Red light, green light, 1, 2, 3...

By Carl 

So it seems that the historic bipartisan budget deal in the House last week – historic, in that it's been years since we didn't just pass a Continuing Resolution to fund the government – is falling on enough deaf ears in the Senate to be a problem:

The prospect that the budget would clear the cloture hurdle brightened Monday, when three GOP senators -- Orrin Hatch of Utah, Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss of Georgia -- announced that they would vote yes. A fourth, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, expressed his support on Sunday. Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake of Arizona also said they would vote in favor of cloture last week.

But unlike in the House, where Speaker John Boehner aggressively battled conservative groups trying to kill the bill, GOP leaders in the Senate are signaling opposition, or at least resistance, to the package.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has not said which way he will vote Tuesday, but he is widely expected to oppose the measure. Similarly, Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn of Texas announced his opposition Monday morning on his campaign's website -- a step his Senate office was unwilling to take. It was later deleted after reporters from The Associated Press asked for confirmation of a Cornyn quote that appeared on the Internet site Breitbart.com.

"Senator Cornyn opposes this budget deal because it breaks previously set spending caps and goes in the 'wrong direction' with regards to entitlement spending," according to the post. His Senate spokeswoman, Kate Martin, would only say that Cornyn would take "a close look" at the measure and is "concerned" that it reverses some of the spending cuts won in a hard-fought 2011 budget pact.

Interesting. It appears that hard-line conservatives in the Senate have drawn a line in the sand. The political implications of this are larger than the legislative implications (the bill overcomes any filibuster and becomes law, with minor amendments).

For one thing, the Republican nominee-apparent, Paul Ryan (by dint of running as the Veep candidate with Mitt Romney), was one of the driving forces behind this deal. The thinking on his part had to include a calculation of the national political implications of being out in front of a bipartisan budget bill ahead of an election that will likely feature Chris Christie, who's main attraction is his ability to bring Democrats on board with his agenda.

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Oh Drat

By Mustang Bobby

David Barton isn’t going to primary Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX).

Controversial Evangelical author David Barton just announced that he won’t challenge Senator John Cornyn in the 2014 Texas Senate primary. On Glenn Beck’s radio show this morning, he told Beck’s listeners that, though the primary is “winnable,” the timing isn’t right for him.

“What can I do to talk you into this?” asked Beck, disappointed.

Louie Gohmert doesn’t want to run, either. (And he could probably win.) So the clown car will have to move on to some other place.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Behind the Ad: Texas Sen. John Cornyn goes all science fiction

By Richard K. Barry

Who: Senator John Cornyn

Where: Texas (web ad)

What's going on: Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, is up for reelection next year. In this ad, which is just over a minute long, a dystopian image of what will happen in Texas should it become a blue state is what we see.

Apparently the piece is a swipe at "Battleground Texas," a group led by Obama campaign veterans who would very much like to turn Texas blue. 

Should Democrats take over, the "Texas miracle" will be over, the ad intones, as more people leave the state than ever before with skyrocketing taxes and a lack of energy jobs due to new environmental regulations. And what's more, there will be higher taxes, higher unemployment and a government drowning in debt. You can count on it. 

And you might not even be able to shoot anybody for messin' with Texas. 

If nothing else, Cornyn gets high marks for successfully mimicking a really bad undergraduate film school project. 

Sabotaging Obamacare: The reductio ad absurdum of Republican extremism and obstructionism

By Michael J.W. Stickings

As long-time Congress-watcher Norm Ornstein (a self-defined centrist who actually works at the right-wing American Enterprise Institute) writes:

When a law is enacted, representatives who opposed it have some choices (which are not mutually exclusive). They can try to repeal it, which is perfectly acceptable -- unless it becomes an effort at grandstanding so overdone that it detracts from other basic responsibilities of governing. They can try to amend it to make it work better -- not just perfectly acceptable but desirable, if the goal is to improve a cumbersome law to work better for the betterment of the society and its people. They can strive to make sure that the law does the most for Americans it is intended to serve, including their own constituents, while doing the least damage to the society and the economy. Or they can step aside and leave the burden of implementation to those who supported the law and got it enacted in the first place.

