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The Cult of Congressional Republicanism


© Mark Fiore

Commentary by the cartoonist, Mark Fiore:

Sure, it seems extreme, but extreme times call for extreme cartoons. When you have the Republican Speaker of the House threatening a national default, food stamps being slashed while farm subsidies are increased and an attempt to defund a program that has been in existence for four years, things have gone to crazy-land.

Rejoice! The End is Near! The Shutdown has begun!

UPDATE: I don’t know why this won’t show. Fiore was asking people to repost this video. Oh well, I guess you will have to watch it on the Vimeo site or on Daily Kos.

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Shutdown?

Adam Zyglis
© Adam Zyglis

Even some Republicans are standing up to Ted Cruz and his efforts to shut down the government. Which is difficult for them, since right-wing groups have punished severely any GOP politician who dares to vote the same way as Obama (even on a health care bill that was originally a conservative idea). The Republicans have painted themselves into a corner.

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If at first you don’t succeed, lie, lie again

The conservative propaganda machine is going full tilt trying to turn the American people against health care reform before it goes into effect on Tuesday and people have a chance to actually benefit from it. How desperate are they?

Pretty freaking desperate I’d say. This week, conservatives keep repeating the lie that Warren Buffett just said that we should scrap Obamacare and start over. Except that he didn’t.

It started on September 17 when a right-wing site called Money Morning took a three-year old quote from Buffett completely out of context. At the time, Buffett was talking about the the situation before health care reform, saying that costs were completely out of control. The only possibly negative thing he said about Obamacare was that it didn’t go far enough, but that he preferred it to the status quo.

Within hours, conservative media started saying that Buffett had just come out against Obamacare and said it should be scrapped.

In fact, Buffett immediately told the press that he didn’t know where these stories are coming from, saying “This is outrageous. It’s 100 percent wrong … totally false. I’ve never suggested nor thought Obamacare should be scrapped.”

Did that stop the lie? The next day after Buffett’s denial, Republican Congressman Jim Jordan said in the National Review “All the momentum is in our direction. Warren Buffett said yesterday, ‘Scrap the bill’.” Then Republican Congressman Tom Graves said on ABC’s This Week “Warren Buffett says stop it now and start over.” Then former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough said on his MSNBC show “Warren Buffett came out last week and said … Obamacare is not going to work. We need to start all over.” Other Republicans tweeted the same thing.

That’s right, one day after Buffett said it was a lie, Republicans said the exact opposite and repeated the lie. Over and over again. If you repeat something often enough, I guess Republicans think that will make it true.

Taking this one big step further, conservative sites then complained that the “liberal media” was suppressing this story.

Rachael Maddow sums it up nicely:

Soon, the “fact” that Buffett criticized the Affordable Care Act — even though he didn’t — will be one of the basic truths that conservatives “know” to be true, and they’ll assume the rest of the country is unaware because the darned “liberal media” refused to get the word out. All of this is necessary, of course, because of the right’s zeal to convince themselves that a moderate health care reform law built on ideas Republicans used to like is destroying America from within.

UPDATE: New Gallup poll shows that a wide majority of uninsured Americans say they will purchase health insurance because of Obamacare. No wonder the Republicans are desperate.

UPDATE 2: Good article by David Atkins explains why the Republicans are betraying all their own principles for political gain in opposing Obamacare.

Republicans have placed all their chips against the Affordable Care Act. Not for a generation or more will Republicans be able to credibly claim to voters that they want to “protect” Obamacare, after voting 42 times to repeal it. Nor for a generation or more will they be able to credibly praise President Obama compared to, say, a presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren if she promotes true single-payer healthcare. It’s hard, after all, to claim that there’s anyone worse than the Communist Kenyan AntiChrist. Nor again will it be possible to “rebrand” Obamacare as anything other than Democratic President Barack Hussein Obama’s healthcare plan.

No, the battle lines here are set. Either Republicans make the President’s signature healthcare plan a failure, or Republicans see their brand badly tarnished as voters are reminded daily of the positive effects of a healthcare plan Republicans opposed, enacted by a President Republicans despised, bearing that President’s own name.

