One Republican who is fed up with the Republican Party is long time conservative radio talk show host Michael Smerconish:

I’m not sure if I left the Republican Party or the party left me. All I know is that I no longer feel comfortable.

The national GOP is a party of exclusion and litmus tests, dominated on social issues by the religious right, with zero discernible outreach by the national party to anyone who doesn’t fit neatly within its parameters. Instead, the GOP has extended itself to its fringe while throwing under the bus long-standing members like New York Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava, a McCain-Palin supporter in 2008 who told me she voted with her Republican leadership 90 percent of the time before running for Congress last fall.

Which is not to say I feel comfortable in the Democratic Party, either. Weeks before Indiana Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh’s announcement that he will not seek reelection, I noted the centrist former governor’s words to the Wall Street Journal’s Gerald Seib. Too many Democrats, Bayh said in that interview, are “tone-deaf” to Americans’ belief that the party had “overreached rather than looking for consensus with moderates and independents.”

Where political parties once existed to create coalitions and win elections, now they seek to advance strict ideological agendas. In today’s terms, it’s hard to imagine the GOP tent once housing such disparate figures as conservative Barry Goldwater and liberal New Yorker Jacob Javits, while John Stennis of Mississippi and Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts coexisted as Democratic contemporaries.

At its annual convention held this past weekend the standard bearer of the Republican party CPAC had GLENN BECK as its keynote speaker for goodness sake!

The President is a very smart man so we are sure that he realizes that the Republicans in the House and the Senate will never support any piece of legislation that will contribute to him succesfully putting the country back on track.  Why? Because Republican’s success depends on the country being in a ditch in 2010.  The success of policies proposed by this President or implemented under his watch means a decreased chance of the GOP regaining control of the House and Senate in 2010.  So the GOP will continue to block and obstruct anything proposed by the Democrats or this President.   This could not have been more apparent than when President Obama endorsed a debt commission in light of the GOP’s newly acquired obsession to the deficit.  The debt commission idea was originally proposed by Republican Senators who when it came to vote for the bill the seven GOP senators who proposed it changed their mind and voted against the measure at the last moment.  Why?  Because it may make the President look good.  This is how strongly the GOP feels about the defecit and reducing the debt.  In other words, “debt on the backs of our children” does not matter when it comes to becoming the majority in the House and the Senate.  The American people are secondary.  Pure and utter politics. 

The next obstruction planned by the GOP?  Financial regulatory reform.  Notorious GOP pollster Frank Luntz recently wrote up a memo of how to do it.

Nine months after he penned a memo laying out the arguments for health care legislation’s destruction, Republican message guru Frank Luntz has put together a playbook to help derail financial regulatory reform.

In a 17-page memo titled, “The Language of Financial Reform,” Luntz urged opponents of reform to frame the final product as filled with bank bailouts, lobbyist loopholes, and additional layers of complicated government bureaucracy.

This continued quest for bipartisanship is an exercise in futility that is a waste of taxpayer money.

You don’t??  No worries there was none.  The attempted attack aboard the Northwest flight  to Detroit on Christmas day was eerily familiar….like we lived it before about eight years ago.  Remember Richard Reid the shoe bomber who attempted to blow up an American Airlines flight on December 22, 2001?  You don’t?  Well lets refresh your memory and the memories of the GOP members who were out loud and proud this week criticizing President Obama’s handling of the situation.  Their main issue is that the president did not respond appropriately with the seriousness that such an occurrence deserves.  And by respond, we can only assume that the Republican House and Senate members believe that the president should have appeared in a cowboy hat and boots with guns blazing.  But I digress. The thwarted attack happened on December 22,2001.  The person who came to the rescue in 2001 was a fellow passenger similar to the actions of the passenger on Northwest flight 253.  Guess what else?  The shoe bomber was arrested and put in jail just like the failed attacker on the Northwest flight.  President Obama made a statement yesterday regarding the failed attack and has been briefed on the hour about new developments in addition to ordering a full investigation of what went wrong.  The President has also ordered new procedures for all flights entering and departing the United States.  What did President Bush say in his 2001 statement regarding the failed shoe bomber attack you ask?

First 24 hours?

KELLY WALLACE, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT:
….
Some additional information to bring to you at this time. We do know that President Bush was notified about this situation earlier today and that he has already had a briefing on the situation. The president, as we have noted, is spending the holiday weekend at the presidential retreat at Camp David.

CNN 12/22/2001

Crickets, crickets

48 hours??

December 23, 2001

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said that President Bush continued to monitor the situation and receive updates at Camp David. Bush has not issued any statements about the incident.

Boston Globe 12/24/2001

crickets, crickets

Five days later…more crickets.

Finally, TEN SIX DAYS later President Bush merely mentions the attack in passing while discussing a different point.

A NATION CHALLENGED: THE PRESIDENT; Bush Says Taliban Leader Will Be Found

President Bush said today that it was ”just a matter of time” before Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban leader, was captured, but he did not say if and when the United States Marines would join in any search. Mullah Omar is believed to be hiding in southern Afghanistan.

”I’m patient, and so is our military,” Mr. Bush said before having a cheeseburger and onion rings for lunch with staff members and friends at the Coffee Station, the only restaurant in this town of about 700. The president is spending the holidays at his 1,600-acre ranch, eight miles northwest of here.

….

Mr. Bush, in his last question-and-answer session with reporters in 2001, also said that the main task of the F.B.I. was now to protect Americans from further attacks.

”The whole culture of the F.B.I. has changed for the better,” Mr. Bush said. He added that the country as a whole was ”on alert” and praised the flight attendant on an American Airlines flight on Dec. 22 who noticed the man whom Mr. Bush called ”the shoe bomber,” Richard C. Reid, trying to light a fuse in his sneaker.

