It's Called Being Lazy

The Tea Baggers were all in a collective lather over Republicans none-too-modest gains in the Lower Chamber of Congress and said that they have delivered a "mandate" of sorts. I'm wondering if they are going to excuse Mitch McConnell's and the GOP's unblushing laziness.

They've already started:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) offered his strongest criticism yet of President Barack Obama’s leadership in the ongoing talks.

“I have little question that as long as this President is in the Oval Office, a real solution is unattainable,” he said on the Senate floor Tuesday. Adding, “This was not an easy decision for me.”

Obama, he said, “has presented us with three choices: smoke and mirrors, tax hikes or default. Republicans choose none of the above.”

McConnell added the Democratic budget plan would provide only “a couple of billion dollars in cuts up front with empty promises of more to follow.”

‘”I had hoped to do good, but I refuse to do harm,” he said.

What McConnell is doing is akin to a spoiled child upset that they don't get everything they want at a moments notice. Moreover, McConnell is attempting to excuse the abject laziness of the Modern American Right by claiming that everything they campaigned on that they don't accomplish is actually Obama's fault.

I can recall that the Clinton White House was able to accomplish quite a bit with a Republican majority in the House, so what is McConnell's excuse now? He is clearly favoring pure partisan rhetoric and pandering to the most extreme notions of the Modern American Right, consequences be damned.

The Price Of Deception

I've found myself in many discussions with conservatives on Twitter regarding the cost of the Bush Tax Cuts and the one unifying answer that I get from them when pressed to explain why they agree with them based solely on the cost is that there "is not cost".

Seems that Mitch McConnell thinks this way as well.



As Think Progress points out, either McConnell doesn't know what he's talking about or he is attempting to defend one of the largest factors in the expansion of the deficit in the last 10 years.

In addition to incorrectly stating the effect that the expiration of the cuts would have on small businesses, McConnell basically summed up the Republican approach here, which is that cutting taxes for the rich is either free or worth exploding the deficit to implement. In reality, extending just the tax cuts for the richest two percent of Americans — which President Obama has proposed allowing to expire — costs $830 billion over ten years and $36 billion next year alone.

But lets just think for a moment about why these tax cuts were implemented to begin with. The idea was that more money would be available to Americans who would reinvest into the economy, thereby preventing a recession. Anyone recall how that worked out?

So aside from McConnell's inability to be honest with those watching MTP, I think this should be asked of him - why are you so willing to continue to back a program what is widely recognized to have failed?

Some Thoughts For Your Morning

- Looks like one of the leaders of the Republican party isn't entirely pleased with Rand Paul's performance. Mitch McConnell, Republican minority leader and Senator from Kentucky, is taking on Rand Paul on his home turf. This is going to get even more interesting the closer we get to November.

- Isn't it convenient when conservatives at Fox"News" continually use the "technical error" excuse? They are at it again after a video clip of Obama giving a commencement speech at West Point was used online and the applause was strangely absent. I guess that "zero tolerance" policy for these types of "mistakes" isn't working out so well.

- Looks like someone took Erick Erickson's "shotgun" threat to heart, only she ended up pulling it on the cops too. So are we going to stop allowing conservatives to claim that there is no violent actions be perpetrated by the Tea Baggers?

- Conservatives and Fox"News" are practically wetting their collective Depends in trying to claim that the Obama administration isn't doing anything about the Gulf oil spill. A Republican Congressman from Louisiana recently took after the President on the House floor in a seriously misleading tirade. The reality that every conservative in America is missing is that the government is actually doing a lot.

- There really is no Godwin's Law within the conservative realm. And with DADT finally on the chopping block, conservatives are all in when it comes to discussing the Nazis, gays, and the military.

- After Rand Paul's admission that he thinks that private businesses should be able to discriminate on the basis of race, and the rightfully ensuing media coverage, it appears that there is a shake-up within his campaign to try and find some people that will help control the message and perhaps shield Paul from any more justifiable criticism. The trouble with this new campaign structure is that one of the key players on Rand's team was the man that defended Ron Paul for taking donations from neo-Nazis.

