Did I hear the Repugnicans right?

This morning I am hearing the news about Chris Dodd's Credit Card Reform Legislation which was passed in the Senate yesterday. Under this bill certain predatory practices would be outlawed. In particular, those skyrocketing rates that the Credit Card companies spring on consumers after luring them into their trap with irresistibly low introductory rates will no longer be allowed.

Of course the Repugnicans are against it.

The reporter may have been paraphrasing the official Repugnican talking points on this. She said that their opposition is based in the expectation that such legal limitations would be ineffective since the Credit Card companies will obviously "have to make up the difference somewhere."

The idea is to stop the outrageous rip-off practices of Credit Card companies.

But Repugnicans insist that ripping people off is not only a right of the free market - for Credit Card companies it IS their business. If you try to regulate them by outlawing those surprise spikes in interest rates they will have to make up the difference somewhere...

They'll surely find some other way to rip us off!

The Cost of War

"Sometimes great presidents make mistakes" - Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass

By a vote of 368-60, the US House of Representatives passed a $96.7 billion bill for military spending and foreign aid efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Nearly the entire Republican delegation supported the measure.

The bill is modeled on President Obama's request for $85 billion in continued support for the Iraq occupation and the war against Taliban forces and Al Queda in Afghanistan. The final House proposal, which now must be reconciled with a Senate version, contains almost $12 billion more than Obama asked for in his budget proposal.

The Senate is expected to approve spending up to $91.3 billion in a bill just voted out of Committee which more in line with Obama's request. It includes $50 million for the Pentagon to begin closing down the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The House calls for no such spending on Gitmo but does come with a resolution that detainees from the prison should not be released on U.S. soil. It does, however, allow for some of the 241 Guantanamo detainees to be moved to the United States to stand trial or serve their sentences.

As both bills were being developed, President Obama made a last minute request that an additional $108 billion be added to his request, earmarked for the International Monetary Fund. This would constitute a US contribution to the expanded $500 billion IMF loan fund designed to assist poor countries struggling through the global economic downturn. As an outcome of last month's summit meeting of the "Group of 20" nations in London, the IMF will issue interest-bearing assets, bringing the immediate taxpayer cost of this loan to about $5 billion for this contribution.

This request was immediately incorporated into the Senate version by Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye of Hawaii.

House Republicans oppose adding the IMF funds to the war-funding measure. But they would include $2.2 billion in other foreign aid to the amount Obama requested. However, the bulk of the $12 billion they would add to Obama's budget would go mostly for new weapons and military equipment such as cargo planes, mine-resistant vehicles, Bradley Fighting Vehicles and Stryker armored vehicles.

Even as the US war budget inflates, a growing number of Democrats are expressing skepticism about the increase in spending for military operations in Afghanistan.

Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., Chair of the House Appropriations Committee that produced the legislation, called it "a bill that I have very little confidence in." Still, he said, "I think we have a responsibility to give a new president — who did not get us into this mess — the best possible opportunity to get out of it."

Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., is one of 51 Democrats opposed the expansion of war funds. He remains unimpressed with Obama's plans for Afghanistan. "Sometimes great presidents make mistakes, and sometimes great presidents make even great mistakes. I hope that doesn't happen here," McGovern said.

"As the mission has grown bigger, the policy has grown even more vague."

The Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday voted unanimously in favor of its version of the spending bill. Most of that money, about $73 billion, would go to the Defense Department to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, part of which will pay for the extra 21,000 troops being sent to Afghanistan.

Despite the panel's unanimous endorsement, several Republicans said they will try to amend the bill to strip out the $50 million to be spent on closing Gitmo.

Wanda Sykes on How People in Straight Marriages can be as Happy as Their Gay Married Friends

May 10, 2009: Wanda Sykes cracked them up at the White House Press Corps Luncheon yesterday, as the opening act for Barack (Yo Mama) Obama's stand up act.

Below is a clip from an earlier performance by Sykes - before she came out as a lesbian last year - where she told it like it is about gay marriage.

Empathy Schmempathy!

RNC chair denigrates Obama desire for empathy
By Beth Fouhy –

NEW YORK (AP) — Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele has a message for President Barack Obama and his stated goal of replacing Justice David Souter with a judge who brings empathy to the Supreme Court bench: "Empathize right on your behind!"

Sitting in for host Bill Bennett on the "Morning in America" radio show Friday, Steele, a lawyer, said Obama should be searching for a judge who understands the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law.

"Crazy nonsense empathetic! I'll give you empathy. Empathize right on your behind. Craziness!" Steele told a radio audience.

