Day: December 1, 2010

Why Are Republicans So Giddy about Tossing 2 Million Jobless Americans to the Wolves at Christmas?

Jon Ponder

Mike Barnicle’s debate with outgoing Arizona GOP-T Rep. John Shadegg on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” has gotten attention because of the outrageous new Grover Norquistian talking point about unemployment benefits that Shadegg trotted out:

It wasn’t Shadegg’s audacious lying that was remarkable — you can see that 24/7 on Fox — it was his swagger, the near-giddiness with which he consigned 2 million unemployed Americans to the wolves at the same time that he was demanding tax breaks for people so wealthy they don’t need to work.

BARNICLE: What about the fact that unemployment benefits pumped into the economy are an immediate benefit to the economy. Immediate.

SHADEGG: No, they’re not. Unemployed people hire people? Really? I didn’t know that.

BARNICLE: Unemployed people spend money, Congressman, because they have no money.

SHADEGG: Ah — ah — So your answer is it’s the spending of money that drives the economy. I don’t think that’s right. It’s the creation of jobs that drive the economy.

BARNICLE: But if you spend money in a variety store —

SHADEGG: Actually, the truth is the unemployed will spend as little of that money as they possibly can. Job creators create jobs.

A little later, Barnicle followed up on unemployment benefits:

BARNICLE: Let’s go back to what you said about unemployment checks. Unemployment checks, people don’t spend that money?

SHADEGG: No. They will spend as little as they can because they’ll hold on to it as long as they can. In reality, they don’t create jobs. You still haven’t told me how unemployed people create jobs.

[…]

Zombie Birthers: The Stoopid ‘Conspiracy’ That Won’t Die – Watch Anderson Cooper Battle Stubborn Ignorance with Truth and Facts

Jon Ponder

One observation about the birther conspiracy that seldom gets made is that Pres. Obama’s handling of this entirely fictional, made-up controversy is proof positive that he can play hardball when he wants to.

Even if Jeebus himself descended from heaven and unfurled Barack Obama’s long-form birth certificate from the top of Mt. Sinai, the birthers would not believe it. What they really want is a president who is a white guy.

It is more than likely — almost a dead cinch — that Obama has in his possession a copy of the actual long-form birth certificate from Hawaii that birthers claim they need to see in order to put their purported concerns to rest.

The president’s mother had to have the long form document to show Customs officials when the family moved to Indonesia when Obama was five years old and and to show U.S. Customs when he returned a few years later to Hawaii to live with his grandparents. He also presumably had to show his birth certificate in order to get a driver’s license when he was 16 and likely had to produce it again when he received his passport.

Assuming those suppositions are correct, it’s good to see that he’s sticking it to these idiots, because the truth is, even if Jeebus himself descended from heaven and unfurled Barack Obama’s long-form birth certificate from the top of Mt. Sinai, the birthers would not believe it. What they really want is a president who is a white guy. Half-white just doesn’t cut it.

That fact comes through loud and clear in Anderson Cooper’s interview, in the video above, with Texas birther and state Rep. Leo Berman, a Republican — who, it must be pointed out, is a ex-pat New Yorker.

Last month, Berman introduced legislation in the Texas House that would “require any candidate for president or vice president of the United States to show his or her birth certificate to the Texas secretary of state,” because, as Berman put it, “we have a president whom the American people don’t know whether he was born in Kenya or some other place”:

[…]

Verbatim

Buck Banks

Speaker Boehner is our Dwight Eisenhower in the battle against the Obama Administration. Majority Leader Cantor is our Omar Bradley. I want to be George Patton — put anything in my scope and I will shoot it

— Rep. Joe Barton (R-CA), in a PowerPoint presentation obtained by NBC News, making his case to become the leader of the House Energy and Commerce panel.

Verbatim

Buck Banks

In the next two years President Obama will be much more independent in fighting hard to prevail and not trying to reach out, which turned out to be fruitlessly, to get two or three Republican votes for this and that.

— Former president Jimmy Carter, in an interview with CBS News, predicting the president will be “a much more tough proponent of what he stands for in the future, giving up on Republican support and taking his case to the American public.”

Verbatim

Buck Banks

Whoever in our government leaked that information is guilty of treason, and I think anything less than execution is too kind a penalty.

— Presidential wannabe? Talking head? Former preacher? Mike Huckabee, asserting that the person who provided thousands of secret State Department cables deserves to be executed, according to Politico.