YouTube: Two Romney Supporters Attack Two Ron Paul Supporters in Oklahoma

Arizona Ron Paul supporters boo Romney's son off stage

The convention may prove to be the Republican Götterdämmerung.

There is no question that the Teabagged Republicans are intransigent assholes, but I cannot get my head around Democrats, Liberals and Progressives rallying around the de-funding of Social Security with this Payroll Tax Holiday.

Attaching it to the very needed Unemployment Insurance extension, and Medicare re-imbursement authorization was a recipe for disaster in the first place, with this gaggle of evil clowns controlling the House.

Here is the actual House Bill: via House.gov

You'll have one hell of a time finding half of the provisions discussed anywhere in the Media or the Blogosphere. What the House Teabaggers are all het up about is the stripping out of several of their most odious demands for all of two months.

1. They inserted a proviso that greatly weakens the Affordable Care Act: CPBB, which would throw nearly 200,000 out of coverage.

The provision in question would substantially increase the repayment charges imposed at tax time on many people who, under the health reform law, will receive subsidies to help them afford coverage during months of the year when their incomes are low but whose incomes increase later in the year because they have found a job, gotten a promotion, gotten married, or for another such reason.

2. They demanded circumvention, or neutering of EPA regulations that greatly reduce emmissions, and put strict controls on mining company effluents-- specifically Mercury and Arsenic. Of course, they cynically called this, "EPA Regulatory Relief." Fortunately, the EPA just rolled those regulations out, thus making this point nearly moot. But, of course, it only made the Teabagged House all the more adamant to get their way, today: Susie Madrak has more on this.

3. The Teabaggers also were demanding drug-testing for Unemployment Insurance applicants/recipients, which is utterly ridiculous.

From Think Progress:

Exxon Mobil is by far the most profitable company in the new Fortune 500 list, riding “high oil prices to a staggering $30 billion in income” in 2010. Exxon made over $10 billion more than fellow oil giant Chevron, the third most profitable company (AT&T edged out Chevron for the number two spot). ConocoPhillips’ $11.4 billion in profits put it in the 16th spot, giving the three oil giants a combined $60.9 billion in profits in 2010.

Democrats won in 2006 and 2008 because Bush messed up and the economy was a mess. Also Katrina and Iraq.

So what did the Republicans learn? When the economy is a mess the incumbent party loses power. So clearly to the Republicans, they needed to do whatever necessary to mess up the economy even more.

It seemed to me that initially the Republicans were worried that Obama would try to be FDR 2.0 and were determined to block his actions. Clearly they need not have worried. Obama does not seem to think that unemployment is a serious political problem for him and he might even be correct.

Well, the proverbial s__t is now hitting the fan in our State Governments, and we’re looking at struggles in State after State between newly elected Republican Governors scapegoating civil servants, while they insist that taxes can’t be raised on the wealthy and large corporations during a recession. Put briefly, the moves to austerity and the resulting conflicts in Wisconsin and other States are partly Democrats’ fault, because they failed to pass a State revenue sharing bill to close the gap in State budgets, so that no cuts in services, employee benefits, or jobs would be necessary.

I agree with Atrios that Republican destructiveness has reached a new level of ghastliness.

My theory is that the Republicans were really frightened in January 2009 that Obama really would be FDR 2.0 and therefore decided to block all his efforts to make the country better on the theory that if things got worse they could get back in power. It helped that neither Obama nor the Senate Democrats had any intention of doing anything for ordinary people.

Now I think they have expanded upon their strategery. I think they actually want to make the US as ungovernable as possible so that they will win in 2012.

Barney Frank suggests unemployment benefits could have passed without the Obama-McConnell tax deal. According to Frank, "It's totally unbalanced.... unemployment shouldn't be considered a concession they give to us." Unemployment benefits have been passed some four or five times since 2008. Frank reminds us what happened the last time a Republican tried to hold up an extension.

Via HuffPost:

After reading the details of the Obama/Republican tax cut deal, some Left leaning economists seemed at least not hostile to it. Yesterday morning, Jamie Galbraith skewered the President for agreeing to extend the Bush tax cuts exclusively targeting the wealthiest Americans, but by that evening, after the President announced details of the deal, he reportedly called the agreement "defensible". Brad Delong suggested the tax proposal amounted to a new stimulus, and perhaps even a "big win" for Obama, though later he conceded the plan produced "relatively low bang-for-buck".

