It's a Wingnut World After All

Obama can't do anything right ever - Disney World edition:

Maybe I am crazy, but I come from a world where it is a privilege, dare I say an honor, to hear a sitting president speak in person. I guess I am a little biased, because if it were George W. Bush speaking at Disney World, I would probably rather ride the Tea Cups until I puked up my intestines. But regardless of the speaker, there is still something unique and timeless about the opportunity to see an American president speak in person. Not so for the Fair and Balanced brigade at Fox, who automatically assumes that the Kenyan Socialist Usurper is shitting all over Real Murkins' vacations by his very presence. 

I know it's belaboring the obvious at this point, but Obama can't do anything right in these people's eyes. The fact that they still hide behind the laughable 'fair and balanced' label, and the fact that people actually buy that facade, is pathetic and laughable. 

Our Economic Broken Record - Republicans Oppose Everything

This wasn't totally predictable or anything:

In a Friday memo to all House Republicans, GOP leaders came out against nearly all the major proposals in Obama's $447 billion job-creation plan, including his middle-class tax cuts and his approach to federal spending on transportation and school construction. 

The Republican leaders said cutting payroll taxes through 2012 would lead to a tax increase in 2013 -- an argument that didn't deter Republicans from a much bigger, 10-year tax cut in 2001 that was extended last December but is set to expire on Dec. 31, 2012. 

"There may be significant unforeseen downsides to large temporary tax cuts immediately followed by large tax increases," they wrote in their memo. "We are creating significant new uncertainty in an already uncertain economy."

This is just fucking crazy. They are now actually arguing that we can't cut taxes now, because when they return to their original level at a later date, that would be a tax increase. Am I the only one that sees the abject lunacy and idiocy in this argument? This is really what one of our major political parties now uses to justify its infantile bull shit?  And as many people have already noted - Republicans have finally found a tax cut that they don't like. Why? Because the payroll tax overwhelmingly benefits the wrong kind of people - poor and middle class citizens. If we were proposing a 200% tax increase on the working poor while abolishing capital gains and the top marginal tax rate, you know they'd be on board. They did vote for the Ryan plan after all. 

Anyone that has paid even one ounce of attention to politics for the last two and a half years know that the Republicans will never support anything the President proposes. So I will admit that while the American Jobs Act is long overdue and a much needed economic stimulus, I have never really seen its path through Congress. Sure the President wants us to call our congressmen and women, even the asshole Republican ones, but does anyone honestly believe that Democratic constituents calling Republican representatives and senators is going to make them shift from them their putrid ideological entrenchment? 

I think really the most likely scenario is that the economy is going to continue to suck tremendously well into the 2012 election season, thereby endangering Obama's re-election. We will get some sort of movement on economic stimulus between now and then, but it will be purposefully hamstrung by the Republicans who will ensure that it is a series of half measures or contains a bunch of their bull shit ideological sacred cows that will do nothing to stimulate the economy. The President's only chance between now and then will to be continue to bring Campaign Obama both to the American public and to his style of governance. If you can't get anything through Congress, then the one thing you can do is present an unmistakably stark contrast between the two parties values and ideas on how to rebuild a broken America. That started with the roll out of the American Jobs Act, and it continues with this:

President Obama on Monday will call for a new minimum tax rate for individuals making more than $1 million a year to ensure that they pay at least the same percentage of their earnings as middle-income taxpayers, according to administration officials. 

With a special joint Congressional committee starting work to reach a bipartisan budget deal by late November, the proposal adds a new and populist feature to Mr. Obama’s effort to raise the political pressure on Republicans to agree to higher revenues from the wealthy in return for Democrats’ support of future cuts from Medicare and Medicaid. 

Mr. Obama, in a bit of political salesmanship, will call his proposal the “Buffett Rule,” in a reference to Warren E. Buffett, the billionaire investor who has complained repeatedly that the richest Americans generally pay a smaller share of their income in federal taxes than do middle-income workers, because investment gains are taxed at a lower rate than wages. 

