Part I addressed the invasive and dangerous power and influence of billionaires Charles and David Koch and Rupert Murdoch and their powerful grip on the GOP, especially its tea party wing.
As we have learned from recent national media reports, barring Fox cable TV "news" of course, self-serving billionaires have invested millions of dollars in a single minded effort to support right wing causes, especially the tea party wing of the Republican party. The main goal of the pervasively powerful corporate potentates is to seek out and find political tools and loyal enablers that will carry their water.
The Republican Party has enthusiastically clicked its heels, while courageously stepping up to selflessly volunteer to serve the potentates of money, power and influence. In so doing the GOP also showed its unbridled willingness to throw everyday Americans into the ditch if such abandonment of constituents better serves the Party's corporate masters.
At least we can now understand the rationale for the Republican servants willful and stubborn obstruction of legislation that would fuel our economic recovery.
The GOP enabling shills have snapped to attention because the puppet masters have given its talking points to lawmakers ranging in rank from Mitch McConnell to John Boehner to half-term governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, and TX Gov. Rick Perry the Secessionist. The billionaire ventriloquists that speak through the voices of Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, understandably yearn for a return to the unfettered Wall St. days of W.
H/t to Disarray over at Daily Kos for the above video.
The GOP obviously has little of substance to offer to the voters because the Republicans are far more focused on fanning the flames of controversy than they are with crafting solutions to repair our busted economy and create new jobs.
Republican politicians must have absolutely no constructive ideas or rationally based proposals for meeting the challenges of our financial miseries and woes. The sound of silence coming from the GOP campaign in this regard has been deafening for some time.
The Republican Party has refused to participate in crafting constructive legislation on any level, no matter what has been placed on the table.
Health care reform.
Hell no. Let patient's die so health insurance companies can improve their profits.
Finance Reform.
Hell no, Please God no, HELL NO! Our closest and dearest donors, YIKES, we mean friends, live on Wall St.
Hold BP responsible for the horrible mess it made in the Gulf of Mexico.
You must be bleeping kidding? Are you Democrats NUTS? Oh God, we are doomed.
Texas Republicans crawled on their knees, groveled and begged BP for forgiveness.
We love you, Big Sugar Daddy.
So, what is a Groveling Minority Party of No Solutions, No Substance, No Ideas to do during an election cycle?
The Party's puppet masters, spin doctors and ventriloquists have crafted a plan and it is so typically Republican that it would be laughable, were it not so very potentially dangerous on both a domestic and foreign policy level.
A plan that only the desperate and self-serving could construct: Unleash McCarthyism at its very worse.
Gin up conflict. Throw barrels of gasoline on a wedge issue that pulls at folk's emotional hot buttons. Distract and terrify the masses with manufactured issues that have little basis in reality. Pit people against one another. Divide and conquer. This is part of the GOP strategy and has been for some time. What else has the GOP to offer voters? Tax cuts for the rich? Endless oil wars with the Middle East? The enabling of Wall St. to behave more as gambling casinos than banks and investment firms? More BP catastrophic oil spills in the Gulf?
Eventually the GOP's ineptitude and hate baiting has got to come back and smack it between the eyes. It has already alienated many African Americans especially during the right wing's ruthless witch hunt after ACORN and later the character assassination of Shirley Sherrod. Now it is on a crusade to demonize Hispanics with the Republican's disgusting rhetoric about repealing the 14th Amendment. And most recently the GOP has just lumped all Muslims into one category, i.e. all are terrorists. Next the GOP will declare another ideological warfare on Asians for God knows why.
The latest ginned up GOP hoopla of distraction is based on the construction of a mosque in lower Manhattan near Ground Zero, the scene of the 9/11 attacks in 2001.
Oh boy. Rick Perry must have his tail tucked tightly between his legs for fear and desperation appear to have taken our Governor hostage.
According to the Statesmen.com political reporter Jason Embry, Governor Rick Perry will skip meetings with the state's editorial boards.
But we've got an exclusive: Perry will not meet with newspaper editorial boards leading up to his faceoff with White, Perry spokesman Mark Miner said.
"We've made the decision that a better use of the governor's time is to talk directly to Texans and reporters throughout the state," Miner said, adding that the Perry campaign will also continue to use social media extensively.
Whoa. The Governor can't take the heat from reporters that are not pre-screened and chosen in advance?
