Author: Blue Texan

Well played, sir.

Step back for a second and look at who we are in this room. As was said many years ago, the law in its majestic equality forbids both the wealthy and the poor from sleeping under bridges. When it comes to the wealthy in health care per capita, we’re the wealthiest people in America. the Federal Employees Health Benefit Program administered by the federal government, setting minimum standards for the health insurance that we enjoy as individuals and want for our families, is all we’re asking for in this bill for families across America.

If you think it’s a socialist plot and it’s wrong, for goodness sakes drop out of the Federal Employees Health Benefit Program. But if you think it’s good enough for your family, shouldn’t our health insurance be good enough for the rest of America? That’s what it gets down to. Why have this double standard?

Indeed.

Tags: Dick Durbin, health care reform, health care summit, Tort Reform

Well, well, well. Another “fiscal conservative” exposed as a fraud.

U.S. Senate candidate Marco Rubio charged grocery bills, repairs to the family minivan and purchases from a wine store less than a mile from his West Miami home to the Republican Party of Florida while he was speaker of the Florida House, according to records obtained by The Miami Herald/St. Petersburg Times.

[…]

Those expenses include a $1,000 charge at Braman Honda in Miami for repairs to the family car in January 2008. Rubio said the minivan was damaged by parking attendants at a political function and that the party agreed to cover half of his insurance deductible. The party also paid $2,976 for him to rent a car in Miami for five weeks, according to the records provided by a confidential source.

Now the good folks at Hertz will rent you a perfectly nice Chevy Cobalt for a mere $646 a month in Miami. But it appears that’s not fancy enough for a guy who wants to “control the excessive and wasteful spending in Washington that threatens to leave future generations with crushing debt and a country worse off than that of their parents and grandparents.”

Marco also ran up these bills with his wingnut welfare card.

• $765 at Apple’s online store for “computer supplies.”
• $78.10 for two purchases at Farm Stores in suburban Miami.
• $412 at All Fusion Electronics, a music equipment store in Miami, for “supplies.”

What will he tell his grandchildren?

King was just giving voice to what lots of right-wing extremists were thinking.

While most Americans surely see Joseph Stack as an angry, misguided man whose final act was repugnant, his suicide mission has clearly tapped a vein of rage among anti-tax, anti-government extremists.

The way they see it, “he did the ultimate flipping of the bird to the man,” said JJ MacNab, a Maryland-based insurance analyst who is writing a book about tax protesters. “He stuck it to the man, and they love that.”

It is not surprising Stack would be portrayed as a hero on fringe Web sites such as stormfront.org, a forum for white supremacists. But admirers also are expressing their appreciation on mainstream sites such as Facebook, where a fan page supporting some of the things he said in his six-page manifesto had more than 2,000 members Monday.

Imagine the Malkin/NRO/GOP freakout if someone had put up a Facebook tribute page for the Ft. Hood Shooter.

Dick Morris has an unusual talent for contradicting himself over the course of several columns. But today, he’s taken that gift to a whole new level.

One out of 10 Republican congressman is a doctor and two GOP senators — Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and John Barraso of Wyoming — also practiced medicine before joining Congress. The Republican Party should send its doctors to the White House for the health care summit Barack Obama is staging right before he tries to ram through his Obamacare legislation.

Great idea! Except…

Poll [sic] show that the public respects doctors when it comes to health care far more than it does politicians or health economists.

My head hurts.

I guess Morris thinks that if Tom Coburn (R-OK), Paul Broun (R-GA) and Ron Paul (R-TX) all show up in scrubs and stethoscopes to the health care summit, people will suddenly forget they’re elected politicans.

Anyway, if the theory is that people trust doctors, not politicians, when it comes to health care — what about this?

The American Medical Association — the group that polls show is most trusted by the public to recommend the right changes to the health care system — on Wednesday issued a public letter to Congress and President Obama broadly endorsing his proposed overhaul on the morning before he makes his biggest push for the plan in a televised speech.

I guess people don’t trust the AMA because it’s kind of like a union or something.

One of the strangest and most annoying Republican talking points about the Democrats’ health care bill is that’s it too long. We’ve heard this from them almost non-stop since the House bill was introduced last year.

