Headline of the Day:

McShamnesty Calls for the Calvary to Protect the Arizona Frontier.

Sen. John McCain wants to call in the cavalry to defend Arizona from illegal immigrants crossing the border from Mexico — and to shore up his own right flank.

McCain asked the Obama administration Monday to send National Guard troops to the border after a prominent Arizona rancher was found shot to death on his own property.

"I am asking you and the administration to immediately reconsider your position and send National Guard troops to our southern border region," McCain wrote in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

Intrepretation: The Pro-immigration Reform McCain, nicknamed Juan McShamnesty by the nutters on the far right side of the dial is afraid of his Teabagger Challenger in the GOP Arizona Senate Primary.

Quote of the Day IV:

To understand the Republican Party today, you have to recognize that right now it is bespelled by three curses:

• The curse of Ronald Reagan: it believes that over the long haul somehow America can tax like Calvin Coolidge and spend like Lyndon Johnson and everything will come out fine because it is morning in America.

• The curse of Richard Nixon: it believes that the purpose of politics is to win high-paid jobs with no heavy lifting involved and to humiliate your political adversaries, rather than to make a better country and a better world, and so anything goes.

• The curse of Barry Goldwater: it believes that the big threat to liberty comes from government attempts to enhance equality of opportunity, and so the Republican Party must abandon its historic commitment to equality of opportunity.

The Republican Party may never again have a legitimate place in American civil life. But if it does, it will only be because brave men and women working within it lift these three curses.

Brad DeLong

Quote of the Day III:

"You're probably going to see a quite a bit of civil disobedience. Not in a violent sense, but all these people are supposed to mandatorily sign up, they're just not going to do it. They're going to say make me pay the penalty but I'm not going to do it.”

~ Representative Joe Barton (R-TX)

Here is another idea: How about boycotting hospitals and doctors visits, too. Boycotting the individual mandate, only, is for pussies. If you are going to do it right, you have to boycott healthcare all together. Of course you have to hope you don’t get sick or get hit by a bus.

Joe Barton is one of the harder core wingnuts in congress and may actually be crazy.

Quote of the Day II:

"The Republican National Committee had a big party at some kind of a sex club in Los Angeles. ... But the guy who organized the big Republican sex party...apologized on the Golf Channel, so that's good."

~ David Letterman

Quote of the Day I:

"The chairman of the Republican National Committee, Michael Steele -- you probably heard about this -- he got in a lot of trouble. I guess they dropped over $2,000 to staffers at a topless bondage theme nightclub right here in Hollywood. ... And what's the Republicans' big issue right now? Isn't it -- oh, yeah -- cutting down on wasteful spending?"

~ Jay Leno

Teabaggers on Parade - The GOP Speaks

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Via Flickr

In Defense of David Frum?

Recently Former Comrade David Frum (of Axis of Evil fame) has been purged from the wingnut welfare state, i.e, the think tanks responsible for ginning out so-called conservative ideas.

Frum’s great crime was to suggest that Health Insurance Reform could have included more big business friendly components (think tort reform) if the GOP had decided to be active participants rather than obstruct the Reform in totality. And further as a result of this obstructism, the GOP suffered a generational Waterloo. Bad Frum. It appears to have cost him a $100K gig at the AEI where his only responsibility was churn out so-called conservative propaganda for the Wingnuttariat via his blog. Bad Frum indeed.

While Comrade Frum has been condemned in all the familiar far out places, he also has his defenders.

To attack his character the way people have is wrong, untrue, and ugly. For myself, I should say that David has always seemed to me, well, a little on the Canadian side in his outlook (I expect he's a pariah there for his views). But Rich Vigilante is right; as a movement, we owe him an enormous debt -- for the Supreme Court we have, if no other reason. Gratitude, if not friendship, requires that we reject the attacks on his character.

The conservatism that David Frum is looking for strikes me as both improbable and undesirable.