Speaking to reporters last week to announce Souter's retirement, Obama said he would seek a replacement who combines an impeccable legal background with "empathy and understanding" for how the law is applied. -- Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Of course, as Media Matters pointed out about such stupidity spewing from the mouths of many TV & radio neo-cons:

"Blinded by the rest of Obama's statement, they ignored the simple fact that immediately after stating that he saw the "quality of empathy" as "an essential ingredient for arriving at just decisions and outcomes," Obama stated that he would "seek somebody who is dedicated to the rule of law, who honors our constitutional traditions, who respects the integrity of the judicial process and the appropriate limits of the judicial role."

When confronted with the President's actual words, those neo-cons put their fingers in their ears, closed their eyes tight and responded:

"Nah nah nah nah na I can't hear you I can't hear you I can't hear you nah nah nah nah na I can't hear you I can't hear you I can't hear you nah nah nah na I can't hear you I can't hear you I can't hear you..."

So what's all this fuss over the word "empathy" about?

Let's get a definition from Dictionary.com:

em⋅pa⋅thy [em-puh-thee]
noun
1. the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.

2. the imaginative ascribing to an object, as a natural object or work of art, feelings or attitudes present in oneself: By means of empathy, a great painting becomes a mirror of the self.

Right there in definition #1 we see the problem. There is something "intellectual" about the word, which automatically places it beyond the realm of a Republican's ability to understand. Intellectualism itself is something that the brainless lot fears and despises.

I don't think that definition #2 is what Obama had in mind -- but the goombah fascists in the GOP are very familiar -- by practice -- with "imaginative ascribing to [someone], feelings or attitudes present in oneself."

It makes sense, right? So if the Republicans are against empathy then they must be in favor of its opposite, right? For those unfamiliar with a dictionary (i.e. Republicans) opposite meanings are known as "antonyms." In the case of "empathy," its antonyms are, "apathy, misunderstanding and unfeelingness."

Yeah. That sounds about right for what the Republicans look for in nominees when they have a position to fill on the Supreme Court.

As always, Jon Stewart and the Daily Show has the best take on it all. At the tail end of his report on the announcement of Justice Souter's retirement comes the best expose of the GOP's anti-empathetic bent anywhere. Take it, Jon...

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Justice Is Bland
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

A Dying Breed? Suicidal Elephants!

Dying Elephant Sculpture

The future of the Republican Party USA just looks brighter and brighter.

Yes indeed.

That is, for those of us who really want them to fail (sorry, they brought it on themselves!), prospects that the GOP will soon succumb to political suicide have never been better.

Just today we get this bit of giddy news from Politico.com:

A conservative faction of the Republican National Committee is urging the GOP to take a harder line against both Democrats and wayward Republicans, drafting a resolution to rename the opposition the “Democrat Socialist Party” and moving to rebuke the three Republican senators who supported the stimulus package.

In an e-mail sent Wednesday to the 168 voting members of the committee, RNC member James Bopp, Jr. accused President Obama of wanting “to restructure American society along socialist ideals.

Yeah, Republicans! All together, now. Join hands with your undisputed leader, Mr. Limbaugh, and take the plunge! Right off that cliff and into oblivian!

J U M P ! ! ! !

Isn't that what you want to say? Aren't we all getting sick and tired of their pathetic whiney death wish? Just do it already!

If you think the GOP does not have a death wish then what the hell are they doing?

Their appeal to average unsuspecting Americans has long been based entirely on manipulating our emotions (fear, mostly) rather than on ideas or actions that might benefit anyone but the super-rich. If they had a will to live you would think that whoever is in charge over there might try to capitalize on the positive feelings that most Americans now say they have about the direction our country is moving in.

How long do they think they can survive by making fools of voters, trying to frighten them out of their contentment with certifiably insane delusions such as the cynical urban legend that the US is being taken over by a gang of socialists?

After 100+ days as Commander-in-Chief, doesn't anyone realize that Obama could have done it by now? If he had a mind to stage such a coup, why would he drag it out?

The venerated GOP saint Ronald Reagan of B-movie fame wowed America with his wistful "City on a Hill" imagery. George H. w. Bush had his "Thousand Points of Light." Neither of these meant diddly-squat, of course, and were basically just silly metaphors meant to cover up and distract from their true intentions. But at least those seminal neo-cons were not so clueless when faced with one lost race after another to just go insanely bombastic, railing and voting against everything the Democratic Party was up to - particularly those things that a majority of people in every poll say they support.

