The Senator from Kentucky blocked extended federal unemployment benefits and Cobra health coverage for the down and out and jobless Americans. Both expired today for millions.
No one in the Senate could reason with the man who is obviously hell bent on a crusade to further punish the struggling and out of work families in his district and across the U.S. Senator Bunning does not care about people in Kentucky. Nor does he care about anyone other than his vile, mean-spirited and narcissistic self.
There is no reason for Senator Bunning to have done this other than spite and pure cold hearted vindictiveness. He is not running for a third term. He chose to retire but he obviously has every intention of heaping as much hell and misery upon the American people as possible until November.
It takes a Texas Republican to go as low as Bunning.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) took the floor after Reid to stick up for Bunning. He noted that there is broad bipartisan support for extending benefits, but said Bunning was right to take a stand against adding $10 billion to the deficit. He also pointed out that the jobs bill that Reid scrapped two weeks ago, crafted by Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Max Baucus (D-Mont.), contained an extension of UI and COBRA.
Can someone please tell me why Republicans continue to vote for politicians who so nakedly hate them?
Well, folks, it looks like we have another one of those typical Bush heckofjobs still in office. A holdover from the Bush Administration had skiing plans the day after the attempted underwear bomber attack. The official, Michael Leiter, did not find it necessary to cancel or shorten his vacation.
Director of the National Counterterrorism Center Michael Leiter didn't cut short a ski trip until several days after alleged Nigerian attempted bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to destroy a commercial jetliner en route to Detroit Christmas day, veteran New York Daily News intelligence correspondent James Meek reports Thursday.
Citing two intelligence officials grousing about Leiter's continued vacation, Meek says the top counterterror boss declined to cut short his snow-struck holiday.
With heckofjobs like this, why not put a terrorist in charge of our national security?
What other horrors are we go learn about when President Obama releases the Christmas Day Bomber Report, I wonder?
Update: some folks over at Daily Kos have problems with Raw Story.com and the New York Daily News as entirely credible sources. I am therefore including a link to ABC News that also covered the story.
The Republican Party threw the American people under a high speed train fast tracked straight to hell.
Again.
Predictably Republicans made a pact with yet another devil. This time the GOP sold its and our souls, too, to the hottest and most irresponsible devil in hell.
Let me introduce the banking devil for whom we emptied our U.S. Treasury in an extraordinary effort to save the American economy.
Tragically the Bush Administration and its rubber stamping Republicans in Congress failed to set up any rules, enforcement mechanisms, proposals for accountability, transparency or pay back benchmarks before it allowed the devil to empty our national piggy bank. Sure, guys, just back up your 18 wheeler big mother trucks to the U.S. Treasury and we will help y'all load the bags of taxpayer cash.
Clearly the GOP is totally on board with the banker devil run lawless casinos on Wall St. The devil is gambling with our money that includes our savings accounts, investment portfolios, retirement savings and bail out taxpayer dollars. The GOP also gave its blessing to a continuation of the banks extensive abusive consumer practices. Usury level interests rates and fees anyone? Worse, the GOP obviously does not have a problem with the obscene Wall St. bonuses, earned on the backs of our savings accounts, portfolio investments, not to mention again, the sucker U.S. taxpayer bucks, thank you.
I guess the sold-out Republicans are also supportive of the banks refusal to lend money to small businesses and consumers because it is more profitable for banks to gamble with our money instead.
Hell, at least we know for certain that the Republicans are completely on board with obstructing our nation's economic recovery. If small businesses cannot get jump started with an influx of cash, it cannot do business. It cannot meet its inventory needs nor can it make payroll. If mortgages cannot be re-negotiated, bankrupted homeowners cannot hold on to their homes. Consumers cannot purchase new homes or cars if we cannot borrow money, either. Nor can we improve or make substantial repairs to our homes if the banks won't lend home equity funding.
Republicans don't care. They simply do not care about the people.
Yesterday Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) informed the Huffington Post that the GOP signed a political pact with the banks to kill off regulatory reform measures.
The allegation of a quid pro quo was based on an email that Durbin received last spring after his amendment to allow judges to modify mortgages for homeowners who enter bankruptcy was defeated on the Senate floor. During a discussion to promote publicly-financed elections on Friday, the Illinois Democrat relayed that, shortly after the defeat of his "cram-down" amendment, a "banker friend" forwarded him the note from Tanya Wheeless, president & CEO of Arizona Bankers Association.
