TomCADem
TomCADem's JournalMaddow Blog - "Woodward's unfortunate errors"
Nice article in Maddow Blog that destroys the new corporate media narrative that tries to blame sequestration on President Obama and Democrats and that tries to suggest that both sides are refusing to compromise:
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/02/25/17086993-woodwards-unfortunate-errors
Over the weekend, there was quite a kerfuffle when Woodward, to the delight of far-right bloggers, jumped into the debate over this week's sequestration cuts, challenging some of the White House's key assertions. For one thing, Woodward insists the sequester was President Obama's idea. For another, Woodward wants the public to believe Obama is "moving the goal posts" by expecting Democrats and Republicans to reach a compromise including both spending cuts and revenue from closed tax loopholes. As far as the Washington Post reporter in concerned, sequestration cuts were supposed to be replaced entirely with different spending cuts, just as GOP policymakers demand.
Let's take these one at a time. The first point, which Republicans and reporters find needlessly fascinating, is quickly becoming farcical. Tim Noah argued that the White House came up with the sequestration policy "in roughly the same sense that it was Charles Lindbergh's bad idea eight decades ago to fork over the equivalent in today's dollars of $840,000 to a German-born carpenter named Bruno Hauptmann.... The sequester was a ransom payment." Noam Scheiber added that saying the sequester was Obama's idea is "like saying it was your idea to give wallet to mugger when he said, 'Your money or your life.'"
Republicans were threatening to crash the economy on purpose and Obama was scrambling to satisfy their demands before GOP lawmakers pulled the trigger and shot the hostage (which is to say, shot us). The sequester then became part of the plan that Republicans proceeded to vote for and brag about, before they came up with the "this is all Obama's fault" talking point in the hopes of winning a bizarre public-relations fight.
After Republicans created a crisis, both sides created the sequester, and both sides now consider it dangerous. The point that matters, even if Very Serious People in Washington are reluctant to acknowledge it, is that only one side is prepared to compromise to resolve the problem.
New Yorker - "Is Senator Ted Cruz Our New McCarthy?"
Interestingly, Ted Cruz even resembles Joe McCarthy. I guess it is no surprise that Ted Cruz feels no shame about attacking the patriotism or loyalty of decorated war heroes. Why feel afraid when you have billions in Koch money behind you?
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/02/ted-cruz-sees-red-not-crimson-at-harvard.html?mbid=gnep&google_editors_picks=true
ket.”
Boxer’s analogy may have been more apt than she realized. Two and a half years ago, Cruz gave a stem-winder of a speech at a Fourth of July weekend political rally in Austin, Texas, in which he accused the Harvard Law School of harboring a dozen Communists on its faculty when he studied there. Cruz attended Harvard Law School from 1992 until 1995. His spokeswoman didn’t respond to a request to discuss the speech.
Cruz made the accusation while speaking to a rapt ballroom audience during a luncheon at a conference called “Defending the American Dream,” sponsored by Americans for Prosperity, a non-profit political organization founded and funded in part by the billionaire industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch. Cruz greeted the audience jovially, but soon launched an impassioned attack on President Obama, whom he described as “the most radical” President “ever to occupy the Oval Office.” (I was covering the conference and kept the notes.)
He then went on to assert that Obama, who attended Harvard Law School four years ahead of him, “would have made a perfect president of Harvard Law School.” The reason, said Cruz, was that, “There were fewer declared Republicans in the faculty when we were there than Communists! There was one Republican. But there were twelve who would say they were Marxists who believed in the Communists overthrowing the United States government.”
Univision - "Obstacle to Reform? Top House Republican Opposes Path to Citizenship."
This just goes to show that beltway's media's effort to claim that Democrats share the blame for the failure to advance immigration reform are nothing more than pro-right wing propaganda. Republicans are not refusing to advance immigration reform simply because they don't like the President. Rather, Republicans want cater to their Xenophobic base, but get some credit from the Latino community for trying to pass immigration reform. Thus, they talk about immigration reform, then blame the President for their opposition.
http://abcnews.go.com/ABC_Univision/Politics/obstacle-reform-top-republican-opposes-path-citizenship/story?id=18559421
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) told NPR he opposes allowing many of the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States from eventually gaining full citizenship.