But to do everything possible to undercut and destroy its implementation -- which in this case means finding ways to deny coverage to many who lack any health insurance; to keep millions who might be able to get better and cheaper coverage in the dark about their new options; to create disruption for the health providers who are trying to implement the law, including insurers, hospitals, and physicians; to threaten the even greater disruption via a government shutdown or breach of the debt limit in order to blackmail the president into abandoning the law; and to hope to benefit politically from all the resulting turmoil -- is simply unacceptable, even contemptible. One might expect this kind of behavior from a few grenade-throwing firebrands. That the effort is spearheaded by the Republican leaders of the House and Senate -- even if Speaker John Boehner is motivated by fear of his caucus, and McConnell and Cornyn by fear of Kentucky and Texas Republican activists -- takes one's breath away.

It does, and it may be unprecedented, but it's now par for the course for Republicans, the disloyal opposition.

It's the jobs, stupid

By Frank Moraes 

In December, the economy added 155,000 new jobs. As usual, the private sector job growth was better (168,000), but we lost government jobs (13,000). These are not great numbers. The government really ought to do something about this. And contrary to what many people believe, there is much that the government could do. Unfortunately, the Republicans are in favor of policies that make both the economy weaker and the budget deficit worse. The Democrats have some decent ideas. President Obama's American Jobs Act would help quite a lot. But it is only a start.

I don't think that people understand just how big a problem we face. The problem is largely due to the media. While the base unemployment rate was as high as 10%, all we heard about was the budget -- as though that was the most important thing in the world. If it hadn't been for the police abusing Occupy Wall Street protesters, we'd never have talked about jobs. And now, it seems we are back to fretting over the budget again.

So how big is the unemployment problem?

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Akin's in it to win it

By Mustang Bobby

(Ed. note: Of course, this Republican opposition to Akin is just posturing. They're doing it because he's made himself toxic and is polluting the Republican brand. (Akin is, or at least was, well up in the polls and might still win this thing, though it will be more difficult without overt party support.) And of course all these Republicans want him to win. And if he does, he'll just move his extremism from one house to the other, settling in comfortably with his new senatorial colleagues. And this will all be a thing of the past, one more example of Republican craziness blending in with all the rest. -- MJWS)

Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) is staying in the Missouri Senate race despite calls from every Republican in and out of office to get the hell out for speaking plainly about the party's stand on life and women:

Mitt Romney, the GOP's presidential standard-bearer, joined a broad chorus of Republicans urging Akin to step aside for the good of his party. "Todd Akin's comments were offensive and wrong, and he should very seriously consider what course would be in the best interest of our country," Romney said.

But after two days of apologizing, Akin grew angry Tuesday, allowing a deadline to pass on an easier way to withdraw from the contest. The congressman made clear that he would not apologize for his belief that abortion should be illegal, even in cases of rape.

"I misspoke one word in one sentence in one day," he said on a radio talk show hosted by former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee. "I haven't done anything that's morally and ethically wrong."

[...]

Immediately after his appearance on Huckabee's show, party leaders who had been sending Akin signals to quit the race left no doubt about where they stood.

"When the future of our country is at stake, sorry is not sufficient. To continue serving his country in the honorable way he has served throughout his career, it is time for Congressman Akin to step aside," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.).

A few hours later, Romney issued his statement calling on Akin to drop out. He was followed by Sen. John Cornyn, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, who reaffirmed plans to abandon a $5 million campaign for Akin. "If he continues with this misguided campaign, it will be without the support and resources of the NRSC," said Brian Walsh, an NRSC spokesman.

And he blamed the liberal media for all of his troubles, of course. That would include Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.

The real liberal media would much rather Mr. Akin stay in the race; he's the poster child for the Republican Party's pro-life stand. After all, they've just adopted a plank in their platform that calls for a constitutional amendment to grant personhood status to a one-celled organism and no abortions at all ever.

As far as I can tell, Mr. Akin is the most honest spokesman the GOP has. 

