Year: 2009

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

I really, really, really have a very simple goal, and that is to keep it as short as Bill Richardson’s tenure as Commerce Secretary.

I raised $17,000 from ex-boyfriends — true story! I know that is the record in the Senate, but in the House it’s held by Barney Frank.

John Edwards is still talking about two Americas — that was the greatest pickup line in history.

Typically, a Republican and a Democrat speak at this — you could have saved a lot of money by asking Joe Lieberman.

— Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), addressing the Washington Press Club Foundation’s Annual Congressional Dinner Wednesday night

Email Your Senator. This Means You.

Trish

It’s not that hard to write your senators and urge them to pass Obama’s economic stimulus plan. There are only two senators per state, after all. I just sent this message to Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) and Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.). I sent the same message to both, ignoring the fact that Martinez wrote the tax cut alternative plan.

Tax cuts are all well and good for people who have jobs and therefore, taxes to pay. For people without jobs, they’re a lot like on-site child care for non-parents — a great workplace benefit, for someone else.

Please support and help gain passage of Obama’s economic stimulus plan, and do it fast. We need jobs, not tax cuts, and we need new, green-energy and good-paying infrastructure jobs the most. Thanks!

Takes two seconds. Google your person and the word, “contact.” It will take you right there.

This is urgent, folks. FOX Snooze and talk radio are beating the drum, and there’s a rightwing flood of calls and emails pouring in. We need to rouse ourselves and let them hear from us.

Gonzales: Torture, Waterboarding, Attorney Firings Were “Little Negatives”

Trish

Oh man. I see why no one wants to give former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales a job. His memory, missing in action during his testimony to Congress on Justice Department malfeasance, is back. And the way he remembers it, he did a heckuva job. In an interview with CNN’s Campbell Brown, Gonzales was just amazing.

  • His overall record at Justice: “I hope history will reflect the fact that during my tenure both at the White House and at the Department of Justice we did a tremendous job in protecting our country and also as attorney general we focused on protecting our kids from sexual predators, we focused on making our neighborhoods safe from guns and drugs…so many people are focused on the little negatives that occurred.”

  • Firing attorneys because of party affiliation: “I’ve already testified, as I’ve indicated before and spoken to the American public about wishing that I had done things differently with respect to the removal of the U.S. attorneys. But I think you need to look at the overall record of the department during my tenure and the good things that we accomplished.”

  • Lobbying Attorney General John Ashcroft in the hospital, hours after major surgery, to O.K. illegal wiretapping: “Andy Card and I were sent on behalf of the president of the United States to talk to General Ashcroft. It was an announced visit. We were sent there on behalf of the president to inform the attorney general of a very important meeting that we had just had at the White House with congressional leadership about probably the most important intelligence collection program for the United States government.”

  • Approving waterboarding and other forms of torture: “Clearly there is no disagreement about the principle of not torturing. That is something that President Bush announced that his administration would follow that principle, which we tried to do. The issue of coercive interrogation to gather information from dangerous crim– dangerous terrorists to help protect our country is one that we clearly wrestled with.”

  • His future prospects: “I can understand in a very tough economy, some employers are going to be very hesitant about bringing someone like me on when you have ongoing investigation…I am anxious to move on to the next phase of my life. I feel like I still have a lot to contribute to our community and to our country and I want to do so.”

How’s about you don’t, Alberto, and we just say you did?

Remember: When the GOP Was in Charge, They Flew $12 Bil in Cash into the Iraq War Zone – And Lost It All

Jon Ponder

It is nothing less than astounding that Pres. Obama and the congressional Democrats have allowed themselves to be put on the defensive about stimulus spending by the same Republicans who, with George Bush, ran the national debt into the trillions in just six short years.

It does not bode well that the president and the Democrats can’t find the cojones to cram the Republicans’ hypocrisy on spending back in their faces.

In particular, this would be a good time to remind Sen. McConnell, Rep. Boehner and the rest that it was they who sat idly by while Bush’s men shrink-wrapped $12 billion in U.S. currency — 363 tons of $100 bills — loaded it onto pallets and flew it on transport planes into the Iraq war zone in mid-2003.

That money vanished into thin air, and Republicans have stonewalled Democrats’ efforts to find out what happened to it ever since.

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

When you really analyze it, if you want to stimulate economic growth, you have to have people investing, creating capital and creating jobs. Basically, a big part of that (stimulus package) went for extending unemployment. It’s a nice thing to do, but when you extend unemployment, you take the incentive away from people to go out and get a job. So it almost has a counter negative effect.

— Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL), in an interview with the Daily Herald.

Republicans Have Hijacked the Stimulus Message

Trish

Joan Walsh at Salon says Republicans are winning the media war over the economic stimulus package.

This had merely been a stupid GOP talking point until 10 minutes ago; now it’s becoming a stupid media talking point. Funny how that works.

…the stimulus fight is tougher than it should be for Democrats. Clearly the best ally the Republicans have is the economic illiteracy of the pundit class in America. I’m watching NBC’s Chuck Todd say the Democrats have lost the “message war” over the stimulus, because it’s now just seen as a “spending bill.” There’s no way for a stimulus bill not to be a spending bill…This had merely been a stupid GOP talking point until 10 minutes ago; now it’s becoming a stupid media talking point. Funny how that works.

