Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Fantasyland) Triples Down On Her Own Bullshit

I posted this a little over a year ago:

Every time the GOP claims to have found someone who has been hurt by the Affordable Care Act, it turns out that the alleged "victim" was actually helped by health care reform.

A recent high-profile example of such chicanery was Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers' mentioning of poor "Bette in Spokane" during the Republican response to the President's State of the Union address.  Of course, Bette's tale of ACA woe turned out to be complete horseshit. ***

Well, it seems that McMorris Rodgers failed to learn her lesson from that debacle.  A couple days ago, she took to Facebook and requested that her constituents submit Obamacare horror stories on the fifth anniversary of the passage of the ACA.  That also turned out to be a mistake:

[Morris Rodgers] instead found her Facebook page filled with testimonials to the benefits of the Affordable Care Act. ***

A lot of folks shared stories. They were of a kind CMR didn’t want to hear — and is largely insulated from hearing on trips home to by-invitation “Coffees with Cathy” in her Eastern Washington district.

An encore ass-kicking as thorough as that one would normally cause someone to back down, but not McMorris Rodgers.  Oh no.  She instead decides to stick her head even deeper into her own posterior orifice:

After yesterday's story on the surprising response she got from constituents when she asked for "Obamacare" nightmares, she doubled-down with a press conference and mentioned several so-called Obamacare horror stories, presumably heartfelt stories that had been sent to her. ***

But, there are a few problems with these accounts. For one thing, there are only five. Five whole stories of the Affordable Care Act being a nightmare, compared to the thousands of positive comments on her Facebook page. Secondly, all five stories (including the ones below) were lifted directly from the House Republican leadership website, which was posted days before her press conference. ***

One of the "horror stories" from the GOP website relates a tale of woe of a woman from Georgia, but the reason she is having difficulty is because Georgia -- in a hissy fit caused by hatred for America's first Black president -- has refused to embrace Medicaid expansion.  Another "horror story" involved one of the "junk plans that the ACA shut down because they were bad for consumers."

Keep digging, Cathy.

Sea Level Rise = "Nuisance Flooding" in Florida

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook,Daily Show Video Archive

Neil DeGrasse Tyson adds: "The science is not political -- that's like repealing gravity because you gained 10 pounds last week."

Obama Kicks Some GOP Ass

This is well worth watching:



Steve Benen's take:

Obama wasn’t taking on a straw man in his remarks – he referenced actual claims from GOP lawmakers and candidates. One said the president’s economic agenda would “diminish stock prices,” which turned out to be backwards. Another said the nation faced “trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see,” which was also turned out to be the opposite of reality. Another predicted that Republican policies might get unemployment down to 6% by 2016 – and it’s 5.5% now, well ahead of schedule.

Hilariously, most Republicans are still trying to convince the American people that none of this stuff is happening. Ted Cruz's recent speech is a good example of this willful ignorance.

Funny Stuff

From The Wall Street Journal:

Soon after the U.S. and other major powers entered negotiations last year to curtail Iran’s nuclear program, senior White House officials learned Israel was spying on the closed-door talks.

The spying operation was part of a broader campaign by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government to penetrate the negotiations and then help build a case against the emerging terms of the deal, current and former U.S. officials said. In addition to eavesdropping, Israel acquired information from confidential U.S. briefings, informants and diplomatic contacts in Europe, the officials said.

The espionage didn't upset the White House as much as Israel’s sharing of inside information with U.S. lawmakers and others to drain support from a high-stakes deal intended to limit Iran’s nuclear program, current and former officials said.

The hilarious part is that the White House reportedly discovered the Israeli spying operation "when U.S. intelligence agencies spying on Israel intercepted communications among Israeli officials that carried details the U.S. believed could have come only from access to the confidential talks, officials briefed on the matter said."

Fourth Graders Get Close-Up View of Republican Fuckery

This is both sad and hilarious:

Fourth graders from Lincoln Akerman School in Hampton Falls received a warm welcome at the State House last Thursday. They and their teacher, James Cutting, were guests in the Gallery.  That reception quickly turned chilly as students got a glimpse of the cold, harsh realities of politics in the Granite State.

