Month: October 2013

South Carolina Senator Vows to Shut Down Government Appointments Because – Benghazi!

Jon Ponder
South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham

Lindsey Graham has a tea-bagger primary opponent in his campaign for reelection to the Senate from South Carolina next year, so he he is now threatening to shut down government appointments, including to top positions at the Federal Reserve and the Department of Homeland Security, because — Benghazi! He made the shutdown threat on Fox News last Sunday:

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Sen. Rand Paul Caught Plagiarizing from Wikipedia, Reads Entry on ‘Gattaca’ from Teleprompter at Cuccinelli Event

Jon Ponder

Raw Story:

For the movie Gattaca to come up during a gubernatorial campaign was weird enough, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow said on Monday. But weirder still was would-be presidential hopeful Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) seemingly reciting portions of his speech on the movie verbatim from Wikipedia and thinking he could pull it off.

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Clinton Rips Republicans As Ideologues, Rather Than Pragmatists, on ACA Rollout

Jon Ponder

Everybody’s forgotten, by the way, that when President George W. Bush and the Republicans put that Medicare Part D drug program in, it was more unpopular than the health care law and they had terrible problems with the computers. Some seniors couldn’t even get medicine they had been getting, and the local pharmacists basically got together and made sure they stayed alive until the computers got fixed. But our side, we’re not so ideological. So, instead of bashing them and screaming about how incompetent they were, most of our people just tried to help people understand the law and make it work and then wait for it to get fixed.

– Pres. Bill Clinton, during remarks at a campaign rally for Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe in the Virginia governor’s race.

Klein: Obamacare is a ‘Highly Moral Piece of Legislation’

Buck Banks

This is not health care for deadbeats, as many Republicans assume. It is a highly moral piece of legislation: the people most affected will be the working poor and lower middle class, people who have jobs, often at small businesses, but don’t have health care. (The unemployed and unemployable poor already have health care via Medicaid.) It is a matter of simple fairness that if we, as a society, provide health insurance to those who don’t work, we also provide it to those who do.

— Joe Klein, writing in Time’s Swampland Blog, noting the importance of Obamacare “should not be lost in the Administration’s failure to implement it.”

N.C. Lawmaker Says Obama Is Not a Traitor — to Kenya!

Buck Banks

Someone had posted something with a picture of Barack Obama and across it said ‘traitor.’ And, you know, I don’t always agree with the guy, I certainly didn’t vote for him but I gotta defend him on this one. I just don’t think it’s right at all to call Barack Obama a traitor. There’s a lot of things he’s done wrong but he is not a traitor. Not as far as I can tell. I haven’t come across any evidence yet that he has done one thing to harm Kenya.

— North Carolina state Rep. Larry Pittman (R), telling a crowd of supporters that President Obama isn’t a traitor to his country — if that country is Kenya.

Sounds Like GOP Is Gearing Up for a January Showown

Buck Banks

The American people are going to demand a fight in January. Look, when this thing goes into full effect, some of those people will go, ‘Why didn’t y’all stand tighter? Why did y’all let this happen?’

— Rep. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA), quoted by Politico, predicting another showdown over Obamacare when the threat of another government shutdown may resurface.