I've been watching these two flirting while pretending not to flirt since about 2002. The elephant would watch the donkey all the time, and the donkey would watch back, while they pretended to hate each others' guts. The donkey would pretend not to give a shit -- not speaking to him, not returning his calls, but the whole time she'd look for excuses to be around while the elephant was in the room. It got to be pretty annoying after a while -- the donkey would be flirting her ass off, and the whole time saying it was nothing, just a little bipartisanship, all in a spirit of compromise.

(This one's a bit of an "oldie", as it was done in April of '08, to be made into stickers for plastering on the streets during the party convention protests, but it's still apropos to the current mid-term fracas.)

After all that time listening to the Democratic apparatchiks and whining Liberal punditocracy at outfits like Daily Kos and The Nation pissing and moaning and insisting that there really, really was a difference between the Republicans and Democrats, I finally figured out that they're absolutely right -- there is a difference, and here it is:

(When I first published this one, it cause quite a wonderful shitstorm in the comments column when it was picked up by Stop Me Before I Vote Again.)

They range from borderline delusional to flat-out certifiable -- and they vote.

I’d been seriously wondering about the root causes of the quality of “leadership” in this country over the past twenty-odd years, beginning late in Reagan’s second term and continuing off and on during the Clinton and Bush years, but it didn’t really start banging the doors down in my head until the 2008 Presidential “election” cycle began. Things finally reached critical mass when I saw this article in Slate a couple of months or so ago. I didn’t quite agree with all of its points, but you can’t possibly imagine the thrill and relief when I finally realized that, yes, I’m not the only one thinking that the number one problem is, in fact, The People.

Here’s another piece inspired by an article I saw at one of my all-time favorite Leftie blogs, Stop Me Before I Vote Again — specifically, this entry, containing an especially pithy comment by another one of my Leftie blogozone faves, The Drunken Pundit, who comments:

…With both parties fully in the grip of the industrial-financial-military complex of the American Empire they have to serve up shit sandwiches to everyone but they each need their own distinctive flavor of shit in order to differentiate themselves…

A downed phone line prevented Dennis Spisak from calling in, so tomorrow evening is going to be the interview that should have taken place on Saturday. Having been there before, all I can say is, “Yikes!”

Anyway, here’s the info for tomorrow night’s show.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/progressive...

1 (347) 884-9121

2012: How U.S. Voters Can Wrest Control of Congress from Special Interests -- Part III. Why and How Congressional Elections Can Be Won By Transpartisan Voting Blocs in 2012

[Ed. note: This series has been re-posted by Joe Firestone (a.k.a. letsgetitdone) on behalf of author Nancy Bordier with her express permission.]

By

Nancy Bordier

See the series introduction here.

All U.S. House of Representatives seats and one third of Senate seats in Congress will be up for re-election in 2012. The U.S. House of Representatives holds the "power of the purse" because it initiates all revenue bills. Electing a majority of representatives to this body who are untainted by special interest money is the fastest and most direct way for U.S. voters to get their policy priorities enacted into law and stop the passage of legislation that serves special interests.

With 80% of Americans wanting most Congressional representatives to be defeated, and the two major parties attracting little more than half of all of registered voters combined, there are likely to be enough discontented voters in most Congressional districts to oust their incumbents — provided they have a mechanism for putting House candidates on the ballot that elicit the votes of a plurality of voters. (U.S. election laws permit candidates to be elected without a majority of all votes cast; they just need to get more votes than any other candidate, referred to as a "plurality").

This mechanism is provided by the web application described in Part II, the Interactive Voter Choice System (IVCS), which enables voters to take advantage of the large scale collective action power of the Internet to win Congressional elections in the electoral districts where they live. The efforts of voters to use the Internet and the application to oust incumbents will be furthered by the fact that incumbent Democrats and Republicans in Congress are often elected to the U.S. House of Representatives with less than 100,000 votes in non-presidential election years. (Each district comprises a total population of approximately 600,000.)

Moreover, while many state election laws are designed to thwart candidacies not backed by the major parties, the rules governing primary elections for the U.S. House of Representatives require the signatures of only a small percentage of registered voters to put a candidate on the ballot on an existing political party's line. While the rules vary widely among the 50 states, it is only 5% in states like New York State.