Republicans And Their Judicial Hypocrisy

It's always good fun when it can be pointed out that Republicans are such a hypocritical lot. This is more than true when it come to the Supreme Court and potential appointee Elena Kagan.

Soon after President Obama announced that he had nominated Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, Republican Sens. Mitch McConnell (KY) and Jim DeMint (SC) attacked his choice because Kagan has never served as a judge...Yet back in 2005, both DeMint and McConnell praised Harriet Miers’ nomination to the Supreme Court before she withdrew. Like Kagan, Miers had no previous judicial experience, yet both GOP senators expressed admiration for Miers, specifically citing her “experience”.

This isn't surprising in the least. At times, though, I'm curious as to whether or not people like McConnell and DeMint have aides that should be doing some research prior to them making such declarative statements. If not, they probably should have.

Nearly 40% off the 111 members of the Supreme Court to serve had no prior judicial experience before being nominated. The most famous, in my mind at least, would have to be William Rehnquist, who was nominated by a Republican - Richard Nixon.

Is He Or Isn't He

Jake Tapper, while hosting "This Week" on ABC, asked Mitch McConnell if the GOP were going to campaign in 2010 on repealing healthcare reform. And even though Tapper usually plays it soft with Republicans in order to curry favor with them from time to time, he didn't exactly let Mitch off on this one:



More from Think Progress.

I could be reading more into this than I should, as it's often difficult to read someone like McConnell, but it appears to me that he is leaving just enough room in his statements to allow him to switch once healthcare reform is shown to be effective. The only problem with that course of action is that he and every Republican in both Houses of Congress are going to have to explain their consistent opposition to reform, more precisely their "no" votes. But I have a fairly good idea of how they will do it.

Moreover, it should be noted that the more paranoid within the GOP have already called for not only campaigning on repeal but implementing it at the first opportunity.

Shorter Mitch McConnell

Public Option In Healthcare Reform?

Holy shit, you want a Public Option? You're gonna fuckin die! But don't challenge me on the fact that taxpayers pay my healthcare coverage. If you do then you're stupid. Don't you know that other countries with universal care kill their population. We're all gonna fuckin die!

Some Thoughts For Your Morning

- Blogger and citizen journalist Mike Stark has been tracking down all of the Senators that voted "no" on Al Frankens "rape amendment". It seems that not everyone was keen answer Stark's very honest, very relavent questions. What were these men thinking? Not to delve too deeply into the "what if" realm that conservatives continually inhabit instead of what is transpiring in the real world, but what if someone like Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, or Michelle Bachman were raped by members of an organization they were assiting? Certainly they would claim that justice be swift and unflinching.

- Is Jake Tapper angling to get a job at Fox"News"? Each an every time Tapper goes off on some tangentical, abstract, pointlessness, conservative bloggers cheer his journalistic creds and hoist him upon their pedistal of diefication. The strange part of all this is that some conservatives think that anyone within the executive branch is not allowed to express their opinion on what is and what isn't a news organization. I guess no one told them about all the blathering that Dick Cheney did when he was VP. Oh, that's right, he wasn't part of the executive OR the legislative branch, was he.

- The Public Option certainly looks good in this ad.

- In an obvious attempt by the Senate majority leader from my state of Kentucky, Mitch "Beeker" McConnell, to boost moral within the Republican party, he completely distorts the facts on how Republicans are doing in polls related to the upcoming mid-term elections. The truth of the matter is that fewer and fewer people are aligning themselves with Republicans and the distance between them and their Democratic opponents has remained virtually unchanged in the last 2 years.

- With all the conspiratorial nonsense that Glenn Beck delivers to America each evening, Media Matters thought they would pay tribute to the man by using his own tactics against him. It turns out that the only difference between what Beck does and what MMFA has done is that the later actually fact-checks their research.