NYT 01/01/2002

By the way, the shoe bomber Richard Reid was indicted on terrorism charges by a grand jury, tried and convicted in a federal court, and is now serving a life sentence in a maximum security prison in Colorado.   And guess what?  Not a peep was spoken by a single Republican about the arrest of the shoe bomber or the fact that this terrorist was tried and convicted in the United States federal court system.  Not even from former Homeland Security Chairman Tom Ridge.

Meanwhile Sen. Jim DeMint is blocking the nominee, Erroll Southers, for the top position at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) because the Republican member does not want baggage screeners to join a union.  So let me get this straight…..currently we have no one heading the airline security in the United States because Sen. DeMint is afraid of collective bargaining?  Can you imagine if this was a Democrat blocking a TSA Chief nominee right after an attempted terrorist attack five days ago?  Exactly…HYPOCRISY!!!

Two more things.  First, didn’t a Republican administration develop the Homeland Security program and had eight years to perfect it?  Second, because the Republicans are labeling this an attack, does this mean that there was another attack on the US during the Bush presidency thereby disproving the claim that Bush prevented subsequent terrorist attacks on the US during his presidency?

Bruce Bartlett, former domestic policy advisor to Ronald Reagan and former treasury official under George H.W. Bush, penned a recent article pointing out the blatant hypocrisy of the GOP’s rabid focus on the allegedly increased deficit that will occur as a result of the passage of the health care reform bill.

The human capacity for self-delusion never ceases to amaze me, so it shouldn’t surprise me that so many Republicans seem to genuinely believe that they are the party of fiscal responsibility. Perhaps at one time they were, but those days are long gone.

Speaking of health care and fiscal responsibility…remember the Medicare drug benefit bill?

This fact became blindingly obvious to me six years ago this month when a Republican president and a Republican Congress enacted the Medicare drug benefit, which former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker has called “the most fiscally irresponsible piece of legislation since the 1960s.”

As for the cost of the GOP orchestrated Medicare Part D program compared to either the Senate or House version of the Health care reform bill according to Bartlett:

Just to be clear, the Medicare drug benefit was a pure giveaway with a gross cost greater than either the House or Senate health reform bills how being considered. Together the new bills would cost roughly $900 billion over the next 10 years, while Medicare Part D will cost $1 trillion.

And now for the kicker..how did the GOP controlled Congress plan to pay forits Medicare Part D program?

Moreover, there is a critical distinction–the drug benefit had no dedicated financing, no offsets and no revenue-raisers; 100% of the cost simply added to the federal budget deficit, whereas the health reform measures now being debated will be paid for with a combination of spending cuts and tax increases, adding nothing to the deficit over the next 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. (See here for the Senate bill estimate and here for the House bill.)………..

Recall the situation in 2003. The Bush administration was already projecting the largest deficit in American history–$475 billion in fiscal year 2004, according to the July 2003 mid-session budget review…….

Recall, too, that Medicare was already broke in every meaningful sense of the term. According to the 2003 Medicare trustees report, spending for Medicare was projected to rise much more rapidly than the payroll tax as the baby boomers retired. Consequently, the rational thing for Congress to do would have been to find ways of cutting its costs. Instead, Republicans voted to vastly increase them–and the federal deficit–by [$534] billion between 2004 and 2013.

The Prescription Drug Benefit program added $15.5 trillion in current value to our nation’s deficit!  Some of the Republicans that voted for the Medicare Part D Prescription Drug Benefit bill?  Jim Bunning (R-KY),  Mitch McConnell (R-KY), John Cornyn (R-TX), Mike Crapo (R-ID), Orrin Hatch (R- UT), and Jon Kyl (R-AZ).  Yep you guessed it…the ones with the biggest mouths concerning the deficit being passed to their children.

The GOP continue to harp on the alleged lack of bipartisanship overtures by Democrats in the House and Senate.  We now have confirmation from a former member of the Republican caucus that such complaints are disingenuous.  We all know that the GOP game plan for the 2010 and 2012 elections is to obstruct and prevent the President from accomplishing any of his domestic agenda and to do it by any means necessary.  Well Sen. Arnel Specter confirmed on Sunday what every person paying even mildly attention already knew…the GOP has been plotting to bring this President down since January 20. 2009.  Specter revealed the GOP strategy according to private conversations that he was privy to as a member of the Republican caucus before he switched to the Democratic Party in April of this year.  See video below.

For months the GOP has been attacking and obstructing the passage of the House health care plan drafted by the Democratic majority without ever having produced one of its own.  Well this week they did just that and submitted it to the Congressional Budget office to be scored.  Mind you the list of reforms was a compilation of oldies that the grand old party has been singing for decades.  You know…..selling insurance across state lines, medical malpractice reform, health saving accounts…yada yada yada.  Well the CBO scored the compilation and concluded that the GOP bill will cost billions more and cover substantially less people.

The Congressional Budget Office has concluded that under the $61 billion Republican amendment to the House health care bill, the number of uninsured Americans would increase to 52 million by 2019, but deficits would decrease by $68 billion over the 2010–2019 period. The bill could slightly reduce premiums for Americans who purchase coverage independently.

Millions of Americans would remain uninsured and continue to pay higher premiums. In fact it’s unlikely that any of the members of the Republican House Leadership would be able to find affordable insurance under their own proposal, should they chose to give up their government-sponsored plans.

What else is lacking you ask? For one, the plan does not prevent insurance companies from rescinding coverage when a person gets sick nor does it prevent insurance companies from denying coverage to people who have a pre-existing condition.  Not to mention this little tidbit:

By weakening or removing requirements that insurance cover certain services–everything from cancer screenings to mental health–the Republican bill would likely result in people getting insurance that covers less.

In other words, bupkus.  Thanks GOP for continuing to waste taxpayers money throughout this GOP lead boondoggle process.  Republicans believe that Americans should pay a premium for the illusion of health insurance.

