"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast"
-Oscar Wilde		 Brilliant at Breakfast title banner "The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth, shall be watered also himself."
-- Proverbs 11:25
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"I came here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum." -- "Rowdy" Roddy Piper (1954-2015), They Live
Monday, January 18, 2010

So, Mr. President, how's that "bipartisan" thing working out for ya?
Posted by Jill | 6:01 AM
You know, Barack, you're a smart fella. You didn't fall off a haytruck yesterday. You've been in the Senate, you know what these people are like. Whatever made you think that "bipartisanship" would work? What in the rhetoric of the Republican Party has given you the idea that any of these nimrods would be willing to work with you? Do you really spend that much time listening to David Broder and Chris Matthews and the rest of the Media Idiots who allowed George W. Bush to run roughshod over the country for eight years but said that YOU had to take the high road? Is it this thing you have of wanting everyone to be happy and get along? What is it?

For months we've been hearing in the media that if health care doesn't get done, your presidency is in ruins. John Heilemann said it in exactly those words just a couple of weeks ago. And yet you chose to stay out of the fray until it was too late, deluding yourself that getting Olympia Snowe would somehow make health care reform "bipartisan." Any idiot can see that one anachronistic moderate Republican does not equal bipartisanship, not when the Republican Party looks more and more like a teabagger rally every day.

So tomorrow there is an election in Massachusetts, for the seat that Ted Kennedy held through four decades. Your party ran a weak candidate, and both said candidate and the party felt there was nothing to do but wait for the votes to come in, just the way your people felt you could sit back and let the Senate handle health care. Even a moron could see that when people are out of work, when they are frightened, they're going to lash out at anyone who feels they're "entitled" to something, even if that something is a Senate seat.

So now another handsome Republican empty suit, a state senator new to the national stage, is probably going to benefit from that fear and anger tomorrow, because your party's candidate ran a crappy campaign and because for whatever reason, your people didn't feel that seat was worth fighting for until it was just about too late.

Should Scott Brown win, this odious, mean-spirited piece of shit will all by himself have the power to scuttle your entire agenda -- because Harry Reid lacks the balls to make the Republicans actually filibuster. Instead he cowers in a fetal position in the corner.

Here's what Scott Brown is:

1) A guy who grins when someone suggests that his opponent should kill herself.

2) A guy who thinks emergency room health practitioners should be allowed to refuse help to women whose morality they disagree with.

3) A guy who voted against financial help for 9/11 rescue workers.

4) A guy with a demonstrated anger management problem.

I haven't been in Massachusetts in quite a while, and the last time I was there it was for a 3-day conference. So perhaps that state really HAS become Alabama. But while the Democrats are not "entitled" to keep any Senate seat, even Ted Kennedy's, I wonder if voters there really want what Scott Brown stands for, or if they're willing to cut off their noses to spite their faces.



We'll find out tomorrow.

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Saturday, January 16, 2010

Hey Massachusetts!
Posted by Jill | 10:07 PM
If you elect this numbnuts, you deserve him:




I'm wondering about the townie high school girl he may have knocked up while he was in college posing for Cosmo. It COULD be true, right? And isn't the world such now that if there is a one percent chance it's true, we have to proceed as if it were certain. It would be irresponsible not to speculate.

(h/t)

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Friday, September 04, 2009

Someone will become Senator from Massachusetts. Who will become the liberal lion of the Senate?
Posted by Jill | 5:25 AM
I keep getting weepy over the death of Ted Kennedy. It isn't that I'm one of those Kennedy cultists. I happen to come from perhaps the only home in America that had liberal parents in the 1950's and 60's who never forgave John Kennedy for defeating THEIR chosen political deity, Adlai Stevenson. But I keep going back to Kennedy thundering "What is it about working people that drives you so crazy?" In doing so, Kennedy ripped the façade off the empty Republican blather about "ordinary Americans." It's as if someone had the guts to point out that in using the words "kill" and "Obama" in the same sentence, Republicans were advocating the murder of the President. I'm not so sure that had Kennedy still be around, he wouldn't have done that. But I look around and I wonder which of the genteel milquetoasts who populate the Democratic side of the Senate is going to have the guts to do this? Who is out of the pockets of lobbyists enough to take over?

