started with Minority Leader John Boehner's surprise embrace for President Obama's tax-cut plan. Boehner said if it was the only option presented to his party, he'd support Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her Democrats in voting for an extension of the tax cuts for the middle class only.
Republicans are being very coy about blasting Boehner (R-OH) openly just as the Democrats are reminding the nation that he wants to be speaker of the House should the GOP win back control. But reading between the lines of their actions, it's pretty clear that few of his colleagues agree with Boehner. Could it spell trouble for the GOP?
The Democrats are in a great position on this because they don't have to raise taxes on anyone. The Bush tax cuts expire, so no Democrat would actually have to cast a vote raising anyone's taxes. Plus, recent polling is firmly on the Dems' side on this particular issue.
The time has come for the Democratic Party to really start pushing back hard. Pre-election gifts like this one don't come around very often.
UPDATE: And speaking of political suicide:
UPDATE II: This tweet from Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling -- reflecting the result of a poll PPP will be releasing today -- shows why the Republican Party Establishment has given up on Tea-Bagger O'Donnell:Conservative activist Christine O'Donnell has earned a stunning victory in Delaware's Republican Senate primary.
O'Donnell's shocking win over longtime Congressman Mike Castle gives new energy to the tea party movement, which targeted Castle after victories by Republican tea party candidates in the Alaska and Nevada Senate primaries.
With 78 percent of precincts reporting, O'Donnell had 54 percent to 46 percent for Castle, a former two-term governor and the longest serving congressman in Delaware history.
While attracting enough GOP conservatives to defeat Castle, a leader of Republican moderates in Congress, O'Donnell will have a hard time defeating Democrat Chris Coons in November for the Senate seat vacated by Joe Biden after he was elected vice president.
Republican officials said privately before Tuesday's primary that they intended to write off the seat if O'Donnell was victorious against Castle. * * *
I watched Fox News this morning -- as I always do when things go horribly wrong for the Republicans -- and Karl Rove was furious that O'Donnell won in Delaware. It was freaking hilarious."Castle primary voters supports Coons over O'Donnell 44-28 in general election."
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Look, I Know The Radical Christian Right Is F**ked Up And All . . .
» Harold's Blog. . . but Geesus:Focus on the Family has a message for gay rights activists: stay off the playground.
Candi Cushman, an education analyst for the James Dobson-founded group, told The Denver Post this weekend that gay rights advocates have inserted their agenda into anti-bullying efforts, at the expense of Christian values.
"We feel more and more that activists are being deceptive in using anti-bullying rhetoric to introduce their viewpoints, while the viewpoint of Christian students and parents are increasingly belittled," Cushman told the Post.
In an email to TPM, Cushman expanded her argument. "Listing certain categories creates a system ripe for reverse discrimination, sending the message that certain characteristics are more worthy of protection than others," she said.
Cushman's argument has two levels: first, she says anti-bullying efforts wrongly put the focus on the "characteristics of the victim" instead of the "wrong actions of the bullies." Second, she thinks that gay rights activists are using the whole issue to sneak their agenda into the nation's schools. She denounced the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). * * * -
The Partial Rehabilitation of George W. Bush (at least in my mind)
» Harold's BlogI found this Atlantic article on Iran interesting, particularly this part (via Think Progress):
As noted in the above-linked Think Progress post, Dick Cheney "has admitted that he was in favor of a U.S. attack on Iran, but was vetoed by President Bush."[E]ven Bush balked at attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities, and discouraged the Israelis from carrying out the attack on their own. (Bush would sometimes mock those aides and commentators who advocated an attack on Iran, even referring to the conservative columnists Charles Krauthammer and William Kristol as “the bomber boys,” according to two people I spoke with who overheard this.)
Don't get me wrong -- I still think that Bush was an awful president. But every so often I hear something about his presidency -- like his above-referenced refusal to attack Iran -- that makes me think he might not have been as big of a tool that he appeared to be. One example of this was when he openly questioned the need for a second tax cut for the rich -- he told Cheney something like, "didn't the rich already get one of these?"
Cheney ultimately convinced him that they in fact did need to further loot the treasury and hand out the tax cut; but what I found interesting about the aforementioned Iraq decision was that Cheney was unable to convince Bush to bomb Iran, something that Cheney really wanted him to do. -
Quote Of The Week
» Harold's Blog
-- Sharron Angle, the teabagger running against Harry Reid, on FoxNews yesterday."We needed to have the press to be our friend. * * * We wanted them to ask the questions we want to answer so that they report the news the way we want it reported."
UPDATE: If you are still uncertain as to whether Sharron Angle is a bats**t-crazy right-wing extremist Bible-beating tea-bagger, try this on for size:It has become commonplace for Republicans to claim that Democratic policies violate this or that part of the Constitution. But Nevada's Senate Republican candidate Sharron Angle is taking that one step further, claiming that her opponent's legislative victories amount to a violation of the Bible's First Commandment.
"[T]hese programs that you mentioned -- that [President] Obama has going with [Harry] Reid and [Nancy] Pelosi pushing them forward -- are all entitlement programs built to make government our God," Angle said in a little noticed interview with Christian Radio this past spring. "And that's really what's happening in this country is a violation of the First Commandment. We have become a country entrenched in idolatry, and that idolatry is the dependency upon our government. We're supposed to depend upon God for our protection and our provision and for our daily bread, not for our government." * * * -
Sen. David Vitter Is A Birther
» Harold's BlogIn other words, Vitter is a racist:
I doubt, however, that his racist position will hurt him in his home state.Republican Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana says he supports conservative organizations challenging President Barack Obama's citizenship in court.
Vitter, who is running for re-election, made the comments at a town hall-style event in Metairie, La., on Sunday when a constituent asked what he would do about what the questioner said was Obama's "refusal to produce a valid birth certificate."
Such claims about Obama's birth certificate have been discredited. But with the crowd applauding the question, Vitter responded that although he doesn't personally have legal standing to bring litigation, he supports "conservative legal organizations and others who would bring that to court," according to a video of the event. * * * -
Quote of the Day
» Harold's Blog
-- Dana Milbank of the Washington Post, commenting on the extent that Legendary Racist Jefferson Beauregard "Jeff" Sessions (R-Ala) and other Republican senators have been attacking Thurgood Marshall during the Kagan confirmation hearings.“With Kagan’s confirmation hearings expected to last most of the week, Republicans may still have time to make cases against Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa and Gandhi.”
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Quote Of The Week
» Harold's Blog
-- Jon Stewart, responding to the Louisiana Senate's recent Designation of Statewide Prayer which stated, among other things, that mortals cannot solve the BP spill problem and that "it is clearly time for a miracle for us.""Actually, the oil is under a mile of sea water and another two-and-a-half miles under solid sediment earth, so I think God's done enough to prevent these spills."
With regard to the whole Joe Barton BP apology fiasco, a recent poll shows that this is a very good issue for the Democrats (via Political Wire):
It appears, however, that Barton will keep his leadership post, which is great news for the Democrats.A new Public Policy Polling survey in Texas suggests Republicans are well advised to stay clear of Rep. Joe Barton's (R-TX) apology to oil giant BP for how they were treated by the Obama administration.
"The poll numbers indicate this is an issue where Democrats could find some resonance with independent voters. They see Barton negatively by a 35% to 14% margin, think he should lose his leadership post by a 45% to 29% spread, think Obama was right on this issue 59% to 29%, and oppose an apology to BP 75% to 12%. Given those numbers GOP leaders would probably like to see this issue disappear as soon as possible." -
Looks Like Republican Party Leaders Owe Rush Limbaugh An Apology
» Harold's BlogFrom Political Wire:
Limbaugh does have a point -- to a certain extent. All Barton was doing last week when he issued his "apology" to BP was echoing one set of GOP talking points on this issue. As Eugene Robinson pointed out this morning:Rush Limbaugh took aim at Republican leaders for rushing to demand Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) retract his controversial apology to oil giant BP during last week's congressional hearing, CNN reports.
Said Limbaugh: "It was a shakedown pure and simple. And somebody had the audacity to call it what it was and now everybody's running for the hills."
Had Barton made these comments on FoxNews or on Limbaugh's show, no controversy would have emerged. His mistake was that he made these comments during a televised Energy and Commerce Committee hearing, a committee on which he is the ranking Republican.Joe Barton is not alone. The Texas congressman's lavish sympathy for BP -- which he sees not as perpetrator of a preventable disaster but as victim of a White House "shakedown" -- is actually what passes for mainstream opinion among conservative Republicans today. * * *
I, of course, think this whole thing is hilarious. The GOP basically has two sets of talking points on this issue. One set -- the anti-Obama talking points -- is for use only on radical right-wing talk radio and FoxNews, and is designed to keep the extremists of the party in line. The other set of talking points -- which features anti-BP rhetoric -- is designed for mainstream consumption with an eye toward the November Mid-Terms. The only time the GOP gets in trouble on this is when the radical set of talking points leaks into the mainstream coverage, which is what happened last week when Joe Barton opened his mouth in the wrong venue.
The amazing part of all this is that the Republicans feel comfortable having two completely different sets of talking points on this issue, and they are right to feel this way because (1) they know that most Republicans only get their news from Fox and the rest of the Extreme Right Wing Echo Chamber, and (2) they know that the Democrats will most likely give them a pass on this particular hypocrisy.
It's a nice place for the GOP to be, so long as folks like Barton simply remember that certain talking points should only be used for specific audiences. Needless to say, if the Democrats tried such a two-faced approach on an issue, the GOP would crucify them.
UPDATE: Jon Stewart gets it. -
Quote Of The Week
» Harold's Blog
-- White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, responding to GOP Rep. Joe Barton's apology to BP CEO Tony Hayward wherein Barton said, among other things, that he's "ashamed" of the American response to BP’s oil spill and wherein he described the creation of the $20 billion claims fund as a "tragedy of the first proportion.""What is shameful is that Joe Barton seems to have more concern for big corporations that caused this disaster than the fishermen, small business owners and communities whose lives have been devastated by the destruction. Congressman Barton may think that a fund to compensate these Americans is a 'tragedy', but most Americans know that the real tragedy is what the men and women of the Gulf Coast are going through right now. Members from both parties should repudiate his comments."
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Quote of the Day
» Harold's Blog
-- GOP operative James Lacy, commenting on what the effect would be if Birther Queen Orly Taitz actually won the GOP primary for California Secretary of State."It'd be a disaster for the Republican party."
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After 40 Years?
» Harold's BlogWow:Former Vice President Al Gore and his wife Tipper are separating after four decades of marriage. They just celebrated their 40th anniversary two weeks ago.
The Gores called the separation "a mutual and mutually supportive decision that we have made together." * * * -
Oh Come On!
» Harold's BlogFrom the AP:Voters dressed in chicken costumes won't be allowed inside Nevada polling places this year.
State election officials on Friday added chicken suits to the list of banned items after weeks of ridicule directed at Republican Senate candidate Sue Lowden.
The millionaire casino executive and former beauty queen recently suggested that people barter with doctors for medical care, like when "our grandparents would bring a chicken to the doctor."
Democrats responded by setting up a website, "Chickens for Checkups," and by sending volunteers in chicken suits to her campaign events. * * * -
This Is Going To Be Way Too Easy
» Harold's BlogRand Paul's victory in the Kentucky GOP Senate primary is nothing short of a disaster for the Republican Party. The guy is a nut case. He recently restated his position that he would have opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, he believes businesses should have the right to engage in racial discrimination, and he thinks that the Americans with Disabilities Act should be abolished. Even right-wing extremist and Rand Paul supporter Jim DeMint had to distance himself from Paul today. He's too radical even for the likes of Jim DeMint!
Paul has since tried to reverse himself on some of these issues, but the Kentucky Senate race should definitely be a fun one to watch. According to a Rasmussen poll that came out today, Paul currently enjoys a 25-point lead over his Democratic opponent. We'll see how long those numbers hold up.
UPDATE: Rand Paul -- a gift that just keeps on giving. -
Quote of the Week
» Harold's Blog
-- Tom Davis, a former Republican congressman from Virginia, commenting on the GOP's loss last night in the special election in Pennsylvania to fill John Murtha's seat."If you can't win a seat that is trending Republican in a year like this, then where is the wave?"
It is certainly a good question, given that John McCain carried that particular district in 2008. Indeed, the Democrats must be feeling pretty good today. Mitch McConnell basically got his ass handed to him last night when Tea Bagger Rand Paul defeated McConnell's hand-picked candidate in Kentucky's Republican Senate primary.
Arlen Specter's loss in Pennsylvania may, at first blush, look like a set-back for the Democrats, but Sestak will be a far more effective candidate in the general election than Specter could have been. And I couldn't be happier that Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) failed to get anywhere near enough votes to avoid a run-off in Arkansas' Democratic Senate primary. Let's hope she loses to Halter in the June run-off.
Even Politico thinks that the Republicans were the big losers yesterday. -
Most Hilarious Video Ever
» Harold's BlogHere it is.
I guess a little background is needed: The Republican Congressman in this pro-abstinence video -- Mark Souder -- just announced his resignation because he had an affair with the female staffer who played the part of the interviewer in the above-linked pro-abstinence video.
I've asked this before and I'll ask it again: What the hell is wrong with these people? -
The Folks In Arizona Pay A Hefty Price For Being Dicks
» Harold's BlogGood thing this didn't happen during tough economic times:
By the way: Good one, Arnold.Several days before Gov. Jan Brewer signed Arizona's controversial immigration bill, Congressman Raul Grijalva called on the rest of the nation to boycott his home state if the new proposal became law. National organizations, Grijalva said, should cancel upcoming conventions slated to be held there.
"If the state follows through with this, the cost will be high," Grijalva warned.
Turns out, he was right: so far, the state has lost between $6 million and $10 million in projected business revenue, with 23 group hotel bookings--from small meetings to large conventions--having been canceled in protest since the stroke of Brewer's pen, according to the Arizona Hotel & Lodging Association.
Hotels don't want to disclose which clients have canceled, for fear of alienating businesses. So far, the most widely publicized cancelation has come from the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
"It's clear that the bill has had an economic impact on the state. It's impossible to say that it hasn't," says Glenn Hamer, CEO of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce. * * * -
This Pretty Much Says It All
» Harold's BlogFrom Think Progress:
Everyone keeps talking about how badly the Democrats are going to get their asses handed to them this November, but this jobs creation chart has to be scaring the hell out of the GOP. -
Oh For Christ's Sake
» Harold's Blog -
Bad News For Republicans
» Harold's BlogMore folks are thinking that the economy is getting better:
Just the other day, House Minority Leader John Boehner stated that the GOP could win 100 additional seats in the November midterm elections. But that could be hard to do if the economy continues to improve over the next six months.Americans are more optimistic about the future of the economy than they were last month, according to a new CBS News/ New York Times poll. Forty-one percent of Americans now say the economy is improving, up eight points from April and more than at any time during this recession. Just 15 percent think the economy is getting worse, according to the poll, conducted April 28 - May 2.
There has also been a small bump in President Obama's approval rating on the economy. In a five-point increase from last month, 48 percent now approve of the job he's doing on the economy. That's the highest approval rating on his handling of the economy the president has seen since last November. Forty-seven percent disapprove of his handling of it. * * * -
Arizona Limits Itself To One Piece Of Racist Legislation Per Month
» Harold's BlogAfter all, the folks down in Arizona don't want to appear too bat-s**t crazy:A bill to require presidential candidates to show their birth certificates to get on Arizona's ballot won't win approval from state lawmakers.
With legislators working toward adjournment of their annual session, the sponsor of the bill says it won't get a state Senate vote because some fellow Republicans don't support it.
The House narrowly approved the measure last week.
The bill is an outgrowth of some Obama critics' doubts over whether he was born in the United States. Hawaii officials have repeatedly confirmed Obama's citizenship, and his Hawaiian birth certificate has been made public, along with newspaper birth notices. -
I Think He Meant To Say Bush
» Harold's Blog
-- Texas state representative Leo Berman, at a Glenn Beck event last Saturday.“I believe that Barack Obama is God’s punishment on us today, but in 2012, we are going to make Obama a one-term president.”
So Leo, did the Lord God actually tell you that your punishment will only last four years and not eight years or longer? Only four years of punishment for what you GOP motherf**kers did to our country?
I believe The Almighty is letting you off easy. -
Quote of the Week
» Harold's Blog
-- Rep. Babette Josephs (D., Phila.) who accused Gregg Kravitz, her primary opponent, of pretending to be bisexual in order to pander to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender voters in her district."I outed him as a straight person."
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My Favorite Part About Wall Street Reform Legislation
» Harold's BlogNow that it looks like Wall Street Reform will pass the Senate with at least some GOP support, does that mean that some Republicans will actually attend the signing ceremony? If it does indeed mean that, won't the GOPers who think that Obama is an illegal alien (one-half of them) and those who think he is the Anti-Christ (one-quarter of them) be totally pissed off?
I'm convinced that the main reason the Republicans initially decided to oppose Obama on everything is because they were afraid to tick off the Birthers, who -- as noted above -- make up half the GOP. But somewhere along the line, the Republican Party decided that is was far more perilous to vote against Wall Street Reform, so they concluded that it would be better to cooperate with Obama on this even though half of the Republicans believe that Obama is not an American citizen and therefore not a legitimate president.
I can't wait to see how this plays out. -
An Honest Teabagger
» Harold's Blog
-- Teabagger Jerry Johnson, explaining that race is only part of the reason he does not like Obama."It's not just because he's black. I wish I could tell you that I loved this guy, that he was a great president, that I had faith in him. But I have none. Zero."
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Quote of the Week
» Harold's Blog
-- Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), directly expressing her sincere hope that the President will not be able to solve any of the problems that the GOP caused (and indirectly expressing her deep hatred for America).[W]e're hoping that President Obama's policies don't succeed. . . .
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Limbaugh's Idiocy On Display Once Again
» Harold's BlogRush Limbaugh said this the other day with regard to the recent mining disaster in West Virginia:
Brad Johnson at ThinkProgress offers up this response:Was there no union responsibility for improving mine safety? Where was the union here? Where was the union? The union is generally holding these companies up demanding all kinds of safety. Why were these miners continuing to work in what apparently was an unsafe atmosphere?
Of course, none of this really matters because Limbaugh can say whatever he wants and his listeners will believe all of it. I doubt a lot of Dittoheads visit the ThinkProgress website.There’s a simple reason the union didn’t protect the miners: the Upper Big Branch Mine, like nearly all of the mines under Massey CEO Don Blankenship’s control, is non-union. In fact, the United Mine Workers of America (UMW) “tried three times to organize the Upper Big Branch mine, but even with getting nearly 70 percent of workers to sign cards saying they wanted to vote for a union, Blankenship personally met with workers to threaten them with closing down the mine and losing their jobs if they voted for a union.”
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It Begins
» Harold's BlogHere we go:A northern Idaho man who police say fired his shotgun near a U.S. census worker who was trying to deliver a census form has been cited for exhibition of a deadly weapon, a misdemeanor. * * *
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FauxNews Should Throw In The Towel On This One
» Harold's BlogI love watching FoxNews when things are going wrong for the Republicans, so -- needless to say -- I was watching Fox a lot when Obama and the Dems passed Health Care Reform a couple weeks ago. It was hilarious.
The Fox talking heads were clearly agitated by the fact that the bill had passed, and they even went after Joe Biden in a big way for telling Obama that "This is a big f**king deal" when the President and Vice-President were too close to an open microphone. The funny part was that at least two of Fox's "guest" commentators thought it was a great moment, and I agreed with them.
In fact, Biden's "F Bomb" was my favorite part of the whole process. Even my Mom thought it was kicked ass, despite the fact that the word in question is not one of her favorites (and, to be fair and balanced, I'm pretty sure she didn't use the phrase "kick ass" to describe it).
But Fox just can't let this one go:
It was a great moment, Fox. Deal with it.Fox News, which went bonkers over the “F-bomb” that Joe Biden dropped at the health care signing ceremony, has now done a poll to see if their flood-the-zone coverage of that very consequential moment has had an impact.
The answer is Not So Much, according to the poll’s internals:
As you may have heard, Vice President Joe Biden used foul language to describe how important he thought passage of the new health care bill was when he whispered to President Obama “this is a big expletive deal” — do you think the vice president’s use of foul language to describe the bill was offensive, or not?
Yes, offensive: 37%
No, not offensive: 57% -
Palin/Bachmann 2012!!
» Harold's BlogPlease God -- let this happen:
By the way, on the issue of Republicans who don't know what the hell they are talking about, here is an excellent article concerning a recent interview with Sen. Saxby Chambliss and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. I found this exchange on the pre-existing conditions issue to be particularly interesting:HANNITY: Are either one of you considering a run for the presidency in 2012? Just asking. Governor Palin, I’ll start — I’ll start with you. But before I get their answers, how many of would you like to see a Palin-Bachmann ticket?