Mr. Obama will not specify a rate or other details, and it is unclear how much revenue his plan would raise. But his idea of a millionaires’ minimum tax will be prominent in the broad plan for long-term deficit reduction that he will outline at the White House on Monday.

Republicans will never in a million years support a tax increase of any kind, especially not one on millionaires, or the "job  creators" as they are known among the mouth breathers. The problem that faces the Republicans is that a millionaire's tax is overwhelmingly popular with the public. They can spew all the bull shit they want, but the fact of the matter is that the public intuitively understands that there is a infinitesimally small slice of the population that controls pretty much all the wealth in this country, and they pay an absolute pittance in income taxes. As the NYT piece says, this tax would hit about three-tenths of one percent of tax payers. It doesn't matter how the GOP and Fox News try to spin it, with all the caterwauling about job killing tax increases or the delicate fee-fees of our job creating plutocrat overlords, the public is just not going to care when you're talking about hitting such a small portion of the tax base with this increase. It's good policy, and even better politics. 

Again, the Buffett Rule faces an even steeper uphill climb in Congress than does the American Jobs Act. But these are the sort of populist positions that Obama should have been taking long ago, since January 2009 on his first day in office. The public saw far too much of Obama as the most reasonable guy in the room. Maybe it's finally catching on that when you're in a room full of unhinged lunatics that want to savage the founding principles of this country and hand it over to rule by corporations and plutocrats, being the most reasonable guy doesn't count for much. Americans want someone on their side, and Obama appears to be finally understanding that.

Republicans Fee-Fees Hurted By Big Meaniehead Dems

Republicans are spraining their vaginas crying about Democrats rightfully taking advantage of their support of the Paul Ryan Path to Fucking Everybody Over But Rich People and Corporations Prosperity:

Nearly a dozen House Republican freshmen held a press conference outside the Capitol Tuesday morning to "wipe the slate clean," and "hit the reset button."

"Yeah, I mean there's been -- again, this is a both-sides issue," said Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) when asked if GOP candidates and the NRCC had engaged in 'MediScare' tactics last year. "To say that one side is blameless in trying to use issues to win votes is just dishonest."

On Tuesday, Kinzinger and 41 of his colleagues sent a letter to President Obama, asking him to rein in Democratic attacks on GOP members who voted for the House budget, which includes a plan to privatize Medicare and cap spending on the program.

"We ask that you stand above partisanship, condemn the disingenuous attacks and work with this Congress to reform spending on entitlement programs," the letter reads. 

I swear to Jebus that there is a direct relationship between immense power/wealth/status and being a colossal delicate flower. Wall Street banksters and Fortune 500 CEOs crying that Obama is mean to them, Congress members of both parties whining to Obama that he needs to be directly involved in the budget (after he already released his proposal), and now the GOP drowning the Oval Office in tears because Democrats are doing what politicians do - engaging in smart politics.

Republicans already voted for Ryan's shit sandwich of a budget and continue to feel the ramifications of it daily, no matter how they try to argue the contrary. The fact that they are crying about Democratic attacks mean that they are working. They've hit a nerve. The House GOP is already feeling the heat from their constituents on their regressive plan, and the last thing they want is for the Dems to continue to hold the spotlight on them on this issue.

Paul Krugman had a good post about this very subject on his blog, noting what I've said many times before - that facts have a well-established liberal bias:

Today was another VSP day at the Washington Post, with both the editorial page and the fact-checker tut-tutting at Democrats who insist on describing the Republican plan to dismantle Medicare as a plan to dismantle Medicare.

Because it is, you know, a plan to dismantle Medicare. When you transform a program that pays seniors’ medical bills into a program that gives them a voucher that almost certainly isn’t enough to buy adequate insurance, you can call the new scheme Medicare, but it isn’t the same program.

Anyway, Republicans are proposing to destroy Medicare; saying that clearly isn’t scare tactics, it’s simply pointing out the truth.

Also, I've got a few things that might help the Republicans cure their sad:

Just a thought. I hear they are super effective.