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Temper Tantrum

Just a few months ago, in July, the Republican Deputy Whip in the House said the following:

It seems to me there’s appropriate ways to deal with the law, but shutting down the government to get your way over an unrelated piece of legislation is the political equivalent of throwing a temper tantrum, it is just not helpful. And I think it is the sort of thing that could create a backlash that could cost the Republicans the majority in the House, which is after all the last line of defense against the president, and could materially undercut the ability of the Republicans in the Senate to capture the majority in 2014 which I think they have a decent chance to do.

And yet, this same Congressman just voted to shut down the government if Obama doesn’t delay Obamacare for a year and allow businesses to opt out of contraception coverage. That’s right, the Republicans actually broadened their demands, and decided that reopening the long settled fight over contraception was the way to do it? They are simply crazy.

Adding to the irony, today Senator Ted Cruz called on Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid to call the Senate back into session on Sunday, instead of waiting until Monday when it is scheduled. Cruz says “The Senate needs to act”. Of course, just a few days ago, it was Cruz who mounted a faux filibuster on his own party’s bill in order to delay action in the Senate by days, which failed miserably. Then, on top of that, he delayed the Senate vote another day just so that — in the words of his own party members — he could get more publicity and raise additional money from conservative donors. Why is he in such a hurry now?

UPDATE: Speaking of temper tantrums, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has come out saying the Republicans should force the shutdown. That’s right, the same man who almost destroyed the Republican party in the 90s by forcing a shutdown didn’t learn from that experience at all. Even more ironic, Gingrich accuses Obama of refusing to negotiate, but offers no evidence for that claim at all. In fact, Obama said again today that he was “not only open to but eager” to negotiate. Unfortunately, the Republicans are not interested in negotiating, they are only interested in making demands while holding the threat of a shutdown like a gun up to the heads of the American people.

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Late Night Political Humor

“This is the 41st time that they have voted to repeal Obamacare. This is really not governing, this is more like a drinking game; every time they vote to defund, Boehner knocks back a Wild Turkey.” – Bill Maher

“The leader in this movement to defund Obamacare is Ted Cruz, the senator from Texas. He said, ‘I will do anything and everything possible to defund Obamacare.’ Really, how about lighting yourself on fire?” – Bill Maher

“Ted Cruz is half Canadian and half Cuban. The wit of Justin Bieber combined with the people skills of Scarface.” – Bill Maher

“It looks like the federal government could be shutting down. The legal definition of a government shutdown is when Congress continues not to work, but they do it from home.” – Jay Leno

“New Rule: If House Republicans succeed in cutting $40 billion from the Food Stamp program, Congressman James Sensenbrenner has to go to a food bank and donate at least two of his chins.” – Bill Maher

“Under the bill they voted for, states now have to require food stamp recipients to be drug-tested and work at least 20 hours a week – the same thing I was going to suggest for congressional Republicans.” – Bill Maher

“Chicago has now surpassed New York City as the murder capital of the United States. That’s really surprising since New York has twice as many NFL teams.” – Conan O’Brien

“The video game Grand Theft Auto 5 made 800 million dollars in one day. People say Americans can’t export on values anymore, this proves we can. Unfortunately, our values are car theft and mass shootings.” – Bill Maher

“Syrian President Assad told Fox News that if he were ever to talk to President Obama he would tell Obama to ‘listen to your people’. Is he the one to give advice about listening to his people? His people are shooting at him!” – Jay Leno

“Russian President Vladimir Putin said he may seek a fourth term but that’s up to the people to decide. Then he laughed for 10 minutes … shirtless.” – Conan O’Brien

“Pundits say President Obama is starting to lose support from his own party. To give you an idea how bad it’s gotten, today Jimmy Carter compared him to Jimmy Carter.” – Jay Leno

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Conservative Anarchy

Well, it looks like the conservatives are going to get the government shutdown they want. In fact, they are already celebrating.

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann says “We’re very excited. It’s exactly what we wanted, and we got it.” She believes that the GOP will be rewarded for standing firm in their demands. “People will be very grateful.”

Texas Congressman John Abney Culberson says “It’s wonderful. We’re 100% united!”

The national coordinator for the Tea Party Patriots applauded Republicans “for their courage and their refusal to be cowed by the Senate and the president.”

They also refuse to learn from history. Even though House Speaker John Boehner warned his Republican colleagues about how a similar (but less severe) shutdown in the mid-1990s caused massive political damage to the Republicans, conservatives have dismissed it. Congressman Tim Huelskamp responded “He has an opinion. It’s an opinion based on experience in the last century.”