PALIN: Well that sounds kind of cool. That sounds kind of cool.
HANNITY: Governor Palin, are you thinking about a run again?
PALIN: As I have said, I’m not going to close any doors that perhaps would be open.
Don't forget -- the individual mandate was originally a GOP idea. It's pretty clear to me that the Republicans did not think it through when they decided to support coverage for pre-existing conditions but not support the individual mandate, which was their idea in the first place.If you somehow tell companies they can no longer deny coverage of pre-existing conditions, you need to provide them another way to eliminate free riders. Under the new law, individual mandates are that tool. As long as everyone is required to have coverage, nobody can game the system and there’s no longer any justification to deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions.
So if the GOP plan is going to ensure that pre-existing conditions are covered, as Chambliss and McConnell suggested, how would they do it without individual mandates? What mechanism would they use?
Chambliss and McConnell had no answer. Literally.
After Chambliss fumbled an initial response, McConnell broke in with a long and familiar condemnation of the Democratic plan, including its failure to include tort reform. After a few minutes, I interrupted and brought him back to the question: OK, but how are the Republicans going to cover pre-existing conditions?
“The premiums are going up either way,” he said.
OK, I responded, a little stunned. That doesn’t explain how the Republicans intend to cover pre-existing conditions.
“The premiums are going up either way,” he repeated. That was that. We moved on, and I still don’t have my answer. -
Do You Take Prison With Your Tea?
» Harold's BlogOops:
By the way, you can put this one in the "No Surprise There" category.Charles Alan Wilson, a 64-year-old Washington man who was angered over health care reform, has been charged with threatening a federal official for allegedly making profanity and misogyny-laced death threats in messages left for Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington announced today.
The complaint alleges that Wilson called Murray's office multiple times between March 22 -- the day after the health bill passed the House -- and April 4. In one message, he allegedly said that Murray "had a target on her back." In another, he allegedly said, "I want to (expletive) kill you."
The press release from the U.S. attorney continues: "Wilson discussed assisting others in an attempt to kill the senator. Wilson's threats were in response to the passage of the Health Care Reform Act." Wilson was arrested this morning. *** -
Quote Of The Week
» Harold's Blog
Barack Obama, mocking reporters and pundits for their impatience with regard to the effects of the health care reform bill."Can you imagine if some of these reporters were working on a farm? You planted some seeds and they came out the next day. 'Nothing's happened. There's no crop. We're gonna to starve. Oh, no! It's a disaster!'"
With regard to health care reform, it gives me nothing but pleasure to think that people like this idiot spend most of their day in a rage because these basic reforms are now the law of the land. -
Right On Time
» Harold's BlogI've said this before, but the bottom line for the Democrats with regard to the upcoming Mid-Term elections is jobs creation. Health Care Reform, Finance Reform, and all the other "Reforms" won't mean squat if this economy didn't start creating jobs by the Spring of 2010.
Well, Spring is here, and so are the jobs:
In addition, the figures for January and February 2010 have been revised and now show a net total of 62,000 positions.The US economy created 162,000 jobs last month as the unemployment rate remained unchanged at 9.7 per cent, the government said on Friday, bolstering hopes that the economic recovery is gathering steam.
Temporary hiring by the government for the census only accounted for some 48,000 new jobs in March, meaning the private sector has begun churning out new positions.
Economists had expected non-farm payrolls to grow by about 200,000 positions, but they had factored in about 80,000 in temporary census hiring. ***
Clearly, this is good news for the Democrats. As far as the Mid-Term elections are concerned, jobs creation needed to start now -- as opposed to this summer -- because the American people need time to get accustomed to the fact that our economy is on the mend and folks are being hired again.
Although the unemployment rate has remained steady at 9.7%, the truth is that our economy would have to create 200,000 jobs a month for an entire year just to reduce the rate by one point, meaning the Dems will probably be stuck with a high unemployment rate for quite awhile. Oh well.
By the way, Obama was on CBS this morning, and he was asked about the level of enmity on talk radio right now. Here is what he had to say:
Obama also stated that those Americans know he wants what's best for the country and that he is trying to do what's right, even if they disagree with him. He's clearly trying to take the high road here, and although I've been critical of him for keeping an even keel and not getting angry enough at all the bulls**ttery, I think I understand what he is trying to do."Well, I think, when you listen to Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck, it's pretty apparent, and it's troublesome." But, you know, keep in mind that there have been periods in American history where this kind of vitriol comes out. It happens often when you've got an economy that's making people more anxious, but that's not the vast majority of Americans."
Obama truly believes that things will eventually calm down in this country, and he doesn't seem to want to burn any bridges by aggressively going after the folks who wish him nothing but ill right now. He's acting presidential. Let's see if this strategy pays off in the long term. -
Romney's Blunder
» Harold's BlogI think Mitt Romney blew a big opportunity. He should have kept his public comments minimal during the health care reform debate, then -- when the bill passed -- he should have come out and said, "Although there are parts of the bill I do not like, I find the overall package to be quite good and I support what the Congress and President Obama have done."
Sure, he would have been mercilessly attacked by the Tea-Baggers and all the Republicans who are afraid of the Tea-Baggers (which is all of them), but Romney isn't in Congress and isn't running for anything in 2010. The 2012 primaries are still a long ways off and anything can happen between now and then. Hell, just two short months ago, the popular thinking in this country was that Health Care Reform was dead and Obama's presidency was crippled as a result. Who knows what the political landscape will be like a year from now.
Instead, Romney currently finds himself in an impossible position -- he now has to distance himself from legislation that he himself came up with (i.e., RomneyCare in Massachusetts), and you know that his opponents for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination are going to repeatedly point out that ObamaCare is really just RomneyCare. In fact, such attacks have already begun. My point is that Romney was going to be attacked for his Massachusetts plan anyway, so why should he distance himself from it by opposing ObamaCare and in the process look like the Mother of All Flip-Floppers? By expressing support for ObamaCare, Romney could have defended himself from a position of strength and maybe even counter-attacked.
Every other GOP candidate for 2012 is going to be attacking Health Care Reform. Romney could have separated himself from the pack on this issue, and I think it was a big mistake for him not to do that. The GOP plan was to defeat the reform, and by doing so, break Obama's presidency. That strategy failed; but given that every Republican supported the strategy, it was a failure for every Republican. It didn't have to be that way.
By the way, will this be the new GOP anti-reform talking point?
UPDATE: John Cornyn's strategy on how to deal with ObamaCare? Praise it by faintly damning it:NRSC Chairman John Cornyn plans to send a memo to Republican candidates Tuesday urging them to be proactive in shaping the campaign debate on health care and not let Democrats "distort our record and our ideas." "On the trail, it's critical that we remind people of the fact that it was Republicans who fought to force insurance companies to compete with one another over state lines for Americans' business. It was Republicans who fought to reform the junk lawsuits that raise medical costs and lower quality by forcing doctors to practice 'defensive medicine,'" Cornyn writes, emphasizing the GOP's record beyond its opposition to the Obama-backed health care bill. "It was Republicans who fought for policies that protected Americans with preexisting conditions and it was Republicans who proposed health care reforms that didn't cut Medicare by $500 billion and raise Americans' taxes by $400 million. It's Republicans who continue to believe that we should focus on reforms which actually lower health care costs for Americans, first and foremost." If the GOP thinks health care is going to work to their advantage this year, that doesn't mean they expect that to happen passively.
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RepubliCare
» Harold's BlogThere is a lot of stuff coming out on how much of the recently-passed health care reform bill was really just a long list of ideas that Republicans had previously embraced. It's been fairly clear to me for quite some time that the HCR bill was mostly populated with Republican ideas, but neither the left or the right seemed to want to talk about this issue.
And for good reason: The GOP was simply out to "break" Obama no matter how many Republican ideas he embraced, and the Democrats certainly didn't want to point out that the reform package was pretty much based on ideas originally proposed by conservatives (their base wouldn't have liked that at all).
But now that health care reform is the law of the land, this story is starting to gather steam. Yesterday, we learned that Bush speechwriter David Frum, who was recently fired by the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute (AEI), made the following comment to fellow conservative Bruce Bartlett:
Imagine that – a conservative “think” tank muzzled because too many of its members agreed with the President on how to solve one of the critical problems of our time. And the other side calls us Stalinists?Since, [Frum] is no longer affiliated with AEI, I feel free to say publicly something he told me in private a few months ago. He asked if I had noticed any comments by AEI "scholars" on the subject of health care reform. I said no and he said that was because they had been ordered not to speak to the media because they agreed with too much of what Obama was trying to do.
I’ll give the GOP credit, though – they had so much anti-Obama solidarity on this health care reform issue that the Republicans were even able to shut down their own intellectuals. [I was about to finish that thought with “Only in America,” but that’s about as un-American as you can get].
There's more. Check out this video. If you can't get video at your workplace, what it shows is an excerpt from an interview today wherein Campbell Brown at CNN asked GOP senator Orrin Hatch why he's against health care reform now even though he actually supported an individual mandate back in 1993. Hatch's response:
I'm not even going to try to parse Hatch's bulls**t response, because the point is that the media is finally starting to realize that "ObamaCare" is actually "RepubliCare" (or maybe we should just call it RomneyCare)."In 1993, we were trying to kill HillaryCare, and I didn't pay any attention to [the individual mandate], because that was a part of a bill I just hadn't centered on, but since then, of course, 17 years later, when it comes up and I know it's possible it's going to pass, I looked at it, and constitutionally, I came to the conclusion, and everyone came to the conclusion, that this would be the first time in history that the federal government requires you to buy something you don't want."
In any event, the Republicans really blew it on this issue, because all they had to do was embrace their own ideas! They could have easily claimed credit for a majority of the bill, and Obama most likely would have let them do it. Had the GOP done that, there would have been overwhelming bipartisan support for the reforms, and the signing ceremony that happened earlier in the week would have been a great day for all Americans as opposed to what it turned out to be, namely, a huge, momentum-building victory for Obama and the Democrats, and a call to violence for the radical right.
But my question is: What now? I expect that the media will come out with more reporting over the following weeks pointing out just how much health care reform is based on GOP ideas. If this happens, what will be the GOP response? Will Republicans just continue to deny the obvious, or will they be forced to pivot on this issue and embrace the reform? How can the Republicans embrace reform now after spending all that effort enraging their lunatic base?
As I mentioned on Wednesday, GOP Senator Chuck Grassley has already taken credit for some of the HCR law, and I expect we'll see more of this over the next few weeks. But the bottom line here is that the Republicans really backed themselves into a corner on this issue.
UPDATE: Here is what Obama said this morning on Today:"[W]hen you actually look at the bill itself, it incorporates all sorts of Republican ideas. I mean a lot of commentators have said, you know, this is sort of similar to the bill that Mitt Romney, the Republican Governor and now presidential candidate, passed in Massachusetts."
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Lukewarm Condemnation From NRCC
» Harold's BlogIn fact, caliing it "lukewarm" would be generous:
Sere later tried to claim he was he was only referring to marches, demonstrations and letters -- and not physical threats -- but that's total horses**t, of course.Rep. Tom Perriello (D-VA) is one of the Democratic lawmakers who has been targeted after the health care vote -- and one Republican group suggests he has only himself to blame for the situation.
National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Andy Sere said that while his organization doesn't condone the actions of the person or people who cut a gas line at Perriello's brother's house (apparently under the impression that the home was the congressman's), Perriello is not the victim.
"Central and Southside Virginians are the ones who are going to have the bear the burden of increased taxes," Sere told The Roanoke Times. "What you're seeing is a frustration among his constituents who believe he's not listening to them." * * *
Clearly, GOP leaders don't want to seriously condemn any of the folks who are issuing threats against Democrats because these people form the base of the Republican Party. Check out these results from a recent Harris poll:
This poll goes a long way to explain why the Republicans have chosen to oppose everything Obama supports, even if the idea was originally a Republican one. I mean, how could a senator or congressman support anything Obama does in the face of these numbers? Such a person would have to go home and explain to half of his constituents why he is cooperating with that illegal-alien-Muslim-terrorizer in the White House.* 57 percent of Republicans (32 percent overall) believe that Obama is a Muslim
* 45 percent of Republicans (25 percent overall) agree with the Birthers in their belief that Obama was "not born in the United States and so is not eligible to be president"
* 38 percent of Republicans (20 percent overall) say that Obama is "doing many of the things that Hitler did"
* Scariest of all, 24 percent of Republicans (14 percent overall) say that Obama "may be the Antichrist."
Two-fifths of Republicans think that Obama is doing many things that Hitler did, and one quarter of them think Obama is the Anti-Christ. How could a Republican ever support Obama on any issue without pissing off these lunatics?
Senator Chris Dodd thinks that things might be loosening up a bit on this front:
I was thinking a similar thing the other day. The most essential part of the GOP's "Just Say 'No' To Obama" strategy was defeating Obama on health care reform; and now that such a goal cannot be reached, my thinking was that a lot of Republicans in Congress might decide that the time has come to do their jobs. But the aforementioned results from the Harris poll have caused me to do some rethinking on that."I think, frankly, there are a number of Republicans who went along with the strategy of 'just say no' who were never really happy with it, but if it worked they would go along," Dodd said. "They saw it fail. And now they've had enough of it. and they really want to be involved in crafting things."
By the way, I really like this. -
Interesting Interview Of David Axelrod
» Harold's BlogFrom HuffPo:
I think Axelrod makes a good point, but he and the rest of the Obama Administration need to beware of falling into the same trap. If the Dems for one minute think that momentum is on their side on this and that they can sit on their hands with regard to Health Care Reform, they should think again. The GOP has promised to come after them with everything they've got, and I expect that will happen.One of the president's closest advisers said on Tuesday that Republican opponents of health care reform let down their guard following Sen. Scott Brown's election in Massachusetts, in the process allowing Democrats and the administration to make a final, successful push for the bill.
In an interview with the Huffington Post hours after the president signed health care reform into law, senior adviser David Axelrod pointed to that special election in late January as a pivotal point in the long path to passing legislation.
"Some of the steam went out of the opposition after that," Axelrod said. "I think that people felt like they had made a statement. Perhaps they felt like they had killed health care reform... They thought the fight was over. And that [the president] couldn't now succeed. I do believe that. And it is almost as if they had made the statement that they thought they had stopped the thing. And so it created a breathing space for us to regroup." * * *
I know that the most recent Gallup poll showed 49 percent approval and 40 percent disapproval of the health care reform law, but all the polls before that showed that most people opposed the reform. The polls basically reversed themselves overnight, and that can easily happen again.
What the Democrats need to do now is launch a spoiling attack against the GOP. Obama should travel all over the country and speak on this issue (I heard he was in fact going to do that). The Democrats and their surrogates should launch blistering attack ads on all the Republicans who opposed this bill (which is ALL of them).
One ad should attack Republicans individually. It should simply lay out the reforms, and then close with "Call Representative So-and-So and ask him why he and the rest of the Republicans opposed a bill that actually reduced the deficit and extended Medicare solvency by at least nine years and provided health coverage to 32 million Americans who didn't have it before."
I have a feeling that a lot of Democrats think this new law will basically sell itself, but that won't happen if they let the GOP frame the debate during the run-up to the Mid-Terms.
UPDATE: This new Health Care Reform law is so full of GOP ideas that I have no doubt Republicans will soon be coming out and taking credit for most of it. Of course, this won't happen right away, because the current Republican plan is to oppose All Things Obama (even if it was a Republican idea to begin with -- e.g., the Deficit Reduction Panel) and, as everyone knows, the GOP is masterful at keeping its people in line and there is no way in hell that . . . .
Wait! ... What's this? Could it be true . . . ?
GOP Senator Chuck Grassley takes credit for health care reform! That didn't take long.
Any bets on who will be the next Republican domino to fall? I pick Rep. Peter King of New York. -
Oops
» Harold's BlogFrom Political Wire:"The health care bill, ObamaCare, is dead with not the slightest prospect of resurrection."
-- Fred Barnes, writing in the Weekly Standard in January. -
Victory!
» Harold's BlogDanimal just called me to concede that I did in fact win my $10 bet with him -- although his call might have been premature given that the GOP can still pull all sorts of delaying tactics to prevent the final vote from happening before midnight --but it is clear now that Health Care Reform will pass the House.
This is a huge accomplishment, historically and politically. If the bill hadn't passed, Obama's presidency would have been crippled and the Democrats would have been absolutely screwed in the upcoming Mid-Term Elections. Now they can campaign from a position of strength. In fact, with regard to the Health Care Reform issue, the Democrats need to do three things to the GOP during the run-up to the Mid-Terms: (1) attack, (2) attack, and (3) attack more.
Even though these reforms really aren't all that different from the stuff that the Republicans were supporting during the Clinton-era health care debate, the GOP nonetheless decided that the best thing for them to do politically was to sit on the sidelines and instead do anything and everything they could to turn this Health Care debate into Obama's Waterloo. They need to pay for that decision, and the Democrats can make them pay if they do the following things:
** The Dems need to constantly point out that the reforms passed today are very moderate. In fact, the whole thing was a huge compromise. The so-called "public option" was actually a compromise on the single-payer deal, which is hilarious because the public option wasn't part of the bill that was just passed. When Obama signs this bill into law, it should be a very somber moment -- he should simply point out that these basic reforms needed to be passed decades ago, and he should say that he signs on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens who died because the American people did not have the political will to get this done sooner.
** The Dems need to constantly point out that the GOP didn't do squat on Health Care Reform when they were in control all those years, and as a result 45,000 Americans died each year who wouldn't have died had they had health coverage. The GOP loves to protect unborn fetuses, but they don't give two s**ts about folks after they are born and Obama and company need to point out this hypocrisy at every opportunity.
** The Democrats need to constantly ask the Republicans this question: Why in the hell did your party uniformly oppose a bill that actually reduced the deficit and extended Medicare solvency by at least nine years and provided health coverage to 32 million Americans who didn't have it before!? One of the GOP's talking points on this issue is that these reforms will increase the deficit, and Republicans continue to make this argument even though these reforms actually reduce the deficit by $130 billion in the first decade, and $1.2 trillion in the second. The GOP will continue to bring up this fake issue; and every time Republicans do it, the Democrats should simply call them out as liars.
On that last point, Obama and the Dems need to rid themselves of their fear of calling Republicans "liars" on this (or any) issue. I hate it when Democrats use phrases like "well, that's not exactly true" or "Mr. So-and-So has his facts wrong." Lies such as "death panels" or "government takeover of health care" were able to gain traction because the Democrats' response to all that bulls**ttery was weak at best. That needs to change.
All you hear about these days is how badly the Democrats are going to lose this November. But that doesn't have to happen, especially if our economy starts creating jobs again over the next few months. But it will happen if the Democrats continue to act like a bunch of political weaklings. -
Bad News For The GOP (With Update)
» Harold's BlogThe Congressional Budget Office just released its final numbers on the health care reform bill, and it is good news for the Democrats. Steve Benen sums it up:
I have a $10 bet with Danimal that the House will pass the bill before the end of the day on Sunday, so this report gives me some hope that I might win that bet. Having a very active Dennis Kucinich on board doesn't hurt the Democrats' chances either:[T]he final package costs $940 billion over 10 years. It reduces the deficit by $130 billion in the first decade, and $1.2 trillion in the second. The bill will bring coverage to 32 million Americans, while extending Medicare solvency by at least 9 years.
Democrats have begun calling the package the "biggest deficit reduction measure in 25 years," which happens to be true. It's also arguably the biggest cost control bill ever.
Also note, the final Democratic proposal lowers the deficit more than the previous versions. The Senate bill was projected to reduce the deficit by $118 billion in the first decade, and this one does even better. * * *
Even if this weekend's anticipated vote doesn't go the Democrats' way, the CBO report does give them a little cover. They can point out during the run-up to the 2010 mid-terms that the Republicans opposed a bill that actually reduced the deficit and extended Medicare solvency by at least nine years while providing health coverage to 32 million Americans who didn't have it before.A few hours after Rep. Dennis Kucinich switched his support to become a critical vote for the health care bill, he took to the House floor to ask wavering colleagues to join him. Astonished colleagues pointed to Kucinich (D-OH) darting from member to member on the House floor yesterday, saying privately they'd never seen him get so involved in whipping a vote.
