REALLY busy week. I haven’t had time to post even a short blog…
…BUT, I have a little time this morning…so I’ll hit the highlights of “Politicians Behaving Badly.”
POLITICIANS BEHAVING BADLY:
- Senator Specter has certainly said and done some odd things since “becoming a Democrat“…although, to be perfectly honest, he’s always been a bit strange. Often times the only thing stranger than his behavior…are the explanations he provides for that behavior. Well, add another one to the list: according to Specter, prominent GOP leader Jack Kemp’s recent death…is partly the GOP’s fault. That’s right – Specter, a cancer survivor himself, broadly criticized his old party for failing to fund cancer research (for the last eight years, did they fund ANY research?) and said: “If we had pursued what President Nixon declared in 1970 as the war on cancer, we would have cured many strains. I think Jack Kemp would be alive today. And that research has saved or prolonged many lives, including mine.” Hmmm…he may have a point…kind of…
- Again on the subject of Specter…he’s not making too many new friends among his new caucus-mates. He voted against the Obama budget, and has declared his intentions to vote against the Employee Free Choice Act (which will not make him popular with labor groups back home), and to vote against the Healthcare Act. Um, Arlen? That’s a lot of voting “against.” You’re not in the party of “no” anymore, buddy. And DNC Chair Howard Dean and Democratic flack James Carville would like to tell you something: keep it up and they will take your ass out in the primary…and easily. Dean said, “…he won’t win the Democratic primary by taking the position that you should not have [the Employee Free Choice Act] or a public option for health insurance…If he takes these kinds of views, of course there is going to be a Democratic primary.” Carville added: “[Specter] was the least reliable Republican. So he will just switch to become the least reliable Democrat.“
- What would an installment of “Politicians Behaving Badly” be without an item about Minnesota Rep. Michelle Bachman? Last week, she attempted to blame the Swine Flu on Democrats (seriously?), and now…she referred to government spending as an “orgy“…and says the government “spent its wad” too early…paging Dr. Freud! Her comments during the National Debt Day rally: “During the last 100 days we have seen an orgy. It would make any local smorgasbord embarrassed…The government spent its wad by April 26. Every dime government spends after April 26 throughout the rest of this fiscal year is borrowed money.” The clips can be seen here.
- We’ve finally found something that the Republicans say “yes” to…TAX HAVENS! That’s right…just as the Obama administration announces plans to go after tax loopholes and corporate tax havens (which will net $210 BILLION), the GOP begins to mount its opposition to protect Big Business’ right to cheat on taxes by exploiting tax code loopholes and hiding money in tiny, exotic locations like the Cayman Islands. A GOP staffer announced it “would be the biggest tax increase on U.S. corporations since 1986.” Point of clarification: being forced to pay the amount you’re supposed to be paying…doesn’t qualify as an “increase.” It’s what the rest of us, who don’t have sneaky accountants, billions of dollars, and offshore accounts, have to do EVERY YEAR. The sickening details of the lengths companies will go to, in order to avoid paying their fair share like everyone else, can be read here. A brief bit from the HuffPo article by Arthur Delaney: “Many of those corporations are beneficiaries of billions in taxpayer dollars under the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Morgan Stanley, for instance, boasts 273 subsidiaries in tax havens, with 158 in the Cayman Islands alone. Citigroup’s got 427, with 90 in the Cayman Islands, and 59 of Bank of America’s tax-haven subsidiaries are there as well…The GAO found 18,857 businesses are registered at just one address in the Cayman Islands.“
- BIZARRE: Republican senator James Inhofe, who rather infamously has referred to Global Warming as a “hoax” and said Al Gore was “full of crap“…is now in cahoots with…Al Gore. Go ahead – I’ll wait for a minute while you reread that last sentence. Inhofe joined a group of Democratic senators calling for an official study to be done on soot, or “Black Carbon.” He claims that his support has nothing to do with “Black Carbon” being the the number two contributor (behind CO2 emissions) to Global Warming, but rather is the result of his experiences in Africa, where he saw the lung diseases that can result from soot: “It’s not a pollutant, it’s a particulate matter. So we are talking about two different things and I am surprised that anyone would be at all surprised that I would be trying to find out about black carbon while I don’t buy the idea that anthropogenic gases are causing global warming.“
- Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the new head of the Senate Judiciary Committee is in a unique position: if he wishes to, he can really hold up the confirmation of President Obama’s nominee to fill Justice Souter’s seat on the Supreme Court bench. If he chooses to do so…his past words or actions may come back to haunt him: during the confirmation hearings for Justice Alito, Sessions denounced stalling measures such as filibuster, and called for straight, up-and-down votes: “Since the founding of the Republic, we have understood that there was a two-thirds supermajority for ratification and advice and consent on treaties and a majority vote for judges. That is what we have done. That is what we have always done. But there was a conscious decision on behalf of the leadership, unfortunately, of the Democratic Party in the last Congress to systematically filibuster some of the best nominees ever submitted to the Senate. It has been very painful.“
- MORE ON JEFF SESSIONS: What’s more…FORMER head of the Judiciary Committee, Arlen Specter, TWICE rejected nominations for Sessions to be given his own federal judgeship…because of Sessions’ DEPLORABLE race record…including statements that he “used to think they [the Klan] were OK” until he found out some of them were “pot smokers.” And now, documents have arisen showing to Sessions to have extensive ties to John Tanton, a “white nationalist.” Apparently (according to the Southern Poverty Law Center), over the years Sessions “has regularly appeared with or joined political causes backed by groups founded by Tanton, including the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), NumbersUSA – which named Sessions its ’2008 Defender of the Rule of Law’ – and the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR.) The senator also received a $1,000 donation from the U.S Immigration Reform, a political action committee founded by Tanton’s wife.“
- STILL MORE ON SESSIONS: While Jeff Sessions may be racist and/or a xenophobe…he might not be a homophobe. Sessions upset many of the party’s social conservatives when he announced on Fox News that he would not oppose a nominee for the Supreme Court who was openly gay or pro-choice. The clip is here.
- Oh yeah, remember that small group of Democrats who have been choosing to side with Republicans in opposition to the Obama Administrations spending? They’d like 20 BILLION dollars, please. These so-called “Blue-Dog Democrats” like to pride themselves on being fiscal conservatives (much like the Republicans), but of course they would like billions of dollars in earmarks for THEIR projects (also, much like the Republicans). Georgia Democrat and blue-dog leader Jim Marshall ALONE requested $12 billion. Marshall claims “As long as they are going to have earmarks, I’m going to submit projects to get money.” Jim…you sound like a child. If you are going to claim to have “fiscal restraint” as a principle, then it doesn’t look too good when you abandon it just because what “other people” are doing.
- By now you’ve heard about Eric Cantor, Jeb Bush, and Mitt Romney meeting in a pizza place to try to “redefine the Republican Party.” Eric Cantor said the meeting, and the ones to follow, represented the GOP’s attempt to listen to the people of America…and to find out what they wanted from the GOP. Rush Limbaugh immediately decried the effort as a “listening tour” and said that the GOP should instead be “educating Americans” about what should be done instead of “listening to Americans.” Cantor’s response? Yeah, that whole “listening thing” went right out the window. Here are the clips, compiled together so you can catch Cantor’s “whiplash-inducing” change of heart.
Tomorrow – the standard, Friday “Chaos Theory Edition” featuring the Palins, killing for Jesus, the Media Behaving Badly, and the shiny new Republican Party! See you then…