Proof that Republicans simply cannot check their own impulses

This answer from Rick Santorum to a question from a gay soldier serving in Iraq tells us more about Rick Santorum than he realizes:



Most bloggers are emphasizing how the audience boos a man who is SERVING HIS COUNTRY, but for me the more interesting part of this exchange is that the soldier is talking about sexual orientation, but Santorum answers a question that wasn't even asked about sexual activity.

I'm straight. That is my sexual orientation. That doesn't mean I'm having sex all the time. I have friends who are gay. They have jobs, kids, hobbies, pets, they participate in their communities, they work for a living. Some gay people in America are soldiers. This does not mean that THEY are having sex constantly either.

That Rick Santorum can't seem to get that through his head tells us a lot about Republican sex scandals, and about why they feel they have to control the behavior of everyone else. It's because they are simply unable to control their own impulsivity, and they can't imagine how anyone else can.

The Smoker You Drink, The Player You Get

And teabagger "family values" representative Joe Walsh (Hypocrite - IL) is quite the player...so much that he's forgotten he has kids to support:

Tea party hero Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.) wants to wipe out the nation’s debt, but he’s got some major personal debt that his ex-wife is demanding he take care of — $117,437 in child support, according to a lawsuit reported by the Chicago Sun-Times.

The suit charges that Walsh enjoyed foreign vacations with his new girlfriend while claiming he couldn’t pay support for his three kids because he was out of work.

[snip]


Walsh’s attorney, R. Steven Polachek, told the Sun-Times the claim of unpaid child support is unfounded.

“I dispute that he owes the child support that she’s claiming or anywhere near that amount,” he said. “Joe Walsh hasn’t been a big-time wage-earner politician until recently — he’s had no more problems with child support than any other average guy.”

In other words, so-called anti-government deficit hawk Joe Walsh was just another unemployed loser until he lucked into a nice fat government-issued paycheck, augmented by nice campaign contributions from the companies at whose beck and call he serves.

And now, Joe Walsh's theme song, sung by the OTHER Joe Walsh -- you know, the one who ISN'T a useless hypocritical POS:

UPDATE: Great minds think alike.

GOP: The party of taking no responsibility

I'm not enough of a glutton for punishment to sit through Sarah Palin fielding softballs lobbed by Sean Hannity, but if you're interested in Madame It's All About Me's latest chapter in, well, It's All About Her, you can read about it here. For those who have forgotten, we had a president for eight years who never, ever, acknowledged a mistake, and look where that got us. If being as much of a dunderhead as Snowflake Nasnooki of the North (or the Texas Tool, for that matter) makes you infallible, then the Great White Alpha Male in the Sky either has a really sick sense of humor or doesn't warrant worship. Take responsibility for your words? Admit inappropriateness? Even if that would let you put it behind you? Nope. Being a Republican means never taking responsibility for your actions.

Now it applies to Congress as well. As Keith Olbermann pointed out, barely two months after crowing about how they now run Washington, the Republicans are now trying to back out of the kind of draconian spending cuts they claim to want -- by claiming they don't know nothin' about birthin' babies, Miz Scarlett -- that they have no power at all and have to wait for the president:

Meanwhile, here in the reality-based community, it's the Republicans who have largely been responsible for running up the debts we face today.

James Kwak:

I know this is a bit early, but I wanted to get some facts out there in advance of the debate. I picked five major bills in the past decade that have significantly increased the national debt: the 2001 tax cut, the 2003 tax cut, the 2003 Medicare prescription drug benefit, the 2009 stimulus, and the 2010 tax cut. (I left out the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars because it’s hard to pin down Congressional votes specifically authorizing their costs, in part because the famous Senate vote wasn’t actually a vote to go to war, in part because of the peculiar way the costs of the wars were budgeted.)

Then, for each of those bills, I looked up the CBO budget impact estimate made at the time. (Sources are at the bottom of this post.) Their costs, as projected at the time (and hence as knowable by members of Congress), were as follows. The first number is the ten-year cost; the number in parentheses is the portion of that cost through fiscal year 2011. Numbers are in billions.

* 2001 tax cut: $1,346 ($1,346)
* 2003 tax cut: $350 ($354 — the cut has a tiny deficit-reducing impact in its final years)
* Medicare Part D: $395 ($271). Note that I am not including the fact that the cost of this bill was almost immediately reestimated after it passed to be significantly higher, since that was not knowable to members of Congress when they voted.
* 2009 stimulus: $838 ($793)
* 2010 tax cut: $858 ($374)

That’s a total of $3.8 trillion — $3.1 trillion of it hitting the national debt by this year, and hence contributing directly to the need to raise the debt ceiling.

Then I looked up how current senators voted on these bills, whether they were in the Senate or the House at the time. For each senator, I added up how much of the current (2011) debt he could have voted for, and how many he did vote for. So, for example, Daniel Akaka (D-HI) was in the Senate for all five votes, so he was on the floor for $3.1 trillion in budget-busting bills; he voted for the last two, so he voted for $1.2 trillion, or 37 percent of what he could have voted for.