It's not just progressives he's targeting to keep in the fold, it's everyone, a top Democratic aide told me. Members know that Kucinich - a staunch antiwar liberal long in favor of a single-payer system and often going out on a limb with his own agenda - is setting aside deep ideology to help get something passed. "It's a totally new dynamic. People are realizing he's doing it for history," the aide said. * * *
Of course, the Dems can more effectively use these arguments against the GOP if the bill passes. My hope here is that the House Democrats who are still on the fence will figure out that they are going to be attacked on health care reform no matter what happens with this bill, and that it would be better to defend themselves from a position of strength (i.e., defending a law that they passed without any GOP support) than from a position of weakness (i.e., defending a failed bill that they couldn't pass even though they controlled both branches of Congress and the White House).
UPDATE: How do we know the CBO numbers are bad for the GOP? Because the Republicans are attacking them.
UPDATE II: From First Read:We’re told that the White House and House Dem leaders are fewer than five votes away from 216, after Dennis Kucinich’s no-to-yes switch yesterday and pro-life Dem Dale Kildee saying that he’s ok with the Senate bill’s abortion language. * * *
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Quote Of The Week
» Harold's Blog
Isaiah 49:16 (i.e., the Bible passage that Sarah Palin quotes to justify her use of notes scribbled on the palm of her hand)."See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me."
The Bible doesn't refer to teleprompters, so I guess that's why Palin has no problem attacking Obama for using them. -
This Is Idiotic
» Harold's BlogI can't believe this one:
The politics of this are pretty simple: the GOP is going to attack Obama on this issue anyway (even though they had no problem with Bush prosecuting terrorists in Federal Court), so if Obama backs down the other side can attack him (1) for initially proposing that Khalid Sheik Mohammed be tried in Federal Court, and (2) for being indecisive on the whole War On Terror deal by changing his mind on Federal prosecutions.President Obama's advisers are nearing a recommendation that Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, be prosecuted in a military tribunal, administration officials said, a step that would reverse Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.'s plan to try him in civilian court in New York City.
The president's advisers feel increasingly hemmed in by bipartisan opposition to a federal trial in New York and demands, mainly from Republicans, that Mohammed and his accused co-conspirators remain under military jurisdiction, officials said. While Obama has favored trying some terrorism suspects in civilian courts as a symbol of U.S. commitment to the rule of law, critics have said military tribunals are the appropriate venue for those accused of attacking the United States. * * *
Show some backbone, Barack. -
What Is It With These People?
» Harold's BlogFrom TPM:It's no good for a family values Republican to get picked up on a DUI. But substantially worse to get picked up for a DUI after leaving a gay nightclub with an unidentified man in a state vehicle.
That's the sorry state that befell California state Senator Roy Ashburn (R-Bakersfield) early Wednesday.
In better days Ashburn, a fierce opponent of gay rights, was fighting marriage equality and organizing anti-gay marriage rallies as part of his "Traditional Family Values" campaign.
But he hit a bump in the road -- figuratively, not literally -- Wednesday at around 2 AM when CHP officers observed him weaving and driving erratically in downtown Sacramento. After a field sobriety test, officers determined that Ashburn, who reeked of alcohol and had bloodshot, watery eyes, was under he influence of alcohol and placed him under arrest. He was released from jail just before 4 AM.
Initial reports only noted the DWI arrest and Ashburn issued a contrite apology on Wednesday. But late this evening, the CBS affiliate in Sacramento reported that "sources" confirmed that Ashburn had left Faces, a gay nightclub in downtown Sacramento, just prior to his arrest. * * * -
That Sound You Hear Is George Orwell Rolling Over In His Grave As His Head Explodes
» Harold's BlogSarah Palin said this on Leno last night:I studied journalism, my college degree there in communications. And now I am back there wanting to build some trust back in our media. I think the mainstream media is quite broken and I think there needs to be the fairness, the balance in there — that’s why I joined Fox. Fair and balanced, yes. You know because, Jay, those years a go that I studied journalism it was all about the who, what, when, where, and why, it was not so much the opinion interjected in hard news stories. … As long as there is not the opinion under the guise of hard news stories — I think there needs to be clear differentiation.
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Quote Of The Week
» Harold's Blog
-- Jonathan Chait at The New Republic.Look, it would be okay for reporters and pundits to be obsessed with what legislative method is employed to pass health care reform if they boned up on the issue. Alternatively, it would be okay for them not to understand it at all if they deemed it an irrelevant issue. (Which, in my opinion, it is.) But obsessed and ignorant makes for a bad combination.
Chait is referring to how reporters and pundits are buying into the GOP bulls**ttery that health care reform is going to be passed via reconciliation. As Kevin Drum explained:
Once again, you gotta hand it to the GOP. Republicans in the Senate are currently on pace to break their own filibuster record:[T]he Democratic plan is not to pass health care reform via reconciliation. It never has been. The plan is to pass it via regular order (i.e., have the House approve the bill already passed by the Senate) and then amend it with a few modest modifications that are passed via reconciliation and therefore can't be filibustered in the Senate.
That should be the big political story, yet the GOP somehow got reporters and pundits to run with a story that has no basis in reality.In the 110th Congress of 2007-2008, with Republicans in the minority, there were a record 112 cloture votes. In the current session of Congress -- the 111th -- for all of 2009 and the first two months of 2010 the number already exceeds 40. The most the filibuster has been used when Democrats were in the minority was 58 times in the 106th Congress of 1999-2000.
I said it before and I'll say it again: Republicans have horrible ideas, but they have political maneuvering down to a fine art. -
I Love This
» Harold's BlogSome conservatives are unhappy that Sen. Scott Brown voted for The Jobs Bill:
The bill did include a tax credit for businesses that hire unemployed workers, something that you'd think the right wing would like, but I guess they don't.Not long ago, Scott Brown (R-Mass.) was elected to the United States Senate and a nation rejoiced, because he was going to drive down to Washington D.C. and become the President of Filibusters. But a funny thing happened yesterday, when Brown decided not to cast the 41st vote, and instead to vote as if he'd like to one day get re-elected to office in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. . . .
That was enough to earn Brown the Drudge banner, complete with the demon-red tint of betrayal! And, subsequently, Scott Brown's honeymoon came to an end like all political honeymoons: amid hotheaded recriminations on Twitter. Ken Layne at Wonkette documented the carnage.
Over at Scott Brown's Facebook page, the mood is much the same, probably because David Broder hasn't written a column yet telling America that the jobs in this jobs bill are so much more awesome than the jobs that came before them because they are "bipartisan." Some of Brown's fans are giving him some support, but the lion's share of comments read like "LYING LOW LIFE SCUM HYPOCRITE!" and "What a bummer dude. We didn't need another Olympia Snowe," and "BROWN, YOU JUST REMEMBER YOU DOUCHEBAG...WE ARE WATCHING YOU!!!!!!!!!!!! AND YOU FAILED AT THE FIRST CHANCE...YOU SCUM SUCKING ASS!!! GUESS MY 10-15 HOUR WORK DAYS WILL HELP PAY FOR THIS TOTAL BULLS**T!!!!!!!!"
And speaking of jobs, this is really going to piss off the GOP:
As Colbert once said, the facts have a well-known liberal bias.The Obama administration's $787 billion stimulus bill created up to 2.1 million jobs during the final three months of last year, according to a new report from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.
During the fourth quarter of 2009, the stimulus added “between 1.0 million and 2.1 million to the number of workers employed in the United States,” the CBO said.
The stimulus also boosted the country’s economic growth by 1.5 to 3.5 percent during the time period and lowered the nation’s unemployment rate by between 0.5 and 1.1 percentage points.
In the report, the CBO noted that economic growth in 2009 was worse than they had predicted at the time that the stimulus was enacted, but that was due to a weaker economy than originally expected, rather than any failings of the stimulus. * * * -
Can't Wait To See How The Republicans Will Criticize This . . .
» Harold's Blog. . . but I'm sure they will find a way:
All Americans, regardless of political party, should be proud and happy that this guy was caught, but I can guarantee you that certain members of the GOP are furious that this happened because it gives Obama a big victory. I find that both hilarious and sad.The Taliban’s top military commander was captured several days ago in Karachi, Pakistan, in a secret joint operation by Pakistani and American intelligence forces, according to American government officials.
The commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, is an Afghan described by American officials as the most significant Taliban figure to be detained since the American-led war in Afghanistan started more than eight years ago. He ranks second in influence only to Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban’s founder and a close associate of Osama bin Laden before the Sept. 11 attacks. * * *
UPDATE: They got another one:
Another GOP talking point bites the dust.Another leader of the Afghan Taliban has been captured by authorities in Pakistan working in partnership with U.S. intelligence officials. Taliban sources in the region and a counterterrorism officials in Washington have identified the detained insurgent leader as Mullah Abdul Salam, described as the Taliban movement's "shadow governor" of Afghanistan's Kunduz province.
Taliban sources told NEWSWEEK's Sami Yousafzai that Salam was grabbed by Pakistani security forces in the city of Faisalabad about a week ago—close to the same time that Pakistani forces, again with American support, captured the Afghan Taliban's No. 2 leader, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, in Karachi. The Taliban sources said that Mullah Salam was arrested with three other militants.
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According to the Taliban sources, at the time of his capture Mullah Salam was preparing to travel to meet Mullah Baradar. Some sources suggested that the arrests of the two insurgent leaders might be linked, though this could not be confirmed in Washington.
Mullah Salam was one of the Taliban's most effective commanders in northern Afghanistan and therefore one of the men most wanted by U.S. and NATO forces fighting there. Salam's soldiers are reputed to have been particularly deadly in their attacks on German troops fighting in northern Afghanistan. *** -
How Should Republicans Respond Now That Obama Is Killing More Terrorists Than Bush?
» Harold's BlogThat's easy -- criticize him for killing too many terrorists:
Here is an interesting article by Spencer Ackerman on the GOP's failed attempts to attack Obama on national security issues in the wake of the Christmas Day Crotch Bomber:Marc Thiessen, former President Bush's speechwriter and the author of Courting Disaster, now complains that President Obama is killing too many terrorists. "Today, the Obama administration is no longer attempting to capture men like these alive; it is simply killing them. This may be satisfying, but it comes at a price. With every drone strike that vaporizes a senior al Qaeda leader, actionable intelligence is vaporized along with him. Dead terrorists can't tell you their plans to strike America."
The reason the Republicans are looking so bad on national security issues right now is because they've decided to oppose Obama on everything, even on stuff they previously supported. I guess they've made the political calculation that it is better for them to look like complete idiots than it is for them to concede that Obama is doing a good job at something. I have no doubt that the Tea-Baggers love this strategy.Very little of whatever Keep America Safe can throw at the Obama administration has survived the Christmas-Day pushback. Even Dennis Blair’s epic Congressional fail hasn’t damaged the administration. Instead, it’s plainly and thoroughly refuted most every conservative national-security article of faith. Mirandizing terrorists inhibits intelligence collection? Wrong. Charging a terrorist in criminal court is a danger? Hundreds have been convicted that way. Non-torturous methods of interrogation fail? They work better. Call the Obama team pussies and they’ll back down? They’ll smack the tartar off your teeth. The public will rally around Republicans if they just ignorantly yell OMG TERRORISM loud enough? They’ll go to the other guy.
There’s just nothing left. Guantanamo, I guess. But there, if they thought about it, they would be happy with Obama’s approach. Instead, the GOP, for the first time in decades, is completely discredited on national security, without any credible spokespeople, after the public remembers the experience of how Republicans started an unnecessary war at the expense of a necessary one. And now it’s all exposed. -
This Is Retarded
» Harold's BlogFrom McClatchy:The flap between Sarah Palin and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel over his use of the word "retarded" has spilled over into the Texas governor's race.
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison's campaign has not been shy in recent days about letting media outlets know that Gov. Rick Perry's political consultant, David Carney, repeatedly used the word "retarded" in a conference call with Dallas television station KERA in advance of last month's television debate.
The incident, which the Perry campaign has confirmed, didn't get much attention.
But with Palin scheduled to campaign for Perry at a Houston-area rally on Sunday, news outlets are devoting time and energy to whether Palin is only offended when Democrats use the word inappropriately.
"It was an unfortunate choice of words and the Governor is extremely disappointed," campaign spokesman Mark Miner said.
Politico reported Thursday that rocker Ted Nugent has also used the word "retarded" in a way some might find offensive. Nugent is scheduled to play the national anthem at Sunday's Perry/Palin event. -
Quote Of The Week
» Harold's Blog -
Freaking Hilarious
» Harold's BlogLoL:Four men were charged Tuesday after attempting to illegally access and manipulate the phone system in a district office of U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-Louisiana, a local U.S. attorney's office said.
Joseph Basel, 24, Robert Flanagan, 24, James O'Keefe, 25, and Stan Dai, 24, were charged with entering Landrieu's New Orleans office, which is federal property, under "false pretenses for the purpose of committing a felony," according to the attorney's office.
Law enforcement officials say they believe O'Keefe is the conservative activist of the same name who dressed up as a pimp last summer and visited an office of ACORN, a liberal community organizing group, in order to solicit advice on setting up a brothel, among other scenarios.
He secretly recorded the visits on video and posted them on the Web, leading to a media firestorm.
Flanagan is the son of William Flanagan, the acting U.S. attorney for the Western District of Louisiana, his office said.
Articles on conservative Web sites connect O'Keefe to a man named Joe Basel, describing them as conservative student activists and filmmakers.
According to the news release Tuesday and an affidavit by FBI Special Agent Steven Rayes, who is based in New Orleans, Basel and Flanagan attempted to gain access to Landrieu's office Monday while posing as telephone repairmen. * * * -
This FoxNews Poll Surprises Me
» Harold's BlogThe poll shows Obama with a 50% approval rating, but that's not what surprises me. It's the answer to this question: "Who do you think is more responsible for the current state of the economy -- President Obama, former President Bush or Congress?" Six percent blamed Obama, 36% blamed Bush, Congress got 30% of the blame, and 20% said it was some combination of the three.
I thought more folks would be blaming Obama, given that he is nearly one year into his presidency. I have no doubt that more people will be blaming him this Spring if our economy doesn't start creating jobs by then. -
Oops
» Harold's BlogFrom Political Wire:
Yes, I know that BushCo was pushing the non-existent Saddam/9-11 connection to the hilt during the run-up to the Iraq Debacle, but I'm amused that Sarah Palin believed as late as 2008 that Saddam actually attacked us on 9-11.One more item, this time about Sarah Palin, from the soon-to-be-released book, Game Change:
The New York Times notes that "in the days leading up to an interview with ABC News' Charlie Gibson, aides were worried with Ms. Palin's grasp of facts. She couldn't explain why North and South Korea were separate nations and she did not know what the Federal Reserve did. She also said she believed Saddam Hussein attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001."
By the way, I don't normally buy political books, but I might have to get Game Change, because that's the book which brought Harry Reid's "Obama is light-skinned African American with no Negro dialect" comment into the light.
And speaking of this whole Harry Reid dust-up, this is interesting:
The whole thing is intriguing to me. Had Glenn Beck privately said that the country "was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama -- a light-skinned African American with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one," he probably would have been attacked for making a racist remark. The corollary to such a statement is that a dark-skinned African-American with a Negro dialect would be unelectable to the highest office at this time, and that is undoubtedly a true statement.George Will waded in to the controversy over what Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called his “improper” comments about then-Senator Obama’s race. Reid apologized for the comments which appear in “Game Change”, a new book by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, hitting book stores this week.
Here’s what Heilemann and Halperin report in the book about what Reid said during the 2008 presidential campaign:
“[Reid] was wowed by Obama’s oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama -- a ‘light-skinned’ African American ‘with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one,’ as he said privately.”
On the roundtable, George Will defended Reid against charges of racism and provoked this spirited exchange with fellow conservative Liz Cheney:
WILL: I don't think there's a scintilla of racism in what Harry Reid said. At long last, Harry Reid has said something that no one can disagree with, and he gets in trouble for it.
CHENEY: George, give me a break. I mean, talking about the color of the president's skin...
WILL: Did he get it wrong?
CHENEY: ... and the candidate's...
WILL: Did he say anything false?
CHENEY: ... it's -- these are clearly racist comments, George.
WILL: Oh, my, no.
Reid's comments certainly pertained to race, but where they racist? Does the issue of whether a remark is racist depend on who is making the remark? Just asking. I'm not sure what that answers to those questions are.
UPDATE: This is from Joan Walsh at Salon:
And Josh Marshall notes: "Talking about racism does not make you racist; advocating racism does."[Michael] Steele and Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl are shrieking "double standard," comparing Reid's comments to the stunning 2002 musings of former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, who had to resign after he said the country would have been better off if it had elected Dixiecrat segregationist Strom Thurmond president in 1948. Oh sure: One guy is talking, perhaps inelegantly, about why he's wholeheartedly supporting our first black president; the other is wishing the country had elected a racist. That's exactly the same thing!
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Anyone See A Pattern Here?
» Harold's Blog
-- Rudy Giuliani on this morning's Good Morning America."We had no domestic attacks under Bush. We've had one under Obama."
-- Mary Matalin on CNN (December 27, 2009)."I was there [in the Bush White House]. We inherited a recession from President Clinton and we inherited the most tragic attack on our own soil in our nation's history. And President Bush dealt with it."
-- Former White House Press Secretary Dana Perino on Fox News (November 25, 2009)"We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term."
I'm certain there are more examples out there, but you get the picture.
For seven years, all the Right-Wing extremists in our country could do was constantly bring up the 9-11 attacks and how afraid we have to be because of them. Geesus, that's all Rudy Giuliani talked about during his failed bid for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination. To quote Joe Biden from 2007, "There's only three things [Giuliani] mentions in a sentence -- a noun, a verb, and 9/11."
So do I believe that "Rudy 9-11" just plain forgot that the most devastating domestic terror attacks in our country's history occurred eight months into Bush and Cheney's first term in office and that Bush/Cheney spent those first eight months ignoring the al Qaeda threat until it was too late? And did he also forget that the anthrax attacks and the failed shoe-bomber attack also occurred when BushCo was in power? Of course he didn't forget those things.
This coordinated attempt at a history re-write is simply a political tactic, and it is a damn good one in my opinion. I may not like many of the GOP's ideas, but you've got to give them credit when it comes to political maneuvering.
One reason Operation History ReWrite is so successful is because nobody calls the Republicans on it. Can you imagine being George Stephanopoulos -- the host of Good Morning America -- and having Rudy Freaking Giuliani come on your show this morning and actually say that "we had no domestic terror attacks under Bush."?
That's like a gift from God. Stephanopoulos could have responded, "Now wait a minute, Rudy -- you've spent the last eight years talking about the 9-11 attacks, but now you're trying to tell us that they didn't occur when Bush was in power?" Had Stephanopoulos done this, the video of the smack down would have been all over YouTube.
Yet the corporate media let GOP whoppers like that one simply slide away. That's not going to change, and the Republicans know this. They also know that the Democrats won't challenge them on it either. It's a very good place for the GOP to be politically.
UPDATE: Finally, an honorable Republican:
To be fair, other conservatives have come out against Dick Cheney's anti-Obama comments. As noted by Steve Benen:In a Bloomberg interview, Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN), the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, defended President Obama's handling of recent terrorism threats and took issue with former Vice President Dick Cheney's criticism.
Said Lugar: "It's unfair. I think the president is focused."
Lugar noted Obama has demonstrated "firmness" and "decisiveness," adding, "That's been the antidote to the criticism."
Plus, Stephanopoulos -- on his blog -- tries to correct his Rudy-9/11 oversight from this morning. [Let's hope that all of the Good Morning America viewers also read Stephanopoulos' blog].Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), for example, said earlier this week, "I think [Cheney] had his eight years, and he's caused a lot of trouble for our country and perpetuated a war in Iraq unnecessary and wrong-headed. I would say it would be best he not be so critical right now." Similarly, former Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia, who left the GOP to become a Libertarian, called Cheney's vile criticism "asinine."
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LotR Trilogy Falls Out Of Favor
» Harold's BlogHere is an interesting piece from Salon about why The Lord Of The Rings trilogy is not making many Best of the Decade lists:
I've noticed this falling out as well. In the series At The Movies, no film from that trilogy made the two reviewers' top ten lists for the decade (Return of the King was the number one pick as the decade's best as far as viewer voting was concerned).Maybe the immense hype surrounding the trilogy's release and all the attendant marketing burned itself out. Maybe the slow-burning backlash among a certain segment of Tolkien purists has gradually taken its toll. Maybe the context in which the films were launched -- the early Bush era, just after 9/11, when the "War on Terror" hadn't yet become a dreary mixture of Orwellian gag-line and grinding reality -- is now so deep in the cultural past that the movies have lost the invisible penumbra of meaning that seemed so strong at the time.
I think this has a lot to do with the fact that it was a trilogy, so some critics had a hard time separating out a single LotR film to include in the decade's top ten (although Rolling Stone did name the entire trilogy as the 10th best film of the decade).
