Dump Michael Steele Watch, Day 1 Update

Politico’s Roger Simon reports:

Which is why one top GOP strategist was recently quoted as saying of Steele, “If his implosion continues, RNC members are likely to call a special session to dump him for an effective chairman.”

Why, what’s this? The Hill reports, "RNC member calls on Steele to quit”:

Michael Steele should resign as Republican National Committee (RNC) chairman, according to a committee member from North Carolina.

In an e-mail to fellow RNC members obtained by The Hill, Dr. Ada Fisher, North Carolina's national committeewoman, said Steele is "eroding confidence" in the GOP and that members of his transition team should encourage him to step aside. Fisher added Steele's personal e-mail address to the e-mail.

"I don't want to hear anymore [sic] language trying to be cool about the bling in the stimulus package or appealing to D.L. Hughley and blacks in a way that isn't going to win us any votes and makes us frankly appear to many blacks as quite foolish," Fisher wrote.

So who is Dr. Ada Stele? Talking Points Memo has the goods. Some interesting background info there.

Did I say Steele would last until June? Let's say May 1. Republicans in disarray!!!!

Dump Michael Steele Watch, Day 1

Republican “insiders” are concerned:

A number of Republican politicos around Washington, many of whom supported Steele's bid to become party chairman, are worried that key jobs at the RNC are unfilled and the party's mission is unfocused, while Steele makes appearance after appearance on television, with sometimes controversial results. The result, they say, is a party that is losing its already scant momentum at a critical time.

[....]

"I think it's been a disaster of a first month," says one Republican who has served on Capitol Hill and the RNC. "He needs to disappear for 60 days, go and staff the building, put his personal energy into making sure he has the people he wants, and go from there.  That's what people are hoping he will do."

"It's not good," says another GOP politico.  "People feel that it's been very erratic at a time when we really need some sort of stabilizing force."

Read the comments on that link, they are illuminating.

Sad News

America’s last wild jaguar has died.

God dammit.

I'm Sorry, Rush!

Hilarious. Send your apology to Rush Limbaugh, courtesy of the DCCC.

Well, Michael Steele certainly stepped in the flaming pile of poo Rahm Emmanuel left on his doorstep. The question of the day is, how much longer can he last? Last week I said privately Steele had until August, but with stuff like this occurring on a daily basis, and media outlets reviving allegations of campaign finance improprieties, it's obvious someone Important is throwing him under the bus.

I'm thinking he might be gone by June.

Evil

Via Andrew Sullivan, we learn that Glenn Beck thinks changes to the charitable contribution deduction affecting only 5% of taxpayers and returning the tax deduction to where it was during the Reagan Administration is more evil than this.

There simply are no words for this kind of stupidity. Never forget, this assclown was on CNN's payroll for years.

Going John Galt

“Going John Galt” is the latest rage in Outer Wingnuttia, where alleged “upper two-percent income earners” vow to decrease their incomes below the Obama-mandated $250,000 out of financial necessity.

A typical example:

• I have a friend who is planning to not work overtime this year to stay well below the dangerous benchmark that is 250k. His point was that he might as well take some time off and enjoy and relax rather than work and give every dollar above 250 away. I don’t blame his reasoning and the loss is, he spends his money.

The argument is so compelling, it piqued the interest of a reporter at ABC News, who filed this report:

A 63-year-old attorney based in Lafayette, La., who asked not to be named, told ABCNews.com that she plans to cut back on her business to get her annual income under the quarter million mark should the Obama tax plan be passed by Congress and become law.

"We are going to try to figure out how to make our income $249,999.00," she said.

"We have to find a way out where we can make just what we need to just under the line so we can benefit from Obama's tax plan," she added.

"Why kill yourself working if you're going to give it all away to people who aren't working as hard?"

Of course, the “little people” doing things like caring for your kids, cleaning your office, providing your nursing care, educating your children, etc. etc. don’t “work hard.” Oh, the arrogance, the sense of entitlement from these pockets of "real America." It's astounding!

