Here and There

update: great analysis of Wilson’s erroneous (not to mention disrespectful and misplaced) outcry at PolitiFact.com.

original post: I’m doing my best to look to the example of Barack Obama in his effort to move beyond partisan bickering in the dust-up over Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) screaming out “You lie!” after Obama claimed that his health care reform bill would not insure illegal immigrants.

Therefore, my only response is: No, President Obama isn’t lying (PDF).

Such a terrible human being I feel justified in making fun of how ugly he is.

My vote, by a Michael Jordan longshot, is James Inhofe, R-Okla. My disgust has driven me as far as to think about giving up everything, moving to Oklahoma, and doing all I can to help convince Oklahomans to fire this utter piece of shit.

But who’s your most-reviled senator? I’m curious.

Find a list of all 99 senators here. Answer in comments, por favor*.

* Inhofe would probably have a huge problem with my use of Spanish here, to cite just one example of his terribleness.

You know what’s un-American? Torture.

You know what’s socialistic? Medicare.

You know what’s shameful? When the government does nothing.

You know what’s pathetic? Incompetence.

You know what’s Soviet-like? Gulags, indefinite detention*, extraordinary rendition.

* To be fair, the guy I voted for in 2008 recently endorsed this shitty policy. For shame.

Awesome:

On some of my bike rides to and from work recently, I’ve been thinking about how seemingly difficult it’s been for Barack Obama to enact parts of his agenda — health care, tax hike on the wealthy, ending corporate-tax loopholes, drawing down in Iraq, funding the closing of Guantánamo Bay, to name a few.

Then I thought back to how George W. Bush really did seem to just show up and start kicking ass, cutting off funding for overseas family-planning clinics who advocate abortion (which, to be fair, Obama has since restored), cutting taxes almost to the point of eliminating them, and (ahem) getting us mired in this whole Iraq mess in the first place.
Read the rest of this entry »

Alabama Senator Richard Shelby (R) this weekend brought up, once again, the question dead issue of President Barack Obama’s citizenship.

Just a few fun figures to mull over while Shelby gets to the bottom of the real problems plaguing this nation:

• Alabama’s overall poverty rate is 16.6 percent, ranking it 10th nationwide
• The state’s child poverty rate is 23 percent, ranking it 9th in the nation
• Its senior poverty rate is 12.6 percent, ranking it 7th
• Alabama’s unemployment rate rose 3 percent, nearly doubling, to 6.7 from Dec. 2007 to Dec. 2008

Shelby is up for re-election next year. It’s never too early.

Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Department of Labor

Politics blogger Marc Ambinder breaks it down for us: $8.4 billion for pubtran and $9.3 for rail. Nice work, senators and representatives.

Perhaps it’s lost on them, but they’re unhappy with a bill that’s close to 50 percent tax cuts (something approaching or slightly more than $400 billion). And that’s for starters.

Another complaint I keep hearing is that all the spending will cause the national debt to increase. Well, geniuses, where was that concern when tax cuts and wasteful defense spending sent the surplus into the red over the course of the last eight years? You know, the years that coincided with your “greatist presidunt in the histry of the US.”

Shut up until you know what you’re talking about. Which I suspect won’t be for a while. I know it won’t for me. I know jack about economics.

Meantime, we’ve got a true, prolonged crisis on our hands. Whether this stimulus is the right thing to do, only time will tell. It’s nowhere near perfect, but at least they tried.

That title is in reference to this (thank you, my junior senator!). Lindsey Graham, et. al, chew on this.

Since they’re so opposed to the government (you know, the only entity seemingly somewhat willing to try anything to save the economy) spending to help shore up the economy and save jobs, I have an idea for the directionless, nay-saying party of Lincoln:

Why not pool all the rich investment money that’s sitting offshore in tax-free havens and create a mega-company, a super-corporation that will put all the (legal, natch) unemployed people back to work. They wouldn’t want to spend it on anything that might reduce carbon emissions or anything, so just make it … the construction of sports complexes. And prisons. And bombs, of course.

Well? I don’t see you offering up any ideas.

Okay, this is meant to be a serious question: Why is it that the Republicans in Congress have any ability or right to hold up stimulus legislation? I mean, they’re the minority, right? And while they beat back a filibuster-proof Senate with the 2008 elections, Democrats are only two votes short of that.

I just don’t understand how or why the GOP can retain so much power. Explain me, please.

Whoa, stop the presses, Cue the reel at CNN. There’s actual disagreement among Obama supporters, and the man’s not even president yet.

From Josh Marshall and John Judis joining some Democrats in Congress to demur on the stimulus, to Rep. John Conyers, D-Michigan, announcing flat out that Obama should rescind his nomination of Sanjay Gupta to become Surgeon General, it’s beginning to look a little like a democracy.

Watching Hardball, and Matthews just made it sound like the Democrats had a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation with the appointment of Roland Burris to the Senate by Rod Blagojevich.

Bullshit.

Had Harry Reid, et al. looked at the actual legality of the whole matter, they could’ve seated Burris with all the other new senators yesterday. To boot, they could’ve deflected criticism by standing on a rule of law argument.

Tisk, tisk, Chris Matthews.

Concerning three matters, that I’m aware of: the Minnesota Senate seat, the Illinois Senate seat, and the likely appointment of Leon Panetta to head the CIA.

First, give me a freaking break. I’m as big a civics nerd as the next civics nerd, so today was meaningful by nature. But these are the “issues” we’re talking about at the end of the day?

Well, not without reason. There is a specific individual to blame in each of the three scenarios.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tomorrow’s expected confirmation of Al Franken as the winner of the Senate race in Minnesota is kind of a big deal.

I’ve followed Franken since his early days as a comedy writer, through the late ’90s and early part of this decade as an author, and then as a radio host on the then-fledgeling Air America. He has made me laugh and think, and I’m grateful for both.

I’m also happy that a Democrat is getting the seat that Paul Wellstone most likely would’ve been re-elected to in November, had he not been tragically killed along with his family in a 2002 plane crash. Wellstone and Franken were friends, and I recall Franken’s pledge to run after the seat went to Coleman in 2002. Franken did it the honest, if excruciatingly difficult and long, way.

And of course, this close a tally (225 votes are expected to separate the two candidates) really underscores, for Minnesotans as well as Americans in every state, the importance of voting. As long as they’re properly counted, yes, every vote does count.

Now, of course, the real fun begins, with Norm Coleman promising to keep waging legal battles for the election he clearly lost, and the Senate GOP caucus threatening to filibuster the seating of Franken as the 111th Congress convenes this week.