The Return of the King might be an obvious pick for best of decade accolades -- given that it did win 11 Oscars -- but I've long been under the impression that those 11 Oscars were more of an acknowledgment by Academy voters of Jackson's overall achievement with regard to the entire trilogy (i.e., they waited to see if he could pull the whole thing off before awarding any major Oscars).
As far as the movie critic in me is concerned, I enjoyed Return of the King and thought it was a fine film, but I thought The Two Towers was better. Return of the King had some great scenes, but it was a lot longer than it needed to be and it did drag in parts, whereas The Two Towers seemed to be a better-paced, more-focused movie. In fact, Return is arguably the weakest of the three films.
Anyway, it is an interesting development. -
I Like The Sound Of This
» Harold's BlogWonderful:
Come on all you Tea-Baggers -- go and support your party. Sarah Palin will give the keynote address, and it will only cost you $349 to hear her speak!Tea Party Nation is pleased to announce the First National Tea Party Convention to be held February 4-6, 2010 at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel in Nashville, TN. The convention is aimed at bringing the Tea Party Movement leaders together from around the nation for the purpose of networking and supporting the movements' multiple organizations principle goals. This event will be co-sponsored by other national groups that believe in a responsible and limited federal government that is responsive to all the people.
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What Do I Like Most About Republicans?
» Harold's BlogWhen they are in a hole, they just keep digging:
Obviously, if a Democrat had tried to delay the confirmation of one of George W. Bush's national security nominees, he or she would have been crucified -- not only by the GOP, but by the so-called liberal media as well. But DeMint has been getting away with this for quite some time -- thanks in no small part to the fact that the Democrats are weak and they let him get away with it -- so it is good to finally see him catching some criticism. Too bad it took a failed terrorist attack to really bring DeMint's bulls**ttery into the light.Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) said today that the President's nomination for head of the TSA concerns him because it shows that "the President is more focused on coming through with a campaign promise to the unions rather than keeping Transportation Security focused on the real security of American passengers."
DeMint appeared on CBS today and responded to criticism from Democrats over his hold on Obama's nomination to the TSA's top post, Errol Southers.
DeMint said that he's "not trying to block" the vote, he just wants "debate and a vote because the stated goal of the president and Secretary Napolitano is to submit our airport security to collective bargaining. This is something that has been prohibited since the agency was formed because it takes away the flexibility that we need to continually upgrade."
Don't forget that this is the same guy who said earlier in the year that "[i]f we're able to stop Obama on [health care reform], it will be his Waterloo. It will break him. . . ." DeMint has since tried (unsuccessfully) to distance himself from that statement, but as far as the Democrats are concerned, he is a gift that keeps on giving. The Dems just need to get better at using this gift. -
Ted Nugent Is Still Alive?
» Harold's BlogI guess so (although it is pretty clear that he is, in fact, brain-dead):Rocker TED NUGENT isn't a fan of U.S. leader BARACK OBAMA - he thinks the president should be jailed.
The Cat Scratch Fever hitmaker, a fervent Republican, insists America should be ashamed about voting in the Democrat, who took office in January (09). He tells Royal Flush magazine, "I think that Barack Hussein Obama should be put in jail. It is clear that Barack Hussein Obama is a communist. "(Former Chinese leader) Mao Tse Tung lives and his name is Barack Hussein Obama. This country should be ashamed. I wanna throw up." -
This Isn't Too Surprising
» Harold's BlogIn fact, they really have no choice. If Republicans running for office in 2010 and 2012 don't come out against health care reform, then they'd risk pissing off the Tea-Baggers:
Palin/Beck 2012!Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) went on an anti-health care reform blitz yesterday, both asserting that the bill will be a central issue for Republicans running in 2010 and 2012, and even suggesting that repealing the bill will be a big part of this platform.
Gingrich, appearing on Meet The Press, was quite blunt about the idea: "I suspect every Republican running in '10 and again in '12 will run on an absolute pledge to repeal this bill."
He also called the health care reform bill "the most corrupt legislation I think I've seen in my lifetime." McConnell was less straightforward, saying that all the Democrats "kind of joined hands and went off the cliff together."
By the way, check out these lies from right-winger Mary Matalin:
One thing the Republicans have learned over the years is that it is OK to lie to the American people. And the bigger the lie, the better."I was there [in the Bush White House]. We inherited a recession from President Clinton and we inherited the most tragic attack on our own soil in our nation's history. And President Bush dealt with it."
George W. Bush did not inherit the 9-11 attacks. They actually occurred eight months into the his first term, and Bush/Cheney spent those first eight months pretending that al Qaeda didn't exist. And Bush did not inherit a recession from Clinton.
Nice try, though -- I'm sure the Tea-Baggers loved it.
And speaking of lying, this is hilarious. -
Great Speech RE: Health Care Debate
» Harold's BlogSenator Whitehouse from Rhode Island really nailed it with this floor speech (watch video here). He started out with a sixty-year-old quote from Richard Hofstadter, who warned that a right-wing minority could create "a political environment in which the rational pursuit of our well-being and safety would become impossible," and then went on to state that "the malignant and vindictive passions that have descended on the Senate are busily creating just such a political climate."
My favorite part of Whitehouse's comments occurred near the end:
Great words, but for me, the amazing part of this whole health care debate is that the bill that will ultimately come out of Congress will probably be mediocre at best when it comes to actually addressing this health care crisis. In other words, the GOP -- along with Lebof**k and the rest of them -- were really able to water this thing down to a great extent."When it turns out there are no death panels, when there is no bureaucrat between you and your doctor, when the ways your health care changes seem like a good deal to you, and a pretty smart idea, when the American public sees the discrepancy between what really is, and what they were told by the Republicans, there will be a reckoning. There will come a day of judgment about who was telling the truth. * * *
"There will come a day of judgment, and our Republican friends know that. That Mr. President, is why they are terrified."
But you wouldn't know it from listening to Drug-Fiend Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Lielly, Mike "Murderer Releaser" Huckabee, Lars F**king Larson, and all those other right winged extremist assholes who dominate local radio station KBND -- they used to just dominate late morning/afternoon programming, but now we have to hear them spew their raw sewage in the early part of the day as well (I felt like giving my radio the Hitler salute this morning).
Anyway, these brain-dead ass clowns -- whom I blame for a good portion of our country's problems given that they were the ones carrying a lot of water for BushCo -- were talking as if the right wing lost everything. I guess they figure that anything the Democrats do with regard to the health care problem will be a victory for Obama and thus a problem for them.
What's the GOP plan for addressing this problem? Well, it's the same bulls**t thing they always say: MORE TAX CUTS!! That's their answer for everything. Jesus, these America-haters even managed to pass a f**king tax cut during war time. Their twisted anti-tax message has gotten so pervasive that our country can't even have a real debate about tax policy anymore (i.e., the rational pursuit of our country's well-being and safety has become impossible). And I find the Republicans' recent interest in budget deficits to be hilarious, given that they were the motherf**kers who spent us -- and legislated us -- into this mess in the first place.
In any event, I love how upset all these right wingers are right now. Maybe Senator Whitehouse is right and these idiots are merely terrified that the American people will ultimately judge them for all the manure they spread around with the help of all the town hall teabagging idiocy. But I've had enough of their crap.
By the way, it is hard to argue with these poll results. The 00s did suck in a big way, and the reason it was such a crappy decade had a lot do with some of the things I mentioned above. -
Talk About Ingratitude . . .
» Harold's Blog
If it wasn't for John McCain, Sarah Palin would still be a nobody:
McCain's decision to put Palin on the ticket will go down in history as one of the great political blunders of all time -- her idiocy turned out to be a huge drag on the ticket and her continuing idiocy may spell the end of the GOP as a major American political party (please God -- let her get the Republican nomination in 2012).The failed Vice Presidential nominee took time off from shilling her book to vacation with her son Trig, daughter Piper and opposite sex spouse Todd, in President Barack Obama's birth state of Hawaii on Tuesday.
But during beach time, Sarah chose to wear a visor from her campaign -- a visor that was emblazoned with the former presidential candidate's name ... that is, until Palin redacted McCain's name with a black marker.
But McCain naming her as his running mate in 2008 certainly helped Palin personally. She should show more appreciation for that. -
Seems Like A Prudent Move
» Harold's BlogFrom TPM:
And while I am on the subject of the extreme right wing, I've gotten a kick lately out of how the GOP is really starting to worry about deficit spending, given that they were the ones who caused the huge deficit in the first place. Of course, if you tried to tell that to a right-winger, he'd turn around and blame Obama. Well, unfortunately for the Republicans, they really can't do that (from The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities):A Costco in Salt Lake City, Utah reportedly removed all of its tomatoes ahead of a Sarah Palin book tour event, after a man was arrested for attempting to hit Palin with a tomato at an earlier event in Minnesota.
According to the Salt Lake Tribune, Costco management was "determined" to avoid another tomato-throwing incident, and resorted to removing all of the tomatoes from the store.
This extreme measure followed a December 7 incident in which a man tried to hit Palin with a tomato at a Mall Of America event, but missed and hit a police officer instead.
That last sentence is pretty good advice, but you know that two things are going to happen: (1) the GOP will blame Obama for everything, especially all the s**t that they -- the Republicans -- caused, and (2) the Democrats will offer up a weak response, just like they always do.Some critics charge that the new policies pursued by President Obama and the 111th Congress generated the huge federal budget deficits that the nation now faces. In fact, the tax cuts enacted under President George W. Bush, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the economic downturn together explain virtually the entire deficit over the next ten years.
The deficit for fiscal 2009 was $1.4 trillion and, at an estimated 10 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), was the largest deficit relative to the size of the economy since the end of World War II. Under current policies, deficits will likely exceed $1 trillion in 2010 and 2011 and remain near that figure thereafter.
The events and policies that have pushed deficits to astronomical levels in the near term, however, were largely outside the new Administration’s control. If not for the tax cuts enacted during the Presidency of George W. Bush that Congress did not pay for, the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that began during that period, and the effects of the worst economic slump since the Great Depression (including the cost of steps necessary to combat it), we would not be facing these huge deficits in the near term.
While President Obama inherited a bad fiscal legacy, that does not diminish his responsibility to propose policies to address our fiscal imbalance and put the weight of his office behind them. Although policymakers should not tighten fiscal policy in the near term while the economy remains fragile, they and the nation at large must come to grips with the nation’s deficit problem. But we should all recognize how we got where we are today. -
Alan Grayson Tells Our Cowardly, Draft-Dodging Former VP To "STFU"
» Harold's BlogMore Democrats need to talk this way about Dick "Five Deferments" Cheney:Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) put his sharp tongue to use again on Hardball this evening. Chris Matthews asked Grayson about Dick Cheney's penchant for taking swipes at President Obama, specifically his most recent accusation that Obama was giving "aid and comfort to the enemy," which is the constitutional language that defines treason. Grayson replied by telling Cheney, in so many words (or in this case, letters), just what he can do:
Grayson: I don't know. You know, on the Internet there's an acronym that's used to apply to situations like this. It's called "STFU." I don't think I can say that on the air, but I think you know what that means.
Matthews: Well, give me the first part.
Grayson: "Shut."
Matthews: Oh! I got you. Stop talking, in crude language. Well, I don't think you're gonna get him to do that.
They moved on to Cheney's accusation that Obama had shown weakness when he bowed to the Emperor of Japan, and in doing so, opened up the country to more terrorist attacks.
It's just too bad that it's too late to impeach him," Grayson said. "That's all I can say." -
Dick Cheney Is A F*cking Idiot
» Harold's BlogWell, I already knew he was an idiot, but geesus:
As Steve Benen notes, however: "There's a nagging detail that even someone of Cheney's limited intellect should be able to understand: there are no cameras for federal trials."Dick Cheney has ratcheted up his criticism of President Obama again, calling the decision to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in New York a "huge mistake."
In an interview with Fox News Channel's Sean Hannity, the former vice president said the trial, which isn't expected to begin for at least a year in Manhattan's federal district court, will allow KSM an ill-advised showcase to spew his anti-American venom.
"He'll be able to go in whenever he's up on the stand and proselytize, if you will, millions of people out there around the world including some of his radical Muslim friends and generate a whole new generation of terrorists," Cheney said.
"I think it will make Khalid Sheikh Mohammed something of a hero in certain circles, especially in the radical regions of Islam around the world. It will put him on the map. He'll be as important or more important than Osama Bin Laden, and we will have made it possible."
On second thought, maybe Cheney knows there are no cameras in Federal Court, but he also knows that the folks who actually watch Hannity's show are morons who have no clue with regard to whether there would be cameras. If that is indeed the case, then Cheney is simply a liar who is taking advantage of the idiocy of FoxNews viewers.
I guess I should have titled this post, "Dick Cheney Is An Asshole."
And speaking of FoxNews, this is hilarious.
And check this out: Rachel Maddow -- a lesbian -- interviews Richard Cohen, head of the International Healing Foundation, a group that claims it can can cure homosexuality. -
Sarah Palin Has A Real Problem When It Comes To Answering Simple Questions
» Harold's BlogAnd the guy asking the question was not a member of the left-wing media elite like Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric, but a fellow right-winger:
Someone must have told her that she was a complete idiot to answer that question the way she did, and she has since tried to backtrack. But I think it is hilarious how much trouble Republicans are having with this Birther Movement. Palin and other don't want to upset these lunatics, but they are also afraid to be lumped in with them.Sarah Palin declared on Thursday that the legitimacy of President Obama's birth certificate is "rightfully" an issue with the American public, and that it is "fair game" for politicians to question Obama's citizenship.
The comments came during an interview with conservative radio host Rusty Humphries, who asked Palin whether she planned to "make the birth certificate an issue" if she runs for president in 2012.
"I think the public rightfully is still making it an issue," Palin said. "I don't have a problem with that. I don't know if I would have to bother to make it an issue, because I think that members of the electorate still want answers."
Humphries -- who began the interview with a rendition of the song "Sarah, Queen Of The Wild Frontier" -- followed up: "Do you think it's a fair question to be looking at?"
"I think it's a fair question just like I think past associations and past voting records. All of that is fair game," Palin responded, adding that "the McCain-Palin campaign didn't do a good enough job in that area. We didn't call out Obama and some of his associates on their records and what their beliefs were, and perhaps what their future plans were, and I don't think that was fair to voters to not have done our job as candidates and a campaign to bring to light a lot of things that now we're seeing manifest in the administration." -
This Is Encouraging
» Harold's BlogFrom MSNBC:
This recovery is going to take years, though. As noted in the article: "Job creation is expected to remain far too weak in coming months to absorb the 15.4 million unemployed people who are seeking work — and 11.5 million others who are either working part-time but want full-time jobs or have given up job hunting."* * * The unemployment rate unexpectedly fell to 10 percent last month, from 10.2 percent in October, as employers cut the fewest number of jobs since the recession began. The better-than-expected figures provided a rare dose of good news for a labor market that's lost 7.2 million jobs in two years.
The average work week also rose, along with average earnings. And the Labor Department said 159,000 fewer jobs were lost in September and October than first reported. * * *
The economy shed 11,000 jobs last month, an improvement from October's revised total of 111,000, the Labor Department said Friday. That's much better than the 130,000 Wall Street economists had expected. * * *
But it's nice to get some good economic news for a change.
By the way, this is hilarious. -
Finally -- A Democrat With Some Guts
» Harold's BlogI'm sure Hoyer will catch a lot of s**t for saying this, but he's absolutely right:
F*ckin-A.George W. Bush "turned tail" from the Afghan war to invade Iraq, leaving President Barack Obama a worsening war he must now try to turn around, a senior Democratic White House ally said Tuesday.
In unusually sharp comments, Democratic House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said he was "angry" about former vice president Dick Cheney's latest attacks on Obama's handling of a bloody conflict now in its ninth year.
"Frankly, they turned tail. That's pretty tough language, but I get angry when I hear vice president Cheney talk about a job they started but didn't finish," Hoyer told reporters." They started something and didn't finish it, and they left it for this administration to clean up," he said. "We are clearly not making the same mistake the Bush administration made." * * * -
More History Re-Writing From BushCo
» Harold's Blog
-- Former White House Press Secretary Dana Perino, in an interview on Fox News."We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term."
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I Guess The Tea Baggers Didn't Want Their True Colors Displayed
» Harold's BlogFrom HuffPo:
And speaking of extremists, this is freaking hilarious.A scuffle ensued Saturday when members of the National Socialist Movement (Neo-Nazis) found themselves shut out of an anti-immigration Tea Party protest at the Phoenix capitol.
American Citizens United, who organized the Phoenix Tea Party rally, told the Neo-Nazi group that racist messages were not welcome at the demonstration. The Neo-Nazis left, but two returned, standing defiantly on the sidewalk that borders the designated protest area.
When JT Ready, one of the Neo-Nazis tried to unfurl an Adolf Hitler flag, one of the event organizers became enraged and tried to rip the flag from Ready's hands. The other Neo-Nazi was holding a Confederate flag and a sign that read, "Bring our soldiers home, and put them on the Mexican border." Ready responded by shoving the organizer, sending him tumbling to the ground several feet away. * * * -
How Much Does Idiocy Cost?
» Harold's BlogIn this case, $20k:A federal judge in Georgia has ordered the US Attorney to collect a $20,000 judgment against Orly Taitz after the Birther attorney failed to pay the fine -- which she appealed -- within 30 days.
Here's the full order from Judge Clay Land, of the US District Court in the Middle District Of Georgia:
"Orly Taitz has failed to pay the $20,000.00 sanction ordered by the Court on October 13, 2009. Accordingly, the Clerk is ordered to enter final judgment in favor of the United States of America and against Orly Taitz in the principal amount of $20,000.00. The United States Attorney is authorized and directed to collect the judgment as provided by law.
IT IS SO ORDERED, this 13th day of November, 2009."
Land imposed the fine a month ago, citing repeated frivolous filings by Taitz in the suit, which was originally about a claim by Taitz's Army captain client that she should not have to follow deployment orders because Barack Obama is not legitimately president. In an interview with TPMmuckraker that same day, a defiant Taitz declared she would not pay the fine. -
I Love This
» Harold's BlogGod help me -- I do love it so:
The imminent civil war within the ranks of the GOP is going to be great. Moderate Republicans will almost certainly have to adopt radical, far right positions in order to appease the tea-bagging birther lunatics.In what could be a nightmare scenario for Republican Party officials, conservative activists are gearing up to challenge leading GOP candidates in more than a dozen key House and Senate races in 2010.
Conservatives and tea party activists had already set their sights on some of the GOP’s top Senate recruits — a list that includes Gov. Charlie Crist in Florida, former Rep. Rob Simmons in Connecticut and Rep. Mark Kirk in Illinois, among others.
But their success in Tuesday’s upstate New York special election, where grass-roots efforts pushed GOP nominee Dede Scozzafava to drop out of the race and helped Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman surge into the lead on the eve of Election Day, has generated more money and enthusiasm than organizers ever imagined.
Activists predict a wave that could roll from California to Kentucky to New Hampshire and that could leave even some GOP incumbents — Utah Sen. Bob Bennett is one — facing unexpectedly fierce challenges from their right flank. ***
Go Palin and Limbaugh!
Speaking of Palin, this is pretty funny:
Palin ended up not speaking, so I guess they figured it out.According to a new book, Sarah from Alaska by Scott Conroy and Shushannah Walshe, tensions within Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign "boiled over on Election Night last November when Sarah Palin, McCain's running mate, repeatedly ignored directions from senior staffers who told her she would not be delivering her own concession speech," CNN reports.
"Palin's speechwriter Matthew Scully had prepared a brief speech for the then-Alaska governor to deliver while introducing McCain, before he gave his concession speech at the Arizona Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix. But after conferring in his suite with senior advisers Mark Salter, Rick Davis and Steve Schmidt, McCain nixed the idea of having Palin speak before him."
Even though Schmidt broke the news to Palin, she told to a staff member: "I'm speaking. I've got the remarks. Figure it out." * * * -
Folks are still blaming Bush for the ...
» Harold's BlogFolks are still blaming Bush for the bad economy (and this is from a Fox News poll!):
Unless things start getting better soon (and they probably won't), Obama will eventually get the blame for all this. But I am nonetheless amazed that all the talk from Limbaugh and Company about how this is Obama's economy really hasn't sunk in much. Maybe that has something to do with this Obama statement from last July:Asked which president is “more responsible for the current state of the economy,” only 18 percent say President Obama. Fifty-eight percent say former President George W. Bush. Nine percent blame both of them. Republicans are the only subgroup of voters who blame Obama, and only by a six-point margin of 35 percent to 29 percent.
What’s striking about this is that the numbers have only marginally gotten worse for President Obama in the three months since Fox News last asked this question. In July, it was 16 percent who blamed Obama and 61 percent who blamed Bush. That is, needless to say, not what Fox News viewers hear when they tune into the network. But it’s essential to understanding why the president remains popular and why Republicans are failing to really capitalize on economic gloom.