Last Sunday, on Meet the Press, Kay Bailey Hutchison spewed one whopper after another about the recently passed Senate health care reform bill. KBH spouted the same fear mongering myths as had John Cornyn in his recent newsletter to his so-called constituents. Kay and John's grotesquely misleading talking points are also a clone of what John Culberson (TX7-TeabaggerR) stated in his pricey and slick brochure.
This week alone I have been bombarded by snail mail and electronic mail from my Texas lawmakers mentioned above. Sadly and outrageously, all of the letters and brochures are filled with nothing but fear mongering tactics and blatant lies.
From Hutchison:
After hearing from constituents over the last several months, some members of Congress have now learned that using the term "government plan" elicits a strong negative from voters (because you have been scaring voters about government for years.) so they have now latched onto a new way to describe the same thing: a co-op. Texans should not be confused by this new packaging of the same idea. The co-op is a back door to a government takeover of our health care. (Really? According to whom? You?) The co-op would be started with federal funds, and it remains unclear whether or not taxpayer dollars would be used if the co-ops begin to fail. The Administration has tried to bail out the banking, housing and auto-industry. Would the co-ops be next?
Wow. Let's talk about an exercise in deceitful fear mongering. This is the first time I have heard about a co-op that would replace the public option and would ultimately become single payer health care. This would be a true dream come true for the American people.
But it ain't going to happen.
Because if a single payer, universal health care reform bill had been introduced there is no way in hell that Republican enabling Lieberman and the three sell-out Democrats known as Blue Dogs would have ever in their dreams voted for the Senate HCR Bill. Like Cornyn and Hutchison, Lieberman and the Blue Dogs serve as major pimps and go to bitches for the insurance industry.
Kay Bailey Hutchison should also remind herself that banking, housing and the auto-industry collapsed under her and her Party's watch. Like most Republicans Kay Bailey has always been in favor of dismantling every living regulatory legislation and she has never supported government oversight, transparency nor checks and balances of any sort.
Based on the mail I have read from Senators Hutchison, Cornyn and my U.S. House Rep. John Culberson, it is obvious that the Republicans are repeating the same lies over and over. The cover of Culberson's brochure reads:
HEALTH CARE TAKEOVER
.
The brochure shows a stethoscope lying on a flag draped on top of a building called:
INSURANCE
A couple of Culberson's bullet pointed lies:
2.5% tax on all individuals who do not purchase government run health care.
8% tax on businesses who cannot afford to purchase government run health care.
Notice how the Republicans frequently use the term government run. They do this to attach a negative and fearful meaning of government. The intended message? The evil government will take over one's life and control one's destiny. The Republican Party has spent years demonizing government run anything b/c they'd rather have the sharks, i.e. their cash cow donors, on Wall St.,in corporate America and the insurance industry to remain permanently in the driver seats.
Let's take a peek at Republican and other pimped out lawmakers willingness to enable corporate greed and corruption.
First up, Culberson's lies. His are only the tip of the iceberg.
Hey dude, I am one of your constituents and quite frankly you are full of stupid nonsense. It is stunning to me that you would include me and other progressives in your district among your special interest groups and deluded teabaggers. I'd venture to suggest that you will have an election challenge in the very near future.
According to Culberson's brochure.
The uninsured should 1. don't get sick or 2. if you do, die quickly.
The Democratic leadership bill, H.R. 3962 costs over $1.2 trillion; contains $729.5 billion in new taxes, adds 111 new offices to the government (jobs anyone?); and creates, expands and extends 43 entitlement programs. (There they go again with their entitlement obsession. Apparently the only ones who are entitled to be entitled are Republicans.) Now here is a really huge whopper: The bill also prohibits the sale of private insurance after 2013; cuts more than $150 billion from Medicare; and exempts members of Congress from the public options but no one else.
If Culberson had really read the bill instead of dancing with teabaggers he would have known that his claim about prohibiting private insurance is a bald faced lie. It is outrageous for Culberson to think he can willfully insult the intelligence of so many of his constituents with such stupid nonsense.
What Republicans are not telling us is the fact that HCR will cut the deficit by $127 billion, coverage will be extended to 94% Americans, 31 million more than have coverage today.
What the heck is wrong with that?
Remember those evil doing non-existent WMDs in Iraq? And Iraq's non-existent ties to Al-Qaeda?
The GOP is promoting health care reform as if it is a WMD. It is one that exists only in their heads.
Governor Rick Perry must be blinded by arrogance to believe that he could actually shut down and cover up an investigation and no one would notice. A politician would also have to be completely overcome by an over sized ego to do so during a tough primary contest.
Last night on MSNBC's Hardball, Chris Matthews interviewed Samuel Bassett, former Texas Forensic Science Commission Officer about the Todd Willingham case.
