The Party of NO claims mantle of bipartisanship
More often than you might think, I’ll start off writing the weeks blog entry, only to end up writing something else entirely. This is one of those weeks.
This particular blog entry started off noting the eerie similarities between the dramatic rise in Right Wing extremism and the very people they claim to hate: Muslim extremists. There was the shooting at the Holocaust Museum last year, an attack on the Pentagon last week, the dive bombing of a plane into a major financial institution (the IRS in Austin), and now a Texas militia group calling itself the “Army of God” (ie: “Hezbollah”) is terrorizing every “un-Christian” business in the town of Amarillo, Tx.
They take their children out of the public schools to focus on a religious-based education (aka: Madrasah) and train them to be “holy warriors“.
They wish death upon anyone that doesn’t think like them.
And what do these nuts have in common? They all call themselves “Patriots“… and “God is on their side”.
Then came Sunday…
Every Sunday I watch three of the major broadcast morning shows, “Meet the Press”, ABC’s “This Week”, and “Fox news Sunday”. And this week I saw a repeating theme across all three shows: Republicans bemoaning “the lack of a bipartisanship” in Congress. (well, whose fault is THAT?)
Mitt Romney (Fox), Rich Lowrey (ABC) and Orin Hatch (NBC) all practically bragged about how when Republicans were in charge, THEY were able to get “bipartisan support for THEIR bills”, while accusing Democrats of “ramming health care reform down our throats”.
Now, maybe it’s just me, but doesn’t that suggest Democrats are more willing to compromise and work with Republicans than Republicans are willing to compromise and work with Democrats?
It takes it takes a set of brass ones to try and claim “moral superiority” for being more obstructionist than your rival Party. What’s worse is that NO ONE EVER CALLS THEM ON IT. No one ever stops and says, “Excuse me, but how can you complain about the lack of bipartisanship when it is YOU saying NO to everything?”
The health care reform bill (HCR) coming out of Washington is looking more and more like a Conservative bill every day. They are threatening to strip out even their weak ineffective “Public Option”; “Single Payer” was never even on the table, and Anti-choice Democrats are threatening to derail all of HCR if it doesn’t specifically deny “federal funding of abortion”, which not only isn’t even in the bill, but contains specific restrictions against it.
Let this be a lesson to Democrats. If the Republicans ever regain control of Congress… maybe I should say “officially” since they seem to control Congress even with a “Super-minority”… Democrats must stop “crossing Party lines” and supporting the GOP’s agenda. Because not only will voters not respect you for doing so, but Republicans can then brag about how THEY can “get things done” while bragging about “bipartisan support” for their legislation. Meanwhile, with Democrats in charge, Republicans simply say “No” to everything… even voting against bills that contain their own Amendments… slow Washington to a crawl… even blocking legislation that would extend unemployment benefits and government jobs programs under false pretenses… and then expect to be REWARDED in November by campaigning against a “do-nothing Congress” that is incapable of getting anything done, or else accuse Democrats of ramming legislation “down your throat” when Democrats finally realize they have no choice but to go it alone if they want anything to get done.
If there is one thing George Bush taught us: You can’t negotiate with terrorists.
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BSC Republicans: A Review of Election Night, Texas 2010.
SPECIAL EDITION
It is election night and the Texas Primary returns are still coming in. If you didn’t think the Republican Party was Bat “$#!+” Crazy before, the primary results seem to all but confirm it. How else does one explain away such huge support for a manifestly insane governor and a series of embarrassing state propositions even making it onto the GOP ballot let alone winning HUGE support among Republican voters?
First off, Governor Rick “Good Hair” Perry, who was Lieutenant Governor under George W. Bush from 1994 until Bush was awarded the Presidency in 2000, became Governor of Texas at that time, where he has been ever since.
In 2007, Perry and the GOP lobbied HARD to put “tort reform” on the November ballot (with frequent ads ridiculing the “hot coffee in the lap” judgment that made headlines years before). The GOP, along with their buddies in the health care lobby, ran ads for months promising that “if we capped injury damages at $5 million dollars, the cost of health insurance would go down and more people could afford to buy insurance.” Opponents of the bill pointed out that they already tried this in California, and it was a miserable failure. But Perry got his way and the motion passed.
The result? Insurance rates did NOT go down (big surprise) and Texas now has the highest percentage of uninsured in the entire country at 26.9%. To make matters worse, the arbitrary “$5 million dollar cap for a lifetime of care” they passed is the same whether the victim is 7 or 70. A seriously injured child can burn through $5 million rather quickly in this era of skyrocketing health care costs (where the GOP “solution” is still “tort reform”.)
As of this writing, Governor “Good Hair” has defeated his equally insane opponent, Senator Kay Baily Hutchinson, despite mercilessly slamming him with a barrage of negative ads. In Perry’s own ads, he slammed KBH “for voting for the $700B Bailout”… which he himself begged her to pass according to KBH. In one ad, Hutchinson is seen telling supporters that she “wouldn’t give anyone a $700 Billion dollar blank check… not even Ronald Reagan”, followed by video of her voting Yea for the bailout the very next day. Hutchinson’s defense in an interview Monday night: “I said I would never give anyone a blank check, and I didn’t. It was limited to $700 Billion.” But as clearly seen in Perry’s ad, it wasn’t “the amount” she was concerned with, it was not knowing what it would be spent on.
In another ad, Perry comes out as a Tenther, pronouncing his “firm belief in the Tenth Amendment” to keep “broken Washington” from “interfering in State government”, and that he would always “fight for the Tenth Amendment”.
Perry already earned his place in the Tea-bagger spotlight when he “threatened that Texas might succeed from the union” if the Government forced health care reform upon the state of Texas. When it was pointed out that “Texas does not have the power to succeed” (a common misconception of many Texans with no more than a tenth grade education), only to “divide itself into as many as five separate states”, Perry responded “that is what I meant all along“, arguing that the federal government “would throw Texas out of the union” before it gave it eight more Senators. Riiiiiiiiiiiight.
Perry managed to draw 51% of the vote and thus avoid a run-off with KBH in April. The “anti-Perry” vote was split between Hutchinson (31%) and Tea-bagger Debra Medina (18%). With 66% of precincts reporting, the local news asked Medina if she was ready to concede the race. “No way!” was her response. “We will wait until ALL the returns are in to see if Perry falls below 50%”, she tells the reporter. Why? You’re not in second place, moron. Even if Perry falls below 50% and there’s a run-off, it will be with the second highest vote getter, and that’s KBH… who leads Medina by 13%. No one ever accused Tea-baggers of living in the “Reality-based community”.
Then there are the Ballot initiatives. On the GOP ballot exclusively, There are five propositions. NONE OF THESE INITIATIVES were on the Democratic ballot, so I have NO idea what the point was of them even being on there… except maybe to draw more pro-Perry Bat-crap crazy Republicans to the polls. The five Propositions on the Texas State ballot might be laughed off any other state ballot, but in Texas, which ranks 49th in Verbal SAT scores, 36th in number of High School graduates, and 40th on education expenditures per child, the results are still surprising (though, I supposed, they shouldn’t be):
Proposition 1: Require voters to show a “Photo ID” before they may vote. 83% of Republicans support this proposition. A fix to a problem that doesn’t exist anywhere but in the minds of Republican voters. There is no mention in the ballot initiative where people are to obtain this photo ID. Despite being a big state, not everyone drives (eg: many seniors) so not everyone has a drivers license. Other “unofficial” forms of photo ID are meaningless, so just who is to issue these ID’s and at whose cost? Do you charge voters for a State-provided photo ID? That’s a poll tax, which is illegal. And how do you obtain photos of those who can’t get to their “local” government office to have their picture taken? Does the government now have to offer taxi service to bring people to the “photo ID center”, or do they just go door-to-door with a camera? I wonder what all this would cost? Something tells me these morons didn’t exactly think this thing through.
