Month: March 2010

Republicans are flailing away about procedural maneuvers involved in passing health care reform because polling shows that the public doesn’t have a clue how bills are passed and they hate seeing how legislative sausage gets made.

Republicans also don’t care when their own rank hypocrisy is revealed in the “liberal media” — when there are balanced reports, for example, that they used the same arcane rules with wild abandon when they controlled Congress. The Republican base will never learn about their own pols’ hypocrisy because these voters have been trained to get their “news” exclusively from right-wing propaganda outlets like Fox News and hate radio, where untidy facts like these will never be mentioned.

But independent voters, who are not averse to exposure to a variety of points of view, still control the outcomes in many congressional districts, so it is important to set the record straight.

The GOP’s latest flog is the “self-executing rule,” also known as “deem and pass,” which they have cleverly branded the “Slaughter Rule” after Rep. Louise Slaughter, the New York Democrat who chairs the House Rules Committee.

(Marc Ambinder has more about Republican lies about deem and pass — they’re also saying it means there won’t be a vote; there will — as well as explanation of how the rule works, at the Atlantic.)

Here is a rundown of Republicans’ use of deem and pass when they controlled the House:

When Republicans took power in 1995, they soon lost their aversion to self-executing rules and proceeded to set new records under Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.). There were 38 and 52 self-executing rules in the 104th and 105th Congresses (1995-1998), making up 25 percent and 35 percent of all rules, respectively. Under Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) there were 40, 42 and 30 self-executing rules in the 106th, 107th and 108th Congresses (22 percent, 37 percent and 22 percent, respectively). Thus far in the 109th Congress, self-executing rules make up about 16 percent of all rules.

Republicans pulled this same nonsense earlier this month when they deliberately mislabeled “reconciliation” as “the nuclear option” — a term coined in March 2003 by GOP Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to describe a procedure for overcoming Democratic fillibusters of George W. Bush’s extreme right-wing judicial nominees.

In fact, Republicans had used reconciliation three times as often as Democrats over the course of congressional history.

But why rehearse? All it takes is a dab of Mentholatum in the eye. Howard Kurtz @ WaPo:

Some staffers say they have watched rehearsals, on internal monitors, in which Beck has teared up or paused at the same moments as he later did during the show. Asked about this, Balfe responded sharply: “Glenn reacts the same way to issues whether he knows people are watching or not, and is proud to show his emotions, unlike the cowardly, two-faced critics who hide behind anonymity.”

In the two months or so since they took office, Virginia’s new Christian extremist governor, Bob McDonnell, and Ken Cuccinelli, the commonwealth’s proudly homophobic attorney general, have made national news by rescinding — then restoring (sort of) — protection from discrimination for gays who work for the state or attend a state-funded college or university.

Aversion to civil rights for gays became issues during both pols’ campaigns last year. First it came to light that when McDonnell was a student at TV preacher Pat Robertson’s Liberty University 20 years ago, he wrote a paper in defense of permanently relegating gays to second-class status, along with, as he put it, “fornicators” and “cohabitators.” (Young McDonnell ignored the fact that, in practice then as now, it is only gays, not sexually prolific straights or unmarried heterosexual couples, whose rights are up for grabs via legislative regulation and voter approval.)

By comparison, however, McDonnell came off as practically enlightened to Ken Cuccinelli, who made news with this:

“My view is that homosexual acts, not homosexuality, but homosexual acts are wrong. They’re intrinsically wrong. And I think in a natural law based country it’s appropriate to have policies that reflect that. … They don’t comport with natural law. I happen to think that it represents (to put it politely; I need my thesaurus to be polite) behavior that is not healthy to an individual and in aggregate is not healthy to society.”

(Yes, we know what you’re thinking. Cuccinelli, the father of seven, doth protest too much. Let’s just mark him as “bi-curious, conflicted.”)

Given all that, it’s hardly surprising that Gov. McDonnell and A.G. Cuccinelli have drawn the media’s attention by fumbling on gay rights. Here’s a recap of sorts from the March 11, 2010, Richmond Times-Dispatch:

Gov. Bob McDonnell is strengthening largely symbolic anti-bias protections for gay state employees, attempting to douse a political firestorm set when his attorney general decreed such safeguards don’t exist.

McDonnell, who previously had resisted legal protections for gay state employees, declared yesterday that as head of the government work force, he will not tolerate bias on the basis of sexual orientation and he threatened to fire offenders.

McDonnell was compelled to action after Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli told tax-supported colleges and universities last week that they have no legal foundation for protecting gay students and employees from discrimination.

Cuccinelli’s position echoed a 2006 opinion by McDonnell that declared unconstitutional part of an anti-bias order by Gov. Timothy M. Kaine.