The GOP: Objectively Anti-Consumer Protection

Assholes:

Nearly every Republican senator is vowing to block any presidential nominee to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) unless major changes are made to the agency.

In a letter sent to the president Thursday, 44 GOP senators said that any pick to become the first director of the CFPB, regardless of political affiliation, will be unacceptable unless the bureau is significatly altered to reduce its "unfettered authority."

[...]

"The CFPB as created by the deeply-flawed Dodd-Frank Act is set to be one of the least accountable and most powerful agencies in Washington," said Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). "The reforms outlined are necessary before we will consider any nominee to head this agency.”

"This about accountability," added Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee. "The bureau, as currently structured, lacks any semblance of the checks and balances inherent in the Constitution."  

Specifically, the lawmakers are demanding the top of the CFPB be changed so that instead of being run by a single director, it is headed by a board of directors. They also want the CFPB's budget to fall under the jurisdiction of Congressional appropriators — currently the CFPB is set up to receive its budget from the Federal Reserve. And finally, they want other regulators to be able to block CFPB regulations if they deem it could endanger the safety and soundess of banks.

Right, because we all know how much Republicans care about "accountability" or reining in "unfettered power," which is they only care about it when they're not in power, or the issue in question is preventing their corporate masters from doing whatever the fuck they want.

And the "significant alterations" they are seeking would do nothing short of rendering the agency useless, which is their ultimate goal. It has nothing to do with accountability. Proposing a board of directors is their attempt to fill it with know-nothing batshit GOP ideologues to grind the agency to a gridlock of 111th/112th Congressional proportions. There is recent precedent for this; the Republican appointees to the financial crisis commission voted to remove any mention of the terms "Wall Street" or "deregulation" altogether from their commission report, and blamed the entirety of the financial crisis on poor people and minorities and the government. Placing the CPFB's budget under the jurisdiction of Congressional appropriators is another attempt to bring the agency to Congressional heel and ensure that it receives little or inadequate funding to execute its charge. You know, because we are broke, and we can't finance consumer protection when we have really important things to pay for like endless wars and tax cuts. There's actually a good argument to make that more of our financial regulation agencies should be free from Congressional budget appropriations and receive their funding through the Fed as the CPFB would.

Going on three years on now with no indictments or criminal prosecutions of any high-level parties involved with the financial crisis, and to add insult to injury, half of our Senators have their heads in the sand or are running around with their fingers in their ears screaming LA-LA-LA-LA-LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU.

Never Enough

Senate Republicans have a hard time making up their minds when it comes to the proper length and/or volume of documents necessary to do their jobs:

Senate Judiciary ranking member Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) called the number of documents released inadequate and reiterated his concern that the committee will not have enough time to pore over the information before Kagan’s hearings.

“The batch of documents received today represent less than a third of the 160,000 pages of material we have been told exist from Elena Kagan’s time as a senior policy aide to President Clinton. We are now a mere 23 days away from the hearing and the committee still has yet to receive over 100,000 pages of documents,” Sessions said in a statement.

What Sen. Sessions is really after is the Goldilocks level of data: the Healthcare bill was too much, the 45,000 pages on Kagan are not enough, but 160,000 pages would be just right. Maybe Sen. Sessions is hoping that in those additional 115,000 pages, he will find the answers to burning questions like whether or not Kagan is a lesbian, or why she deigns to cross her legs. Because we absolutely have to get to the bottom of that.

I Think He's Gonna Be Sad

I think it's today, yeah:

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) is demanding that Paul McCartney apologize for expressing his gratitude that America again has a president "who knows what a library is," Human Events' Connie Hair reports.

"Like millions of other Americans, I have always had a good impression of Paul McCartney and thought of him as a classy guy, but I was surprised and disappointed by the lack of grace and respect he displayed at the White House," Boehner said in a statement. "I hope he'll apologize to the American people for his conduct which demeaned him, the White House and President Obama."

And I expect that Boehner will apologize to the American people for his hideous spray tan and his pervasive infantile behavior. So there. At least Boehner calls for conservative celebrities to apologize when they say much worse things. Seriously. Cry more.