GOP Disarray

The payroll tax holiday debacle in the House of Representatives is tearing the GOP apart and smashing to pieces their "anti-tax" brand. The meme is becoming clear: the Republican Party is only interested in political wins and protecting the wealthy.

Here's how they looked today on the House floor when Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) tries to bring up a vote on the Senate compromise bill passed by nearly 90% of the Senate:

Embarrassing optics for the House leadership, where Speaker Boehner kowtows to the Teapublicans to try and keep his job. Per Dana Milbank, the GOP is now in damage control mode. And supposed "leader" of the GOP Presidential pack, Willard Mitt Romney, is too chicken to take a position on the payroll tax holiday at all. Nice leadership skills, Willard.

It's not just this issue -- the GOP are in trouble everywhere with their Teapublicans, like the Major of Troy, Michigan:

Janice Daniels, led a coalition of like-minded tea partiers to kill off a transit center project that was a decade in the making, kissing off $8.4 million in federal investment funds to help make the project happen.

Well, Troy is now going to pay the price for this type of mindless ideological dogma: investors are being advised to look elsewhere rather than Troy, Michigan.

As for the idea of taxing millionaires, an anathema to the GOP:

Six in ten Americans believe Congress should raise taxes on Americans earning more than $1 million per year, according to a new CBS News poll, while only 35 percent oppose such an increase.

A narrow majority of Republican primary voters say those making more than $1 million per year should not see an increase -- but they are nearly split on the question. Forty-three percent want to see taxes on millionaires increased, and 51 percent do not.

Most GOP primary voters - 55 percent - don't think such a tax increase would have a negative impact on job creation. Twenty-nine percent say such a tax hike would hurt job creation.

Yep, as The Wall Street Journal said today:

After a year of the tea party House, Mr. Obama and Senate Democrats have had to make no major policy concessions beyond extending the Bush tax rates for two years. Mr. Obama is in a stronger re-election position today than he was a year ago, and the chances of Mr. McConnell becoming Majority Leader in 2013 are declining.

Once again: Gobama.

Tea-saster

House Speaker John Boehner can't get the votes for his debt-raising bill, which will be dead moments after it hits the Senate floor, because teabaggers are pissed off about what they call a "welfare program" -- Pell Grants! And people wonder why the USA may be losing it's edge in the global economy. (Clue: education, as in the money Germany spends to get ahead on things like alternative energy as a post-industrial nation. You know, what the Fox wing calls "Eurosocialism.")

With the Republican Party straining to keep it's warring factions together as they send all of us headlong towards massive interest rates and the downgrading of our nation in world financial markets, maybe the mainstream media will finally stop with the false equivalences. Per Paul Krugman on "The Centrist Cop-Out":

The facts of the crisis over the debt ceiling aren’t complicated. Republicans have, in effect, taken America hostage, threatening to undermine the economy and disrupt the essential business of government unless they get policy concessions they would never have been able to enact through legislation. And Democrats — who would have been justified in rejecting this extortion altogether — have, in fact, gone a long way toward meeting those Republican demands.
...

Some of us have long complained about the cult of “balance,” the insistence on portraying both parties as equally wrong and equally at fault on any issue, never mind the facts. I joked long ago that if one party declared that the earth was flat, the headlines would read “Views Differ on Shape of Planet.” But would that cult still rule in a situation as stark as the one we now face, in which one party is clearly engaged in blackmail and the other is dickering over the size of the ransom?

The answer, it turns out, is yes. And this is no laughing matter: The cult of balance has played an important role in bringing us to the edge of disaster. For when reporting on political disputes always implies that both sides are to blame, there is no penalty for extremism. Voters won’t punish you for outrageous behavior if all they ever hear is that both sides are at fault.

...

But making nebulous calls for centrism, like writing news reports that always place equal blame on both parties, is a big cop-out — a cop-out that only encourages more bad behavior. The problem with American politics right now is Republican extremism, and if you’re not willing to say that, you’re helping make that problem worse.

