Republicans have no shame: part two

Krugman

Oh, my. Dick Armey invokes the Federalist Papers on behalf of the tea party movement:

“Who the heck do these people think they are to try to sit in this town with their audacity and second-guess the greatest genius, most creative genius, in the history of the world?” Armey demanded.

A member of the audience passed a question to the moderator, who read it to Armey: How can the Federalist Papers be an inspiration for the tea party, when their principal author, Alexander Hamilton, “was widely regarded then and now as an advocate of a strong central government”?

Historian Armey was flummoxed by this new information. “Widely regarded by whom?” he challenged, suspiciously. “Today’s modern ill-informed political science professors? . . . I just doubt that was the case in fact about Hamilton.”

Actually, of course Hamilton was very much a strong-government type. More than that: he was the author of the Report on Manufactures, an early call for — drum roll — industrial policy, backed by public investment.

I’m sure the response to Armey’s comeuppance will be a denunciation of liberal snobbery. But remember, it was Armey who was trying to pull intellectual rank, proclaiming himself the true heir of the Founding Fathers … whose writings he hasn’t bothered to read.

Republicans have no shame

More "do as I say, not as I do".

TPM

The procedure every(GOP)one is so up in arms about is called a "self-executing rule." How many times did the Republicans use it the last time they controlled Congress, 2005-06? More than 35 times! And the Democrats? They complained about it then too, though to the best of my knowledge there were no claims of treason.

Norm Ornstein has the story.

See Media Matters also.

In related news, Ezra Klein catches David Brooks in a series of big, fat, whopping lies:.

"Reconciliation has been used with increasing frequency," writes Brooks. "That was bad enough. But at least for the Bush tax cuts or the prescription drug bill, there was significant bipartisan support."

...
But none of Brooks's evidence is true. Literally none of it. The budget reconciliation process was used six times between 1980 and 1989. It was used four times between 1990 and 1999. It was used five times between 2000 and 2009. And it has been used zero times since 2010. Peak reconciliation use, in other words, was in the '80s, not the Aughts. The data aren't hard to find. They were published on Brooks's own op-ed page.

Nor has reconciliation been limited to bills with "significant bipartisan support." To use Brooks's example of the tax cuts, the 2003 tax cuts passed the Senate 50-50, with Dick Cheney casting the tie-breaking vote. Two Democrats joined with the Republicans in that effort. Georgia's Zell Miller, who would endorse George W. Bush in 2004 and effectively leave the Democratic Party, and Nebraska's Ben Nelson. So I'd say that's one Democrat. One Democrat alongside 49 Republicans. That's not significant bipartisan support.

Another example: In 1993, Bill Clinton passed the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act. The final tally was, again, a tie broken by the vice president. In this case, not a single Republican voted for the bill.

As for the prescription drug benefit? The prescription drug benefit didn't go through reconciliation. It was passed through the normal order. Brooks is simply wrong on this.

To recap, Brooks argued that reconciliation is being used more frequently, and that past reconciliation bills, like Bush's tax cuts and prescription drug benefit, were significantly bipartisan. Reconciliation is, in fact, being used less frequently, past reconciliation bills like the tax cuts were not significantly bipartisan by any stretch of the imagination, and the prescription drug benefit did not go through reconciliation. Brooks isn't wrong in the sense that "I disagree with him." He's wrong in the sense that the column requires a correction.

Stewart compares self-serving politicians to professional wrestlers

James Cameron directs Kathryn Bigelow in hilariously bad but sincere Bill Paxton 80's music video

Black Book

Back in the day, erstwhile Cameron mainstay Bill Paxton had a short lived band called Martini Ranch, for which Cameron directed this wild-west-themed video. In it, (Cameron's now-ex, and Oscar-winning Hurt Locker director Kathryn) Bigelow plays the leader of a group of female gunslingers who ride in to town and quickly rustle up some trouble. The song is regrettable, but the deliriously over-the-top video more than makes up for it. Look for cameos by Lance Henriksen, Paul Reiser, Jenette Goldstein, and Adrian Pasdar!

2 observations:
1)Personally, I can't believe Cameron, Bigelow or Paxton had a career after this.
2)Watch the opening scene, could this have been the birth of steampunk?

Gibbs: Health Care "Law Of The Land" Next Week; Axelrod To GOP: 'Try and take it away'

The White House is beginning its final push on health care this week, with senior adviser David Axelrod and press secretary Robert Gibbs making the rounds of the Sunday talk shows to express confidence that the bill will pass.