Oh, there are Democrats whose hearts are in the right place; people like Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, and Barbara Boxer, and a few others. Perhaps Al Franken may rise to the occasion, though Franken is far less liberal than those who demonized him when he was doing the "Oy Oy Oy Show" on Air America would believe. And so far Franken has taken his status as most junior member of the Senate quite seirously, not rocking the boat. It's hard to imagine him becoming the next Paul Wellstone, but it's too early to say.

One candidate for Lion that I'll be watching is Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown. Now I have to admit, I was skeptical about Brown for quite a while, after Chuck Schumer and yes, Rahm Emanuel, tag-teamed to strongarm the highly charismatic Paul Hackett out of the race that put Brown in the Senate. It was an ugly start to Brown's Senate career, given that he'd said he wouldn't run and then changed his mind, with the help of Messrs. Schumer and Emanuel, after Hackett decided to run. But lost in that whole foofarah, which was in many ways an indication of how Emanuel "does business" and how he is so able to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, is that Brown had, and still has, a reliably liberal voting record.

Brian Buetler at TPM reports on a conversation he had with Sherrod Brown this week, in which Brown doesn't unequivocally say that he would vote against a bill that's simply a windfall for insurance companies, but he did get to the crux of the matter:
"I don't know for sure if I would support it with out a public option but it would be hard to get there.... We're not going through this to write some namby pamby bill so we can check a box and say we did health care reform."

Now all that said, Sherrod Brown is no Ted Kennedy. For one thing, he comes across as not quite the sharpest knife in the drawer. For another thing, at times he has a disconcerting facial resemblance to the most recent former occupant of the White House. For a third thing, as one wag noted, his speech cadences are often more reminiscent of Billy Mays than of Ted Kennedy:



Perhaps Brown seems like pretty weak soup after the thundering oratory of Ted Kennedy and that of that other warhorse of the Senate, Robert Byrd (cue Barry or someone like him to post a comment about Robert Byrd's long-ago KKK association, which he has long since repudiated; yes, he's that predictable). But I'm not sure they even make orators like that anymore. The question is whether Sherrod Brown or Al Franken or someone else will pick up the mantle of liberalism not as something to be ashamed of, but as something that brought most of the programs that Americans, even though currently shrieking at Town Halls about "Obamacare", like and take for granted.

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Thursday, July 02, 2009

Welcome Senator Franken!
Posted by Anonymous | 1:02 PM

He may be an Israel-loving Nazi (if that's even possible,) but hes our Israel-loving Nazi. Buy him for the humor and his lefty vote, and keep him because he is actually a guy who cares about the country!!
If we threw out every politician on our side that was not about to bash Israel, we'd have a pretty empty side of the chamber. Yes, to me personally, its a problem that deserves another discussion. But to hold Franken to a higher standard is a little like throwing the vote out with the kool-aid...or something like that.

h/t Joe Conason via facebook

c/p RIP Coco

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Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Norm Coleman Finally Concedes....Finally!! Congratulations Senator Franken!
Posted by Anonymous | 4:20 PM
And congratulations to all of us for the majority and for the end of this circle jerk. Of course, Coleman felt like he had to do this for the people...just like my own Joementum Lieberman! Sometimes the people don't want your idea of justice!



c/p RIP Coco

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Sunday, May 03, 2009

Arlen Specter's New Rules; Another Rat, Same Ship.
Posted by Anonymous | 12:22 PM

Arlen Specter appeared on Meet the Press this morning to grease his slide to the left and to remind us that his seniority is not a bribe for his defection, but an entitlement for his time served since 1980. Seems to me that if that were true that Joementum Lieberman would be able to keep his....um...nevermind....