The controversy — it ignited protests online and on campuses as well as in the General Assembly — threatened to tarnish McDonnell’s fledgling administration; made the state an object of ridicule on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart”; and could complicate efforts to lure defense giant Northrop Grumman, which has gay-friendly employee policies, to relocate to Fairfax County from Los Angeles.

“It has caused too much fear and too much uncertainty in the business community and the higher-education establishment and among young people in the commonwealth — and I simply won’t stand for that,” McDonnell told reporters.

Over the weekend, however, Cuccinelli shredded his already tattered credibility after being caught on tape speculating about where Pres. Obama was born, which he claims not to be “beyond the realm of possibility.”

Transcript:

Q: What can we do about Obama and the birth certificate thing?

Cuccinelli: It will get tested in my view when someone — when he signs a law, and someone is convicted of violating it and one of their defenses will be it’s not a law because someone qualified to be President didn’t sign it.

Q: Is that something you can do as attorney general? Can you do that or something?

Cuccinelli: Well only if there is a conflict where we’re suing the federal government for a law they’ve passed. So it’s possible.

Q: Because we are talking about the possibility that he was not born in America.

Cuccinelli: Right. But at the same time under Rule 11, Federal Rule 11, we gotta have proof of it.

Q: How can we get proof?

Cuccinelli: Well… that’s a good question. Not one I’ve thought a lot about because it hasn’t been part of my campaign. I mean, someone is going to have to come forward with nailed down testimony that he was born in place B, wherever that is. You know, the speculation is Kenya. And that doesn’t seem beyond the realm of possibility.

Got that? The top law official of the commonwealth of Virginia is a birther — quite possibly becoming the top elected state official in the country to join their ranks. Congratulations, Virginia.

A study by UCLA found that about a quarter of Californians under the age of 65 are uninsured. That’s 8.2 million people. By comparison, that’s more people than who live in 39 U.S. states and more than the total population of Virginia (7.8 million), Washington state (6.6 million), Arizona (6.5 million) or Massachusetts (6.5 million).

Los Angeles Times

Nearly 1 in 4 Californians under age 65 had no health insurance last year, according to a new report, as soaring unemployment propelled vast numbers of once-covered workers into the ranks of the uninsured.

The state’s uninsured population jumped to 8.2 million in 2009, up from 6.4 million in 2007, marking the highest number over the last decade, investigators from UCLA’s Center for Health Policy Research said.

People who were uninsured for part or all of 2009 accounted for 24.3 percent of California’s population under age 65 — a dramatic increase from 2007 driven largely by Californians who lost employer-sponsored health insurance, particularly over the last year.

Sarah Palin got better than she gave when she recently attacked U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Orlando). The representative was a prime target of the GOP even before a recent poll showed that 29% of the registered Republicans in his district support him, despite the fact that he’s a Democrat. Palin made Grayson the centerpiece of her fundraising speech at the Central Florida Lincoln Day dinner:

Piper is with me tonight, so I won’t say anything about Alan Grayson that can’t be said around children. But thank you, Florida, for allowing candidates in a contested primary to duke it out over ideas and principles and values, all with the same goal, and that is unseating those who have such a disconnect from the people of America. That’s what the goal is here in this race against Alan Grayson. Please fight hard, and do this for the rest of the country. Fight hard, and send a conservative to Washington, DC.”

What Palin might not know about the race is that of Grayson’s 13 opponents on the GOP side, not one is seen as viable. All the people anyone ever heard of have dropped out of the primary contest for one reason or another.

And speaking of what Palin doesn’t know about Central Florida politics, Grayson responded quickly to Palin’s attack, letting loose a stream of one-liners that would be the envy of the writers for David Letterman’s show. “I look forward to an honest debate with Governor Palin on the issues, in the unlikely event that she ever learns anything about them,” Grayson said. His press release called Palin “the former half-term Governor” and noted that at the event, she wore clothes she paid for herself. It didn’t stop there.

Grayson praised Palin for having a hand large enough to fit Grayson’s entire name on it. He thanked Palin for alleviating the growing shortage of platitudes in Central Florida. Grayson added that Palin deserved credit for getting through the entire hour-long program without quitting. Grayson also said that Palin really had mastered Palin’s imitation of Tina Fey imitating Palin. Grayson observed that Palin is the most-intelligent leader that the Republican Party has produced since George W. Bush.

When asked to comment about what effect Palin’s criticism might have, Grayson pointed out, “As the Knave’s horse says in Alice in Wonderland, ‘dogs will believe anything.'” Earlier, as the Orlando Sentinel reported, Grayson said, “I’m sure Palin knows all about politics in Central Florida, since from her porch she can see Winter Park,” which is part of Grayson’s district.

Grayson said that the Alaskan chillbilly was welcome to return to Central Florida anytime, as long as she brings lots of money with her, and spends it.