Author: Blue Texan

Bloomberg is the latest polling outfit to discover that the Teabaggers are deeply confused, ignorant people.

Tea Party activists, who are becoming a force in U.S. politics, want the federal government out of their lives except when it comes to creating jobs.

More than 90 percent of Tea Party backers interviewed in a new Bloomberg National Poll say the U.S. is verging more toward socialism than capitalism, the federal government is trying to control too many aspects of private life and more decisions should be made at the state level.

At the same time, 70 percent of those who sympathize with the Tea Party, which organized protests this week against President Barack Obama’s health-care overhaul, want a federal government that fosters job creation.

Yeah, it’s KEEP YOUR DAMN GOVERNMENT HANDS OFF MY MEDICARE!!1!, all over again.

The activists say they believe the government is on a path to socialism, although they don’t see all federal programs in that light.

Fewer than 10 percent say the Veterans Administration is definitely socialist, 12 percent identify management of national parks and museums, and 36 percent say expanding Medicare for the elderly, Medicaid for the poor and Social Security amount to socialism.

In other words, for Teabaggers, “socialism” has no meaning beyond “stuff I don’t like.” That’s it.

And who are these people?

Tea Party supporters are likely to be older, white and male. Forty percent are age 55 and over, compared with 32 percent of all poll respondents; just 22 percent are under the age of 35, 79 percent are white, and 61 percent are men. Many are also Christian fundamentalists, with 44 percent identifying themselves as “born-again,” compared with 33 percent of all respondents.

You don’t say.

Tags: Tea Party, teabaggers, Wingnuttia

 

Turns out Eric Cantor is a lying liar.

According to police, Eric Cantor was mistaken. His staff office in Richmond, Va. was not targeted by political extremists as he claimed earlier today with so much partisan pizazz. Instead, a bullet fired into the air at 1 a.m. on Tuesday happened to fall at just such a trajectory that it punctured the office’s front window and fell some inches from it.

Police in Richmond said late Thursday that bullet was fired randomly, and that Cantor’s office was in no way the target.

I’m sure he’ll issue a retraction today, right?

Tags: Early Morning Swim, Republicans

 

The image on the right, from Sarah Palin’s Facebook page, shows rifle scope crosshairs fixed on Congressional Democrats Palin says she wants to “fire.”

Writes the Quitter,

We’ll aim for these races and many others. This is just the first salvo in a fight to elect people across the nation who will bring common sense to Washington.

And here’s a recent tweet.

Commonsense Conservatives & lovers of America: “Don’t Retreat, Instead – RELOAD!”

Crosshairs, aim, fire, salvo — RELOAD!

All just a harmless coincidence.

Democratic National Committee chairman Tim Kaine released a sharply-worded statement Wednesday night accusing several Republican leaders, including Palin, of inciting dangerous behavior.

“Republican leaders are themselves engaging in actions and rhetoric that previously would have been limited to fringe elements of the Republican Party,” Kaine said. “Sarah Palin has invoked health care ‘death panels’ and has now placed gun sights on 20 Members of Congress who supported reform.”

An adviser to Palin responded by pointing to several instances in which the former Alaska governor has urged supporters to focus their energies on civil debate and action at the ballot box – not extremist activities.

How generous of her.

At a time when elected Democrats are receiving death threats, Democratic offices are literally under attack, and the FBI has to be called in because Democrats fear for their families — this would be pretty disgusting behavior coming from some wingnut blogger or radio blabbermouth.

But the Republican Party’s most recent vice presidential candidate?

Unforgivable.

Tags: right-wing extremism, Sarah Palin, Wingnuttia

 

And, increasingly, it’s not just about screaming epithets.

U.S. House leaders of both parties condemned threats of violence directed at Democratic lawmakers following approval of the U.S. health-care overhaul.

“We’ve had very serious incidents that have occurred in the last 48 or 72 hours,” Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland told reporters today. “Anyone who feels at risk is getting attention from the proper authorities.” He said “a significant number, meaning more than 10” members received threats. […]

Slaughter said Republican leaders appeared “to be fanning the flames with coded rhetoric.” She cited a National Review Online article in which Boehner was quoted as saying that Ohio Democrat Steve Driehaus might be a “dead man” politically in his congressional district.