Proposition 2: “Control Government Growth”. A proclamation limiting the growth of State government by a formula based on population and inflation, which can only be overridden by public vote or in cases of emergency. 92% are voting Yes. I see a few problems with using such a narrowly defined formula to calculate state spending, but for the most part, this is probably the least bat-crap crazy initiative of the five.
Proposition 3: Cut Federal Income Taxes. A demand that the U.S. Congress “stimulate the economy by cutting taxes.” 93% agree with this measure… you know, because the Bush tax cuts worked so well. I guess no one has told these asshats that 95% of them already GOT a tax cut under President Obama. And when you have Tea-baggers in the streets protesting the size of the deficit, what smarter move is there than to cut tax revenue so the government will have to borrow more money to operate?
Proposition 4 (my favorite): Decree on the “public acknowledgment of God”. This initiative would “allow the word ‘God’, prayers, and display of the Ten Commandments in all schools, public buildings, and public gatherings“. 95% of Republicans voted yes on this measure. The remaining 5% are Scientologists (/snark). I suspect this vote says more about the make up of the GOP than anything else… that is, no Muslims, Hindus, Buddhist or Atheists. No one but “the Big Two”: Christians and Jews. And since when ars religious displays/speech/activity prohibited at “public gatherings” outside of schools or government buildings? And if just ONE of these Right-wing tools can explain the legal justification for displaying Commandments such as “Keeping the Sabbath holy” or “No other Gods before Me” in a government building, I’m all ears.
Proposition 5: Mandatory Sonograms (and forced viewing) for women seeking an abortion. 69% voted Yes (surprisingly low in this BSC state.) This ballot measure is truly offensive. As if the entire abortion process isn’t traumatic enough already… between the protesters calling you “baby killer”, and (in some states) forcing women to watch videos showing aborted fetuses, followed by the abortion procedure itself and the shame many women are already feeling… let’s heap on top of that, forcing women… some of them rape victims… to view the fetus they are about to abort. Let’s see how deep we can dig those emotional scars. Seriously now, isn’t that the precise goal of such a law… Either change you mind or be deeply traumatized for life? Republican pro-lifers have this delusional image of smiling young women skipping to the abortion clinic on their way to homeroom.
With Perry winning 52% of the vote and a run-off now unnecessary, it will be Perry (who won re-election in 2007 with just 39% of the vote thanks to a carefully orchestrated 4-man race splitting the anti-Perry vote three ways) vs. the former Democratic Mayor of Houston Bill White (who was just replaced with the city’s first openly-gay mayor Annise Parker).
And those GOP Ballot Initiatives… since they weren’t on the Democratic ballot, their purpose clearly was not to see if they appear on the November ballot… I have NO CLUE what their purpose was other than to entertain Republican voters while they cast their ballot. A fun activity to attract wingnuts to the polling station. Cheaper than coloring books I suppose.
It’s going to be a fun next eight months. 
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NBC Healthcare Report fraught with MAJOR errors.
Last Thursday, NBC’s Nighly News opened with a two-part story on the “Obama Bi-Partisan Health Care Summit” held at Blair House in Washington D.C.. The opening segment talked about “strategy”, and how “the Democrats objective seemed to be to appear reasonable”, while the Republican strategy was “to distance themselves from the Democrats bill”. Various clips were played of the exchanges between the two Parties and how far apart they appeared to be at times, all the while Democrats keep repeating “how close” we really are in agreement on so many issues. Nothing major there.
The second segment was a travesty unto itself. All about the cost of health care reform, the second report then incorrectly reported… in both pictures and words… “the cost of President Obama’s proposed health care reform package” as $900 TRILLION dollars over ten years instead of $900 Billion dollars over ten years… off by a mere 1000x (or 100,000%):
Now, I know that it was probably “an honest mistake”, when people are tossing around the “T”-word like it was just another big-government expenditure. But when you are doing a report on the COST of health care, and you’re playing clips of Republicans claiming “we just can’t afford this”, getting something like that THAT wrong is simply inexcusable. Opponents are already screaming bloody murder over the supposed cost of the HCR bill, and when a major news organization misreports a figure like that, it only adds fuel to the fire. They did not correct the mistake on-air during the program, nor did they correct it on the next nights newscast. One person told me they they did correct the number in the online video version (but as some have pointed out, you can’t unring a bell, and how many people will see the online version, let alone watch the same report a second time online to discover the error?), but the online report replaced the old error with a completely new… and far less excusable… one, now reporting the size of the presidents’ reform package as “$1 Trillion dollars over ten years“… now off by a factor of only 10% (or $100 BILLION dollars). Accidentally saying “Trillion” instead of “Billion” might be an honest “spelling” mistake, but ADDING $100 BILLION dollars to the CBO’s OFFICIALLY stated cost of reform with NO basis borders on DELIBERATE misinformation. (Were they thinking simply wiping two zeros from their report rather than change the “T” to a “B” makes them look less incompetent?)
During that same report, they play a clip of Senator John Boehner (R-Coppertone) claiming that the HCR bill “as it now stands” would “provide federal funding of abortion for the first time in history”. Now unless something has changed since President Obama said this before a joint session of Congress last September:
“…under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place.”
…Boehner is talking out of an orifice slightly lower than his belt-line. And naturally, NBC said absolutely nothing to contradict or even challenge his assertion. They simply let it go as fact.
It is difficult enough for Democrats to fight the constant barrage of misinformation being pushed by the Republican Party and their corporate overlords, let alone having a lazy (or even deliberately stilted) mainstream media giant like NBC spreading GLARING errors and allowing seriously questionable claims to go unchallenged.
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Republican to English dictionary
About a week ago, a Right-Wing caller into one of the major Progressive radio-shows I listen to called President Bush “a Liberal”. Saturday, one of my YouTube videos drew the same “accusation”. Of all the things George W. Bush was, “a Liberal” was not one of them. Liberals don’t view government as “evil”, but as a potential force for good (I’ve always wondered about politicians who condemn government while running for office, or the voters that elect those same politicians in the mistaken belief they will somehow make government better.) The reasoning of both men was that Bush’s fiscal irresponsibility automatically made him “a Liberal”… because in their mind, that’s what a Liberal is. Take the test:
| President #1 | President #2 |
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So which is the “fiscally irresponsible Liberal” and which is the “frugal Conservative”? President #1 is Ronald Reagan. President #2 is Bill Clinton.
But this isn’t the first time I’ve heard this. Conservatives equate “big spender” with “Liberal”, because that is the extent of their knowledge of what “Liberal” means. Spend money like a drunken sailor, increase the National Debt and expand the size of government, you must be a “Liberal”.
George Bush wasn’t a Conservative, that’s true. But spending doesn’t make one a “Liberal” either as the above test points out. Bush was a NeoCon… “neo-Conservative”. His Administration went on a deregulatory binge that led to the financial disaster on Wall Street and a 3/4 of a Trillion dollar bailout while employment was already tumbling. And while the markets were struggling to stave off the coming economic collapse on Wall Street, Bush went on a cross-country speaking tour in 2006 trying talk the county into privatizing Social Security. That’s not “Liberal” by anyone’s definition.
