Month: August 2009

Fla. GOP Chair Keeps ‘Ass’ in ‘Asset’

Buck Banks

Republican Party of Florida (RPOF) Chair Jim Greer continues his meteoric rise within the ranks of Der Party by being named to the Republican National Committee’s Rules Committee, the usual quote-mark-impaired press release announced.

No less of a light than RNC Chair Michael Steele offered the gregarious Greer a carefully worded congrats:

“Through his outstanding success in the private sector and during his tenure at the helm of Republican Party of Florida and on the Republican National Committee, Chairman Greer has proven himself to be visionary leader, earning the respect of his colleagues and fostering an environment that couples ambitious goals with a strategic plan of action,” said RNC Chairman Michael Steele. “I am confident that Chairman Greer will be a great asset to our leadership team as we work to build this great party.” (emphasis added to jibe with the headline)

Greer earned his ‘bones’ with the recent purge of Libertarians from the RPOF.

“Fostering an environment that couples ambitious goals with a strategic plan of action” just sounds ominous to me.

Seems Greer has a knack for making rules and enforcing them, though, from the recent purge of Libertarians from the party through manipulation of the RPOF’s Grievance Committee to his actual career, which the release describes this way:

A lifelong Republican, Chairman Greer served multiple terms in local government and worked as the President and Chief Executive Officer of a national regulatory compliance company he founded in Central Florida.

Hmmm, regulatory compliance …. Sounds like Greer’s just the guy for the RNC Rules Committee, which does this:

The RNC Rules Committee is a Standing Committee comprised of one member of the Republican National Committee from each state. The Committee is the primary body responsible for the governance of the RNC. The Rules Committee is responsible for reviewing the rules of the Republican Party and proposing recommendations to Chairman Steele as needed.

There’s no doubt that Greer runs a tight ship in the Florida Republican Party. He’s fond of pointing out that under his reign, not one state GOP congressional seat was lost in 2008, and indeed the party picked up one state congressional seat. Though I’m not so sure that’s attributable to Greer’s leadership as much as it is to gerrymandering and the fossilization of the Florida legislature. Hey, he delivered the Florida statehouse, it wasn’t his fault the state went blue for Obama.

But if the RNC wants a guy who will set the rules and enforce the rules, they’ve picked a tenacious bulldog in Jim Greer. And rules are important to a party that is hemorrhaging members but at the same time wants to maintain purity — hence the purge of the Libertarians whereby Greer earned his “bones” and received a national post as a reward.

And to show the rulesmeister’s softer side, the press release mentioned some personal details about the Greer family:

Chairman Greer and his wife Lisa Michelle reside in Oviedo with their four children, Hunter, Amber, Austin, and Aidan.

‘Nuff said.

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

The votes you’re going to have to cast, whether it’s guns or whether it’s abortion or whether it’s any one of the hot-button items, finishes you as a national political leader in this country. You just can’t do it. It’s not possible.

— Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA), quoted in “The Battle for America 2008,” advising then Sen. Barack Obama to run for president sooner rather than later.

Olbermann Names Reform-Killers in Both Parties Who Are Prostituting Themselves for the Medical Lobbies

Jon Ponder

In his Special Comment on MSNBC’s “Countdown” last night, Keith Olbermann called out prominent members of Congress who are working to kill health-care reform, accusing them of prostituting themselves to the health industry lobbies.

“We know what you are, sir, we’re arguing about the price.”
— Olbermann addressing Sen. Thune (R-N.D.), who has been paid $1.2 million by medical lobbies to kill health care reform

In particular, he accused Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., of lying in his follow-up to the president’s weekly address last week when Thune said the Democrats’ reform proposals would produce ” … government run health care that would disrupt our current system and force millions of Americans who currently enjoy their employer-based coverage into a new health care plan run by government bureaucrats.” (The Republicans’ meme that government bureaucrats are worse than, say, Blue Cross or United bureaucrats never ceases to rankle.)

Sen. Thune — whose family benefits from a very nice health care plan run by government bureaucrats — has received $1.2 million in donations from medical lobbies, according to Olbermann.

Olbermann also called out Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite (R-Fla.), who said on the House floor that in their reform proposals, Democrats were saying to America’s seniors: “Drop dead.” Rep. Brown-Waite has received $369,255 from the lobbies.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has received $3.1 million; Rep. Joe Barton, R-Ok., has taken $2.6 million; and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. has been paid $1.6 million to kill health care reform.