It appears that the continued obstructionism by the Republican Party is doing little to improve its brand.  A new ABC/Washington Post poll says that the amount of Americans identifying themselves as Republican is at a 26-year low. 

That cuts to the GOP’s basic challenges finding political footing: Only 20 percent of Americans now identify themselves as Republicans, the fewest in 26 years. Just 19 percent, similarly, trust the Republicans in Congress to make the right decisions for the country’s future; even among Republicans themselves just four in 10 are confident in their own party. For comparison, 49 percent overall express this confidence in Obama, steady since August albeit well below its peak.

Pollster.com came to a similar conclusion.

In late January, a USA Today/Gallup poll recorded 27 percent of respondents saying they identified with the Republican Party, 36 percent with Democrats and 25 percent as unaffiliated or independent. Now in mid-October, the average data compiled from dozens of surveys over more than a year shows Republican ID at 22.5 percent, Democratic ID at 33.7 percent and Independent ID at 35 percent.

Two additional tidbits in the poll are the strong support for a public option and the increased support for the President. 

But 57 percent support one of the plan’s most contentious elements, a government-sponsored insurance option, and that soars to 76 percent if it’s limited to those who can’t get affordable private insurance.

……….

Still [Obama is] showing resilience, with a 57 percent job approval rating overall – not a significant difference from his 54 percent last month, but the first time since April it hasn’t declined

The majority of those polled said that they would rather see a public option than bipartisanship.

Indeed, Americans by 51-37 percent in this latest ABC News/Washington Post poll say they’d rather see a plan pass Congress without Republican support, if it includes a public option based on affordability, than with Republican backing but no such element.

There has been a ridiculous meme being pushed by the right about President Obama’s speech to the nation’s schools.  A request asking children to write a letter informing the President how they can support him is the main objection being circulated by the lunatic fringe.  Several members of the Republican party claim that the administration is trying to indoctrinate students in a way similar to that of some of the world’s most evil and notorious dictators.  Unbelievable.  Well…..guess who said the following in a speech broadcast live to the nation’s classrooms while he was campaigning for re-election in 1991:

“Let me know how you’re doing. Write me a letter — and I’m serious about this one — write me a letter about ways you can help us achieve our goals. I think you know the address.”

            President George H. W. Bush 1991

No public outcry, no storming of the Capitol by the left, no parents threatening to pull their children out of school.  President Bush gave his speech pushing the education policies of his administration and all was good in the hypocracy of the GOP.

John Mackey, the CEO and co-founder of Whole Foods, penned an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal titled: “The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare.“  Referring to health care reform as “ObamaCare” is a hint as to which way this article is headed.  However, given the large segment of Mackey’s Whole Foods target market that are progressive minded liberals who care about health and the enviroment this was probably not a sound business move on his part.  Left leaning progressives are already rallying to boycott Whole Foods.  There are now about 2,500 people who’ve joined a Facebook group dedicated to boycotting the grocer.  If Mackey thinks he is untouchable he needs to talk to Glenn Beck.  Several corporations have pulled their ad dollars from Beck’s program after he made offensive and extremist hate speech remarks about the President and Nancy Pelosi. 

Mackey’s self-serving piece offers as his solution to health care reform that Americans eat healthier food, organic preferably, exercise, and make healthier lifestyle choices. 

“Most of the diseases that kill us and account for about 70% of all health-care spending—heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes and obesity—are mostly preventable through proper diet, exercise, not smoking, minimal alcohol consumption and other healthy lifestyle choices”.,,,, CEO of Whole Foods, John Mackey

Who knew???  Who knew that the daughter who has a history of breast cancer in her family could prevent its occurrence simply by exercising and eating an apple a day?   Who knew that the son who inherited altzheimers only needed to eat organic blueberries to prevent its onset.  Don’t get me wrong,  I’m all for preventative health care and lifestyle choices both of which are a significant part of the bills currently being proposed by the House and the Senate but that alone will not make a dent in health care costs?  Why?  Because patients need to seek out a doctor for advice as to what preventative measures should be taken?  In other words there needs to be an ongoing doctor-patient relationship.   Such patients will not seek that advice if they cannot afford it.  Further, a working mom holding three jobs just to tread water cannot afford an over-priced, two dollar, organic piece of fruit.  It is not a reality in her world.  A trip into the real world where a family of four is living on $17,000 a year would do Mr. Mackey good. 

The Whole Foods CEO and co-founder also advocates the following as his solution to the health care crisis:

• Remove the legal obstacles that slow the creation of high-deductible health insurance plans and health savings accounts (HSAs). Free market health care….that worked so well for the financial industry.
• Equalize the tax laws so that that employer-provided health insurance and individually owned health insurance have the same tax benefits. Tax benefits for people paying for their own health insurance is a good plan that can be offered along side the public option.
• Repeal all state laws which prevent insurance companies from competing across state lines.  Does not decrease the cost of health care but allows large insurance companies to become larger. Besides, a public option accomplishes more competition, lower cost, larger risk market place, with the added benefit of preventing more insurance company monopolies.  Also, competing across state lines does not work because of risk selection.  Everyone would buy health insurance from the low price states which would result in higher risk for the insurance company thereby resulting in higher premiums for customers which defeats the purpose of lowering health care cost. Not to mention that some states are healthier and has less expensive health care than other states thereby resulting in less risk for the insurance company.  For example, there may be more risk providing insurance to someone in Mississippi, the state with the nation’s highest obesity rate, than in Washington state, one of the healthiest states in the nation.  The increased risk is based on the different lifestyles and eating habits of customers of the two states.
• Repeal government mandates regarding what insurance companies must cover.  Yes, I’m sure that without a mandate all the insurance companies will be rushing to cover all the expensive procedures that eat into their profits.  Such companies are quite benevolent that way.  Lets see, a choice between the patient’s well being and profits with big insurance as the decider…give me a break.  If we did not have regulatory cost ceilings for certain procedures the death rate for those WITH insurance would be much higher.
• Enact tort reform to end the ruinous lawsuits that force doctors to pay insurance costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.  Already proven not to reduce health care cost…see yesterday’s post.
• Make costs transparent so that consumers understand what health-care treatments cost.  Wow, who knew that if the unemployed, uninsured, and underinsured just knew how much health care cost they wouldn’t seek treatment thereby saving loads of cash.  Perhaps they would hold out even longer and just go ahead and die thereby inconveniencing Mr. Mackey as little as possible.
• Enact Medicare reform.  Brilliant Sherlock, it’s already being proposed by the House and the Senate.
• Finally, revise tax forms to make it easier for individuals to make a voluntary, tax-deductible donation to help the millions of people who have no insurance and aren’t covered by Medicare, Medicaid or the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Lets rely on the goodness of people like Mackey who has concluded that only rich people deserve health care and those who are unfortunate enough to lose their job, change jobs, have a prexisting condition, or develop an unexpected serious illness and are dropped from their insurance company must be damned to a short life.  Is the reason we have thousands of people dying each month from curable and preventable deseases due to people like Mackey’s generosity?