"I love the folks who helped get us in this mess and then suddenly say, 'Well, this is Obama's economy,'" the president told an outdoor crowd at Macomb Community College, veering off his scripted words. "That's fine. Give it to me. My job is to solve problems, not to stand on the sidelines and harp and gripe."
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I Guess This Kinda Backfired
» Harold's BlogBlue Cross/Blue Shield customers in North Carolina are a little pissed off right now (from AmericaBlog):First, they learned their rates will rise by an average of 11 percent next year.
Next, they opened a slick flier from the insurer urging them to send an enclosed pre-printed, postage-paid note to Sen. Kay Hagan denouncing what the company says is unfair competition that would be imposed by a government-backed insurance plan. The so-called public option is likely to be considered by Congress in the health-care overhaul debate.
"No matter what you call it, if the federal government intervenes in the private health insurance market, it's a slippery slope to a single-payer system," the BCBS flier read. "Who wants that?"
Plenty of people, it turns out.
Indignant Blue Cross customers have rebelled against the insurer's message, complaining that their premium dollars have funded such a campaign.
They've hit the Internet in a flurry of e-mails to friends and neighbors throughout the state. They've called Hagan's office to voice support for a public option. They've marked through the Blue Cross message on their postcards to instead vouch support, then dropped them in the mail -- in at least one case taped to a brick -- to be paid on Blue Cross' dime. Or dimes. -
Breaking News: Louisiana Justice Of The Peace Actually Lets Black Folks Inside His Home
» Harold's BlogFrom MSNBC:
And hold on to your hats -- he even lets negroes use his bathroom:A Louisiana justice of the peace said he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple out of concern for any children the couple might have.
Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long.
Neither Bardwell nor the couple immediately returned phone calls from The Associated Press. But Bardwell told the Daily Star of Hammond that he was not a racist.
"I do ceremonies for black couples right here in my house," Bardwell said. "My main concern is for the children." * * *
Is it too late to nominate this guy for an NAACP Image Award?"I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way," Bardwell told the Associated Press on Thursday. "I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else."
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Quote Of The Week
» Harold's Blog
From a statement put out last night by PricewaterhouseCoopers, the author of a report for the insurance industry which claimed that health care costs would increase in a big way if Democratic reforms were enacted."Hey, we weren't paid to evaluate the effects of the entire bill, but rather a small slice of it."
I've reevaluated World War II using the PricewaterhouseCoopers methodology; and focusing solely on the Pearl Harbor attack, I've concluded that the United States lost.
Konnichiwa. -
Hilarious
» Harold's BlogThe radical, America-hating right-wing extremists in this country are furious that Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize:
Obama's response to all this was perfect. He said that he did not think he deserved to be in the company of the others who had won it before him and that he wasn't certain he had done enough to earn the award, but that he will "accept this award as a call to action, a call for all nations to confront the challenges of the 21st century."For Obama's critics, * * * the Nobel Prize has touched a far more bitter nerve -- affirming their firmly-held beliefs that the president is more symbolism than substance and that he's accomplished little of note on the international stage except to serve as an emblem of U.S. repentance for the Bush years.
"This fully exposes the illusion that is Barack Obama," conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh told Politico via e-mail. "And with this 'award' the elites of the world are urging Obama, THE MAN OF PEACE, to not do the surge in Afghanistan, not take action against Iran and its nuclear program and to basically continue his intentions to emasculate the United States... They love a weakened, neutered U.S and this is their way of promoting that concept. I think God has a great sense of humor, too."
"I did not realize the Nobel Peace Prize had an affirmative action quota," wrote Erick Erickson, of the site RedState.com, "but that is the only thing I can think of for this news."
"Obama isn't the first American president to win the Nobel Peace Prize, but he's the first to win it without having accomplished anything," wrote John Miller, of the National Review. "Obama's award is simply the projection of wishful thinking."
"The prize seems not just premature but embarrassing," wrote Mark Krikorian, also on The National Review, "this just reinforces the Saturday Night Live meme that Obama has done nothing. This really might be his Carter whacking-the-bunny-rabbit moment."
Indeed, an online petition was started just hours after the announcement was made, objecting to the "absurd decision to award B. Obama Nobel Peace Prize."
And so, in the immediate aftermath, the meme had already been established -- seconded by the usual purveyors of conventional wisdom -- that the Nobel Prize was more burden than benefit for the White House. The conclusion: the president needed to turn the prize down.
"I predict right now that he will find a way to basically turn it down," Time Magazine's Mark Halperin told MSNBC's Morning Joe. "I think he is going to say, I share this with the world or whatever. I don't think he'll embrace this. Because there is no upside."
"The damage is done," added Mika Brzezinski shortly thereafter.
I also enjoyed the DNC's take on this:
Beautiful."The Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists -- the Taliban and Hamas this morning -- in criticizing the President for receiving the Nobel Peace prize," wrote DNC Communications Director Brad Woodhouse. "Republicans cheered when America failed to land the Olympics and now they are criticizing the President of the United States for receiving the Nobel Peace prize -- an award he did not seek but that is nonetheless an honor in which every American can take great pride -- unless of course you are the Republican Party. The 2009 version of the Republican Party has no boundaries, has no shame and has proved that they will put politics above patriotism at every turn. It's no wonder only 20 percent of Americans admit to being Republicans anymore - it's an embarrassing label to claim."
UPDATE: Here's what John McCain had to say about all this:
Well said.JOHN KING: The president of the United States, who a year ago this weekend was your campaign rival heading into the final month of the campaign, is the Nobel Peace laureate for 2009. Deserved?
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN: Oh, I’m sure that the president is very honored to receive this award. And Nobel Committee, I can’t divine all their intentions, but I think part of their decision-making was expectations. And I’m sure the president understands that he now has even more to live up to. But as Americans, we’re proud when our president receives an award of that prestigious category.
KING: Did it surprise you, a little more than eight months into office, at a time when, yes, he has set some lofty goals around the world, but he has not won more NATO troops for Afghanistan, he has not convinced the Israelis to do what he says is necessary to sit down with the Palestinians? Were you surprised?
MCCAIN: Well, I think all of us were surprised at — at the decision. But I — I think Americans are always pleased when their president is recognized by something on this order. -
Jesus
» Harold's BlogFrom HuffPo:Lo and behold, the Bible has gotten too liberal, according to a group of conservatives. And it needs a little editing.
That's the inspiration behind the Conservative Bible Project, which seeks to take the text back to its supposed right-wing roots.
Yes, even scripture is not orthodox enough for the modern conservative. Not that it's the fault of the author(s), exactly. The group cites a few reasons why the Bible is too progressive: "Lack of precision in the original language ... lack of precision in modern language" and "translation bias in converting the original language to the modern one."
So how can the Bible be conservatized? The group has proposed a Wikipedia-like group editing project. Some of the ideas would only bring the translation closer to the original. But others would fundamentally change the text. * * * -
Boris Yeltsin
» Harold's BlogThis is fascinating (from Christopher Hitchens' review of The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History With the President):The 42nd president of the United States was not infrequently accused of being needy, greedy, and tantrum-prone, as well as over-fond of fast or junk food. But try this, about his Muscovite counterpart, from an entry dated Oct. 18, 1994:
"Yeltsin did not always cope with the pressure. President Clinton said Yeltsin's chronic escapes into alcohol were far more serious than the cultivated pose of a jolly Russian. They were worrisome for political stability, as only luck had prevented scandal or worse on both nights of this visit. Clinton had received notice of a major predawn security alarm when Secret Service agents discovered Yeltsin alone on Pennsylvania Avenue, dead drunk, clad in his underwear, yelling for a taxi. Yeltsin slurred his words in a loud argument with the baffled agents. He did not want to go back into Blair House, where he was staying. He wanted a taxi to go out for pizza. I asked what became of the standoff. 'Well,' the president said, shrugging, 'he got his pizza.' "
One has to respect a reporter who can (a) bring off a deadpan description of such a hair-raising event, and (b) keep such a sensational scoop to himself for 15 years. Taylor Branch's latest book has made me whistle more than any comparable piece of work for a very long time, and not just because of its many remarkable disclosures. (On the ensuing night, you may care to know, a plastered Yeltsin managed to escape Blair House security again, and was—in Branch's understated account—"briefly endangered." So we almost but not quite had to read about the leader of post-communist Russia being shot down while the guest of an American president undergoing a midterm election.) * * * -
Backpacking Trip 2009
» Harold's Blog
Our annual backpacking trip into the Three Sisters Wilderness was a success. Along for this year's expedition was most of the old crew -- me, Dan, Larry (aka Dan's Dad), The Nick, Jayson, and Chris -- and Chris's wife Lisa also joined us. Charlie did a day hike with us on Thursday. He brought his boat along, and transported all of our packs -- and me -- across Cultus Lake, saving us about three miles of hiking with full packs. Thanks for doing that, Charlie.
From Cultus, it was about a 4.5 mile hike into Winopee Lake (pictured above), where we spent our first night camped at a very nice spot which gave us a great view of the lake and a lot of the surrounding countryside. Bank fishing was somewhat limited there due to marshy conditions near the shore, but we managed to catch a few trout. I have no doubt that a raft or a float tube would have increased our angling success significantly at Winopee. There was a lot of fish jumping in the middle of that lake.
Dan and Larry also fished nearby Lower Snowshoe for awhile, a beautiful little lake that didn't seem to hold too many fish. This is a fairly remote area that I don't think a lot of people visit. In fact, the trails were barely maintained, meaning there was quite a bit of fallen timber over the path which had not been removed. This area, due to its marshy nature, also had more mosquitoes than we were used to for late September.
After spending Thursday night at Winopee Lake, we left the mosquitoes behind and continued north until we met up with the Pacific Crest Trail and shortly thereafter took a side trail to our ultimate destination, where we spent two nights. The fishing there was better. We landed six fish on Friday and six fish on Saturday, and had trout for dinner on both those nights.
We caught a mixed bag of rainbow, cutthroat and brook trout, with brookies making up the biggest part of the catch. The fish averaged 14 inches in length. Dan had the hot hand fishing-wise, landing five trout. Jayson caught three fish, including the largest one of the trip, the 17-inch cutthroat pictured above. [All photos courtesy of Jayson]. The lake received its first brook trout in 2007 after not being stocked with brook for many years, and some of these 2007 fish were in the 13-14 inch class, which bodes well for next season.
The best bite of the trip occurred on Saturday morning when me, Dan, and Lisa took a treacherous climb down a lakeside cliff and fished a spot Dan discovered last year. We landed three 14-inch trout there in about a half an hour. I brought in the first one, and Lisa followed with her fish shortly thereafter. A few moments after landing Lisa's fish, we glanced over to Dan's rod just in time to watch it being pulled into the lake. Dan grabbed the pole before it was yanked into the water and brought his trout in. Dan landed another 14-inch trout about a half hour later at a different spot a little ways south.
This particular trip featured the best weather we've had yet in our four years of doing this, so good in fact that we were able to go swimming on Friday and Saturday. The water was cold and presented a bit of a shock when you first went in, but you quickly got used to it. The lake was deep off the point where we were swimming, so several of our group either jumped or dove off the cliff there. Dan, The Nick, and Jayson even did a moonlight swim on Saturday evening.
One of the cool parts about being in the water was swimming out to where the lake got very deep and opening your eyes underwater. You couldn't see the bottom, so the blue, sunlit water seemed to go into infinity. I plan to bring goggles next year.
Although Sasquatch shadowed us for most of the trip, he only attacked once when he tried to pull The Nick under while we were swimming (no doubt to perform unspeakable acts upon The Nick's person before drowning him). Jayson managed to take a photo of the attack just as it was unfolding.
Fortunately, Chris was able to mimic the feeding cry of the only predator that Sasquatch fears -- the Loch Ness Monster -- and that scared off Sasquatch before he was able to hurt The Nick physically. I can't speak to the psychological damage, though.
We'll see you in Hell, Sasquatch.
I brought my tent along but I never got around to pitching it. I slept under the stars all three nights and had great sleep for the entire trip. I'm in a lot better shape now than I had been on previous trips, so I wasn't in as much pain as I usually am when backpacking, which might explain the good sleep. [Note to self -- stay in shape]. I'm certain that the daily swims in cold lake water also did a lot to take the kinks out.
We had a somewhat smoky sky on the first night of the trip due to all the fires that were burning in Oregon last week; but the winds shifted, which gave us a lot less smoke on Friday and smoke-free days on Saturday and Sunday. Saturday might have been the nicest day I've seen up there in late September, which is funny because it started snowing there three days later.
Even though the weather was great, we didn't see any other hikers or backpackers during the entire trip until we got within three miles of the trailhead near Elk Lake, where our trip came to an end. -
An Interesting Development In Massachusetts
» Harold's BlogFrom the Boston Globe:House lawmakers approved legislation last night that gives Governor Deval Patrick the power to appoint a temporary successor to the late Edward M. Kennedy in the US Senate, putting Massachusetts on track to have a new senator in place by next week.
The passage of the bill, by a 95-to-58 vote, was a crucial step toward filling the seat left vacant by Kennedy’s death last month and could carry major implications as Congress debates an overhaul of the nation’s health care system.
“This bill will give us full representation today, and the people of Massachusetts will have their second voice in the US Senate,’’ said state Representative Michael Moran, a Democrat from Boston and cochairman of the Joint Committee on Election Laws. “My overriding concern is making sure the people of Massachusetts are fully represented in the US Congress.’’
The legislation now goes to the Senate, where top lawmakers believe they have enough votes for it to pass, presuming some supporters do not get cold feet. Republicans, however, vow to use parliamentary maneuvers to stall final passage for as long as possible. * * * -
This Is Clever
» Harold's BlogFrom The Wall Street Journal:
Nice idea there, Ms. Snowe. And Obama is smart to embrace it, because he can push this public plan fallback idea as an example of where a Republican is actually trying to come up with a solution instead of trying to block reform and thus hand Obama a political defeat.The White House is holding intensive talks with Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe, a moderate Republican, about Ms. Snowe's proposal to use the public plan as a fallback option, aides familiar with the conversations said.
The overhaul under discussion would include a requirement for most individuals to buy insurance; a federally operated exchange where individuals and small businesses could buy insurance; and tax credits to help people buy plans. Ms. Snowe believes that is enough to create a competitive market that drives down prices.
But if prices don't fall by a certain percentage and coverage doesn't expand beyond 95% in a given state after a time, the plan would call for adding a government insurance option to that state's choices, according to the aides familiar with the White House conversations. "We are at the point now to give it the full throttle to get it over the finish line," Rahm Emanuel, White House chief of staff, said in an interview. "That is why the president is going to step into a different role and be more prescriptive." -
The Cover Of Glenn Beck's New Book
» Harold's BlogNot sure where to begin with this one . . .
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Obama Makes A Good Point
» Harold's BlogIt is a point that needs to be made more often:
You have to give the Republicans a lot of credit on this. Folks who give us the news know that if they report on the "death panel" story and then end the report by saying that nothing in the proposed legislation would result in the creation of death panels, the Radical Right would be all over the report claiming that it reflects left-winged thinking. [As Stephen Colbert once said: "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."]"...I have to say, part of the reason it spreads is the way reporting is done today. If somebody puts out misinformation, 'Obama's Creating Death Panels,' then the way the news report comes across is: 'Today such-and-such accused President Obama of putting forward death panels. The White House responded that that wasn't true.' And then they go on to the next story. And what they don't say is, 'In fact, it isn't true.'
"You know, it's fine to have a debate back and forth -- he said, she said -- except when somebody else is just not even telling remotely the truth. Then you should say in your reports, 'Oh, and by the way, that's just not true.'
"But that doesn't happen often enough."
So instead of having to deal with the Radical Right Wing ire that will occur if the actual truth is told, members of the mainstream press simply forego pointing out that Sarah Palin and the rest of "the Deathers" are a bunch of f**king liars and thus give momentum to a story that is nothing more than a huge pile of horses**t.
Joe Klein recently summed up the problem this way:
Think about that for a second. America's Extreme Right has spent years accusing the Corporate Media of having a liberal bias -- the same Corporate Media, ironically, that cheerleaded us into the Iraq Debacle by ignoring BushCo lies -- and all that effort has paid off big time because now members of the Radical Right can spew the most outrageous lies knowing that the cowards in the media will report it without pointing out that it is all a lie.Given the heinous dust that's been raised, it seems likely that end-of-life counseling will be dropped from the health-reform legislation. But that's a small point, compared with the larger issue that has clouded this summer: How can you sustain a democracy if one of the two major political parties has been overrun by nihilists? And another question: How can you maintain the illusion of journalistic impartiality when one of the political parties has jumped the shark?
Isn't that a form of right-wing media bias? Just asking.
UPDATE: Atrios says it better:The thing is that press doesn't simply tolerate lies, they grant additional authority to the lie and the liar. Hosts and reporters who fail to correct lies implicitly bless them, adding their credibility to it.
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Oops
» Harold's BlogThis would suck:You know times are tough when people are getting kicked out of their house when it’s not even for sale.
That’s what happened to Anna Ramirez after she found all of her stuff out on the front lawn of her Homestead home last week and a strange man demanding she get out of his newly purchased house.
The eviction came after Ramirez’s home was mistakenly auctioned off to the highest bidder by her bank, Washington Mutual. Usually, you get a warning before you get the boot. A foreclosure letter. Maybe a sign saying your house is up for sale. Not Ramirez, who found her belongings bashed and battered in the street.
"This came out of nowhere," Ramirez said. "The bank took the house from right under my feet."
The man who bought the house told Ramirez he paid $87,000 for it, which shocked Ramirez, who bought the house for $260,000.
What's worse is her husband, daughter and grand children were also kicked out by Homestead and Miami-Dade police officers, said Martha Taylor, who witnessed the unexpected eviction.
"I have never seen anything like it," Taylor said. "They literally threw all her stuff on the front lawn. I didn't sleep that night and it wasn't even my house." ***
A mistake in the Miami-Dade Clerk's Office appears to be behind the mishap, which landed Ramirez homeless for more than 24 hours.
The sale was eventually reversed by a Miami-Dade judge, allowing Ramirez to return to her old digs. Ramirez said she wants to sue for the damage to her furniture. *** -
Finally
» Harold's BlogMore please.
UPDATE: You can put this one in the "finally!" department as well (via Kevin Drum):
You're just now figuring this out, Rahm?Given hardening Republican opposition to Congressional health care proposals, Democrats now say they see little chance of the minority’s cooperation in approving any overhaul, and are increasingly focused on drawing support for a final plan from within their own ranks.
Top Democrats said Tuesday that their go-it-alone view was being shaped by what they saw as Republicans’ purposely strident tone against health care legislation during this month’s Congressional recess, as well as remarks by leading Republicans that current proposals were flawed beyond repair.
Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, said the heated opposition was evidence that Republicans had made a political calculation to draw a line against any health care changes, the latest in a string of major administration proposals that Republicans have opposed.
“The Republican leadership,” Mr. Emanuel said, “has made a strategic decision that defeating President Obama’s health care proposal is more important for their political goals than solving the health insurance problems that Americans face every day.” ***
I hope that Obama and Company understood this all along and, as Drum suggests in his piece, were simply laying a huge trap for the GOP wherein the Republicans would ultimately be exposed as anti-heath care reform -- no matter what the reform was.
But I have a feeling Obama truly believed that there could be a bipartisan bill on this, and if so, then that was a major political error on his part.
UPDATE II: All I can say about this latest Tom Tomorrow cartoon is: F**king-A. -
Quote Of The Week
» Harold's Blog
-- Bill MaherAt a recent town-hall meeting in South Carolina, a man stood up and told his Congressman to "keep your government hands off my Medicare," which is kind of like driving cross country to protest highways.
Oh, and by the way, Senator Chuck Grassley is a f**king idiot:
A distortion from the far left? I'm sure Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich would be interested to know that they are members of the Far Left.This morning, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) called in to MSNBC's Morning Meeting to discuss health insurance reform. During the interview, host Dylan Ratigan asked Grassley about the so-called "death panels" in the House reform bill. Grassley, incredibly, responded that the fervor over end-of-life counseling is the result of "a distortion coming from [the] far-left."
Grassley said: "Well, listen. I see that as nothing more than a distortion coming from far-left with bringing up these end-of-life concerns, which are not the issue that we ought to be talking about. We ought to be talking about government takeover of the health care system. We ought to be talking about the exploding deficits. We ought to be talking about the failure to get on top of high health care costs. And all of these things are in the Pelosi health care bill, and it seems to me they don't want to talk about the real issues."