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A Health Care bill by any other name would not smell as sweet

Further evidence that the fight over health care reform is more of a referendum on Obama, and not really about health care. CNBC did another poll asking people for their opinion of health care reform, but they did something interesting. “In CNBC’s third-quarter All-America Economic Survey, we asked half of the 812 poll respondents if they support Obamacare and the other half if they support the Affordable Care Act.”

And here is where it gets ironic. 46% of the respondents oppose Obamacare, while 37% oppose the ACA. Even though they are exactly the same thing. Likewise, 26% support Obamacare, but only 22% support the ACA.

Why?

Gender and partisanship are responsible for the differences. Men, independents and Republicans are more negative on Obamacare than ACA. Young people, Democrats, nonwhites and women are more positive on Obamacare.

Another factor is that 30% don’t even know what the ACA is, while fewer people — only 12% — say they don’t know about Obamacare.

Polls done in the past show that when asked about the separate provisions of the ACA, people are more supportive than if they are asked about the reform bill itself.

It seems like many people have no clue about health care reform, they are just expressing their opinion about Obama (both positive and negative). Even so, recent polls show that Americans are opposed to defunding Obamacare/ACA, especially if it means shutting down the government. According to one Republican pollster, Americans seem to be saying (whether they support it or not) “It’s the law of the land. Let’s give it a try.”

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Late Night Political Humor

“President Obama warned that the government could shut down in two weeks. Obama added, ‘Not because of a budget impasse but because we’ll all be watching the last episode of ‘Breaking Bad’.'” – Conan O’Brien

“Senate leaders Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell admitted they have no Plan B if the House doesn’t avoid a government shutdown. Of course this raised a lot of questions, like: Since when did they have a Plan A?” – Jimmy Fallon

“The CEO of Starbucks is asking customers to stop bringing guns into the coffee chain stores. He said, ‘It’s our job to rob you guys’.” – Conan O’Brien

“Starbucks announced they don’t want customers bringing guns into their stores. Meanwhile, Dunkin’ Donuts said there is nothing you can bring in here that’s more dangerous than what we serve.” – Conan O’Brien

“You know, if I wanted to pick out one thing that best exemplifies our country’s peculiar relationship with guns, it’s that the phrase ‘minor shooting incident’ exists.” – Jon Stewart (on reports that the Navy Yard shooter was previously in involved in minor shooting incidents)

“North Korea says it’s ready to resume nuclear talks with the U.S. for the first time in five years. But President Obama said it’s going to be pretty awkward – not talking to North Korea, but having to thank Dennis Rodman.” – Jimmy Fallon

“Cher has turned down an invitation to sing at the 2014 Olympics in Russia because of Russia’s anti-gay laws. Their anti-gay laws are so strict, men can be arrested just for showing up at a Cher concert.” – Jay Leno

“Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff is apparently so mad over the NSA’s spying scandal that she has canceled her trip to the White House next month. Of course it didn’t help when Brazil called to say they weren’t coming and the White House was like, ‘Yeah, we heard’.” – Jimmy Fallon

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Top 16 Myths about Obamacare

PolitiFact has been doing fact checking about Obamacare since 2009. Here are their top 16 myths and lies about the law (full explanations at the link).

