No More Mister Nice Blog: And Quist differs from other Republicans how, exactly?
Angry Bear: The rich *are* different
SCOTUSblog: Wide detention power upheld
The Mahablog: I love this video
The Satirical Political Report: Buddha gets the last laugh on Brit Hume
OFF THE BEATEN PATH: Mario Piperni, plain view, Zen Comix,
Activism and organizing for healthcare reform on the state level has the potential to be more effective, because while state legislators are even more easily influenced by campaign donors, they're also more vulnerable to local pressure. So it's important to follow the fight in your state, make your position on strong regulation known to your representatives and lobby friends and family to do the same:
WASHINGTON — Like about a dozen other states, Florida is debating a proposed amendment to its state constitution that would try to block, at least symbolically, much of the proposed federal health care overhaul on the grounds that it tramples individual liberty.
But what unites the proposal’s legislative backers is more than ideology. Its 42 co-sponsors, all Republicans, were almost all recipients of outsized campaign contributions from major health care interests, a total of about $765,000 in 2008, according to a new study by the National Institute on Money in State Politics, a nonpartisan group based in Helena, Mont.
It is just one example of how insurance companies, hospitals and other health care interests have been positioning themselves in statehouses around the country to influence the outcome of the proposed health care overhaul. Around the 2008 election, the groups that provide health care contributed about $102 million to state political campaigns across the country, surpassing the $89 million the same donors spent at the federal level, according to the institute.
Any federal legislation is likely to supersede state constitutional amendments. But backers of the state measures say they want to send a message to Congress and also lay groundwork for fights about elements of the health care package that are expected to be left up to the states.”
[...] Advocates of a sweeping overhaul by the federal government, on the other hand, say the magnitude of the health care industry’s contributions shows the dangers of leaving such a question up to individual states, where campaign finance and ethics rules vary from strict to negligible.
“The states are the next battle,” said Richard Kirsch, national campaign manager for the liberal advocacy group Health Care for America Now, “and the insurers and health care industry are primed up and ready to go. The industry has enormous power at the state level, and very few states have state-level consumer groups that are able to lobby effectively against them.”
Campaign analyst Charlie Cook says so far, it's still unlikely that we'll see a Republican sweep in 2010:
To put it another way, as things stand now, Republicans could win every competitive House race and still come up one seat short. That won't be the case, however, if there is further erosion in the ranks of the solid and likely Democratic seats. Although Democrats can take some solace from the fact that no party has ever lost every single competitive House race, none of the four lawmakers who have recently added their names to the retirement list -- Brian Baird of Washington, Bart Gordon of Tennessee, Dennis Moore of Kansas, and John Tanner of Tennessee -- was considered particularly vulnerable a year ago.
For Republicans to take control of the House, more Democrats in swing districts would have to retire. There will be more, but how many?
If 10 or 12 more seats rated as solid or likely Democratic shift to the "lean Democratic" or "toss-up" columns, the fight for control will become much more serious. Washington is awash in rumors of other veteran Democrats contemplating voluntary exits. Some serve in safely Democratic districts, but others represent places not unlike the districts of Baird, Gordon, Moore, and Tanner. Also helping the GOP is its best House recruiting in a long time. A crop of strong candidates will help Republicans win more than their share of contests if the political environment remains what it is today.
Winds that began shifting against Democrats around the end of June, during the House cap-and-trade vote and the beginning of the health care debate, are now transforming their party's potential problems into real ones. That change is causing predictable talk of a 1994-style Republican landslide strong enough to flip the Senate. That talk, though, is just so much hot air.
Anyone with the slightest knowledge of the Senate's 2010 lineup of contests couldn't take such talk seriously. For Republicans to seize the Senate, they would have to hold all six of their open seats, which is quite plausible. All 12 of the GOP incumbents up for re-election would also have to win, which is quite likely. The Republicans would then have to pick up the Delaware and Illinois open seats that Democrats now hold -- a feat that is not difficult to imagine.
However -- and this is where the going would get rough for the Republicans -- they would need to defeat Michael Bennet in Colorado, Barbara Boxer in California, Christopher Dodd in Connecticut, Kirsten Gillibrand in New York, Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas, Harry Reid in Nevada, and Arlen Specter (or Joe Sestak if he wins the primary) in Pennsylvania, plus Republican Gov. John Hoeven of North Dakota would have to run and beat Byron Dorgan.
No party in history has ever run the table that completely. And even then, the GOP would come up one seat short.
The fragility of the Democrats' Senate majority is visible, though, if you look toward 2012, when 23 Democratic seats will be on the line compared with just nine Republican ones, and ahead to 2014, when 20 Democratic seats but only 13 Republican ones will be up for grabs.
Just as much has changed in the past year, much could change in the next. What the past tells us is that it takes a truly major event -- such as the 9/11 attacks of 2001 or the 1998 impeachment of President Clinton -- to improve the fortunes of the president's party going into a midterm election. Only one thing seems certain: 2010 won't be dull.