The article, published on March 18, said Boehner predicted political consequences for anti-abortion Democrats who vote to approve the bill. Referring to Driehaus, Boehner was quoted as saying, “He may be a dead man. He can’t go home to the west side of Cincinnati. The Catholics will run him out of town.”

Boehner spokesman Don Seymour said the Republican leader “does not condone violence and his remark was obviously not meant to be taken literally.”

Of course not! I mean, who’d be crazy enough to take assassination threats by a sitting Congressman literally?

Tags: Barney Frank, Early Morning Swim, right wing violence, Tea Party, teabaggers

 

Unless the GOP successfully absorbs the Teabaggers into the Borg, the virus just might kill the host.

A Quinnipiac national survey finds that having a Tea Party candidate on a general election congressional race ballot could negatively affect the Republican’s chance of winning.

Republicans lead the generic ballot test by a 44%-39% margin over Democrats. However, when a generic Tea Party candidate is thrown in the mix, the Democrat receives 36% and the Republican 25%, with the Tea Partier taking 15%.

But…but…I thought Teabaggers were non-partisan independent swing-voter types.

According to the poll, it “has more women than men; is mainly white and Republican and voted for John McCain, and strongly supports Sarah Palin.” They (85%) also feel that the government is doing too much.

“The Tea Party movement is mostly made up of people who consider themselves Republicans,” said Brown. “They are less educated but more interested in politics than the average Joe and Jane Six-Pack and are not in a traditional sense swing voters.”

In other words, they are hardline wingnuts who think the Republican Party has gone squishy. And if the GOP can’t get them to behave, it will be NY-23 — all over the country.

Good luck trying to put that toothpaste back in the tube, Michael Steele.

Tags: 2010, GOP, Midterms, Republicans, Tea Party, teabaggers

 

Marcy wrote about this yesterday.

Remember how, several weeks ago, Michael Isikoff rationalized away any concerns about someone flying a plane into a federal office building? One distinction he made is that white American terrorists–the Unabomber, the anthrax killer (!), the tax protestor–don’t coordinate with others who have the same enemy. […]

Now, to be fair, Isikoff also said that to qualify as a terrorist you had to set out to cause mass casualties (though of course the IRS protester failed only in execution on that front).

But as to coordination to serve a mutual enemy? We’re officially there now.

This is not going in a good direction.

Tags: Early Morning Swim, Rachel Maddow

 

No, this isn’t an Onion headline. Yes, it is yet another poll that shows Republicans are out of their fucking minds.

On the heels of health care, a new Harris poll reveals Republican attitudes about Obama: Two-thirds think he’s a socialist, 57 percent a Muslim—and 24 percent say “he may be the Antichrist.”

In fairness, that question was clearly designed to make conservatives look bad. I mean, it’s completely possible that Obama may be the Antichrist. Has anyone thoroughly checked him for the Mark of the Beast? How can really we be sure?

Other findings  of the Harris poll, due out tomorrow, include:

• 67 percent of Republicans (and 40 percent of Americans overall) believe that Obama is a socialist
• 45 percent of Republicans (25 percent overall) agree with the Birthers in their belief that Obama was “not born in the United States and so is not eligible to be president”
• 38 percent of Republicans (20 percent overall) say that Obama is “doing many of the things that Hitler did”

I’m surprised that only about half of the polled Goopers are birthers — that feels low to me.

But we shouldn’t be surprised that nearly 40% think he’s the second coming of Adolf Hitler, since elected Republicans and clowns like Glenn Beck and the Pantload make the comparison often.

Nice party you’ve got there, GOP.

Tags: Obama, Republicans, Wingnuttia

 

Meanwhile, Bob Herbert is blistering this morning.

At some point, we have to decide as a country that we just can’t have this: We can’t allow ourselves to remain silent as foaming-at-the-mouth protesters scream the vilest of epithets at members of Congress — epithets that The Times will not allow me to repeat here.