So here's how I game it out. The GOP leadership manages to twist enough arms and create a horrific enough bill, filled with damage and fantasies, that they squeak out the votes they need to get it to the Senate. If not, they should all quit because they will have shown a 100% inability to govern. Next the bill is killed or amended to a more acceptable form in the Senate and, probably due to behind-the-scenes negotiations between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a bad but not 100% tragic bill gets 60 votes needed for closure and passes. It goes into Conference Committee with the House leadership as time ticks away, hopefully stays pretty much the same, and now it gets interesting.

Since the Dems have compromised to the point of near-ridiculousness but are the adults in the room, they all vote for it in the House. Now the trick for John Boehner, to keep from going down in history as the man who crashed the global economy, is to get enough Republican House votes to make up a majority, including covering a few odd Dems who don't vote for it.

When Obama signs the bill, three major things happen. For one, he gets to claim a bi-partisan bill passed. Two, the GOP fractures like broken glass as the 'baggers and fellow rightwing extremists revolt against their leadership, possibly to the point of Boehner getting voted out by the caucus. And three, unless something very odd happens, the GOP is shamed in public by their inability to pass anything themselves, self-castrated, and a horrific bet to any thinking American of any political persuasion in 2012.

And that's how the President gets re-elected, if not a flip back to Dem majority in the House, once that can actually pass legislation. It's those who can't even govern themselves vs. the man who killed Bin Laden.

If the above scenario comes to pass, I'll bet it won't be a hard decision for most Americans at all.

Boehned Again

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) can't get his own debt ceiling bill to add up, and he's getting major tea-fections in his fractured yet intransigent Republican Party as the clock ticks down and Wall Street gets ticked off at the GOP.

Comin' up empty or passing a piece of legislation that gets amended away in the Senate?

Showdown approaching. I'm betting on the threat of the 14th Amendment growing stronger the longer the GOP have the legislative edge. But if their edge evaporates, then the question is whether the Dems can peel off enough GOP votes to support their own bill.

Otherwise, Mr. President: The Constitutional Option.

Crashing Their Party

Tonight President Obama gave the first speech of his Presidency that had a direct call to contact your Congressional Representative and tell them to compromise. It's been his message all along against a the Tea Party-driven GOP anti-tax fever and the greatest concerted effort yet to dismantle or privatize risk in Social Security and Medicaid. Those advances that has saved America from the type of geriatric poverty it suffered prior to those great American civilization advances.

And he reportedly crashed the House servers.

Will it keep Boehner from crashing our economy?

Punks

The best debt negotiation quote yet:

Since pulling the plug on the deal, Boehner has been largely silent in the meetings, leaving House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) to present details of the House’s position. On Tuesday, people in both parties said, Obama tried to reestablish Boehner’s primacy.

Cantor, who is advocating a smaller deal, at one point demanded that Obama offer the details of his vision for a “grand bargain.”

“Where’s your paper?” he asked angrily.

Obama snapped back: “Frankly, your speaker has it. Am I dealing with him, or am I dealing with you?”

It was all revealed today. At the highest level, it's House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) doing his "young guns" power-grab over House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) fueled by the Tea Party he's grabbed onto. His PPT was leaked today, no compromise on revenue generation at all:

Eric Cantor July Slides

Today the business leaders hit back. At the GOP:

The message, sent in a letter to President Obama and every member of Congress, puts pressure on GOP lawmakers, who have staked out an uncompromising stance against raising taxes in the partisan wrangling over the country’s borrowing limit.

Republicans rely heavily on corporations for political support and have regularly cited the opinions of these “job creators” in their opposition to new tax revenue. Many of the House GOP freshmen most opposed to a compromise were swept into office with the help of financial support from groups behind the letter.

But the business community, which has largely kept quiet on the issue until now, does not uniformly share the Republican orthodoxy on taxes, according to some lobbyists who helped craft the statement.

The letter conspicuously avoided any mention of tax revenue partly because of differences of opinion among executives over whether to compromise on taxes to get a deal done, said a senior industry lobbyist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the internal deliberations were private.

