The Wandering Donkey

Saxby Chambliss thinks the President should show “humility”

So, an old white male senator from the southern State of Georgia thinks the United States of America’s first black President should “express some humility” in his speech before a joint session of Congress tonight?

Where, exactly, do you begin with that?

The not so subtle racism?

What has to be either a total misunderstanding of his place in the political spectrum or the over the top hyperbole of the senior Senator from the State of Georgia saying that the man who was elected President of the United States of America needs to show humility?

Regardless of how I feel about the Republican Party, in general, and their views on healthcare, in general, the number of their members, particularly southern, who keep using ‘code words’ when discussing the President has to be appalling even to their own rank and file. You know the words: humble, swagger, uppity, cocky, etc….

The fact that the Republican rank and file are not calling these people on this is what is truly disgraceful. I grew up in deeply Republican Greenwich, Connecticut. I don’t believe anyone there would support this type of language, yet, I do not here any audible objections from quarters such as that.

Part of the problem is that Republican New England and even those in the Mid-Atlantic states have been marginalized and, to a large extent, ostracized. They are what used to be known as the ‘liberal’ wing of the Republican Party. A term that most national Republicans would deny ever applied to any Republican. They don’t even like to admit that they have ‘moderates’ within their party.

What then happens is that rather than fight for their party, they try to ‘fit in’. Thus, they do not object to the rhetoric. They have even come to believe that Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck are to lead them out of the darkness despite how objectionable they find some of their views.

Democrats learned long ago what following the demagogues can do to your party. Republicans seem to have failed to learn that lesson. In the meantime the rest of us have to listen to this tripe disguised as public debate and free speech.

My belief in America and Americans says that this type of talk will be marginalized, where it should be, soon enough.

Video courtesy of TPM:

Comments welcome,

Pat McGovern

Palin vs. Letterman? Are you kidding me?

The judgment of Sarah Palin and her family, Todd in particular, is amazing. Rather than just taking it in stride and leaving it alone, she decides to take a moral stand against David Letterman?

 

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Well, at least one question is answered: Sarah Palin has no national political aspirations. No one with even the least amount of political savvy would publicly attack David Letterman if they had a national agenda.

Now, Dave and his writers should have been more aware as to which of the Palin daughters were on the trip before making those jokes, but this is an amateur, headline grabbing way of responding. Much like the miserably failed presidential campaign Palin was involved in, it does rally the base at the expense of that large swath of the middle that she only think she appeals to.

Congratulations, Sarah! The good news is that the presidential campaign season doesn’t really get going for another year and a half or so. There is time to recover although I am confident there will be plenty more forthcoming.

Comments welcome,

Pat McGovern

Obama picks Sotomayor to replace Souter

President Barack Obama today introduced U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Sonia Sotomayor of New York as his selection to replace retiring U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter of New Hampshire. (Whitehouse.gov)

This is probably as close to a slam dunk as President Obama could have gotten. Thus far,  pundits have praised the selection of someone with such a wealth of high level judicial experience. That could work against her as well as there is one heck of a long paper trail for Republicans to dig through.

She has however, been seen as a rising star since her nomination to the appeals court in 1998, so they are not likely to dig anything up that has not already been hashed out publicly. I’m sure there will be some hiccups. Ranking Judiciary Committee Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions, who has plenty of not so well hidden skeletons himself, will see to that.

Despite that, I don’t see people such as Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Sen. Sue Collins (R-ME) or Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) supporting a filibuster on her nomination after they voted for her confirmation 11 years ago. They may vote against her in committee and/or on the floor but I don’t see them supporting an attempt to keep her nomination from a vote.

Thinkprogress has an article detailing the right's attempt to portray Judge Sotomayor as a “liberal Harriet Miers.” For full coverage of who exactly said what click on through.

It is a ridiculous argument starting with the fact that she has more federal bench experience than any Court nominee in memory. As SCOTUSBlog points out, women and minority candidates have a long history of being described as not smart enough for the job. It is also something that may generate an intense amount of backlash, if they wish to pursue it, from two groups the Republican party is allegedly desperate to court: women and Hispanics.

Here is some footage of them sticking their collective feet in their mouths already:

Class, do you know why this worked with Harriet Miers? Yes….you in the back. That’s correct…..because it wasn’t the presumed opposition, in that case the Democrats, doing the hack job. It was the people everyone assumed would support her. The Democrats were more than happy to let Jeff Sessions and company hack away at Harriet Miers intellectual fitness because it wasn’t they who would come out looking badly if it went awry.

If the Democrats were to attack Judge Sotomayor’s intellectual “heft” it might be a different story this time as well. But they won’t and not least because the woman has been a Federal Appeals Judge for 11 years! (Which, not coincidentally, is 11 years longer, by itself, than Harriet Miers total judicial experience, federal or otherwise.)

I understand that the right is still smarting from the fact that one of the reasons that Miers was nominated was that Sen. Harry Reid thought it might be a good idea. I think they also need to realize, as we Democrats do, that it wasn’t a vast left wing conspiracy when that happened, it was just Harry using his political judgment, which we well know is severely lacking.

Ultimately, the Republicans will cut their own throats with women and Hispanics if they go to far in opposition here. I realize they are capable of it but hold out hope that some of the relatively sane ones, such as Hatch and Collins and maybe even Judd Gregg, will save the party from themselves.