~ Maggie Gallagher – NRO

A spirited defense! Former Comrade Frum’s problem, it seems, stems from the fact that he’s a Canadian. Since nobody can chose their parents or place of birth, it’s really not Frum’s fault that he fallen from true party dogma. If only he would have been born in Alabama or some other awesome example of conservatism. Poor Frum.

Passage of the Day:

I hear GOP folks and Tea Partiers bemoaning the fact that media and Democrats are using the extremes of their movement for ratings and to score points. This is like Drew Brees complaining that Dwight Freeney keeps trying to sack him. If that were Martin Luther King's response to media coverage, the South might still be segregated. I exaggerate, but my point is that the whining reflects a basic misunderstanding of the rules of protest. When you lead a protest you lead it, you own it, and your opponents, and the media, will hold you responsible for whatever happens in the course of that protest. This isn't left-wing bias, it's the nature of the threat.

There is of course a deeper question about the limits of strategy. It's possible that if the Tea Partiers cleaned up their ranks--purged the birthers, publicly rebuked people like this guy, banned Hitler signs, loudly rejected any instances of racism--that they simply wouldn't have much of a movement left. Martin Luther King was trying to lead a black community that was demonstrably patriotic, and had, in the main, rejected political violence as a strategy. He could afford to be picky. In the case of the Tea Parties, it's possible that once you subtract the jackasses, you just don't have enough energy left.

~ TNC

This pretty much sums things up.

When it comes down to it, the T’baggers are really just a bunch of disaffected GOP leaning voters who were whipped up to a frenzy by their party overlords. You can’t protest budgetary red ink without taking the time to note the disaster the last guy living in the white house left behind and then assigning at least some blame to him. The Baggers never marched when George, Jr., was in office. Matter of fact, I bet a fair amount of them cheered every bad decision he made and backed him to the hilt in 2004 when it was more than clear that George was in way over his head.

Nervous Neocon Nellie weighs in on the Affordable Care Act

President Obama's budget projects that "core" defense spending (excluding supplemental appropriations for wars) will fall as a percentage of GDP to 3% in 2019 from 3.9% in 2010. Assuming the economy keeps growing, that will still deliver more defense spending in absolute terms—but economic growth may well be endangered by the higher taxes needed to fund ObamaCare. Even if defense spending stays steady, it will be increasingly hard to replace aging weapons systems such as Bradley Fighting Vehicles, Abrams tanks and Black Hawk helicopters, which were purchased during the Reagan defense buildup.

The Air Force, which is responsible for maintaining air and space superiority—a sine que non of American power—faces a particularly big budget crunch. Its aircraft are aging and need to be replaced (KC-135 tankers and B-52 bombers are more than 40 years old), but each new plane is much costlier than its predecessor.

The Navy faces a similar problem. It now has only 283 ships—the smallest number since 1916. Granted, each of those vessels is much more capable than earlier models. But at some point quality cannot substitute for a crippling lack of quantity.

Max Boot – A Neoconservative thinker.

According to our Neoconservative Friend, Health Insurance Reform will threaten national security. Of course to Neocons, virtually everything is a threat to national security. So this is not unexpected.

The logical question to Boot would be: where have you been on runaway health costs in the last decade? The United States spending 16% of its national output on health care. The US pays more than any other nation and its citizens receive lower quality of care than most developed nations. With health care costs rising and eating up more of the pot every year, would it not have been logical for Mr. Boot to support some form of health insurance reform to get costs under control to protect future military spending he claims to support?

If Boot is opposed to the Affordable Care Act wouldn’t it be true that the alternative – the status quo - is equally unacceptable if not far worse? According to Boot: “The navy faces a … problem. It now has only 283 ships – the smallest number since 1916.” If you want to be able to pay for more boats in the water, why is it better to have runaway costs under the healthcare status quo than it is to have deficit reducing reform?

The short answer is that Boot is a Neoconservative. And anything (health insurance reform) that may be a political benefit to a Democratic President scares the beejesus out of them.