The results are predictable, but I still think worthy of noting, especially with all of the grandstanding that is going to happen.

Overall, current Democratic senators (including Sanders and Lieberman) had the opportunity to vote on $127 trillion of additional debt, and voted for $64 trillion, or 50 percent; current Republican senators had the opportunity to vote on $104 trillion of debt and voted for $70 trillion, or 67 percent.

The difference would have been greater except for trends in the composition of the Senate. Of current senators, the proportion in each party voting for each bill is as follows:

* 2001 tax cut: Democrats 18%, Republicans 93%
* 2003 tax cut: D 3%, R 94%
* Medicare Part D: D 17%, R 88%
* 2009 stimulus: D 100%, R 5%
* 2010 tax cut: D 77%, R 87%

So the typical Democratic vote pattern is N-N-N-Y-Y (I counted “present” and not voting as no votes — there were very few of these, anyway), which would mean voting for 37 percent of the total debt produced by these bills (just like Daniel Akaka). In fact, thirty-four Democrats were able to vote on all five bills, and twenty of them voted that way.

The typical Republican vote pattern is Y-Y-Y-N-Y, which means voting for 75 percent of the total debt. And, of the twenty-seven Republicans around for all five bills, eighteen of them voted that way.

The reason that the Republican-Democratic “debt responsibility” percentages are 67-50 instead of 75-37 is that not all senators have been in Congress for the past decade, and most of the ones who have only been there for a few years are Democrats. So there are many Democrats who were only in Congress for the last two votes, on which they typically voted Y-Y (100%), and a few Republicans who were only there for the last two votes, on which they typically voted N-Y (32%). So the facts that the Democrats’ budget-busting bills came later, and that I’m only looking at current senators, make the Democrats seem more profligate than their party has been as a whole, and vice-versa for Republicans.

The bottom line: As a party, the Republicans who will be railing against fiscal irresponsibility and threatening to block a raise in the debt limit are the irresponsible ones themselves who created the need to raise that debt limit. The Democrats can claim to be somewhat less irresponsible; more to the point, perhaps, insofar as they did vote to raise the debt, at least their current behavior (assuming that most support the administration and vote to raise the debt limit) is at least consistent with their past votes.

To the extent that Republicans are associated with "fiscal responsiblity", it's because the Democrats, in their inimitable way, have been too lazy, or too afraid, or too SOMETHING, to point this out. The Republicans are not, and have never been, the party of fiscal responsibility. They just scream that they are, and no one screams back. But then, Republicans never take responsibility for what they say, or what they do. Like the Pope, they regard themselves as infallible. Sarah Palin puts human beings in her crosshair metaphor and someone shoots them? Nothing wrong with what she did. John Ensign pays off the parents of his paramour while running as a family values Republican? Nothing wrong. Tom Delay is convicted of money-laundering? It's a political conviction. Republicans never, ever, ever admit to doing anything wrong. Instead they deflect blame to others: Liberals. Illegal immigrants. "The Lamestream Media." Markos Moulitsas (who very conveniently has a "foreign-sounding" name). Liquor. "Soulmates." Nothing they do is ever wrong, nothing they do is ever inappropriate. In the eyes of the GOP, well, to paraphrase Richard Nixon, if a Republican does it, then it is not wrong.

And yet this country continues to hand the car keys to the very same petulant drunk teenager who wraps the car around a tree and blames it on the kid who brought the beer.

Sorry, ladies, but you only get a free pass if the media thinks you're hot

I guess people are supposed to just vote blindly for Jan Brewer and Sharron Angle because of what they blather. Because being asked questions seems somehow "unfair" to stupid, moronic, ignorant candidates who might have to actually talk about their policies on the spur of the moment rather than just spout babbling talking points.

First it was Sharron Angle saying that reporters should only ask the questions her campaign wants them to:

Now, after her meltdown during her most recent debate where she couldn't talk about her own policies, Arizona governor Jan Brewer says she won't do any more debates:

Incumbent Republican Jan Brewer said Thursday she has no intention of participating in any more events with Democrat Terry Goddard. She said the only reason she debated him on Wednesday is she had to to qualify for more than $1.7 million in public funds for her campaign.

"I certainly will take my message in a different venue out to the people of Arizona," she said.

Brewer said she has been in elective office for 28 years, and Goddard has held office for nearly that long. "I think it's pretty defined what he stands for and what I stand for."

Anyway, Brewer said, she believes the debates help Goddard more than they benefit her.

"Why would I want to give Terry a chance to redefine himself?" she said.

Brewer conceded that her performance in Wednesday's debate, and her refusal to answer a question from reporters afterward, was not well-handled. That includes an opening statement when she lost her train of thought and went silent, and walking away after the event rather than answering questions about her prior statements about headless bodies in the desert.

Brewer blamed part of her post-debate activities on her gaffe in her opening statement. The governor also said she presumed reporters would want to talk to her about some of the issues raised during the hour-long, televised debate.