* * *
Goodlatte's comments should come as no surprise. He is a favorite of immigration restrictionist groups and has long voiced skepticism about a path to citizenship. Goodlatte called a path "extreme" during a committee hearing on immigration reform earlier this month.
But the congressman's comments are an indication that comprehensive immigration reform, which is supported by President Barack Obama, a bipartisan group of senators, and a majority of the American public, could still face significant trouble passing Congress.
NY Magazine - "John Boehner Traps Himself on the Sequester"
The Republican party continues to try to hide the fact that Boehner has no way of getting his caucas to vote for any deal. So, he continues to make mutually exclusive promises to his crazy caucas.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/02/john-boehner-traps-himself-on-the-sequester.html
John Boehner uses a Wall Street Journal op-ed today to signal his party’s strategy, such as it is, on the budget sequester. The main message is to blame President Obama for the budget sequester. Now, that part of the message is obviously untrue — the sequester was a way to escape an economic crisis ginned up by House Republicans, and Boehner himself touted it in 2011.
But the untruth of Boehner’s claim that Obama is the Father of the Sequester isn’t the real problem here — that fact will get buried in he-said, she-said reporting. The bigger problem with Boehner’s strategy is what comes next.
* * *
So what is Boehner’s play here? One possibility might be to just try to cancel out the sequester — perhaps in some sneaky way by replacing it with some future commission that would pretend to cut the deficit but really wouldn’t. The trouble here is that Boehner promised his own ultra wing he would carry it out earlier this year. The other possibility would be to just live with the sequester more or less permanently, or until Republicans can gain full control of government. The trouble here is that Boehner promised his defense hawk members the sequester would never go into effect. Conservative reporter Byron York notes that Boehner’s message — that the sequester is a disaster – totally undermines his chances of just sticking with the sequester.
* * *
It is actually a fascinating thing about Boehner. He keeps wedging himself into impossible situations and somehow escaping. One interpretation (put forward by Ross Douthat) is that he is a highly clever pol who manages to defuse crises. It could be. But it also seems that Boehner’s technique for escaping each crisis involves putting off irreconcilable promises. He got through the expiration of the Bush tax cuts and the debt ceiling by promising his members a grand, successful clash the next time.
Maddowblog - "Reality 1, Boehner 0"
Once again, just another reminder why Republicans are the reason why Congress is dysfunctional and Boehner is the worse speaker ever.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/02/20/17030297-reality-1-boehner-0?lite
With this in mind, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has a 900-word op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on the subject, devoted almost entirely to a desperate attempt to avoid blame. In the larger context, it's only mildly annoying that Boehner invests more energy in pointing fingers than working on a solution, but it's far worse that the Speaker peddles blatant falsehoods, lacking enough respect for the public and the political world to be honest with them.
* * *
This is insane. As the president scrambled to pay the GOP's ransom, so Republicans wouldn't follow through on their threats to hurt Americans on purpose, Obama accepted over $1.2 trillion in spending cuts with no revenue. Boehner said that was inadequate. With time running out, the two leaders agreed to a sequester to give policymakers time for further fiscal talks. Obama pushed for a sequester that was 50% revenue, 50% cuts, but Boehner refused that, too. Eventually they agreed to 50% defense cuts, 50% non-defense domestic cuts, and the Speaker agreed to let the hostage live another day.
* * *
To call this "the president's sequester" is idiotic. Republicans demanded a ransom, and at the time, boasted about the sequester they said they put into the law. Boehner and his GOP cohorts voted for all of this, making it the nation's sequester.