So this got me thinking of all the other Right-Wing Talking Points that we hear but no one ever asks them to explain:
Here in Texas, Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson is in a mudslinging contest with incumbent Governor “Good Hair” Rick Perry, who was Dubya’s two-term Lieutenant Governor before Bush ran for President in 2000 and has been our governor ever since (winning reelection in 2007 with just 39% of the vote in a carefully orchestrated four-way race). Outside of Texas, Perry is a punchline, openly joking about “secession”. And now, he is running a TV ad (currently not online) where he comes out, unambiguously, as a Tenther (defined)… which is code for rejecting “Government healthcare” if offered.
In 2006, Joe Lieberman’s reelection website was “ConnecticutForLieberman.com”… not “Lieberman for Connecticut”, because, as was later noted, “It’s all about Joe”. It’s always been all about Joe. As we’ve seen in the health care debate, the Iraq War and supporting the Republican candidate for President, the only person Joe cares about is Joe.
Here in Texas, the top two Republican candidates for governor, Rick Perry and Kay Bailey Hutchinson have their own websites. You guessed it: TexansForPerry.com and TexansForKay.com. To be fair to Perry, a cyber-squatter is sitting of “PerryForTexas.com”, but “KayForTexas.com” and “KayForTexans.com” both redirect you to “TexansForKay.com”. Something about those Republicans that think “it’s all about them“.
Hutchinson won reelection in 2006 by throwing GWB under the bus, criticizing Gitmo and citing the need “to bring our troops home and end the war in Iraq”. Of course, with her reelection, she joined the GOP chorus to criticize then-candidate Obama in 2008 for wanting to end the war in Iraq and now attacks his support for terrorism trials to be held in civilian courts instead of Gitmo. If you’re surprised by the about-face, you probably WERE born yesterday.
Anyway, Hutchinson quickly picked up the “Health Care Reform would be a government takeover” football and has been running with it ever since. I doubt a campaign stop has gone by where she didn’t vow to “stop the government takeover of health care.” I would just LOVE the chance to ask her about this because there’s no way to defend the accusation without sounding like Michelle Bachman’s even-crazier half sister. So without further ado, I give you my…
“Republican to English dictionary”:
1) Talking Point #1: denouncing Health Insurance Reform as a “government takeover of health care” despite the fact that the government isn’t threatening to seize control of hospitals or put a single doctor on the government payroll. Here’s how they explain it:
If the government offers insurance, it will be SO cheap and SO popular it will put private insurers out of business, leaving people with no choice but the government from which to buy insurance. Eventually, with all insurance companies out of business, there’s nothing to stop the government from taking over the entire health care industry.
Yes, the government insurance that would lead to “death panels” and “rationed care” would be SO popular, “everyone” would sign up and put the private insurance industry out of business. Got that? Me neither.
And how long before this “takeover”… this eventual total collapse of the entire health insurance industry followed by the government socializing all hospitals and doctors… is complete? One year? Five? Ten? Well, actually, even IF this far fetched scenario took place, it would likely take 30-50 years. How do I know? The court battles alone over “seizing” privately owned hospitals could tie up the courts for decades. And I don’t see the Federal government going on a “construction binge” building brand new government-owned hospitals across the country simply to circumvent buying existing hospitals. I’d also like to point out that despite warning labels, high taxes and city ordinances, the government has yet to put the tobacco industry out to pasture. The GOP would like you to think this would all happen virtually over night.
But it’s a ridiculous scenario to begin with. Other nations with a “public option”, most notably Japan, have thriving a private insurance industry. Will they have to adjust? Of course! That is the point after all of including a public option. Prices come down, insurance companies cut costs and coverage increases. If you can’t do that, then you deserve to go out of business.
2) Claiming “the Stimulus hasn’t created one (net) new job“. I put “net” in parenthesis because that word was added only just last week as millions of people were pointing to their job as either being created or saved by the Stimulus. The Republican argument before that was “we’re still losing jobs”, ergo, the lack of positive employment numbers was “proof” the Stimulus “hadn’t created any new jobs”. Because in Republican-Land, if you haven’t gone from losing 700,000 jobs a month to zero in just one year, whatever you are doing isn’t working.
The Obama White House wisely put out the following graph showing that job growth is clearly moving in the right direction:
Many pundits pointed out the number of Republicans citing jobs in their state that were created by the Stimulus. Even President Obama ridiculed them to their face for bashing the Stimulus while posing for publicity photos with giant Publishers-Clearinghouse sized checks. Their credibility on the issue plummeted quickly, forcing them to revise their wording at last week’s CPAC convention, now claiming “the Stimulus hasn’t created one NET new job.”
Looking at the above graph, who would you rather have in charge of the economy? The Party that spent eight years getting us here, or the one that’s digging us out?
3) Teabaggers screaming President Obama “raised our taxes” even after getting a tax cut. President Obama cut taxes for 95% of Americans (and holding steady for another 3%), so unless there are FAR more corporate titans in America than anyone thought… enough to populate these Teabagger rallies with hundreds of protesters in cities across the nation, chances are President Obama didn’t raise their taxes. So how do they explain this disconnect?
When I asked a Conservative friend, the argument was that “taxes raised on the so-called rich simply get passed along to the rest of us in the form of higher prices.” Ah! So much for their faith in the “Free Market” to keep prices low. Paris Hilton can protest her taxes going up as much as she wants; I don’t foresee ticket prices for her movies going up any.
Maybe it’s just me, but wouldn’t it follow then that prices would go DOWN if we just cut their taxes? We tried that under George W Bush. Funny, but I don’t remember things getting cheaper as a result. Nor did they create more jobs with all that extra untaxed income… which was the original argument for cutting their taxes.
There is a new (?) viral email making the rounds right now “pointing out” that the economy didn’t tank “until Democrats took charge of Congress in 2007″… a myth I debunked all the way back in March of last year, and the fantastic economy under Bill Clinton was when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress.
While this is an interesting rewrite of history, the most glaring question is, “I thought you said Clinton left Bush with a Recession?” For how many years did we hear Republicans deflect blame for the pitiful Bush economy by blaming Clinton? Who now, again, was in charge of Congress when Bush was supposedly “handed a Recession”? You can’t have it both ways, folks. Either the Clinton economy was great while you were in charge or it wasn’t. Make up your mind. And if I remember correctly (and I do), those exact same Republicans were still in charge when Bush took office and the economy continued to sink. The Market wasn’t exactly on the rebound either by September 10th. To the contrary, the DOW continued to lose another 1452 points over the next seven-and-a-half months.
It’s a common theme to condemn Democrats who were elected to fix Republican-caused disasters, for not fixing those disasters fast enough. Republicans need people to believe their disasters are the Democrats fault because Democrats are in charge when their economic timebombs go off. Radio’s Thom Hartmann calls this “the two Santa Clauses Theory“, where Republicans promise voters “tax cuts” and “government services” while borrowing frightening sums of cash to pay for it all, and then demonizing Democrats for raising taxes and borrowing additional money (at a much slower rate) to fix the mess they left. Then voters, unhappy with having to live within their means, return to the people promising both low taxes and more services (while ratcheting up the National Debt).
What happens to all that hysteria over the Debt while Republicans are in charge? The GOP does an amazing job of rallying their “low information” voter base to take to the streets and feign outrage over something that has been a problem for years once they are no longer in charge.