“The debt default would be exponentially more painful than anything else,” said another senior executive at a major business lobbying group.

Obama has won the war of governance. The GOP is my way or the highway, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) found himself squeezed between the idiot Tea Party faction that thinks defaulting on the debt won't lead to world economic depression the loss of global American currency dominance that keeps us on top of the world, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, normally their biggest ally. No sane business in the country wants the U.S. to default and interest rates shoot through the roof -- if you can even get a loan.

So McConnell releases his Plan Z, panic mode, where they'd just keep holding short term votes to raise the debt without any cuts truly tethered. The idea is they keep the U.S. from defaulting but keep their members from having to vote on a Grand Bargain with any tax revenues, whether through closing loopholes or raising marginal rates on high income.

The result: his own party turns on him:

"It's Time to Burn Mitch McConnell in Effigy," read the headline on a post by Red State's Erick Erickson. He later changed it, writing "I decided to make the title less incendiary."

The new version? "Mitch McConnell Just Proposed the 'Pontius Pilate Pass the Buck Act of 2011.'" A sample:

So fearful of being blamed for a default, McConnell is proposing a compromise that lets Barack Obama raise the debt ceiling without making any spending cuts at all. Consider sending McConnell a weasel as testament to his treachery.

The generally more polite Heritage Foundation took aim at McConnell's plan as well.

"The plan that we are reading reports about today is a serious walk back," Heritage blogger Ashe Schow wrote, "and would seemingly trade the leverage needed to achieve reforms in return for political gains."

The NY Times is already capitulating to McConnell's plan (hang it on Obama through the election), which I don't think Obama wants but might be able to live with if he can a Grand Bargain separately. But it appears we're in an interesting Obama-jitsu moment, where he's used his opponents own weight to create a reversal on them.

They wanted cuts, he's brought the cuts. They wanted to lower the deficit, he's offering a huge deal to do it. They wanted to use the leverage of the debt limit, their threat to let the U.S. slide into fiscal default for the first time in our history, after raising the debt limit 19 times for their own El Presidente George W. Bush and his wars which we are still fighting; he's got the leverage now, at least for the moment.

Either Boehner comes out of this strengthened for letting Cantor play out, or there's going to be total civil war in that party. They're paying the devil's price for having the ranking extremists, the tea-ideologues with their pitchforks, and the most stratified capitalists in the same Party. It's only a hatred of taxes -- and government spending that doesn't just go directly to them in the form of Medicare, Social Security, big government project spending or tax credits. They don't even agree on "values" issues.

Is this the granddaddy of all teachable moments?

Demystifying the Debt

Whiny Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) walked out of budget/debt negotiations this morning, which seems to be mainly a move to avoid any tax increase blood on his hands and kick it upstairs to golf buddies Boehner and Obama. Fine, whatever. Cantor is not the stupidest member of his caucus, but he is certainly not as bright as he thinks he is. He is, however, photogenic.

As for these deficit negotiations, it is taken as conventional wisdom now that somehow this most be solved before, say, lowering the unemployment rate. When you're feeling like caving yourself to the Fox News CW (FNCW, perhaps?), it will help to have this handy list, so beautifully assembled by Avenging Angel on DailyKos -- "10 Things the GOP Don't Want You to Know About the Debt":

1. Republican Leaders Agree U.S. Default Would Be a "Financial Disaster"
2. Ronald Reagan Tripled the National Debt
3. George W. Bush Doubled the National Debt
4. Republicans Voted Seven Times to Raise Debt Ceiling for President Bush
5. Federal Taxes Are Now at a 60 Year Low
6. Bush Tax Cuts Didn't Pay for Themselves or Spur "Job Creators"
7. Ryan Budget Delivers Another Tax Cut Windfall for Wealthy
8. Ryan Budget Will Require Raising Debt Ceiling - Repeatedly
9. Tax Cuts Drive the Next Decade of Debt
10. $3 Trillion Tab for Unfunded Wars Remains Unpaid

Ah, the sweet scent of truth, rather than truthiness. All those links are clickable to documentation and evidence, so enjoy.