"All you guys were doing and talking were beheadings, beheadings, beheadings," the governor said. "That is something that has stuck with you all for so long, and I just felt we needed to move on."

The subject came up during an exchange in which Brewer said unions are to blame for financial fallout over illegal immigration, calling on Goddard to disavow unions' support because they have called for boycotts of the state.

Goddard responded that it is actually Brewer scaring off tourists with comments about headless bodies being found in the desert, for which there is no supporting evidence.

Brewer insisted later that she has been misquoted. "I never said 'Arizona,' and it's unfortunate that it was construed as 'Arizona.' "

It's hardly surprising that Angle and Brewer would be baffled that they don't get a free pass when they show that they don't know a damn thing. These people want to be able to just spout whatever horsepuckey pops into their heads -- spoiled Americans....beheadings....unemployment is useless....with absolutely no consequences. After all, Sarah Palin gets away with spouting meaningless babble composed entirely of disjointed talking points, why shouldn't they?

And indeed, that's an interesting question. There's no quantifiable difference between the kind of dangerous, ridiculous nonsense spouted by Angle and Brewer and that spouted by Palin -- except that Palin's comes out of a younger, more physically attractive package. You'd think that two women who have reached middle age in our society would have recognized that double standard already.

But the larger picture is that these Tea Party candidates are all about the sloganeering. It's like their minions who talk about wanting to vote for someone who "loves the Constitution" or "will govern by the Constitution" -- when most of them don't even know what's in it. They don't feel they should have to be coherent, or defend their policy plans. After all, Sarah doesn't have to, and she gets LOTS of fawning attention.

Because there are no more pressing problems

If you need further proof that Republicanism is completely bankrupt of policy ideas, here's Michele Bachmann's plan for Republican governance:

According to Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., the House Republicans should exercise their power to subpoena and hold continuous hearings. Speaking to a gathering for the GOP Youth Convention on July 22 in Washington, D.C., she emphasized this point.

“Oh, I think that’s all we should do,” Bachmann said. “I think that all we should do is issue subpoenas and have one hearing after another. And expose all the nonsense that is going on. And it’s very important when we come back that we have constitutional conservative leadership because the American people’s patience is about this big.”

Sort of like Michele Bachmann's brain. But there you have it, folks, as your wingnut relatives march off to the polls this November bound and determined to teach that Kenyan a lesson. No plans to revive the economy. No plans for how to deal with Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran. No plans for dealing with climate change (which they don't believe exists). No plans for anything, except trying once again to destroy a Democratic presidency. There's an Ahab and the Great White Whale joke in there somewhere, but I'm too dispirited to try and find it.

It's only big government when some other state gets the largesse

Some things are too hypocritical for even that hack Dana Milbank to ignore:

About 10:30 Monday morning, Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), an ardent foe of big government, posted a blog item on his campaign Web site about the huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. "I strongly believe BP is spread too thin," he wrote.

The poor dears. He thinks it would be a better arrangement if "federal and state officials" would do the dirty work of "protecting and cleaning up the coast" instead of BP.

About an hour later came word from the Pentagon that Alabama, Florida and Mississippi -- all three governed by men who once considered themselves limited-government conservatives -- want the federal government to mobilize (at taxpayer expense, of course) more National Guard troops to aid in the cleanup.

That followed an earlier request by the small-government governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal (R), who issued a statement saying he had called the Obama administration "to outline the state's needs" and to ask "for additional resources." Said Jindal: "These resources are critical."

About the time that Alabama, Florida and Mississippi were asking for more federal help, three small-government Republican senators, Richard Shelby and Jeff Sessions of Alabama and George LeMieux of Florida, were flying over the gulf on a U.S. government aircraft with small-government Republican Rep. Jeff Miller (Fla.).

"We're here to send the message that we're going to do everything we can from a federal level to mitigate this," Sessions said after the flight, "to protect the people and make sure when people are damaged that they're made whole."

Sessions, probably the Senate's most ardent supporter of tort reform, found himself extolling the virtues of litigation -- against BP. "They're not limited in liability on damage, so if you've suffered a damage, they are the responsible party," said Sessions, sounding very much like the trial lawyers he usually maligns.

All these limited-government guys expressed their belief that the British oil company would ultimately cover all the costs of the cleanup. "They're not too big to fail," Sessions said. "If they can't pay and they've given it everything they've got, then they should cease to exist." But if you believe that the federal government won't be on the hook for a major part of the costs, perhaps you'd like to buy a leaky oil well in the Gulf of Mexico.

It may have taken an ecological disaster, but the gulf-state conservatives' newfound respect for the powers and purse of the federal government is a timely reminder for them. As conservatives in Washington complain about excessive federal spending, the ones who would suffer the most from spending cuts are their own constituents.

Read on...it's definitely worth your time, as it points out how residents of the states which send these small-government demagogues receive a disproportionate amount of federal funds even when all is well. But don't think for one minute that the money we in the states that don't vote for these teabagger-coddling loons is going to change anything. The minute they get their hands on the cash, they'll be back to screaming that Obama is a socialist and we in the Godless heathen Jewish homosexual Communist northeast aren't "real" Americans.