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Craziest Republican of the Day: Jim DeMint

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The right-wing senator from South Carolina isn't happy with the direction of the GOP:

The problem in the Republican Party is that the leadership has gone to the left. I need some new Republicans.

Really? To the left? Well, perhaps so, relatively speaking. After all, one can be to the left of an extremist like DeMint and still be extremely conservative.

DeMint's comments come as party leaders such as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) chairman John Cornyn (R-Texas), and RNC chairman Michael Steele have come under fire from several conservative bloggers and conservative grassroots activists.

They argue that they have not done enough to thwart the Democratic legislative agenda and to back conservative candidates running in primary elections.

Those on the right point to some establishment Republicans' initial support for state Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava (R-N.Y.) instead of Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman the New York special House election.

Conservatives have also rallied around former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio (R) instead of Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (R), the NRSC's choice in the state's GOP Senate primary.

True, there is something of a civil war going on in the Republican Party, along with a push for purity on the right, and so it's understandable, perhaps, that DeMint is complaining that the party leadership isn't rightist enough for his liking.

Indeed, while DeMint is certainly crazy, say, to think that what the GOP needs is to be even more extreme than it is now -- that is, crazy in the sense that what he wants wouldn't be good for Republicans (if good for those of us on the other side) -- but, given the current state of the GOP, he may actually be more genuinely Republican, more authentic, than those Republicans to his left, however conservative those others may be.

I mean, come on, McConnell and Cornyn? Hardly a couple of lefties. They may be slightly to DeMint's left, sure, but what concerns such Republicans, those DeMint wishes to replace with his own kind, is not just ideological purity but electoral success, and that means a bigger tent than the one DeMint would have the GOP be. I don't want to give McConnell et al. much in the way of credit -- they hardly bear much resemblance to the moderates who once ruled the party -- but I do recognize that some in the GOP leadership are working to build up the party, not reduce it to a narrow sliver on the far right.

Again, though, DeMint seems to be in tune with the Republican Zeitgeist, which is all about rigid right-wing extremism. And so, while crazy, he's about as dedicated a partisan as they come.

A day in the life of Ivan Cornysovitch

By Capt. Fogg

I guess Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) is trying to cornhole us again. I imagine that he woke up early one morning and realized there was another absurd, extreme, preposterous, shameful, ridiculous, and grotesque simile he hadn't used yet to vilify any health care reform that doesn't appeal to the corporate overlords he serves. We've already heard about "death panels" and how extending the program that Cornyn benefits from to the rest of us, is just like Pol Pot's killing fields and Hitler's death camps. Somehow he'd overlooked Stalin's Gulag Archipelago, and it's important we hear about it right away.

You see, the problem is that the Democrats aren't accepting "input" from the Republicans although it's pretty clear that the only "input" he or they have offered is to drop the damn subject. Still it's hard to understand why Tex himself isn't trying to escape from that death camp of federal employee insurance that just might kill him at any time now.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Deep in the Cornyn hole of Texas

By Capt. Fogg

I got an e-mail from Texas Senator John Cornyn this morning. Somehow I had the urge to take another shower. In the relentless crusade to mock, rebuke, deride, insult, sneer at, and taunt the "opposition," Cornyn is an endless cornucopia of crepuscular reasoning and shady opinions, such as his assertion that the "delays" in supplying Texas and the United States with hundreds of millions of H1N1 vaccinations argue against the public option in health-care reform:

These delays and limited access make me question whether the government, which cannot run existing public health programs competently, should be trusted with even more responsibility – such as running a new government health plan. [italics mine]

Of course, Cornyn doesn't give examples of how the government can't run health care, either from Medicare, the Veteran's Administration, or indeed from the government health care Cornyn and his cronies enjoy. Of course, he doesn't have to, he's preaching to Republicans -- a faith-based group who never seem to question the tenebrous tenets of that faith. The Government just can't do anything right: Reagan said so and the Republicans are hell-bent for leather to make sure it's self-fulfilling.