OK so Perry did not like where this investigation was going and so, as only a dictator would do, he shut it down. And now we also know where the fake, self-serving "moderate" Kay Bailey Hutchison stands on barbaric medieval practices. We already know where she stands on ginned up wars and a deregulated Wall St. KBH voted with W. over 90% of the time. Princess Sparkle Pony may have made a brilliant tactical political move, at least according to Slater, but she also revealed her true colors as anything but moderate.
Earth to Perry: as hard as you spin, rail and cry, the execution of an innocent man on your watch ain't going away. And Kay, hell will freeze over before this liberal would ever in her dreams vote for the likes of you. You squarely belong in the deather box right there along with Dictator Perry and your beloved W. who is responsible for the deaths of over 100,000 Iraqis. For? Please do remind us.
Scott Cobb over at The Burnt Orange Report has been providing exhaustive and outstanding coverage of this issue. Please click on the link to see how you can get involved with ongoing efforts to abolish the death penalty. Now that we know Texas has executed an innocent man, never has the case been stronger to eliminate this barbaric medieval practice.
This morning in the Houston Chronicle, Lisa Falkenberg wrote a sobering commentary about Rick Perry and the Todd Willingham execution.
LBJ would use the term "peckers in pockets" when pushing through Medicare. According to the former President, he needed "peckers in his pocket" to make sure the bill passed. I imagine few Presidents have made abundant use of such colorful language as LBJ. It sure would be nice if we had him around today. Given today's political climate of hysterical drama queens and kings, LBJ's descriptions would no doubt be brutally hilarious and priceless.
Speaking of pocketed peckers, who is running the Senate healthcare mark-up today? Are our Senators working for us or are they working for insurance?
Today, on CSPAN our very own Senator John Cornyn shows us he is a pawn for the insurance industry. Cornyn likes things the way they are, meaning he does not care that Texas has the highest number of uninsured residents. And he has no intention of lifting a finger to change the plight of the untreated. Predictably Cornyn had tried to "grandfather in" insurance companies in order to protect their profits. According to Senator Rockefeller Cornyn's amendment also favored 46% of the population while it would work against 54% of the people. Is this the best Big John could do? What a stand up dude. Texas should be so proud. Fortunately his pandering amendment promoting the status quo failed 13-10.
Reacting to an amendment proposed by Sen. Jon Cornyn (R-Texas) during the Senate Finance Committee's markup of health care reform legislation on Thursday, committee member Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) called his colleague a pawn of the health insurance industry.
"This is a very, very important amendment and it's a very, very bad amendment," said Rockefeller. "If there's anything which is clear, it's that the insurance industry is not running this markup, but is running certain people in this markup."
Senator Cornyn, by the way, received $759,000 from health professionals, $350,000 from insurance, $222,000 from Pharma and $248,000 from lobbyists. A video clip of the exchange between Senators Cornyn and Rockefeller can be seen in the link above.
The Huffinton Post reveals that Senate GOP intends to send out misleading mailers from a so-called non-partisan and vague task force called:
U.S.Senate Health Care Task Force
The mailer is actually commissioned by the National Republican Senatorial Committee and it is by no means non-partisan. The letter is signed by yours truly John Cornyn.
All of these descriptions are either intentionally misleading or deeply contested interpretations of the health care provisions put forth by Democrats. And while the name and NRSC title -- "Chairman" -- of Senator John Cornyn, (R-Texas) is listed in the header, there is no mention of the fact that he's a Republican. Only in the sixth paragraph is it revealed that "Republican leadership of the United States Senate" commissioned the survey.
This is yet another pathetic attempt for pimped out Republicans to kill health care reform.
The mailer uses the usual GOP fear mongering tactics by insisting that a lottery system will be set up that will determine who does and does not get care. The system will be based on age, race and gender.
Hats off to Bill Moyers for his wise words and refreshing honesty. And hats off to another wise Texan, James Moore, who shows us how Texans can so badly mess up Texas.
More relevant video clips and transcripts can be found here.
The last time a president tried to overhaul U.S. health care, Americans were spending $912 billion on the system and 40 million were uninsured. Today they're spending $2.5 trillion and almost 50 million lack coverage.
Health-insurance premiums for families have risen 119 percent since 1999, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a Menlo Park, California-based policy-research firm. Inflation has risen 28.5 percent over that period, according to the Labor Department.