Funny how no one's talking about the "Arnold Amendment" anymore

Remember when there was a big push among Republicans to introduce and pass a Constitutional Amendment that would allow non-native-born Americans to be President. It was all because back then, Arnold Schwarzenegger was a big hero to Republicans, so why NOT change the Constitution to allow it? In 2003, none other than Orrin Hatch introduced legislation to amend the Constitution to allow anyone who's lived in the U.S. for twenty years to be President. It seems almost quaint now, in an age when Republicans are joining the "birther" chorus, led by the unhinged Orly Taitz, that somehow Barack Obama is a fearsome "Other" who seized his office unlawfully. What's even more quaint is that in 2004, the Amendment was branded the "Equal Opportunity to Govern Amendment" and the Hatch-led Senate Judiciary Committee hearing into such an Amendment was branded "Maximizing Voter Choice: Opening the Presidency to Naturalized Americans."

Heh. Republicans interested in maximizing voter choice? I guess that's why only a month after this article ran, Republicans in Ohio made damn sure that there would not be enough voting machines in Democratic districts. But once the apparatus was in place for making sure George W. Bush could be re-elected, it was all about looking ahead to clear a path for Ah-nuld.

How times change:

he California Republican Party will hold its state convention this weekend, but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will not be lending his star power to the event.

The Republican governor told reporters Tuesday he would not be attending the three-day convention in Santa Clara because he "can't be in two places at the same time."

Schwarzenegger declined to say where he would be. His spokesman said only that the governor had a prior commitment.

Did someone call her schnorrer? Hooray hooray hooray*

If Sarah Palin ever becomes president, they'd better count the plates in the White House china:

Sarah Palin and her entourage descended "like locusts" on the Oscar swag suite, scarfing up freebies in a binge that "practically cleaned the place out," celebrity gossips reported Thursday.

The former Alaska Gov's Wednesday pigout included jewels from Pascal Mouawad, watches by Skagen and a fancy new hairdo for her daughter Willow. The new coiffure came courtesy of Erick Orellana, Jennifer Aniston's longtime hairstylist, witnesses said.

The Los Angeles Times reported Palin was supposed to donate all of her gift items back to the Silver Spoon Oscar Suite for auction, as well as $1,700 of her own cash, in support of Red Cross efforts in Haiti and Chile.

But E! Online insisted, "we can assure you she did not give up any of her swag."

She's the perfect Republican -- opportunistic, heartless, and greedy.

It isn't even the tyranny of the minority anymore

The dysfunction of the Senate isn't even about the tyranny of the 42-seat Republican minority anymore. Now a single Republican Senator for whom ideology and the desire to topple Barack Obama trumps everything can send hundreds of thousands of the unemployed a step further down a road to ruin from which they may never be able to return:

Jim Bunning, a Republican from Kentucky, is single-handedly blocking Senate action needed to prevent an estimated 1.2 million American workers from prematurely losing their unemployment benefits next month.

As Democratic senators asked again and again for unanimous consent for a vote on a 30-day extension Thursday night, Bunning refused to go along.

And when Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) begged him to drop his objection, Politico reports, Bunning replied: "Tough shit."

Bunning says he doesn't oppose extending benefits -- he just doesn't want the money that's required added to the deficit. He proposes paying for the 30-day extension with stimulus funds. The Senate's GOP leadership did not support him in his objections.

And at one point during the debate, which dragged on till nearly midnight, Bunning complained of missing a basketball game.

"I have missed the Kentucky-South Carolina game that started at 9:00," he said,
"and it's the only redeeming chance we had to beat South Carolina since they're the only team that has beat Kentucky this year.

Poor Jim Bunning. He had to miss a college basketball game rather than debate whether hundreds of thousands of people who have lost their jobs can continue to pay their bills and put food on the table.

Funny how Jim Bunning didn't care about deficits when he introduced a bill authorizing George W. Bush to invade Iraq based on a bunch of trumped-up horseshit. He didn't care about deficits when voting for the Bush tax cuts. But when it comes to help for Americans who need it, he's on the wrong side every single time:

* 2005 -- Voted WITH the credit-card industry on the bankruptcy bill.

* 2005 -- Voted WITH oil companies by giving them more tax breaks.

* 2006 -- Voted FOR higher deficits by extending the Bush Tax Cuts.

* 2007 -- Voted AGAINST children by opposing S-CHIP.

* 2008 -- Voted AGAINST helping people facing foreclosure.

* 2009 -- Voted AGAINST women by opposing the Ledbetter Act.

* 2009 -- Voted AGAINST children again by opposing S-CHIP.

* 2010 -- Voted AGAINST reducing the debt by opposing the Debt Commission.

Kentucky, the state which for some bizarre reason sends this guy back to the Senate every six years, has the 4th lowest per capita income. Only Mississippi, West Virginia, and Arkansas are worse off. More than one in ten Kentucky workers is unemployed. And yet Jim Bunning opposes help for his own constituents (if you want to assume that the citizens of Kentucky are still his constituents, which is doubtful).