Let the abortion fear mongering from the GOP begin on the Nelson compromise. From The Hill -- Coburn: Nelson agreement with leaders 'threw unborn babies under the bus':
A number of Republican senators attacked an agreement reached between Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and Senate Democratic leaders Saturday, saying it would lead to the eventual reversal of more than 30 years of federal law banning abortion funding.
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Oka.) said it is “absolutely fictitious” that there is an anti-abortion provision in the Senate Democrats’ reworked healthcare reform bill.
“The negotiations, whoever did them, threw unborn babies under the bus,” Coburn said.
[...]
“The abortion language in this bill funds abortion for the first time since 1977,” said Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas). “We are told this is a pro-life bill. It is not.”
The agreement reached between Nelson and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will give states the choice to ban abortion coverage or not in the insurance exchanges the legislation creates. The deal will also separate premiums from insurance plans that pay for abortion from federal money.
The responsibility for the most partisan atmosphere is Washington history goes to President Barack Obama, according to Sen. John McCain. "[Obama] said there would be a change in the climate in Washington. There's been a change. It's more partisan. It's more bitterly divided than it's been," McCain told Fox News' Chris Wallace.
A few Republicans have participated in crafting major legislation during Obama's first year in office. Three Republican Senators voted for the stimulus bill and Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe voted for the health care bill coming out the Senate finance committee.
But for the most part, Republicans have voted together to block Democrats' attempts to pass legislation more often than any Congress in history. On December 18, Republicans broke the modern-day record for the most filibusters in history, according to Campaign for America's Future.
John Amato:
John McCain is one of the biggest sore losers in all of American politics. The media for some insane reason gives him unlimited face time on my TV to bash President Obama who soundly defeated him and the conservative movement in 2008. When will the Villagers go after conservatives for being ideologically against this president and their efforts to block every piece of legislation is all for political gain. America is on the receiving end of their very destructive games. John McCain is a bold-face-liar for blaming Obama for the lack of that stupid word called bipartisanship.
Digby and I have talked a lot about the mandate issue being presented by the health-care bill for months now, and a lot of great blogs have been hitting it too. A new poll done by Research 2000 for the PCCC and DFA says American voters will hate this bill if there are mandates and no public option.
If American voters aren't going to see any immediate pluses to their overall health care and are forced to pay into the mandates of the health care bill then how will the voters feel about the new outlay of cash? A good many will probably just pay the penalty instead of signing up and will be just as pissed, and that's coming from the left. The right-wing crazies will hate it even if it significantly helped their lives. so the debate has really focused on the differences on the left. We have captured the debate.
I know I'm a broken record on this subject, but I do think it's the thing most lacking from the insider conversations on HCR. Not that I really know, because I'm not an insider, but occasionally I get a wee sense of what's actually occupying staffers in various places. "Voters liking this thing" seems to be at best an afterthought.
It's sorta weird, really, because on most subjects it's the first thing they think of, both about the policy itself and the myriad imaginary attack ads that can be run based on the policy. If voters don't like this thing, it'll likely be repealed before most of it even takes effect, either because Republicans take over or because frightened members of a Dem controlled Congress do so. Sure, there's the optimistic view that it could be "made better" instead of repealed, but I'm not really feeling all that hopey.
No matter what the tosser Ron Brownstein says, liberal activists want health-care reform much more than Villagers can imagine, but we don't want it if it does nothing more than enrich insurance corporations and in the end never accomplish much of the goals that the defenders of the Senate bill are saying.
Lieberman and the Villagers are more interested in protecting the DC insider crowd than they are reforming health care for America.
And to show how lacking his argument is, Brownstein tries to paint us as the racists. Brownstein should check out a few teabagger rallies. And to dismiss the complaints we have as "ideological" shows how petty the elitists truly are.
(Governor Alfred E. Driscoll (R) - His legacy: The New Jersey Turnpike)
The world of politics seems to be one endless procession of bright lights, sterling hopefuls and utter flame-outs.
During the 1948 Presidential campaign, the name Alfred E. Driscoll was bandied about as a possible vice-Presidential running mate with Thomas E. Dewey on the Republican ticket. It surfaced again in 1952. But neither panned out and New Jersey Governor Driscoll quietly faded from the public scene after leaving office in 1954. His legacy, it would appear, are a number of bridges along with championing the cause of the New Jersey Turnpike.
At the time though, (1948) eyes were trained on him as serious Capitol Hill material, as is evidenced by this rather lively discussion on an early incarnation of Meet The Press regarding the postmortem on the 1948 election and the disastrous defeat for the Republican party.
Lawrence Spivak: “Fortunately, I have before me Governor, Clarence Buddington Kelland’s quotation on the campaign. Mister Davis, a moment ago asked you about it and I’d like to read it to you and see if you agree or disagree with what he said. He said ‘Dewey’s campaign was smug, arrogant, stupid and supercilious. No issues were stated or faced.’ You think that was true of the Republican campaign, that they failed to state their issues or face them?”
Governor Driscoll: “ Well I would like to enter an emphatic denial on the first part of . . that statement. I think that the Republican party did fail for reasons that are now apparent, which were perhaps not apparent at that time. To adequately state and fight the issues.”
