God damn son of a bitch

I truly hate it when this happens.

After stating in my own comments that I see a huge difference between progressives and wingers in that progressives can disagree, but wingers have to stay loyal to The Message™, I run into this shit.

Bucking Republican Orthodoxy

Uh oh. It looks likes someone is in danger of losing his status as a conservative in good standing. It began yesterday when Ramesh Ponnuru of the National Review took issue with a claim made by the New York Sun editorial staff. The editors of the Sun, in an editorial entitled "What is a Republican?" claimed that all Republicans should be able to unify around the following idea:

Reductions in top marginal tax rates provide incentives for growth and lead to greater government revenues in the long run. That is not always the case. There is a point on the Laffer Curve at which tax cuts on the top margin stop generating increased income, but we are nowhere near that point now.

Ponnuru, who is the most intellectually honest of the Corner gang by a country mile, took issue with this, noting the obvious:

Presumably what they [the editors of the Sun] mean is that the top income tax rate is higher than the revenue-maximizing rate, but I'm not sure why they think that it is. Bush's tax cuts appear to have caused revenue to be lower than it would otherwise have been, which suggests that we're already below the revenue-maximizing tax rate.

Of course, as stated by A L in the first couple sentences, Ramesh Ponnuru is probably dead meat to the Republicans. The stupid ass strayed from The Message™. The Republicans will teach him about the folly of thinking.

He's authored a book called The Party of Death. Duh. You can see that in the picture.

Haven't read that book, but my research shows it refers to Democrats* when it should be about Republicans.

* Here it gets tricky. From my research**, Ponnuru denies its about the Dems and then says it is. He's writing about abortion and euthanasia. I guess bombing the shit out of Iraqi civilians doesn't count as "death".

** Remember, dear reader, I'm lazy ass so my research is always suspect.

Déja vu all over again

Been there, done that, worn out the T-shirt and nearly forgotten the whole thing.

Through the years I've known and even admired many Republicans. Its absolutely impossible to work for most American corporations without rubbing elbows with Republicans. Hell,everyone hasn't been Democratic so I was bound to run into a few Rs. Anyway, although we would often disagree on policy or whatever, they made decent, cogent arguments for their positions. They were totally wrong, but they were earnest, honest, reasonable.

But those people have been marginalized at best. I'm hard pressed to accept a Republican as anyone who isn't completely bat shit crazy until they prove to me they aren't. A good place to start is for them to denounce Bush. Anyone who thinks Bush has been good for America should be placed in a straight jacket and lobotomized.

Hello, hyperbole?

I miss the Republican party as a source of opposition and for discussion.

Please read Anonymous Liberal.

KARL ROVE, CHAMPION OF THE LITTLE GUY

Need a good laugh? Sure ya do. We all do. Well I've got just the thing for you here from Kevin Drum.

A couple of days ago James Fallows dispensed some advice to Michael Gerson regarding his new op-ed perch at the Washington Post. Boiled down, he suggested that Gerson needed to reduce his output of vague, feel-good columns and instead write sharper, more pointed pieces that acknowledged his six years as George Bush's chief speechwriter and made that experience a core part of his narrative, warts and all.

Today Gerson did just that, writing a column about Karl Rove. Here's his pitch:

Rove's main influence on the Republican Party has not been a series of tactical innovations but a series of strategic arguments. In this way, Rove is the opposite of a cynical political operator.

....Rove argues that Republicans win as activist reformers, in the tradition of Lincoln, McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. "We were founded as a reformist party," he said in our conversation this week, "not to be against something, but to help the little guy get ahead." The models he cites are 401(k)s and the mortgage interest deduction — government policies that encouraged individual wealth and ownership.

Ya gotta read the article because it gets funnier as Kevin eviscerates Gerson.

Despite Large Majorities, Democrats Are Chicken on Gun Control (NSFW)

Come on. This is pure bullshit. The Democrats are chicken shit on everything. Face it and live with it.