Have the morons running that party today forgotten that they would need to win a majority of votes to stay alive politically? That after a while most voters with half a brain who happen to respond favorably to just some of the things that the Democrats are doing will eventually catch on and resent what the neo-cons are trying to pull?

At some point no rational voter will be able to deny that Republicans are just a bunch of ineffective empty headed nay-sayers. Sooner or later won't most of the few people left loyal to the GOP have to wise up and realize how they are being insulted by party leaders who ask for their votes while telling them how stupid they are if they do not buy into the GOP's rabid opposition to all things Democrat with no coherent ideas of their own?

I would hate to think this is giving Republican loyalists too much credit in the smarts department.


Illustration Credit: Fox News, of course

Even as acknowledged by the GOP, Arlen Specter's defection marks a milestone on the path of their imminent demise. If my home-town Senator did only abandon the Republican Party for self-serving opportunistic reasons, his changing affiliation at this time can only be taken as a sure sign that the GOP ship is sinking fast: the last of the plague-ridden rats are diving off in a desperate grab for survival. Those staying on board have obviously gone out of their minds.

Specter, long known as the most moderate Congressional member of the party that has run out of tolerance for liberals, leftists, or independent thinkers, will become one of the most conservative members of the Democratic Party in the Northern States (Lieberman doesn't count for anything).

But at 71, Arlen is more of an old-school conservative, coming out of a time when some Republicans still had an active brain cell or two that responded to something other than a sense of entitlement, greed and power-lust. Back in the day even Republicans were sometimes known to engage in something more than negative sensationalistic smears of their opponents even after losing major contests to them.

As junior counsel to the Warren Commission, Specter cut his teeth on his invention of the laughably implausible "single bullet theory." And who could forget how grossly lawyer-esque he was - in the worst conceivable sense - when he savagely grilled Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas nomination hearings?

But Arlen somehow managed to get that Commission to accept that people would not question the impossibly magical explanation of JFK's assassination which brought the official inquiry to a tidy end. And, to his disgrace, he managed to discredit Anita Hill so thoroughly as to assure a sexual predator's confirmation as the most ineffective Supreme Court Justice ever (see: The Truth About Arlen Specter).

Specter has always known how to achieve the means to an end, no matter how undesirable or premature that end may be.

That even he could not figure out a way to keep the Republican Party from imploding (and taking with it his chance for political survival) is very telling indeed.

One thing the last of the Republicans still know is that Americans, on the whole, do not like extremist political parties. That is exactly why the dwindling GOP is pouring every last ounce of energy into trying to convince their gullible clinging base that Obama and the Democrats are socialists, communists or even fascists. Far from gaining any ground with this last-ditch tactic, however, it is obviously backfiring on them big time.

As the once-dominant party slumps in numbers and influence, a few goofy loud-mouth extremists are left with nothing to offer but more of the same mindless arrogance and gutter-level politics that dragged this country to the brink of collapse under their rule.

Seriously, what little is left of the GOP as a national political party - its bitter dregs - no longer deserves a place at the table.

But if you don't like everything the Democrats are doing, please remember that we have a number of other minority parties besides the moribund GOP to choose from. And we urgently need to realize that some of them actually do offer viable ideas and agendas that may be serious workable alternatives to what the newly dominant party is putting out there. We The People know that, in addition to extremist parties, Americans also very much dislike the prospect of single-party rule. What most of us still have to learn is that Republicans are not just one among a number of alternatives to the Democrats - they are no longer a viable alternative at all.

Mostly what the other (non-Republican) minority parties lack are those deep pockets and a shadowy funding base that allow political parties to gain strength, membership and votes while also leading, invariably it seems, to political corruption. Witness our current reality where neither of our major parties are immune from the corrupting influence of money and power in any sense.

As the sole remaining political superpower, the Democrats now have to be very careful not to try and take undue advantage of the welcome demise of the Republican Party. We The People, on the other hand, have a responsibility to be more vigilant than ever, keeping the Democrats' feet to the fire while they are acting as the instrument to rid the land of this blight known as the GOP.

Ultimately, however, Obama and the Democrats will disappoint us - already have in a number of ways. As we become disillusioned with them as the ruling party, we as Americans have a responsibility to our country and each other to stay alert to - and support - real alternatives in the political arena, rather than just voting against the Democrats by voting for Republicans out of spite (talk about cutting off your nose!).

For an introduction to the array of alternative political parties see: Guide to American Political Parties at www.politics1.com. Any of the parties listed there are at least as deserving of our support as the Republican Party - which, to me, is on par with the American Nazi Party (regrettably, they too really do exist!).