Drinking Liberally Louisville Chapter Blog

Evening, Liberals!

It is oh so frustrating that more than a year has passed and still no healthcare or financial reform. Worse, the finance reform bill Dodd is working on in the Senate must have been written by the banks since it barely restrains the wreckers of our economy. And it did not restore the Glass/Seigal act that kept banking separate from insurance and other institutions that caused "too big to fail." Dodd's bad bill, which contains all sorts of Republican "ideas," (all bad) still didn't garner a single republican supporter. I'll ape a GOP talking point and say, tear it up and start over! It's enough to make you head out to Drinking Liberally at the BBC at 7:00 Thursday night!

As always, you'll find plenty to keep you Drinking Liberally on the on the DL Louisville Blog

See you soon!

Your Dear Leaders in Peace,
Vicki, Ron, Maria and Hank

It's about time someone tells the "centrist" Dems (conservaDems) that they are part of the majority DEMOCRATIC party.

The New York Times reported yesterday that labor activists are planning to run challenges against Democrats who oppose healthcare reform. Particularly in New York, where there’s already a line on the ballot for the labor-backed Working Families Party, the giant Service Employees International Union will offer a concrete reminder to Democrats of the costs of running for the center. SEIU chief Andy Stern told Politico that in many cases, voters "will have the Republican against healthcare and the Democrat against healthcare, and they’re going to ask themselves, 'Where’s the candidate that shares my values?' A lot of us would like to run another candidate."

Possible targets in New York include Rep. Michael McMahon, who represents Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn, and upstate representatives Bill Owens, Michael Arcuri and Scott Murphy. Outside New York, labor has pledged major backing to Arkansas Lt. Gov. Bill Halter’s primary challenge to Senator Blanche Lincoln, and is looking at interventions in Illinois and Pennsylvania as well.

Politicians everywhere need to be forced to do what’s hard. Franklin Roosevelt famously told activists harassing him on his left, "I agree with you, I want to do it, now make me do it." Individual Democrats in Congress are shooting their own party in the foot if they help kill healthcare reform. Political parties are fundamentally cynical, self-serving and pragmatic organizations; when they behave as such, a temper tantrum doesn’t fix anything.

In other words, fear of a well funded primary challenge might make them less willing to destroy reforms of health care and banking. What good is having strong majorities in both Houses of Congress when you have Ben Nelson taking a wrecking ball to everything?

CNN is making a big mistake. It's one thing to hire wingers as commenters, but this is a different thing entirely!

CNN has a new political contributor. Erick Erickson, the managing editor of conservative blogging site RedState.com, will start appearing regularly on the new "John King, USA" later this month, the network announced in a release. The channel is clearly happy about the move -- but it shouldn't be.

Forget Erickson's politics and whether you agree with them. It's not whether he's on the left or the right that matters -- it's the way he expresses his beliefs that's the problem. Among other things, he's had readers send fake dog poop to Rep. Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D., because of the congressman's support for his party's healthcare reform proposals, he's celebrated Chicago's losing the 2016 Summer Olympics by writing, "Obama's pimped us to every two bit thug and dictator in the world," he's said that "leftists celebrate each and every death of each and every American solider because they view the loss of life as a vindication of their belief that they are right."

Big FAIL, CNN.

Think Progress made a nice compilation of the crap the GOP put out on the Sunday "news chats" below The miserably ill-informed hosts of Sunday political talk shows make watching them painful. The hosts regularly let wingnuts spin and filibuster even the QUESTIONS they are asked, for one thing. They also never challenge their blatantly false talking points. Here's a good example:

In fact, the plan implemented by former Republican Gov. Mitt Romney in Massachusetts is very similar to the Democratic proposal. Both plans require people to purchase coverage and both provide affordability credits to those who can’t afford insurance. Both create insurance exchanges, both establish minimum creditable coverage standards for insurers, and both require employers to contribute towards reform. The Wonk Room’s Igor Volsky created a chart outlining the similarities between Romney’s plan and the Senate bill that passed in December and will become the foundation of national health care reform.

Graham cites only two issues to support his claim: Medicare cuts and tax raises “on the American people.” But of course, no state has the authority to either change Medicare or raises taxes on all Americans.

Whatever!

Frank Rich's column in the NYTimes today is on the mark, as usual. He's also correct to note that the more Big Dick and Pig Boy Rove talk, the more they remind the public how relieved the country is to be rid of them and their ilk.

Now the revisionist floodgates have opened with the simultaneous arrival of Karl Rove’s memoir and Keep America Safe, a new right-wing noise machine invented by Dick Cheney’s daughter Liz and the inevitable William Kristol. This gang’s rewriting of history knows few bounds. To hear them tell it, 9/11 was so completely Bill Clinton’s fault that it retroactively happened while he was still in office. The Bush White House is equally blameless for the post-9/11 resurgence of the Taliban, Al Qaeda and Iran. Instead it’s President Obama who is endangering America by coddling terrorists and stopping torture.

Could any of this non-reality-based shtick stick? So far the answer is No. Rove’s book and Keep America Safe could be the best political news for the White House in some time. This new eruption of misinformation and rancor vividly reminds Americans why they couldn’t wait for Bush and Cheney to leave Washington.

Word to that! The Roves and Cheneys of this world really have their fingers on the pulse of the fact and reality averse creatures among us. In other words, roughly 30% of our population is insane.