As the New York Times noted yesterday, Bunning didn't care about the impact of unemployment compensation on deficits while George W. Bush was in the White House. His "come to Jesus" moment on deficits seems to have miraculously coincided with the inauguration of a Democratic President:

Senator Bunning once cared about the unemployed. When the benefit was due to expire in November, he joined a unanimous vote to extend it until the end of February. “Kentucky has been hit hard by the current economic downturn,” he said at the time. It still is, but Mr. Bunning refused to consider the extension unless it was paid for with funds from the fiscal stimulus plan. For years, Mr. Bunning didn’t seem to have a problem with blowing up the deficit for the Iraq war and tax cuts. Now he’s a deficit hawk when it comes to average Americans.

This is the cancer that has infected the Republican Party. For them ideology trumps everything. If it takes destroying the country to regain power, they're perfectly willing to do so, even if what they end up presiding over is a hollowed-out, burnt-out shell of a nation. It's ALL about ideology. It's ALL about power.

I'd be tempted to say that if the citizens of Kentucky are stupid enough to bote for guys like Jim Bunning and Mitch McConnell, then they deserve to be put out of their homes and hungry. But I live in a district with a Congressman, Scott Garrett, who was an "Udeology Über Alles" adherent long before it was fashionable -- and this district keeps sending him back to Congress because they either still think Marge Roukema is their representative, they aren't paying attention and reading the truth behind his "I'm working for you" mailings sent every month at our expense, or they are registered Republicans and here in New Jersey, our ballots encourage party-line voting. This year it looks like the Democrats aren't even going to bother to field a candidate.

Once a government official becomes entrenched, he controls his own message, because voters simply do not pay attention to what their so-called representatives in Washington are actually doing. We can shrug our shoulders at the Kentuckyans who seem to think that electing someone who votes against their interests every time won't be relevant once they get invited into the Club of the Rich that Ronnie Reagan told them they could get into if they Just Work Hard Enough (never noting that most of those in the Club of the Rich got there through inherited money or by being nothing but middlemen), or at the New Jerseyans who still think they're voting for Marge Roukema even though it says "Scott Garrett" on the ballot -- except that their delusion affects us all.

What part of They Want Him to Fail does Obama not understand?

Either Barack Obama really enjoys being kicked in the teeth, or he wants to make sure Republicans share the blame when health care reform fails. Those are the only two explanations for this:

President Obama said Sunday that he would convene a half-day bipartisan health care session at the White House to be televised live this month, a high-profile gambit that will allow Americans to watch as Democrats and Republicans try to break their political impasse.

Mr. Obama made the announcement in an interview on CBS during the Super Bowl pre-game show, capitalizing on a vast television audience. He set out a plan that would put Republicans on the spot to offer their own ideas on health care and show whether both sides are willing to work together.

“I want to come back and have a large meeting, Republicans and Democrats, to go through systematically all the best ideas that are out there and move it forward,” Mr. Obama said in the interview from the White House Library.

Mr. Obama challenged Republicans to attend the meeting with their plans for lowering the cost of health insurance and expanding coverage to more than 30 million uninsured Americans. Republican leaders said they welcomed the opportunity and called on Democrats to start the debate from scratch, which the president said he would not do.

Politically it may benefit Obama for the Republicans to be seen as simply obstructionist. But the longing for bipartisanship is something that does not exist in the American public, or at least it didn't until he started looking like a complete wuss for continuing to seek common ground with people who want him impeached as ineligible to be president, jailed for being a terrorist, or dead -- and that's the Republicoteabag party in a nutshell. Bipartisanship is a longing by the talking heads of the media, not by people whose lives and livelihoods are threatened by ever-spiraling health care costs. Like calling for a three-year freeze in spending that would be the WORST thing to do for a still-sputtering economy, this has the smell of utter, abject, bullshit fear about it. And we all know that when Republicans smell fear, they go into a feeding frenzy.

Let's not hear any more about fiscally responsible Republicans, shall we?

Republicans always like to talk about how they are the party of fiscal responsibility, and how opposed they are to earmarks. Perhaps, then, one of them would like to explain how holding up the President's nominations until you get the earmarks you want is fiscal conservatism:

Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) has put an extraordinary "blanket hold" on at least 70 nominations President Obama has sent to the Senate, according to multiple reports this evening. The hold means no nominations can move forward unless Senate Democrats can secure a 60-member cloture vote to break it, or until Shelby lifts the hold.

"While holds are frequent," CongressDaily's Dan Friedman and Megan Scully report (sub. req.), "Senate aides said a blanket hold represents a far more aggressive use of the power than is normal."

The Mobile Press-Register picked up the story early this afternoon. The paper confirmed Reid's account of the hold, and reported that a Shelby spokesperson "did not immediately respond to phone and e-mail messages seeking confirmation of the senator's action or his reason for doing so."

Shelby has been tight-lipped about the holds, offering only an unnamed spokesperson to reporters today to explain them. Aides to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid broke the news of the blanket hold this afternoon. Reid aides told CongressDaily the hold extends to "all executive nominations on the Senate calendar."