Perry will field questions from reporters after his public events and in interviews. What he won't do is go to newspapers around the state and spend an hour or more at each stop answering questions from editorial writers, editors, publishers and whoever else sits in on those meetings.
So, why is Chicken Rick too chicken to face editorial writers, editors and publishers?
Is Rick Perry stooping to the arrogant level of Facebook, Twitter and Fox "News" only Drama Queen Sarah Palin and the desperate Nevada Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle who literally runs away from reporters? Are the three of them completely terrified of being held accountable for their statements and actions? Or do the three of them believe none are accountable to anyone at all?
That would be the G.W. Bush era of criminal incompetence, an unnecessary oil war in Iraq and U.S. economic devastation 2000-2008.
On the NBC Meet the Press show on Sunday, TX Senator John Cornyn and TX U.S. House Rep. Pete Sessions clearly revealed the core belief system and agenda of the GOP.
First, the GOP is completely bereft of ideas and solutions for repairing our broken economy. Nor does the Republican Party have any plan on any table for creating new jobs for unemployed Americans.
Instead the GOP is totally focused on the negative and the cold-hearted: obstruction, obfuscation and the repeal of both health care and financial reform should the Republican Party take control of the U.S. Congress.
Repeat. The GOP has absolutely no viable ideas, solutions or plans for the future. The GOP is instead consumed and driven by racism as well as hate talk, fear mongering and lies.
Now that a financial reform bill has passed the U.S. Congress and the Republican Party continues to show its unbridled contempt for the jobless while it falls all over itself protecting the Bush tax cuts for the rich, the American people are beginning to wake up and smell the coffee.
A just-released Gallup poll now gives Democrats a 6-point lead among registered voters in the generic Congressional ballot. With Wall Street reform awaiting the signature of the President, the American people are beginning to pay attention, and they are starting to realize that this election is a choice: A choice between a party that wants to move forward and make progress - however imperfectly - and a party that has made a political decision to obstruct everything.
Meanwhile, Republicans continue to fully embrace their Scroogeconomics policies.
I betcha Louie Gohmert and Sarah Palin did not realize that their hysterical invocations of Hitler when bellyaching about President Obama's demands to BP have brought the Evil One back from the grave.
Hitler is back and he is foaming at the mouth with rage. It looks like Hitler's ghost is going to haunt Smokey Joe and his GOP for a very long time.
For you have torn off the mask and have unveiled the thinly shrouded southern Republican Party strategy, since the 1950's.
The GOP strategy, of course, includes blatant racism, exclusion, xenophobia, intolerance and hate. The toxic witches brew is mixed with an irrational hatred for big government.
Thank you, Rand, for shining a bright and stark light on your party's deeply racist and crony capitalism ideology.
When Rand and his Republican Party members shriek about how they must
Take our country back
It tells us that Republicans yearn to return to an era before the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Sarah Palin has the same message when she refers to
Real Americans.
GOP scorched earth politics strategist and opportunist, Karl Rove, and his side kick, the hate talker and snake oil multi-millionaire manipulator Rush Limbaugh must be so very proud of Rand Paul.
For those who do not know, Beavis and Butt-Head are fictional cartoon teenagers that are socially incompetent. Both are hopelessly insensitive to the feelings of others. They are obnoxious, misogynistic, and boorish. In the cartoon series, Beavis and Butt-Head usually escape from their irresponsible shenanigans unscathed while those around them do not always fare so well.
Today Rick Perry wins the Beavis and Butt-Head Oscar award for showing, yet again, his heartless contempt for struggling Texans. This is strike three for the Governor who is as laser focused as his big and bad pistol in killing off federal programs that throw financial, educational and literal life lines for the jobless, school children and to those who cannot afford heath insurance.
Does a reckless and heartless cowboy preside over Texas?
Meanwhile, the real Sarah recently proclaimed that we do not need this snake oil science stuff at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans, home of the Republican enabled Katrina debacle.
Sarah, the Tea Party Queen, is sharply focused on finding platforms in which she can promote herself. In Sarah's case, an alliance with FOX Fixed and Fabricated News is crucial. And Sarah and FOX do share at least one crucial thing in common.
In order to exist, both must be noticed by the public. They must command a rather major share of attention and media coverage.
Demagoguery.
How do Sarah and FOX accomplish this? Sarah likes to state the blatantly and outrageously false. Her groupies buy it hook, line and sinker. No questions are asked about the outrageous.