Mike Pence:

[T]his legislation actually uses the word ’shall’ 3,425 times. After weeks of backroom negotiations, now the Democrats have emerged with a bill that isn’t a thousand pages; it’s 1,990 pages.

Tom Price:

So how much takeover can you cram into 2,000 pages? By comparison, the legislation that created Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, which now cost nearly $800 billion annually, was less than 300 pages long. So at 2,000 pages today, that’s a whole lot of government input for a plan the Speaker says won’t result in Washington taking over health care.

And John Boehner:

[t]he fact that it weighs in at nearly 2,000 pages — more than 620 pages longer than the government takeover of health care Hillary Clinton proposed in 1993 — is as good an indication as any of just how costly and unsustainable Speaker Pelosi’s proposal is.

Cue John Boehner’s spokesman, today.

“The White House’s ‘plan’ consists of an 11-page outline, which has not been scored by the Congressional Budget Office or posted online as legislative text. So they want to reorganize one-sixth of the United States’ economy with a document shorter than a comic book, and they’re complaining that they can’t find our plan on their own website? C’mon.“

You just can’t make this shit up.

Pants on fire.

Cheney told Fox News back in April last year:

“There are reports that show specifically what we gained as a result of this activity. They have not been declassified. I formally ask that they be declassified now.”

The memos are still secret, despite Cheney’s request. But Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff, in reporting the latest review on the use of torture, published last Friday, explains:

“A crucial CIA memo that has been cited by former Vice President Dick Cheney and other former Bush administration officials as justifying the effectiveness of waterboarding contained “plainly inaccurate information” that undermined its conclusions, according to Justice Department investigators.”

If I were a war criminal, I’d probably lie about it, too.

He knows his GOP talking points.

Take a look at these headlines.

• WaPo: “At CPAC, Glenn Beck scolds the Republican Party.“
• MSNBC: “Beck criticizes Obama and the GOP.“
• The Atlantic: “Beck Thumps GOP, Puzzling Conservatives.”
• L.A. Times: “Glenn Beck to Republican Party: Repent.“

And on and on. If you only skimmed those headlines, you’d think that Beck went boldly into the belly of the beast, and had some kind of Sister Souljah moment.

Except Beck didn’t do that. He blew smoke up the CPAC audience’s white asses by simply reciting, verbatim, exactly the same tired spiel Republican leaders have been parroting nonstop since they lost control of Congress in 2006.

Here’s what Beck said.

“I voted Republican almost every time,” he said, and “I don’t even know what they stand for anymore. And they’ve got to realize that they have a problem: ‘Hello, my name is the Republican Party, and I’ve got a problem. I’m addicted to spending and big government.‘”

So Republicans are losing elections because they’re insufficiently conservative. Never heard that before!

Tommy Thompson:

If we’re going to spend money foolishly, and as stupidly as the Democrats, the voters are going to vote for the professional spenders, the Democrats. Not the amateur spenders, the Republicans.

Paul Ryan:

The leaders asked the caucus why we thought we’d lost our majority. Was it the war in Iraq? About a third of the hands went up. Was it corruption? About a dozen hands. Was it that we’d lost our way on spending and the need for small government? The majority of hands went up … The American people came to believe that we’re the party of Big Government. That’s why they threw us out.

Senator John McCain of Arizona acknowledged Monday that his fellow Republicans “forgot who we were” in recent years by spending too much, and said that as president he would rely on low taxes, greater fiscal restraint and free trade to lift the nation’s economy.

Bobby Jindal:

In recent years, these distinctions in philosophy became less clear — our party got away from its principles. You elected Republicans to champion limited government, fiscal discipline and personal responsibility. Instead, Republicans went along with earmarks and big government spending in Washington. Republicans lost your trust — and rightly so.

Ask yourself: is it possible to “scold” or “thump” someone when you’re lovingly reciting their talking points? Probably not.

On the other hand, Beck called progressivism a “cancer” on America which needs to be “eradicated.” So he pretty much bashed both sides equally.

[/Dana Milbank]

Two very revealing snapshots from CPAC yesterday.

Ron Paul wins CPAC strawpoll. Crowd apparently booed the result when it was announced.