The very first video I ever posted to YouTube was when the National Debt broke the $10Trillion dollar mark in mid 2006 (before Democrats retook Congress btw). Where were the Teabaggers then??? Less than five and a half years after President Clinton left a less than $5Trillion dollar Debt that was shrinking thanks to a balanced budget and budget surplus, Bush and the Republican controlled Congress had more than doubled the National Debt and turned the surplus into a record deficit. So pardon me when I question the Tea Parties sincerity over controlling the size of the Debt. But now, with fewer tax dollars coming in, the government needs to borrow more money to get the economy moving again. And the Baggers are in hysterics.
I used to write a lot about the size of the National Debt under George Bush. I haven’t written much on the subject since. Why? Am I giant hypocrite? No. Let me explain:
It takes money to run the Federal government. Lots of money. And when you have high employment and lots of people paying taxes into the system, you don’t need to borrow that much to make up the “difference”… which we call “the deficit”. The biggest drains on our economy now are the Bush Tax Cuts and the two Bush Wars. President Obama has taken Defense Cuts off the table and shifted part of the Bush Tax Cuts over to lower income Americans, so that leaves just borrowing and spending to make up the difference.
Now everyone thinks we can cut spending. But two problems with that: one, you can’t cut spending without cutting someones job, and two, there just isn’t that much left to cut after you take Defense off the table. Republicans would then have us make deep, vain gushing cuts into “entitlements”… namely, things like the “Medicare” that Teabaggers demand the government to keep its hands away from… and Social Security… which Bush campaigned to privatize the year before the Stock Market collapsed.
So now you have to borrow. And if you want to create jobs and fund new industries, it has to be a lot. The irony is that this wouldn’t be such a huge problem if George Bush hadn’t added $6 trillion to the National Debt with nothing to show for it. More money was lost to the Bush Tax Cuts than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. The tax cuts that they said were “necessary to create jobs”… how’d that work out for ya?
Quote of the Day:
“When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.” – Jonathan Swift
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Putting the “Snowpocalypse” into perspective with maps
Recently, the Right-Wing echo chamber has been in a lather over record snowfall in the American North East, suggesting that it is “proof” of the nonexistence of “Global Warming”. Last week, I noted how famed Conservatives Sen. Jim Inhoff (R-OK), Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), Sean Hannity and Sarah Palin are all giddy over how foolish Al Gore must now feel in light of the massive amount of moisture dumped on DC this Winter in the form of snow. Add dead-squirrel-toupee enthusiast Donald Trump to that list, who suggested that the Nobel Prize committee “take back” Al Gore’s award in light of “the coldest Winter ever recorded” (total nonsense. No such claim has ever been made.)
On last weeks “Fox news Sunday“, regular panelist Bill Kristol said of the Winter blizzard, “It’s awfully convenient to have a theory that predicts both less snowfall and more snowfall at the same time.” I defy Mr. Kristol to name a single scientist that ever said Global Warming would produce “less snowfall”. In fact, the opposite is true. In 2006, when he and Boss Limbaugh were pointing to “increased snowfall in Greenland and Antarctica” as “proof” that Global Warming didn’t exist, the response was the same then as it is today: that increased snowfall means more water is evaporating. The scientific community has been absolutely consistent on that point… unlike the Deniers.
Meanwhile, as the American North East digs itself out from under record snowfall, the Vancouver Winter Olympics on the West Coast is being plagued by unusually warm weather disrupting the event schedule. So let’s put the Deniers “proof” in perspective with some maps (click on map for interactive version):
(two more maps on linked page)
(If you have any reports I’ve missed, post them in the comments and I’ll add them to the maps. – Ed)
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Go ahead and laugh Republicans, but record snowfall IS from Global Warming.
Just a quicky.
The North East is currently suffering its THIRD blizzard in two months. Giddy conservative Global Warming deniers like Jim Inhofe (R-OK) were photographed building an “igloo” in his front yard with his grandchildren, mockingly calling it “Al Gore’s new home.” Sean Hannity of Fox “News” claimed on his show Monday night that the North East snowstorms “seem to contradict Al Gore’s hysterical Global Warming theories”. And Wednesday, that towering intellect known as Sarah Palin called global warming studies ‘snake oil science.’
(ADDENDUM: Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) laughingly said it would “continue to snow in DC until Al Gore cries Uncle.”)
I have but one question for all these “authorities” on climate science: WHERE DO YOU THINK ALL THAT MOISTURE CAME FROM?
Breaking News: It’s not Winter EVERYWHERE, dipshits. El Nino, that massive buildup of warm water off the Pacific coast of South America… where it is currently SUMMER… is pumping Billions of gallons of evaporated seawater into the atmosphere, where the jetstream then carries it to the North East (where it is Winter) and falls as snow. If it were Summer, it would be pouring rain, but since it is Winter, it falls as snow.
Now, the deniers equate “snow” with “cold”, thereby “contradicting” Global Warming. So I did a quick Google News search for “record low temperature” and found exactly ZERO reports of record cold associated with this blizzard. Meanwhile, Seattle just had its “warmest January in history“, and Vancouver… home of next weeks Winter Olympics, is having to truck in snow from neighboring towns in time for the event.
While Ms. Palin is on the road belittling climate science, someone might want to ask her why the Kuskokwim River ice road in South Western Alaska is cracking up in December?
As I’ve explained here previously, there is a difference between “climate” and “weather”. Florida has a warm “climate”, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t get cold there in the Winter.
In the 2006 movie “Jesus Camp“, a mother that was homeschooling her children ridiculed reports that “global temperatures may rise by 7/10th of a degree…” “Doesn’t sound like very much, does it?”, she says snarkilly to her children.
Is 7/10th of a degree very much? Ask an ice cube what the difference is between 32′ degrees and 32.7′ degrees.
UPDATE: Beck thinks Climate Scientists should stab themselves to death.
Myth Busting: “In Search Of…” 1970’s “Global Cooling” hype.
While Washington D.C. and the surrounding area attempts to dig itself out from under “The Snow-pocolypse”, Global Warming deniers are back at it again, pointing to it and the unusually blizzardly (pardon the new word) Winter we’ve been having… mixed in with last Falls “leaked Climate-Gate emails” as PROOF that “Global Warming” is actually a giant fraud (or, according to Utah State-Representative Mike Noel, a secret plot by Liberals aimed at “population control”… because Republicans are SO concerned about Liberal attempts to suppress the number of brown people in the world… unless they think “Global Warming” exists everywhere EXCEPT the United States. Nah. That can’t be it.)
The DailyKOS released a poll last week echoing what we’ve all known for quite sometime now: these people are NUTS! But the KOS poll left out one CRUCIAL question IMHO: Level of Education. Because I’m certain if you asked, the less educated you are, the more likely you are to be a Right-wing loon with ridiculous views. (One corollary to this rule… the richer you are, the easier it is for a dumb person to graduate from a prestigious school… eg: Dubya attending both Harvard and Yale.)
Anyway, back on topic:
Climate Change deniers love to cite “1970’s hysteria” over “Global Cooling” and articles written at the time predicting “the coming ice age”. Conservative columnist George Will loves pointing to “Global Cooling” reports in the ’70s frequently as a way to ridicule “Climate Change” science today. That’s a bit like ridiculing The Internet today because Bill Gates once called it “a passing fad” in his 1995 book “The Road Ahead” (or was it during a Presser for “MSN: The Microsoft Network” that same year?).