But Boot is not done, he continues with more fear:

The crunch will not come anytime soon. The U.S. will remain strong for years to come. But if we are looking at major threats to our global standing, we should not look at China, Iran or Russia. We have met the enemy and he is us—specifically, our insatiable demand for entitlement spending, which ObamaCare will only exacerbate. [em-mine]

This is the second time I have seen the “We have met the enemy and he is us” line out in the wingnut-o-sphere to describe (supporters of) health insurance reform. It ain’t a promising trend.

This chart demonstrates just how far Boot is off base:

From Matt Yglesais

The Europeans actually have a larger share of their economy left over to pay for non-health items, including defense. What’s more, people have this weird tendency to understand European defense capabilities. The EU’s power-projection capabilities are meager compared to America’s, but enormous compared to Russia or China or anyone else. Last, if you restrict your attention to EU countries you’ll see that health spending is highest as a percent of GDP in France and that defense spending as a percent of GDP is . . . also highest in France.

Remember that whole Contract on America thing back in the 1990s?

[I]n 1995 when Republicans took control of the House and Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) became Speaker. One of their first actions was to thoroughly gut the committee system, which they saw as the liberals' base of power and an impediment to fast action on the Contract With America. Thousands of Democratic committee staffers were fired and control of the legislative process was centralized in the Speaker's office. Such longtime staples of legislative activity as hearings and markups were essentially dispensed with.

In practice, the only committee that mattered anymore was the House Rules Committee, which is completely controlled by the Speaker. Historically, its only job was to set the terms of debate in the House--the length of debate on bills, what amendments would be in order, etc. But under Gingrich the Rules Committee became the committee of primary jurisdiction in many cases, often writing bills from scratch in the dead of night.

[…] Gingrich's innovations proved indispensable to Ms. Pelosi, who was able to ram a massively large and complicated bill through the House in a way that would have been impossible under the pre-1995 committee structure. Under that system, Republicans would have had many more opportunities to amend or kill the health bill. Their failure to do so, therefore, rests partially with Gingrich, who unwittingly provided Democrats with the parliamentary tools they needed to enact it.

~ Bruce Bartlett

Looks like health insurance reform is all Newt’s fault to me T’baggers. With friends like Newt – who needs enemies? You probably need to start up your own party.

Dispatches from the wingnut-O-sphere – Lincoln would NOT have been a Teabagger, cont…

President Obama won a major victory last night in his determined effort to impose his will on the American people. But far from striking a fatal blow to the cause of limited government and fiscal responsibility, Obama has awakened a sleeping giant.

Unlike past threats to the American way of life, this time the threat comes from within. Lincoln warned us that this would be so:

All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa . . . , with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years.

At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, If it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

Jeffery H Anderson - NRO

Here is another portrayal of Abe Lincoln as a Teabagger in response to Patient Protection and Affordable Care. Was Lincoln warning against health insurance reform back in 1837? Is the NRO on to something for a change?

No fraid not.

Honest Abe was warning against mob rule, violence, and intimidation and in favor of deference to the courts, the constitution, rule of law and to reason over passion. Had our wingnutty friend read the rest of the speech he would have read examples of Mob Justice, lynchings, burning folks, etc., along with Abe’s belief that such lawlessness posed a great danger to the existence of the very young American Republic.

Abe continues:

But all this even is not the full extent of the evil. By such examples by instances of the perpetrators of such acts going unpunished the lawless in spirit are encouraged to become lawless in practice and having been used to no restraint but dread of punishment they thus become absolutely unrestrained. Having ever regarded government as their deadliest bane they make a jubilee of the suspension of its operations and pray for nothing so much as its total annihilation.

According to Abe this lawlessness will make good men, frustrated by lack of order, receptive to the siren songs of those who would promise to exchange freedom for order.

Whenever this effect shall be produced among us whenever the vicious portion of population shall be permitted to gather in bands of hundreds and thousands and burn churches ravage and rob provision stores throw printing presses into rivers shoot editors and hang and burn obnoxious persons at pleasure and with impunity, depend on it this government cannot last. By such things the feelings of the best citizens will become more or less alienated from it and thus it will be left without friends or with too few and those who are too weak to make their friendship effectual. At such a time and under such circumstances men of sufficient talent and ambition will not be wanting to seize the opportunity strike the blow and overturn that fair fabric which for the last half century has been the fondest hope of the lovers of freedom throughout the world.