And later,

Even Ann Coulter, who drew a huge crowd herself, felt compelled to give a shout out to Paul-mania, saying she agreed with everything he stands for outside of foreign policy — a statement met with cheers.

Despite Coulter’s attempt to make foreign policy a mere trivial disagreement, her statement — and the CPAC crowd’s response — is absurd.

The United States currently has troops in 140 countries around the world. We are actively involved in shooting wars in three countries, going on a decade now. We will spend nearly $700B on defense in 2010 — almost as much as the “generational theft” stimulus bill — and this doesn’t count the billions we spend on Homeland Security. And all for a single year of “defense.”

So Ann Coulter agrees with everything Ron Paul says, except for that trillion or so a year she wants to keep spending to maintain a US Empire. Or, put another way — Coulter and the neoconservatives that have taken over the Republican Party want Ron Paul’s pre-WWI, pre-Fed, pre-Social Security, pre-IRS federal government — to go with LBJ’s Great Society military.

This notion that you can have “small government” while maintaining a global empire and fighting a “Global War on Terror” is obviously nonsense, and even William F. Buckley recognized that. Here’s Buckley, arguing during the Cold War that conservatives had to embrace “Big Government” (from Julian Zelizer’s Arsenal of Democracy):

Buckley wrote that conservatives had to “accept Big Government for the duration–for neither an offensive nor a defensive war can be waged…except through the instrument of a totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores.” He explained that Republicans “will have to support large armies and air forces…central intelligence…and the attendant centralization of power in Washington–even with Truman at the reins of it all.“

If Buckley had said this at CPAC about the “War on Terror” and Obama he’d have been booed off the stage.

But whoever the GOP nominee is in 2012 will have to embrace this paradox wholeheartedly. The GOP isn’t ready to give up it’s small government, low tax, Pax Americana neocon fantasyland — anytime soon.

Pictured: The GOP's "moderate" 2012 candidate.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!1!1!!

Conservatives could learn a lot from Tiger Woods’ wife Elin, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty said at the Conservative Political Action Conference today.

“She said, I’ve had enough,” Pawlenty said. “We should take a page out of her playbook and take a 9-iron and smash the window out of big government.”

Isn’t that hilarious? And just one day after Joseph Stack did just that.

I guess, for TPaw,  Republicans are Elin and Obama, Tiger Woods. Obama = Tiger Woods. Get it?

Anyway, TPaw also busted out this highly-original yukker.

Pawlenty was at pains to differentiate himself from Romney, referring to his blue-collar roots and to “elites” who eat brie and drink Chablis “at parties in San Francisco.”

Never heard that one before.

Pssst! Don’t forget the fundies, TPaw.

“I’m proud that in my state in the very first sentence in the very first paragraph of the Minnesota constitution. It says: “We, the people of the State of Minnesota, grateful to God for our civil and religious liberty.

“I say to those naysayers trying to crowd out God from the conversation. ‘If it is good enough for the founding fathers, it should be good enough for each and every one of is.‘”

Which founding father wrote the Minnesota constitution?

Remember: this clown is one of the GOP’s hopefuls in 2012.

It really does all come down to pissing off liberals with this crowd.

U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., is using her call out as MSNBC host Keith Olbermann’s “Worst Person in the World” as a fundraising draw, saying she’s wearing it “like I’ve won a gold medal at the Olympics.”

Olbermann, well-known for his occasional “worst person” attacks, singled out Blackburn for her continued interest in permitting young people to privatize their Social Security contributions. He suggested the plan would allow young people to “get wiped out the next time the mortgage industry or some other form of legalized gambling wipes out a chunk of the economy.”

Why run on your legislative record, and what you’ve done for the people of your district?

Much better to run against that there teevee man, who says mean things about conservatives.

Site of the crash, Austin, TX

The Austin-American Statesman has posted this diatribe by a Joseph Stack of San Marcos, Texas, the man federal authorities have confirmed tried to kill his family by burning down his house, then flew a small plane into IRS offices near downtown Austin. The plumes of smoke from both the house and the plane crash were visible from my office this morning — several miles from the incidents.