Glenn Greenwald writes and interesting piece in Salon today that sort of explains all the frustration Liberals have with the Senate and President Obama over passing a Public Option in healthcare:

all year long, they insisted that the White House and a majority of Democratic Senators vigorously supported a public option, but the only thing oh-so-unfortunately preventing its enactment was the filibuster: sadly, we have 50 but not 60 votes for it, they insisted. Democratic pundits used that claim to push for "filibuster reform," arguing that if only majority rule were required in the Senate, then the noble Democrats would be able to deliver all sorts of wonderful progressive reforms that they were truly eager to enact but which the evil filibuster now prevents. In response, advocates of the public option kept arguing that the public option could be accomplished by reconciliation -- where only 50 votes, not 60, would be required -- but Obama loyalists scorned that reconciliation proposal, insisting (at least before the Senate passed a bill with 60 votes) that using reconciliation was Unserious, naive, procedurally impossible, and politically disastrous.

But all those claims were put to the test -- all those bluffs were called -- once the White House decided that it had to use reconciliation to pass a final health care reform bill. That meant that any changes to the Senate bill (which had passed with 60 votes) -- including the addition of the public option -- would only require 50 votes, which Democrats assured progressives all year long that they had. Great news for the public option, right? Wrong. As soon as it actually became possible to pass it, the 50 votes magically vanished. Senate Democrats (and the White House) were willing to pretend they supported a public option only as long as it was impossible to pass it. Once reconciliation gave them the opportunity they claimed all year long they needed -- a "majority rule" system -- they began concocting ways to ensure that it lacked 50 votes.

Wow. Are these folks THAT tied to special interest money that they'd screw the nations' uninsured to pay off their benefactors? Sure looks that way to me.

If you thought Texan GW Bu$h and his administration lived outside the reality (and fact) based community, Get a load of what the TX Board of "Education" is up to

The Texas Board of Education has been meeting this week to revise its social studies curriculum. During the past three days, “the board’s far-right faction wielded their power to shape lessons on the civil rights movement, the U.S. free enterprise system and hundreds of other topics”:

– To avoid exposing students to “transvestites, transsexuals and who knows what else,” the Board struck the curriculum’s reference to “sex and gender as social constructs.”

– The Board removed Thomas Jefferson from the Texas curriculum, “replacing him with religious right icon John Calvin.”

– The Board refused to require that “students learn that the Constitution prevents the U.S. government from promoting one religion over all others.”

– The Board struck the word “democratic” from the description of the U.S. government, instead terming it a “constitutional republic.”

On what planet does educating students include warping known history? Oh, yeah, Planet Texas! KY seems to be headed in the same, sorry direction after years of progress and being a national leader on some educational fronts, thanks to our deeply hillbilly legislators. They're all for teaching an elective class on the Christian religion, but what chance do you suppose the teachings of, say, Unitarianism has? We have churches and religious schools for that. No student should be subjected to the whims and subjective viewpoints of ANY adult. Just the facts, thank you.

You really cannot make this s**t UP! The lunatics at the [FOX] GOP controlled propaganda station are seriously trying to make the claim that Joe McCarthy was a REAL American and that FDR wrecked the country. Hahahahahaha!

Seriously, do they think the world will re-write history that much? What utter cranks.

Jeebuz! The GOP is banking hard on the notion that our nation is utterly stupid. Get a load of THIS!

Rep. Paul Ryan's tax and spending "roadmap" is a fascinating critter: conservatives all praise it to the skies but none of them want to actually commit to supporting it. The reason for their hesitation is obvious: Ryan's plan would cut spending dramatically, and supporting it would mean having to explain what, exactly, they'd cut. That would be electoral suicide and they know it. They much prefer their usual game of loudly denouncing "spending" without ever having to say what spending they're actually opposed to.

However, their reason for supporting Ryan's plan is also obvious: it would cut taxes on the rich dramatically, and there's nothing conservatives like better than cutting the tax bills of America's wealthy. But how much would it cut taxes on the rich? Citizens for Tax Justice has run the numbers and the answer is: a lot. The very richest of the rich would see their tax bills go down by an average of over $200,000, a whopping 15% of the income. Ka-ching! To make up for that, everyone with an income under $100,000 would have their taxes increased by about $2,000 per year.

It gets worse. It includes every discredited Bu$h nightmare plan for privatizing Social Security and Medicare, etc. Heckufajob, Ryan! Let's just call it the "Let Them Eat Cake Plan."

If the current U.S. House of Congress ran the country, we'd have more sane policy and get more work done in Washington.

House Democratic leaders on Wednesday banned budget earmarks to private industry, ending a practice that has steered billions of dollars in no-bid contracts to companies and set off corruption scandals.

The ban is the most forceful step yet in a three-year effort in Congress to curb abuses in the use of earmarks, which allow individual lawmakers to award financing for pet projects to groups and businesses, many of them campaign donors.

But House Republicans, in a quick round of political one-upmanship, tried to outmaneuver Democrats by calling for a ban on earmarks across the board, not just to for-profit companies. Republicans, who expect an intra-party vote on the issue Thursday, called earmarks “a symbol of a broken Washington.”

Both parties are seeking to claim the ethical high ground on the issue by racing to rein in a budgeting practice that has become rife with political influence peddling. So far, though, the Senate is not joining in. House Democrats had tried to reach an agreement with their counterparts to ban for-profit earmarks, but the senators balked, Congressional officials said. . .

House Democrats said the new restrictions, in addition to banning for-profit earmarks, would include greater public disclosure of other earmark requests, audits of 5 percent of nonprofit earmarks, and the establishment of a program directly financed by the Pentagon to promote awards for small, start-up military projects.

As the article points out, the late Jack Murtha--infamous for wasteful, useless military earmarks for his Pennsylvania district--has been replaced by a far more ethical Democrat. If the GOP really wants to reign in wasteful spending, this is an excellent start. Way to go, Speaker Pelosi! Drain the swamp of corrupt earmarks from the abusers of the system in both parties.