Mr. Mackey goes into the same Read the rest of this entry »

In her latest column Kathleen Parker calls it as she sees it regardless of her political leanings.  With the craziness that has enveloped the GOP involving the “birther movement” and the “townhall terrors” Parker officially announces that “Southern Republicans, it seems, have seceded from sanity.”

The curious Republican campaign of 2008 may have galvanized a conservative Southern base — including many who were mostly concerned with the direction Democrats would take the country — but it also repelled others who simply bolted and ran the other way. Whatever legitimate concerns the GOP may historically have represented were suddenly overshadowed by a sense of a resurgent Old South and all the attendant pathologies of festering hate and fear.

What the GOP is experiencing now, one hopes, are the death throes of that 50-year spell that Johnson foretold. But before the party of the Great Emancipator can rise again, Republicans will have to face their inner Voinovich and drive a stake through the heart of old Dixie.

Today is President Obama’s 48th birthday and we have some good news to deliver from Gallup.  The number of states that are solidly or leaning blue is:

37

That’s the number of states that are either solidly or leaning Democratic in a series of Gallup tracking polls conducted over the first six months of 2009. Only eight states are solidly or leaning Republicans in that same data.

The numbers, which are based on party identification of adults in national tracking polls, paint a stark portrait of the challenge facing Republicans not just in the 2010 midterm election but also in the 2012 presidential race.

The following talking points memo is being circulated within the Republican National Committee in its effor to sabotage health care reform and “Waterloo” the President in the process.

Obama’s plan for health care is deemed an “experiment” and a “risk” that could bankrupt the country and dangerously change the doctor-patient relationship.

More

“The Republican National Committee will engage in every activity we can to slow down this mad rush while promoting sensible alternatives that address health care costs and preserve quality,” the memo affirmatively declares.

In an effort to slow down reform, the RNC advises its advocates to use a whole host of political tools, from organizing town halls, to writing letters to the editor, to booking surrogates on radio and television, to engaging in “Street Theater” protests outside Democratic events. And in a bit of irony, the memo’s authors encourage readers to frame the president as the one acting out of political motivations.

and MORE:

* President Obama and Democrats are conducting a grand experiment with our economy, our country, and now our health care.
* President Obama’s massive spending experiments have created more debt than at any other time in our nation’s history.

* The President experimented with a $780 billion dollar budget-busting stimulus plan and unemployment is still rising. The President experimented with banks and auto companies, and now we’re on the hook for tens of billions of dollars with no exit plan.

* Now the President is proposing more debt and more risk through a trillion dollar experiment with our health care.

* Democrats are proposing a government controlled health insurance system, which will control care, treatments, medicines and even what doctors a patient may see.

* This health care experiment will have consequences for generations, but President Obama and Democrats want to ram this legislation through Congress in two months.

* President Obama’s health care experiment is too much, too fast, too soon. Our country cannot afford to fix health care through a rushed experiment.

* Americans want health care reform that addresses, not increases, cost or debt.

* Government takeover is the wrong way to go — health care decisions should remain between the doctor and the patient.

In remarks given in Lynchberg, Virginia, GOP gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell praised George W. Bush for his economic policies and expressed that he hopes to repeat them in Virginia.

“President Bush put in a ten-year tax-cut on everything from the death tax to capital gains tax and it was followed by an unprecedented period of economic recovery and economic growth,” he said. “In fact, it almost overheated the economy through about 2006. So, I think that’s the way you stimulate business. And that’s the kind of governor that I’m going to be to reduce those impediments to entrepreneurship, to let small businesses grow and thrive and create some opportunity.”

One supposes that McDonnell hopes to leave Virginia in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression also.  About those tax cuts, GW used the surplus lest by President Clinton to pay for them.  Had W been fiscally responsible and left them aside for a rainy day perhaps we would not have had to implement two stimulus packages.  No thanks McDonnell, it sounds like under your leadership Virginia will be broke in no time.

Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa was a bit upset that President Obama went to Paris, France to commemorate the fearless warriors who landed and took control of Normandy during World War II.  Grassley was so upset that he tweeted about it.

Per 75-year-old Sen. Chuck Grassley:

June 7:

Pres Obama you got nerve while u sightseeing in Paris to tell us”time to deliver” on health care. We still on skedul/even workinWKEND.

June 7:

Pres Obama while u sightseeing in Paris u said ‘time to delivr on healthcare’ When you are a “hammer” u think evrything is NAIL I’m no NAIL  [I'm taking my crayons and going home...na na na na na]

The White House Response:

“President Obama is gratified that the Senate is working hard to bring a health-reform bill to the floor on schedule. He looks forward to continuing his work with them upon his return from the commemoration of Allied heroism at D-Day.”