According to the report, Shelby is holding Obama's nominees hostage until a pair of lucrative programs that would send billions in taxpayer dollars to his home state get back on track. The two programs Shelby wants to move forward or else:

- A $40 billion contract to build air-to-air refueling tankers. From CongressDaily: "Northrop/EADS team would build the planes in Mobile, Ala., but has threatened to pull out of the competition unless the Air Force makes changes to a draft request for proposals." Federal Times offers more details on the tanker deal, and also confirms its connection to the hold.

- An improvised explosive device testing lab for the FBI. From CongressDaily: "[Shelby] is frustrated that the Obama administration won't build" the center, which Shelby earmarked $45 million for in 2008. The center is due to be based "at the Army's Redstone Arsenal."

Though a Shelby spokesperson would not confirm that these programs were behind the blanket hold, the Senator expressed his frustration about the progress on both through a spokesperson to both CongressDaily and the Federal Times.

A San Diego State University professor and Congressional expert told the Mobile paper "he knew of no previous use of a blanket hold" in recent history.

I guess a corollary of the IOKIYAR rule is "It's not an earmark, it's a vital program, if you're a Republican."

Tom Coburn gets an early start on celebrating the birth of the Prince of Peace....

...by praying for Sen. Robert Byrd to die so that the Harry Reid's manager's amendment to health care bill would fail:

Going into Monday morning's crucial Senate vote on health-care legislation, Republican chances for defeating the bill had come down to a last, macabre hope. They needed one Democratic senator to die -- or at least become incapacitated.

At 4 p.m. Sunday afternoon -- nine hours before the 1 a.m. vote that would effectively clinch the legislation's passage -- Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) went to the Senate floor to propose a prayer. "What the American people ought to pray is that somebody can't make the vote tonight," he said. "That's what they ought to pray."

It was difficult to escape the conclusion that Coburn was referring to the 92-year-old, wheelchair-bound Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.V.) who has been in and out of hospitals and lay at home ailing. It would not be easy for Byrd to get out of bed in the wee hours with deep snow on the ground and ice on the roads -- but without his vote, Democrats wouldn't have the 60 they needed.

Nice. But then, Coburn is a C Street House frat boy and "Family" member, and their perversion of Christianity is all about their own wealth and power, and has nothing to do with the teachings of Joshua of Nazareth.

Now I don't much care for this health care bill in its current form. I don't like purchase mandates without industry price regulation. I don't like throwing women's health care under the bus. And I don't like that there's no requirement that insurance companies actually pay claims. But when people who make their reputations on preaching about morality are praying for others to die, I think we have to call them out for the beasts that they are.

The Great Orange Satan takes down Tom Tancredo

While I respect what the Great Orange Satan has done, I have to admit that I think he's a bit of a jerk. I met him at a book signing a few years ago and he couldn't wrap his mind around the idea that this pudgy middle-aged Jewish lady was a blogger instead of, as he insisted, the keeper of a bed & breakfast (which is what he thought the name of this blog meant.)

That said, dweeby little Markos Moulitsas deserves applause for so effectively eviscerating faux tough-guy Tom Tancredo on The Ed Show yesterday without even breaking a sweat:

Mr. President, THAT is how it's done.

If the Republicans keep this up there won't be anyone left to support them

Let's see, they've alienated Black and Latino Americans already, and today they may have just eliminated the women:

“General Pelosi has no problem sacrificing her own credibility as the Obama administration and liberals in Congress attempt to walk back a strategy they strongly advocated just months ago,” said NRCC Communications Director Ken Spain. “Nancy Pelosi continues to make party politics a higher priority than our national security. Rather than listening to a four-star general’s assessments on Afghanistan, General Pelosi somehow believes she is better suited to craft our country’s military policy.”

If Nancy Pelosi’s failed economic policies are any indicator of the effect she may have on Afghanistan, taxpayers can only hope McChrystal is able to put her in her place.

Yes, folks, this is the Republicans' new theme song for its female outreach:

Lost in the hoopla over the public option...

While the news media were covering the defeat of two public option proposals in the Senate and whether Alan Grayson is a big old meanie who should apologize to the wee sensitive frail souls in the Republican Party, the Senate Finance Committee -- yes, the one chaired by Max "Wholly-Owned Subsidiary Of The Insurance Industry" Baucus, voted to restore funding for abstinence-only education.

Yes, folks, while Republicans scream about pork and about wise expenditures of federal tax money, they're voting to teach kids "Just Don't Do It." Republicrats Blanche Lincoln (Arkansas) and Kent Conrad (North Dakota) voted with the pearl-clutchers on the right -- you know, the ones who embrace the moral family values of David Vitter and John Ensign while telling teenagers not to fuck.

There's no excuse for continuing these programs, which have shown to be ineffective in preventing teen sexual activity, other than the Republican obsession with teen sex -- perhaps because their own sexual maturity level is about at the level of your average 15-year-old boy:

A long-awaited national study has concluded that abstinence-only sex education, a cornerstone of the Bush administration's social agenda, does not keep teenagers from having sex. Neither does it increase or decrease the likelihood that if they do have sex, they will use a condom.