And then there’s Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., the chairman of the Finance Committee who has done as much as anyone to kill the government option. He has taken in $2.6 million from various medical industry groups, according to Olbermann.

Others members of Congress cited by Olbermann as turning tricks for the medical lobbies include Rep. Bart Gordon, R-Tenn., ($1.17 million); Rep. John Tanner, D-Tenn., ($215,000); Rep. Mike Ross, D-Ark.; Sen. Kay Hagan, D-N.C.; Rep. Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D.; Sen. Thomas Carper, D-Del.; and Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark.

Transcript:

[…]

Happy (American) Birthday, Mr. President

Trish

As Pres. Obama blows out the 48 candles (hey, that’s one year for each of the lower 48 states!) on his birthday cake today, we wonder what he’ll wish for. Health care reform? A muzzle for Joe Biden? Retirement for Sen. Ben Nelson and two more Supreme Court members? It’s hard to say, but it’s a pretty safe bet that they won’t be celebrating Obama’s birthday in Virginia, where a new poll shows hardly any Republicans believe Obama was born in America.

An astonishing 41% of the state’s Republicans think President Obama was not born in the United States while just 32% think he was and 27% are still not sure.

The moral of the poll? If you have a half a brain, don’t be a Republican but if you must, at least don’t be a Virginia Republican.

Happy birthday, Obama!

Senate GOP to Oppose More Funding for Popular, Successful ‘Clunkers’ Stimulus Program

Jon Ponder

The “Cash for Clunkers” program has been a success by all metrics. Car buyers who traded in their older cars for up to $4,500 in downpayments for new, more energy efficent vehicles depleted the program’s $1 billion funding within the first week. As many as 250,000 cars were sold last week, according to government estimates.

These sales benefited the local economies in the hometowns of the dealerships as well as, ultimately, the auto industry.

So who would oppose adding another $2 billion to this win-win deal? You guessed it. The Party of No:

“My children and grandchildren are going to have to pay for these cars and we’re helping auto dealers while there are thousands of other small businesses that aren’t getting the help,” said Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) during an appearance on Fox News Sunday. “The role of the federal government is not to run the used car business.”

“We’re definitely going to debate it and I’ve heard that John McCain is going to stand up and try to stop it and I’m going to work with him every way that I can,” he said. “This is crazy to try to rush this thing through again.”

“I just think this is a great example of the stupidity that’s coming out of Washington right now, and I think Americans realize the numbers that we’re throwing around don’t work,” DeMint added.

Unless these pols are looking at polling that shows that no Republican voters are taking advantage of this deal — and the chances of that are next to nil — this kneejerk opposition is even crazier than the rest.

Local Publisher Regrets Not Covering Hate Crime Murder of Ryan Skipper

Jon Ponder

Just ran across this item in the Daily City and had to pass it along. In an interview about the 15th anniversary of the founding of Watermark, a gay news source serving Tampa Bay and other Florida metro areas, publisher Tom Dyer acknowledged missing an important story in his market and to the nation:

In the final analysis, Ryan Skipper was assaulted twice — first, fatally by his homophobic killers and then in the media by the homophobic sheriff of Polk County.

[Daily City]: In 15 years of publishing Watermark, what has been your biggest regret?

Tom Dyer: We should have jumped on the Ryan Skipper story immediately. This young Polk County man’s murder just a few years ago was every bit as gruesome as Matthew Shepard’s, and every bit as telling about the persistence of violent homophobia in our area. There was almost no coverage in the mainstream press, and I let that influence my judgment. Big mistake, and I still regret it.

The fact that there was no coverage in the mainstream media about Ryan’s death in March 2007 is directly attributable to egregious malpractice by the top law enforcement official involved in the case, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd.

At his first news conference about the case, four days or so after the murder and hours after the arrests of Joe Bearden and William Brown, a couple of young meth heads with criminal records, Judd presented the media with a tick-tock of events around the murder that was based entirely on accounts given to investigators by Bearden and Brown.

According to Judd, Ryan — a clean-cut, 25-year-old student — was out looking for rough trade that night and picked up Bearden in what was purported to be a known cruising area in the rural community of Wahneta. He then took Bearden home where, interestingly, they did not have sex but instead smoked pot and schemed to forge checks using Ryan’s computer.

That mistaken profiling of a gay victim would be bad enough, but the clincher came in Judd’s own take on what happened:

“What we do know is that Ryan was looking for someone to pick up that evening. And unfortunately for Ryan, he picked up the wrong person.”