Complaining about stacked decks and how he was doing it for the people of Pennsylvania, he was asked by David Gregory what his core beliefs are now; um, um, um....inspiration of his father, his record as being for the little guy; but the question remains, what the fuck has he been doing as Rome burned? This guy has as much experience in the old guard of Washington as anyone, and he stood by as a Republican while his party was gutted and the economy was destroyed, talking about rules and how he had to strengthen the party. He exclaimed along the way that he stood behind his party and wanted to grow it, but like all the other rats who aren't hanging onto the edge of the fringe, he abandoned ship. Indeed, Specter is a problem for both parties because he votes in what seems to be his own interest, all over the place. You can appreciate one vote, but the rest don't always line up. This makes me wonder who Arlen Specter really is.




Here in an interesting 2001 clip from CSPAN, Specter asks for a rule to prevent party switching. Odd in how this is exactly what he would do, not so many years later:



As Jill says here there is no allegiance or pattern to Specter's beliefs; its all about his own ass and his own job security. If the tattered remains of the Republican party wanted to vote Specter out as too liberal, then so be it, but don't come running to trade your seniority and votes for your job. This is the problem with these lifers; the country loses the ability to have ever-changing ideas and representation, as intended by the founders, because guys like this have done everything in their power to prevent new voices from being heard.

As he said to David Gregory "I don't expect the American people to agree with all of my votes, I don't even agree with them at this time!" I guess it would be more understandable if he hadn't just made a move that would secure his seat along the path of least resistance as opposed to standing up within his own party and fighting for the side that he represents. Are these the kind of Democrats we want?

As I watched the long, hideous process of the fall if the house of Bush, I kept saying that after we get to a safe place as far as fixing whats been done to the country, we need to shake out the dug-in, old-school, Dems who have been sliding by on name recognition and cronyism. We may need a majority right now, but the party has to be stronger in what we give away to these defectors. Arlen Specter, who has voted time and again against what the American people finally pulled their heads out of the sand long enough to remember and confirm, does not serve our long term. He will be forever considered a conservative democrat who will eventually be voting against his new party if it serves him.

Fuck inclusive politics! The Bush administration nearly destroyed us, and the jury is still out on what the future will be like and how much Obama can really do. This is a guy who sat there while Bush and Cheney tortured and killed people. Did he not notice what was happening? Why would he pick now, when his party needs his voice so badly, to defect? He has a history of switching parties along with the direction of the power, as he began his long journey as a democrat. For the democratic party, this is grabbing the low hanging fruit...we may need any fruit we can get, but lets stop messing around about the whys of this; its a business deal and it serves all involved; cue the senate dems to jump to their feet in applause when he next takes the floor.

After twenty six years of representing what was supposedly the less extreme part of the republican party, look where he left his party. I would venture to say that he has done a pretty piss poor job of promoting the balance that he talked about, and pretty much proved all those old memes of the crony's controlling things with their guaranteed positions in the power structure. I say that if its up to the American people, let us vote on it. So, lets fund and encourage any primary challenge to this rat. Here again, is the facebook page dedicated to that movement.

c/p RIP Coco

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Friday, January 23, 2009

A giant "Eff You" to bumblin' John Roberts
Posted by Jill | 5:15 AM
Yesterday Congress struck a blow against pay discrimination, undoing a pet cause of the Bush Administration -- and of the Roberts court -- by passing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act:
The Senate approved landmark worker rights legislation Thursday that will make it easier for those who think they have endured pay discrimination to seek legal help. The vote was 61-36.

The House approved a similar measure Jan. 9, three days after the 111th Congress convened. Because the Senate made modest changes in the House version, the House must pass it again. Once it does, as is assured, this will be one of the first bills that President Barack Obama signs into law.

