Teamates

Saudi Prince and Fox News co-owner Alwaleed Bin Talal on the price of oil: The stiff position of Saudi Arabia, we want the price to be between $70 and $80. Not only to help the West, but also to help ourselves. We don’t want the West to go and find alternatives, because, clearly, the higher the price oil goes, the more you have incentive to go and find alternatives. So, really, our interest coincides with American interest, to have the price for around $70, $80 which is a price good for consumers and producers.

Keeping us hooked on oil is anything but in the "American interest." It's in the special interests. It's in the GOP interests. But it's not in America's interest. So on the one hand we have the Saudis, Fox News, big oil and the Republican party. And on the other hand we have the American people, the environment, future generations and clean energy. Just so we know where we stand....

Pro Profiling

Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) on racial profiling: "We have to stop this inane political correctness that’s going on. Political correctness won’t save any lives..."

...but pointless racism that plays well with the Republican base will cost them. Alienating, marginalizing and scaring all Muslims will create more terrorists than Broun's racist public policy could ever catch. Or perhaps he means we should harass all white Republican men wearing camo hats because of Tim McVeigh? On second thought perhaps it's not such a bad idea.

I'm Rubber, You're Glue

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Tuesday: “The only people in Washington, DC who have voted to cut Medicare have been the Democrats when they voted to cut $500 billion in Medicare during Obamacare.”

To be fair the Republican party didn't vote cuts to medicare, they voted to get rid of it. While the Democrats continue to try and reduce costs by eliminating handouts to insurance companies and big pharma, Republican strategy has turned to third grade taunts and outright lying.

Self Evident Truths

Think Progress: Three months after voting to eliminate funding for the Environmental Protection Agency, Rep. Lou Barletta (R-PA) now says he’s outraged that the EPA isn’t doing more to protect the health of residents in his district.

We wouldn't go so far as to say Republicans deserve to get cancer - that's just bad form. But it's certainly true that if their industrial polluter cronies give it to them, they brought it on themselves. And of course it's a shame when people who do actually vote to protect the environment and public health fall victim to GOP public policy and get sick. We would all live in a cleaner, safer, more healty world if people just stopped voting Republican.

Pathalogical

Mitt Romney on the auto industry bailouts in April 2009: "What is proposed is even worse than bankruptcy...It would make GM the living dead."

Mitt Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom on the auto industry bailouts today: “Mitt Romney had the idea first, you have to acknowledge that. He was advocating for a course of action that eventually the Obama administration adopted.”

So the economic, fiscal, and regulatory policy Romney advocates crashed the economy and as a result Obama had to come in with policies to try and fix it. Romney said this fix would be a disaster. And now, after it's worked, Romney's lying about what he said. He's obviously not competent or honest enough to be president.

Killer Public Policy

Headline: GOP Congressman Pays For Emergency Disaster Relief With Cuts To Clean Cars Program

Great. In GOP world we can only save our citizens from disaster by giving them lung cancer. God forbid we stop giving billions of dollars in tax breaks to oil companies though. Can't have that.

The Company You Keep

Think Progress: While on his tour of Europe, President Obama traveled to the Irish hometown of an ancestor yesterday where he drank a pint of Guinness, which he joked tasted “so much better here than it does in the States,” becasue “you guys are — you’re keeping all the best stuff here!” Fox Business host Eric Bolling — who has been filling in for Glenn Beck in recent weeks and is rumored to be a potential replacement for the paranoid prime timer — was not amused, taking to Facebook and Twitter to slam the president for celebrating his Irish heritage while Americans suffer from the aftermath of the Missouri tornadoes:


"40′s” is a slang name for 40oz malt liquor bottles. But Obama drank from a pint glass (not a bottle) of beer that doesn’t come in 40oz bottles. Why did Bolling say Obama was “chugging 40′s”? As even some of Bolling’s Facebook commenter note, it’s an eyebrow-raising choice of words, given the beverage’s long-time association with African American stereotypes.

Smokin blunts and slappin ho's the whole way no doubt.

The take away here isn't really that this Republican is a racist. Everybody knows the party of the confederate flag and the southern strategy has plenty of those. It's that he obviously knows this kind of thing plays well within the party. If you're voting GOP and you're not a racist tool, you would do well to consider that.

When Killers Threaten Death

Constituent: I want to know who serves cancer care to people with preexisting conditions who are uninsurable in a private marketplace because they're interested in profits.

