Tag: tea klan

peterwknox:stfuconservatives:roxanneritchi:

A deleted tweet from Sarah Palin. She is deleting anything that may show what she has said and done and advocated: TakeBackthe20.com, her tweets, posts on Facebook. She started doing this BEFORE she bothered to extend condolences to Griffords, the other victims of the shooting, and their families.

Do not forget this.

She should not be able to go out in public ever again without being shown or asked about this. Every day, every appearance, every press event.

Source: formerlyroxy-blog-blog

A Kind of Relief

George Packer made several excellent points last night, one of which seems to be this morning’s emerging “serious person” consensus on the Giffords shooting and the political motivations (and their sources) that all-too-clearly underlie it:

It would be a kind of relief if Loughner operated not out of any coherent political context but just his own fevered brain.

Emphasis on coherent. Because it’s plain there are a number of right-wing talking points in this guy’s spew. Gold standard, government takeover, and other usual suspects have already emerged from his internet wake without the official investigation even getting started. But because the spew was most definitely a spew, and one that somewhat rarely qualified as English, well, those were just coincidental ravings of a lunatic and not something he heard repeatedly and then acted on. Just a lone nut, and both sides do it anyway.
Well, Cokie, Packer is ready for you:

…even so, the tragedy wouldn’t change this basic fact: for the past two years, many conservative leaders, activists, and media figures have made a habit of trying to delegitimize their political opponents. Not just arguing against their opponents, but doing everything possible to turn them into enemies of the country and cast them out beyond the pale. Instead of “soft on defense,” one routinely hears the words “treason” and “traitor.” The President isn’t a big-government liberal—he’s a socialist who wants to impose tyranny. He’s also, according to a minority of Republicans, including elected officials, an impostor. Even the reading of the Constitution on the first day of the 112th Congress was conceived as an assault on the legitimacy of the Democratic Administration and Congress.

Absolutely right. Just absolutely goddamned right. It is no coincidence that the entire week’s House agenda was instantly sidelined. Boehner and the rest knew the whole purpose of it was to create a hateful political sideshow. Sound and fury signifying nothing, but most certainly working to gin up some more fury. What’s the point of continuing with it if you can’t go before the microphone to talk about the coming tyranny? So that will just have to wait till next week. Because the Beltway media culture steadfastly refuses to learn from anything, least of all repeated, targeted domestic terror attacks. Time and time again, whether it be against the IRS, a member of Congress, government buildings, what have you, these are each dismissed as lone nuts operating on some incoherent babble and most definitely not taking marching orders from other lunatics that are routinely given the microphone on the most popular media outlets in the country. Don’t worry your pretty little head over the fact that their manifesto contains extensive quotes from Beck, Limbaugh, Bachman, Palin, whomever. That’s just incoherent ramblings. Both sides are equally guilty, and here’s an anonymous DailyKos comment that proves it.

Full Faith and Credit

John Chait sees some hope:

My guess is that Republicans are hearing from the business lobby that even risking a default would be totally unacceptable.

This because he notes Paul Ryan’s recent statement implicitly accepts that the debt ceiling will be raised (not can be, or might be):

“I want to make sure we get substantial spending cuts and controls in exchange for raising the debt ceiling”

Fair enough, Chait, and I’m sure they are already hearing it from the business lobby, but I think you’re forgetting the Tea Klanners in the back benches as well as the rump of the idiot Blue Dogs who all too often also think along similar, overly simplistic economic lines. We should never forget that a smaller and less organized contingent of these idiots managed to defeat the initial bailout, sending shockwaves through the markets that then and only then convinced them to do what was right (and not what played well with their foolish constituencies, most of whom want the US on a gold standard as soon as possible).

The problem with a similarly construed default bait-and-switch in which a symbolic first vote happens and then is undone some time later: the shockwaves in this case would be the end of the American economy as we know it. And there’d be no take-backs. It would simply be over. Once the genuine possibility of a default is even raised, you’ve basically defaulted. Why should anyone act otherwise in the aftermath of such a near-default? The thinking would immediately coalesce along the lines of: they didn’t actually pull the trigger this time, but we’re just one election away from something like that happening, and that’s more risk than we can bear. Get a few of these “I’m heading for the doors” mentalities together and our whole economic construct falls apart. Irrevocably.

They’re dumb enough, they’re bad enough, and dog gone it, people (will) hate them. But, rest assured, they’ll find a way to do it and will be laughing all the way to the gold deposit bank and calling it strict constructionism.

Respectable Buisinessmen’s Club

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.

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.

Poison Pill Revisited

Jonathan Gruber sums up the wages of partial repeal (be it legislative or judicial) of the Affordable Care Act:

Removing the Affordable Care Act’s mandate would eviscerate the law’s coverage gains and greatly raise premiums. And going further by only keeping the market reforms and the small business tax credit would virtually wipe out those coverage gains and cause an enormous premium spike.

Oh, and it would totally destroy the existing insurance company-based system of coverage within a very few years. They’d be the first ones screaming for some replacement for the mandate; they’d have to be, because without it, and in the continued presence of the rest of the reforms, they’d be out of business.