I personally am old enough to remember claims of “the coming ice age” in the 70’s. I remember reading an except in Readers Digest about The Great Blizzard of 1888, where over 4′ of snow (40″-50″ inches) fell in the space of one week over New York, New Jersey, and parts of Connecticut. That was but one example given as “proof” the Earth was cooling and we were headed for another ice age (“every 10,000 years” they claimed, thus we were due.)
So I did a little research regarding these “Global Cooling” claims in the 1970’s and found some fascinating stuff.
One of my favorite TV shows in the 70’s was “In Search Of…”, a weekly 1/2 hour pseudo-science series hosted by Leonard Nimoy (of Star Trek fame… which pre-dated me). Among topics like the search for Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster, Season Two included an episode entitled “The Coming Ice Age”, of which I found a copy online on the Usenet (binary newsgroups. Don’t ask me to explain). The entire basis for the “Global Cooling” argument consisted almost entirely of anecdotal evidence:
First broadcast in May of 1978, I watched the entire episode (twice) listening for their “proof” upon which they were basing their claims. “Canada, the Northern United States, and much of Europe were buried under a two mile thick sheet of ice some 18 thousand years ago”, Leonard remarks. “The world’s population has flourished to over 5 billion people during this interval of abnormal warmth“, we are told. Presumably, a warm Earth just isn’t natural. So another “ice age” is therefore inevitable.
“Proof”? Forgedaboudit. “Evidence”? There was none to be found. No facts. The “coming ice age” was simply a foregone conclusion.
The only evidence the program presented to support the claim were “Ice cores” drilled in the Antarctic supposedly showing that “89,000 years ago” there was “a sudden and abrupt change in the climate…” resulting in “widespread freezing occurring with dramatic suddenness.” How did this happen? One scientist theorizes that “volcanic activity” put enough ash into the atmosphere to block enough sunlight to cause an ice age.
As to why we should expect this to happen again…? “We’re due.” We are told repeatedly in the program that there have been “eight ice ages” in our history, and “we know how long between each ice age”, therefore, “we’re due”.
And THAT, dear reader, was the extent of the “Global Cooling” science in 1978. Not years of temperature data from around the globe showing a gradual drop in yearly average temperatures, or even photographic evidence of increased ice accumulation or growing glaciers (though the scientist in vid#2 did claim to have evidence the Greenlandic glacier he studies is/was still growing “100 years ago”). No, the entire argument was simply: “we’re due”.
The “volcanic ash blocking the sun” argument supporting “global cooling” gained the most traction in the late 70’s when “volcanic ash” was replaced with “pollution from cars, trucks and factories”. The argument at that time was that “all that pollution would block the sun, reflect the heat and cause the next ice age.” They were observing the same phenomena we see today and drawing the exact opposite conclusion. But the fact air pollution had the power to affect global temperatures was evident even then.
One prescient climatologist towards the end does warn that attempts to “fix” Global Cooling could backfire and cause more trouble than it solves:
The remaining half of the program was dedicated to describing the consequences an ice-age would have on the United States. Not providing evidence demonstrating that the climate curve was bending downwards.
Today it’s the “Snowpocolypse” or “Snomageddon” as some places are calling it, tongue planted firmly in cheek. A record breaking snowstorm has struck the North East! A snowstorm! In the middle of Winter no less! Finally, the proof “Global Cooling” advocates have been longing for since the 1970’s!
…unless, of course, you factor in El Niño… the notorious warm-water formation off the Pacific coast of South America, which is being blamed for the increase in moisture that is dumping all this snow on the North East.
Oops! Sorry Climate-Change deniers. Once again, reality tracks mud all over your nice shiny picture of reality.
(UPDATE: A more scientific look into the “Global Cooling Myth” can be found here at “RealClimate.org”. Thanks to DU’s “Dead Parrot” for the link.)
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GOP: The Party of Lawlessness. Four Decades of Criminal Behavior.
I‘m probably not telling you anything that hasn’t crossed your mind already, but sometimes we just need to say things out loud for them to sink in: For all their talk about “patriots” and “love of America”, the GOP really HAS become a party with a total lack of respect for the law (apologies to Sheriff Buford T. Justice).
Two recent events helped put a punctuation mark on this: the arrest of Conservative filmmaker James O’Keefe, and the recent decision by the Conservative-controlled Supreme Court overturning over 100 years of precedent regarding “corporate campaign contributions”, giving Corporations… even foreign owned ones… the same First Amendment rights as American citizens.
Now, you’d be perfectly justified in thinking me brain-dead if only now, after eight years of Bush & Cheney’s law breaking, I was just beginning to realize Republicans have no respect for the law. But The Bush Years were mere straws on the camels back. This has been going on for decades.
The O’Keefe break-in, where he and three friends (two of whom dressed as telephone repairmen) accessed Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu’s office in an apparent attempt to bug her telephone, has been dubbed “Little Watergate”, referring to Nixon’s botched break-in/bugging of the National Democratic headquarters in 1972. So now we’re looking at a 38 year history of Republican disregard for the Rule of Law. (You’re excused if you don’t know too much about this story, as there has been a near media-blackout regarding it. O’Keefe’s first “story”, a questionable and highly edited condemnation of a select few ACORN workers suggesting things they shouldn’t have, made ALL the major networks. And Fox turned O’Keefe into a minor celebrity. Flash forward a few months to his arrest last week, and it’s “O’Keefe who?”)
Republicans LOVE to preach to others about law & order… citing it frequently in the late 90’s as the justification for impeaching Bill Clinton over something as trivial as lying about having an affair with a young intern. The argument was that “the affair itself is irrelevant. He lied about the affair UNDER OATH, and therefore is guilty of a Federal crime” (the reason “the affair itself was irrelevant” is because several of President Clinton’s chief critics, including House Speaker Newt Gingrich and prominent Senator Henry Hyde were BOTH having extra-marital affairs and publicly lying about it at the time. But neither had to testify to that fact “under oath”. Lucky for them.)
Vice President Dick Cheney outed an undercover CIA Agent (obliterating an entire undercover operation dedicated to monitoring Iran’s nuclear weapons program, jeopardizing the lives of all involved) because her husband called him out for lying about Iraq’s WMD capabilities in the New York Times. His Chief of Staff Lewis “Scooter” Libby was convicted of “obstruction of justice” while investigating the outing of said CIA Agent.
President Bush’s chief adviser and campaign guru Karl Rove decided for himself that he (and Bush’s personal lawyer Harriet Myers) could ignore subpoenas ordering them to testify before a Senate inquiry regarding their role in the outing of CIA Agent Plame. Since nether bothered to show, and the Democratic Congress seems unwilling to press the issue, we may never know what role they played (I would add “if any”, but there is no question… by his own admission… that Rove played a role.)
In 1987, Ronald Reagan… the heart & soul of today’s Republican Party… testified “I can’t remember” 57 times (or was it over 100?) during the Iran/Contra hearings, where it was finally concluded that St. Ronnie really had traded “arms for hostages”:
REAGAN (videotape, 3/4/87): A few months ago, I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that’s true. But the facts and the evidence tell me it is not.
By the time the Reagan Administration was over in 1989, 132 Reagan administration officials had either been indicted or subjects of either “misconduct” or outright “criminal” investigations.
Speaking of “criminal investigations”, who can forget Kyle Sampson, the Chief of Staff for Bush’s Attorney General Alberto Gonzales pleading “I don’t remember” 122 times before a Congressional investigation into the illegal firing of eight (Wiki says “seven”) federal prosecutors in December of 2006 because they wouldn’t do the Bush Administrations bidding to pursue frivolous prosecutions of Democrats engaged in close mid-term election races.