Now just who, these days, has been excoriating the Government and gathering in mobs and threatening elected officials? If you answered the so-called Tea Party Wing of the GOP, you’d be correct.

So no, Honest Abe would not have been a teabagger.

McCain soon to declare a Glorious Victory – a 2008 Presidential Election Pledge Kept?

Things didn’t turn out so well for John McCain during the 2008 Presidential Elections. There was the Sarah Palin thing, the declaration that “fundamentals of the economy are sound” during the biggest economic collapse since the great depression and the whole electoral vote thing as well. One moment I remember is John McCain taking time in one of the debates to prattle on about the use of tax dollars for studies on Bear DNA during instead of talking about issues that folks were actually concerned about. Memories.

Since that time, Joe the Plumber has turned on him and McCain has earned the ire of so-called Tea Party Patriots who aim to administer a dose of Tea Bag style justice to him in the GOP primary for his senate seat. More often that not today, McCain appears as a grumpy old man, shell of his former self and someone who doesn’t want to play nicely with others anymore. This leaves many to conclude that maybe John’s time in the sun has come and gone.

However in a startling turnaround it appears that the McCain losing streak has come to an end. What is this good news you may ask?

Read more »

Joe the Plumber joins campaign to Tea Bag McCain?

Word on the series of tubes has it that Joe the Plumber, aka Sam Wurzelbacher will be in Arizona at anti tax tea party rally with Sen. John McCain’s challenger in the Arizona GOP Senate Primary, J.D. Hayworth. Joe the Plumber, by the way now claims that McCain ruined his life.

As fate would have it, Side Show Sarah Palin will be in Arizona at the same time shilling for McCain on orders (most likely) from the GOP’s DC establishment.

What is a teabagger to do - either go to the anti-tax rally and do some proper hating on the government or see Side Show Sarah? I’d say that the odds of wingnut on wingnut violence breaking out next week are going to be higher than average.

More Dispatches from the wingnut-O-sphere - The Meltdown Continues

At least since the conclusion of the Civil War, the Democrats' war on freedom has never been more brazen. Indeed, there is a tie that binds the Democratic Party of the antebellum era with today's Democratic Party:

It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, "You work and toil and earn bread, and I'll eat it." No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.

Abraham Lincoln said that, on more than one occasion, and he knew what he was talking about.

~ The guy named Scott at Powerline Blog

Affordable Health Insurance for working folks as the slavery of another race? A little bit emotional there about Health Insurance Reform, I see.

Would it do any good to remind Scott that it was, you know, um, the Conservatives and the Strict Constructionists that were defending Slavery back in the antebellum south. It would not have been Lincoln who ran with that pack.

So I doubt very much that if Abraham Lincoln were alive today he’d be a teabagger. Sorry ain’t happening, Pal.

The Axis of Evil suffers Crippling Blow…….

Word on the series of tubes has it that one of the remaining members of the Axis of Evil has suffered a crippling economic blow to its number 1 export:

South Korea is phasing out sand imports from North Korea, delivering a heavy blow to the impoverished regime which is already reeling economically because of confiscated arms shipments and bungled currency reforms.

Sand was the biggest export to South Korea from the north in 2008, earning Pyongyang $73m. This represents about twice as much as it gains annually from wages at factories in Kaesong, a cross-border industrial zone for South Korean companies.

South Korean officials told the Financial Times that Seoul would phase out sand exports when existing contracts with its northern neighbour expired. [...]

Losing the sand trade would compound economic woes for Pyongyang, which in addition to reeling from arms seizures is also suffering the fall-out from a bungled currency revaluation that sparked food shortages and inflation.

North Korea is trying to compensate for the South Korean move by seeking alternative sand markets in Russian construction projects.

Sand. You know a country is seriously screwed if sand (other than misery) is its number 1 product.