And remember, support and vote for any candidate who promises, convincingly, to tax the rich.

It's about time again.

Tax the Rich Pt II

So with President Obama set to speak about the deficit on Wednesday night and recommending rescinding the ruinous Bush tax cuts -- the very cuts that got us deeper into debt doing nothing to stop the Bush economy from cratering, the very cuts that seems to have rescinded the Clinton Era prosperity -- House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) has, predictably, called this return to sensible taxation of income above $250k/year "unacceptable and a non-starter."

I find that particularly amusing in light of the difficulty he appears to be having getting his Party in Congress to go along with the budget deal made this past Friday between Boehner, Harry Reid and the President:

While only 28 Republicans voted against the bridge plan to keep the money flowing until Thursday’s vote, it is highly likely that some of the Republicans who supported that measure were looking to avoid a government shutdown and will vote nay on the bill to finance the government through the rest of the fiscal year.

In a meeting with reporters, the House majority leader, Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, while saying it was his understanding that the bill had “strong Republican support,” conceded Tuesday that he was not certain the bill would pass without support from Democrats. “Certainly we’ll always ask for them,” he said about Democrats.

Ha, weaklings, needing Dem support. I almost hope it fails -- then the nation sees today's GOP for what they are, psycho extremists or hostage to the same. Now Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) is saying the GOP will let the U.S. debt limit hit the ceiling and risk catastrophic default:

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) suggested Tuesday that Congress will allow the country to hit its debt ceiling, and continue to hold out for dramatic spending cuts while the nation approaches a genuine default.

"I think Treasury has, if I'm not mistaken, has put ... out a notice that there is a window within which we have to act in order to avoid the eventual default of this country on its debt," Cantor told reporters at his weekly Capitol briefing. "And I believe that that outside deadline is early July."

I'm guessing this is just bullshit brinksmanship for the benefit of teabagger votes, but you never know how a game of chicken will resolve itself. Unpleasant surprises have been known to happen once such a game is on. Per Dem strategist John Podesta, the GOP are playing with the type of fire with which they can scorch themselves:

"That that's like playing Russian Roulette with a fully loaded gun. I think that gun's actually pointed at the Republican leadership's head, not so much at the White House," John Podesta told me after a presentation at his think tank, the Center for American Progress. "I think they will find soon enough that if they try the same tactics they used in the 2011 [spending] battle with respect to the debt limit, you're going to see markets react to that in a very, very negative way and there's going to be a lot of pressure on them to get realistic, and at least with respect to the debt limit, to move forward in a more cooperative way."

Bang bang.

Buzzkills

Who wants to go to the Playboy Mansion and get sick? With all the airbrushing that goes on in the magazine, one wouldn't even expect at STD, yet suddenly:

The LA Times reports on a possible cause of the mysterious outbreak at the Playboy mansion:

The possible outbreak of legionellosis, or Pontiac fever, affected people connected with the DOMAINfest Global Conference, "with symptoms mostly consisting of fever, chills, general discomfort (malaise) and some cough," according to a statement by the county Department of Public Health.

Well, there is this old guy who walks around in his bathrobe all day living there. I'm expecting less excitement about a dip in the legendary grotto from here on out.

And how about a computer beating out the best ever human competition on Jeopardy? Isn't that a "who cares?" moment?

Even when he bungled Final Jeopardy, Watson (with his 10 offstage racks of computer servers) remained poised.

The answer: "Its largest airport is named for a World War II hero; its second largest, for a World War II battle."

Both Jennings and Rutter knew the right response was Chicago.

Watson guessed doubtfully, "What is Toronto?????" It didn't matter. He had shrewdly wagered only $947.

The trio will return on Wednesday, when their second game is aired. The overall winner will collect $1 million.

Where will "Watson" spend all that dough? PC Connection?