There’s more:

Dr. Sharon Poczatek, who runs her own dental practice in Boulder, Colo., said that she too is trying to figure out ways to get out of paying the taxes proposed in Obama's plan.

"I've put thought into how to get under $250,000," said Poczatek. "It would mean working fewer days which means having fewer employees, seeing fewer patients and taking time off."

Poczatek argued that by reducing her income from her current $320,000 to under $250,000 by having her dental hygienist work fewer days and byl treating fewer patients, she would avoid paying higher taxes on the $70,000 that would be subject to increased taxation if Obama's proposal is signed into law.

These must be the dumbest bunch of wealthy Americans ever because “Going Galt” to stay below $250,000 in income is just wrong. Like, really, really wrong. As in, factually incorrect:

Now, the obvious here is that the tax code doesn't work that way. A tax increase effects the marginal dollar that a person gains. That's means only every dollar over $250,000 is taxed at a higher rate. Obama is not proposing a tax system whereby somebody who goes from $249,999 to $250,000 suddenly becomes poorer. Nobody has ever enacted a tax hike like that in the history of the United States.

So, Poczatek will still end up far better off paying a slightly higher tax on that $70,000 than if she didn’t earn the $70,000 at all. I mean, how dumb can you get?

There’s a lot of factually incorrect information swirling around out there about Obama’s tax plan. Yesterday morning a friend told me he has a wealthy client who said Obama was going to eliminate the deduction for charitable contributions. “Gee,” I replied. “If that were true, you’d think we’d have heard about that.”

Sure enough, it’s another piece of wingnut misinformation. The president’s tax plan does not eliminate charitable deductions, but caps them at 28% AGI for top-income earners. This levels the playing field for the 95% of us who are not named Frist or Gates who like to donate to charities, too:

If you’re a teacher making $50,000 a year and decide to donate $1,000 to the Red Cross or United Way, you enjoy a tax break of $150.  If you are Warren Buffet or Bill Gates and you make that same donation, you get a $350 deduction – more than twice the break as the teacher.
 
This proposal walks that difference back some of the way – it would limit the tax benefit for Buffet or Gates to $280.  In other words, we are not eliminating the deduction – just reducing it to 28 percent (or $280 on the hypothetical $1,000 contribution) for the 5 percent of families at the very top of the income distribution.  That is the same tax benefit that they would have enjoyed at the end of the Reagan Administration.

There’s a lot of ignorance out there about taxes and tax proposals, and that’s understandable -- taxes are a complicated issue. All the more reason why news outlets should be extra careful when doing their reporting.

Is CNBC’s Jim Cramer A Fascist?

Hey, I'm not one to throw that particular "f" bomb around, but I'm just wondering what else Jim Cramer could possibly mean by this comment:

Government of, by, and for the corporation is perishing from the Earth… our country is now run by a president and a Bolshevik-leaning Democratic Party that are unfavorable to stocks and the people who own them.

Of, by and for the corporation? Gee, I don’t think that’s exactly how Abraham Lincoln phrased it in his Gettysburg Address, but Mussolini sure would be proud.

I seem to recall right-wingers getting all foamy-mouthed last October when then-candidate Obama talked about spreading the wealth around a bit. Communist! Socialist! Bolshevik! ZOMG!!!!1!!!11!

I guess this is another one to throw at CNBC spokesman Brian Steel. CNBC is starting to look increasingly like a bad parody of Fox Business.

Santelli Astroturf Fallout, Megalomania Edition

[UPDATE]:

Ooops:

The attention around Mr. Santelli’s views now appears to be a distraction at CNBC. (The New York Times has a content-sharing agreement with the network.) Mr. Santelli declined interview requests on Monday, and the network canceled his appearance on “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” on Wednesday. “It was time to move on to the next big story,” a CNBC spokesman said.