Quote of the Day

"President Obama won one of the great – they're calling it – the 'great legislative victories of the last 50 years' last night. He won healthcare reform approval to extend coverage to millions of uninsured Americans, or as the Republicans are calling it, 'Armageddon.'"

~ Jimmy Kimmel

Congressman Eric Cantor is one Smooth Cat

"There's been a year and a half nearly of debate over this and still more questions than answers. That's why we are hearing reports that the Majority will try and ram this through without a direct vote on the Senate bill, Madam Speaker. We should take an up-or-down vote on the Senate bill."

~ Congressman Eric Cantor (R-VA)

Last week Congressman Eric Cantor called for a majority vote on the health insurance reform bill. Imagine the fate of Health Insurance Reform to be determined by a simple majority vote. Crafty fellow ain't he?

Speaker Pelosi must have heard Cantor’s call by graciously scheduling an up or down vote yesterday. Who says comity is dead in congress.

Dispatches from the wingnut-O-sphere - More Irony of the Day:

Health Insurance Reform continues to perplex the various nutters out there in the wingnut-O-sphere. This quip about the unfair media coverage was amusing:

The pitiful performance of the mainstream media did not entirely prevent the American people from understanding the mess of pottage they were offered in exchange for their birthright.

The Guy named Scott at Powerline Blog

The refusal of the GOP to engage in any discussion of the alternatives to reform and instead engage in scare tactics was intentional. Don’t whine about media coverage of teabaggers and claims of Marxism and Death Panels now because that is what the game plan was from day one.

Dispatches from the wingnut-O-sphere - Irony of the Day:

The major health insurance and provider stocks leaped upward on the open, as expected. (They just acquired 32 million new customers in the most ideal way: it’s now illegal not to buy their products.) They all came back down again on some initial profit-taking, and now they’re drifting back upward again.

Big Pharma stocks started strong and stayed strong. Devices are looking steady. Capital markets are steady, with notes and bonds somewhat higher.

There’s nothing wrong with state capitalism.

~ Some Guy at RedState Blog.

The Capital Markets Reaction to Socializing Health Care by Government Take over is apparently - Strong.

Huh – after a year and a half of warning of a communist take over of the one-sixth of the economy there is a nonplussed to positive reaction on WallStreet. Counterintuitive isn’t it?

The Irony is lost at RedState Blog, however.

More Dispatches from the wingnut-O-sphere

As the fugleman for conservative despair, I am of course neither shaken nor stirred at the passing of the health-care bills. It was to be expected.

I see plainly that Western civilization, over my lifetime, has been a slow-sinking ship. The few who have known what is happening have worked desperately to seal the watertight doors, repair the fissures, pump out the flooded zones. It's been a losing fight, though. The tilt of the decks is harder and harder to ignore. Last night, a major bulkhead gave way. Soon a funnel will topple over with a great crash and a shower of sparks. Yet still the band is playing, the people are dancing, the food coming up from the galley.

John Derbyshire – NRO, lamenting the passage of the Health Insurance Reform bill yesterday.

Scary times?

Jonah Goldberg predicts a coming health insurance Kulture Kampf

Really?

this legislation is a superconducting super collider of culture-war conflagrations. It will throw off new and unforeseen cultural spectacles for years to come (if it is not repealed). The grinding debate over the Stupak amendment was just a foretaste. The government has surged over the breakwater and is now going to flood the nooks and crannies of American life. Americans will now fight over what tax dollars should cover and not cover. Debates over "subsidizing" this "lifestyle" or that "personal choice" will erupt. And when conservatives complain, liberals will blame them for perpetuating the culture war.

You would think that extending affordable health insurance to the working poor has really spooked the nutters on the internets. However, this state of paranoia and fear is a standard feature found in your ordinary right wing blogs.

This Impending Doom will be quickly forgotten as a new and more ominous threat emerges to end western civilization.

