Vyan over at Daily Kos has written an excellent piece about MSNBC's Rachel Maddow's deconstruction of Fox's race baiting and the Republican Party's most recent southern strategy of scorched earth politics.
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.
President Obama has accomplished more in his first half term than any President since FDR.
This is why the Republican Party is screaming and howling day in and day out. The programs implemented by the Obama Administration will offer an economic life line to everyday American people. Some of Obama's policies have seriously inconvenienced big business and big insurance, too. And this why the Republican Party has been threatening to repeal health care and financial reform the second it can get control of the levers of power.
But we are not going to let Republicans take back the power are we?
While Rick Perry slashes social services for children and the elderly, our welfare loathing Governor appears to be incapable of cutting back on his own taxpayer funded living expenses.
While there is an $18 billion budget shortfall, the state's schools rank second to last in the U.S. and Texas has the highest number of uninsured residents, the Neiman Marcus loving millionaire Governor expects taxpayers to pony up for his Gourmet Magazine subscriptions, fine wines, pate de foie gras and thousand dollar drapes.
It looks like Glenn Beck, a college drop out, has founded his very own university. On line, of course, and for profit, no doubt, complete with a chief member of the American Christian Taliban as a distinguished lecturer. The sole purpose of Beck U is to rewrite American history. Why does this sound so very familiar?
I wonder if the membership of the Texas Christian Taliban, aka the SBOE have lined up to enroll? Get yer credit card ready, members, for Beck U will not be free. By the way, not that it would matter to you folks, the "degree" you receive will be absolutely worthless. But go ahead folks, sign up while openings remain. Absolutely no prerequisites for admission are needed, except for timely tuition payments and fees of course.
More on demagoguery, right wing nuttery and Crazy & Greed Inc. below.
Thirty years after the Republican Party somehow managed to trick the American people into embracing the notion of trickle down economics, the hard data now shows us that nothing ever did trickle down. In fact, the data reveals that trickle down has harmed 90% of the American people.
For six of the seven indicators, the average annual growth rate between 2001 and 2007 was below the average growth rate for the comparable periods of other post-World War II economic expansions.
Notably, this expansion was among the weakest since World War II with respect to both overall economic growth and growth in fixed non-residential investment. These two indicators should have captured any positive "growth effects" of the tax cuts.
The labor market also was weaker during the 2001-2007 expansion. Both employment growth and wage and salary growth were weaker during this expansion as a whole than in any prior expansion since the end of World War II.
The 2001-2007 expansion outperformed the average post-World War II expansion in only one area: corporate profits, which grew much more rapidly than average.
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.
The loony fringe of the Texas GOP continues to fall all over itself standing by their big sugar daddy, BP. Louie Gohmert took extremism to a new level when he compared President Obama's demand to BP for $20 billion to who else but Hitler.
Is there a head doctor in the house? President Obama's demands for accountability and responsibility from BP seems to have driven the Texas GOP stark raving mad.
There they go outing themselves again. Republicans are the ones that are easily led idiots who will believe anything a demagogue says. Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck are perfect examples. And as I recall, W. whined about how much easier it would have been to rule as a dictator instead of a democratically elected President.
Our esteemed Texas Republican lawmakers, especially U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, seem to have their lips perpetually super glued to the derrieres of BP and big oil.
I guess our Texas Republican lawmakers are completely incapable of thinking outside of any box that is unrelated to stuffing bucks into their personal campaign coffers.
As we all know by now, Governor Rick Perry has also super glued his lips to the derrieres of any big money that moves in his direction.
Meanwhile, back in a reality residing outside of the Texas GOP world of groveling and self serving pimpitude to corporate interests, there are grave and challenging issues that must be dealt with on national, state and local levels.
The GOP can't seem to stop itself from taking up for the strong armed, shaken down, extorted, ripped off, the unfairly abused and pilloried BP. Yet another Republican stands up for the most reckless and destructive oil companies on the planet. Today Senator Coburn (R-OK) joined his colleagues Joe Barton, (R-TX) John Cornyn, (R-TX) Rand Paul (R-KY), Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and Rush Limbaugh. Together, they cried
Perhaps a rudimentary definition of the role of government would be worth mentioning given Joe Barton's unhinged apology to BP yesterday. On what planet has Joe Barton been living? Maybe Rush Limbaugh and his hate talk and profit driven corporate lobbyists have overwhelmed and confused Republican politicians like Joe Barton.