* * *
FreedomWorks Made Video of Fake Giant Panda Having Sex With Fake Hillary Clinton
Source: Mother Jones
An internal investigation of FreedomWorks—the prominent conservative advocacy group and super-PAC—has focused on president Matt Kibbe's management of the organization, his use of its resources, and a controversial book deal he signed, according to former FreedomWorks officials who have met with the private lawyers conducting the probe. One potential topic for the inquiry is a promotional video produced last year under the supervision of Adam Brandon, executive vice president of the group and a Kibbe loyalist. The video included a scene in which a female intern wearing a panda suit simulates performing oral sex on Hillary Clinton.
In December, after months of bitter in-fighting, two members of FreedomWorks' board of trustees—C. Boyden Gray, the White House counsel for President George H.W. Bush, and James Burnley IV, a secretary of transportation during the Reagan years—notified Kibbe that they had received "allegations of wrongdoing by the organization or its employees" and had hired two lawyers, Alfred Regnery and David Martin, to investigate. Soon after, Regnery and Martin began interviewing past and present FreedomWorks employees and officials. This list included Dick Armey, the former House majority leader who in November resigned as chairman of the group (and pocketed an $8 million payout), citing concerns about the management of the organization. The investigating lawyers, Armey says, "picked my brain. I told them a forensic audit would be imperative because so much is hidden there."
One former FreedomWorks official says three "investigative themes" emerged when he was interviewed by Regnery and Martin. The two attorneys indicated they were examining the book deal that awarded Kibbe the profits from a book whose production, several former FreedomWorks officials say, involved extensive use of the organization's resources. Kibbe has contended that he wrote the book without significant help from FreedomWorks. (Armey and two former officials have also told Mother Jones that the nonprofit bought thousands of copies of Kibbe's book from retail sources in an attempt to land it on bestsellers lists. FreedomWorks, one former staffer says, "used tens of thousands of dollars, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, to promote this book."
The investigative team has also discussed with former staffers Kibbe's use of his expense account. "The question is whether Matt Kibbe used FreedomWorks resources and donor funds to live the high life," one past staffer says. And Regnery and Martin have questioned FreedomWorks sources about management and personnel matters. A former FreedomWorks official says Kibbe and Brandon ran the group as a "cult of personality" geared toward promoting Kibbe, and that Kibbe at times issued crude guidelines for hiring women based on their appearance. The investigators, according to a witness interviewed by them, have "asked about a hostile work environment that also included Adam [Brandon] pitting people against each other."
Read more: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/02/panda-hillary-clinton-sex-tape-freedomworks-matt-kibbe-dick-armey
Stay classy Freedom Works. I guess Republicans are continuing their decent into right wing madness with Ted Cruz now openly accusing fellow Republican Hagel of being an Iranian agent. The fact that the media simply lets them say the most childish, insane shit without any blowback is the reason why Republicans continue to try to out-crazy each other.
Big Corporations Put Up Seed Funding for Republican Dark Money Group
Source: ProPublica
Some of the nation’s biggest corporations donated more than a million dollars to launch a Republican nonprofit that went on to play a key role in recent political fights.
Like the nonprofit groups that poured money into last year’s elections, the decade-old State Government Leadership Foundation has been able to keep the identities of its funders secret. Until now.
A records request by ProPublica to the IRS turned up a list of the original funders of the group: Exxon, Pfizer, Time Warner, and other corporations put up at least 85 percent of the $1.3 million the foundation raised in the first year and a half of its existence, starting in 2003.
The donor list is stamped “not for public disclosure,” and was submitted to the IRS as part of the foundation’s application for recognition of tax-exempt status. If approved, such applications are public records.
Read more: http://www.propublica.org/article/big-corporations-put-up-seed-money-for-republican-nonprofit
Despite all the recent re-branding efforts of the Republican party, the fact of the matter is that it is still the same old Republican party with multinationals and billionaires pulling the strings from the shadows.
HuffPo - "Jon Stewart Blasts Frank Luntz & Fox News' 'Messaging' Problem" - Hilarious!