  1. The law rations health care, like systems in Canada and Great Britain. False. (Florida Governor Rick Scott on Fox News.)
  2. It has “death panels.” Pants on Fire. (Sarah Palin of course.)
  3. Muslims are exempt from the health care law. Pants on Fire.
  4. The IRS is going to be “in charge” of “a huge national database” on health care that will include Americans’ “personal, intimate, most close-to-the-vest-secrets.” Pants on Fire. (Congresswoman Michele Bachmann on Fox News.)
  5. Congress is exempt from Obamacare. False.
  6. Under Obamacare, people who “have a doctor they’ve been seeing for the last 15 or 20 years, they won’t be able to keep going to that doctor.” Mostly False. (Senator Marco Rubio on Fox News, but this is no more true than before Obamacare.)
  7. The health care law is a “government takeover” of health care. Pants on Fire. (Congressman Bill Young.)
  8. “All non-US citizens, illegal or not, will be provided with free health care services.” Pants on Fire.
  9. Because of Obamacare, health care premiums have “gone up slower than any time in the last 50 years.” False. (Barack Obama. They are going up slower, but that may not be because of Obamacare. There was also this recession.)
  10. Under Obamacare, “75 percent of small businesses now say they are going to be forced to either fire workers or cut their hours.” Pants on Fire. (Marco Rubio again on Fox News. This one has been repeated so often even some liberals believe it.)
  11. “At age 76 when you most need it, you are not eligible for cancer treatment” under the health law. Pants on Fire.
  12. The health care law includes “a 3.8% sales tax” on “all real estate transactions.” Pants on Fire.
  13. “Obamacare is … the largest tax increase in the history of the world.” Pants on Fire. (Rush Limbaugh on his show.)
  14. A “hidden” provision in the health care law taxes sporting goods as medical devices. Pants on Fire.
  15. Obamacare will question your sex life. Pants on Fire. (This one was said by Betsy McCaughey just a week ago! It wasn’t her first Pants on Fire rating for lies about Obamacare.)
  16. An Obamacare provision will allow “forced home inspections” by government agents. Pants on Fire.
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McCain Defends Obamacare

Sometimes I have mixed feelings about Senator John McCain, but sometimes I really love him. This is one of those latter times.

Full transcript here.

And of course, Jon Stewart has something to say about the same thing that McCain is upset about — Ted Cruz comparing himself to Churchill and Obama to Neville Chamberlain.

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Late Night Political Humor

“Joe Biden has people talking that he’ll run for president after he was spotted at a fundraiser in Iowa this week. Unfortunately, he missed giving his speech because he spent four hours trapped in a corn maze.” – Jimmy Fallon

“USA Today had a front-page feature on the new healthcare law. It said that the opposition to Obamacare at an all-time high. It has gotten so bad that the president is now calling it ‘Bidencare’.” – Jay Leno

“Joe Biden’s niece was arrested. The hardest part about arresting a Biden is convincing them they have the right to remain silent.” – Conan O’Brien

“The United Nations General Assembly was called to order. The streets of Manhattan were jammed with people in strange clothes, yelling in weird languages. Then the U.N. got started.” – Craig Ferguson

“That’s right, 705 people saw a woman in a bikini and thought, ‘Muslim Extremist’.” – Stephen Colbert (on the fake outrage over Indian-American Nina Davuluri being crowned Miss America, after it was reported there were 705 tweets that mentioned “Miss America terrorist”)

“According to a new report, over the last three years Social Security overpaid by $1.29 billion – thus establishing itself as the federal government’s most efficient program.” – Jay Leno

“This week marks the fifth anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, which sparked the recession. Think about how bad things were back then. We had unemployment over 7 percent. The debt was out of control. There were wars breaking out all over the globe. Thank God that’s all behind us now, huh?” – Jay Leno

[Jay Leno does it again. How does he keep coming up with such stupid and unfunny jokes? We just avoided a war in Syria, the the deficit is going down, not up. – iron]

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Tea Party Serves Green Eggs and Ham

Dr. Seuss
© imgflip.com

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Cheating the Speed of Light

It is not very often that a financial story comes along that requires referencing the Einstein’s theory of relativity to explain, but we have finally come to this.

One week ago, the Fed made an important surprise announcement — that it would not be reducing its bond buying program. The result of this announcement was that the price of stocks, bonds, and gold skyrocketed. In order for markets to be fair, everyone must receive this information simultaneously. However, in the crazy world of relativity, there is no such thing as simultaneous. And somebody used this fact in order to make a lot of money.

This is how it went down. Anyone who has watched the “Back to the Future” movies (or the movie “Trading Places”) knows that if you know in advance which way the markets are going to move, you can make trades that will make you rich beyond your wildest dreams. But in this case, you don’t need to own a DeLorean that can travel in time. After all, it is already the future somewhere else.

When the Fed makes a market moving announcement like this, they release the news at a very specific time. In this case 2pm in Washington DC, “as measured by the national atomic clock“. Now here is where it gets tricky. According to the theory of relativity, information cannot travel at faster than the speed of light. So it should take at least 3.2 milliseconds for this information to get from DC to Chicago (a millisecond is 1/1000 of a second, and light travels around 300 kilometers in one millisecond). But someone cheated the speed of light, and received this information in Chicago at exactly 2pm, which to them is 3.2 milliseconds early. With modern high speed stock trading systems (available only to the financial elite of course), that was just as good as having their own time machine.