Perhaps John can explain what the failure of the oil industry that supports him to end oil shortages and give us 29 cents a gallon gasoline again argues for or against, or why we shouldn't say that Exxon can't run anything properly, including keeping tanker captains sober. One offensively stupid argument deserves another, I should think, and the argument that the government can't do anything and so shouldn't be allowed to do anything is a stupid argument and an annoying one coming from someone who is part of the government and is stalling, obfuscating and sabotaging health care reform -- right after having supported Bush's massive increases of unaccountable executive power and failed wars for 8 years.

No, a public option for health care is a:

Trojan horse that will ultimately lead to a government takeover of our health care system,

says John Cornyn, another way of invoking the slippery-slope fallacy. If we allow A, we'll allow A+B, and if we allow A+B, we'll allow A+B+C... Of course, any truth to this is no more than accidental because none of these steps compel the other, That's why we call it a fallacy, but again, he's arguing to Republicans and Lone Star Republicans at that, not exactly a constellation bright enough to light up the sky. Funny that he didn't argue that an invasion of Iraq would lead to a "government takeover" of the world or that warrantless surveillance and the end of habeas corpus would lead to a police state.

No, we're not on a slippery slope toward invading Ireland, the U.S. Postal Service isn't going to take over DHL or UPS or FedEx, and none of those could handle a minute fraction of the envelopes, post cards, advertising fliers, or periodicals the USPS delivers. No, the public schools aren't going to take over the private schools, and the Social Security Administration isn't going to take over your pension. The county hospital or the VA hospital isn't going to take over the private hospitals. It isn't the "government" producing the vaccines, and if we had to depend on the profitability of doing that to induce the pharmaceutical industry to do it, we'd have far greater shortages and tens of millions who wouldn't get any and couldn't afford it and would help the disease spread because of it.

Of course, I'm sure Tex Cornyn will get his vaccination, one way or another. He'll get it for free. He gets all his health care for free, so why should he give a Texas damn about you?

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Rounding up the righteous

By Capt. Fogg

Glenn Beck, that bottomless sack of snake shit, is trying to make you forget that the last administration set new highs in illegal surveillance of private citizens by referencing a small item at the Whitehouse.gov webpage which asks that the endless stream of e-mail lies be forwarded. The site, if you care to look, has information and videos that attempt to disprove the mostly baseless claims. The professional liars are alarmed and so they want you to be alarmed -- and so they break out the swastikas again and try to pin them on the Democrats. They're rounding up the conservatives, they cry, while trying not to snicker. "They've created a new 'Information Czar,'" says the Bullshit Czar, Glenn Beck.

People who invent psychotic scenarios and dress them up as dire warnings are "conservatives" you see and only trying to help you see that Obama is a fascistcomministmuslim and illegal alien -- conservatively speaking.

If you're like me, you've had enough of the Palin "death panel" fraud and a great many others and forwarding them to Snopes or Factcheck simply doesn't help much. Returning them with comment to the people who sent them to you doesn't help either. Depending on the Media to refute the obvious and childish fabrications is a lost hope, but it seems that Mr. Beck and Senator Cornyn and the other professional traitors and haters of honesty are afraid someone will get to the bottom of it all and trace the sabotage, the lies and the psychotic ravings back to the RNC and into their own hard drives from whence it originates.

Behold, we're now all being asked to "squeal on our neighbors" say the folks who wanted to have postal letter carriers peek in our basement windows a few years ago and encouraged librarians to spy on those of us who read. Obama is making up a list, just like Santa and he's going to put all those people who tried to warn you that Obama is Hitler into camps.

Did I mention that Poland invaded Germany? The liberals don't want you to know.



(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

An honest Republican

By Creature

No really, there is one (stop laughing). It's Sen. John Cornyn and he's stepped up to call the recent attacks on Supreme Court nominee Sotomayor "terrible." In response to Gingrich and Limbaugh Cornyn goes on to say:

"Neither one of these men are elected Republican officials. I just don't think it's appropriate. I certainly don't endorse it. I think it's wrong," he said.