The Bush Administration was certainly a high-water mark for skirting the Rule of Law, from warrantless wiretaps of American citizens, the use of torture to extract information from “enemy combatants” held in legal limbo at Gitmo, “free-speech zones”, suspending Habeas Corpus for American citizens accused of “terrorism”, crafting the “Patriot Act” that gave them sweeping unconstitutional powers hurried through in the wake of the attacks on 9/11, not to mention the illegality of the invasion of Iraq itself (hearkening back to Kissinger’s illegal invasion of Cambodia in 1969).
But I’m not looking here to rehash all the crimes of the Bush Administration specifically.
This week also saw the conviction of Scott Roeder, the Right-wing Anti-abortion extremist that murdered Dr. George Tiller… or, if you live in Mankato, MN, it was Doctor Tiller who was convicted in his own murder according to their headline: “Tiller Convicted in Abortion Doctor’s Murder“. Dumb mistake or Freudian slip? I’ll let you decide.
Roeder proudly regaled his crime for the jury, making his conviction all but certain (this was Kansas after-all). “Justifiable homicide” seems to be a recurring theme on the Rabid-Right, or hadn’t you noticed? But so is “blinding fear of the outside world”.
After weeks of Republican outcries over the “insanity” of putting accused terrorists “on trial like common criminals”, the Obama Administration finally relented on trying alleged 9/11 mastermind “KSM” in New York City at the request of NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg. To his credit, Bloomberg did not back down in response to Right-wing pressure against trying “terrorists” inside the United States, instead citing “rising costs” and “logistics” making such a trial there impractical. If I had my guess, I’d say the rising complication of holding the trial in NYC is more due to RW crazies protesting the trial and possibly threatening the courthouse with “bomb threats” than any alleged fear of “terrorist reprisals”. (THINK: these people have been in Gitmo for eight years. How many attempted terrorist attacks have there been on that facility?)
I received a RW email chain letter last week suggesting that the reason President Obama was so eager to try/convict terrorists in civilian court was to avoid having to personally sign their death warrant (presumably because he’s “a fellow Muslim”) vs conviction via military tribunal. I responded with a lengthy reply pointing out how, after World War II, we put the Nazi’s on trial, publicly, before cameras and on radio. We gave them lawyers and even allowed them to take the stand where they could “spout their Nazi propaganda”. Suddenly, 60+ years later, we’re all frightened children that cower in fear over the idea of letting an accused terrorist hang themselves with their own words on the stand? Sorry, I don’t get that. No, instead, these “Rule of Law” Republicans prefer “military tribunals” conducted in secrecy where hearsay and “confessions” obtained through torture are admitted as evidence.
Rush Limbaugh once called drug abuse “abhorrent behavior” on his radio show, and that those who wish to “legalize drugs” should go “to London and Zurich”, before it was discovered that Limbaugh himself was a degenerate drug abuser, using his maid to buy his illegal drugs for him.
You must understand. To Republicans, law breakers are degenerate scum with no respect for “America, for which it stands”… until it’s THEM at odds with the law, and then suddenly it’s “liberal activism” obstructing them, and therefore the law can be ignored, giving them a clean conscious. It’s how two Supreme Court justices can swear to uphold “precedent” and “not legislate from the bench” one day, and overturn 103 years of precedent the next. It’s how a “documentary filmmaker” can don disguises and engage in likely criminal (certainly dishonest) behavior in the name of “exposing criminal behavior” without a hint of irony. It’s how a man can proudly defend murdering a doctor he accuses of “murdering babies”. It is how Republican critics of “illegal immigration” can employ undocumented workers with a clear conscious. It’s how indicted felon and former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay can appear on “Dancing with the Stars” without an ounce of shame. And it is how the Fox Opinion Channel can call itself a “News” organization with a straight face.
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The True Lesson of the Brown Win: the voters want a KISS
E=MC2: Energy equals Mass times the Speed of Light squared; the mathematical equation at the heart of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. One of the most complex mathematical theorems ever devised, reduced to an equation so simple that even Sarah Palin’s probably heard of it. And it is BECAUSE it is so simple that it’s lauded to this day. It’s the formula that explains both how the atomic bomb works, and how all matter is based on nothing but particles of energy.
“Keep It Simple, Stupid.” Wiser words were probably never spoken. People don’t like complexity. Republicans REALLY don’t like complexity. That’s why they voted for George W. Bush, Sarah Palin… and lest we forget the father of Republican Stupidity, former VP Dan Quayle (1989-1993). If you’re smart, they call you “an elitist”. And Democrats know oh so well that the more complicated things get, the less popular they become (see: Obama’s poll numbers).
There’s a word for government over-complication. We call it “bureaucracy”. When we think of “bureaucracy”, we think of filing our taxes, waiting in line at the DMV, or filling out hours of tedious government paperwork. We DON’T want “health care” to join that mental list. No one likes bureaucracy. And when government programs get complicated, they become “bureaucracies”.
The OPPOSITE of “bureaucracy” is “simplicity”.
The health care debate is one of those ideas that started out simple… cheap health insurance from the government… and was allowed to be edited, “tweaked”, patched and mangled into a bureaucratic nightmare that even many Democrats don’t support… and they said so with 19% of them voting for Scott Brown in the Massachusetts special election last week. As the Sunday shows pointed out yesterday, 75% of MA voters polled “want Scott Brown to work WITH Democrats on health care” to craft a new bill, not kill it entirely. And Brown himself, while opposing the Senate health care bill, NEVER criticized “Romney-care” (Massachusetts’ miserable, costly, fully-privatized public health care system), which Brown voted for. Nor did he come out in opposition to government-mandated health care.
I’ve mentioned before on here that I attended one of those Republican “Town Halls” last August… held in a funeral home… where the crowd was rabidly anti-government involvement in health care (yet equally protective of Medicare). Yet to my surprise, the guy calling me a “Commie” and accusing the president of “wanting to turn the country into Cuba” advocated (on his own, with no prompting from me) “simply opening up the existing Medicare system to everyone, rather than create a new government bureaucracy.” Simple. Easy to understand. People are already familiar with it, and Republicans have actually run ads and mailed (me) fliers vowing to protect it.
Keep It Simple, Stupid. Push through a bill “allowing ANYONE to buy into Medicare” using Budget Reconciliation (51 votes) and move on to concentrating on Jobs and The Economy. An entire year WASTED, with voters angrier than ever, with BOTH sides unhappy with the Frankenstein health care bill(s) coming out of Congress that promise to cover fewer and fewer people, full of sweet-heart deals that have turned the entire process into a laughing stock.
We keep hearing supporters say “pass anything” and “we’ll fix the problems later”. But the problems DON’T get fixed. This country turns “inefficiency” into major industries. We don’t fix the tax code, we build an entire industry around companies to file your taxes for you. We don’t reform health insurance billing practices, we create companies whose sole job it is is to handle Medical Billing. Even the internal combustion engine… a marvel of inefficiency with al its moving parts and dependency on dirty and increasingly rare fossil fuels… is functionally unchanged since its inception over 100 years ago. As long as someone profits from a particular inefficiency or loophole, there’ll be someone fighting to keep it. And with the recent horrendous Supreme Court ruling giving corporations… many of them foreign owned… near unlimited power to influence our elections, rest assured wasteful, costly, bureaucratic health care reform, once installed, will remain unchanged for decades to come.