It is 2010, which means it is way past time for decent Americans to rise up against this kind of garbage, to fight it aggressively wherever it appears. And it is time for every American of good will to hold the Republican Party accountable for its role in tolerating, shielding and encouraging foul, mean-spirited and bigoted behavior in its ranks and among its strongest supporters.

[…]

This is the party of trickle down and weapons of mass destruction, the party of birthers and death-panel lunatics. This is the party that genuflects at the altar of right-wing talk radio, with its insane, nauseating, nonstop commitment to hatred and bigotry.

Glenn Beck of Fox News has called President Obama a “racist” and asserted that he “has exposed himself as a guy, over and over and over again, who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture.”

Mike Huckabee, a former Republican presidential candidate, has said of Mr. Obama’s economic policies: “Lenin and Stalin would love this stuff.”

The G.O.P. poisons the political atmosphere and then has the gall to complain about an absence of bipartisanship.

Read the whole thing. Herbert has never been better.

Tags: Early Morning Swim

 

I really do live for moments like this.

Glenn Reynolds:

MEGAN MCARDLE: HEALTH “REFORM” IS DEAD.

John Hawkins:

Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, and a lot of other liberals are talking tough on health care, but the reality is that Scott Brown’s election is probably going to kill it deader than the dodo.

Clownhall:

Take it for granted, they were told, that one political party would promote the welfare of all Americans. It just wasn’t so.

That’s why Obamacare is dead.

American Spectator:

Obamacare is dead. The politicians, journalists and bloggers who continue to talk about passing “reform” via reconciliation or some other procedural skullduggery are like those characters in the comedy, Weekend at Bernie’s, who lug a corpse around pretending it’s still alive.

Reason [sic]:

I’d say that chances are that Democrats will to have to call off their health care reform efforts shortly—perhaps even by the end of the day tomorrow.

NRO:

Obamacare is going down.

RedState:

ObamaCare will fail in the House next week.

Never in doubt.

(Video courtesy of El Rushbo)

Tags: Health care, Wingnuttia

 

• Big media reactions here, here, here and here.
• Blog reactions here, here, here, here and here.
• Wah!
• Boehner and Pence: two of the biggest asshats on the planet.

David Frum:

Conservatives and Republicans today suffered their most crushing legislative defeat since the 1960s.

[…]

We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.

There were leaders who knew better, who would have liked to deal. But they were trapped. Conservative talkers on Fox and talk radio had whipped the Republican voting base into such a frenzy that deal-making was rendered impossible. How do you negotiate with somebody who wants to murder your grandmother? Or – more exactly – with somebody whom your voters have been persuaded to believe wants to murder their grandmother?

Epic teabagging fail.

Tags: Early Morning Swim, health care reform

 

Noted left-wing activist* Bruce Bartlett read David Frum’s recent survey of a bunch of Teabaggers, and finds their grasp of the issues, erm, lacking.

…the Tea Party crowd appears to believe that federal taxes are very considerably higher than they actually are, whether referring to total taxes as a share of GDP or in terms of the taxes paid by a typical family.

Tea Partyers also seem to have a very distorted view of the direction of federal taxes. They were asked whether they are higher, lower or the same as when Barack Obama was inaugurated last year. More than two-thirds thought that taxes are higher today, and only 4% thought they were lower; the rest said they are the same.

Remember, taxes are the Teabaggers’ raison d’etre — the fact that they seem to know very little about them is noteworthy.

But it’s not only taxes where Teabaggers need help.

The survey also reveals some misperceptions about the status quo on healthcare and energy in the United States. The average Tea Partier placed the United States’ global rank in life expectancy at 11^th, when in fact the CIA ranks the United States 49^th.

Not surprising. This crowd hears Republicans talk about “the best health care system in the world” 24/7, and breaks out into chants of “U-S-A! U-S-A!” at the slightest provocation.

Finally, there’s this.

In terms of energy policy, Tea Partiers estimated that the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR) holds about 70 years worth of oil, based on America’s present rates of consumption. Conventional estimates suggest that ANWR holds about a year’s supply of oil, based on the CIA’s estimate of oil consumption.