But, by all means, GOP: herald in the era of single payer, finally a true government takeover of healthcare funding in this country by launching relentless attack on the less popular but absolutely critical parts of the package. Said it before, will likely say it again: bad policy is absolute catnip to the GOP and their Tea Klan enablers. They cannot resist it. Forget testing proposed legislation; just see if the GOP/Tea Klan is for it. If so: it is at best a singularly bad and more likely an utterly catastrophic policy.
With that useful razor in hand, it’s easy to see that with a policy outcome as catastrophic (to the insurers) as removing the mandate and but also leaving the popular stuff like the community rating, no lifetime limits, and etc… in there, the GOP and Tea Klan are and will forever be like moths to the flame until such time as they see their particular foolishness accomplished. And before we know it, President Palin will be signing the new American Homeland Patriotic Healthfulness Imbuement and Embiggening Flag Act of 2013, handed to her by a slothful yet resolutely responsive GOP rubber-stamp of a Congress.

Cannot wait.

Poison Pill Revisited

Oh, I don’t know, maybe you should ASK

Former Half-Term Governor Sarah Palin: There’s nothing different today than there was in the last 43 years of my life since I first started reading. I continue to read all that I can get my hands on — and reading biographies of, yes, Thatcher for instance, and of course Reagan and the John Adams letters, and I’m just thinking of a couple that are on my bedside, I go back to C.S. Lewis for inspiration, there’s such a variety, because books have always been important in my life.
Jonathan Chait: Does anyone find this remotely believeable?
Lemkin: No, I do not, but unlike you and your brethren I don’t have access to ask her a (fucking) follow-up. Howsabout you pry ever-so-gently for a little plot information from “The Screwtape Letters” or for a particularly moving or trenchant letter from Adams? I know, I know: shrill. Sorry. But, honestly, it’s hard to tell just what journalists spend their time doing. That time certainly isn’t spent preparing.

WHY THEY FAIL

[Axelrod said that] separating out different categories of tax cuts now – extending some without extending others – is politically unrealistic and procedurally difficult

God almighty Christ is there a clearer possible enumeration of why this administration is failing in the eyes of the public? This sentence alone should cost Axelrod his job. Period
Procedurally difficult? How? They all expire at the end of the year. You write a law enacting the sub-$250k part. You put it to a vote. It passes or it doesn’t. We’re meant to believe this is too hard? Yes, it’s “politically unrealistic” because Republicans will oppose it. THAT’S WHAT YOU WANT THEM TO DO, YOU FUCKING IMBECILE. You want to force them to a) take a hard position publicly -or- b) genuinely compromise with you and your still giant majorities and continue only the sub-250k cuts. Instead, after the events since 2008, you apparently still believe it’s best to begin negotiations from the GOP position and then see what sensible add-ons they want once this thing hits the floor. And you wonder why the public loses faith and doesn’t turn out to vote you and yours back in?
Do you seriously expect me to believe that you just do not understand politics at any level? That you are that dense? Or are you just suffering from an overtight necktie? Your job is to help us; not to fuck us up. Does that seem clear to you? I know I’m the one out here “on drugs,” but still. Statements like this makes me think maybe life under our Tea Klan theocratic overlords would, if nothing else, at least be more sensible from a beliefs-vs-governing-stance viewpoint than anything I’ve heard emitted from the raging shitspew that’s been coming out the maw of the national Democrat since November 2nd.

Really, really execrable. Just the worst, most defeatist, circular-firing squad shit I’ve seen coming out of this administration ever. Why not just go into the Rose Garden with Biden and abdicate the day Boehner is named Speaker and make him President? For life, if possible.

Honestly, if this is the way you plan to govern in opposition you may as well just cede the whole thing right off the bat.

[END BLOODRAGE]

WHY THEY FAIL

One More Thing…

John Boehner, amidst his tear strewn recitation of the robotically, preternaturally, hypnotically exact four things that he and all of his GOP cronies claim to believe the election results told them, accidentally let slip the next great product we can expect from the GOP:

While our new majority will serve as your voice in the people’s House, we must remember it’s the president who sets the agenda for our government.

There you have it. Where in their beloved Constitution is the establishment of a parliamentary system in which the Congress (either house) takes its marching orders from the President? But that’s what we’ll be told as they sit on their hands and do nothing other than obstruct, obstruct, obstruct: the President is the one with a problem. His agenda doesn’t meet with our approval. So, more in sadness than in anger, we’re required to shut the government down and default on the debt. Sorry, but Obama made us do it by not “heeding the public” and installing a full, far-right GOP agenda (that Obama’s own overwhelming electoral majority also wanted, apparently. Or did that election not deliver any cogent message from the public?). Because, you know, the President sets the agenda. Nobody else can or will, because that would be wrong.

Democrats, they’re teeing it up for you, and have been for a long time. History will call them the Tee Klan. Well, they will if you’ll just take a swing.

The public’s real anxiety is about values, not economics: the gnawing sense that Americans have become debt-addicted and self-indulgent; the sense that government undermines individual responsibility; the observation that people who work hard get shafted while people who play influence games get the gravy.

David Brooks, positing (apparently without irony) that all those long-term unemployed folks are really just concerned about the nation’s long-term moral footing. Is there anyone more out of touch than this man who, it’s important to note, is Obama’s preferred “conservative.”