Michael Steele has officially become the “token” figurehead of the Republican National Committee.  Steele has signed a secret pact with members of the RNC agreeing to checks and balances on all expenditures or agreements binding the RNC monetarily.  The former lieutenant governor does have a checkered history when it comes to campaign fund management but the GOP knew this before they voted him up to the chairmanship.  In addition and in recognition of Steele’s history, one wonders if this would have happened to a horse of a different color with similar past campaign coffer issues.  Did we mention that this is the first time in history that such restraints have ever been placed on an RNC Chairman?  Wow…Steele made history in a second way…he must be so proud!

Here is a kicker, RNC veteran Jay Banning will be an advisor to the new RNC treasurer.  Did we also mention that Steele fired Banning last month?  The RNC forced Steele to reinstate Banning a month after he fired him.  So Steele does not even have control over employment decisions of the RNC. Wooow.

As most people have guessed by now, Steele was elected on President Obama’s coattails.  However, what the GOP still fails to realize is that black folks do not support President Obama simply because he is black but because he is a smart, qualified, articulate, gifted and capable leader.  In other words, President Obama and his family makes most black folks proud to be a member of the African-American community.  They do so by consistently projecting a positive image of high intelligence and high competence and ability.  Steele does the opposite.  As a matter of fact, many of us are wondering, under normal circumstances, whether Steele would have been elected using statements like “bling-bling,” “off-the-hook,” referring to everyone as “baby,” “wearing his hat backwards is how he roll” and agreeing with and laughing at a reference to the President as the “magic negro.” Instead of taking a high profile opportunity and using it to make a valuable contribution to political discourse, Steele has used his increased visibility to project utter buffoonery and may have set African-Americans back twenty or thirty years.  Two messages for Steele.  First, your constituents are not 16-year-old hip hop enthusiasts and if you are not smart enough to realize that then you are not smart or QUALIFIED enough to run a national party nor are the people who elevated you smart or attuned enough to the current political climate to dictate the policy and agenda for the decreasing number of Americans identifying themselves as Republican.  Second, laughing at a racist joke period but a racist joke about a member of your own community……..well there are no words.  Think about it, President Obama is a highly qualified, highly intelligent, highly accomplished, and highly revered figure in politics and in the world for that matter, if they are making such unimaginative, imbecilic remarks about him what exactly do you think they are saying about you behind your back? 

I guess all the trash talking Sen. Arnel Specter has been doing, “I will not be a loyal Democrat,” “I will not back the Employee Free Choice Act,”  “I will not be an automatic 60th vote” “still time for the Minnesota courts to do justice and declare Norm Coleman the winner,”  has had an effect on Senate Democrats. Last night in a modified resolution approved on the Senate floor it was resolved that Sen. Specter would enter the Democrat caucus as the most junior member of all committees but one.  Yes, Specter will be second in seniority only on the Special Committee on Aging despite promises from Sen. Harry Reid that the former Republican senator would retain the same seniority he would have earned had he entered the Senate as a Democrat 29 years ago.  As a Republican, Specter was the ranking member on the Judiciary Committee and a senior member of the Appropriations Committee, as well as ranking member of the panel’s Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education.  In fact, Specter lost seniority on five committees in all which will severly limit his influence.  So even though Specter retains seniority in the Senate generally he has lost it where it counts. 

Perhaps now the Pennsylvania Senator will realize that he has switched parties and there are consequences for Senators who switch parties in name only.  Specter’s comment that he is “entitled” to seniority this past weekend baffles this writer.  My question to Specter is have you been fighting for democratic causes for the 29 years that you have been in the Senate?  Voting with Democrats a mere 35 percent of the time does not “entitle” you to leap frog over those Senate Democrats who vote Democrat 80 to 90 percent of the time.  You’re not that valuable.  Not to mention the fact that you have benefited greatly throughout the past 29 years as a Republican member of the Senate primarly because the GOP has controlled the body for the majority of that time.  Senate Democrats have been in the minority for a long time, it seems unfair that all you need to do to usurp their earned power and influence is to cross to the other side of the isle.  Especially because you switched, by your own admission,  simply because you are unelectable as a member of the Republican party and not for any real ideological shift. 

It is unclear whether Sen. Specter will recoup his seniority IF he is reelected.

Most will be celebrating President Barack Obama’s 100th day in office today but some Democrats believe that the celebration for this milestone began yesterday when Sen. Arlen Specter delivered him a blue iced cake by announcing that he would be switching his party affiliation from Republican to Democrat.  The change will provide Senate democrats with a 60-vote filibuster-proof majority once Al Franken of Minnesota is seated.  Specter did caution democrats yesterday that they should not expect him to be an “automatic 60th vote” nor should they expect his vote on the current version of the Employee Free Choice Act.  The soon to be former Republican in fact reiterated his opposition to EFCA by saying that it was “a bad bill.”  However, it does not mean that he would not support the bill if it was tweaked a bit considering that he has supported it in the past. 

Sen. Specter began his political career back in the 60’s as a Democrat but switched to the Republican party in the 70’s.  As for Specter’s voting record, the Pennsylvania Senator voted with the Republican party 65 percent of the time this year.  While two other moderate Republicans senators Olympia Snow and Susan Collins of Maine only voted with their party 54 percent and 59 percent of the time respectively.  Democrats should not be overly excited about Specter’s switch and should remember that he voted AGAINST the Democrats 65 percent of the time and WITH the Democrats a mere 35 percent of the time.  The term that comes to mind is “Conservadem.” Democrats may be able to count on Specter for healthcare reform and probably climate change legislation but they had his support on those two issues prior to the switch.