Receiving the information a few milliseconds before anyone else in Chicago allowed them to make several hundred million dollars in trades before anyone else. One to two milliseconds after 2pm (Chicago relative time), someone made (according to estimates) around $600 million in trades.

Why should you care about this? Because the money made by high-speed trading systems taking advantage of quirks like this is money that is siphoned away from everyone else, including you. It is money that your retirement nest-egg investment doesn’t make. And since billions of dollars are being spent on high-speed trading systems (including special high-speed light-carrying fibre optic communication lines, advanced computers, programming talent, and other resources that allow the ultra rich to execute an equity trade in around 10 microseconds), you know that they are taking a lot more than billions of dollars from people like you. In 2010, high-speed trades accounted for around 75% of all US equity trades. Which is a big reason why almost all the money made in the last decade has gone to the top 1%.

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Late Night Political Humor

“The last couple of weeks have been very tough for Republicans because of course they always have to call for the opposite of whatever Obama is saying or doing. And this has been hard when Obama himself has been changing his mind pretty much on a daily basis. First he was against the bombing, of course they were for it. Then he was for the bombing, now they’re against it. Now there’s a peace plan on the table, and the same Republicans who were saying he was acting too rash to call for strikes on Syria are now calling him a wimp for going with the diplomacy. They say in the end, whether he chooses war or peace, the hard truth is either way he is still inarguably, hopelessly black.” – Bill Maher

“It should be in the dictionary: ‘Black-track’, the act of changing one’s mind because President Obama has agreed with you. See also: ‘Pulling a one-hatey’, or the ‘Kenyan boomerang’.” – Bill Maher

“This would be simple if we had a Republican president because a Republican president could get a Republican Congress to bomb Sea World.” – Bill Maher

“McCain wants war so much, he resents meth labs because they blow themselves up.” – Bill Maher

“I am with the majority who don’t want to strike Syria. As horrible as chemical weapons are, lots of people don’t want to start new shit in the Middle East. I never understood the rationale behind this: ‘Assad you bastard, you monster, you have crossed a line no human may ever cross, even in war. We are going to bomb you. But just a little. Just a little poke there Satan.'” – Bill Maher

“It’s not that easy to go and secure all these chemical weapons. For one thing, the Syrians have been scattering stockpiles of the chemical weapons all over. They’ve even got some stored here in the U.S. It’s called Monsanto.” – Bill Maher

“The way it’s going to work is Assad is going to turn over his chemical weapons to Russia, who will then of course sell them to China, who will repackage them as off-brand roach spray, and you can get them at the 99 cent store.” – Bill Maher

“The peacemaker is Vladimir Putin. He is going to help us secure the chemical weapons, because if there is one thing you can trust Putin with, it’s poison. ” – Bill Maher

“Putin wrote that Op Ed in The New York Times yesterday and lectured America on democracy. This is like getting parenting notes from Billy Ray Cyrus.” – Bill Maher

“New Rule: Now that it’s been 60 years, Americans must accept the fact that rock stars like to mime sex acts on stage. Yes, they’re acting all hot and horny but they’re a lot like Congress; when all is said and done, what they’re actually doing is fucking nothing.” – Bill Maher

“Anthony Weiner did not really exit in a very classy way. After his concession speech, as he was leaving, the press was taunting him, and they got a picture through the window of the car of him holding up his middle finger. At least we hope that was his middle finger.” – Bill Maher

“New Rule: Anthony Weiner has to tell us how long he waited after he’d lost his election before he went back to jerking off with strangers online. Unless the answer is, ‘What do you think I’m doing behind this podium right now?'” – Bill Maher

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A Taste of Obamacare

Tony Auth
© Tony Auth

The Republicans have painted themselves into a corner. They know that once Obamacare is implemented, people will like it. More people will have health coverage. You won’t have to change insurance companies (and often doctors) when you change jobs, and will be able to get health insurance even if you quit your job to start a company. Even before it is fully implemented, insurance premiums are going down and coverage is going up.

The main people who lose are the health insurance companies, and the politicians who receive campaign donations from them. Which might explain why the Republicans are so dead set against it that they are threatening to shut down the government.

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