Yes, indeed. How embarassing when the “big story” concerns your reporter’s ethics and your network’s questionable credibilty.
---------------------------

CNBC’s Rick Santelli has been forced to issue a denial that he was affiliated with FreedomWorks, the Sam Adams Alliance, or any of the other groups whose planned “tea parties” mysteriously sprang up hours after his rant.

And what a denial it is. This one takes the prize for rank narcissisim:

First of all let me be clear that I have NO affiliation or association with any of the websites or related tea party movements that have popped up as a result of my comments on February 19th, or to the best of my knowledge any of the people who organized the websites or movements.

[...]

Anyone who has watched my thousands of appearances on CNBC is well acquainted with my aggressive and impassioned style. Over the next several days CNBC.com will put up some of my other passionate broadcasts of the past. Since joining CNBC in 1999 I have not traded the markets in any capacity. As a financial reporter I have never shied away from trying to promote discourse and dialogue of the important issues that affect markets and therefore our lives. The one spot in particular that occurred on February 19th at roughly 8:15 est time and maybe lasted for a minute probably wasn't even in my top 5 in terms of intensity, energy, or controversy. It was unique in that it obviously struck a chord with the public thus inciting what can only be described as a groundswell of feedback from the public, the White House, the Internet, and the media at large.

Oh, obviously. Cripes. The ego has landed. Oh, but there’s more:

Many millions of Americans seem to agree with my position otherwise why would this "rant" be so much different than many of my impassioned comments of the past. Why would the Internet light up the way it did if people did not feel so strongly. The answer seems pretty obvious; the nerve I struck resonated across the country.

Good lord. It seems Rick Santelli hasn’t spoken to Michelle Malkin, who claims:

The rebellion was already underway before Santelli took a stand on the Chicago trading floor. The Seattle anti-pork protest, spearheaded by independent mom-blogger Keli Carender who comments on this site, took place on Feb. 16. Santelli’s Tea Party call came three days later.

Glenn Reynolds blogged a similar defense, which must be devastating news to Rick Santelli, who seems to believe he started the whole thing. So, shhh. We don’t want Santelli’s head to explode.

Unfortunately for all involved, none of this proves the tea parties weren’t astroturf--especially since, as the folks at Sadly, No! have revealed, those earlier protests drew fewer than two dozen people and don't appear related to the "movement" that sprang up later. And Malkin herself appears pretty deeply entrenched with the right-wing cabal funding the tea parties.

So this leaves us with two choices where Rick Santelli is concerned: he was either a shill or a tool. The one thing he does not appear to be, for all of his wishing, is the spark that lit the flame.

Sorry, Rick.

Some Rocky Mountain Bullshit

Watch Stephen Colbert pwn Utah Republican Congress Critter Jason Chaffetz, trying to be cool on the YouTubes with a "cot-side chat":

I Guess Rush Limbaugh Heads The Republican Party After All

Pass the popcorn. Hours after Rush Limbaugh ripped RNC chief Michael Steele a new one, Steele has issued an embarrassing apology.

Drum roll, please:

"My intent was not to go after Rush - I have enormous respect for Rush Limbaugh," Steele said in an interview. "I was maybe a little bit inarticulate. ... There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership.

"I went back at that tape and I realized words that I said weren't what I was thinking," Steele told Politico. "It was one of those things where I thinking I was saying one thing, and it came out differently. What I was trying to say was a lot of people ... want to make Rush the scapegoat, the bogeyman, and he's not."

Shorter Michael Steele: “Rush Limbaugh is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life.”

Ouch. Some of us on the left had bets on how quickly this would happen. I figured Steele would at least wait 24 hours; he didn’t even wait four.

Any doubts about who is in charge of the Republican Party have just been erased. Hint: it’s not the black guy who just groveled before the bloated white bigot who once told an African American caller to “take that bone out of your nose.”