Dispatches from the wingnut-O-sphere

I shouldn't be surprised then that DeLay is now lobbying for amnesty or, as his Roll Call piece says, "We also must find a way for people who are here illegally to pay taxes and get right with the law." So, other than Gingrich, it looks like the brain trust in, and behind, the Republican House takeover -- Armey, DeLay, and Norquist -- are amnesty supporters. Great.

Mayflower Mark Krikorian - NRO

Mayflower Mark who covers the NRO’s immigration beat is just learning that the GOP cares more labor costs than his pet issue, i.e., largely closing the borders to immigration. Surprise – Surprise Mark. The guys with the big bux call the shots.

Apparently there is a new group of People who really HATE Bart Stupak now

Bart Stupak has just got him self Judas-listed at Red State Blog:

We can’t Bart Stupak go without a parting gift. Judas, after all, got 30 silver coins to sell out our Lord. Stupak needs something for selling out all the children sent off to be slaughtered thanks to his “compromise” that any President can pen away to oblivion — notwithstanding the questionable legal assumptions behind it.

Let’s send him 100 silver coins. It’s only a $4.00 investment on your part.

Order them and send them to:

Congressman Bart Stupak (you’ll not want to use the word honorable)
1229 W. Washington St.
Marquette, MI 49855
(906) 228 3700

So now what? After sending the silver coins to Stupak, what will wingnut bloggers propose now that Health Insurance Reform has passed? Perhaps they’ll organize a boycott of hospitals.

Health Insurance Reform Passes

link

Health Insurance is to be more affordable for working folks and the self employed.

Millions will be able to receive life saving preventative health care services for the first time.

The cost savings will reduce the Nation's budget deficit.

And just like Social Security, Medicare and the Civil Rights Act before, the same sort of characters are threatening to repeal this reform as well. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

On this Day in History:

From the Reconstruction Era.

Here is an Op Ed from a Virginia Newspaper urging Freedmen to remember their place in society and side with their former masters on matters of reconstruction and politics.

A Few Words to the Colored People

Last year we honestly advised the colored people not to vote; to hold aloof from all participation in the political struggles then going on. Again we repeat the advice. It was a white man's war and a white man's political fight now. You incidently [sic] made your freedom by it, and, if that's anything made, you are the only winner in the game. So let well enough alone - work hard - make yourself so useful that the country can't do without you, but avoid voting and politics. You can not effect the issue, in the long run, as you are only 3,000,000, with no increase by immigration, to 40,000,000 white men on this Continent. You can and will only be used as tools to promote the designs of "mean white men," and be made an "obstruction" to the prosperity of the whole country. If you vote for the Radicals you cannot expect us to employ you any longer than we can get other labor; and you enlist yourselves in a vile crusade against the dearest rights of your best friends - the Southern people. If you vote Conservative the Radical Yankee idea of exterminating your race, and filling your places with free white labor, will soon be carried out. You are between two fires; you are in the most helpless condition of any body of people on earth, unless you pursue the safe road - taking neither the right nor the left, neither Radical nor Conservative, but holding to what you have with content. In all kindness; as a friend of the negro race, in this place, we throw out these suggestions. They are as true as that there is a God above us and honestly told, not caring whom they may offend. You must "learn to labor and to wait," or you must perish. Choose ye!

Valley Virginian: March 18, 1868

The advice: You best vote the right way or not at all.

I have a feeling that the newly freed folks may have a different view of where their best interest may lay than their former masters. Just a Hunch.

Quote of the Day:

In the run-up to the vote on the Clinton budget, rhetoric reached a fever pitch. The legislation would, alternately, destroy the free market; thrust our economy into the next Great Depression; spell the end of the United States as the leader of the free world. Based on the clips, one might think passage of the Clinton budget made Armageddon look like a walk in the park.

Tactically speaking, not much has changed. Reconciliation is a "threat to our democracy." Health-care reform = socialism.

But none of the dire predictions about the Clinton budget came to pass. Today, economists longingly look back to the economic growth of the 1990s, the economic policies of the Clinton administration and, indeed, to the budget that launched it.

Former Representative Marjorie Margolies (D-PA)

It is always the same with the GOP. Fear predominates.

