Year: 2013

Caught on Tape – Republicans Have Been Planning This Government Shutdown Since 2009

Jon Ponder

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As the federal government was shutting down last night, Rep. Michele Bachmann, the tea party leader, captured the moment for her cohorts, “It’s exactly what we wanted, and we got it.”

On her MSNBC show last night, As Rachel Maddow demonstrated with archival recordings of comments by tea party politicians going back to 2009 that shutting down the government has been their objective from the outset.

Rough Transcript:

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Tea Baggers Claim to Love the Constitution – So How Can They Ignore It When It Gets in the Way of Their Anti-Obama Obsession?

Jon Ponder

I thought tea partyists were supposed to revere the Constitution. The Constitution lays out two ways to undo a law — repeal it through legislation or challenge it in court. Republicans have tried both routes — 42 repeals and lawsuits all the way up to SCOTUS — and it has all failed. What they’re doing now, threatening to shut down the govt and/or ruin the full faith and credit of the United States if the president refuses to submit to their demands, is not only a thuggish act of desperation, it is an affront to the constitution.

What’s worse, of course, is that they have been plotting the government shutdown since 2009, as Rachel Maddow reported last night. Not unlike their obsession with invading Iraq in 2003, they were determined to do it at any cost, all they needed was a pretext. Then it was 9/11; now it’s opening day for the Affordable Care Act.

Stock Market Not Into Obamacare Delay

Trish

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Points the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell as it closed on Monday, after House Republicans continued to threaten a government shut-down if implementation of the Affordable Care Act isn’t delayed a year. What would happen during that year to change the ACA, which was passed by Congress, upheld by the Supreme Court, and signed by the president, is unspecified.

Justice Dept. Takes Action Against North Carolina GOP’s Voter Suppression Laws

Jon Ponder

Another humiliation for my old home state. Until now, North Carolina was one of the few Old Confederacy states that was not covered by the Voting Rights Act, because, unlike the others, the Democrats who ran the state insisted that voting be open to all who were eligible. Now, just 10 months electing the first Republican-controlled government since the 1870s, those days are over. If the Justice Department prevails, NC will be covered by the VRA just like every other state run by neo-Confederates, and will have to submit its plans for changing voter regulations to the courts in advance for approval.

Charlotte Observer:

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GOP Still Trying to Ram Through Romney’s 2012 Economic Plan

Buck Banks

The fact that a major party could even propose anything like this is a display of astonishing contempt for democratic norms. Republicans ran on this plan and lost by 5 million votes. They also lost the Senate and received a million fewer votes in the House but held control owing to favorable district lines. Is there an example in American history of a losing party issuing threats to force the majority party to implement its rejected agenda?

— Jonathan Chait, looking at the Republican list of demands to raise the debt ceiling and concluding, “It’s Mitt Romney’s 2012 economic plan. Almost word for word, in fact.”