Tag: Republicans
Why Don’t Republicans Know the Difference Between Pandering and Condoning Violence?
If I’ve got to measure everything I say, I mean, I’m not going to be politically correct. That was a joke. This was an audience for this. This is a Catholic Church.
— Mike Hogan, Duval County Florida Tax Collector and Jacksonville mayoral candidate. Hogan was referring to his comments in a public forum that Roe v. Wade was “an awful decision by an awful court” and that he would not personally bomb an abortion clinic, “but it may cross my mind.”
SSDD: Republicans Proposed Same Cuts in 1995
Let me read you a news story about some of the proposed budget cuts. Republicans are proposing cuts in youth training and education programs, foreign aid, assistance to homeless youth, federal subsidies to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Head Start, energy assistance for the needy to pay their fuel bills. That’s a list from 1995. So Republicans now are proposing a very similar list of cuts that go after the programs that they have always targeted, things that conservative voters don’t like very much, that liberal voters do. So in that sense there is Republican unity.
Cynthia Tucker, Atlanta Journal Constitution columnist, appearing recently on NPR’s “Tell Me More.”
House Energy Committee Has Become a Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Oil Billionaire Koch Brothers
A partial list of recipients of Koch Industries “investments” in the 2010 midterm elections:
House Leadership:
- Speaker John Boehner, Ohio, $20,000
- Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Va., $20,000
- National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Pete Sessions, Texas, $20,000
- House Ways & Means Chairman Dave Camp, Mich., $17,500
- House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, Wisc., $20,000
- House House Oversight & Government Reform Committee Darrell Issa, Calif., $12,500
House Energy Committee Republicans
Six of 22 donations to committee members by the Koch brothers:
- Chairmain Fred Upton, Mich., $20,000
- Chairman Emeritus Joe Barton, Texas, $18,000
- Rep. John Shimkus, Ill., $18,500
- Freshman Rep. Michael Pompeo, Kansas, $43,500
- Tea Partyist Rep. Morgan Griffith, Va., $5,000
- Tea Partyist Rep. Adam Kinzinger, Ill., $5,000
House Energy Committee Democrats
Two of of five donations to committee members by the Koch brothers:
- Rep. Mike Ross, Ark., $15,500
- Rep. Dan Boren, Okla., $13,500
(List continues below)
In the 2010 midterms, Californians rejected wealthy, self-funded candidates for governor and the U.S. senate at least in part because voters were leery of candidates who felt they could “buy” the election in order to achieve power. In the Florida governor’s race and the Wisconsin U.S. Senate race voters made the opposite decision. There is every reason the swing voters who put Gov. Rick Scott and Sen. Ron Johnson into office will soon regret those votes, but at least these candidates were elected, as much as is possible these days, in the open by a fair vote.
But while no one was looking, oil billionaires David and Charles Koch — behind-the-scenes funders of the tea party astroturf mobs — and their front group, Americans for Prosperity spent a little over $41 million during the election, quietly buying dozens of members of Congress, lock, stock and barrel.
Since the elections, the Kochs have taken control of their latest acquisition — the House of Representatives — with their first order of business being a directive to House Speaker John Boehner to populate the House Energy Committee, which regulates their core business, with members beholden to the new bosses.
The Kochs hate publicity, and this maneuvering has been done with utmost secrecy. So it must have been unpleasant for the brothers and their minions in the GOP on Sunday when the Los Angeles Times published a story about their purchase of the energy committee on its front page above the fold:
The Reagan Legacy: Can We Talk?
While folks born from the late ’70s on reflect fondly on the 100th birthday of Pres. Ronald Reagan, I wanted to inject a little reality on the subject of the Gipper.
As someone who was already around when he was in office, I have a different view of the golden age conservatives now see as the greatest in our country’s history, except of course, for the halcyon days of 3/5ths personhood and what-not at our country’s founding. Reagan gave us:
- Voodoo economics, aka trickle-down economics, aka supply-side economics, aka tax breaks for the rich
- Tripling the national debt within two years (see “voodoo economics”)
- Just Say No
- Creating a new demographic of Americans: The Homeless
- A 4,370-piece set of dishes (19 pieces per setting), costing $209,508
- Bombing Libya and killing 60 people, including Leader Muammar al-Gaddafi’s 15-month-old daughter
- Ketchup as a vegetable in public school lunches
- Lt. Col. Oliver North
- Selling arms to Iran and using the money to overthrow the government of Nicaragua
- Using astrology to plan presidential trips, functions, speeches, etc.
