Cole Sear: I see dead people republicans.
Malcolm Crowe: In your dreams?
[Cole shakes his head no]
Malcolm Crowe: While you’re awake?
[Cole nods]
Malcolm Crowe: Republicans like, in graves? In coffins?
Cole Sear: Walking around like regular people. They don’t see each other. They only see what they want to see. They don’t know they’re… dead republicans.
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Based on how they have legislated recently, I’m sure Republicans would say that this is actually in the Bible.
Yes, that sound you heard out of Washington was not just John Boehner’s rant against his conservative brethren, it might have been the long-awaited thaw in relations between the two parties in the Congress over the budget.
And you probably thought that Republicans didn’t believe in warming.
Well, don’t get too excited. After all, 94 House members voted against the bill and it looks like the Senate will manage only four GOP supporters when the bill lands on their desks. And this is a bill that I might have voted against because it basically sacrifices the long-term unemployed on the alter of perceived laziness and blame-the-victim politics that’s the hallmark of the Republican Party (though Patty Murray must be terrific at selling unpopular ideas). The bill does modify and correct some of the most egregious sequestration cuts, but this budget deal was played on the Republican side of the field.
Is this a thaw? Possibly, though there are significant snowstorms ahead. The immigration bill is stalled in the House and it would be a monumental achievement for a law that includes a path to citizenship to pass in that chamber. Then again, Boehner is not a dumb politician and understands that the Republicans need to begin courting the Hispanic vote, so maybe he can shepherd a modified version of the bill through his caucus. Of course, Democrats will jump all over any perceived weakness int he GOP approach and will run with it in 2014 and 2016.
The Senate provides another ice sheet for progress. Although the two sides came to an agreement to pause the confirm-a-thon until Monday, the Republicans are still smarting from having the filibuster rug pulled from under their Gucci-shoed feet. Two of the president’s DC Circuit nominees have been approved at the EPA Chief is up next. I see this as great progress and a future bulwark against Republican mischief via the courts in the years to come. “Young Democratic Judges” is a phrase I love hearing over and over.
So I’m not looking for a grand love-in on the floor of the legislative bodies over the course of the next year, but I do see a grudging push in the direction of getting things done, especially on the right. They can run against the health care law and probably keep the House and make inroads in the Senate in 2014. Their main concern, and a shiver up the spine, has to be the prospect of a Tea Party presidential candidate and the thought of defending 24 Senate seats in 2016. They won’t win the former contest and could do serious damage to themselves in the latter if they persist with the nonsense they’ve been peddling since 2010.
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They are frantic. These Republicans are running out of options. All the lies they have told about the president is falling by the wayside. So the next move in their playbook? Impeachment… for absolutely… no reason! He’s a Democratic President, so impeachment is their natural inclination. It’s what they do!
History will record that on Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2013, the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary met to consider the impeachment of Barack Hussein Obama. They didn’t use that word, of course. Republican leaders frown on such labeling because it makes the House majority look, well, crazy.
It is, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) said from the dais, “the word that we don’t like to say in this committee, and I’m not about to utter here in this particular hearing.” One of the majority’s witnesses, Georgetown law professor Nicholas Rosenkranz, encouraged the Republicans not to be so shy. “I don’t think you should be hesitant to speak the word in this room,” he said. “A check on executive lawlessness is impeachment.”
This gave the lawmakers courage. “I’m often asked this,” said Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.) “You got to go up there, and you just impeach him.”
Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Tex.), who has said there are enough votes in the House to impeach Obama, added: “We’ve also talked about the I-word, impeachment, which I don’t think would get past the Senate in the current climate. . . . Is there anything else we can do?”
Why, yes, there is, congressman: You can hold hearings that accomplish nothing but allow you to sound fierce for your most rabid constituents.
The Republicans in the House know there is no chance of throwing this president from office. Yet at least 13 of the 22 Republicans on the panel have threatened or hinted at impeachment of Obama, his appointees or his allies in Congress. They’ve proposed this as the remedy to just about every dispute or political disagreement, from Syria to Obamacare.
