Haley Barbour (R. Gov MS): You heard of the Citizens Councils? Up north they think it was like the KKK. Where I come from it was an organization of town leaders.
Citizens Council: The Citizens’ Council is the South’s answer to the mongrelizers. We will not be integrated. We are proud of our white blood and our white heritage of sixty centuries.
Tag: 2012
Recap and Trade
Mike Huckabee, 2007: I also support cap and trade of carbon emissions. And I was disappointed that the Senate rejected a carbon counting system to measure the sources of emissions, because that would have been the first and the most important step toward implementing true cap and trade.
Mike Huckabee, 2010: In a recent internet post, a contributor makes the claim that I supported cap-and-trade in late 2007 while running for President. To put it simply, that’s just not true.
McCain|Palin 2008 platform: …will establish … a cap-and-trade system that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions. A cap-and-trade system harnesses human ingenuity in the pursuit of alternatives to carbon-based fuels.
Palin, in VP debate: [Ifill asks “Do you support capping carbon emissions?”] I do. I do.
Palin, 2010: I am deeply concerned about President Obama’s cap-and-trade energy plan, and I believe it is an enormous threat to our economy. It would undermine our recovery over the short term and would inflict permanent damage.
Lemkin: What’s remarkable is that she didn’t call it “Cap and Tax.” They think you have the memory of a goldfish. And, it seems, they are mostly right. We shall never speak of any of this again.
Mitch McConnell, Earmark Opposer
Mitch McConnell plans to filibuster an omnibus spending bill because of the earmarks larded onto it. Worth noting that he personally added several of these earmarks to the bill. Your 2010 GOP, staunch earmark opponents as recently as a week ago:
the legislation includes provisions requested this year by McConnell, including $650,000 for a genetic technology center at the University of Kentucky, according to an analysis of the bill by Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan watchdog.
[…]
But McConnell, like other new earmark opponents, stopped short of asking for his projects to be removed from the bill.
Rest assured, we shall never speak of this again. Or now, really. Just forget any of this happened.
Devastating secondary punchline.
bernie sanders filibuster” 2nd on Google trends hot search only to “miley cirus bong
Mike Memoli.
Twitter, you complete me.
Twitter, you complete me.
…I don’t think there’s a single Democrat out there, who if they looked at where we started when I came into office and look at where we are now, would say that somehow we have not moved in the direction that I promised. Take a tally, look at what I promised during the campaign. There’s not a single thing that I said that I would do that I have not either done or tried to do. And if I have not gotten it done yet, I’m still trying to do it.
Barack Obama, perhaps being a bit testy on the reaction of the left to his strategy and overall leadership style thus far.
And, basically, he’s right. The key issue, though, is the pervasive perception that when the GOP is in charge, they get the policy they want to the letter, often with Democratic help. Alternatively, when the Democrats are in charge, they rarely achieve that standard, and more often slump across the finish line with badly compromised legislation that is, as a result, more difficult to talk about and more difficult to defend, all the while presented in a manner best described as: “shut up, you smelly hippies; why can’t you just be happy with whatever shit sandwich it is we’re giving you today.”
Take tax cuts: most of America (wrongly) believes their taxes went up under Obama. Likewise the widespread but utterly misplaced belief in the increasing size of government under Obama (it’s gotten smaller). These and other issues like them are the direct product of a messy, painful compromise and triangulation-prone legislative output that can’t easily be described, much less described in two word, rhyming catch-phrases and, in the case of healthcare reform, isn’t even really in effect yet, and won’t be until 2015…nearly the end of a theoretical second term.
So: you’re supposed to be a communicator, Obama. Get out there and communicate, passionately, about something. Anything. Forcefully explain what you’ve done. And, more importantly, what you would have seen done if not for rampant obstructionism and demonstrable lies. Call out, by name, lies and the liars propagating them, be that House, Senate, or most popular broadcast news network employees. Repeatedly. Every day. Every hour. Every time a microphone is switched on, we want to see you fight. That is all. We will then shut up and sit quietly in the corner with our drugs that we are all on. Thanks in advance.
And, basically, he’s right. The key issue, though, is the pervasive perception that when the GOP is in charge, they get the policy they want to the letter, often with Democratic help. Alternatively, when the Democrats are in charge, they rarely achieve that standard, and more often slump across the finish line with badly compromised legislation that is, as a result, more difficult to talk about and more difficult to defend, all the while presented in a manner best described as: “shut up, you smelly hippies; why can’t you just be happy with whatever shit sandwich it is we’re giving you today.”
Take tax cuts: most of America (wrongly) believes their taxes went up under Obama. Likewise the widespread but utterly misplaced belief in the increasing size of government under Obama (it’s gotten smaller). These and other issues like them are the direct product of a messy, painful compromise and triangulation-prone legislative output that can’t easily be described, much less described in two word, rhyming catch-phrases and, in the case of healthcare reform, isn’t even really in effect yet, and won’t be until 2015…nearly the end of a theoretical second term.