"We'll have the votes when the House votes, I think, within the next week," Gibbs said on "Fox News Sunday." "Whoever sits here at this time next week, I think will not be talking about health care as a proposal, but as the law of the land."

Asked by Tom Brokaw on "Meet The Press" whether Republicans would be able to run against health care in the 2010 elections, Axelrod told Republicans to bring it on.

If the Republican Party wants to go out and say to that child who now has insurance or say to that small business that will get tax credits this year if he signs the bill to help their employees get health care. If they want to say to them, "You know what? We're actually gonna take that away from you. We don't think that's such a good idea." I say, let's have that fight. Make my day. I'm ready to have that. And every member of Congress ought to be willing to have that debate as well.

Glenn Beck Denounces Springsteen's "Born In The USA" as Anti-American

Big Think

Twenty-six years after the release of Bruce Springsteen's hit song, "Born in The USA," conservative talk show host/performance artist Glenn Beck finally got around to listening to the lyrics.

Beck was shocked, shocked to discover that for all these years he'd been rocking out to a song about a bitter down-and-out Vietnam vet who has been kicked to the curb by the aforementioned USA.

Is Beck aware that conservative demigod Ronald Reagan used "Born in the USA" as a theme song for his reelection campaign? The cognitive dissonance is going to smart. Beck loves Reagan. "Because of Ronald Reagan, my grandfather, my father, I have hope for America," Beck told an audience at the conservative CPAC conference earlier this year.

Yesiree, The Gipper loved The Boss. Reagan thought Springsteen was a shining example of hope. According to Roadside America:

On the afternoon on September 19, 1984, President Ronald Reagan spoke before an enthusiastic crowd in downtown Hammonton, New Jersey. The speech was mostly political boilerplate, but it did contain one memorable passage. "America's future," Reagan said, "rests in the message of hope in songs of a man so many young Americans admire, New Jersey's Bruce Springsteen."

People even vaguely familiar with the songs of Bruce Springsteen know that they rarely contain messages of hope for America's future. But Reagan was oblivious.

Beck correctly senses that Springsteen didn't reciprocate Reagan's admiration. The campaign didn't get Springsteen's permission to use "Born in the USA" as a theme song. When the artist found out, he put a stop to it.

In the same video clip, Beck urges his viewers to wake up and realize that Woody Guthrie's beloved anthem "This Land is Your Land" is unpatriotic, despite the fact that we all sang it at summer camp, and the lyrics make perfect sense (even to Beck). I am not making this up.

Teabaggers keep pushing their hands farther into the racial fire

Thomas Frank, the author of What's The Matter With Kansas, examines the tea party movement and it's paranoid contradictions:

Huff Post

Not too long ago, Kansas would have responded to the current situation by making the bastards pay. This would have been a political certainty, as predictable as what happens when you touch a match to a puddle of gasoline. When business screwed the farmers and the workers--when it implemented monopoly strategies invasive beyond the Populists' furthest imaginings--when it ripped off shareholders and casually tossed thousands out of work--you could be damned sure about what would follow.
Not these days. Out here the gravity of discontent pulls in only one direction: To the right, to the right, further to the right. Strip today's Kansans of their job security, and they head out to become registered Republicans. Push them off their land and next thing you know they're protesting in front of abortion clinics. Squander their life savings on manicures for the CEO and there's a good chance they'll join the John Birch Society. But ask them about the remedies their ancestors proposed--unions, antitrust, public ownership--and you might as well be referring to the days when knighthood was in flower.

So if it's not jobs, and land and health pushing them to the tea parties, what could it be?


There's also the less kinder view

Harry Reid: Reconcile This

Harry Reid's letter to Mitch McConnell, via Krugman/Ezra:

As you know, the vast majority of bills developed through reconciliation were passed by Republican Congresses and signed into law by Republican Presidents – including President Bush’s massive, budget-busting tax breaks for multi-millionaires. Given this history, one might conclude that Republicans believe a majority vote is sufficient to increase the deficit and benefit the super-rich, but not to reduce the deficit and benefit the middle class. Alternatively, perhaps Republicans believe a majority vote is appropriate only when Republicans are in the majority. Either way, we disagree.