And then there's those wackadoodle buzzkillers who sprung up after the last Presidential Election. You know, the one where we elected a half-black guy. The Birthers.

Only it appears that Birthers now comprise more than half of the Republican party:

According to the poll, 51 percent of those likely to vote in a GOP primary in the next election cycle adhere to the conspiracy theory suggesting the president was born outside the United States and therefore is ineligible to serve.

Twenty-eight percent of respondents say they have no doubt that Obama is a citizen of the U.S., while 21 percent remain unsure, the survey shows.

With the birth certificate already in public record, there's just the growth of the Big Lie that, to any rational person, would disqualify Birther believers from having the judgment required to vote responsibly. On the other hand you have the GOP honchos like House Speaker John Boehner, who refuses to gainsay Birtherism:

House Speaker John Boehner became embroiled in the "birther" controversy on Sunday, saying on NBC's "Meet the Press" that, while he believes President Obama is a citizen, it's not his job to correct those who claim otherwise.

Wow. Leadership.

Maybe the Speaker needs to relax a little, take a trip to the Playboy Mansion.

Insulting

The GOP started their new run in the House by reading their own bowdlerized version the U.S. Constitution, for example conveniently leaving out slavery, much as their core constituency wants to believe slavery had little to do with the Civil War.

When they read the section on having to be born in America to become President they got interrupted -- a birther screamed to Jesus before being arrested by Capitol Police.

The GOP had two members vote illegally, i.e. not officially sworn in, and asked for permission from ex-Speaker Nancy Pelosi to keep the votes in the record.

Their next big media event is a vote, without debate, to repeal the historic healthcare reform enacted this past session under Democratic leadership. Odd choice if they're really fiscal conservatives, as it will add $230 billion to the deficit and leave 17 million Americans uninsured, i.e. just like before reform passage.

They're claiming any new programs have to be offset by an equal amount to spending cuts, yet have exempted tax cuts from their proposed rule, as if they are magic beans. Yep, more deficit. Like they gave America with the Bush tax cuts they all voted for.

New House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) is already backtracking on his party's promise to reduce spending by $100 billion this year.

And Rep. Darrel Issa (CA-R) has had to backtrack wildly from calling Obama "the most corrupt President", saying a day later he meant the Administration, not the President himself, and again today backing further by saying he meant "corrupt like a computer." WTF are you saying, Darrel? Awesome session start for you, sir.

Awesome session start for all these clowns.

At a time like this, there's only one thing to do:



(Groucho and Eddie Murphy rule.)

And Again

They're at it again, GOoPers trying to undermine Social Security, as they have since it was created in 1935:

Congressman John Taber, a Republican from New York, proclaimed that "Never in the history of the world has any measure been brought here so insidiously designed as to prevent business recovery, to enslave workers and to prevent any possibility of the employers providing work for the people." His New York colleague, GOP Congressman Daniel Reed, warned that if it passed "the lash of the dictator will be felt." The American Medical Association denounced it as a "compulsory socialistic tax." Silas Strawn, former president of both the American Bar Association and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, described it as "economically preposterous and legally indefensible." It was, he said, part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's attempt to "Sovietize the country."

What was this threat to American prosperity, freedom, and democracy they were all decrying? It was Social Security, which President Roosevelt signed into law on August 14, 1935 -- 75 years ago.

At the time, the opponents of Social Security were not right-wing lunatics (the Depression-era cousins of today's Tea Party), but rather the business establishment and the mainstream of the Republican Party.

So now that it's been proven to keep elderly Americans out of poverty -- more than 50% of America's elderly lived in poverty before it was passed and it now keeps more than 20 million Americans out of poverty -- the only reason for the current crop of opportunistic dimwits to attack it is political gain. Yep, this is, per many economists including Paul Krugman, yet another fake Republican crisis:

About that math: Legally, Social Security has its own, dedicated funding, via the payroll tax (“FICA” on your pay statement). But it’s also part of the broader federal budget. This dual accounting means that there are two ways Social Security could face financial problems. First, that dedicated funding could prove inadequate, forcing the program either to cut benefits or to turn to Congress for aid. Second, Social Security costs could prove unsupportable for the federal budget as a whole.