If you’re comfortable with “fixing the problems later”, you shouldn’t have a problem with the “Medicare buy-in” proposal. Sure it doesn’t cover “everyone” right away, only “those who can afford it”, but currently, neither do the bills in either the House or Senate (including recent talk of stripping “pre-existing coverage requirements” from “all” down to just “children“). But the bill with the greatest chance of bringing those costs down sooner rather than later is the Medicare buy-in. The bill that is likely to see the LEAST Conservative opposition and the most support among Republican voters is the “buy-in”. The infrastructure is already in place. The bill can be passed in time for President Obama’s State of the Union on Wednesday, and he can then move on to focusing on jobs and the economy like most voters feel he needs to.
An entire year wasted. Another 3 million jobs lost since the inauguration one year ago, and the number of angry voters on the rise rather than the decline.
Another example of bureaucracy getting in the way of simple solutions: using the Stimulus to create Green jobs. The money isn’t being spent and much of which is being spent is being wasted. Instead, people hear about “bailing out Wall Street” while “Goldman/Sachs hands out $16.2 Billion in bonuses“. And they’re getting angry. Angry voters don’t re-elect incumbents.
Here’s a KISS idea: spend part of the Stimulus to “green-ify” millions of Federal office buildings across the United States. Solicit a contract for 5 million hybrid postal delivery vehicles that only (the struggling) U.S. automakers can bid on. Create tens of thousands of new “Green jobs” literally overnight… jobs that develop skills that workers can take to their next job. Building infrastructure that will return value to the country for decades to come while saving the government money on energy costs, all while helping the environment. Simultaneously forcing Republican opponents to campaign against the government creating jobs… that’ll go over with voters like peanutbutter-tunafish-pudding come November… or… seeing the obvious disadvantage to such opposition, might actually result in Republicans voting FOR spending Stimulus funds to create jobs. Imagine that! The bi-partisanship President Obama so deeply craves finally satisfied! But, even if they don’t, this too can be pushed through with just 51 votes using “budget reconciliation”. (And if you’re one of those people concerned with the abuse of “budget reconciliation” by its over use, I direct you to THIS GRAPH.)
It’s all just a matter of “keeping it simple”. Because no one likes “complexity”. When people are frustrated, the majority always loses because they have more seats to lose. It’s not a “rejection” of Democratic policies as much as a demonstration of “frustration” with the lack of progress.
If there’s one lesson President Obama should take away from the Scott Brown victory in MA, it’s Keep It Simple, Stupid! It worked for Albert Einstein!
| UPDATE: New petition added (see link on left): Create tens of thousands of green jobs that build new job skills for less than the cost of one bank bailout. Isn’t this how we all thought the Stimulus was going to be spent in the first place? |
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Might Coakley’s Loss Become a Democratic Victory?
January 20th. A Democratic win with the inauguration of President Obama, and one year later, the loss of a key Democratic seat in the Senate. Arguably, two victories for frustrated Democrats.
Liberals like myself have been frustrated by President Obama’s inexplicable need to court Conservatives to pass health care reform with 60 votes in the Senate. The result has been compromise after compromise, a watering down of any true health insurance reform while making unconscionable backroom deals with the likes of Bill Nelson and Joe Lieberman, while the most simple and effective solution: “Medicare for all” was all but ignored in a desperate attempt to reach 60 votes.
On ABC’s “This Week” last Sunday, guest panelist Tucker Carlson (sans bowtie) repeated the Conservative meme that “Democrats in the Senate have 60 votes. Everything that comes out of Washington… they own it.” Of course, this is absolute nonsense (as I’ve repeatedly pointed out), with Lieberman and the Blue Dogs (not a pop music group) obstructing every vote, Democrats have had no more than 52-53 reliable Progressive votes to pass anything. Meanwhile, Conservatives have turned being an “obstructionist” into an art form.
And now with no chance of achieving 60 votes for anything, maybe President Obama will FINALLY give up on trying to get 60 votes for everything, and pass health care reform with a STRONG public option using “budget reconciliation” (requiring only 51 votes).
MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell, filling in for Keith Olbermann on “Countdown”, suggested that a win for Brown could seriously screw up the GOP’s mid-term election agenda. Why? Because they hope to run on “repealing” everything passed by the Democratically controlled congress… healthcare, tax increases, etc. And how do you run on “repeal” if the programs never pass to begin with?
Losing Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, a seat that he held for over 40 years, to a Republican so soon after his death is seriously disappointing, but the fact candidate Chris Brown ran from the label “Republican” like a GOP leper colony, not even using the word on his website, demonstrates that the label “Republican” is still toxic in parts of the country. Voters may be frustrated with Democrats, but Brown’s “win” isn’t exactly a victory for Republicans (though, of course, they’ll try their best to spin it that way… aided by the MSM… for weeks to come.)
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When did “Republican” become this nations fall-back position?
It’s 2010, an “election year”, and as the Sunday News Shows were “eager” to point out, “two prominent Democratic Senators are retiring, Chris Dodd (CT) and Byron Dorgan (ND)”. Suddenly, the Democrats “Super-Majority” is in question. Really? As DNC Chairman Tim Kaine pointed out on several shows Sunday morning, while two Democratic Senators are retiring, SIX Republican senators are retiring. Did the pundits ask if Republicans were worried about becoming even more marginalized than they already are? No. They simply noted how “historically”, the party that retakes the White House “typically” loses seats in the following mid-term election.
So, naturally, after huge Democratic wins in 2006 and 2008 because Republicans were driving this country into a ditch, the country must be ready to “give up” on Democrats because they haven’t undone the monumental damage of the past 8 years in just three. Why? “Because history shows us”. Ignore the fact that a Republican president with Republican Congress doubled the national debt in just six years (after being handed a balanced budget), mired the country in two Trillion-dollar wars with no exit strategy, created an economy that was shedding over 700,000 jobs and 1000 stock-points a month by the time Bush left office less than one year ago, and then dumped the entire mess in the lap of Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress… ignore all that because “history shows us” that the country typically turns back to the people they voted out en masse to bail them out just two years into a new presidency.
Republicans are the Party that dug this hole we’re in. And now that we’re finally starting to see the top and almost out, are we really going to reach out to the guys with the shovels to pull us out? And yet somehow, the “Media” keeps telling us “this is a center-Right nation” (despite all evidence to the contrary) and when Democrats “fail” to fix everything overnight, the country will naturally gravitate back to the Republican Party.
How did “Republican” become this country’s “fall back” position in elections? It has seemed to me for quite a while that voters are very quick (too quick imho) to give Republicans the benefit of the doubt and have very little patients with Democrats. Yet, as CNN’s Chris Mathews so delicately pointed out last week, “What has the Republican Party done for the country in the last 20 years?” (cue: crickets).
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Ronald Reagan quadrupled the national debt in his eight years from $1T when he came in to $4T when he left. Bush-41 added another $1T in his four years. Clinton, for all his *personal* faults, shrank the debt, balanced the budget and left a surplus. “Dubya” then turned that surplus into the biggest deficit in history and more than *doubled* the National Debt by adding another $5T to it in under seven years. And now, all the Republican “teabaggers” screaming about “spending” never said “boo” in the eight years Bush-43 and the (six year) Republican controlled Congress ran up all this debt and destroyed the economy. Add to that his violations of the Constitution, warrantless wiretaps, “free-speech zones” and suspension of Habeas Corpus for American citizens, only to have these same Republicans apoplectic, claiming President Obama wants to turn this country into “the Soviet Union” because he wants to reform health insurance. One bright spot in this economy? Gun sales. All the gun nuts are stockpiling as many weapons as they can get their hands on “before President Obama tries to take their guns away” despite not introducing one single piece of gun control legislation since taking office. In fact, “gun control” was not even discussed on the campaign trail if memory serves. But you know who WAS a threat to gun ownership? George W. Bush and his “Patriot Act” that gave the government the right to invade your home without a warrant and seize your property… including/especially guns… without telling you they’ve done so or even providing you with a way to get them back. That seems very much like the kind of thing they accuse Democrats of wanting to do. But a Democrat didn’t do it, a Republican did. And did you see huge angry mobs of NRA members picketing the White House protesting the Bush Administration? No, of course not. Because (to them), President Bush “was one of them”.