Premium costs are projected to rise another 9 percent next year, an increase that 42 percent of employers plan to pass on to their workers, according to a report last month by PricewaterhouseCoopers. That's likely to further squeeze millions of Americans who find themselves in high-deductible insurance plans as wages stagnate because of the recession.
Republicans might be stunned to know that Wal-Mart believes health care reform is critical.
The right wing hypocrites who nailed Bill Clinton to a cross for having a consensual cigar sex affair must have been projecting their own long repressed evil doing sinning at the time. S.C. Governor Mark Sanford, as I recall, was right in there with his right wing soul mates, hammering in the nails.
In fact, this is what Mark Sanford said about Bill Clinton's affair.
The issue of lying is probably the biggest harm, if you will, to the system of Democratic government, representatives government, because it undermines trust. And if you undermine trust in our system, you undermine everything.
In the future, holier-than-thou Republicans might want to be careful before throwing stones.
Somehow, someway, the right wing hypocrites find ways in which to grant themselves forgiveness for their well-meaning, the-devil-made-me-do-it sins.
Oh so now the laughable hypocrites want bygones to be bygones because this is about the "heart." Joe Scarborough is so angry about Sanford's outing that he actually accused one of his own colleagues of having an affair. Joe is one very angry guy who has been having on the air altercations with his more liberal colleagues on MSNBC lately. It must be hell to belong to a Party that no one takes seriously anymore.
Jon Stewart pretty much nailed Sanford last night when he said.
"Oh, marital infidelity, you're just another run of the mill human being whose simple moralizing about the sanctity of marriage is only marred by the complexities of their own life. Well just another politician with a conservative mind and a liberal penis.
As we all know, an anti-abortion extremist gunned down and murdered Dr. George Tiller in his church where he served as an usher and his wife sang in the choir. This was the second attempt on the physician's life. In 1993 Dr. Tiller had been wounded by anti-abortion extremists in an unsuccessful assassination attempt. During that same year, Dr. David Gunn was murdered by anti-abortionists in Pensacola.
Records reveal that Tiller's murder suspect has a criminal record and a history of anti-abortion postings on friendly web sites. Apparently the suspect also spends a lot of time at a home known for its strange gatherings.
Neighbors said they've seen a similar car at the house in Merriam. They describe the ongoings at the house as strange. They said it's a revolving door of men coming and staying there and describe what appear to be religious gatherings.
Dr. Tiller has been a target of the right for some time as he was one of the few doctors in the country who would perform late term abortions. A number of right wing TV and radio talk show hosts have made a practice of demonizing Dr. Tiller in an attempt to whip the religious right into frenzy. This time the hate talkers hit the jackpot.
Bill O'Reilly of FOX "News" is one of those who led the charge against Dr. Tiller.
Jed Lewison over at Daily Kos captured the video clip below in which Bill O'Reilly called Dr. Tiller:
Ok, so we've been hearing about this deadly swine flu that has many folks panicking right and left. Schools are closing, people are wearing surgical masks, and many are avoiding their local public transportation systems, railroads and airlines. In Texas alone, 300,000 children are not in school.
Indeed the reaction has been so strong that a flight enroute to the U.S. from Europe diverted to Boston because a passenger said she had flu like symptoms. Some folks, mainly Republican politicians and xenophobic pundits, have demanded that we immediately shut down the U.S./Mexico border. Apparently these folks have not heard the latest reports on the swine flu.
Apparently we were warned about this flu's potential as far back as 1999. The forewarning obviously fell on deaf ears.
As one would expect Karl Rove blatantly lied about Senator Arlen Specter's motivation for switching his Party affiliation from Republican to Democrat.
In a statement issued earlier today, Senator Specter said his former Party had moved too far right.
Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right. Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats. I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans.
Speaking from FOX Looney Tunes News, Rove said Specter had lurched left.
First, from the Texas wing of The Party of Torture and Tax Cuts.
Senator John Cornyn, prominent member of the Party of Torture and willing player in the Bush Administration's
Journey to Depravity must think Democrats are quaking in their boots because, according to The Huffington Post he attempted to bully and blackmail them on the torture issue.
Cornyn apparently prefers to sweep the recent revelations of torture under the rug. That or pin the blame on Democrats who served on the Foreign Intelligence Committee at the time, and/or stick it to low level military and CIA officers at the bottom of the torture chain of command.
If Democrats insist on probing the Bush administration's program of detainee torture, they'd better be careful, a senior Senate Republican said Tuesday, because they might find blood on their own hands as well.
"To sit quietly and to let this happen and then to come back later and say people ought to be prosecuted criminally, not just here in the United States but perhaps internationally, to me is inconsistent, to say the least," said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas).