In the spirit of learning by doing, students drafted a bill to learn the process of how a bill becomes law. They proposed House Bill 373, an act establishing the Red Tail Hawk as the New Hampshire State Raptor. Even though it passed through the Environment and Agriculture committee with a majority vote, some representatives were far from receptive.

Rep. Warren Groen, a Republican from Rochester said, "It grasps them with its talons then uses its razor sharp beak to basically tear it apart limb by limb, and I guerss the shame about making this a state bird is it would serve as a much better mascot for Planned Parenthood."

Groen made that horseshit comment in front of the visiting fourth graders, and Republican Representative John Burt followed it up by stating: "Bottom line, if we keep bringing more of these bills, and bills, and bills forward that really I think we shouldn't have in front of us, we'll be picking a state hot dog next."

The bill was killed by a vote of 133-to-160.  Jim Cutting, the kids' teacher, had this to say on NPR the other day:

I think that they were a bit discouraged to hear anybody speak against their bill. Most of the comments I don't think that they really - I think that they had a sense of the tone of it and they were tuned in to the reaction of other people, whether it was their families that were with them. There was some laughter on the House floor, and one child asked, why did people laugh at us? But I think that, in particular, the Planned Parenthood comment was not something that they really understood.

Well, join the club -- I don't get it either.  Perhaps the best way to explain that comment to kids is by simply telling them that Republicans are assholes and leave it at that.

Obama 1, Netanyahu 0 [Updated]

I guess Bibi didn't think this one through:

When this week got underway, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apparently thought he was going to lose his re-election bid. This fear led the Israeli leader to adopt some desperate measures.

“I think that anyone who moves to establish a Palestinian state today, and evacuate areas, is giving radical Islam an area from which to attack the State of Israel,” Netanyahu said Monday. “This is the true reality that has been created in past years,” he added, vowing to increase settlement construction in East Jerusalem.

Asked if that meant Netanyahu intended to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state if he remained prime minister, he replied, “Indeed.”

Bibi has since tried to walk back this "flip-flop," but nobody appears to be buying it. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said today that Netanyahu's pre-election statements show that he is "no longer committed to a two-state solution," which “means that the United States is in a position to re-evaluate our thinking.”

The big problem for Bibi is that most everyone thought he was full of shit anyway when he endorsed the two-state solution:

[I]n Washington, many officials have long suspected that Mr. Netanyahu was never serious about making peace with the Palestinians or about the American-brokered negotiations toward such an outcome that collapsed last spring. So when a right-leaning Israeli news site asked him directly on Monday, “If you are prime minister, a Palestinian state will not be established,” and he answered, “Correct,” they pounced.

Mr. Earnest said, “This is not a situation where the prime minister is creating some daylight between himself and President Obama,” Rather, the remarks created some daylight between Mr. Netanyahu and “Democrat and Republican presidents in the United States and every single member of the House of Representatives,” he said, referring to a unanimous House resolution late last year endorsing a two-state solution.

What I like the most about this whole clusterfuck is that Bibi will certainly try to get the United States to bail him out, but we won't because Obama absolutely hates Netanyahu.

Payback's a bitch, ain't it.

UPDATE:  From The New York Times:

President Obama waited nearly two full days before making a congratulatory phone call to Mr. Netanyahu on Thursday evening, as his administration was still seething over the Israeli leader’s pre-election comments.

In a striking indication of how bitter tensions remain between the two, Mr. Obama told Mr. Netanyahu directly that the United States would have to “re-assess our options” after the prime minister’s “new positions and comments” on the two-state solution, according to a White House official who spoke without authorization to detail the private conversation.

It'll be interesting to see how Republicans in Congress respond to all this. Of course they'll support Bibi over Obama, but I look forward to seeing how it will all play out.

Quote Of The Week

"[M]aybe from our perspective, the newly honest Netanyahu government isn’t such a bad thing ***. American governments can give up the endlessly frustrating task of trying to negotiate a Palestinian-Israeli settlement, because the Israeli leader is now on record saying he wants the occupation to be permanent. And with Netanyahu’s journey from the far right to the far-far-right, we can be less concerned with his opinion about Iran’s nuclear program or anything else, and treat him like what he is: an ideologically radical factional leader, albeit one capable of winning one-quarter of the seats in his country’s parliament."