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My Advice To Birthers: Hire A New Lawyer
» Harold's BlogThis is pretty funny:
So let me see if I've got this right: Someone in the Birther Movement took this Aussie guy's birth certificate and used it as a template to forge Obama's "Kenyan" birth certificate, which Oily Taint herself presented as a legitimate Kenyan birth certificate. But now that this "Kenyan" document has been proved a forgery, Taint blames the victim of this whole fraud -- namely, the dude from Australia -- for being the one behind the conspiracy to discredit the forged birth certificate. In other words, the Aussie's birth certificate is the forgery.It's become very clear that the Birthers simply aren't going to stop -- ever. In fact, their craziness and ineptitude is now starting to spread over the whole globe in some pretty funny ways.
The Birthers dragged a complete bystander from yet another country, David Bomford of Adelaide, Australia, into this whole mess. And now, it appears, their ringleader is saying that he's the phony. It really is worth thinking about what has happened here.
After Orly Taitz released the quickly-debunked forged Kenyan birth certificate, it was discovered that the document was altered from a source document that didn't even come from Kenya, but was taken from Bomford's family genealogy site.
Bomford himself chimed in, and told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that he would be taking his birth certificate off the family genealogy Web site, after security experts said he'd left himself open to identity theft. But he did seem a bit entertained about the whole experience: "I'm not particularly worried about it because no-one would honestly believe that anyone like me would be involved in it - just a grey-haired old guy sitting in a corner in quiet old Adelaide."
But Taitz is carrying on, having posted two days ago on her Web site that Bomford's certificate is the suspect one: "Bomford report was created to try to discredit my efforts." * * *
The sound you just heard was my head exploding. I'm not certain how to make sense of all this, but I'm pretty sure that time travel would once again be a necessary component to such an explanation.
As an aside, wouldn't it be great to have a law practice where you could just make s**t up all the time? You'd never have to worry about troublesome concepts such as ethics or truth. In fact, you wouldn't even have to be coherent.
UPDATE: Having some trouble locating your Kenyan birth certificate? No problem -- you can get it here. -
What Kevin Drum Says
» Harold's BlogHe's absolutely right -- there is a big difference between the fringe people on the Left and the "fringe" people on the Right:
I'm definitely part of the group that didn't start hating Bush until all the talk about invading Iraq started. Prior to that, I thought he was doing a pretty good job.[T]he conservative lunatic brigade appeared so goddamn fast. It's true that some precincts on the left went nuts over Bush, but anti-Bush venom didn't really start to steamroll until late 2002 when he was making the case for war against Iraq. Nobody drew BusHitler signs after he signed NCLB or called him a war criminal for signing a tax cut. It took something really big to create a substantial cadre of big league Bush haters.
Conversely, the conservatives who think Obama is a socialist, or think Obama was born in Kenya, or think healthcare reform is going to kill your grandma, or think Obama is going to take all your guns away — well, that stuff started up approximately on January 21st, if not before. And it's not just a weird 1% fringe. There's a lot of conservatives who believe this stuff. And there wasn't any precipitating cause other than the fact of Obama's election in the first place. * * *
But the Obama Haters appeared on or before the swearing-in, much like the Clinton Haters did in the early 90s. Unlike Democrats, members of the GOP appear to believe that only a Republican has a right to be President of the United States and that any Democrat who happens to win the presidency is some kind of usurper who must be viciously attacked on Day One no matter what his policies are.
Is it just me, or is there something treasonous about wanting your commander-in-chief to fail even before he is sworn in? One would think that if you truly loved your country, you'd give your brand new president a little time before wishing him ill. But a good portion of the GOP don't appear to love their country. They are instead in love with an extremist ideology and will attack anyone who doesn't agree with it, even folks in their own party.
In any event, Drum raises an excellent point, namely, there really doesn't seem to be a right-wing "fringe." For example, as I noted in the previous post, I thought the Birther Movement made up just a small percentage of the GOP, but it turns out that most Republicans either think Obama is an illegal alien or are "undecided" on that issue:
I find the numbers on Independents to be particularly fascinating. The Democrats seem to have a real opportunity here to further erode independent voters' support for Republicans. The Dems should do everything possible to paint the GOP as a fringe group that is out-of-touch with mainstream America. And they wouldn't even have to lie about it -- the numbers certainly support such a notion.Among Republicans, it's a much weaker plurality of only 42% who say Obama was born in the U.S., with 28% saying he was not, with a very high undecided number of 30%. Among Democrats, the number is 93%-4%, and among independents it's 83%-8%.
I know Democrats don't particularly like to do that kind of stuff. It's a weakness they have. But if the shoe was on the other foot and a majority of Democrats believed something as bat-s**t crazy as the beliefs adhered to by the Birther Movement, the GOP and its surrogates would certainly be saturating the airwaves with ads that pointed out this craziness.
UPDATE: As usual, conservative columnist Kathleen Parker nails it:* * * “We got too many Jim DeMints (South Carolina) and Tom Coburns (Oklahoma),” [Ohio Sen. George Voinovich] told The Columbus Dispatch. “It's the Southerners. They get on TV and go ‘errrr, errrrr.' People hear them and say, ‘These people, they're Southerners. The party's being taken over by Southerners. What the hell they got to do with Ohio?' ”
Whatever Voinovich's sound effects were intended to convey, his meaning was clear enough: Those ignorant, right-wing, Bible-thumping rednecks are ruining the party.
Alas, Voinovich was not entirely wrong.
Not all Southern Republicans are wing nuts. Nor does the GOP have a monopoly on ignorance or racism. And, the South, for all its sins, is also lush with beauty, grace and mystery. Nevertheless, it is true that the GOP is fast becoming regionalized below the Mason-Dixon, and becoming increasingly associated with some of the South's worst ideas.
It is not helpful (or surprising) that “birthers” — conspiracy theorists who have convinced themselves that Barack Obama is not a native son — have assumed kudzu qualities among Republicans in the South. In a poll commissioned by the liberal blog, Daily Kos, participants were asked: “Do you believe that Barack Obama was born in the United States of America or not?”
Hefty majorities in the Northeast, Midwest and West believe Obama was born in the U.S. But in the land of cotton, where old times are not by God forgotten, only 47 percent believe Obama was born in America and 30 percent aren't sure. Southern Republicans, it seems, have seceded from sanity.
Though Voinovich's views may be shared by others in the party, it's a tad late — not to mention ungrateful — to indict the South. Republicans have been harvesting Southern votes for decades from seeds strategically planted during the Civil Rights era. When Lyndon B. Johnson predicted in 1965 that the Voting Rights Act meant the South would go Republican for the next 50 years, he wasn't just whistling Dixie. * * * -
This Explains A Lot (With Update)
» Harold's BlogFrom TPM:
I must admit that I was a bit surprised by these numbers. For some reason, I was under the impression that the Birthers (i.e., Lou Dobbs and other people who were dropped on their heads at birth) constituted only a small -- but very vocal -- percentage of Republicans.A new Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll finds that 77% of Americans believe President Obama was Indeed Born in the United States, with only 11% saying he was not -- but there's no clear verdict among Republicans.
Among Republicans, it's a much weaker plurality of only 42% who say Obama was born in the U.S., with 28% saying he was not, with a very high undecided number of 30%. Among Democrats, the number is 93%-4%, and among independents it's 83%-8%.
This means that for Republicans to openly admit that Obama is indeed a natural-born American citizen, they risk alienating a significant chunk of their loyal base. And on the other hand, they could scare away independents by humoring the tin-foil hat crowd.
But now it turns out that 28% of Republicans think that Obama is an illegal alien (with 30% of the GOP "undecided" on that issue). No wonder Republicans in Congress are going out of their way to not piss off these people and why well-known racists such as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh are actively courting this crowd.
But then again, I shouldn't be too surprised by the numbers. After all, George W. Bush maintained around a 28% approval rating even after it was clear to just about everyone that he was one of the worst presidents in American history.
I do think it is highly likely that a large number of the Republicans who claim they think Obama is an illegal alien don't actually believe that. They instead embrace Birtherism because it is a way for them to express their personal outrage that a Negro man has been elected President of the United States. As I mentioned before, they cannot openly express their race hatred, so this is the next best thing for them.
UPDATE: At least one person agrees with me:
UPDATE II: The price of idiocy:Politico’s Glenn Thrush asks, “When do we start a serious dialog about the Birther movement being a proxy for racism that is unacceptable to articulate in more direct terms?”
According to analysis of Nielsen data by the New York Observer, as criticism of Lou Dobbs has continued to rise over his questioning of President Obama's citizenship, his ratings at CNN have continued to go down.
In fact, Dobbs' audience has decreased 15% in total viewers and 27% in the all important age 25 to 54 demographic group since the start of the controversy. -
The Best Lawyers That Racism Can Buy
» Harold's BlogFrom The Washington Independent:
Meanwhile, the turd in the Republican Party's pocket keeps growing. This piece from Politico -- titled GOP Headache: The Birther Issue -- sums up the problem nicely in the wake of the Mike Castle town hall debacle:One of the more amusing quirks of the “birther” movement is the quality of the legal minds in whom Obama birth certificate obsessives are placing their trust — and their occasional donations. Phil Berg, the original “birther” lawyer, has been forced to pay out sanctions for legal malpractice. Orly Taitz, famously, got her law degree from an online correspondence school. And it turns out that Charles Lincoln, who has been assisting Taitz — he provided judges with amended complaints in Keyes et al v. Obama et al last week and he showed up at the last hearing on the case— has been disbarred in California, as well as Florida and Texas. * * *
Of course, GOP Congressmen could easily handle this problem. When some whacko raises the issue at a town hall meeting, all they'd have to do call that person a complete nutjob and then move on. But this is something the Republicans cannot do, and that is why I find this story so freaking hilarious.[B]irthers say members should expect more of the same in the coming weeks. “Absolutely,” says California resident Orly Taitz, the Russian-born attorney/dentist who has become a kind of ringleader for the movement. “It is a very important issue, one that politicians should have taken up a long time ago.”
Moments after speaking with POLITICO Saturday, Taitz posted a call to arms on her blog: “I believe it is a serious concern and I hope that each and every decent American comes to town hall meetings with a video camera and demands action,” she wrote.
Having seen his colleague Castle come under attack, Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.) is taking no chances. “Before I got back to Michigan before the break, we’ll go through it, so that we’re versed in it,” Hoekstra said recently. “Just like anything else, if you see a hot issue ... it’s sort of like, ‘Let me go take a look at this and see what the status is.’”
Hoekstra believes there’s no “compelling case” questioning Obama’s origins. But after talking to Castle about his town hall, he knows that he’d better be ready with an answer.
The trick: What do you say?
Of the various approaches a put-on-the-spot pol can take, each carries its own risk of alienating constituents. Pick up a pitchfork in the cause of this conspiracy theory, and you risk damaging your reputation in the mainstream while aligning yourself with a movement some regard as having racist undertones.
Rep. John Campbell (R-Calif.), co-sponsor of legislation that would force candidates to show their birth certificates, was widely mocked after he told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews that Obama is a U.S. citizen — “as far as I know.”
However, members who decide to challenge the conspiracy theory, as Castle did mildly, risk ticking off a shrill minority who can upend their events and then post the video on the Web.
And those who try to split the difference may find themselves getting doubly burned. At a Wyoming town hall in April, birthers jumped on freshman Republican Rep. Cynthia Lummis. “I’m not questioning your concern,” Lummis told the crowd, according to the Wyoming Eagle Tribune. “I am questioning whether there is credible evidence.” The congresswoman ended up asking for anyone who had “evidence” to send it to her.
At a walk-in meeting in Sen. Tom Coburn’s Washington office, birthers gave the Oklahoma Republican’s chief of staff nine pages of documentation in support of their claims. The group later billed the meeting a success on one of Taitz’s blogs. But when asked about the meeting, Coburn spokesman Don Tatro said that the office was simply trying to be “polite” and that “it is possible to mistake politeness for agreement.”
In fact, the Democrats should send operatives to GOP town hall meetings to make sure the birther issue is always raised. This is the greatest thing since the Republican Party's Terri Schiavo disaster.
UPDATE: It didn't take long for legendary idiot Jim Inhofe to step right into the pile of feces that is called the birther movement:
My question to Inhofe is: Why would the White House want to do anything to "dispel the concerns" of a bunch of racist whackjobs who are causing you and other Obama enemies to repeatedly step on their own dicks?As you’ve already seen, Senator Jim Inhofe made a big splash today by telling the Politico that the birthers “have a point,” adding that he doesn’t “discourage” their movement.
But he’s now clarifying his claim, and blaming the White House for the persistence of birtherism. Inhofe now says that the birther point he was endorsing was specifically that the White House has not done a good enough job of rebutting the birthers’ charges.
Inhofe spokesman Jared Young sends me this new quote from Inhofe: “The point that they make is the Constitutional mandate that the U.S. President be a natural born citizen, and the White House has not done a very good job of dispelling the concerns of these citizens. My focus is on issues where I can make a difference to stop the liberal agenda being pushed by President Obama.”
By the way, this is hilarious. -
The Upcoming Foundation Movies Will Be Directed By . . . Roland Emmerich?
» Harold's BlogFrom ComingSoon.net:
For those of you who've never heard of Roland Emmerich, he's the guy who directed Universal Soldier, Independence Day, Godzilla, and The Day After Tomorrow, so I'm having a hard time seeing a maker of summer-time popcorn flicks being able to effectively handle Asimov's Foundation Trilogy. I hope he can pull it off, though, because I've been wanting these movies made since I was a kid.It's Day 3 of Comic-Con and ComingSoon.net had a chance to sit down with Roland Emmerich to talk about his new movie 2012. Before we wrapped up, we asked what was going on with Emmerich's adaptation of Isaac Asimov's sci-epic Foundation, and we learned that Oscar-nominated writer Robert Rodat (Saving Private Ryan, The Patriot) has been hired to adapt it.
"'Foundation' is my first attempt to do a series of movies, because we're developing three movies: 'Foundation,' 'Foundation and Empire' and 'Second Foundation,'" he told us. "It took me a long time to actually wait for the moment where the rights were totally free and we got them all, it's like 11 books, and we own the title 'Foundation' and also some of the robot novels and now we can really do these. I just hired a very good writer, the writer of 'Saving Private Ryan' who wrote 'The Patriot' for me and he's incredible. He is the most knowledgeable person I ever met about the 'Foundation' novels. It's great to write with somebody like that because there's no, 'I'll just look in the book and see what's there'... he knows it. I had a certain idea and he had a certain idea and that together I think will make this a movie." * * * -
This Sucks
» Harold's BlogFrom Salon:
I hope Lou Dobbs and his staff ignore Klein's e-mail and continue to run with the story, because this whole "Obama is an undocumented alien" movement is a giant turd in the GOP's pocket and I hope it doesn't go away anytime soon (and it won't go away if Lou Dobbs continues to speak out on it).Seems like CNN executives have finally spoken up on Lou Dobbs' embrace of Birtherism. TVNewser is reporting that CNN/U.S. President Jon Klein e-mailed some of the staffers from Dobbs' show before it aired Thursday night to say, "[I]t seems this story is dead -- because anyone who is not convinced doesn't really have a legitimate beef." * * *
I for one hope the rumors that Obama was born in Kenya are true, because if they are, that means someone from Obama's camp traveled back in time to 1961 and planted Obama's birth announcement in the Honolulu Advertiser, which necessarily means that Obama has access to time travel technology, which would be really cool.
UPDATE: Yes! Klein leaves the door open for Dobbs to continue claiming that Obama is an illegal alien:CNN/U.S. President Jon Klein told staffers of "Lou Dobbs Tonight" on Thursday that the controversy regarding the legitimacy of President Obama's birth certificate -- a topic Dobbs has avidly pursued on the air -- is a "dead" story.
But in an interview, the cable news chief left open the possibility that Dobbs may continue to raise questions about why the president has not produced a long-form birth certificate. The absence of such a record has spawned rumors that Obama was not born in the United States, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary.
"He's got more than 30 years as a television journalist, and I trust him, as I trust all our reporters and anchors, to exercise their judgment as various stories evolve," Klein said of Dobbs, whose daily CNN program is a mix of news and opinion.
That appeared to be a step back from the stance Klein took in his e-mail Thursday, in which he wrote that CNN researchers had determined that Hawaiian officials discarded paper documents in 2001. Because of that, Obama's long-form birth certificate no longer exists and a shorter certificate of live birth that has been made public is the official record, they reported. * * * -
Hilarious
» Harold's BlogI'm really enjoying this whole deal. I just find it extremely funny that lots of right-wing types are sitting at home at this moment in a profound state of fury because they believe Barack Obama was born in Kenya. In other words, they are furious that the U.S. elected a Negro as president, but they just can't come out and say that, so they find other ways to express their racism (like this guy did here).
Watching that video of the woman going ape-s**t over this the Obama birth certificate "conspiracy" . . . well, it literally reminded me of primates throwing their own s**t around at the zoo. It's both troubling and hilarious.
Even Lou Throbbs is getting in on the s**t-tossing.
And speaking of racism, this story reminds me of something out of the first Harold and Kumar movie. -
Lawsuit Threatens Hobbit Movies
» Harold's BlogFrom Bloomberg:J.R.R. Tolkien sold movie rights to his “Lord of the Rings” novels 40 years ago for 7.5 percent of future receipts. Three films and $6 billion later, his heirs say they haven’t seen a dime from Time Warner Inc.
The accounting methods used by New Line Cinema, the Time Warner unit that made the movies, will face a jury’s scrutiny in October, when the heirs’ lawsuit against the New York-based media company is set for trial in Los Angeles Superior Court.
The case, if not settled by then, may provide a window into accounting practices that let Time Warner deny proceeds of the Oscar-winning films to Tolkien’s heirs. The litigation also threatens to derail two “The Hobbit” films that, if their predecessors are a guide, could generate $4 billion in sales.
Tolkien’s family and a British charity they head, the Tolkien Trust, seek more than $220 million in compensation, according to Bonnie Eskenazi, an attorney with Greenberg Glusker, the Los Angeles firm representing the heirs. * * *
The Tolkiens also want the option to terminate further rights to the author’s work, as the original contract lets them do in the event of a breach, according to the complaint. News Corp.’s HarperCollins Publishers, which holds Tolkien’s publishing rights, is also a plaintiff. * * * -
Sotomayor And Republican Racism
» Harold's BlogFrom Craig Crawford:
It's pretty clear to me, given how some of these GOP senators held out their racist mentality for all to see, that the Republicans used the Sotomayor hearings to actually promote racism. That's why the GOP allowed a good old boy like Jeff Sessions to run the show for them -- they knew Sotomayor would easily be confirmed, so why not use the hearings as an opportunity to throw some red meat at the 20% or so of the U.S. population that currently make up what's left of the Republican Party.President Obama is free to go hard left with his next Supreme Court appointment. That's the lesson of the failed attacks on nominee Sonia Sotomayor during this week's Senate confirmation hearing.
Racially-tinged inferences, snide liberal bashing and the shameless pandering to anti-intellectual sentiment that once won the day for Republicans are now falling flat. The Sotomayor nomination has proved to be yet another test case for the efficacy of traditional conservative attack lines.
Republicans might have hoped to use this hearing to put limits on how far the President can safely go in picking liberals for future openings. Instead, they showcased just how narrow and out of touch their political base has become.
It is stunning that the GOP did not learn this lesson in the election of Barack Obama. Until Republicans get past calling 1-800-HATE there will be fewer and fewer voters on the other end of the line.
And I fully support such a strategy. The last thing I want the GOP to do is something that would actually expand the number of Republicans.
Palin/Sessions 2012! -
The Time Has Come For Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III To Throw In The Towel
» Harold's BlogSenator Jeff Sessions is an idiot.
Now don't get me wrong -- I'm sure he does a really good job when he presides over Klan meetings and such, but he seems to be having a hard time pulling his head out of his ass when it comes to the Sotomayor hearings.
Here is a comment Sessions made to Judge Sotomayor yesterday:
Wow -- I guess if there was any doubts about Sessions being a racist, those doubts have now gone by the wayside. And this exchange was hilarious:SESSIONS: You voted not to reconsider the prior case. You voted to stay with the decision of the circuit. And in fact your vote was the key vote. Had you voted with Judge Cabranes, himself of Puerto Rican ancestry, had you voted with him, you could’ve changed that case.
I know there is no way to keep racists out of the Senate, but prospective senators should at least be required to score over a 70 in an IQ test before being allowed to run. Is that too much to ask?During his questioning, Sessions said he wished Sotomayor acted more like Judge Miriam Cedarbaum, who “believes that judges must transcend their personal sympathies and prejudices.” “My friend Judge Cedarbaum is here,” Sotomayor responded, to Sessions’ apparent surprise. For her part, Cedarbaum told the WSJ, “I don’t believe for a minute that there are any differences in our approach to judging, and her personal predilections have no effect on her approach to judging.”