The Pope has been getting on Republicans’ nerves lately. He recently let his feelings about capitalism and trickle down economics be known, saying that the theory of trickle down “has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power…”
This proclamation by the Pope caused the right wing to practically blow their tops. Rush Limbaugh, the author of much of the Republican’s talking points took to his radio show and denounced the Pope and all that he stands for. Said Rush;
“Pope Francis attacked unfettered capitalism as ‘a new tyranny.’ He beseeched global leaders to fight poverty and growing inequality, in a document on Tuesday setting out a platform for his papacy and calling for a renewal of the Catholic Church. In it, Pope Francis went further than previous comments criticizing the global economic system, attacking the ‘idolatry of money.’ ”
I’ve gotta be very caref– I have been numerous times to the Vatican. It wouldn’t exist without tons of money. But, regardless, what this is — somebody has either written this for him or gotten to him. This is just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the pope. There’s no such — “unfettered capitalism”? That doesn’t exist anywhere.
And a Fox Host Stuart Varney also lashed out at the Pope for him suggesting that we should be helping the less fortunate among us.
And now this news. A recent interview with Archbishop Konrad Krajewski, the “Almoner of His Holiness,” raised speculation that the Pope joins him on his nightly trips into Rome to give alms to the poor, and it turns out that the rumors are probably true.
A knowledgable source in Rome told The Huffington Post that “Swiss guards confirmed that the pope has ventured out at night, dressed as a regular priest, to meet with homeless men and women.”
Krajewski earlier said, “When I say to him ‘I’m going out into the city this evening’, there’s the constant risk that he will come with me,” and he merely smiled and ducked the question when reporters asked him point-blank whether the Pope accompanied him into the city.
What will these Republicans do now? Oh the calamity!
Just another example of Republican obstruction if they think the President might win on a particular issue. Top level Republicans are now calling for stronger sanctions against Iran after a new deal was announced over the weekend. Republicans know that increased sanctions would kill the deal, so they’re jumping on that plan ASAP!
Under the deal reached in Geneva in the early hours of Sunday morning the Islamic Republic agreed to freeze significant parts of its nuclear program and increase transparency in exchange for the lifting of $7 billion worth of sanctions which have been punishing the Iranian economy for years.
However top Republican lawmakers have said that now is the time to step up the sanctions against the regime, since, they argue, they have been instrumental in forcing Iran to the negotiating table. Speaking on ABC Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) told the ‘This Week’ program:
“Instead of easing them, now is the time to tighten those sanctions and let’s get a long term deal to prevent them from developing a weapon.”
Kevin McCarthy of California, the House Majority Whip, said that it was time to move forward with new sanctions in the Senate.
However the Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Sarif was unequivocal about the consequences of a new round of sanctions:
“If there are new sanctions, then there is no deal. It’s very clear. End of the deal. Because of the inability of one party to maintain their side of the bargain.”
Don’t get me wrong. What’s happened over the past five weeks has been a colossal, epic failure on President Obama’s part. All he needed to say about the health care law was that you could keep your insurance if it met minimum standards, and then he needed to repeat those standards. He also needed to repeat the benefits of the law, from covering preexisting conditions to free physicals, checkups and flu shots. But Obama thought that passage of the law was enough and that the government didn’t need to publicize what was on public record. Big mistake. Now he’s gotten caught in a web that the right wing has been spinning since 2010. It’s ugly. It’s sobering. It’s a mess. And it hurts.
And now for the good news. Obama’s opponents are still the same gang that shut down the government, opposes marriage equality, wants to voucherize Medicare and cut $40 billion from the food stamp program, denies global warming, thinks transvaginal ultrasounds are effective public policy, supports testing public school students at the expense of a real curriculum, opposes immigration reform and continues to want to deport large numbers of Hispanics.
In the 1990s, my father used to say that Newt Gingrich was the best thing that ever happened to Bill Clinton. The Tea Party and John Boehner are the best things to happen to Barack Obama. His approval ratings are down now, but they’ll rebound because the right wing hasn’t changed.
Their main vulnerability is their belief that the health care law has imperiled every part of Obama’s agenda. What they forget is that prior to the shutdown, the GOP’s ideas were extreme and unpopular. My sense is that they’ll get even more extreme because they see Obama at a critical point in his presidency. Healthcare.gov will not make the Republicans look any better on women, Hispanics, social programs and, yes, health care.
The health care mess will also leave the front pages soon because the website will be fixed and more people will successfully sign up for care. Also, fiscal negotiations are just around the corner and the right has left itself vulnerable because they’ve pretty much promised not to shut the government down again and they’d be even crazier than I think they are to not raise the debt ceiling. Plus, the press will get tired of this story and move on to other things.
In the end, though, the real advantage is that we’re talking about trying to insure people against catastrophic expenses by providing them with health insurance. Never forget that.