70 years, 1 year — what’s the difference?

Again, when you hear your leaders say “Drill, baby, drill!” over and over, this confusion is understandable.

The Teabaggers are just regurgitating years of programming by Rush and Sean and the GOP. Pesky things like “facts” and “data” are the stuff of weak-kneed libruls.

*For the snark impaired, Bartlett served in the Reagan and Bush 41 administrations.

Tags: Bruce Bartlett, David Frum, taxes, Tea Party, teabaggers, Wingnuttia

 

Is the end nigh?

In the homestretch of the health care debate, one obvious question being asked across the capital is whether Speaker Nancy Pelosi will find 216 votes to pass the bill. For a group of particularly jittery Democrats, the better question may be this: Who will be allowed to slip away?

[…]

There are, of course, very few votes to spare. Yet there are some. And even most Republican leaders concede that the mystery is not so much whether Democrats will reach the magic number of 216, but rather whose names will be included as yes votes in the final count.

“Every vote around here is a heavy lift,” Ms. Pelosi told reporters Thursday.

I’m sure it is.

Tags: Early Morning Swim, HCR, Howard Dean

 

From The Great Gatsby:

“Civilization’s going to pieces,” broke out Tom violently. “I’ve gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read “The Rise of the Colored Empires’ by this man Goddard?”

“Why no,” I answered, rather surprised by his tone.”

“Well, it’s a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be—will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.”

And here’s Mark Steyn, approvingly quoting L. Paul Bremer.

It is a fact of history that Europe is based on Judeo-Christian values. But Europe seems unwilling, or perhaps afraid, to acknowledge this reality…

European countries have a large, and in most places, growing Muslim population. […] Europe also faces a demographic time bomb. The population of every major European country is falling. This will place unsustainable burdens on the elaborate and expensive welfare programs built up over the decades. As the Muslim populations grow in proportion to overall populations, it is vital that Europe find a way to integrate peaceful Muslims while defeating extremists.

Uh-huh. So let me get this straight.

The man who was the Bush administration’s viceroy in Iraq, the guy who was handpicked to wield complete dictatorial control over one of the largest Muslim countries in the world after the United States bombed, invaded, conquered and occupied it, the guy who then promptly reduced the place to a nightmarish, zombies-walking-the-streets hellhole — turns out to be a Tom Buchnanesque asshole who frets publicly about the Great Brown Hordes irrevocably staining the lily-white tapestry of Europe.

Pretty easy to see why it all went so well over there, isn’t it?

Tags: L. Paul Bremer, Late Night, Mark Steyn, National Review, The Corner, Wingnuttia

 

CNN:

Rep. Dennis Kucinich said Wednesday that he will continue to work toward a single-payer program, despite his decision to reverse course and support President Obama’s health care plan.

“This was a detour,” the Ohio Democrat told CNN’s “Larry King Live.”

“I’ll work with the president in getting this bill passed and the president has committed to working with me to seeing further health care reforms after this bill is out of the way.”

Kucinich has been a strong proponent of what he calls “Medicare for all,” but said he was willing to settle for something short of that — at least in the short term.

“I’m not a ‘my-way-or-the-highway’ kind of guy,” he said. “This is a first step. By no means is this bill the bill that I wanted. I’ve been highly critical of it, and I don’t take back anything I said.”

Funny how the liberals are never “my-way-or-highway” kind of guys.

Tags: Dennis Kucinich, Early Morning Swim, Health care

 

In light of today’s news, it’s worth revisiting a post about Obama’s supposed powerlessness over Congress by Matt Yglesias.

I think there’s something perverse in the very strong desire I see among liberals to make problems in congress be about anything other than congress. It’s just not in the power of Barack Obama to make the senate anything other than what it is. […] These are men and women who have amassed a great deal of power, and who ultimately need to decide on a daily basis what it is they want to do with that power. If they choose to use it for bad ends, then blame them for that, not Obama or his team’s alleged lack of familiarity with the United States Senate.