And now, some people are actually considering putting Republicans back in power to undo the damage they themselves caused? How stupid are we?
It wasn’t always this way. When the economy collapsed in 1929 in the wake of rampant real-estate speculation with no regulation (sound familiar?), it elected Franklin Roosevelt, a Progressive Democrat, in 1932 to undo the damage. Four years later, in 1936, the economy was still a mess. Double-digit unemployment, people standing in soup-lines, but did the nation rush back to the Republican Party to rescue them? No, they re-elected FDR because they saw signs of progress. By the end of FDR’s second term (1940), The Great Depression was over (I hope to post video proof of this in coming weeks) and the country was strong enough to fight two wars (Germany & Japan) following the attack on Pearl Harbor nearly two years later.
But today, now that President Obama hasn’t undone 28 years of Conservative mayhem in just 12 months, we’re taking polls on whether people are ready to rush back to the people that created this mess in the first place??? The pundits argue that with huge majorities in both the House & Senate, everything that comes out of Washington is entirely the Democrats doing and Republicans are blameless.
As I’ve pointed out on here before, Democrats really haven’t had a “super-majority”. Between the 6 Conservative “blue-dogs” that vote like Republicans on taxes, healthcare, and stimulus spending, plus GOP mole Joe Lieberman who sits in on DNC meetings so he can then report back to his RNC masters everything that was said, at best Democrats have had only 52-53 semi-reliable Progressive votes in the Senate. And the lack of the classic “stand-up filibuster” means every vote of consequence now requires an unconstitutional 60 vote super majority (interesting link. It’s to a 2003 WSJ op/ed accusing Democrats of abusing the filibuster to block Supreme Court nominee Miguel Estrada. My how times change. – UPDATE: Mother Jones just released an article on the unconstitutionality of the sit-down filibuster.) RNC Chairman Michael Steele is currently promoting his new book subtitled: “12 Steps to Defeating the Obama Agenda”. Yes, Steele really did use an “Alcoholics Anonymous” metaphor to describe the Republican Party. And yes, the book is all about how “The Party of ‘No’” needs to say “No” more often rather than offer an alternative positive agenda of their own.
I ask again… how did “Republican” become this nations fall-back position?
Postscript: Because it is such an amazing example of Republican hypocrisy as well as an incredibly insightful piece of journalism, and has some bearing on what I’ve been saying above, this recent expose from The Rachael Maddow Show should serve as a clear reminder why we don’t want these people back in control of the government again:
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Stating the Obvious: Terrorist Activity Has Risen in Sync with Troop Increases in Afghanistan
Sometimes, someone just needs to point out the obvious: As the number of troops in Afghanistan has gone up, so has terrorism.
The past two weeks, we’ve seen a marked increase in the amount of terrorist activity focused on the U.S.. There was of course the Underwear bomber on Christmas Day on a plane from Amsterdam bound for Detroit.
A week later on December 31st, the Taliban killed seven CIA agents using a suicide bomber posing as a possible informant.
Last Friday (January 1st) someone drove a car filled with explosives onto the football (soccer) field in Pakistan during a match, killing 88 and wounding 50 more.
Casualties in Afghanistan have skyrocketed since U.S. troop levels have increased. President Obama sent an additional 20,000 troops to Afghanistan last March and 30,000 more in November. The result: a dramatic rise in the number of targeted suicide attacks against the United States and its allies.
Meanwhile, as American troops depart Iraq, the number of U.S. troops killed there has plummeted to its lowest level since the war began, with “only” 150 American troops killed in all of 2009. December was the first month since the Iraq War began to have ZERO U.S. casualties. Meanwhile, the number of U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan saw its highest number ever last year: 319, more than double the year before (155)… which hasn’t happened since 2005 (when the number of those K.I.A. jumped from 52 in 2004 to 99 in 2005 – see previous link for data.)
Hmm. Maybe Iraq WASN’T “the central front in the War on Terror”?
When the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan were below 10K and the Taliban were slowly reclaiming the country, Republicans were preparing a victory party. Last September, it was determined the Taliban now has a PERMANENT presence in more than 80 percent of the country (pdf map).
A tiny group of insurgents don’t control 80% of a country the size of California without attracting new recruits. And THAT is where the Obama military policy in Afghanistan has failed. Last September, I wrote here on how a “non-military counter insurgency strategy” was the ONLY way to achieve victory in Afghanistan. Violence only serves as a recruiting tool for the other side, and they can recruit soldiers far faster than we can kill them. You don’t defeat an insurgency by creating martyrs. You win by depriving them of willing recruits. Give them reason to prefer you over your enemy. Where they offer only war & death, you build roads, and school houses, and hospitals. How many Afghan farmers could you subsidize for the cost of one Predator Drone ($3.2 million dollars)?
Again, just stating the obvious: the recent rise in terrorist activity is a direct result of the increased American troop presence in Afghanistan. Is there ANYONE that would dispute that? And yet, it seems like it needs to be said. The only question is: Will the Obama Administration recognize this simple fact and respond with a dramatic change in strategy for 2010, or will they follow “the Bush Game Plan” of sending in more and more troops until they can just hand the whole mess off to the next Administration?
POSTSCRIPT: Just a random thought that crossed my mind last week: If the Underwear Bomber was promised his “72 virgins” in the afterlife, just what did he plan on doing with them after blowing his junk to kingdom-come? <chuckle>
Also, while Mugsy’s Rap Sheet is a labor of love, it does not receive enough visitors each day to qualify for any of the prominent Progressive Advertising Webrings (ads that link sites). While I could sign up to include “generic” advertising via “Google Ad-Sense”, etc, I’ve resisted so far because I would have almost no control over the types of ads that would appear on this site (including Conservative advertising for agendas I oppose). So instead, I’ve willingly covered the small expense of hosting this blog and all the work that goes into it out of my own pocket & free time. But, times being what they are, the allure of recouping part or all of my expenses by allowing a few ads on this site is attractive. But since it is you, dear reader, that must look at them, I’ll leave it up to you:
Thanks. I’ll rerun the poll till the end of the month. You’ll know what the results were if you start seeing ads on this site come February. 
UPDATE: (Regarding last week’s review of my predictions for 2009: I am reminded by “Crook’s & Liars” that Attorney General Eric Holder DID investigate accusations of torturing detainees held in U.S. custody, so I’m upgrading this prediction to “partial” and giving myself credit.)
| Please REGISTER to post comments or be notified by e-mail every time this Blog is updated! Firefox/IE7 users can use RSS for a browser link that lists the latest posts! |
| – Keeping this blog current can be a bigger job than for just one person. “Mugsy’s Rap Sheet” is looking for VOLUNTEER guest writers to contribute to our blog to help make it worth visiting more than once a week. To contact us, please send an email to the address on our About Us page along with a sample and/or link to your writing skills. - Mugsy |