- Paul Waldman.

Tom Tomorrow

[click to enlarge]

Tehran Tom, The Traitorous Twit

Here is the most recent cover to the New York Daily News, a publication which actually supported Romney for President in 2012:

HuffPo has got the goods:

Tuesday's scathing front page accuses Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and their "traitor" GOP colleagues of trying to "sabotage" President Barack Obama's nuclear talks with Iran. In a bizarre move on Monday, Cotton and 46 other Republican senators ignored protocol and sent an open letter to Iran's leaders, warning that whatever agreement reached with Obama would not be bound by the constitution.

President Obama responded to Sen. Tom Cotton's letter by hilariously stating:"I think it's somewhat ironic to see some members for Congress wanting to make common cause with the hard-liners in Iran -- it's an unusual coalition,"  The President's statement apparently inspired Democratic Colorado Rep. Jared Polis to tweet: "Tehran Tom took his case directly to the Iranian government." Polis also tweeted: "Tehran Tom asks Iranian Revolutionary Guards for help in battle against US diplomats."

Asked whether the signatories to the letter were traitors, Sen. Cotton "replied negatively and said they were just trying to speak for the American people."  This whole thing kind of reminds me of when people begin sentences with the phrase, "I don't mean to be racist, but . . . "

Anyway, the Radicalized Right was quick to come to Tehran Tom's aid, saying that he is a veteran of the Iraq War and thus somehow immune to such criticism.  But I seem to remember that Benedict Arnold was a military man and war veteran as well.

When Too Much Was Not Enough (w/ updates)

It seems that America's Radicalized Religious Right is pissed off at Jeb Bush because he did not do enough to save Terri Schiavo, whose cerebral cortex had basically turned to liquid as a result of massive brain damage following cardiac arrest:

Standing at the pulpit of his Sioux City, Iowa, mega-church a decade ago, Reverend Cary Gordon wept over the death of Terri Schiavo, a brain-damaged woman who had her feeding tubes removed more than 1,500 miles away in Florida. Now, the politician mostly closely associated with trying to keep her alive is coming to the state searching for support for his prospective presidential bid.

To much of the world, it appeared as if Jeb Bush, then the governor of Florida, stood his ground against those who wanted to take Schiavo off life support. But that's not the picture that emerged for some in a crucial constituency in the state with the first presidential nominating contest.

“I’m displeased with Governor Bush,” Gordon said in an interview this week. “He could have informed law enforcement, called up the National Guard, or told the county sheriff’s office not to let it happen.” * * *

Christ, where do I even begin with something like this (now that I'm done laughing my ass off)? As the above-linked article points out, Jeb's over-the-top efforts to save Schiavo's body "were supposed to be an antidote to his troubles with the conservative base." Instead, it turns out that members of the American Taliban hate him over it.

As Jesus famously said, there's just no pleasing some people:



(h/t Ed Kilgore)

UPDATE:  I completely forgot about this (from July 2005):

Even after congressional intervention, politically-inspired misdiagnoses, and widespread slander, the Terri Schiavo matter lingered on when Florida Gov. Jeb Bush asked a prosecutor to investigate why Schiavo collapsed 15 years ago, under the notion that her husband may have called 911 too slowly. Thankfully, this lunacy came to an end yesterday when the prosecutor told Bush there was nothing more to probe.

As I wrote nearly nine years ago, a particularly warm place in Hell has been reserved for Jeb Bush and the rest of those Republican motherfuckers who refused to let Schiavo's husband do the right thing for his brain-dead wife.

UPDATE II:  Hunter at Daily Kos has more on this here.

Idiot Scalia Zinged By Government Attorney During Oral Argument in Anti-ACA Case

Brother Benen provides the details:

During oral arguments this morning in the King v. Burwell case, Justice Antonin Scalia heard Solicitor General Don Verrilli warn of dire consequences if the Supreme Court strips millions of families of their health care insurance subsides. The Republican jurist just didn’t believe the consequences would be ignored by the people’s representatives. It led to an unintentionally amusing exchange:

     SCALIA: “What about Congress? You really think Congress is just going to sit there while all of these disastrous consequences ensue? I mean, how often have we come out with a decision such as the ­­ you know, the bankruptcy court decision? Congress adjusts, enacts a statute that takes care of the problem. It happens all the time. Why is that not going to happen here? “

     VERRILLI: “Well, this Congress?”