According to elementary school level civics, the federal government, as established by the Constitution, is a government of the people, by the people and for the people.
Joe Barton and John Cornyn, too, have obviously forgotten why they run for office and who they are supposed to represent. Contrary to Texas Republican belief we are not, gentlemen, a government run by corporations, for corporations, and of corporations. In other words, you dudes work for us, i.e. we the people. You do not work for BP and your deep pocketed campaign contributors.
Get the message or get fired by your bosses. That would be people like me and not BP CEO Tony Hayward.
If this is not proof that big oil owns the Texas Republican Party I do not what else is. Joe Barton (R-TX) apologized to BP CEO Tony Hayward for President Obama's successful demand for $20 billion commitment from BP in order to help make reparations for those that have been financially devastated by the disaster. This includes fisherman who can no long fish for a living, the tourism industry and oil workers who are out of work b/c of the temporary ban on deep water drilling in the region.
Ol' Joe is obviously more worried about his own campaign coffer than he is the people in the Gulf region. Joe has received $33 million from big oil during his career in office.
God forbid should the government work on behalf of the American people.
For those who do not know, BP's TOP KILL efforts today failed. I honestly hate to be the messenger of such tragic news of failure to this community. Links to all relevant information are included in the links provided above.
Meanwhile a Ph.D. level environmental geochemist and energy specialist over at Daily Kos posted images captured by NASA. Click on the link to see the graphic and horrifying images captured.
The images show a sheen of oil offshore at Port Arthur.
Today's Terra Imagery from NASA shows a sheen of oil offshore of Port Arthur, near Beaumont Texas.Oil may begin coming onshore on Texas beaches. There's a strong liklihood that black area is weathered oil below the water's surface coming ashore on barrier islands southwest of Galveston, Texas.
It gets worse.
The combination of images shows oil spread from near Pensacola Florida to near Galveston Texas.
This is what happens when lobbyists are put in charge of our regulatory agencies. It is the same as appointing Bernie Madoff the Sheriff of Wall St.
An article in the New York Times reveals the Minerals Management Services gave permission to BP and other oil companies to drill in the Gulf without requiring permits that are obtained at another agency. The MMS also put a muzzle on the agency's scientists.
The Minerals Management Service, or M.M.S., also routinely overruled its staff biologists and engineers who raised concerns about the safety and the environmental impact of certain drilling proposals in the gulf and in Alaska, according to a half-dozen current and former agency scientists.
Those scientists said they were also regularly pressured by agency officials to change the findings of their internal studies if they predicted that an accident was likely to occur or if wildlife might be harmed.
Under the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Minerals Management Service is required to get permits to allow drilling where it might harm endangered species or marine mammals.
Meanwhile BP, Deepwater Horizon and Halliburton refuse to take responsibility for the devastating link by pointing fingers at one another. What an irresponsible, disgraceful and disgusting bunch.
OILmageddon is what happens when two oil boys are in charge of our federal government. President Bush and Vice President appointed lobbyists to run our federal regulatory agencies.
The BP, Deepwater Horizon and Halliburton's unstoppable oil volcano, enabled by the W. Administration crusade to drill, baby, drill, continues to spew devastation into the Gulf regions of Louisiana and Alabama. Mississippi and Florida are next in line as recipients of the same ecological and economic carnage.
A Hurricane Creekkeeper John Wathen of Alabama and volunteer pilot Tom Hutchings of SouthWings flew over the Gulf of Mexico on Friday to get a look at the massive oil slick spreading from the site of the BP disaster.
It should come as no surprise to anyone (except for the Rush and Glenn teabagging Republicans) to learn that the Bush/Cheney Administration appointed lobbyists to serve as federal government "regulators."
For the Bush administration was, to a large degree, run by and for the extractive industries - and I'm not just talking about Dick Cheney's energy task force. Crucially, management of Interior was turned over to lobbyists, most notably J. Steven Griles, a coal-industry lobbyist who became deputy secretary and effectively ran the department. (In 2007 Mr. Griles pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about his ties to Jack Abramoff.)