But neither of these potential problems is a clear and present danger. Social Security has been running surpluses for the last quarter-century, banking those surpluses in a special account, the so-called trust fund. The program won’t have to turn to Congress for help or cut benefits until or unless the trust fund is exhausted, which the program’s actuaries don’t expect to happen until 2037 — and there’s a significant chance, according to their estimates, that that day will never come.

Meanwhile, an aging population will eventually (over the course of the next 20 years) cause the cost of paying Social Security benefits to rise from its current 4.8 percent of G.D.P. to about 6 percent of G.D.P. To give you some perspective, that’s a significantly smaller increase than the rise in defense spending since 2001, which Washington certainly didn’t consider a crisis, or even a reason to rethink some of the Bush tax cuts.

So where do claims of crisis come from? To a large extent they rely on bad-faith accounting. In particular, they rely on an exercise in three-card monte in which the surpluses Social Security has been running for a quarter-century don’t count — because hey, the program doesn’t have any independent existence; it’s just part of the general federal budget — while future Social Security deficits are unacceptable — because hey, the program has to stand on its own.

This week is the 75th Anniversary of the most successful social program in the history of America. Here's President Obama commemorating it:

Welcome to the 2010 election, with Republicans once again running on a crypto-promise to gut it:

One high-profile House Republican recently called for the government to "wean everybody" off Social Security. A day later, another House Republican endorsed Social Security privatization. Two days later, yet another House Republican endorsed Social Security privatization.

Keep it straight: privatization means massive fees for Wall Street, with the huge burden on risk once again on American citizens themselves. The market tanks? Tough luck.

It won't even disturb John Boehner's golf game...at at least $82,998/year.

Boehned It

Looks like Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) is doing his best to ruin his political career:

"The investment that we're making today will be a small price if we're able to stop al Qaeda here, if we're able to stabilize the Middle East, it's not only going to be a small price for the near future, but think about the future for our kids and their kids."

Y'see nobody really needs to sacrifice anything for this greatest conflict of all time war.

Tell that to the 3,780 families and counting.

Boohoohoohoo

This must be seen to be believed.

The #1 Republican in the House of Representatives, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) cries like a little child over the Iraq War funding bill on Thursday, and not for the reason all the progressives Dems are crying, or the reason why so many Iraqi's have been crying since Bush invaded Iraq and their world has been destroyed, family members slaughtered, an entire secular way of life ruined.

Meanwhile, has Bush himself finally realized he's lost his grand war? After wiping his ass with the Baker-Hamilton Report, he's been talking about it for two days, while word leaks out of a 50% troop reduction next year.

He's done the rope-a-dope before, so as usual I treat anything that comes out of his mouth as a lie. When he says there are "a lot of things I like" in the Report, he's probably just thinking of a few things that he can twist and turn around and pretend like he's actually reasonable, not an egomaniacal menace.

Or maybe it's trying/lying to keep the GOP at bay, now that they're starting to openly challenge him. The visit by the Congressmen, Ron Paul getting attention, the likelihood of losing the next Presidential election. Cheney's henchman staring down three years in prison. Final confirmation that our intelligence agencies did indeed report that this is how it would turn out in Iraq -- it's all his fault.

His very own Chief of Staff for the selling of the war and debacle following openly booed by hundreds of students and professors when he's just trying to get his honorary degree at UMass.

Hundreds. In public. At commencement.

Hey, Andrew Card, here's an interoffice memo for you: Lying is wrong.

Boohoo, John Boehner and your $100,000,000,000. Boohoo Scooter Libby and your scooting off (one can only hope) to the pokey. Boohoo Andrew Card up on that stage, naked and ridiculed in cap & gown.

Boohoo Georgy-Porgy and your great big failure as a warrior, as a President, as a human being.

Boo-hoo.