Here is an excerpt:

I know I’m hardly the first one to decide I have had all I can stand. It has always been a myth that people have stopped dying for their freedom in this country, and it isn’t limited to the blacks, and poor immigrants. I know there have been countless before me and there are sure to be as many after. But I also know that by not adding my body to the count, I insure nothing will change. I choose to not keep looking over my shoulder at “big brother” while he strips my carcass, I choose not to ignore what is going on all around me, I choose not to pretend that business as usual won’t continue; I have just had enough.

I can only hope that the numbers quickly get too big to be white washed and ignored that the American zombies wake up and revolt; it will take nothing less. I would only hope that by striking a nerve that stimulates the inevitable double standard, knee-jerk government reaction that results in more stupid draconian restrictions people wake up and begin to see the pompous political thugs and their mindless minions for what they are. Sadly, though I spent my entire life trying to believe it wasn’t so, but violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer.

It should be noted that he also rails against “GM executives,” “drug and insurance companies,” and “organized religion.” But the central complaint of the rant is the government, as he seems to have had some tax-related problems in the past.

The Statesman has more on the story as it unfolds.

Dave Neiwert at C&L has more analysis, plus video.

Here’s Teabagger candidate Marco Rubio, yukking it up at CPAC.

“The president couldn’t find anywhere to set up a teleprompter to announce new taxes,” Rubio said of the snow accumulation.

Noted Tim Mak,

Doesn’t stop Rubio from using a tele-prompter himself though.

That aside, watching Rubio’s and DeMint’s CPAC speeches is literally like stepping into a timewarp. It is as though the years 2001-2009 never happened.

The words “Bush” and “Cheney” were not uttered. There was no acknowledgment that under conservatives, the country collapsed into the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression. There was not a single mea culpa, not a hint of regret that the wars conservatives launched have still not ended in victory. Low taxes and less regulation were repeatedly cited as the answers to all our problems — despite the fact we’re coming off three decades of lower taxes and less regulation. There were endless complaints about the deficit, and no admission that conservatives are responsible for most of it. There were no answers for stagnant middle class wages, no concerns that about half of America’s children at some point depend on food stamps. Just endless refrains that Americans should have the freedom to make lots of money.

In a nutshell: “Freedom, freedom, freedom, socialism, socialism, socialism, tyranny, terror, taxes. In conclusion, America fuck yeah!”

Surreal.

Send it to your friends, post it on Facebook, tweet it — this is must-see TV.

Looks like Dubya and Jeb! got together for a “town hall” at some high school in Naples, Florida. The Bushes didn’t allow cameras, but a reporter caught Dubya trashing the Quitter.

The brothers differed in opinion on subjects such as Sarah Palin. Although, both tried to stay neutral, George W. said vice presidents don’t win elections.

Now I can’t tell if this is sloppy reporting or if Dubya meant to say “vice presidential candidates.” But it certainly doesn’t sound like a compliment.

Then there’s this.

Most notably the Bush brothers disagreed on the Senate race between Marco Rubio and Charlie Crist. Jeb Bush says he is officially neutral, but is disappointed in Crist’s embrace of the stimulus bill. George W. Bush joked “who the hell is Marco Rubio”, something that even caught the attention of this high schooler.

Ouch. In case you didn’t know, Marco Rubio is the teabaggers’ golden boy in Florida.

Also: way to keep it classy in front of the sophomores, Chimpy.

From last night’s “Frontline”:

Greenspan, remember, always said that he was a believer in Ayn Rand, a believer in free market. Little bit curious for a central banker, because what is central banking? It’s a massive intervention in the market, setting interest rates. So to me, that kind of perspective, to say, “I believe in free markets, but I’m going to accept the job at central banking,” is a contradiction. You almost have to be schizophrenic.

Whole thing is fascinating.

Start here.

Early voting for the gubernatorial primaries starts today in Texas. Details are at the Texas Secretary of State page.

Here’s 5 reasons why Democrats should vote early and often in the GOP primary — and vote for Hutchison.