Given this history, it's not surprising that the Minerals Management Service became subservient to the oil industry - although what actually happened is almost too lurid to believe. According to reports by Interior's inspector general, abuses at the agency went beyond undue influence: there was "a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity" - cocaine, sexual relationships with industry representatives, and more. Protecting the environment was presumably the last thing on these government employees' minds.
Now, President Obama isn't completely innocent of blame in the current spill. As I said, BP received an environmental waiver for Deepwater Horizon after Mr. Obama took office. It's true that he'd only been in the White House for two and half months, and the Senate wouldn't confirm the new head of the Minerals Management Service until four months later. But the fact that the administration hadn't yet had time to put its stamp on the agency should have led to extra caution about giving the go-ahead to projects with possible environmental risks.
Russell King, a former conservative, describes the stunning moral bankruptcy that pervades and drives today's conservative movement. His sustained attack is comprehensive and devastating.
As well as snarkingly hilarious.
King threw the kitchen sink, the bathtub and the toilet with its sewer pipe intact at the Republicans and conservatives. He nailed them for hypocrisy, hyperbole, hatred and the Republican penchant for historical inaccuracy.
King also charges his former party and its ideology with cowardice, irrationality and irresponsibility.
Now the advice. You're going to have to come up with a platform that isn't built on a foundation of cowardice: fear of people with colors, religions, cultures and sex lives that differ from your own; fear of reform in banking, health care, energy; fantasy fears of America being transformed into an Islamic nation, into social/commun/fasc-ism, into a disarmed populace put in internment camps; and more. But you have work to do even before you take on that task.
Your party -- the GOP -- and the conservative end of the American political spectrum has become irrepsonsible and irrational. Worse, it's tolerating, promoting and celebrating prejudice and hatred. Let me provide some expamples -- by no means an exhaustive list -- of where the Right as gotten itself stuck in a swamp of hypocrisy, hyperbole, historical inaccuracy and hatred.
After over a year of Republican obstruction, whopping lies, Halloween type driven fright frenzies, hate fests, death panels, clown shows, biased news coverage, tea parties, Dick Armey and his Freedom Works and other shills for the health insurance industry,the American people will finally be able to realize a long and overdue life line known as health care reform.
Thirty three million Americans will soon be able to afford health insurance coverage.
Wow. What a step forward for a first world country that does third world access to affordable health care.
Unfortunately for Texans the ruling GOP here is totally on board with third world health care.
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?
Of course we evil doing liberals know for absolute certain that Republicans would never, ever, hell would have to freeze over,crack down on a scam that rips off people but is good for business.
Houston's conservative readers in Houston did not want to know about the totally screwed temporary but really permanent employees as reported by Rick Casey. With all due respect to Casey, he is not exactly a flaming liberal pinko communist progressive.
Houston area conservatives tore into Casey because they did not like his article.
In response to a comment I had posted on Mr. Casey's online article, a conservative responded with the following.
....as far as jobs and benefits, the unemployment rate has increased dramatically since the Demos took charge of both houses of Congress and Presidency. this is because evil white old white guys, the Chinese who hold our debt and many others are scared of the Demos reckless spending that will soon bankrupt the country.
Hint: This dude watches FOX and listens to Rush.
I wonder where this guy was when then Vice President Dick Cheney said deficits didn't matter and he and Bush stuck an unnecessary war and tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans at the same time, putting all on our national credit card? All of a sudden Republicans are all but hysterical over the deficit. And yet when the Senate introduced a bill proposing a deficit reduction commission 7 Republicans who supported it voted NO when the President said it was a good idea. Talk about political bi-polar disorderly dysfunction syndrome. What is wrong with them?
The truth of the matter is, Democrats are really good at cleaning up Republican made messes. We know what it takes to rebuild a devastated economy and we know how to catch terrorist leaders. The Obama Administration has caught more Taliban terrorist leaders, by the way, in one month than the Bush Administration caught in 6 years. And U.S. troops seized a Taliban headquarters in Afghanistan today. Poor Dick Cheney must have fainted when he learned about this. He is running out of stones to throw at President Obama. So much for Democrats being weak on national security.