No filibuster will happen here. Fireworks? Perhaps. I think the nominee attracts close to, if not more than, 70 votes on the floor though.

I could be wrong. ;)

Comments welcome,

Pat McGovern

The Party of Hypocrisy

I haven't posted much lately and I won't promise that the posts will become more regular. I have to see if I can help this video go viral though:

Good jobs Dems. Don't let the country forget the spending spree our "fiscally conservative" friends went on for the last eight years. And don't let them try to blame it all on their "War on Terror" either.

Comments welcome,

Pat McGovern

It's got electoral votes. It's what politicians crave.

Weekly Address 3/14/2009

President Barack Obama's Weekly Address:

The Republican response by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA)"

Comments welcome,

Pat McGovern

It's got electoral votes. It's what politicians crave.

Weekly Address

President Barack Obama's Weekly Address:

The Republican response from Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO):

The DMV? The IRS? More scare tactics from the Grand Old Pessimists.

Comments welcome,

Pat McGovern

It's got electoral votes. It's what politicians crave.

Who needs Limbaugh and Steele?

The Democrats don't need Rush Limbaugh or Michael Steele as foils! There's plenty more fodder where they came from. Take, for instance Michelle Bachmann (R-MN):

Let's peruse, shall we?

"But what I think we're seeing is an implementation of all of the radical ideas that Bill Ayers and Ward Churchill -- the radical ideas that we've seen on some college campuses, they are now being implemented in our government, and they're taking a nefarious route when it looks at the economic recovery."

Seriously? Ward Churchill? I seriously wonder if Michelle Bachmann has ever even looked at any of Ward Churchill's work beyond a GOP talking point sheet. Regardless, I have never heard Barack Obama espouse any notion that expresses the idea that America brought 9/11 on itself. Another case of a GOP bobblehead projecting what they think someone or a group believes upon them and then pretending it's fact. Meanwhile, notice Bill Bennett with the "Uh-huh"s just going right along for the crazy ride.

If you want to look at economic history over the last 100 years. I call it punctuated equilibrium. If you look at FDR, LBJ, and Barack Obama, this is really the final leap to socialism.

Two separate issues here.

• If it's been steadily occurring over the past 100 years it might be because it is a superior economic theory to that which you propose.
• Nearly any definition of socialism includes state control of the means of production. I have yet to see Barack Obama try to nationalize Caterpillar or DuPont. Indeed he is actually resisting a call to take over banks temporarily that even some conservatives view as inevitable and necessary.

You see. We don't need Rush being labeled 'head of the party.' We don't need Michael Steele's innumerable self-contradictions and gaffes. The Republican Party has far more than that to offer. We haven't even heard from the Governor of Alaska much lately.

The Republican Party needs to try to quiet Michelle Bachmann down or else they risk quite a bit with the crazy label. They did it fairly successfully last October after she imploded. Further issues are likely forthcoming. All of the 'loud' people in the GOP are also the ones who are slightly askew. They really need to work on that issue before anything else.

(via Think Progress with a hat tip to TPM)

Comments welcome,

Pat McGovern

It's got electoral votes. It's what politicians crave.

Let's just do away with inconvenient rules

Where have I heard that before? Oh, yeah! The last administration considered the Constitution and inconvenient rule. Other 'inconvenient rules' include the Electoral College and the Senate's filibuster rules.

Let me lay this out in the open. I believe in the electoral college. It is annoying sometimes unless you just want your presidential candidates hanging around in only major cities, then getting rid of it is a bad idea. It doesn't give undue influence. It just amplifies the interest of the smaller states so that they are not excluded from the process. You want to reform it? Fine. Let's do proportional elector selection like Maine and Nebraska. But don't eliminate it. It would just encourage the candidates to not move around and engage America. Like they do most of the time anyway.

The other issue is the filibuster. People like George Kenney are writing about how it's obstructionist and interfering with the timely passage of legislation. Let's address this.

A sphincter says what?

El Rushbo

David Kurtz's head is exploding over at TPM. It is over Time's Michael Scherer deciding that the whole "Rush Limbaugh is the defacto leader of the GOP" storyline is actually a creation of the Obama White House and is being force fed to the American people. This he concluded after reading a piece by Jonathon Martin in Politico that does not really support this hypothesis.

Like David, I'll point you to Greg Sargent's analysis.

Let's see if the media parrots this line now. I'm convinced 99% of the media would say "what" if you read the title of this post to them. They don't think before acting anymore than the last administration did.

Let me just point out that no one from the White House told Rush to say, "I hope he fails." not once, but twice. No one from the White House made El Rushbo the keynote speaker at CPAC. And no one told Michael Steele to formally anoint Rush as head puppeteer after originally trying assert himself as leader of the GOP. This line of attack has obviously been adopted by the White House but is isn't their creation. No one in politics, television, fiction or movies could write anything this good. :)

Comments welcome,

Pat McGovern

It's got electoral votes. It's what politicians crave.

The Limbaugh apology widget

The DCCC has discovered a 'Republican Apology Machine' that explains how the Republicans are able to grovel to Rush Limbaugh so quickly after insulting/offending him! H/T: TPM.

Comments welcome,

Pat McGovern

It's got electoral votes. It's what politicians crave.