Walsh says timing is bad for Democrats, with the failures of the TARP bailout all over the news. The question is, why isn’t this bad for the Republicans? That bill was passed under Bush and managed by his Republican administration. It was their idea to take away taxpayer oversight of how the funds were distributed.

It’s not good that we’re debating how to spend the second “tranche” of the awful TARP program at the same time as we’re having the stimulus debate; I think the inequities and inefficiencies of TARP are smogging the atmosphere for the as-yet-unfinished stimulus bill. We all heard about a desperately needed $700 billion bailout bill a few months ago — it rewarded bad behavior and, worst of all, it didn’t work. So why should Americans be any more optimistic about the separate (and it’s hard to keep straight that it is separate) stimulus bill Obama has championed?

Walsh offers a good suggestion on how to salvage the media battle and get the right message to the citizenry.

…Obama and the Democrats need to break three or four categories of spending out of the bill, and crusade for them daily, in real-life, real-job, real-money terms. This mess is complicated, and I’m not suggesting that Obama demagogue or exaggerate, but what the plan will accomplish is getting lost in debate over tax cuts and tax credits, shovel-ready vs. forward-looking projects, and confusion over the stimulative role of direct grants to the states. There is so much confusion and ignorance at work here, only some of it willful. Obama has an enormous educational and not merely political task in front of him this week, and he can’t expect much help from most of the media.

Palin Prevaricates to Her Party

Buck Banks

Remember back during the late presidential campaign when Sen. John McCain stiffed David Letterman, claiming that he was needed in Washington to straighten out the economy, but he was really in another studio at CBS in New York doing an interview with Katie Couric?

Well, apparently lying runs on the ticket. McCain’s veep candidate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin pulled a McCain-like move last week when she declined to address the Republican congressional delegation at its winter retreat. She claimed that she could give the keynote address because she couldn’t leave Alaska because of pressing state business. Instead, she was in Washington, D.C., for the Alfalfa Dinner on Saturday.

“She lied to us,” said a Republican at the retreat.

Asked why Palin told the Republicans she could not leave Alaska this weekend, Palin spokesman Bill McAllister offered this non-responsive answer:

“My understanding is that the governor has not scheduled any partisan events on her current trip to D.C.,” McAllister told ABC News.

The House Republicans seemed to do just fine without Palin. Their list of speakers included Republican stars Michael Steele, Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty and Newt Gingrich.

Asked about Palin’s no-show, House Republican leader John Boehner shrugged.

“Whatever,” Boehner said.

That universally dismissive comment hits about the right note when it comes to how much attention the GOP should give Ms. Palin.

Clearance Sale Predicted

Trish

The bumper sticker, left, and the button

If you’re that one American who wishes Bush could have run for a third term, here’s some good news. You can send the former president a message, via your own bumper or breast, showing your gratitude for his ineptitude — all eight years of it.

For only $1.50 you can slap this “Thank you” sticker on your car. Or for $1.75 you can take that thought with you wherever you go, with a “Thank you” button. The Republican National Committee is selling both, along with commemorative golf balls, low-boy tumblers (fitting, eh?), and t-shirts at the George W. Bush Store.

We’d really love to know how many they’ve sold so far.

How’s That Identity Politics Working for You, Republicans?

Trish

RNC Chair Michael Steele

The last time Republicans tried to show they were as broad-minded as Democrats, the country got Sarah Palin. Introduced as the Republican answer to Hillary Clinton, Palin was expected to syphon off the votes of all those disgruntled Hillary-heads and prove Republicans value women more than Democrats do. Instead, it was almost immediately evident they had selected one of the most anti-choice, anti-feminist, anti-“vagina-Americans”* ever to crawl out from under an oil pipeline.

So what have they done this time? Trotted out former Maryland Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele, an African American, to lead their party. And as Wattree at epluribusmedia notes, it’s the same old Republican stuff.

What I would personally like to see is a Republican Party that INCLUDES minorities, not use them…[A]nyone with an ounce of sense can see that this is a gimmick. Republicans were defeated so badly in the last election, and Obama is so popular, that they figure Black must be the political flavor of the season, so they went out and “got them one”–it didn’t matter who, just long as his skin was dark…

The American people didn’t elect President Obama because he’s Black, they elected him because he demonstrated that he was an intelligent, competent, statesman. He was also elected so overwhelmingly because for the past eight years the Republican Party has clearly demonstrated that it was overflowing with corruption, incompetence, and greed. So while it’s hard for the RNC to believe, for the very first time, we had an election that was based strictly on the issues and relative competence, and not race.

Their election, on the other hand, was all about race. One contender, former Tennessee GOP Chair Chip Saltsman, made it crystal clear with his Christmas gift. The audio CD contained the now-famous “Barack the Magic Negro” as well as “Ivory and Ebony” and “The Star Spanglish Banner.” It was satire, we were told, not racism. What better way to prove it than to select a black man to lead them? That Steele, unlike their other candidates, has no party-building experience is secondary.

I don’t yet know Steele’s opinions or views but this move seems almost as good as choosing a female misogynist to run as vice president. And we all know how that worked out.

* In the words of The Daily Show’s Samantha Bee