This culminates a two-year effort, mostly by Democrats, that made one-time tire plant supervisor Lilly Ledbetter a civil rights icon and a political star.

The legislation overrides a May 2007 Supreme Court ruling that Ledbetter, a Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. employee in Gadsden, Ala., couldn’t sue her employer for pay discrimination because she didn’t file suit within 180 days of the alleged discriminatory act.

“It set us back 40 years in our fight for equal opportunity in the workplace,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.

Ledbetter roamed the Capitol’s halls Thursday, explaining to lawmakers and reporters that she was unaware of the pay disparity during most of the 19 years she worked at Goodyear.

“Pay levels were a big secret,” she said, “but an anonymous person left a note in my mailbox at work one day, comparing my pay to that of three male managers — and that’s when I knew I’d been the victim of pay discrimination.”


This isn't a difficult-to-define case of trying to assess work of equal value; this is a case of a woman being paid significantly less for doing THE SAME JOB as men. The insult in the law that was upheld in the Ledbetter decision was that it was somehow incumbent on the worker to try to dig out the pay scales and find out what everyone else was making within the first 180 days of being hired, and that if you didn't immediately start out in an adversarial position with a new employer, it was tough noogies for you.

For the record, the Republicans who crossed over were Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, Kay Bailey Hutchison, and Arlen Specter. No male Republicans other than Specter voted for this bill, and no Democrats crossed to the Dark Side, which means that all but one of the thirty-five Republican men in the Senate believes that paying women less than men for EXACTLY THE SAME JOB is perfectly OK. I wonder, then, how they expect these women to feed the babies that Republicans want to force them to have?

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Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Senator McDreamy
Posted by Jill | 6:10 AM
Now here's a guy who ought to make that thrill go up Chris Matthews' leg. Meet Scott Kleeb, who decisively won his primary race against a Republican-turned-Democrat in Nebraska yesterday with 69 (now, STOP it!) percent of the vote. Kleeb is running for the seat of the retiring Chuck Hagel against former U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns.

The good news? Well, LOOK at him, fer cryin' out loud. The other good news? His big push is about R&D into alternative energy, he's an environmentalist, and favors diplomacy over shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later. He's a bit more hawkish than I'd like, his talk of "simplifying the tax code" sounds kind of right-wing dog-whistle-ish, and he falls into the trap of assuming that retraining is some kind of panacea for job outsourcing. But he's about as progressive as you're going to get out of Nebraska, he's an ranch hand-turned-college professor with a Ph.D. in history, and well, uh, LOOK at him.

This would be a very nice Democratic pickup. It would mean that the Democrats would have picked up seats that used to belong to some of the most high-profile Republicans in the Senate and House.

With West Virginia proving yesterday that there are still far too many people who simply Will Not vote for a black man for president, getting to that 60-seat threshhold in Congress is going to be very important as a precaution against a McCain presidency run amok. Kleeb is running against an extremely well-financed opponent, so if you want to target a Senate race for donations, you could do worse than this one.

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Wednesday, April 16, 2008

File this away under "Why Am I Not Surprised"?
Posted by Jill | 5:38 AM
So much for the Foreclosure Prevention Act being about helping homeowners in danger of losing their homes:

In the Senate bill, the nation’s biggest home builders, some now on the verge of bankruptcy, won a provision that would let them claim millions in tax refunds by charging their current losses against the huge profits they made three or four years ago. Other struggling industries would benefit from this provision.

“This is our biggest legislative effort since the Tax Reform Act of 1986,” said Jerry M. Howard, chief executive of the National Association of Home Builders. Hundreds of the association’s members flooded the district offices of representatives and senators while they were home for the spring recess last month.

Supporters of the bill, including Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana and the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, say it represents sound tax policy carefully focused to help stimulate the lagging economy. But the White House opposes the Senate bill, and Democratic leaders in the House not only have promised to provide more relief for individual homeowners, but have also dropped the corporate tax provisions from their version.

