Speechless

Democratic Congressman Joe Crowley channels Tim Robbins as Bob Roberts (and perhaps Bob Dylan) with his House floor "speech":

You Have A Funny Definition Of Victory

My inbox has received more than a few e-mails touting the Senate Dems’ big “victory” yesterday. Seems they were finally able to pass the FMAP extension which gave states money for Medicaid and prevented teacher layoffs. [Full disclosure: what really passed was some procedural bullshit which clears the way for the bill's passage, yada yada.]

Amazingly, it’s another one of those bills Republicans have been blocking for no earthly reason save to be dicks. The Democrats had to weaken the package until the usual suspects, the two Senators from Maine, agreed to vote Aye. And there was much rejoicing across the internet.

Here’s how the bill passed:

The two moderate Republicans were drawn to support the measure after Democratic leaders scaled back the measure from $24 billion to $16.1 billion and provided offsets for the entire cost of the legislation, which includes $10 billion for education programs to prevent teacher layoffs.

For liberals, the offsets came at a price: Almost $12 billion of the $26.1 billion tab is covered by cutting food stamp benefits to low-income Americans beginning in 2014. 

Food stamps. We paid for preventing teacher layoffs and Medicaid cuts by cutting food stamps.

Fuck you very much.

This isn't a victory, it's a tragedy. Quit telling me to be happy! Own up to the sorry state of the modern American legislative process! Teachable moments, people! Hell, point fingers if you want: it's perfectly okay to say, "Hey, this is what your Republican Party represents: taking food from needy families to pay for teachers and Medicaid." Last time I checked it was an election year, and aren't these the same assholes refusing to budge on letting the Bush tax cuts expire? Hello?

I know I’ve been a bit of a downer lately but it makes me nuts to get e-mails trumpeting the Senate’s “bold step forward” when I know better. Can’t we please be honest with ourselves for crying out loud?

Once again I’m being told a shit sandwich is filet mignon. It’s wearing thin, people. I know it’s been tough slogging, and I know this is a battle we very nearly didn’t win. I'm not saying it shouldn't have passed at all. But let's not pop the champagne corks. You are paying for teachers and state Medicaid by cutting food stamps. This is not a high-five moment. This is a moment to stand up and say, “we were forced to make a terrible choice today because Republicans have their priorities messed up.”

I mean for crying out loud, people. If the Republicans insist on being dicks then at least make them own it.

April Fool Du Jour

That would be Larry Sabato :



I am shocked that the director of the University of Virginia’s Center For Politics and the “most quoted college professor in the land” has never heard of John F. Kennedy, John Kerry, Max Cleland, Daniel Inouye, Chuck Rangel, Joe Sestak, the late Jack Murtha or former California Governor Gray Davis.

Really a shame that someone so ignorant is so widely quoted, but I shouldn’t be surprised.

Who’s Still Fighting For Single Payer?

I am.

You are.

The Republicans are fighting against it.

Whether you realize it or not, we all are fighting for it or against it.

Yesterday the public option was shot down, and the best argument the Republicans could come up with was that it was

in the words of Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, “a Trojan horse for a single-payer system” in which the government would eventually control most health care.

Or, in the words of Chuck Grassley (R-IA):

"It is a slow walk toward government control."

Got that? The Republican Party thinks we can’t have a public option because it will lead to single-payer.

This is what I’ve said all along! We are fighting single payer even when we aren’t fighting single payer!

Every argument against healthcare reform the Republicans have brought up has been an argument against single-payer. But we never got to have an actual debate about the merits of single-payer because it was never actually on the table!

I’m so angry at the Democrats right now I can barely contain myself. How could you screw this one up so badly? How could you lose control of the debate like this? How could you sell out healthcare reform?

How could you be such fuck-ups?

This has been the most ham-fisted public policy debate I’ve ever seen. I want a damned debate about single payer already. The Republicans are having it, so come on, Democrats. Join the conversation. Put it on the table already.

What are you afraid of? That we might actualy get it?

Political Ill Will

Digby had one of her amazingly prescient posts up yesterday about the bank bailout plan. And folks, if Digby says we’re screwed, believe it.

The part that resonated with me is here at the very end:

I don't believe the congress is the problem. And let's just say that if it is, if the majorities the Democrats have, the amount of popular outrage and the magnitude of the crisis we face aren't enough to push through real reform of the financial sector in the face of Wall Street screeching, then let's kiss health care and everything else goodbye. If the political will isn't there for something this vital, it's not there for anything and we are simply screwed.

And voila, today we have the Blue Dogs stamping their feet and gnashing their teeth at key provisions of the Obama budget. They are ready to scrap domestic spending and Obama’s signature tax cut and are giving ammo to Republicans like Eric Cantor, who now claims the Obama budget

"is so far out of the mainstream" that even members of Obama's own party are reluctant to support it.

Wait, last I checked Republicans loved loved loved tax cuts. Do they only like the kind that aren’t paid for in the budget? WTF?

So let’s head back over to Hullabaloo, where dday explains it for us:

But Obama paid for that tax cut in his budget. It was tied to revenue from a cap and trade plan. The reason the tax cut is out has nothing to do with expense, but because cap and trade has been excised. Kent Conrad and the Axis of Centrism just don't want to deal with climate change in a meaningful and substantive way, which will lead to more extreme weather, loss of snowpack, more hardship for farming, the loss of a great deal of the American coastline, and untold disaster funding needs.

This is how the government spends money in the name of saving it. And this is how "fiscal responsibility" is used as a cover to block progress.

So it appears there is no political will after all. And Digby is right: we’re screwed.

Hey, Blue Dogs: thanks for nothing. Don’t think we won’t remember this when you’re up for re-election.