Authorized by Congress in 1997, the study followed 2000 children from elementary or middle school into high school. The children lived in four communities -- two urban, two rural. All of the children received the family life services available in their community, in addition, slightly more than half of them also received abstinence-only education.

By the end of the study, when the average child was just shy of 17, half of both groups had remained abstinent. The sexually active teenagers had sex the first time at about age 15. Less than a quarter of them, in both groups, reported using a condom every time they had sex. More than a third of both groups had two or more partners.

"There's not a lot of good news here for people who pin their hopes on abstinence-only education," said Sarah Brown, executive director of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, a privately funded organization that monitors sex education programs. "This is the first study with a solid, experimental design, the first with adequate numbers and long-term follow-up, the first to measure behavior and not just intent. On every measure, the effectiveness of the programs was flat."

They sure spend a lot of time obsessing about teen sex, these Republicans. Perhaps that's why they can't be bothered working to come up with some kind of viable health care reform -- they're too busy getting in touch with their own inner Roman Polanski.

Threatening lawsuits over tort reform is like fucking for virginity

You can't make this stuff up:

While they still believe Congress will not succeed in passing a healthcare reform package shaped the way the president and Democrats want, opponents of government-run healthcare are laying the groundwork for lawsuits to stall and eventually kill any Democratic legislative victory—just in case. A broad group of conservatives has begun to explore how to file such lawsuits, who would file them, and what components of the legislation would be challenged, if not all of it. Because the effort is in the initial stages, none of those involved would allow Washington Whispers to identify them.

The first task, the conservatives say, is to find people or groups "with standing" to file the suits. They don't expect, however, that identifying groups or employers will be difficult if the mandate to require people to buy health insurance ends up in the final bill. Most of the conservatives involved say that the mandate amounts to a tax and that it will be fought on constitutional grounds. Also, the lawsuits won't be filed just in federal court in Washington. Sources say the suits will also be filed in most states and in as many courts as possible to avoid putting all eggs "in just a few baskets."

Mr. Wilson, your fifteen minutes have started....and they're not going to be pretty

If your name is "Mr. Wilson" and you're an elected official and you're going to start screaming at the President during a nationally-televised speech because you think it's going to somehow make the Terminally Stupid who constitute your base think you're a swell guy, then we have no choice but to post clips of Walter Matthau as Dennis the Menace's nemesis:

...except that Wilson is more like Don Rickles as Mr. Wilson than like the crusty-but-lovable Walter Matthau.

Because there's nothing lovable about Rep. Joe Wilson.

This yahoo has apologized, but that doesn't absolve him. We aren't Jesus, and we don't let him off the hook that easily. So there's one thing to do about Rep. Joe Wilson, and that's send him back to the primordial ooze from which he came. You know what to do.

Why not just say "It's OK If You're a Republican" and be done with it?

John Ensign -- The Biggest Fucking Hypocrite in the Country Not Named 'Mark Sanford':

When President Bill Clinton's relationship with a White House intern erupted a decade ago, Sen. John Ensign called for his resignation.

But the Nevada Republican says that situation is different from one he faces after admitting to an extramarital affair with a former campaign aide. Ensign told The Associated Press that he didn't lie under oath like Clinton did and that he hasn't "done anything legally wrong."

"President Clinton stood right before the American people and he lied to the American people," Ensign said. "You remember that famous day he lied to the American people, plus the fact I thought he suborned perjury. That's why I voted for the articles of impeachment."

Ensign made the remarks Wednesday before speaking at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon in rural Fernley.

The event was Ensign's first public appearance in his home state since acknowledging in June that he had an affair with his friend's wife, former campaign aide Cynthia Hampton.

"I think it would be inappropriate to start any other way than to say I'm sorry," Ensign said. "I've said I'm sorry. I can't say I'm sorry enough. I made a big mistake in my life and I apologize once again to all of you."

Coming next week: John Ensign explains how a Jewish carpenter who said we should be nice to each other and take care of the poor got nailed to a cross 2000 years ago and that means he can do whatever the hell he want because he believes when that Jewish carpenter was murdered, he somehow absorbed all the sins of all who believe this for all eternity.

And the week after that he'll explain how he was specifically targeted by Satan because Satan and God are engaged in this perpetual game of Skee-Ball at an arcade in Keansburg, NJ and Satan gets extra bonus points for tempting believing Christians and getting them to stray from their spouses.

Grab the popcorn.

Another Clean Slate Christian™ gets nabbed

Another day, another Republican Christian hypocrite:

A Tennessee lawmaker resigned from the state Senate on Tuesday after his extramarital affair with a 22-year-old intern was revealed by an investigation into an extortion case.

"Due to recent events, I have decided to focus my full attention on my family and resign my Senate seat effective August 10," Republican Sen. Paul Stanley wrote in his resignation letter.