Worst In The World v. 7.1, 7.2, 7.3

----- a veiw from the wayback-machine from last week, in case you missed them ------
Rick "The White House Leveled A Veiled Threat At Me" Santelli

Rush "My Style Is Better Than Your Substance" Limbaugh

Rush Limbaugh ( again )

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

Fred "Bristol Says This But Means This" Barnes

Chris Wallace

Mitch "I'm Playing Beeker In The Live Action Muppet Movie" McConnell

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

A"Roid" or Celina Roberts

G. Gordon "Un-apologetic Right Wing Terrorist" Liddy

Micheal "You Can't Trust A Word We Say" Steele

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

As If You Needed More Proof: Pt IV

I'm still wondering how conservatives think that they are ever going to regain a majority acting like this:



Then there's conservatives favorite indicted man, Tom DeLay:



More from Think Progress

DeLay's and McConnell's comments provide a window that looks out onto the vast landscpe of the conservative mind. And do you know what you see?

Nothing.

They are more concerned with obstruction than progress. More involved with their own self-interests than with the interests of their country. Are more interested in gimmicks and the theatrics of the political lifestyle than advancement of their country.

It's almost as if they don't understand - nor try to understand - anything outside their limited sphere of understanding.

Honestly, if these people are holding up Limbaugh as the golden-calf of the Right, they obviously have no idea what the bulk of the country is about, what it needs, and what it strives to be.

Lies, Damned Lies, And Anything Mitch McConnell Says

"When they say this, what they REALLY mean is..........."

There are so many examples of predictable conservative rebuttles. The "what if" meme, the "gotcha" line that is supposed to help your preferred candidate when they flub an easy question - those are two easy ones that come to mind.

Then, there is this one from Kentucky's favorite screw-up, Mitch McConnell:



Oh, they are REALLY saying that "small businesses" are going to suffer? Really?

Wait a second. I think I see some facts over here that you missed.

Of course, they're not talking about small business. As CNN concluded in October, "fewer than 2% of small business owners would pay more under Obama's plan."

As it turns out, McConnell is merely parroting the same fraud now that John McCain tried to perpetrate then. Last fall, then Republican presidential candidate McCain attacked Obama, wrongly asserting, "The small businesses that we're talking about would receive an increase in their taxes right now." As it turned out, McCain's human shield and faux small business owner Joe "the Plumber" Wurzelbacher will receive a tax cut, and not an increase, under the just passed Obama stimulus package.

Crooks And Liars' Jon Perr has more.

For more info, you can check out the Stimulus Package that was just passed.

Sen. McConnell, Meet The Reality Of Kentucky

My hometown in Kentucky - Madisonville - seems to be stradling the ever-growing economic pit that seems to be opening up underneath everyone else.

Many people here work in the mining industry or in areas that service those.

However, we have job areas that are likely to be inpacted directly by the economy, and harshly.

Here is a video that show's just some of what is going on in other areas of Kentucky.



From Think Progress.

Republican Muppet Doesn't Want To Be Stimulated

Mitch "Beaker" McConnell seems to not have a problem with giving out billions to banks that aren't too keen on telling us what they are doing with it. But, when it comes to other matters ( ie: infrastructure, health-care, or education ) McConnell tells the American people - in his own way - to fuck-off:

As of right now, Americans are left with more questions than answers about this unprecedented government spending, and I believe the taxpayers deserve to know a lot more about where it will be spent before we consider passing it.

More from The Washington Post





Think Progess has more

According to the Washington Post, McConnell has also “called for a weeklong cooling off period between when the bill is drafted and when it is voted on, allowing time to dissect it for signs of ‘fraud and waste.’” Conservatives have the power to filibuster the legislation if they oppose it.

McConnell, however, had no problem quickly passing President Bush’s Wall Street bailout, even though that package had almost no oversight safeguards. In fact, as McClatchy reported, McConnell “led the battle” to pass the bill.

McConell also opposed Congress’s rescue package for auto workers, arguing that he couldn’t “ask the American taxpayer to subsidize failure” and using it as a political opportunity to bash unions.

What this all boils down to is that Republicans have no plan for stabalizing the country, so they do the only thing they know how to do - be against any and everything a Democrat is for.