Cue Blanche Lincoln.

President Barack Obama hasn’t reached out to lobby Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) on healthcare, the senator said Wednesday.

“I made it pretty clear that I didn’t support reconciliation,” Lincoln said during an appearance on MSNBC, by way of offering a reason as to why the president would let her be. “I think he hates asking people to do things contrary to what their gut tells them to do.“

Oh, really?

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, a fierce critic of the health care reform bill from the Democrats’ left, relented Wednesday and said he would vote for it.

The Ohio Democrat’s decision brings House Speaker Nancy Pelosi one member closer to the 216 votes she needs to pass reform.

But Kucinich is not doing it gladly, and his capitulation comes only after intense pressure from Pelosi and President Obama, who traveled to Ohio with Kucinich earlier this week.

The strong-arming of Kucinich makes Yglesias look more than a little silly today. But the idea that the president is simply an impotent bystander in the face of the awesome powers of the United States Congress was always an absurd position — especially in light of the ample evidence that Obama White House gleefully puts the screws to liberals.

So Blanche Lincoln can threaten to filibuster her own party’s bill, and she doesn’t get so much as a phone call.

But Dennis Kucinich, on the other hand, stands up for a key principle of health care reform that the president campaigned on — and gets a personal visit from Air Force One.

See how this works now, Matt?

Tags: Blanche Lincoln, Dennis Kucinich, health care reform, Matt Yglesias, Obama

 

The Teabaggers’ man in Arizona is not having a good week.

J.D. Hayworth is the Arizona Republican senatorial candidate that actually makes us root for John McCain. He thinks men will marry horses if gay marriage is allowed. Tonight, Maddow revisited her bout with Hayworth last night and showed pretty convincingly that J.D. Hayworth’s mouth is incapable of forming words that are not completely false.

For example: Hayworth told Maddow that she was wrong in saying he had been one of congresses top recipients of money from crook-lobbyist Jack Abramoff. He was actually just ninth, he said! Turns out, that was a lie; he was ninth only if you counted “groups” in addition to individual legislators.

What a clown.

Tags: Early Morning Swim, J. D. Hayworth, Rachel Maddow

 

Dick Armey, the former Congressman from Texas and current teabagger, actually grew up in North Dakota — but he certainly sounds like he was educated by the Texas School Board.

“Jamestown colony, when it was first founded as a socialist venture, dang near failed with everybody dead and dying in the snow,” Armey reported in his luncheon address.

No. Jamestown was founded strictly as a business venture by a group of entrepreneurial English noblemen looking to find gold. And the Jamestown colonists’ “look out for #1″ philosophy got a lot of them killed.

Armey seems to be referring to the Plymouth Colony, whose idealistic founders did not want to repeat the mistakes of Jamestown, and thus signed the Mayflower Compact, which called for “submission” to the “general good.”

The problem for Armey is that the for-profit Jamestown was an epic fail and the “socialist” Plymouth was a big success.

Armey is also confused about Alexander Hamilton.

“The small-government conservative movement, which includes people who call themselves the tea party patriots and so forth, is about the principles of liberty as embodied in the Constitution, the understanding of which is fleshed out if you read things like the Federalist Papers,” Armey explained. […]

A member of the audience passed a question to the moderator, who read it to Armey: How can the Federalist Papers be an inspiration for the tea party, when their principal author, Alexander Hamilton, “was widely regarded then and now as an advocate of a strong central government”?

Historian Armey was flummoxed by this new information. “Widely regarded by whom?” he challenged, suspiciously. “Today’s modern ill-informed political science professors? . . . I just doubt that was the case in fact about Hamilton.”

Ahem. Notes Dana Milbank,

Hamilton favored a national bank, presidents and senators who served for life and state governors appointed by the president.

Yes. As any high school student should know.

It is an ongoing fascination of mine that the very same wingnuts who are constantly bragging about how much they love this country are so frequently pig-ignorant of its actual history.

Tags: Dick Armey, Tea Party, teabaggers, Wingnuttia

 

Dennis is getting the full-court press.