Court records show that Stanley, 47, told agents investigating a blackmail case that he had a sexual relationship with intern McKensie Morrison. Her boyfriend, Joel Watts, is charged with trying to extort $10,000 from Stanley in April in return for explicit photos of Morrison that Stanley had taken.

[snip]

Stanley's legislative proposals were largely focused on pro-business issues, but he also sponsored failed measures to ban gay couples from adopting children. He also spoke out against funding for Planned Parenthood because he said unmarried people should not have sex.

"Whatever I stood for and advocated, I still believe to be true," he said during an interview Tuesday with Memphis radio station WREC-AM. "And just because I fell far short of what God's standard was for me and my wife, doesn't mean that that standard is reduced in the least bit."

I wonder if he went on to say that Jesus died on the cross for him so he knows God has forgiven him. He does, after all, self-identify as an "evangelical Christian."

You know, even if you want to assume for a minute that one guy who was murdered by the government could absorb all the sins of mankind in perpetuity, you'd think that if these people were so aware of how much a Jewish carpenter suffered for them, they would feel a special responsibility to look at the juicy young thing in the miniskirt and then look the other way.

Oh, and another Fun Fact about Rep. Paul Stanley: He is a "financial advisor" to The Stanford Group, the company founded and headed by disgraced and indicted financial swindler Allan Stanford. He even still boasts of this on his web site.

Remind me again why anyone takes Republicans seriously....

(h/t)

An introduction to the C Street House power structure

If you lack the time (like me) or inclination (you shouldn't) to read Jeff Sharlet's book about the hypocritical scumbags who constitute the denizens of the C Street House and its lunatic fraternity "The Family", I recommend that you read Sharlet's article about exactly what these people who actually hold elective office in this country believe. A sampler (emphases mine):

The Family likes to call itself a "Christian Mafia," but it began 74 years ago as an anti-New Deal coalition of businessmen convinced that organized labor was under the sway of Satan. The Great Depression, they believed, was a punishment from God for what they viewed as FDR's socialism. The Family's goal was the "consecration" of America to God, first through the repeal of New Deal reforms, then through the aggressive expansion of American power during the Cold War. They called this a "Worldwide Spiritual Offensive," but in Washington, it amounted to the nation's first fundamentalist lobby. Early participants included Southern Sens. Strom Thurmond, Herman Talmadge and Absalom Willis Robertson -- Pat Robertson's father. Membership lists stored in the Family's archive at the Billy Graham Center at evangelical Wheaton College in Illinois show active participation at any given time over the years by dozens of congressmen.

[snip]

I met the younger Coe when I lived for several weeks as a member of the Family. He's a surprising source of counsel, spiritual or otherwise. Attempting to explain what it means to be chosen for leadership like King David was -- or Mark Sanford, according to his own estimate -- he asked a young man who'd put himself, body and soul, under the Family's authority, "Let's say I hear you raped three little girls. What would I think of you?" The man guessed that Coe would probably think that he was a monster. "No," answered Coe, "I wouldn't." Why? Because, as a member of the Family, he's among what Family leaders refer to as the "new chosen." If you're chosen, the normal rules don't apply.

I've heard of "clean slate Christianity", in which no deeds are heinous as long as you believe a story someone tells you about a Jewish carpenter who got nailed to a cross two thousand years ago so you can indulge all your impulses like a two-year-old; but this elevates that form of hypocrisy masquerading as religion to an even new level: Not only are you forgiven for even the most heinous sins, but because you are chosen by God to rule the earth, normal rules don't even apply. There's nothing to forgive, because for The Family, there is no sin and anything goes.

Let me repeat: And these are people who wield power over your life. These are the people who are saying you can't get married if you're gay; you can't have an abortion if your contraception fails, you can't even use contraception. These are the people who want their twisted sickness taught in the public schools. These are the people the media suck up to, inviting them to spew their filth on national television and call it "policy."

Here's a quoted list from the article of the other people in Congress who are members of this twisted cult of would-be despots. If you are represented by one of these people, you might want to tell your friends what they're putting in office:

Men under the Family's religio-political counsel include, in addition to Ensign, Coburn and Pickering, Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Jim DeMint and Lindsey Graham, both R-S.C.; James Inhofe, R-Okla., John Thune, R-S.D., and recent senators and high officials such as John Ashcroft, Ed Meese, Pete Domenici and Don Nickles. Over in the House there's Joe Pitts, R-Penn., Frank Wolf, R-Va., Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., Ander Crenshaw, R-Fla., Todd Tiahrt, R-Kan., Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., Jo Ann Emerson, R-Mo., and John R. Carter, R-Texas. Historically, the Family has been strongly Republican, but it includes Democrats, too. There's Mike McIntyre of North Carolina, for instance, a vocal defender of putting the Ten Commandments in public places, and Sen. Mark Pryor, the pro-war Arkansas Democrat responsible for scuttling Obama's labor agenda. Sen. Pryor explained to me the meaning of bipartisanship he'd learned through the Family: "Jesus didn't come to take sides. He came to take over." And by Jesus, the Family means the Family.