Bush Cancels Switzerland Trip After Threat of Arrest for Torture Crimes
Former Pres. George W. Bush is denying that the sudden cancellation of his scheduled speech at a Jewish charity event in Switzerland has anything to do with the fact that human rights groups promised he would be arrested on arrival.
Human rights lawyer: ‘I think George Bush’s world is a very small place at the moment’
Bush was to be the keynote speaker at Keren Hayesod’s annual dinner on February 12 in Geneva. But pressure has been building on the Swiss government to arrest him and open a criminal investigation if he enters the Alpine country.
Criminal complaints against Bush alleging torture have been lodged in Geneva, court officials say.
Most Viewers Were Favorable to SOTU
77%
Number of people who felt “more optimistic” after watching Pres. Obama’s 2011 State of the Union address, according to a CNN poll. Only 19% said it made them “more pessimistic.” Coincidentally, 19% of those polled were Republicans.
GOP Continues to Spotlight White Males
Jeb Bush’s recent plea for his party to pay more attention to its Latino members seems to have fallen on deaf ears. Their selection of a white guy Midwesterner to perform the Republican rebuttal to the State of the Union address ignored rising star sunbelt Latinos, including New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) will give the speech, which according to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, will deal with economics.
“Paul Ryan has spent the better part of the last two years explaining exactly why the Democrat agenda has been so bad for jobs and the economy, and why we need to ditch the government-driven approach in favor of creative, common-sense solutions that put the American people back in charge.
Maybe Gov. Bobby Jindal’s poor showing reinforced the natural Republican inclination to stick with white guys
Republicans apparently noticed the economic crisis after the inauguration of Pres. Obama. It slipped past them when they were voting to allow Pres. George W. Bush to run up the deficit to unprecedented levels in order to wage war on a country that had not directly threatened us. They also must have been confused when they voted for Bush’s plan to spend $700 billion to bail out banks and other large corporations that had invested in mortgage-backed securities. Bush signed that Republican-approved law on Oct. 3, 2008.
Rubio, like Rep. Michele Bachmann (GOP/TEA-Minn.), plans his own State of the Union rebuttal for the benefit of his followers.
Hey, Sarah, How’s That Dopey-Ragey Thing Workin’ out for Ya?
So far, 2011 — all 23 days of it — has been a bad year for Sarah Palin’s presidential campaign.
First, her response to the mass murder attack on Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords on Jan.8 gave voters invaluable insight into how, as president, she would perform under pressure. Pres. Palin, they learned, would make the crisis — say an Iranian nuclear attack on Israel — about herself and then give a speech from the Oval Office in which she used her limited oratorical skills to dress down her critics.
Last week, two polls found that Palin’s approval rating had dropped to 38 percent. Her disapproval rating in the Gallup poll was 53 percent and 56 percent in the CNN survey. In Sarah Palin’s own Alaska, her approval is 33 percent.
Now Palin has come in fourth in a presidential straw poll of Republican activists in New Hampshire — behind vice presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty and just a notch above her even crazier doppelganger, Rep. Michele Bachmann.
Palin received just 7 percent of the vote — which is eerily the same as the 7 percent she received last February in the straw poll at CPAC, the wingnut confab sponsored by the hate group, American Family Association.
Until recently, pundits were blue-skying the 2012 Republican primaries as playing out like this. Palin wins the Iowa caucuses, comes in second in New Hampshire after Mitt Romney, the former governor of next-door Massachusetts, and then rolls into the South Carolina, a hotbed of rage-addicted tea baggers — in other words, her base — and where Mormons like Romney are considered satanic cultists. By taking two of the first three, she becomes an unstoppable force and sews up the nomination.
That scenario, which took a beating after Tucson, came apart yesterday in New Hampshire. Here’s how Fox News reported it online:
No Honeymoon for GOP-Tea Partyites in Congress
Hey, when I’m wrong, I’m wrong. And I was wrong late last year when I predicted that Pres. Obama’s poll numbers would be tanking into the 30s in mid-January — so, now — primarily because he made a deal with Republican, who were threatening hissy fits if he did not agree to extend tax breaks for their billionaire sponsors.
The GOP’s fav/unfav has gone from a net positive in December (38 percent-37 percent) to a net negative now (34 percent-40 percent). – NBC/GOP-WSJ poll
The way it looked then was that hordes of liberals and fiscally responsible Democrats would abandon the president over the deal, that whatever he might gain in support from moderates and swing voters, he’d lose from his base, and then some.
But the White House followed up its caving on the tax cuts with other successes, particularly the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