The amazing thing is that what is funny is not so much Jon Stewart's commentary, but the earnest seriousness with which the Fox News reporter and Frank Lutz consider various talking points, which are the exact opposite of what Republicans actually stand for.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/06/jon-stewart-blasts-frank-luntz-fox-news-messaging-problem_n_2630065.html
Fox blamed the GOP's loss with a "messaging" problem, but Stewart hardly could believe that they lacked the means to properly get the message out. "What Republicans need is some kind of 24 hour, 7 day a week perpetual messaging refinement and distribution resource, preferably one cloaked in the trappings of journalistic authority but without any of its ethical constraints," he joked.
Stewart pointed out that Luntz has a long history of distorting policy messaging to fit Fox's narrative, such as turning the "single-payer" healthcare option into the "government option," and admitting that "the American people don't care about what the size of government is" as he encourages Republicans to move away from "smaller government" and over to "more efficient government."
But "Republican Batman," as Stewart called him, could not save them in the 2012 election, nor could his messaging prowess. "The Church of Scientology called, they want their deliberately obfuscating words back," Stewart quipped.
(Arizona) Bill would require hospitals to check immigration status
Source: Arizona Daily Sun
PHOENIX -- A state legislator is moving to put Arizona's hospitals on the front line in the fight against illegal immigration.
The proposal by Rep. Steve Smith, R-Maricopa, would require hospitals to "reasonably confirm" that those who show up at their doors are in the country legally if they do not produce proof of valid health insurance. HB2293 lists methods that hospital officials and employees can use to make that determination.
But the measure also says if legal status cannot be verified, someone from the hospital "must immediately contact the local federal immigration office or a local law enforcement agency to report the incident."
The legislation is drawing alarm from the Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association.
"When does this begin or end?" asked Pete Wertheim, the organization's vice president of strategic communication. "What other industry should be screening their customers for citizenship verification?"
Read more: http://azdailysun.com/news/local/state-and-regional/bill-would-require-hospitals-to-check-immigration-status/article_a9ad6973-3227-552d-9816-82870b8fcf4e.html
Republican State Representative Steve Smith said his goal is to find out the amount of money hospitals spend to treat undocumented immigrants. Of course, if passed it would likely dissuade undocumented immigrants from seeking health care since their presence in the emergency room would trigger a call to the cops or feds.
It will be interesting to see if Marco Rubio disqualifies himself from the Republican nomination by embracing President Obama's immigration policies. What is more likely is that they will nominate someone who caters to the anti-immigrant extremists then add Rubio to the ticket in order to show the general population that he was just kidding.
LA Times - "Obama's inaugural speech provokes rattled Republicans"
The political cartoon associated with the story is funny as well.
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-inaugural-speech-provokes-20130122,0,5396679.story
The complaints of congressional Republicans that President Obama’s inaugural address sent them no bouquets and love letters show a lot of gall, given the history of the last four years. Obama’s inauguration speech in 2009 was crammed with language about bipartisan cooperation and ending the political rancor in Washington and what did he get for it?
First, he got Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell’s declaration that the paramount priority of his caucus was to make Obama a one-term president. After that, he got an avalanche of roadblocks thrown in his way as GOP senators and representatives attempted to carry out McConnell’s mission.
They went to war on "Obamacare," even though a very similar scheme had been put in place in Massachusetts by the Republican governor who would become their presidential nominee in 2012 – an approach that had also been supported on a national level in the 1990s by Bob Dole, their 1996 presidential nominee. Republicans, raving about death panels and a government takeover of healthcare, attacked as if the plan had been concocted by Karl Marx and used the issue as a bludgeon to win back the House of Representatives in the 2010 election.
Today, though, having lost House seats and having failed to take back the Senate or the White House in the 2012 campaign, the GOP’s permanent rejection of anything the president proposed does not seem like such a clever tactic. Obama’s political clout is at a high point and, after giving him higher taxes on the wealthy in the end-of-the-year "fiscal cliff" showdown, Republicans are now backing away from a confrontation over raising the debt ceiling.
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