Shame is completely absent as well. As a matter of fact wingnut Republican Congressmen like Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) are now actually taking credit for Margolies balanced budge vote. Without a lick of shame Hensarling, now claims credit for the economic policies of the Clinton Administration and the budget and that launched them. The two things you can count on from ideologues like Hensarling is that they are always wrong about their apocalyptic predictions and they never, never, ever apologize. And one other thing - they are also douche-bags too. You can count on that.

Erick Erickson Continues his Call to Tea Bag Bob Bennett (R-UT), cont......

There is a Internecine War Watch in effect for the wingnut-O-sphere.

Wingnut Blogger Erick Erickson is back at it urging his fellow travelers to Tea Bag Bob Bennett (yet again). Erickson has been pretty consistent in his condemnation of Poor ol’ Bob as the greatest living threat to the GOP, to this Republic and the very Freedom of Mankind. Though, I do suspect he’s exaggerating a wee bit.

This time Bennett’s alleged offense is truly ridiculous. Believe it or not “Bob Bennett is bad for the free market” because he voted …………to save Capitalism as we know it! Yep that is it. Bennett should be bagged for voting to save the economy from collapse. I am not making this up.

To loons like Erickson, the Magic of the Marketplace is scared and its will infallible. If the government intervenes as was done in October of 2008 to prevent economic collapse it is an abomination. If you thought your 401k turning into a 201k was bad, the alternative was far worse we are told.

What is preferable would be just like what happened in 1929. You see, according to the true believers, every so often the economy must be purified through collapse to allow the rebirth of a more pure form of capitalism to rise from the ashes left behind. Damn the Consequences - Doctrine must be followed at all Costs so the story goes.

Erick Erickson tags Mitt Romney for Retribution

During the past several months Wingnut Blogger Erick Erickson has been waging a Jihad against public enemy number one – Senator Bob Bennett (R-UT). Bennett, who may possibly have kicked Erickson’s dog at one time or another, is guilty of all sorts of offenses against pure party doctrine so the story goes. And thus Erickson hopes that the party faithful can administer a dose of vile teabag justice to Bennett in the GOP primary.

Today’s outrage centers on ol’ Willard Romney aka “Mitt.” Turns out that Mittens may be lending a helping hand to Bob Bennett in his time of need. Here is how Erickson puts it:

Conservatives in Utah are rallying around Bennett’s challengers, and the Club for Growth is actively working to defeat him at the May nominating convention.

So who does Bennett call on to save his career? Mitt Romney, of course. Bennett is even giving away copies of Romney’s book on the campaign trail — maybe that explains the curious New York Times notation that Romney’s book, debuting in the number one spot this past week on the best sellers list, was the only book on the list to have received bulk orders.

Romney may think he’s playing it safe here. But so did Rick Santorum in 2004, actively supporting Sen. Arlen Specter over Pat Toomey in the Pennsylvania Republican Senate primary. The move alienated Santorum’s base and rendered him a dead-man walking in his own re-election campaign two years later. Romney is now walking the same plank in Utah – supporting an unpopular, out-of-touch establishment incumbent against fresh, new, principled conservatives of the sort who are finally breathing life into the Republican Party. This comes on the heels of Romney declining to join every other 2012 hopeful in NY-23 supporting Doug Hoffman.

Conservatives right now can’t know who their candidate will be in 2012, but this may get them thinking.

It is not surprising that the True Believer Erickson has issues with Weasely Willard. It looks like Willard play acting as a born again Teabagger wouldn’t even placate Erickson. You have to imagine that if Rick Santorum was not far right enough for him there is no way Mittens could ever gain his approval.

Apparently Santorum lost is his Pennsylvania Senate Seat because he was not right wing enough! Come on Erickson, what would have Santorum had to do to get you to cut him some slack – Goose step?

All the same Willard Romney better keep an open eye for these characters because it looks like they’ll bag him if they get a chance.

Dan Mitchell - Wingnut of the Week!