Although it's clear Driscoll wasn't up for exchanging fistfuls of mud with the panel, his answers give some indication where the Republican party's troubles lay in 1948. And one could say the same for the election of 2008, sixty years later.
Some things don't change.
December 16, 2009 C-SPAN
Part 1
Part 2
December 14, 2009 C-SPAN
From Think Progress--Franken: Republicans ‘haven’t read the bill and are not very familiar with it.’:
This afternoon, Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) openly challenged Sen. John Thune (R-SD)’s claim that the Senate health care bill does not offer benefits until 2014. “We are entitled to our own opinions; we are not entitled to our own facts,” Franken asserted. “Benefits kick in right away.” He concluded:
I stand here day after day after day and hear my colleagues, my good friends from the other side, say things that are not based on fact. […]
Senator Thune did say that none of the benefits started next year. He just, I guess, hasn’t read the bill. .. I do find that many of my colleagues who I’m very friendly with, haven’t read the bill and are not very familiar with it.
And The Politico--Al Franken feuds with GOP's No. 4:
Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) and Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) sparred sharply on the Senate floor Monday evening, a departure from the usually dormant speeches in the august chamber.
Franken said he was struck by a speech in which he said Thune had refused to highlight when benefits to the health care bill would kick in and instead emphasized the negative parts of the bill.
From The Colbert Report:
The GOP must put moderate Republicans in situations that reveal their true beliefs, like in the movie "Saw."
R.I.P. George Carlin. Great stuff and nsfw.
The latest Rasmussen Poll has disastrous news for Republicans -- and disquieting news for for the rest of us too:
In a three-way Generic Ballot test, the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds Democrats attracting 36% of the vote. The Tea Party candidate picks up 23%, and Republicans finish third at 18%. Another 22% are undecided.
Among voters not affiliated with either major party, the Tea Party comes out on top. Thirty-three percent (33%) prefer the Tea Party candidate, and 30% are undecided. Twenty-five percent (25%) would vote for a Democrat, and just 12% prefer the GOP.
The look on Eric Bolling's face, filling in for Neil Cavuto yesterday on Fox News, contemplating this news said it all: He thought the Tea Party and Republicans were one and the same thing! In fact, he spills as much:
Bolling: Isn't the tea party just another wing of the Republican Party? ... Aren't we just splitting the party?
Well, not exactly. Like Republicans, the Tea Party folks are fervently anti-Obama. But as Republicans like Lindsey Graham are discovering, the Tea Partiers are so arch-conservative they hate BOTH parties, and consider Republicans to be sellouts of their true-blue conservative ideals.
Now, this may appear to be good news for Democrats, since it means the Right is splitting its vote. And over the short term, as we saw in the NY-23 race, it may well be. But there is an ominous quality to this that should be disturbing to everyone.
The GOP thought it could unleash this tide of right-wing populism and prosper -- but are discovering that it's not such an easy thing to control.
And what they're unleashing is a flood of right-wing extremism in the process. Because as the "Tea Party" gathering we saw this past weekend in Spokane made crystal-clear, the "Tea Parties" are one of the most massive conduits for mainstreaming extremist beliefs in our history:
More than 1,000 people, including local sheriffs, state representatives, lawyers, families and blue-collar workers, gathered in Post Falls last month to hear a former Arizona sheriff blast the federal government. About 500 met last week in another event organized by the Campaign for Liberty – a coalition of about 10 Inland Northwest groups hoping to create a forum to share ideas and create a louder voice in politics.
Some aren’t afraid to use the word militia.
“We need to rob that word back from the people who villainize it,” said Schaeffer Cox, a 25-year-old from Fairbanks, Alaska, eliciting a roar of approval from the crowd in Post Falls Wednesday night.
Oh those family values Republicans:
The Scott County court clerk confirms a felony complaint has been filed against former Missouri House Speaker Rod Jetton for an incident that allegedly took place Nov. 15 in Sikeston, Mo.
The complaint alleges Jetton "recklessly caused serious physical injury to ------- by hitting her on the head, and choking her resulting in unconsciousness and the loss of the function of part of her body."
UPDATE, 3:50: The affidavit attached to the probable cause statement alleges Jetton went to the home of the victim Nov. 15, where he and the victim drank wine and watched a football game. The victim claims Jetton hit her on the face and choked her, leaving bruises that the police department photographed.
The affidavit claims the assault occurred during the night and into the morning of Nov. 16. It says Jetton and the victim agreed on a "safe word" "to use as a stop word during intercourse."
The safe word was allegedly "green balloons." The next day, Jetton allegedly told the victim: "You should have said green balloons." Read on...
Brutal. Jetton is the former Missouri House Speaker, but his biggest claim to fame was working as a political adviser to Mitt Romney during his failed presidential campaign in 2008. Known as "jedijetton" on Twitter, Rod tweets about attending CPAC -- and here's a photo of him with everybody's favorite conservative battle axe, Phyillis Schlafly.
Wonkette adds the finishing touches to this story:
Rod Jetton is married with three children and attends Methodist church regularly. He is affiliated with the Republican Party. He is a Real American, the end.
From The Young Turks: Republican Sexcapades with Cliff Schecter.