The health care polls are flawed, facts are bring twisted, you're being lied to and the media is letting it happen

Joel Benenson, president and co-founder of Benenson Strategy Group, and lead pollster to President Obama wrote this piece for the Washington Post.

No pollster, including me, could look at the recent data and responsibly say anything other than that the American public is closely divided when it comes to supporting or opposing various health-care plans. The most recent Washington Post poll (from Feb. 10) shows a narrow gap between support and opposition: 46 percent favor; 49 percent oppose. This data is consistent with eight of the 12 most recent independent public polls reported on Pollster.com.

In light of this data, it is irresponsible, and wrong... to assert that a "solid majority of Americans oppose" health-care reform.

In fact, two recent polls, including one with the most negative ratings on health care, reveal through follow-up questions that a significant number of people who oppose current plans do so because they don't go far enough rather than because they go too far. Not only is it absurd to suggest that these people would rise up against Democrats for passing the president's plan, it is far more likely that they would join others who support the plan and punish those who tried to block reform or voted against it.

Let's take the CNN poll from early January -- the most negative independent poll on health care and one that predated President Obama's proposal. Only 40 percent supported the bills passed by Congress, while 57 percent opposed them. But in a crucial follow-up question, a net of 10 percent of all Americans opposed the bill because it was "not liberal enough." If one makes the reasonable assumption that these people are far more likely to side with supporters of the president's plan than with Republicans who are obstructing it, the results would show that 50 percent favor the plan or want a broader one, while only 45 percent oppose the plan.

...
The central components of the plan -- a ban on denying coverage of preexisting conditions, closing the Medicare "doughnut hole" on the drug coverage gap for seniors, creating an insurance exchange in which small business and those without coverage could buy private insurance at competitive rates -- are all supported by solid majorities, from 60 percent to 81 percent.

There's no question that a majority of Americans oppose a government-run health system. But there is no government-run health care in the plan, and not a single American would be forced into any government-run program.

In politics, new information is always the most potent. When it comes to health care and insurance, once reform passes, the tangible benefits Americans will realize will trump the fear-mongering rhetoric opponents are stoking today.

And when that reality kicks in, the political burden will shift from those who supported the plan to those who voted against banning insurance companies from denying coverage to those who are sick, against the tax credits for small businesses offering coverage, or against helping seniors on Medicare pay less for prescription drugs.

It is no accident that Republican leaders are warning Democrats of dire political consequences if health reform passes.

But there is every reason to believe that for Republicans, the negative consequences will be their own.

Why Republicans should support health care. By a Republican

Ray LaHood/Chicago Tribune

I've been a Republican all my life, when I served in the Illinois legislature, when I worked for members of Congress and when I served in Congress. During the 2008 presidential election, I supported Republican Sen. John McCain. I have always been — and still am — a fiscal conservative, an advocate for a smart, but restrained, government.

For those reasons and others, most people wouldn't expect me to be an advocate for comprehensive health care reform. But the truth is, I believe there is no bigger issue to solve and no better chance to solve it than now.

If I were still a member of Congress, I would proudly vote for the bill that President Barack Obama is championing and I would urge my colleagues to do the same, not because I don't believe in fiscal discipline, but because I do.

Read more...

The formula for the BEST MOVIE TRAILER EVER!!!!

Destined to win the Academy Award for Awesomeness

Ignorant Texas Board of "education" cut Jefferson out of the history books

ThinkProgress

The Texas Board of Education has been meeting this week to revise its social studies curriculum. During the past three days, “the board’s far-right faction wielded their power to shape lessons on the civil rights movement, the U.S. free enterprise system and hundreds of other topics”:

– To avoid exposing students to “transvestites, transsexuals and who knows what else,” the Board struck the curriculum’s reference to “sex and gender as social constructs.”

– The Board removed Thomas Jefferson from the Texas curriculum, “replacing him with religious right icon John Calvin.”

– The Board refused to require that “students learn that the Constitution prevents the U.S. government from promoting one religion over all others.”

– The Board struck the word “democratic” from the description of the U.S. government, instead terming it a “constitutional republic.”

As the nation’s second-largest textbook market, Texas has enormous leverage over publishers, who often “craft their standard textbooks based on the specs of the biggest buyers.” Indeed, as The Washington Monthly has reported, “when it comes to textbooks, what happens in Texas rarely stays in Texas.”

Just secede already. You won't be missed. You're run by the American Taliban.

See also: Glenn W. Smith: Conservatives Re-Write Declaration of Independence