Yes, wrong. And while having Cornyn step up is a good start, it's a only a start. It's time for the rest of the GOP and the media to stop taking Sotomayor's quotes out of context and give her the respect a judge of her caliber deserves. I always expected the ugly to come out over any Obama pick, but this week's display has been worse than expected.

Tilting at windmills

By Carl

It's fun to watch the Republicans gather up their skirts and try to stand in front of a force of nature:

Three months after their Election Day drubbing, Republican leaders see glimmers of rebirth in the party's liberation from an unpopular president, its selection of its first African American chairman and, most of all, its stand against a stimulus package that they are increasingly confident will provide little economic jolt but will pay off politically for those who oppose it.

After giving the package zero votes in the House, and with their counterparts in the Senate likely to provide in a crucial procedural vote today only the handful of votes needed to avoid a filibuster, Republicans are relishing the opportunity to make a big statement. Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Tex.) suggested last week that the party is learning from the disruptive tactics of the Taliban, and the GOP these days does have the bravado of an insurgent band that has pulled together after a big defeat to carry off a quick, if not particularly damaging, raid on the powers that be.

Emphasis added.

First, I'm not sure comparing yourself to the people who assisted in killing 3,000 Americans on September 11 is one you really want to make, Pete. After all, by opposing the stimulus package, you are in effect telling many Americans, perhaps as many as millions, to drop dead.

Second, the ineffectuality of "small victories" only proves the point Obama is going to make in the coming days, that obstructionism is a party-centric tactic and that Republicans are more interested in the good of the party than in the good of the nation.

Which is fine. It's the Republicans' party and they can cry if they want to and if they are more interested in standing on principle as opposed to winning the occasional election, then let them join the Naderites and the Communists and the Libertarians in holding their conventions in a phone booth at Port Authority bus terminal.

Hell, the entire right wing will be able to fit in there soon, if Rush loses weight!

But let's take a look at the nuts and bolts of this tactic for a second, and see why precisely it's a doomed strategy:

Republicans are holding congressional Democrats responsible for the wasteful spending they say is in the stimulus package, even though most of the big-ticket items -- for renewable energy, health care and schools -- are ones that Obama wanted in the package to advance his long-term goals.

For a while, the president did not exactly resist this tack, leaving the impression that the bill is mainly a congressional creation, but he started to defend it more vigorously last week. It is a triangulation of sorts, with Republicans hoping to drive a wedge between congressional Democrats and Obama.

"The president has done a good job reaching out to Republicans, and he has said he wants to approach this crisis . . . on a bipartisan basis. That's good, and we're willing to work with him on that. But this bill is not the president's bipartisan plan," Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) said yesterday on "Fox News Sunday."

Apparently, the Republicans have suddenly forgotten the lessons of history.

When the economy "recovered" under Reagan's tax and spending "cuts", does anyone recall that the Democratically-controlled Congress actually cut Reagan's budget proposals by a total of $16 billion dollars over eight years?

Nope. They only recall that Reagan cut taxes and created an economy.

When the Republican Congress ran up the budget in the first six years of Bush II, does anyone remember that Congress created these massive deficits with their pork?

Nope. They only have this nebulous sense that somehow Bush's foray into Iraq was responsible for the enormous (to that time) budget deficits.

Somehow, the right-wing of the Republican party has worked out in its head that the American people have somehow begun to pay attention. And perhaps they have, but to the other guys, not to you. I'm curious to see how the Republicans believe they can somehow grab enough of a spotlight to make a case that relies on two things: One, the economy remains flatlined for two years and two, people won't blame Bush in the first place, the way they blamed Hoover even after FDR had a hard time restarting the economy during the Great Depression.

The irony in all this is, if the Republicans had listened to even their moderate members during the Bush years, they may have actually salvaged some of the argument they are trying to make, by making themselves seem as responsible budget hawks in a decade that will require loose, and I mean "loose" as in a drunk sailor on a dock full of hookers, spending.

We probably need that. The temptation to spend money for spending sake is great, even if the numbers are staggering, and we've seen that Democrats are as liable to contract trichinosis as Republicans.

(Cross-posted at Simply Left Behind.)