And by the way, I love this. -
Quote Of The Century
» Harold's Blog
-- Blogger Marcy Wheeler on MSNBC yesterday, responding to the GOP suggestion that BushCo illegalities should not be investigated."[Y]our idea is that after investigating Bill Clinton for a blow job for like five years, we shouldn't investigate the huge, grossly illegal things that were done under the past administration, only because Alberto Gonzales was too much in the back pocket of Dick Cheney to do it while he was still in office. That's ridiculous."
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GOP Dicktitude On Full Display At Sotomayor Hearing
» Harold's BlogFrom MSNBC:
It would have been great if Sotomayor responded, "Well, Senator, unless you start molesting young children, I'm certain your career will go just fine as well."Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told Sotomayor, "Unless you have a complete meltdown, you're going to get confirmed.
"And I don't think you will" have a meltdown, he added quickly as Sotomayor sat listening, her face in a half-smile.
I know -- something like that would never happen, but I can dream, can't I?
Legendary racist -- and Alabama Senator -- Jeff Sessions couldn't resist coming off as a complete dick either:
Maybe it is just me, but I think it is hilarious that Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III felt compelled to lecture a Latina woman about "prejudices."Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the senior Republican, vowed a "respectful tone" and "maybe some disagreements" when lawmakers begin questioning Sotomayor on Tuesday.
Moments later, he took aim at Sotomayor's 2001 statement that her standing as a "wise Latina woman" would sometimes allow her to reach a better decision than a white male.
"I will not vote for, and no senator should vote for an individual nominated by any president who believes it is acceptable for a judge to allow their own personal background, gender, prejudices or sympathies to sway their decision," he said.
"Call it empathy, call it prejudice or call it sympathy, but whatever it is, it's not law," Sessions said. "In truth, it's more akin to politics, and politics has no place in the courtroom."
UPDATE: From Matthew Yglesias:I would pay good money to hear Sonia Sotomayor say, “Senator Sessions, I think it’s ironic to be facing these questions from a man whose judicial nomination was rejected by this very committee on the grounds that he’s a huge racist.” * * *
Seriously, though, when the Republican Senate Conference was meeting, did nobody say "if we're going to oppose the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice, maybe we shouldn't have a giant racist leading the charge?" This seems like a situation in which Mel Martinez might have been able to offer a useful perspective. Or they could have called up JC Watts out of retirement. What were they thinking? -
This Speaks Volumes
» Harold's BlogFrom Political Wire:A new Pew Research report on American attitudes toward science finds that 55% of scientists identify as Democrats, while 32% identify as independents and just 6% say they are Republicans. When the leanings of independents are considered, fully 81% identify as Democrats or lean to the Democratic Party, compared with 12% who either identify as Republicans or lean toward the GOP.
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An Election Season That Keeps On Giving
» Harold's BlogFrom TPM:The Minnesota Republican Party has tied off a remaining loose end from the epic, eight-month battle to determine a winner in the 2008 Minnesota Senate race, sending Democratic Sen. Al Franken's campaign a check for almost $96,000 that was owed to him by Republican former Sen. Norm Coleman's campaign.
This had been the result of a trial-court judgement in early June, finding Coleman liable under the state's loser-pays provision for a small portion of the legal fees that Franken had piled up in the course of the election litigation. * * * -
The One Person I Wouldn't Want To Be Right Now
» Harold's Blog -
Sanford/Palin 2012!
» Harold's BlogThis guy wants to run against Obama in 2012. That goal might be a bit hard for him to achieve after this:
Before all this s**t happened, Gov. Sanford was famous for speaking out against Obama's stimulus plan, and even tried (unsuccessfully) to reject portions of South Carolina's stimulus allotment. When those efforts failed, he apparently decided to take a long hike.S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford’s staff said this morning that the governor plans to return to his office Wednesday. Late Monday, his office said the governor was hiking on the Appalachian Trail, ending four days during which staff and state officials said they had not heard from him.
In a statement, Joel Sawyer, Sanford's spokesman said, "Governor Sanford called to check in with his chief of staff this morning. It would be fair to say the governor was somewhat taken aback by all of the interest this trip has gotten. Given the circumstances and the attention this has garnered, the governor communicated to us that he plans on returning to the office tomorrow.
Neither Sanford’s office nor the State Law Enforcement Division, which provides security for governors, had been able to reach Sanford since he left the mansion Thursday in a black Suburban SUV assigned to his security detail, said state Sen. Jake Knotts , R-Lexington, and three others familiar with the situation, but who declined to be identified.
On Monday, Sawyer would not disclose where on the trail the governor was hiking, nor would he reveal whether Sanford was hiking alone. Sanford’s last known location was near Atlanta late last week. A mobile telephone tower there picked up a signal from his phone, according to a source familiar with the situation. Since then, the governor’s state and personal phones had been turned off, and Sanford had not responded to phone or text messages, a source said. Most mobile phones cannot be tracked if they are turned off.
First lady Jenny Sanford said Monday her husband has been gone for several days over Father’s Day weekend and she did not know where.
She said she was not concerned.
“He was writing something and wanted some space to get away from the kids,” Jenny Sanford told The Associated Press while vacationing with the couple’s four sons at their Sullivan’s Island beach house. * * *
I hope he gets the GOP nomination in 2012, because the attack ads practically write themselves. One of them could be just like Hillary's "3 a.m. telephone call" ad, except it would show "President" Sanford's telephone ringing for four days straight without getting answered.
The real question, of course, is: Was Gov. Sanford hiking naked?
UPDATE: Sanford was in Argentina (at least that is what's currently being reported). There's simply too much s**t happening with this story right now for me to fully cover it at this time, but ThinkProgress has the goods (as does TPM).
Something tells me that when all the dust clears, this story will be better than Ted Haggard and Larry Craig combined.
UPDATE II: Unless Sanford's "dear friend" in Argentina turns out to be a guy, it looks like all this story will boil down to is simply another Bible-beating Republican politician having an extra-marital affair. [yawn]
It even features FauxNews' worn-out ploy of "accidentally" mis-identifying the wrongdoer as a Democrat. I've lost count of how many times Fox has repeated that particular "mistake."
And I had such high hopes for this scandal. It had such a great start. -
The Northern Lights From Space
» Harold's Blog -
Quote of the Week
» Harold's Blog
-- CIA Director Leon Panetta re: Dick Cheney, who has recently stated on several occasions that Obama's policies are making the U.S. less safe."It's almost, a little bit, gallows politics. When you read behind it, it's almost as if he's wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point. I think that's dangerous politics."
Frank Rich doesn't mention Cheney in this column, but he should have. -
This Seems Pretty Stupid
» Harold's BlogFrom Sci-Fi Wire:
A re-imagining of the re-imagining? But why?Richard Hatch—who played Apollo in the original Battlestar Galactica and Tom Zarek in SCI FI's re-imagining—told Moviehole that he's watching the recently proposed feature film closely, though he's not involved, and has ideas as to how to reboot the franchise.
"I think they saw the success Paramount had with their Star Trek reboot," Hatch told the site. "But unlike Paramount, who seems to know the Star Trek audience, I don't think Universal ever quite got Battlestar. I just hope they hire the right people and make a good movie."
Universal Pictures quietly entered into negotiations with Battlestar creator Glen A. Larson to produce a big-screen version of the property he created, which would be unrelated to the recently concluded SCI FI series headed by Ronald D. Moore and David Eick, according to The Hollywood Reporter in February.
The film would reportedly preserve the premise—a ragtag fleet of human survivors runs from the murderous Cylons while seeking a new home on the mythical planet called Earth—as well as the characters of Adama, Starbuck and Baltar, but insiders told the trade paper that the movie will otherwise be a complete re-imagining of both series. * * * -
Some Good News
» Harold's BlogFrom Reuters:Sales at U.S. retailers rose in May and the number of workers filing new applications for jobless benefits fell for a fourth straight week last week, according to official data on Thursday that suggested the recession was abating.
The Commerce Department said total retail sales rose 0.5 percent, the first advance in three months, lifted by strong gasoline and building material receipts. Sales fell 0.2 percent in April.
A separate report from the Labor Department showed the number of U.S. workers filing new claims for jobless aid fell 24,000 to 601,000 in the week ended June 6, the lowest since January 24.
"It looks like we are turning the corner. There is pretty clear evidence that the worst of the labor downturn has passed, but we still expect more job losses," said Zach Pandl an economist at Nomura Securities International in New York. * * * -
Quote Of The Week
» Harold's Blog
-- Barack Obama, from his speech at the American cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, Normandy, France, commemorating the 65th anniversary of D-Day."I know this trip doesn't get any easier as the years pass, but for those of you who make it, there's nothing that could keep you away. One such veteran, a man named Jim Norene, was a member of the 502nd Parachute Infantry Division of the 101st Airborne. Last night, after visiting this cemetery for one last time, he passed away in his sleep. Jim was gravely ill when he left his home, and he knew that he might not return. But just as he did 65 years ago, he came anyway. May he now rest in peace with the boys he once bled with, and may his family always find solace in the heroism he showed here."
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Greatest Country In The World?
» Harold's BlogIt's hard to make that argument when you read s**t like this:Medical bills are involved in more than 60 percent of U.S. personal bankruptcies, an increase of 50 percent in just six years, U.S. researchers reported Thursday.
More than 75 percent of these bankrupt families had health insurance but still were overwhelmed by their medical debts, the team at Harvard Law School, Harvard Medical School and Ohio University reported in the American Journal of Medicine.
"Using a conservative definition, 62.1 percent of all bankruptcies in 2007 were medical; 92 percent of these medical debtors had medical debts over $5,000, or 10 percent of pretax family income," the researchers wrote. "Most medical debtors were well-educated, owned homes and had middle-class occupations." * * * -
If This Is The Best The Extreme Right Can Do . . .
» Harold's Blog. . . then Sotomayor's confirmation is pretty much a done deal.
The latest anti-Sotomayor Right Wing talking point is that she can't be a good judge because she has a 60% reversal rating. But as Steve Benen notes, the Radical Right is completely full of s**t on this one:
I'm no expert on the Supreme Court, but as I understand it, not every case which is appealed to that Court is granted review. It doesn't surprise me, therefore, that of the cases the Supreme Court actually decides to review, a majority of them would be reversed.Sotomayor has been on the appeals court federal bench for over a decade, and during her career, she's written 380 rulings for the 2nd Circuit's majority. Of those 380, five have been considered on appeal to the Supreme Court. And of those five, three have reversed the lower court's decision. That's how the right gets to a 60% reversal rating -- three out of five, as opposed to three out of 380.
Of course, if that 60% figure were really scandalous, the right should have balked at the Alito nomination -- he had two of his rulings considered by the high court, and both were overturned. (That's a 100% rating! He must have been a horrible judge!)
The irony is, Sotomayor's reversal numbers are actually better than the norm, not worse. Media Matters noted yesterday, "[A]ccording to data compiled by SCOTUSblog, Sotomayor's reported 60 percent reversal rate is lower than the overall Supreme Court reversal rate for all lower court decisions from the 2004 term through the present -- both overall and for each individual Supreme Court term." * * *
But the Radical Right can get away with this type of bulls**t talking point because the right-wing base is made up of a bunch of idiots who will believe anything that Limbaugh, Cheney, or Hannity tells them. -
The Movement To Legalize Pot Takes A Huge Hit
» Harold's BlogIt now appears that the drug of choice for evil-doing terrorists is marijuana:
"Homegrown" terror cell -- that's pretty funny. I have no doubt that the anti-legalization folks will have a field day with this one.* * * The ringleader of the four-man homegrown terror cell accused of plotting to blow up synagogues in the Bronx and military planes in Newburgh admitted to a judge today that he had smoked pot before his bust last night.
When U.S. Magistrate Judge Lisa M. Smith asked James Cromitie if his judgment was impaired during his appearance in federal court in White Plains, the 55-year-old confessed: “No. I smoke it regularly…I understand everything you are saying.”
The stunning revelation came as the accused plotters made their first court appearances following a dramatic arrest by the NYPD and FBI last night. The suspects drove in an SUV that law enforcement believed was laden with explosives ready to be detonated outside the Jewish centers. * * *
And speaking of drug users, either Rush Limbaugh is off the Oxycontin or he's a little smarter than I thought he was (from his radio show last Wednesday):
This is a remarkable admission from Limbaugh -- he has essentally conceded that being the de facto head of the GOP was playing right into the Democrats' hands, and in doing so has admitted that his extremist brand of right-wing politics is hurting the Republican Party.RUSH: As any of you and all of you who have been paying attention to the Drive-By news media the past number of months have heard, I am the titular head of the Republican Party. I have been anointed to this position by members of the Drive-By Media, and, of course, the Obama White House. I have not been named the titular or any other head of the Republican Party by anybody in the Republican Party. And so I hereby, ladies and gentlemen, today announce that I am resigning. I am resigning as the titular head of the Republican Party. Clearly I am not the titular head of the Republican Party. It's not an office I sought. It was a position that was ladled on to me when I was appointed without my acquiescence. So the only thing I can do to remain true to myself and to you is to resign this position that I never had in the first place. But because so many people think I am the titular head of the Republican Party today, I quit.
In the famous words of Roberto Duran, "no mas, no mas," no more, no more. I quit. I resign as the titular head of the Republican Party.
Rush's resignation is a mild setback for Obama and Company, who have a strong interest in keeping in place right-wing whackos like Limbaugh as the spokespersons for the GOP. The last thing the Democrats need is some middle-of-the-roader becoming the leader of the Republicans. That's why Obama chose Utah Governor Jon M. Huntsman Jr. as his pick for ambassador to China. Huntsman, a moderate Republican, is often mentioned as a possible presidential candidate for 2012, so sending him to China was a great way for Obama to deal with that potential political threat.
But don't worry, folks -- Limbaugh's resignation is pretty much a non-event given that Dick Cheney appears to be the new de facto head of the GOP. It just doesn't get any better than that.
Cheney/Palin 2012! -
Another Old Sci-Fi Series To Be Rebooted
» Harold's BlogFirst we had a reboot of Battlestar Galactica. Then the old Star Trek series got rebooted with the recent movie. And The Prisoner will soon be brought back to life in the form of an AMC miniseries. Plus we recently learned that the series "V" will be revived by ABC.
And now it appears that the old Gerry Anderson series UFO will be updated:
I loved this show when I was a kid. It was a lot better than Anderson's follow-up series, Space: 1999, which I thought was sort of weak.Veteran producer Robert Evans is getting into the alien business, teaming with ITV Global to create a feature based on cult TV series UFO.
The British show, which ran from 1970 to 1973, was created by Gerry Anderson, best known for his work on the hugely popular Thunderbirds series.
According to Variety, the plot "revolves around Shado (Supreme Headquarters Alien Defense Organization), a covert military organization that thwarts an alien race that has been kidnapping and killing humans for decades, then using the body parts. Shado headquarters is hidden beneath a Hollywood studio, and the studio mogul is actually the Shado commander."
However, while the original show was set in 1980, the reboot will take place in 2020. * * *
And although I've often complained that Hollywood doesn't have any new ideas, I'm liking the fact that all these old sci-fi shows are being rebooted. And it makes sense to do this type of thing, because it is undoubtedly easier to sell a reboot of an old series given that there is already a built-in audience, which I'm sure makes the studio heads more comfortable when it comes to spending the money. -
Spoiler-Free Impressions of Star Trek 11
» Harold's BlogI saw the new Star Trek movie last night. I've been all over the map as far as anticipation for this film is concerned. Eighteen months ago, when casting information was revealed, I expressed a concern that the movie would suck. I felt this way because it was my belief that the whole Star Trek concept had run out of steam and they should give it a long rest.
But then the teaser trailer came out, then full length trailers, and I actually started thinking that the movie could be great. Then the reviews started trickling in and they have been very positive -- Rotten Tomatoes gave it a whopping 96% freshness rating -- so I figured I'd go into the movie with expectations so high that there would be no possible way I could enjoy it.
Well, the movie rocked. It was well-paced, well-acted, and very funny, but not overly funny. It was great to see these familiar characters re-introduced and re-imagined.
People who are not fans of Star Trek will probably miss a lot of the inside jokes (especially those delivered by Karl Urban, who did a great job with the McCoy character) -- whereas some hardcore Trekkies might not like how certain things have been tweaked -- but I think the filmmakers struck a nice balance. The movie had a great "feel" to it.
I had a few problems with various elements of the plot, and one scene involving a series of tubes felt out of place. But any shortcomings were quickly forgiven due to the high quality of the overall production. You definitely should see this one on the big screen. -
Yes, But Will It Open The Pod Bay Doors?
» Harold's BlogThis is pretty cool:The biggest internet revolution for a generation will be unveiled this month with the launch of software that will understand questions and give specific, tailored answers in a way that the web has never managed before.
The new system, Wolfram Alpha, showcased at Harvard University in the US last week, takes the first step towards what many consider to be the internet's Holy Grail – a global store of information that understands and responds to ordinary language in the same way a person does.
Although the system is still new, it has already produced massive interest and excitement among technology pundits and internet watchers.
Computer experts believe the new search engine will be an evolutionary leap in the development of the internet. Nova Spivack, an internet and computer expert, said that Wolfram Alpha could prove just as important as Google. "It is really impressive and significant," he wrote. "In fact it may be as important for the web (and the world) as Google, but for a different purpose.
Tom Simpson, of the blog Convergenceofeverything.com, said: "What are the wider implications exactly? A new paradigm for using computers and the web? Probably. Emerging artificial intelligence and a step towards a self-organising internet? Possibly... I think this could be big."
Wolfram Alpha will not only give a straight answer to questions such as "how high is Mount Everest?", but it will also produce a neat page of related information – all properly sourced – such as geographical location and nearby towns, and other mountains, complete with graphs and charts.
The real innovation, however, is in its ability to work things out "on the fly", according to its British inventor, Dr Stephen Wolfram. If you ask it to compare the height of Mount Everest to the length of the Golden Gate Bridge, it will tell you. Or ask what the weather was like in London on the day John F Kennedy was assassinated, it will cross-check and provide the answer. Ask it about D sharp major, it will play the scale. Type in "10 flips for four heads" and it will guess that you need to know the probability of coin-tossing. If you want to know when the next solar eclipse over Chicago is, or the exact current location of the International Space Station, it can work it out. * * * -
The Bizarro World Of GOP Politics
» Harold's BlogYou practically need a Venn Diagram to follow this one:
And this is hilarious:Republicans are taking a page out of the Democrats’ tried-and-tested playbook: They’re trying to dent Sen. Arlen Specter’s popularity among Democrats in Pennsylvania by tying him to former President Bush.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee is launching about 100,000 robo-calls to registered Democrats in Pennsylvania, reminding voters of Specter’s relationship with the former president.
“I’ve recorded this message…to help you welcome your newest Republican senator, Arlen Specter,” a narrator on the call says. “We wanted to make sure that we properly introduced him to you.”
The phone call then features audio from Bush’s endorsement of Specter during his competitive 2004 GOP primary against Toomey.
“I’m here to say it as plainly as I can, Arlen Specter is the right man for the United States Senate,” Bush says in the robo-call. "I can count on this man -- see that's important. He's a firm ally when it matters most."
This, to my knowledge, is the first time Republicans have invoked former President Bush to engender a negative reaction. But since it worked so well for Democrats in 2006 and 2008, why not give it a try?
A recent poll showed that only 20% of voters in this country now identify themselves as Republican, and I remember thinking to myself, "well, that can't be right." Now I'm not so sure (and neither is at least one prominent Republican).[GOP] Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.'s appearance at a Michigan county Republican Party event was scrapped this week after the county chairwoman said that hosting the moderate Utah governor would mean abandoning the party's conservative principles.
Kent County Republican Party Chairwoman Joanne Voorhees abruptly canceled the party fundraiser scheduled for Saturday.
"The voters want and expect us to stand on principle and return to our roots. Unfortunately, by holding an event with Governor Huntsman, we would be doing the exact opposite," Voorhees wrote in an e-mail quoted in The Grand Rapids Press .
Voorhees did not specify which issues she felt were contrary to the party's principles and did not return messages left at the party headquarters and on her cell phone.
The group Campaign for Michigan Families praised the cancellation, attributing it to Huntsman's support of civil unions, and urged the Oakland and Kalamazoo county parties, where Huntsman is also scheduled to speak this weekend, to do the same. * * *
By the way, I think this GOP congresswoman has a great last name, given that she appears to be right of Hitler (and before you send me angry comments about how I compared someone to Hitler, be advised that I am making no such comparison -- I'm saying that she's "right of Hitler"). -
Sweet!