FOX will cut and edit a true story in order to fix it to fit its ideological and extremist right wing mission. Fox's viewers buy the fixed stories hook, line and sinker. No questions are asked about the fake.
No wonder the right has serious issues with public access to top quality education. Let the masses be as dumb, poor and angry as possible.
And no wonder a recent poll indicates that the IRS is more popular than the Tea Party movement. Yes folks, that would be the IRS of all places and the poll was taken less than two weeks before the dreaded tax day.
From the perspective of a conservative and economist.
Bruce Bartlett, a conservative and an economist recently wrote an article in Forbes Magazine entitled:
The Misinformed Tea Party Movement
It seems that the anti-tax crew knows very little about how much revenue the federal government receives from taxpayers.
Curious about the factual knowledge these people have regarding the issues they are protesting, my friend David Frum enlisted some interns to interview as many Tea Partyers as possible on a couple of basic questions. They got 57 responses--a pretty good-sized sample from a crowd that numbered between 300 and 500 people. (Survey results are here.)
Question 1: How much does the federal government receive in taxes as a percentage of the GDP?
Teabagger answer:
Tuesday's Tea Party crowd, however, thought that federal taxes were almost three times as high as they actually are. The average response was 42% of GDP and the median 40%. The highest figure recorded in all of American history was half those figures: 20.9% at the peak of World War II in 1944.
The facts.
According to Congressional Budget Office data, acceptable answers would be 6.4%, which is the percentage for federal income taxes; 12.7%, which would be for both income taxes and Social Security payroll taxes; or 14.8%, which would represent all federal taxes as a share of GDP in 2009.
We used to hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada," Palin said in her first Canadian appearance since stepping down as governor of Alaska. "And I think now, isn't that ironic?"
On Sunday Texas had the honor to be graced by the frequent flashing of pearly whites, volumes of hair, razzle, dazzle, sizzle and sazzle at a Perry campaign pep rally near Houston. Aside from memorized talking point attacks, a boatload of flash and glittering glamor, lots of hair all around and awesome wardrobes, Rick and Sarah had little of substance to offer their crowd.
All hats, all hair, no cattle.
Rick Perry and Sarah Palin fired up their base with the usual right wing rhetoric and campaign jingles. Approximately 1100 hard right conservatives comprised mostly of teabaggers, (including the group's neo-Nazis and white supremists)secessionists, racists, bigots and xenophobes cheered Mr. Good Hair and the Quitter on Twitter's pep rally.
Rick and Sarah spent much of their time attacking, attacking and well, more attacking. I guess neither have a plan to bring new jobs to Texas, nor are they interested in investing in alternative green sources of energy. The Quitter on Twitter remains locked in a 20th century energy framework, reciting her old drill baby drill campaign pledge. Perry offered no plan to bring down the drop out rate in Texas schools. Nor did he talk about the fatal flaws of the Texas criminal justice system. He failed to mention the transportation challenges that plague our state given the broken roads, the lack of viable public transportation and our state's crumbling infrastructure.
Out of touch do nothing government believers, like Rick and Sarah, who rely on fat cats to deliver the goods, don't get what happens when their sugar daddy fat cats fail to, thanks to greed, deliver the goods to the people.
Both Perry and Palin ignored state wide issues and both targeted their guns away from their own failures as governors while pointing at a convenient and predictable target.
Blame Washington DC for everything.
Meanwhile, back at the Perry farm in Texas and in the snow laden outpost called Wasilla, Alaska, federal funding has been greeted with both great sighs of relief and cheers.
But narcissists like Rick and Sarah don't care much about the people of Texas or Alaska, for it is all about them. For both, their main concern is:
What works best for me?
Kay Bailey Hutchison is no better. She said it is time to leave the Senate and yet she is still there. Her husband and children live in Texas and she is here every Thursday through Tuesday. Senator Hutchison is earning a tax payer funded six figure salary with health insurance benefits, while working two and a half days on behalf of Texas.
This morning when I unfolded the front page of the Houston Chronicle the headline
GOP begins to show signs of resurgence
hit me in the face.
Really? A Republican resurgence?
I guess the fact that much of his N.J. constituency viewed Corzine as arrogant, corrupt and the dude who saddled his constituents with high property taxes while at the same time has strong ties to the thieves of all thieves, Goldman Sachs, had nothing to do with his loss.