The move by Specter is more devastating for the Republican party because it demonstrates the decreasing size of the Republican tent in terms of tolerable views outside those of the far, far, conservative right.  Specter in fact joined the other 200,000 Pennsylvanian Republicans who switched to the Democratic party within the last year.  Diversity of ideas or thoughts appears to be a deal breaker and as a result is the cost of admission and acceptance to the GOP.  Specter said yesterday that the reason he switched is because he did not want the far right electorate making the senatorial candidate decision for the entire state of Pennsylvania by supporting a right wing potential Republican candidate (Pat Toomey of Club For Growth fame) that planned to challenge him in the 2010 Pennsylvania primary.  Pat Buchannan said it best yesterday, the GOP is  “a heavily white party.”  This writer will add to that statement that the Republican Party is turning into a right wing fringe, isolationist sect incapable of offering credible and reasonable opposition.

As a side note:  Specter has built up a $6 million dollar campaign war chest as a Republican party candidate and has said in a statement released yesterday that he will return any donations made prior to the announcement upon request.

The President and Vice President will hold a press conference with Sen. Arlen Specter this morning welcoming Specter to the Democratic Party.

Barack Obama speaking to St. Louis citizens

Tea crackPOT bag revolution in St. Louis 4/15/2009

crickets….crickets……Nuff said.

Yesterday President Obama responded to today’s GOP scheduled tax day “tea party” initially brought on by CNBC analyst Rick Santelli during an ill advised rant last month.  The GOP has now taken the spectacle and ran with it.  Unfortunately, the Grand Old Party do not have a cohesive focus or message for their stunt.   The president, however, has decided to address all the criticisms lodged against his economic policies coming from certain factions of the GOP.  If you want to be informed regarding teh president’s policies and teh logic and reasoning behind them, read below.  If you want to know why it does not make sense to send checks directly to taxpayers as opposed to giving it to the banks read below.  If you want to know why it does not make sense to nationalize the banks read below.  If you want to know why it is critical to our economic recovery that the government increases its spending please read below.

President Barack Obama’s remarks at Georgetown University, as provided by the White House                          

A House Upon A Rock

It has now been twelve weeks since my administration began. And I think even our critics would agree that at the very least, we’ve been busy. In just under three months, we have responded to an extraordinary set of economic challenges with extraordinary action – action that has been unprecedented in both its scale and its speed.

I know that some have accused us of taking on too much at once. Others believe we haven’t done enough. And many Americans are simply wondering how all of our different programs and policies fit together in a single, overarching strategy that will move this economy from recession to recovery and ultimately to prosperity.

So today, I want to step back for a moment and explain our strategy as clearly as I can. I want to talk about what we’ve done, why we’ve done it, and what we have left to do. I want to update you on the progress we’ve made, and be honest about the pitfalls that may lie ahead.

And most of all, I want every American to know that each action we take and each policy we pursue is driven by a larger vision of America’s future – a future where sustained economic growth creates good jobs and rising incomes; a future where prosperity is fueled not by excessive debt, reckless speculation, and fleeing profit, but is instead built by skilled, productive workers; by sound investments that will spread opportunity at home and allow this nation to lead the world in the technologies, innovations, and discoveries that will shape the 21st century. That is the America I see. That is the future I know we can have.

To understand how we get there, we first need to understand how we got here.

Recessions are not uncommon. Markets and economies naturally ebb and flow, as we have seen many times in our history. But this recession is different. This recession was not caused by a normal downturn in the business cycle. It was caused by a perfect storm of irresponsibility and poor decision-making that stretched from Wall Street to Washington to Main Street.

As has been widely reported, it started in the housing market. During the course of the decade, the formula for buying a house changed: instead of saving their pennies to buy their dream house, many Americans found they could take out loans that by traditional standards their incomes just could not support. Others were tricked into signing these subprime loans by lenders who were trying to make a quick profit. And the reason these loans were so readily available was that Wall Street saw big profits to be made. Investment banks would buy and package together these questionable mortgages into securities, arguing that by pooling the mortgages, the risks had been reduced. And credit agencies that are supposed to help investors determine the soundness of various investments stamped the securities with their safest rating when they should have been labeled “Buyer Beware.”

No one really knew what the actual value of these securities were, but since the housing market was booming and prices were rising, banks and investors kept buying and selling them, always passing off the risk to someone else for a greater profit without having to take any of the responsibility. Banks took on more debt than they could handle. The government-chartered companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, whose traditional mandate was to help support traditional mortgages, decided to get in on the action by buying and holding billions of dollars of these securities. AIG, the biggest insurer in the world, decided to make profits by selling billions of dollars of complicated financial instruments that supposedly insured these securities. Everybody was making record profits – except the wealth created was real only on paper. And as the bubble grew, there was almost no accountability or oversight from anyone in Washington.

Then the housing bubble burst. Home prices fell. People began defaulting on their subprime mortgages. The value of all those loans and securities plummeted. Banks and investors couldn’t find anyone to buy them. Greed gave way to fear. Investors pulled their money out of the market. Large financial institutions that didn’t have enough money on hand to pay off all their obligations collapsed. Other banks held on tight to the money they did have and simply stopped lending

This is when the crisis spread from Wall Street to Main Street. After all, the ability to get a loan is how you finance the purchase of everything from a home to a car to a college education. It’s how stores stock their shelves, farms buy equipment, and businesses make payroll. So when banks stopped lending money, businesses started laying off workers. When laid off workers had less money to spend, businesses were forced to lay off even more workers. When people couldn’t get car loans, a bad situation at the auto companies became even worse. When people couldn’t get home loans, the crisis in the housing market only deepened. Because the infected securities were being traded worldwide and other nations also had weak regulations, this recession soon became global. And when other nations can’t afford to buy our goods, it slows our economy even further.

This is the situation we confronted on the day we took office. And so our most urgent task has been to clear away the wreckage, repair the immediate damage to the economy, and do everything we can to prevent a larger collapse. And since the problems we face are all working off each other to feed a vicious economic downturn, we’ve had no choice but to attack all fronts of our economic crisis at once.