» Harold's BlogSenator Specter is switching parties (h/t Slic[k]):Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter will switch his party affiliation from Republican to Democrat and announced today that he will run in 2010 as a Democrat, according to a statement he released this morning.
Specter's decision would give Democrats a 60 seat filibuster proof majority in the Senate assuming Democrat Al Franken is eventually sworn in as the next senator from Minnesota. (Former senator Norm Coleman is appealing Franken's victory in the state Supreme Court.)
"I have decided to run for re-election in 2010 in the Democratic primary," said Specter in a statement. "I am ready, willing and anxious to take on all comers and have my candidacy for re-election determined in a general election." * * * -
And The Official Rock Song For The State Of Oklahoma Is . . .
» Harold's Blog. . . "Do You Realize??" by The Flaming Lips.
Members of the American Taliban did their God-Damndest to stop this from happening, but to no avail:Oklahoma lawmakers who voted against making a Flaming Lips tune the official state rock song represent a minority of "small-minded religious wackos," the band's lead singer says.
Most state House members voted for a resolution recognizing 2002's "Do You Realize??," but conservatives who said they were offended by the band's clothing and language mustered enough votes to keep it from being adopted.
"Me, I just say look, it's a little minority of some small-minded religious wackos who think they can tell people what kind of T-shirts and what kind of music they can listen to, and the smart, rational, reasonable people of Oklahoma are never going to buy into that," frontman Wayne Coyne told Tulsa World in an interview Friday.
Gov. Brad Henry resolved the issue by announcing he would sign an executive order proclaiming "Do You Realize??" the official rock song of Oklahoma. The song earned more than half of the 21,000 votes cast in an online contest. . . . -
Vegas During Recession-Time
» Harold's BlogLinda and I recently returned from three nights in Vegas. Joining us were Attorneys Todd, Erika, and Lauri (because we were going to need plenty of legal advice before the trip was over).
We had a great time. Linda had a successful shopping weekend, and I gambled about five hours a day while there. We also spent a lot of time by the pool enjoying the 80-degree weather. I wanted to take it a little easier this trip by not staying up all night on the first evening like I always do, and I (sort of) succeeded -- I actually went to bed at 4 am on Friday morning, the earliest I've ever hit the rack on the first night in Vegas.
Our suite had a kitchen, so we loaded up with booze, mixer, and food and ended up eating several meals in the room and enjoying many refills of Todd's signature drink: vodka with cranberry juice and margarita mix. But we did go out for a great meal at Bar Charlie located inside The Palazzo. Nice choice there, Todd.
I was curious to see if Vegas was showing any outward signs of the recession, and we noticed a few things. Some of the down escalators were turned off in an apparent attempt to save on the electric bill. We also noticed that some casinos didn't have as many tables opened as they normally would. On Thursday night, Todd, Erika, and I wanted to play blackjack together at Treasure Island, but all the active tables were full and we couldn't find any empty tables with ready-to-go dealers.
We eventually found a table at The Mirage, where Erika and I immediately went on a tear. I was way up for awhile, but then lost most of my winnings and walked away with only about $50 in profit. I played Blackjack a couple more times on the trip, but enjoyed no further success.
One thing struck me while I was playing that game -- I didn't see any tables that paid 3-2 on blackjacks. Now I haven't played a lot of twenty-one over the years, but I'm pretty sure 3-2 is the traditional payout. Every table we played, however, only paid 6-5 for a blackjack. Another sign of the times, perhaps.
But the thing I noticed most of all as far as the recession is concerned was the cheap craps. Last year, Casino Royale had three dollar craps tables on Thursday evening only, then $5 tables on Friday through Sunday. But this year, it had three dollar craps tables all weekend long, so I spent most of my gambling time there.
Todd and I played craps for awhile at about 3 am on Friday morning. I had just ran out of chips -- and was down $100 -- when he showed up at the table, so I bought in for another $60. I ended up doubling my $60 before we called it quits, which meant I only lost about $40 for the overall session. Todd also won money in what I'm pretty sure was his first winning craps session ever.
I couldn't really get much else going, though. On Friday afternoon, a lady next to me went on a nice long roll which netted me around $300, but I was already down about $100 for that session when her roll started. The dice went fairly cold after that, but I still only lost about $200 for the weekend. Erika had a good night on Thursday evening/Friday morning, winning about $250 playing blackjack.
I didn't play any hold 'em, which was odd because I recently started playing poker again in part to get ready for this trip. But I've played a lot of cards here at home recently, and I never get to play craps, so the $3 craps tables left me with no real interest in playing poker on this particular trip. Todd and Erika didn't play any hold 'em either. Maybe next time. -
Why It Sucks To Be An Extreme Right-Wing Republican These Days
» Harold's Blog
-- Paul KrugmanWhat's so wonderful is watching Republican congressmen saying, "But this will cost jobs!" The very same Republican congressmen who were denouncing the stimulus, saying government spending never creates jobs, but cutting defense spending costs jobs. It's wonderful.
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Weak
» Harold's BlogRadical right-wing extremist governors are quickly discovering that, when it comes to stimulus money, all politics is local:The list of governors threatening to decline federal stimulus money last month read like a list of Republicans considering running for president in 2012: Govs. Mark Sanford, Bobby Jindal and Sarah Palin led the anti-stimulus charge.
But what began with a bang is ending with something closer to a whimper. All three of those governors have been forced to scale back their expectations, to varying degrees, as the push of conservative philosophy gave way to the pull of political reality.
All three found that praise from the conservative movement in Washington meant nothing to furious state legislators of both parties. And in the end, along with other conservative Republican governors, the three submitted letters in recent days asking to be eligible for federal funds, a spokesman for the White House Office of Management and Budget confirmed. -
Quote Of The Week
» Harold's Blog
-- Roger Ebert, responding to Bill O'Reilly's recent assertion that he (O'Reilly) has "more power than any politician.""That reminds me of the famous story about Squeaky the Chicago Mouse. It seems that Squeaky was floating on his back along the Chicago River one day. Approaching the Michigan Avenue lift bridge, he called out: Raise the bridge! I have an erection!"
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Kumar Goes To . . . The White House
» Harold's BlogKal Penn, of Harold and Kumar fame, is giving up acting for the time being and going to work for Obama:
Penn is also a regular on the TV show House, but he'll be leaving that show to work for Obama:Actor Kal Penn, who stumped around the country for the Obama presidential campaign, is going to leave Hollywood to work in the Obama White House, EW.Com is reporting. The White House confirmed to the Chicago Sun-Times that Penn is joining the Obama administration. * * *
Penn told EW: "I'm going to be the associate director in the White House office of public liaison. They do outreach with the American public and with different organizations. They're basically the front door of the White House. They take out all of the red tape that falls between the general public and the White House. It's similar to what I was doing on the campaign."
They should work Penn's departure from House into an episode -- his character could announce that he's leaving to work in politcs, and Dr. House can then respond by saying, "you're an idiot."[PENN] "The ultimate irony, of course, is that I love being on House. There's not a smarter group of people that I've been surrounded by in television. So I thought about it for a very long time before I went and talked to David and Katie."
"What was that conversation like?"
PENN: "We had a very long discussion. And I remember David saying, 'Are you telling me that you're unhappy with the show and that you want to leave so you can go off and do a different show?' And I was like, 'Not at all. I'm actually saying the exact opposite, which is I'm having an incredible time, but there's something aching in me to do something completely different and take a break from the acting thing for a while.' And with their blessing, we were able to work it out."
UPDATE: I guess I should have watched House last night (spoiler alert if you happened to have Tivo'd that episode and haven't watched it yet). -
The Ted Stevens Situation Just Keeps Getting Funnier
» Harold's BlogThe Alaska Republican party wants Sen. Mark Begich (D-AK) to resign. Begich defeated the evil Ted Stevens last November, but Attorney General Eric Holder is now asking the judge to drop the charges against Stevens because of prosecutorial misconduct by Justice Department lawyers working for the Bush Regime.
This is one strange political story. Stevens was convicted as the result of a prosecution conducted by attorneys working for George W. Bush, and now Obama's AG is asking for the charges to be dropped. Weird. -
A Little Bit Of Justice
» Harold's BlogThe Deep Recession (aka Depession) that George W. Bush caused is causing George W. Bush some problems when it comes to raising money for his presidential library:
I have no doubt that Bush will be able to raise the funds. Even though a lot of radical right wing extremists tried to distance themselves from Bush in the last couple of years, the 43rd President was a dream come true for those bastards -- and a nightmare for the rest of the country -- so they'll do whatever it takes to rehabilitate him. The last thing they need is for Bush to come up short on the fund-raising for his presidential library.Former President George W. Bush is preparing for one final struggle against the odds: raising $300 million for a presidential library, museum and policy institute at a time when dollars are tight and skepticism about his presidency runs high.
The former president and first lady have already begun holding small private dinners to persuade wealthy friends to invest in a monument and incubator based on the values and events of his presidency. By this fall, he’ll be armed with architect’s renderings and will hold travel around the country to meet with groups and build support for the complex on the campus of Southern Methodist University in Dallas. * * * -
Quote Of The Week
» Harold's Blog"If I had only followed CNBC's advice, I'd have a million dollars today . . . provided I had started with a hundred million dollars."
-- Jon Stewart last night, attacking CNBC for all the s**tty investment advice it gave during the run-up to the Depression.
UPDATE: This is funny.
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Brand Insight Blog [xml|www]
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Run Until I Die [xml|www]
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Smoke Signals
[xml|www]
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Renegade Rollergirls of Oregon
[xml|www]
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NitroSister Christina : Artwork [xml|www]
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Frequency: The Bulletin's music blog
[xml|www]
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Bankermom
[xml|www] -
Damian Fagan [xml|www]
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Joan Quick [xml|www]
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Eponaleah's Photoblography
[xml|www]
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vorpal.cc/blog [xml|www]
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BP's Bend Properties [xml|www]
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Bend Real Estate News
[xml|www]
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acloudtree [xml|www]
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Life, Crafted. [xml|www]
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Community Learning Instructor [xml|www]
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Volcano Vineyards Blog [xml|www]
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Nugget Newspaper Blog [xml|www]
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the. Blink. Blog
[xml|www]
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Central Oregon Views [xml|www]
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Pressing On [xml|www]
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The Ardent Thread's Weblog
[xml|www]
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Diner Life [xml|www]
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The Payroll Experience [xml|www]
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she's just saying ... [xml|www]
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ralph phillips .com
[xml|www]
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TechSpace [xml|www]
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indie girl in a mountain town
[xml|www]
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Virtual Teahouse
[xml|www]
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BendTech
[xml|www]
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Finding Ground
[xml|www]
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Good Fitness, Great Life [xml|www]
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Lean Startup - smsDrone [xml|www]
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Cheri Smith's Bend Oregon Real Estate Blog
[xml|www]
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monkeyinabox [xml|www]
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Rob Umphress [xml|www]
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Lance Hardy Photography
[xml|www]
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Moving On [xml|www]
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Wandering Words
[xml|www]
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MYC Yoga Bend
[xml|www]
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Bend, Oregon Real Estate Blog [xml|www]
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The Blacksmith Restaurant [xml|www]
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Lifestyle Bend
[xml|www]
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Leave it to Barney [xml|www]
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Steve Bennett Builders [xml|www]
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Foot Zone Blog [xml|www]
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Dating Is Weird [xml|www]
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Trying to live the raw food life in Bend, Oregon [xml|www]
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The Lone Cowgirl [xml|www]
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Planker Sandwiches Presents: Traveling Sandwiches
[xml|www] -
Wiggling Around [xml|www]
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Peachy Green
[xml|www]
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propaganda and lies
[xml|www]
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Campbell PR Blog [xml|www]
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Good Dirt Jewelry [xml|www]
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Escape to Books [xml|www]
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robertwrose.com
[xml|www]
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Run Girl Run! [xml|www]
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The Blender [xml|www]
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Bend Tax Tips [xml|www]
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Professional Counseling Services [xml|www]
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Bend Wild [xml|www]
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knives and lanyards
[xml|www]
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David VanKeuren's Photography
[xml|www]
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The Bend Beer Blog [xml|www]
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Latitudes and Lassitudes [xml|www]
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Forever Family Designs [xml|www]
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WAVE Journey.com [xml|www]
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A Day on the Bike [xml|www]
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Run Bitches Run [xml|www]
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Central Oregon Landwatch [xml|www]
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The Little Things
[xml|www]
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Hydro Flask Blog [xml|www]
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pinkwik
[xml|www]
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Bend Oregon ... and a little beyond! [xml|www]
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Kids@Heart [xml|www]
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Fleet Feet Sports Bend Blog [xml|www]
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to knit in peace [xml|www]
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Cooking For My Guy
[xml|www]
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Paula Watts Photography [xml|www]
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RankByDesign
[xml|www]
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Pastor Mike's Faith Journey Adventure [xml|www]
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Fade Away... [xml|www]
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Build Baby Build [xml|www]
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Play Outdoors Campfire
[xml|www]
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The Social Business Blog [xml|www]
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A Year In The Life of Krystal
[xml|www]
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The Share House
[xml|www]
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Sentences We Love [xml|www]
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True North [xml|www]
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The Beeb, the Beagle & My Bestfriend [xml|www]
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Craving [xml|www]
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Gill Adventures Blog [xml|www]
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Central Oregon Web Professionals Usergroup
[xml|www]
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Camalli Book Company [xml|www]
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The Central Oregon Veteran [xml|www]
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Sagebrush Blog [xml|www]
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Occidental Tourist
[xml|www]
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The Wagger [xml|www]
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Marvin's Blog: CEO of Bend Memorial Clinic
[xml|www]
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The Map [xml|www]
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Amerine.net
[xml|www] -
Forget-About-It Golf
[xml|www]
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Barker Bass Blog [xml|www]
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Sagewind Voices [xml|www]
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Matt Hand - The Media Geek [xml|www]
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Awbrey Dental Group Blog
[xml|www] -
Seth Anderson, Architect
[xml|www]
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WOW! And I say it louder. [xml|www]
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Dylan Darling's Real Estate Blog [xml|www]
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Greener By Design [xml|www]
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Alt Blu [xml|www]
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TBD blog [xml|www]
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Pacific Crest Stock Photography Blog
[xml|www]
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Nosler
[xml|www] -
COTA News
[xml|www]
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Martha Knows
[xml|www]
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Don's Sunnyside Blog [xml|www]
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Until All have Heard [xml|www]
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COISUG
[xml|www]
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The Trading Desk [xml|www]
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Tangled and True [xml|www]
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Carpet Cleaning Bend Oregon [xml|www]
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Buzz By Annie's [xml|www]
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Ms.E. [xml|www]
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My Tangerine Dreams [xml|www]
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Blooming Eventually [xml|www]
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Learning Conversations [xml|www]
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The Pure Ingredients [xml|www]
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3:18 Theology [xml|www]
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CS Distributors and Creative Smocking [xml|www]
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yarrow [xml|www]
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Ginger's Kitchenware [xml|www]
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View From The Cliff [xml|www]
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Create and Relate [xml|www]
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Parenting A Complex Special Needs Child [xml|www]
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KerryONeal.com
[xml|www]
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BluSportz
[xml|www]
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Dudley's BookShop Cafe [xml|www]
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Postcards from the Edge [xml|www]
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Parking Lot Mamas [xml|www]
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Central Oregon Life
[xml|www]
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Ethereal Graphics
[xml|www]
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It Was Written [xml|www]
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breaking the rules [xml|www]
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Be Well with Qigong [xml|www]
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Spiritual Awareness Community of the Cascades [xml|www]
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Blessed Wanderer
[xml|www]
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BendNights Dot Blog [xml|www]
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The Speed Test
[xml|www]
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Olive Stew - All the Ways We Eff-Up Love [xml|www]
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Liana's Lifetime [xml|www]
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The Huni Family (Almost) Daily Diatribe [xml|www]
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Bend Attachment Parenting
[xml|www]
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life is weird (and so am i) [xml|www]
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BendBubble Phase Three [xml|www]
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coldframed tomatoes [xml|www]
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On The Record
[xml|www] -
NeighborImpact Food Bank News [xml|www]
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Parenting An Adult with Complex Special Needs
[xml|www]
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The Sorted [xml|www]
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AdFedCO Blog
[xml|www]
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Invest In Oregon
[xml|www]
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IronHorse [xml|www]
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Dustin Cowell Enterprises Blog
[xml|www]
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THEMdidit
[xml|www]
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Edwards Photography
[xml|www]
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Wannabe Hipster Mom
[xml|www] -
Mike Toth Art
[xml|www]
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Shopping With Katrina [xml|www]
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BrianInBend [xml|www]
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Big Star Farm's Blog
[xml|www]
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Think, Love & Live Green
[xml|www]
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Pale Musings
[xml|www]
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Blueturtle's Space [xml|www]
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Central Oregon Critic [xml|www]
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olivefingers
[xml|www]
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Brewerman [xml|www]
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Images by Jeff Kennedy [xml|www]
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Alpine Blogs [xml|www]
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Central Oregon Savings [xml|www]
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Merlot Mortgage Blog [xml|www]
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Katie [xml|www]
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Training For Fun! [xml|www]
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Juniper Seahorses [xml|www]
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Ignite Bend
[xml|www]
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Bicycle43 [xml|www]
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Sunriver Google Fiber RFI Response
[xml|www]
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High Desert Diva [xml|www]
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Tom's Book Publishing Blog [xml|www]
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THE JC PEOPLE [xml|www]
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Living With Music [xml|www]
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The Grumpy Forester [xml|www]
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Central Oregon Food [xml|www]
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Bend Spirit Club
[xml|www]
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Mom2Mom Bend, Oregon [xml|www]
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Brysons of Bend [xml|www]
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Birdies 4 Babies Golf Charity [xml|www]
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On The Bright Side.net
[xml|www]
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Backporch Coffee Roasters
[xml|www]
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How the Real Mother Hen Sees the World [xml|www]
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Garage Improvement [xml|www]
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Bend, Oregon, Daily Photo [xml|www]
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The Gardener's Husband
[xml|www]
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PPP (Pole Pedal Paddle) [xml|www]
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End Times [xml|www]
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WebCyclery Blog
[xml|www] -
Elise Michaels Media [xml|www]
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The Commercial Photographer [xml|www]
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RAMBLETRON 4.75.269 [xml|www]
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Elan Vital Anthology [xml|www]
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Peebo the Bike Commuter [xml|www]
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Bend Mothers Acting Up [xml|www]
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Bend Drum Circle [xml|www]
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Bend Chiro Blog [xml|www]
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It's the little things in life... [xml|www]
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Holly Contracting and Design [xml|www]
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Snowboard Mt Bachelor
[xml|www]
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there once was a girl [xml|www]
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Things that go great with coffee, friends and waffles [xml|www]
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Dwyer Williams Potter, Attorneys, LLP [xml|www]
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dopeblend news
[xml|www] -
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Stroller Strides - Bend, OR [xml|www]
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Cowgirls Blog [xml|www]
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Isabella Acosta Barna [xml|www]
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Search Consulting Service Blog [xml|www]
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Bend Morons [xml|www]
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bent and beat [xml|www]
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The Minkz
[xml|www]
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backstage pass [xml|www]
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If you're not ready to die for it... [xml|www]
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The Debut Effect [xml|www]
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Stride Steady [xml|www]
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bent paradox
[xml|www]
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Victoria's Secrets Told [xml|www]
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disturbing the comfortable [xml|www]
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XC Oregon [xml|www]
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Ania Designs [xml|www]
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There Goes Today, it Slowly Fades Away [xml|www]
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Dusty Tales [xml|www]
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Bring Back the 80's! [xml|www]
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Life Behind the Lens [xml|www]
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Bend Oregon Photos [xml|www]
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Bend Gazette [xml|www]
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Our journey to Paige [xml|www]
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Live on the Fly Studio [xml|www]
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Pensees [xml|www]
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The BF Stop: The Official BIG Folio Blog [xml|www]
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Bivwak Outdoors [xml|www]
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the ecomoderate
[xml|www]
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eMusings [xml|www]
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Scam Protectors [xml|www]
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bikebuzz
[xml|www] -
Tom Cornilliac
[xml|www]
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Call Me Ed [xml|www]
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I intentionally wrote it out to be an illegible mess [xml|www]
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Gregg Zivney [xml|www]
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Music and Musings [xml|www]
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The Adventures of Rich Jandt [xml|www]
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The Christensons [xml|www]
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Kitchen Weech [xml|www]
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Juniper Ridge Info [xml|www]
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Lighthouse Parents [xml|www]
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Not So Sex and the City [xml|www]
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Laura @ Curl Up & Dye [xml|www]
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Media Review [xml|www]
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Chinook TC
[xml|www]