Exactly (With Update)

This 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:

“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.”

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.

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-batshit-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 fuck 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

From The Boston Globe:

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. ***

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.

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 is 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 Baggers are idiots, but they're not that stupid. Nobody is.

Sorry To Go Off On A Rant Here, But . . .

A 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:

“And you let that fucking scum bag know, that if he ever fucks around with my money, ever the fuck again, I’ll fucking 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 fucking knows.”

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.

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.

Fucking-A

George Packer sets the record straight (via Political Wire):

[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.

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.

Quote Of The Day

"The state of Hawaii has said that President Obama was born there. That's good enough for me."

John Boehner, reacting to an outburst from a birther during the reading of the Constitution in the House gallery.

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

This is quite an accomplishment:

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. * * *

And by the way, I have a feeling this is going to backfire, particularly if Obama's approval numbers continue to rise:

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.

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 fucking asshole like Issa.