The first step was to fight a severe shortage of demand in the economy. The Federal Reserve did this by dramatically lowering interest rates last year in order to boost investment. And my administration and Congress boosted demand by passing the largest recovery plan in our nation’s history. It’s a plan that is already in the process of saving or creating 3.5 million jobs over the next two years. It is putting money directly in people’s pockets with a tax cut for 95% of working families that is now showing up in paychecks across America. And to cushion the blow of this recession, we also provided extended unemployment benefits and continued health care coverage to Americans who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own.

Now, some have argued that this recovery plan is a case of irresponsible government spending; that it is somehow to blame for our long-term deficit projections, and that the federal government should be cutting instead of increasing spending right now. So let me tackle this argument head on.

To begin with, economists on both the left and right agree that the last thing a government should do in the middle of a recession is to cut back on spending. You see, when this recession began, many families sat around their kitchen table and tried to figure out where they could cut back. So do many businesses. That is a completely responsible and understandable reaction. But if every family in America cuts back, then no one is spending any money, which means there are more layoffs, and the economy gets even worse. That’s why the government has to step in and temporarily boost spending in order to stimulate demand. And that’s exactly what we’re doing right now.

Second of all, I absolutely agree that our long-term deficit is a major problem that we have to fix. But the fact is that this recovery plan represents only a tiny fraction of that long-term deficit. As I will discuss in a moment, the key to dealing with our deficit and debt is to get a handle on out-of-control health care costs – not to stand idly by as the economy goes into free fall.

So the recovery plan has been the first step in confronting this economic crisis. The second step has been to heal our financial system so that credit is once again flowing to the businesses and families who rely on it.

The heart of this financial crisis is that too many banks and other financial institutions simply stopped lending money. In a climate of fear, banks were unable to replace their losses by raising new capital on their own, and they were unwilling to lend the money they did have because they were afraid that no one would pay it back. It is for this reason that the last administration used the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, to provide these banks with temporary financial assistance in order to get them lending again.

Now, I don’t agree with some of the ways the TARP program was managed, but I do agree with the broader rationale that we must provide banks with the capital and the confidence necessary to start lending again. That is the purpose of the stress tests that will soon tell us how much additional capital will be needed to support lending at our largest banks. Ideally, these needs will be met by private investors. But where this is not possible, and banks require substantial additional resources from the government, we will hold accountable those responsible, force the necessary adjustments, provide the support to clean up their balance sheets, and assure the continuity of a strong, viable institution that can serve our people and our economy.

Of course, there are some who argue that the government should stand back and simply let these banks fail – especially since in many cases it was their bad decisions that helped create the crisis in the first place. But whether we like it or not, history has repeatedly shown that when nations do not take early and aggressive action to get credit flowing again, they have crises that last years and years instead of months and months – years of low growth, low job creation, and low investment that cost those nations far more than a course of bold, upfront action. And although there are a lot of Americans who understandably think that government money would be better spent going directly to families and businesses instead of banks – “where’s our bailout?,” they ask – the truth is that a dollar of capital in a bank can actually result in eight or ten dollars of loans to families and businesses, a multiplier effect that can ultimately lead to a faster pace of economic growth. Read the rest of this entry »

The GOP is really lost in the wilderness at this point.  Not only does their “budget” spend more than the President’s budget but when they were comparing their budget to what they thought was the current administration’s numbers, it turns out they they were using the numbers of the Bush administration which made their conclusion end with a skyrocketing deficit.  So what does TAKE TWO of the House GOP “budget” recommend? Let see, they want to cease all non-military discretionary spending for five years. In other words, bye, bye stimulus, infrastructure building, educational advancements, healthcare reform.   Hello, more tax cuts for the wealthy, additional tax breaks for big oil companies, and higher taxes for the middle class. The House GOP “budget” also proposes cutting funds allocated for food stamps to low-income Americans who are the ones in most need of help during this economic downturn.  

It appears that the GOP really are the Marie Antoinettes of politics given that they seem to relish the sentiment most often erroneously attributed to the former Queen of France, “let them eat cake.”  The embattled party also proposes cutting education and medicare spending. In other words, lets continue to keep the American populace lagging behind other countries in pre-college education advancement. As for medicare, the GOP wants to privatize it…you know like they wanted to privatize social security?  Think about where we would be now had we listened to he Republican Party when they proposed that we take all the Social Security funds and invest them in the stock market. The GOP budget plan also maintains and gives additional tax cuts to an even smaller group of the wealthiest Americans.  They want to cut the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent. You know, give the Wall Street fellows a bit more reason to celebrate. In addition, they want to suspend the capital gains tax for two years.  But propose a subtantial increase personal income taxes for the middle class, those earning $50,000 to $100,000 per year. It appears that the GOP really is tone death. As a matter of fact, Congressman Eric Cantor of Virginia says that Democrats are “overreacting to this economic crisis.” Apparently unemployment claims reaching an all time 26-year high is a figment of our imagination. I also assume that the fact that Cantor’s wife’s (Diane Cantor) employer, New York Private Bank and Trust, receiving $250,000 in TARP funds keeps his family sitting pretty through these difficult economic times.

According to the Citizens For Tax Justice, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research and advocacy organization, the budget plan proposed by House Republicans far exceeds the spend proposed by the President’s budget.  CTJ compared the two plans and the GOP didn’t fair too well.  After a week of criticising the president for the amount required under his plan, it turns out that the GOP’s plan spends significantly more, $300 billion more.  The GOP does hypocrisy so well.  Below are the highlights of the GOP plan that House Republicans will announce on the steps of the Capitol today.

• Over a fourth of taxpayers, mostly low-income families, would pay more in taxes under the House GOP plan than they would under the President’s plan

• The richest one percent of taxpayers would pay $100,000 less, on average, under the House GOP plan than they would under the President’s plan.

