Month: March 2010

Verbatim

Buck Banks

There are two good signs for the Democrats: One is all this blowup happened 10 months before the election, not 10 weeks before the election. Two, the average American believes that better times are ahead. Those are two important indicators. Now, there are plenty of indicators that aren’t so good, but I think a month is a huge lifetime in politics, so I think we’re actually going to do a bit better than people are predicting.

— Former DNC Chairman Howard Dean, in an interview with Salon.

Verbatim

Trish

Every idea has been put on the table. Every argument has been made. Everything there is to say about health care has been said and just about everyone has said it.

— Pres. Obama, lighting a fire under the backsides of Democratic lawmakers. To which we can only add, “Amen!”

Coolest. Music. Video. Ever. OK Go!

Buck Banks

OK Go! is a Chicago-area band oknown as much for their impossibly imaginative and perfectly executed music videos as they are for their infectious indie pop musical stylings. While cool dudes (and devotees of PRI’s This American Life) have cherished this group since the late 90’s, they are perhaps best known for their “treadmill video” as well as a slew of other great videos. This time, they’ve outdone themselves with a Rube Goldberg–esque version of “This Too Shall Pass.” Do not deny yourself 3.5 minutes of joy. Watch the video.

Crist and Rubio: Playing Third Party Parchesi in Florida

Trish

meek-rubio-crist

The speculation in Florida that Gov. Charlie Crist might switch parties to beat his Republican challenger in the U.S. Senate race, Marco Rubio, says a lot about the state of the Republican party. First, that it’s easy to see why the previously described moderate Crist might be more comfortable going the “Independent Republican” route, ala Independent Democrat Joe Lieberman, belies how far to the right the energy on the GOP side has shifted. Second, that it’s equally easy to see Rubio going the Tea Party route — and winning — shows how much the Chronically Aggrieved demographic of the electorate, ala Sarah Palin, has grown.

Crist continues to deny he’s toying with a switch.

“It’s not something I’m thinking about,” Crist told the Times/Herald in Tallahassee last week. “I’m comfortable about the race. I know what the numbers are, but we’ve got six months to go, and the public really doesn’t know the opponent.”

To a Human Events reporter last week in Washington: “Some friends of mine talked to me about it, but I haven’t embraced it. I’m running as a Republican.”

And we know about those embraces from Charlie. The one he gave Obama when the president visited the state early in his term is still a thorn in Crist’s side, leaving a wound which Rubio takes every opportunity to reopen.

We who live in Florida also recognize a weak Crist denial when we hear one, and the governor’s not quite “No” is helping to keep the rumors going.

The Crist camp blames the Rubio camp for generating this buzz, maybe as payback for the Rubio camp’s claims that Crist, or more likely his good buddy, disgraced Republican Party of Florida (RPOF) chair Jim Greer, was behind the release of the records from Rubio’s RPOF credit card. They revealed the high-dollar hair cuts and three-digit lunch tabs one might expect a Tea Bagger fiscal conservative type to avoid. (Unless one is familiar with Sarah Palin, of course, and then Rubio would fit the mold to a “tea.”) Greer could also have been paying the Rubio folks back for his resignation/ouster, which came after months of Rubio supporters turning on Greer for ignoring party rules and endorsing a candidate in the primary, i.e. Greer’s old pal Crist.

Standing safely on dry land is the Democratic candidate, U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek (Miami). Meek continues to criss-cross the state, meeting voters from the Daytona Speedway to black churches to fire stations and diners. Despite his efforts and progressive voting record, local Democratic activists complain that they have little sense of Meek as a man and would like to see more passion and personality than his handlers seem to allow.

Meek’s strategy of leaving the two Republicans to try to drown one another and address only the survivor would fall flat if the race stayed a three-way, with either Crist or Rubio running on a third party ticket. But if that’s going to happen, it better happen soon.

Under Florida law, Crist would have to change parties by the April 30 qualifying deadline. That means Crist could not pull a Joe Lieberman — lose in the August primary and then run in the general election as an independent candidate.

The scenario goes like this: Crist concludes in late April that he simply cannot win the Republican primary — two polls last week showed him trailing Rubio by 18 points — and that his best and only hope would be to run as an independent. Using the more than $7 million he has on hand already, Crist would cast Rubio as Attila the Hun and Democrat Kendrick Meek as a sure loser and then peel off enough moderate voters and independents to win the general election.

“That would certainly end his presidential aspirations, but Charlie Crist would be formidable as an independent candidate,” said Democratic fundraiser Mitchell Berger of Fort Lauderdale, a strong Meek supporter. “Objectively, I do think he has the ability to win over Democrats,” he said.

I felt early on that people underestimated Rubio, and time — plus the rise of the Tea Bagger movement — certainly bear that out. If Meek is going to stand a chance, he better wade into the Crist/Rubio swamp soon. And Crist and Rubio better watch each other closely to see who looks as if he’s about to row over to the third party sandbar.

Sen. Bunning Says He Single-Handedly Halted Unemployment Benefits Because They’re Not Paid For – But He Voted for Bush’s Unfunded Tax Cuts and Wars – and Against Pay-Go

Jon Ponder

photo-buprnning

More GOP hypocrisy. Hundreds of thousands of Americans will not be receiving unemployment checks, at least in the short term, and thousands more will find themselves without health insurance coverage — all because Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky, is having a temper tantrum on the national stage.

Bunning says he opposes extending benefits to the unemployed during an economic crisis he helped create on principle.

“If we can’t find $10 billion to pay for something that we all support, we will never pay for anything on the floor of this U.S. Senate,” he said…

“We cannot keep adding to the debt,” he said. “It’s over $14 trillion and going up fast.”

But that is a lie.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid fired back, pointing out that Bunning voted against passing pay-go rules requiring the Senate to offset costs of legislation with revenue raising provisions or tax cuts.

Bunning, said Reid, also raised no objections to passing the Bush tax cuts and authorizing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq without paying for the provisions.

“We don’t need lectures here on debt,” said Reid.

“The Republicans in the Senate are standing between these families and the help they need while these benefits expire and expired,” he added. “It might work under the Senate rules they can do that, but it certainly doesn’t work for working families.”

As the scandal unfolded over the weekend, Bunnning showed his true overly entitled, elitist colors on video when a reporter tried to question him as he entered an elevator in a Senate building, shouting, “Get off my yard!” Wait, no, sorry, it was actually: “Excuse me, this is a senator-only elevator!”

Bunning’s bizarre behavior over the years has contributed to rumors that he has Alzheimer’s. For example, during his 2004 reelection campaign, he required a teleprompter in order to debate his Democratic opponent. (The fact that this demand was okayed is still puzzling.)

Last February, Bunning made news when he predicted that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was being treated for cancer, only had nine months to live — and then when his staff issued a faint-hearted apology for this callousness, they misspelled the justice’s name twice.

Bunning is retiring this year, in part because of pitifully low polling back home and equally dismal fundraising. It also didn’t help when he called the Senate minority leader, and fellow Kentuckian, Mitch McConnell, a “control freak” last year, telling reporters, “If Mitch McConnell doesn’t endorse me, that may be the best thing that could happen to me in Kentucky.” McConnell is the most popular politician in Kentucky.

If Bunning is suffering from Alzheimer’s, it is tragic that the people close to him haven’t stepped in to protect him from this sort of self-inflicted damage — especially in an instance like this when his unprincipled obstinance risks inflicting serious damage on innocent families.

If he is not ill, then he is reinforcing his party’s reputation for apathy about the plight of regular Americans, which, in a just world, would trash his tattered legacy once and for all and cause blowback on Republicans among voters in the fall.