From the Wingnut Welfare Operation know as "Big Government" - a not so wise sage uses this example to bash Keynesian economics.

When Dorothy and her friends finally reach Oz, they present themselves to the almighty Wizard, only to eventually discover that he is just an illusion maintained by a charlatan hiding behind a curtain. This seems eerily akin to to the state of Keynesian economics. It does not matter that Keynesianism isn’t working for Obama. It does not matter that it didn’t work for Bush, or for Japan in the 1990s, or for Hoover and Roosevelt in the 1930s.

Dan Mitchell

The problem here is that our wingnutty friend is actually making the opposite case.

The Wizard of Oz is an allegory about 1890s - you know the pre-Keynesian Gilded Age (that is presumably preferred by Dan Mitchell). In the story, the scarecrow representing disaffected farmers and the tin man representing industrial workers along with Dorothy travel down the Yellow Brick road (representing the Gold Standard) to the emerald city. Once there they learn the Wizard is a fraud and that Dorothy's Silver Slippers have always had the power to set her free.

Going one step further the "almighty Wizard" is mostly likely either Eastern Banksters or the guy they put in the white house, President William McKinley.

So - pretty much the opposite of the point Mitchell is trying to make. This is what wingnut welfare does to folks.

Translating Politico-speak – Quote of the Day:

"That was the most major cheap shot I have ever seen"

Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) responding to the allegation that he’s carrying water for payday loan lenders by exempting loan sharks from new consumer protection legislation

Translation: I did it, but I’d rather you write about something else instead.  How about a story casting me as the victim?

Quote of the Day:

“Senator Ensign has stated clearly, he has not violated any law or Senate ethics rule.”

~ Rebecca Fisher, Spokeswoman for Senator Ensign (R-NV)

Translation: Senator Ensign has violated an assortment of laws and various Senate ethics rules.

I definitely believe this

The economy has strengthened beyond expectation from the time President Obama took office. The Market is up 68% since its low point one year ago today. Housing is starting to stabilize. Commodity prices are up. So how does this reflect on President Obama’s job Performance:

“We’ve had a phenomenal run in asset classes across the board... If he [Obama] was a Republican, we would hear a never-ending drumbeat of news stories about markets voting in favor of the president.”

~ Dan Greenhaus, chief economic strategist for Miller Tabak & Co.

Yeah, I bet this would be true. As a matter of fact, Larry Kudlow would be publishing pieces on how the President was moving the markets by force of will alone. He has done it before.

Hey, by the way, whatever happened to the Bush Boom that Kudlow used to prattle on and on about?

Passage of the Day

Recently some foolish bloggers have suggested that it would be better to default on the debt than raise taxes. That would, of course, cause tremendous hardship for millions of Americans because some $800 billion in Treasury securities are owned by private investors, almost $700 billion are owned by mutual funds, more than $500 billion are owned by state and local governments and more than $300 billion are owned by pension funds, among others. I tend to think that they won't take too kindly to the idea that raising taxes would be worse than paying them the money they are owed. In the end the debt must be paid, and we will have to raise taxes and cut spending to make sure it is.

~ Bruce Bartlett

Federal Taxes are at historical lows and with the Budget deficits such as they are, it is inevitable what must be done. Unfortunately, the GOP has spent a generation teaching the masses free market fundamentalism which holds that tax cuts are always virtuous and tax increases are always heresy.

How much as of a Heresy you ask? So much so that GOP apparatchiks like Glenn Reynolds, aka Instapundit, are urging a default on the good faith and credit of the USA and the resulting ruin that would follow rather than to compromise any on Party Ideology. You see when you spend a generation selling snake oil, you find your Party infested with those who have bought the bullshit. And after a year of running on right wing populism against keeping the government out of Medicare, you find another group of folks ready to string someone up for problems both real and imagined.

This deficit ain’t going away with out raising taxes. The question is who is gonna pay? Will the budget be balanced on the backs of the teabaggers or would they prefer, given the choice, that rich folks pitch in more like they have in previous decades? I suspect I know the answer to this question.