1. There is no danger Bill White, the excellent Democratic front runner who’s polling very well against Rick Perry, of losing the Democratic primary.
2. Perry’s failure to receive more than 50% of the primary vote will ensure a runoff, taking resources away from him against White.
3. If Hutchison actually pulls the upset and wins the runoff, a victory for Bill White is more likely, because the teabagger/secessionist crazies who Perry courts (and who Debra Medina says she represents) will stay home on election day in November.
4. While it would be morbidly fascinating to watch Perry and Medina try and out-crazy each other during the runoff, the thought of Medina — who makes Perry seem like some sort of technocratic moderate — as governor of the second-largest state in the country is too scary to contemplate.
5. Rick Perry is a corrupt, shallow, Christianist hack, and Texas Democrats should jump at any chance to finally get rid of him.

Not a whiff of racism among those Teabaggers.

Almost 30 years ago, Tony Stewart, a civil-rights activist, co-founded the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations in Coeur d’Alene. The task force has campaigned to rid north Idaho of its reputation as a haven for anti-government extremists. Its tactics brought many successes, including a $6.3 million civil judgment that effectively bankrupted Richard Butler’s Aryan Nations.

When the Tea Party uprising gathered force last spring, Stewart saw painfully familiar cultural and rhetorical overtones. Stewart viewed the questions about Obama’s birthplace as a proxy for racism, and he was bothered by the “common message of intolerance for the opposition.”

Branding Obama a tyrant, Stewart said, constructs a logic that could be used to rationalize violence. “When people start wearing guns to rallies, what’s the next thing that happens?” Stewart asked.

The Teabaggers will no doubt whine about this Olbermann segment, but you didn’t hear boos when Tancredo and Farah gave their racist speeches in Nashville — you heard thunderous applause. Why is that?

Pictured: Evan Bayh in his element.

Here’s Steve Benen on Bayh’s weak ass excuse for quitting.

To hear Evan Bayh tell it, Republicans have made it impossible for Congress to work on issues important to him … so he’s decided to make it easier for the Republican caucus to have more power.

When the going gets tough, the conserva-Dems pack up and go home?

Pretty much. Except they “pack up and go home” while blaming both “left and right” and in a manner that screws the Democratic Party.

Why are people surprised? Let’s not forget who this guy is.

Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), who is now being mentioned as a strong candidate for Sen. Barack Obama’s running mate, co-sponsored the 2003 resolution authorizing the Iraq war.

Bayh not only voted for the war and embraced its neo-conservative rationale by chairing the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, as a New York Times profile noted this week.  He went further, taking the single most aggressive, pro-war position possible. The few Democratic co-sponsors of the White House Iraq resolution provide context for the kind of senators who shared Bayh’s position at the time — they include Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn), Zell Miller (Ga.) and John Breaux (La.).

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Yesterday, “Joe” the “Plumber” endorsed the Teabagger candidate for governor in Pennsylvania, and made a startling announcement.

Wurzelbacher touched on several different points during his speech, and many of them were surprising. He said he doesn’t support Sarah Palin anymore. Why? Because she’s backing John McCain’s re-election effort. “John McCain is no public servant,” he told the room, calling the 2008 Republican nominee a career politician.

But what about all that campaigning you did for him, Joe?

Wurzelbacher said, “McCain was trying to use me. I happened to be the face of middle Americans. It was a ploy.”

You’re in good company, Joe — so was the Quitter.

Via LATFT

The Democrats are running for the hills!

A trio of House Republican retirement announcements over the past 10 days have sparked a debate between the leaders of the two major parties over whether the GOP is losing momentum in its quest to score major gains at the ballot box this fall.

With the three latest lawmakers choosing not to seek reelection in November, Republicans will have to defend 18 open seats and Democrats 14.

Everyone hates Obama!

At a time of deepening political disaffection and intensified distress about the economy, President Obama enjoys an edge over Republicans in the battle for public support, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

TEA PARTY!!!1!!

The percentage of Americans holding a favorable view of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has dipped to 37 percent, “a new low,” in the latest national ABC News/Washington Post opinion survey.

“Although Palin is a tea party favorite, her potential as a presidential hopeful takes a severe hit in the survey. Fifty-five percent of Americans have unfavorable views of her . . .” the Post reported. […]

Overall, 35 percent of those surveyed expressed favorable views of the tea party movement, and 40 percent saw it unfavorably.

Yessiree. They got them libs right where they want ‘em.