It seems that certain members of the Republican Party, specifically former Texas U.S. Senator Phil Gramm, created mechanisms by which very wealthy Americans could cheat Uncle Sam by hiding their incomes in off shore tax havens. Unfortunately for Joe and Jane the Taxpayers (that would be you, clueless Republican tea baggers, and me), we are the go to folks who have to pony up the mind numbing shortfall.
Apparently there is no end in sight to the Bush Administration and its Republican Party's pillage and looting of every existing piggy bank whether it is that of the federal government, Republican dominated states and local governments, the private sector including formerly revered and respected banks and investment firms, corporations and small businesses. The insatiable and pervasive tentacles of reckless irresponsibility, greed and corruption spread like a lethal and uncontrollable cancer.
Diarist Muzikal203 over at Daily Kos uploaded a video clip of Keith Olbermann's rant on tax evaders last night. Olbermann has every right to howl about this. We all should be doing the same.
So, we've been hearing a lot of chatter on cable TV this week about a Fox News/GOP Tea Party Revolution. Fox News and the right wing fringe of the GOP have obviously gone completely bat bleep crazy over something. They are screaming day in and day about something. I am not sure what it is at this point. I've heard rants like "taxation without representation."
Huh? As I've mentioned before, we had an election recently that did not require lawsuits or recounts. This week President Obama has a 66% approval rating. The Democratic Party is at 51% while the Republican Party has a 26% approval rating. A majority of Independents and some moderate Republicans support President Obama's agenda.
So why is there so noise spewing from the right? Is this tea party thing merely a childish tantrum thrown by a bunch of sore losers and clowns?
Let's explore a few events of this past week to try to find an answer.
Oh what a stunning surprise. The architects of trickle down baloney and black magic misery give the President a failing grade. The liars ignored the fact that their grading is based on a discredited Wall Street Journal Survey.
These very same go-to bitches for the sound, solid and endless profit spewing machines of Enron, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, AIG and the Bank of America actually believe they can credibly weigh in on President Obama.
That alternative universe of theirs must have become an insane asylum during the W. years.
And the gates of the asylum swung open this week when the looney tunes marched out in full lock step support of its collective whackonomics.
Check out the right wing looney tunes shows over at Daily Kos.
These morons unashamedly got it wrong for over a decade. Why on earth would they get it right today? The same twisted and failed ideologies continue to underpin their whackonomic make believe.
A photo-blogger over at DK posted a series of stunning photos of a recently erected tent city near his hometown of Sacramento California. Those residing in the tent city had lost their homes to foreclosure. The diarist, "Marc in CA" also included photos from the "Hoovervilles" of the Great Depression era of the 1930' and entitled his piece Bushvilles: The New Hoovervilles, rapidly expanding.
Please pour yourselves a little glass of your preferred beverage of relaxation, get out the popcorn, if you like, sit back and enjoy the show.
First, the ground rules: Jackass awards are not exclusive to the Republican Party, Rush Limbaugh or propagandists for right wing and conservative thought. A jackass is viewed as one who is either arrogant or stupid enough to believe he/she can get away with fooling, lying to and/or willfully misleading others. In other words, any person who holds a position of influence whether one is a politician, elected official, community, or business leader, and this includes all media pundits, anchors and spokespersons for all of the above, who arrogantly or stupidly insults the intelligence of those they do, or hope to influence, is a jackass.
A jackass is also one who refuses to accept or lies about certain realities such as:
The simplest explanation for why America's reality got so distorted is the economic imbalance that Barack Obama now wants to remedy with policies that his critics deride as "socialist" ("fascist" can't be far behind): the obscene widening of income inequality between the very rich and everyone else since the 1970s. "There is something wrong when we allow the playing field to be tilted so far in the favor of so few," the president said in his budget message. He was calling for fundamental fairness, not class warfare. America hasn't seen such gaping inequality since the Gilded Age and 1920s boom that preceded the Great Depression.
This inequity was compounded by Bush tax policy and by lawmakers and regulators of both parties who enabled and protected the banking scam artists who fled with their bonuses and left us holding the toxic remains. The fantasy of easy money at the top of the economic pyramid trickled down to the masses, who piled up debt by leveraging their homes much as their '20s predecessors once floated stock purchases "on margin." Our culture, meanwhile, painted halos over celebrity C.E.O.'s, turning the fundamentalist gospel of the market into a national religion that further accelerated the country's wholesale flight from reality.
Finally, a jackass is one who wants to revert to the same old failed and stupid policies that got us into this economic meltdown in the first place.