In other words, Ryan was asking to be murdered and got what he deserved.

[…]

Palin Threatens Blogger with Lawsuit over Divorce Story

Jon Ponder

It’s predictable that Sarah Palin would threaten to sue a blogger who posted a story claiming Palin and her husband Todd were divorcing. Palin has shown that she can’t let any slight or grievance go unanswered, no matter how small, and no matter how relatively insignificant the source.

She apparently has a bottomless supply of money to pay lawyers to address these sorts of things. But the fact that her lawyer threatened to serve the blogger with the lawsuit at the kindergarten where he or she works is a new low.

From Alaska Report:

Thomas Van Flein, Sarah Palin’s lawyer, threatened Saturday to serve libel papers at a kindergarten to the owner of the highly trafficked “ImmoralMinority” blog for a divorce story on the Palins. The blog was given until 3pm Saturday to remove the story and post a retraction. The blogger stands by the story…

“Gryphen”, the owner of the blog, laughed off the threat and told Alaska Report – “Nothing that I wrote in my post was meant to be malicious. I trust my source and simply reported what I had been told.

Threatening to serve legal papers to an educator in a room full of five year olds? Now that is malicious.”

Alaska Report says that this is the fourth threat of a lawsuits from Palin, but that none of the threats have been carried out so far.

Good politicians ignore stories like this, even if they’re true, because these sorts of stories, true and false, come with the territory and — especially when the stories are true — the politician’s efforts to stifle the stories are also news and only serve to perpetuate the story she’s trying to tamp down.

Palin Rumors: Disinvited by Nancy? Divorcing Todd?

Jon Ponder

On his Air America show last Thursday, Thom Hartmann said he’d heard scuttlebutt suggesting that there’s more to Sarah Palin’s abrupt announcement that she would not be speaking at the Reagan library in Simi Valley, Calif., on Aug. 8, than has been reported.

The idea that Nancy sees Palin as responsible for the ugly turn the party of Reagan has taken lately certainly passes the plausibility test.

The rumor, according to Hartmann, had it that Nancy Reagan put the kibosh on Palin’s appearance at the library, probably because she does not like the ugly turn the party of Reagan has taken of late and sees Palin as one of the chief instigators. This certainly sounds plausible, but who knows?

The event was not organized or sponsored by the library. The Simi Valley Republican Women, Federated — of which we can promise you Nancy is not a member — had hired the hall for a celebration of its 50th anniversary.

Palin’s gig at the Reagan library was a persistent thread in the cable chatter about her resignation as Alaska’s governor last month. It seemed to counterbalance a similar thread in which her parting shots at the media (“Stop makin’ stuff up.”) were compared with Richard Nixon’s retirement announcement in 1962 when he told reporters, “You won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore.”

(The parallels between Nixon and Palin end there, however. By 1962, Nixon had been a U.S. congressman, a senator, vice president for two terms and the GOP nominee for president. Palin’s career in politics so far has included a stint as a mayor of a town of 12,000, half of one term as a small-state governor and a stint as the GOP candidate for vice president.)

[…]

House GOPs Vote Unanimously Against Killing Government Health Care

Jon Ponder

Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee exposed their hypocrisy on the government option when they voted against a Democratic congressman’s amendment that would have killed a government health care program — Medicare:

Yesterday, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) decided that it was “put-up or shut-up time for the phonies who deride the so-called ‘public option.’” He offered an amendment that would eliminate government-run Medicare… Not a single member of Congress voted for the amendment…

Republicans are refusing to acknowledge the hypocrisy in their statements warning about “socialized” medicine and their support for Medicare. Of course, conservatives also opposed the creation of Medicare in the 1960s and made many of the same claims that their counterparts are doing today. Forty-four years later, Medicare has helped America’s senior citizens live longer, healthier lives. By not voting for Weiner’s amendment, conservatives are acknowledging that their supposedly substantive claims about health care reform are nothing more than crass political fear-mongering.

The “government option” in the health-care debate would simply make available to all Americans the same sort of medical benefits provided by Medicare and to the military, veterans, members of Congress and federal workers.

Many of the people who would benefit most from a government insurance safety net are the same low-income conservatives who support the GOP pols whom the health-insurance industry are paying to kill the government option. These Fox News watchers and Dittoheads are being duped into acting against their own self-interests again.