Downtrodden automakers — Ford and General Motors — were especially dogged in securing a tax break that would let them collect alternative minimum tax credits, also known as the A.M.T., that would otherwise be out of reach because they did not pay enough taxes in recent years to claim a rebate.

If the provision becomes law, it could mean checks up to $40 million for the car manufacturers, as long as the companies had made investments in plant or equipment in that amount.

A Ford spokesman, Mike Moran, said he was aware that Ford would benefit from the tax credit in the bill passed by the Senate. But Mr. Moran said that the credit applied to a range of industries, not just automakers. A General Motors spokesman could not be reached.

Domestic airlines and manufacturers other than automakers would be eligible to claim the A.M.T. break as well. One lobbyist said that the companies that had sought the tax breaks in meetings with lawmakers included Ford, General Motors, American Airlines, Northwest Airlines and Goodyear Tire and Rubber.

Companies could claim only one of the new tax breaks, which in all, are expected to cost $6 billion through 2018. The jockeying among industry groups, including Realtors, home builders and bankers, is certain to intensify in coming weeks as lawmakers move to reconcile the Senate bill with a more ambitious package of housing legislation now under way in the House.

Lawmakers on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee have omitted the corporate tax cuts from their version of the bill in favor of tax breaks for first-time home buyers and developers of low-income rental housing, and more aid for owners facing foreclosure.

Congressional Democrats are also hearing from consumer advocates and other groups who say that the Senate bill does little to help Americans in danger of losing their homes to foreclosure.

“The Senate legislation gave corporations and Wall Street billions in tax breaks,” Terence M. O’Sullivan, the president of the Laborers International Union of North America, said at a news conference on Tuesday to denounce the bill.

“Tax breaks for corporate home builders won’t help stabilize the housing market, won’t create jobs and won’t prevent a single foreclosure,” he continued. “If anything, this multibillion-dollar windfall will make things worse.”


This is why, when those envelopes from the DNC, DSCC, and DCCC come in the mail, I throw them away, and why I will only support certain specific individual candidates, most of whom are "insurgent" candidates who seek to throw these bums out. It's because I am tired of supporting a party apparatus that claims to be the "about the people" party and then does its corporate masters' bidding when legislation time rolls around. Piss, leg, raining, etc.

Frankly, I'm not in favor of bailing out people who were too stupid or too careless to understand what they were signing when they agreed to borrow hundreds of thousands of dollars, let alone the flippers and speculators. [curmudgeon on] I didn't have a house until I was 40 because we just plain couldn't afford the down payment. And I made damn sure to crunch the numbers, make sure we could make the payments, and understand exactly what we were signing when we finally bought the house we live in now. [curmudgeon off] There's a legitimate fear that if millions of people are foreclosed out of their homes, the ripple effect, not just to home values (which really DO need to come down; there is no reason why a POS cape cod like mine should sell for almost a half-million dollars), but to entire neighborhoods in danger of becoming a haven for squatters and plunderers, will cause the economy to collapse, at least as much as allowing Bear Stearns to fail would have.

There's no legitimate way to help the person who bought an $800,000 home on a $60,000 income. That person is going to have to learn a very hard lesson. But there has to be a way to craft legislation to truly help those who were baited-and-switched by mortgage lenders who showed up at closing with a different mortgage than the one agreed to, and those who are being foreclosed because they lost their job or are faced with impossible medical bills. The Senate should take the time to craft legislation to do that, not to use American homeowners as cover to shovel yet more taxpayer cash into the pockets of their campaign contributors.

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Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Franken is running
Posted by Jill | 2:51 PM
Al Franken just announced that he is going to run for Senate in Minnesota in 2008. Climb on board here.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the next Senator from the great state of Minnesota:









I hear William Donohue is busy already.

OK, all kidding aside:





Somewhere, Paul Wellstone is smiling.

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