Obama invited Kucinich and undecided Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio) to the ultimate pressure cooker as he tries to nail down a majority for his top domestic priority.

What was said at 35,000 feet is anyone’s guess, and Kucinich is — for once — not talking. The president talked one on one with Kucinich aboard Air Force One on the flight, a White House spokesman said. But Obama’s onetime presidential rival just smiled as he walked across the tarmac upon arrival in his home state.

“I’m looking forward to hearing what he has to say,” Kucinich said. A spokesman in his D.C. office said the congressman was politely declining all requests for interviews today.

But there was a public hint of the kind of pressure he is under. When Obama introduced Kucinich at his rally in Strongsville, in the congressman’s suburban Cleveland district, someone in the audience called out, “Vote yes.”

Obama, not missing a beat, turned to his traveling partner. “Did you hear that, Dennis?” he asked.

Wonder why Blanche Lincoln or Joe Lieberman never get this kind of treatment.

Tags: Dennis Kucinich, Early Morning Swim, Michael moore

 

Ross Douthat doesn’t care for the “Bush lied, people died reductionism” of the new Matt Damon movie, “The Green Zone,” and instead, would prefer something more along the lines of The Comedy of Errors.

The narrative of the Iraq invasion, properly told, resembles a story out of Shakespeare. You had a nation reeling from a terrorist attack and hungry for a response that would be righteous, bold and comprehensive. You had an inexperienced president trying to tackle a problem that his predecessors (one of them his own father) had left to fester since the first gulf war.

Hmmm. I’m don’t think Americans wanted a “bold, comprehensive” response to 9/11 — though that’s exactly how Condi Rice described the reasoning behind Iraq. I think people wanted to get those responsible for 9/11 — period.

And notice how Ross so effortlessly pivots right from 9/11 to Iraq, as though they were somehow related. Remind you of anyone?

You had a casus belli — those weapons of mass destruction — that even many of the invasion’s opponents believed to be a real danger to world peace.

More revisionism. Plenty of experts were insisting Iraq had no WMD — including the UN inspectors on the ground. But WMD wasn’t the casus belli, it was simply chosen for “bureaucratic reasons” according to Paul Wolfowitz. It was supposedly the threat that Saddam would give his non-existent WMD to his allies, al Qaeda — another fabrication. And the desire to do “something bolder.” Oh, and we were gonna kick their ass and take their gas. Also.

Our nation might be less divided, and our debates less poisonous, if more artists were capable of showing us the ironies, ambiguities and tragedies inherent in our politics — rather than comforting us with portraits of a world divided cleanly into good and evil.

So true.

If only Hollywood could be like more George W. Bush and embrace a sophisticated, nuanced, shades-of-gray type of worldview — rather than so clumsily dividing the world into good and evil.

Why must Matt Damon poison our politics?

Tags: Hollywood, Iraq war, Ross Douthat, Wingnuttia

 

Last week, Jerusalem gave Washington the finger by announcing the construction of new settlements, timed for maximum humiliation of Vice President Biden. The Vice President was furious, and, as Spencer notes, told the Israelis they were endangering American troops. So beyond the pale was the Israelis action that the Secretary of State called it “insulting.”

But for the ADL, it’s the Obama administration that’s the problem.

“We are shocked and stunned at the Administration’s tone and public dressing down of Israel on the issue of future building in Jerusalem,” ADL director Abraham Foxman said in a statement. “We cannot remember an instance when such harsh language was directed at a friend and ally of the United States.”

Maybe you can’t remember one, Abe, because “friends” of the United States typically don’t pull fuck-you moves like that on our Vice Presidents.

The fact is, the US was making a good-faith effort to broker peace between Israel and the Palestinian people, and the Israeli government expressed its gratitude by doubling-down on a reckless, aggressive policy that every US president since Jimmy Carter has opposed. But how dare anyone criticize Israel for it.

The ADL has officially become as relevant as the Catholic League.

Heckuva job, Abe.

Tags: ADL, Anti-Defamation League, Hillary Clinton, Israel, Joe Biden