Philosophical Differences

In the hullabaloo over the Utah mine rescue story, the MSM seems to have missed this information about “mine safety czar” Richard Stickler. Apparently President Bush had to resort to one of his famous recess appointments to put Stickler in charge of the Mine Safety and Health Administration, because Stickler couldn’t get confirmed even by a lame duck GOP-dominated Senate.

Huffington Post and Keith Olbermann broke this story last week, although I still haven’t seen much in the MSM about this “mine safety Brownie” (in fact, CNN seems to have ignored the story). I can’t help but wonder if things wouldn’t be different had it been Drudge, not Huffington Post, that had broken the news. Liberal blogs just don’t seem to be on the MSM’s radar.

So in case you missed it, Stickler is a coal industry executive who has a history of overseeing mines with higher-than-average accident rates. His appointment was opposed by miners rescued from Quecreek in Pennsylvania, as well as the families of deceased miners in three states. I guess in the wake of the Sago disaster, putting an industry crony in charge of mine safety was considered bad PR, because the Senate opposed Stickler, too. But Bush wanted his coal industry buddy there, and here we are.

No, this isn’t another one of those “blame President Bush” posts. I really don’t think there’s any doubt about the depth of President Bush’s incompetence, and if you’re one of the remaining 27% who doesn’t agree with me, well, your mind won’t be changed by my little blog bloviatings. But Bush is not to blame for every single disaster this country has faced.

However, I do blame him for nurturing a philosophy in Washington where those in power don’t believe they serve the American people, just a privileged elite. At it’s core, that’s what cronyism does.

And I believe the American people deserve better. We’re entitled to a government that functions properly, where agencies charged with oversight of certain industries know their job is to keep the interests of people, not company profits, front and center. They know that’s why they’re there, because they remember that most of these agencies were created in response to some horrible disaster. That’s what American government does: it responds legislatively to disasters that grab the headlines and tug the heartstrings.

Look, the deadliest mine disaster in U.S. history occurred in December 1907 (the fourth-deadliest occured four days later). And in 1910, the Bureau of Mines (precursor to today’s Mine Safety & Health Administration) was created. Things change over the years, government agencies are phased out and new ones created, laws are modified--often in response to some other tragedy--but that’s basically how government responds.

But the GOP doesn’t seem to get that. Call it a philosophical difference, if you will, but they seem to view these things as “yet another useless government agency” that just gets in the way of business and profits, full of red tape and dumb rules that seem to serve no purpose other than to frustrate and just generally make things harder.

If you believe this, and you happen to be in power, then you will put your industry friends in charge of these oversight agencies so they can loosen the regulations that were created to protect people, and make it easier for companies to work around the rules. That seems to be a basic GOP philosophy. Somehow, the “free hand of the market” is supposed to be incentive enough for mine owners to operate safe workplaces, but it hasn’t been that way in the past few hundred years, so I don’t know why anyone expects anything to change now.

Yes, I realize the GOP doesn’t have the corner on cronyism. Yes, Democrats will put friends and fundraisers in positions of power, too. But I really think the Bush Administration has taken this to a new level.

There’s a tremendous lack of respect that borders on disdain for workers revealed here. Think about it: in the wake of Sago, which was a hugely publicized mine disaster that captivated the American people, President Bush installs an industry executive with a checkered past for mine safety to head the government body charged with .. mine safety. If that’s not a “fuck you” then I don’t know what is.

Michael Savage Blames Dems For Roberts’ Seizure

And they call us crazy? Conservative nutcase Michael Savage (AKA Michael Alan Weiner) claims that a conspiracy by Democrats is responsible for Chief Justice John Roberts’ seizure on Monday:

On the July 30 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Michael Savage reacted to news that Chief Justice John Roberts had suffered a seizure that day by raising the possibility that "his health was in some way tampered with by the Democrats." Savage said, "Something's wrong with this picture," after noting that Roberts' seizure occurred just three days after Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) said he would seek in general to reject any future Supreme Court nomination made by President Bush.
...
Savage asked, "Am I to believe there's no connection between Charles Schumer on Friday saying he would never appoint, or never, excuse me, approve another Bush appointment to the court, to any court? And then the chief justice suffers a so-called seizure two days later? You're telling me there's no possibility of a conspiracy by the Democrats to have caused this seizure in some manner?" He added: "Tell me it's not possible, and I'll tell you you're a liar."

Of course what Schumer actually said was, “... we should not confirm any Bush nominee to the Supreme Court except in extraordinary circumstances.” Let’s play along with Mikey here for a moment and say it is possible to cause a seizure in another person; maybe the Chief Justice was shown the London Olympics logo. Regardless, I’d say losing the Chief Justice to a serious health issue would qualify as an “extraordinary circumstance.” Using Savage’s “logic” (which I realize is an oxymoron), one could just as easily argue that the Republicans were responsible through some medical foul-play.

I mean does Michael Savage really expect us to believe that John Roberts has a vacation home in Port Clyde, Maine -- 120 miles from the Bush vacation compound in Kennebunkport, which is in the same state! The Republicans had motive and opportunity ... what else do we need?

See how easy that is?

It’s tempting to write off tin-foil “haters” like Michael Savage as just another right wing crackpot. But we live in an era where corporate media outlets like CNN are bending over backwards to mainstream the craziest of wingnuts. Don’t forget: Savage had a regular gig on MSNBC until his hate speech got the better of him.

A few months ago I watched a marvelous old movie called A Face In The Crowd. It starred Andy Griffith as “Lonesome” Rhodes, a populist media hero who's not exactly as he appears to be. It’s an excellent film that offers a few cautionary lessons for today’s media stars.