And let's ignore the fact that Wall. St. and the financial sector is among the largest employer in the NYC and northern NJ area. Many mid to lower level employees in the financial sector received pink slips when Wall St. crashed. I guess these folks are not in the least bit angry at those who are or were part of the Wall St. establishment.
Earth to GOP obstructionists: incumbents even remotely tied to the Wall St. melt down and the thieving banks are going to get the boot unless Congress does something to regulate and demand transparency from the financial industry.
The once popular New York's former Democrat and now Republican billionaire mayor Bloomberg had to spend millions upon millions of his own money, outspending his opponents 10 to 1 to barely squeak by a win.
And a lackluster candidate in purple Virginia who ran a lackluster campaign in which he fled from a progressive agenda in a state that traditionally votes for a Governor who is not in the same Party as the President, is a sign of a GOP insurgence?
Voters don't vote if candidates fail to excite them. And no matter the party, voters will vote against corrupted and/or lying incumbents. Nor will they vote for a candidate who calls him or herself a progressive or conservative but whose words and deeds show they are anything but. Some Republicans may be able to fool the teabagging crowd and old white Independents with double talk and spin, but this crowd is a mere tiny minority. Just wait until Independents in Va. realize the newly elected governor, who pretended to be a centrist, is really a hard core conservative. Welcome to teabagger land, Indies. Maybe next time you won't be fooled by self-serving liars.
John Cornyn, of course, is gloating all over the place about two the Democratic gubernatorial losses.
These Republican victories clearly demonstrate a strong wave for our candidates in the 2010 midterm elections," said Sen. John Cornyn, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
And predictably, good ol' Taliban Pete Sessions is also salivating over the Democratic gubernatorial losses. Check out Matt Glazer's piece over at The Burnt Orange Report.
Caught Red Handed. Sen. Grassley Voted for "Death Panels" in 2003
Oh those lying liars and the lies they tell.
According to Amy Sullivan at Time many of the very same death panel liars voted in favor of end-of-life counseling in 2003.
You would think that if Republicans wanted to totally mischaracterize a health care provision and demagogue it like nobody's business, they would at least pick something that the vast majority of them hadn't already voted for just a few years earlier. Because that's not just shameless, it's stupid.
Yes, that's right. Remember the 2003 Medicare prescription drug bill, the one that passed with the votes of 204 GOP House members and 42 GOP Senators? Anyone want to guess what it provided funding for? Did you say counseling for end-of-life issues and care? Ding ding ding!!
Ho hum. Life chugs along as usual in the Republican realm.
OK so Karl Rove lied about his involvement with the fired U.S. attorneys. Yawn. What else is new?
The New York Times revealed something that we in the internets and tubes have known for some time. I am glad that at least some journalists are emerging out of their eight year slumber.
Internal e-mail messages in the spring of 2005 at the White House showed that there was widespread unhappiness with David Iglesias, the United States attorney in New Mexico, because of the perception among top Republicans that he was dragging his feet on voter fraud and corruption investigations involving Democrats.
In a June 2005 message, Scott Jennings, a top political aide to Mr. Rove, wrote a colleague that Mr. Iglesias should be removed because Republicans in New Mexico "are really angry over his lack of action on voter fraud stuff."
"Iglesias has done nothing," it continued. "We are getting killed out there."
Yesterday I posted a video clip of a former physician/death decider for Humana and Blue Cross/Blue Shield who had testified at a Congressional hearing in 1996. Dr. Peeno admitted that she had made decisions in favor of the profit margins that resulted in the deaths of patients.
Thirteen years later, after the Republicans and health care lobbyists devastated all hopes and efforts at any kind of healthcare reform, the death panels remain in full force today. I suppose this is the reason Sarah Palin suddenly ratcheted down her rhetoric about them. Someone in the GOP likely reminded Ms. Clueless that um, er, silly, silly woman, the insurance companies are knowingly killing off patients. Don't bring attention to it for crying out loud!
Poor, poor short-sighted, seriously uninformed Sarah. That woman does not know when to quit. This time she let the real death panel genie out of its hole in hell.
to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Hearings for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor tomorrow?
Based on the questions posed to Ms. Sotomayor by Republicans, when coupled with the hateful right wing ad below, I believe my question is completely legitimate.
Senator John Cornyn is indeed in total lock step with Senator Sessions' right wing racist fringe of the GOP. Cornyn continues to beat Ms. Sotomayor's comment about "Latina woman" like a dead horse.