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House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) told immigration advocates that lawmakers will not take-up immigration reform this year. As a result, an amendment to deport DREAM-eligible immigrants — which passed with overwhelming GOP support in June — will be the only immigration measure to have received a vote on the floor of the House in 2013.
McCarthy’s remarks came after a week-long lobbying blitz from business groups, religious organizations, and immigration advocates. Proponents argued that comprehensive reform will provide a boost to the nation’s economy, create jobs for U.S. citizens and immigrants in the agriculture, retail trade, and construction sectors and bring millions of people out of the shadows.
But despite a series of constructive meetings with advocates, McCarthy explained to protesters camped outside of his district office in California that Congress did not have enough time to consider reform in the 16 remaining legislative days. The comments contradict reports of GOP leaders “struggling to come up with an agenda” to fill the end of the year with the House “facing no immediate cataclysmic deadlines.” Members come back from a week-long recess on Tuesday.
Last month, 186 Democrats introduced a comprehensive immigration reform bill that amends the measure passed by the Senate in June by “striking a controversial border security measure that would add 700 hundred of miles of fencing and 20,000 border control agents along the U.S.-Mexico border” and replacing it with a “border control plan that was passed unanimously by the House Homeland Security Committee last spring.” That proposal “instructs the Department of Homeland Security to write a plan that could ensure the apprehension of 90 percent of illegal border-crossers in high-traffic areas within two years and across the entire southern border within five years.”
Three Republicans — Reps. Jeff Denham (R-CA), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), and Rep. David Valadao (R-CA) — have co-sponsored the comprehensive bill. House leadership, however, is wary of allowing a vote on a measure that does not have the support of the majority of the Republican caucus and worry that advancing any immigration proposal that triggers a conference with the Democratic-controlled Senate would deal a blow to the House in final negotiations and open House Republicans to conservative primary challengers.
Just another Republican behaving badly. Nothing to see here.
According to the Philadelphia Daily News, Chairman Robert J. Kerns got drunk at what the paper called a “major GOP power-broker dinner” on Oct. 25 and then sexually assaulted the woman.
“Somebody alleged that he was drinking and sexually assaulted her,” a source told the Philadelphia Daily News. “It was supposedly a woman that worked with him. It took place the following evening, 24 hours later – not associated with the county dinner.”
WCAU reported that investigators had been seen at Kerns’ home in Upper Gwynedd. One source told the station that a search warrant had been filed to obtain evidence in the case.
A Center City defense attorney confirmed to WCAU that he had been retained to represent Kerns, but would not say why. The District Attorney’s office has also declined to comment.
Kerns, who is a partner in a Lansdale law firm, is married and has two grown sons
So you all know that Republicans and Conservative media have used Jon Stewart as their latest weapon against Obamacare. It is a well know fact that the Obamacare website, healthcare.gov, needs more work. The website was not ready for primetime and like the rest of the media, Jon Stewart has voiced his disappointment in the site’s roll-out and the fact that urgent improvements are needed.
Jon Stewart is disappointed at the roll-out of healthcare.gov? That was all the Republicans and the Conservative media wanted to hear. Like swarms of locust, Republicans jumped on Stewart and used his disappointment as proof that Obamacare is already a failure!
Well Stewart has a message for these so-called reporters!
“Making fun of something–that’s nothing new for us….so don’t act like us making jokes about a certain program or President is evidence that politician or issue has reached some kind of tipping point for action…although that apparently is exactly the case that they are making.”
Stewart continued…
“Don’t you use our jokes as evidence that the thing you hate must be stopped. Cause I’m sure when we joke about sh*t you like, you’re more than happy to ignore them.”
He then ended his segment in a song, with the main point being, “Go F*ck Yourself!”
As reported by The Hill, President Obama expressed a great deal of frustration at a fundraiser in Boston yesterday.
“Sometimes people ask me, ‘Man, how do you stay optimistic because it just seems like a bunch of problems piling up on your desk, and it doesn’t seem like you’re getting a lot of help from the other side?’”
And the president expressed concerns that some of the most tragic events in recent history were unable to end the partisanship in Washington.
“We would have hoped that coming out of those two tragedies that we would see a new spirit in Congress of people pulling together, and rolling up sleeves, and working on the things a broad spectrum of Americans agree on, but that’s not what we got,” Obama said. “Instead, we got more obstruction and more resistance to getting anything done, most recently culminating in a shutdown that was entirely unnecessary.”