The room, not surprisingly, erupted in laughter. Congratulations, Congress, you’ve literally sunk to the level of a punch line.

A few days ago, I told a friend that I really hoped the anti-Obamacare lawyer would tee-up this particular argument so that the government lawyer could could hit it 300 yards down the fairway.

However, it did not occur to me that Scalia would actually suggest that Congress -- after trying to repeal Obamacare fifty-five fifty-six times -- would just simply turn around and fix the language at issue.

I thought he was smarter than that.

I Laughed Out Loud When I Read This (Updated)

Some conservatives apparently think that Rand Paul was not clapping hard enough during Netanyahu's war-mongering speech to Congress yesterday:

Standing among his colleagues, all of whom were vigorously applauding the speech, Paul could be seen delivering a slow clap while looking relatively detached amid the cheers.  * * *

Commentators pounced.

"What if I clap, but only half-heartedly?" the anonymous Hot Air writer Allahpundit imagined Paul saying, calling it proof that the libertarian senator is struggling to prove his conservative credentials.

RedState.com writer Dan McLaughlin, alias Baseball Crank, compared it to the popular GIF of Orson Welles clapping in "Citizen Kane." National Review rounded up reactions from various Twitter users.

But perhaps most agitated by the scene was Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin, a vocal supporter of Israel, who took to Twitter to blast Paul and those coming to his defense.

The first thing that popped into my head after reading this was the following scene from The Great Escape, particularly the part starting at 1:24, where the SS officers appeared stunned by the Camp Kommandant's half-hearted return of the Hitler salute:



The big difference, of course, is that Hitler was actually the leader of Germany. Netanyahu is not even an American citizen let alone an American political leader, yet conservatives nonetheless think that Rand Paul did not demonstrate sufficient allegiance toward this foreigner.

UnFuckingBelievable.

UPDATE:  Jon Stewart eviscerates Netanyahu and his bullshit speech:

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook,Daily Show Video Archive

The Wall Street Journal Gets It

Yesterday's Wall Street Journal editorial page attacked House Republicans over their handling of DHS funding.  Read all about it here.

Just in case you missed it, House Republicans handed Boehner an embarrassing defeat last Friday when they voted down his plan to fund the Department of Homeland Security for three weeks.  The WSJ editorial correctly described this debacle as a victory for Obama:

"The sad if predictable irony is that this is exactly what Mr. Obama hoped to incite with his November immigration order. He wanted to goad an overreaction that made the GOP look both anti-immigrant and intemperate enough to shut down the government."

I think this analysis is absolutely correct -- Obama is tapping into the overwhelming hatred the GOP feels for him and using it for his own political benefit.  The editorial also noted that the GOP's failure in this regard gives Obama an opportunity "to gain the political high ground on national security."

But, as Sahil Kapur of TPM pointed out today, it gets even better:

Congress just gave the Supreme Court a glimpse of what to expect if it drives a stake through the heart of Obamacare: CHAOS.

Oral arguments in King v. Burwell are this Wednesday, and they come amidst peak dysfunction in the new Republican-led Congress, which would be tasked with fixing the law if the justices rule that federal exchange subsidies for Americans in some three-dozen states are not allowed under the language of the Affordable Care Act.

There is no way in hell that Republicans would be able to do anything to mitigate the disastrous effects that an anti-Obamacare ruling in King would cause, even if they wanted to (which they don't). Christ, the GOP can't even do something as simple as fund the Department of Homeland Security without fucking it all up.

Let's hope at least a couple of Supreme Court justices (namely, Kennedy and Roberts) take this into consideration.

Quote of the Day

“If this were a wind mill project or a solar project, Republicans would have been hair-on-fire crazy supporting the property rights of farmers and ranchers. But because it’s an oil pipeline, it’s fine.”

- Jane Kleeb, founder of the anti-Keystone group Bold Nebraska, on the use of eminent domain by a foreign company to seize land in the United States.