I've posted before I'm no advocate of gun control. Guns have always been part of my life from an early age and they can be controlled by those who own them.

But this is an issue many Americans have a problem with and the Dems don't give a shit.

This is supposed to be a republic controlled by the People. Even if I don't agree, the People should rule. The Dems are like the Repugs in not caring what the People want.

So sad.

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Know when to keep your mouth shut

Over at The Fix, they've posted many comments from readers in response to a question:

If Markos Moulitsas's (a.k.a. Kos) call to tape every word uttered by Republican officials and candidates was a good or a bad thing for politics.

One response:

"How is anyone supposed to develop serious policies if the first time they talk about a subject they are worried that a mistaken sentence could come back to bite them later on?... Kos' plan ... isn't politics, its warfare." -- Posted by: camguy | May 29, 2007 09:35 AM

This is a no-brainer to me. All officials and candidates should either speak from their true beliefs for the first time or admit they need to look closer at the subject/issue before saying anything.

But no, most will expound in great detail about what they think which is pretty shallow thinking at best and that's why their words come back to haunt them.

"I don't know." Throughout my years of schooling I can't count how many times I was told that is a perfectly solid answer. Its also the correct one if you haven't really thought about a subject/issue or really do just don't know.

Tick, tick, tick...

Is that a light I see at the end of this tunnel?

Andrea Mitchell on the Chris Matthews Show:

I think the Republicans are going to crack. What I’ve been told from inside the moderate center of the Republican caucus is that the vote in favor of the president this week — it was against the president but the Republicans holding for the president — was misleading. That they really are not in favor of the surge. They don’t believe it’s going to work. But they basically said the president has until August, until Labor Day. After that, if it doesn’t work, they’re running.

+++

MITCHELL: They’ll stick until September and then they’ll leave. I believe very firmly that they’re against what he is doing but they feel that General Petraeus has persuaded them that for all intents and purposes, they can’t vote a withdrawal before September.

One needs to be cautious with one's elation, but perhaps sanity is slowly invading Washington DC.



Most Americans don't believe they've sent an utter fool to represent them in Congress regardless of political party, but sometimes it seems they have. Maybe now the fools are slowly getting wiser and will do the right thing.

Or maybe this is to you're liking. Fool, idiot, all the same, right?



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A must read IMHO

Its pretty long, but comes from Chuck Dupree so ya know its worth reading. A snippet.

Even non-Bush-related issues, such as the number of people who expressed support for “old fashioned values about family and marriage” or who support allowing school boards to fire homosexual teachers, have moved left by about ten percentage points. If you haven’t seen the graphs, I recommend them, they’ll give your spirits a lift. From more support for government programs to less social conservatism to less religious intensity, the country is moving in a consistent direction, and it’s not one the Republicans would choose, at least not the Republicans of the recent past.

Very intersting

Check out this list of Republican child molesters, rapists and more.

The list sure surprised me. There are many more of these than I knew about.

(via Bad Attitudes)

House approves huge spending bill

Those fucking Democrats!

A must-pass bill covering about one-sixth of the federal budget swept through the House on Wednesday. A sizable chunk of Republicans joined virtually all Democrats in approving spending increases for education, veterans and the AIDS battle in Africa.

The 286-140 vote — with 57 Republicans voting in favor — was a pleasant surprise for Democrats who expected far less GOP support. The $463.5 billion spending bill had much to please the rank and file, including Republican moderates, even though it contained no pet projects for their districts.

"The content is a heck of a lot better than most expected we'd come up with," said the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Rep. David Obey (news, bio, voting record), D-Wis. He worked with his Senate counterpart, Sen. Robert Byrd (news, bio, voting record), D-W.Va., to add money for initiatives popular with both Democrats and Republicans.

The winning vote would have been even higher had there not been such hard feelings over how Democrats powered the bill through the House: just an hour of debate time, no amendments allowed.

In truth, this is a good article. It admits the spending bill was necessary and even Republicans felt compelled to support it. Perhaps those Democrats aren't so bad after all?

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