• The income tax proposals in the House GOP plan, which is presented as a fiscally responsible alternative to the President’s plan, would cost over $300 billion more than the Obama income tax cuts in 2011 alone

It is very easy for someone to say that a plan will not work and criticize it excessively.  It is much more difficult to offer sound alternative solutions in the light of such criticism.  Every time I hear the President speak I walk away feeling completely confident of our eventual recovery.  So I pull up my bootstraps and head out to do my part by using a small amount of purchasing power to help in the cause.  Just as I’m about to head for the door, I hear someone from the GOP screaming ‘oh my goodness…..the sky is falling….the sky is falling.’  So what do I do instead….I go out and buy an umbrella. 

The GOP has been all over the Sunday shows and the political spectrum shouting that the budget proposed by President Obama spends too much and will impose insurmountable debt on future generations.  Such an argument confuses the immediate priorities.  Who amongst us would forgo an opportunity to provide our starving child with food knowing that it will result in a larger credit card bill next month even if there was a possibility that the grocer may not accept credit and you may walk away empty handed.  In times of emergency all reasonably viable opportunities must be pursued.  Besides, give a child a fish and he/she will eat for a day. Teach a child to fish and he/she will eat for a lifetime. It is a much better proposition to sacrifice the funds now and clean up the ocean so that future generations can eat for a lifetime.

Unfortunately, the GOP have failed miserably at offering any plausible alternatives to the president’s budget that have not already been tried during the eight years of the Bush administration.  In spite of the fact that the GOP has all of a sudden got fiscal religion, lets revisit history for a moment in terms of its fiscal track record.  The budget was balanced for the first time in 30 years under President Bill Clinton.  That means that the four Republican presidents preceding Clinton (Reagan, Bush 41, Nixon, Ford) and the single democratic president (Carter) could not balance the budget.  Lets also remember that President Bush and a republican controlled Congress entered office with a 86.4 billion dollar surplus.  President Bush, with the help of a GOP controlled Congress six out of his eight years in office, left the presidency and the country with a staggering $638 billion dollar deficit.  One wonders if on the Titanic the GOP were the ones bailing water into the ship. Needless to say, the Republican party has absolutely no credibility when it comes to debt left to future generations or fiscal discipline in general.

The President proposes that the best way to bring down our deficit is to have a budget that leads to broad economic growth. It also makes sense that the president’s budget is inseparable from our economic recovery because it lays the necessary foundation for a secure and lasting prosperity.  The administration plans to create a new foundation for the economy by creating a new health care system, new energy technology, and achieving great progress in education so that it will enable us to become a much stronger competitor in the global economy.  There is an enormous need to counter the incredible drop in demand currently plaguing the nation and pull us out of this crisis.  The only sector with money to do so is the government.  That means that the government is the liquidity source of last resort right now. It must spend to stimulate demand and prevent us from sinking into a depression. As a matter of fact, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), a nonpartisan body, says that the adoption of the Reinvestment and Recovery Act will help to end the recession by fall of this year. 

We must make the necessary investments in education, health care, and renewable energy infrastructure now in order to equip future generations for future and sustained prosperity.  So instead of just putting a band-aid on the broken economy this administration has opted to confront it, operate, and heal it.  The biggest drain on future funds is health care.  More specifically, Medicare and Medicaid.  Therefore, investing in an information technology system to make the health care industry more efficient will also contribute significantly to decreasing our deficit. Now that all the relevant players in the health care industry now recognize that the industry must be reformed including the majority of the GOP, twelve years later, but at least they are on board now, now in the time to do it.  We must face the fact that we as a people must make a tectonic shift in how we move throughout or day to day lives.  During this challenging time it will be inconvenient and we will have to make sacrifices now in order to secure a prosperous future.

Other obstructionist arguments offered by the GOP.

 The GOP argues that the small businesses will be hurt most by a tax increase on Americans making over $250,000 a year.

According to Politifact, a small business would have to ”make” $250,000 in net profit after deducting all his expenses (employees pay, supplies, and other legitimate business expenses) to be subject to the tax increase.  The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center says that only two percent of small businesses will be subject to the tax increase.  Which means that 98 percent will more than likely receive a tax cut.

Charities will lose by a decrease in the deductions allowed for charitable giving by the wealthy.  There will be a cap on such deductions for those earning $250,000 or more a year.

The best way to encourage and enable charitable giving is to have a flourishing economy. When the economy is booming people are much more charitable. In addition, a significant amount of charitable giving comes from low income people through religious institutions etc.

Requires a Cap and Trade or energy tax on all Americans.  

The cap and trade plan is designed to reduce green house emissions and address climate change in addition to investing in necessary infrastructure building. Further, building such infrastructure will enable us to decrease our dependence on foreign oil.  The plan will also move toward providing us with alternative sources of energy and provide millions of green jobs in the process.  Not to mention that it will help us to become an energy producing rather than an energy consuming economy.  This part of the president’s budget is a necessary investment in our infrastructure, by way of updating the electric grid among other things, for the jobs of the future.  Our outdated electricity grid is costing the U.S. over $100 billion dollars a year.  It wastes twice as much energy as it did thirty years ago.  We need to update and modernize our energy grid.  The GOP has criticized this part of the budget by referring to it as an energy tax. Why you ask? Because the GOP is significantly dependent on oil company money and it is not in the interest of the oil industry for the U.S. to become less oil dependent.  Why you ask?  Because the cap and trade plan will result in consumers using less energy (driving less)which cuts into oil industry profits.

Repealing tax credits to the oil and gas industry that may result in putting the industry at a competitive disadvantage.

Exxon Mobil shatters U.S. records in January 2009 by reporting profits of 45.2 billion for 2008.   Nuff said.

Where is the GOP’s budget you ask? They don’t have one.