There's this myth going around. It seems many people think the extension of Bush-era tax cuts on the first 250k in income per family exclude wealthy families. They do not. While policy makers are debating letting the Bush-era tax cuts exclusively targeting those with family incomes above 250k, these families would not be excluded from the Democratic proposal to extend these other tax cuts. Indeed, in dollar terms, the wealthy fair better under the so-called middle-class tax cuts, than the middle-class.

Via OpenLeft:

Orszag’s maiden voyage at the New York Times entitled “One Nation, Two Deficits,” is full of myths, and that’s the polite way to say it. I’ll review these and comment on each of them one-by-one.

It used to be so much fun to bash the rightwing crazies like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Michelle Bachmann and Ron Paul. I used to love it when Keith Olbermann would fulminate in righteous rage over the latest horrors coming from "Mr. Bush." I used to laugh my butt off when Rachel Maddow would make fun of wingnuts, and when Al Franken would play "Bill O'Reilly: Lying or Stupid?"

But now, when I hear the latest outrage over Rand Paul or Sarah Palin or the Tea Party or some other alleged threat to the very fabric of our country, I just feel uncomfortable and slightly queasy. Why? Why don't I care anymore?

“If a man could have half his wishes, he would double his troubles.” – Benjamin Franklin

When the so-called “grass-roots” Tea Party movement began back in 2009, most on the Right jumped at the chance to support the group and pander to its followers. Without shame, they openly supported many of the ridiculous notions supported by the Tea Baggers, like Obama being a Socialist and the Dems, in general, wantin’ to destroy our fine country.

Perhaps they shoulda’ thought just a wee bit more about the potential outcome of such a “movement” gaining national recognition and power.

So, correct me if I’m wrong, but has’t it been the Right that’s bitched about Obama and the Dems turning this country into the next Nazi Germany????

But if you ask the the Arizona Senatorial candidates, apparently it’s a great thing that a new regulation virtually enacts World War II era Germany rules into Arizona state laws.

Now, as a good ol’-fashioned Southern girl, I always try to give credit where credit is due…and I’ve always been fair about givin’ credit to the Right for their amazing ability to make people vote against their own best interests. Despite all the Right’s talent, I was still amazed that they managed to motivate (translate: terrify) people into protesting an issue that doesn’t even exist. Now that’s somethin’!

Today, hundreds of pro-gun folks swarmed Washington to protest the non-existent Obama plot to repeal the Second Amendment. Un-Fuckin’-Believable!

Since I last asked this question, the "Democrats" (and I use that term loosely) have passed a Health Whatever Bill which was not only based on the conservative Heritage Foundation's plan from 1994, but also included an Executive Order which severely restricted women's access to reproductive care. "Pro-choice" Democrats voted for it; "liberal" Democrats voted for it; "I promise you a Public Option Sparkle Pony!" Democrats voted for it. Ah, our "post-partisan" Paradise, where every politician, regardless of the letter after his/her name, is working for the top 2%!

Obama supports a shitty health-care bill, as well as offshore oil drilling. Fantastic.

The RNC has enough scandals to be a reality television show. Baby.

And the first third party movement in my memory to be given considerable media attention wears fucking tea bags on their heads. Well, Yee-freakin’-Ha!

Is it possible that with all the media coverage focused on the angry rhetoric of a few, that the leaders in both parties have left the majority of us full of “political apathy”?

Too often lately I’ve heard “What difference does it make who you vote for, they’re all just politicians.” Or better yet, too often lately have the people making such comments had valid points?

How do you ever win the game when your quarterback keeps throwin’ the ball the wrong fuckin’ way?

“The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic. [...] The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.”

Yesterday I, two bloggers from Correntewire (Gmanedit and LibbyLiberal) and a woman who had heard about the protest from the PNHP meeting Libby and I had attended, stood on a chilly street in New York City and talked about half-healthcare for women, the deficiencies of the Health Whatever Bill, and the superiority of single-payer (universal) health care. We were accompanied by two stoic but friendly police officers (you have to let the NYPD know when you're going to publicly exercise your right to free speech), who guarded Representative Maloney's doorway from us dangerous hippie types, in case we decided to get WILD and CRAAAAAZY!