So: you’re supposed to be a communicator, Obama. Get out there and communicate, passionately, about something. Anything. Forcefully explain what you’ve done. And, more importantly, what you would have seen done if not for rampant obstructionism and demonstrable lies. Call out, by name, lies and the liars propagating them, be that House, Senate, or most popular broadcast news network employees. Repeatedly. Every day. Every hour. Every time a microphone is switched on, we want to see you fight. That is all. We will then shut up and sit quietly in the corner with our drugs that we are all on. Thanks in advance.
Quiet Down, We’re Playing the Inside Game
Good roundup of the Bush tax cut extension negotiations by Ezra Klein:
When the deal was cut, the president took an oblique shot at their preferences, saying “the American people didn’t send us here to wage symbolic battles or win symbolic victories.” And this came a mere week or two after the White House announced a federal pay freeze. The pattern, for progressives, seems clear: The White House uses them during elections, but doesn’t listen to, or consult them, while governing. In fact, it insults them, and then tells them to quiet down, they got the best bargain possible, even if it wasn’t the one they’d asked for, or been promised.
[…]That the Obama administration has turned out to be fairly good at the inside Washington game of negotiations and legislative compromise and quite bad at communicating to the public and keeping their base excited is not what most would have predicted during the 2008 campaign. But it’s true.
The President’s Last Stand Was No Stand At All
The deal the President struck with Republican leaders is an abomination. It will cost $900 billion over the next two years — larger than the bailout of Wall Street, GM, and Chrysler put together, larger than the stimulus package, larger than anything that’s come out of Washington…
And don’t think for one second that the GOP won’t be out there, probably today, screaming:
This President’s $900 BILLION deficit exploder is going to destroy the country. It’s bigger than all his other giant spending programs in the government takeover department. He’s a profligate socialist of the kind we just can’t afford anymore. We in the GOP delivered you, the wealthy, massive tax cuts and are thus: Serious People.
The media will not lift a finger to connect the $900B to the massive tax cuts for the wealthy. Watch and learn, Democrats. Watch and learn.
Since all the evidence says that elections depend on the rate of change of unemployment, not its level, this is actually bad news for Obama: he’s setting himself up for an economic stall in the months leading into the 2012 election.
Paul Krugman, caught in the act of being exactly right. Couple this with the decision to let these Bush tax cuts expire in an election year again, and you’ve got recipe for disaster.
On what planet do these (so called) Democrats live? Do they expect to learn from the messaging disaster they perpetrated in the ten year leadup to this battle? Nothing I’ve seen from anybody, dog catcher up to President, has shown me that they have any chance of even budging the conversation, much less crafting a winning electoral message on this in the face of a still-stagnant economy and ~10% unemployment come 2012.
Obama’s determination to be the “next Carter” is really remarkably strong. I’d say he’s one killer rabbit away from being little more than a punch-line.
Get out there and fight for something, anything. What is so hard to understand about that? Why is it so terrifying for them? This is why they fail.
On what planet do these (so called) Democrats live? Do they expect to learn from the messaging disaster they perpetrated in the ten year leadup to this battle? Nothing I’ve seen from anybody, dog catcher up to President, has shown me that they have any chance of even budging the conversation, much less crafting a winning electoral message on this in the face of a still-stagnant economy and ~10% unemployment come 2012.
Obama’s determination to be the “next Carter” is really remarkably strong. I’d say he’s one killer rabbit away from being little more than a punch-line.
Get out there and fight for something, anything. What is so hard to understand about that? Why is it so terrifying for them? This is why they fail.
[President Obama] announced a pay freeze for federal workers. This was an announcement that had it all. It was transparently cynical; it was trivial in scale, but misguided in direction; and by making the announcement, Mr. Obama effectively conceded the policy argument to the very people who are seeking — successfully, it seems — to destroy him.
So I guess we are, in fact, seeing what Mr. Obama is made of.
[…]
[He] apparently intended the pay freeze announcement as a peace gesture to Republicans the day before a bipartisan summit. […] There were no comparable gestures from the other side. Instead, Senate Republicans declared that none of the rest of the legislation on the table — legislation that includes such things as a strategic arms treaty that’s vital to national security — would be acted on until the tax-cut issue was resolved, presumably on their terms.
Paul Krugman bringing the shrill. Excellent stuff.
Find me a single MSM story that in any way frames this as a GOP minority temper tantrum and willful, dangerous obstructionism in the face of overwhelming public opinion. This is before you even get to utterly foolish in light of the GOP’s supposed deficit focus. I think you’ll find it being framed systematically and pervasively in quite the opposite direction. Liberal Media.
Find me a single MSM story that in any way frames this as a GOP minority temper tantrum and willful, dangerous obstructionism in the face of overwhelming public opinion. This is before you even get to utterly foolish in light of the GOP’s supposed deficit focus. I think you’ll find it being framed systematically and pervasively in quite the opposite direction. Liberal Media.
Lemkin 