Dan Webster (R-Koch Industries): Thank you for that question and I’ll answer it....first of all, that I believe there is a need to have preexisting conditions covered. I’ve said that. So I’m not trying to eliminate that at all, and that would be the answer to your question. All I’m saying is, left to the community and the states and having partnerships will free us from this. We can’t afford it. We can either do it on borrowed money and run our country into the ground and then no one gets coverage because we won’t have a country.

What we can't afford is Republicans. If these people don't stop deliberately destroying the tax base by cutting or eliminating taxes for the super rich and the corporations, we won't have a country. If they don't stop outsourcing and exporting the middle class to help their CEO constituency, we won't have a country. If they keep lying and cheating to get the nation stuck in trillion dollar wars, we won't have a country. Providing access to affordable heath care doesn't threaten the United States. GOP public policy does. That's what the evidence shows.

Go To Hell

Mitt Romney: Obama "threw Israel under the bus"

Whatever. For 50 years the Republican party has been a haven for racists and bigots. They only pimp Israel to try and peel away some of the Jewish vote and pander to radical Christians who want to keep Jerusalem away from the Muslims before Jesus returns and sends them both to hell.

Sabotage

According to The Wisconsin State Journal economists allege that Governor Scott Walker's budget crisis is a fabrication invented out of whole cloth and predicated on a series of tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy.

No Republican should be allowed to say we can't afford this or that. They've spent the last 30 years deliberately destroying the tax base though tax cuts and outsourcing and now they're crying crocodile tears. It's like pouring out the pitcher and then saying we'll have to go thirsty because there's just not enough water to go around. The only way to restore this country is to rebuild the tax base and bring back the middle class. The only way to do that is to get Republicans out of government.

Up Is Down

RNC Chairman Reis Priebus speaking about Latino outreach on MSNBC Wednesday: If we continue to talk about creating good jobs in this country, and continue to show that Barack Obama has actually been an absolute failure when it comes to jobs – except for, obviously promoting the, you know, securing his own job – I think we do very well in that community. And when it comes to jobs, when it comes to spending, the deficit, the debt, and keeping more money in people’s pockets, the Republican Party is the right party.

Right. Except all the evidence says exactly the opposite. And they're equally bad in comparison on the deficit and the national debt. The Republican party might be the right party if you're looking for job growth in China and India, but here at home they're a God-damn-national-disaster.

They Would Know

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul: 'Right to health care' is slavery

No, slavery is slavery. The party of the confederate flag and the southern strategy should know that.

Don't like Democrats, Hate Democracy

Raw Story: Claiming they only wish to prevent voter fraud, Wisconsin Republicans are rushing a bill that would impose additional identification requirements on citizens who attempt to cast a ballot -- all ahead of key recall elections that could see the GOP thrown from power in the state. The new rules would in effect limit the numbers of Democratic voters, according to research (PDF link) carried out by New York University. The elderly, the poor and minority voters tend to lean Democratic, and also have the highest percentages of people without driver's licenses or other photo IDs.

Putting aside the longstanding moral cesspool that is Republican Party vote suppression, claiming to fix problems that don't exist shows them to be untrustworthy and of low character.

Defend That

"You can't talk about cuts without first looking at eliminating the giveaways to big oil. It should start there,” Jon Summers, a top spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), said in a statement today. “We agree we have to cut spending, but it is ridiculous for Republicans to push a plan to kill Medicare while trying to defend taxpayer handouts to big oil companies that are making record profits. They don't need the money. If Republicans are serious about cutting spending, they'll support our plan to eliminate welfare for Big Oil so we can apply that money toward the deficit.”

That's good. But if we're talking medicare there's a more relevant example of Republican corruption and lack of fiscal responsibility. In order to take care of big pharma they're sticking it to the American people by refusing to let the government negotiate better drug prices for Medicare. No conversation about spending should be without it.

Rainbow Six

Ross Doubthat in today's NYT: For those with eyes to see, the daylight between the foreign policies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama has been shrinking ever since the current president took the oath of office. But last week made it official: When the story of America’s post-9/11 wars is written, historians will be obliged to assess the two administrations together, and pass judgment on the Bush-Obama era.

This idea that Obama only got Bin Ladin because he was doing what Bush/Cheney did is ridiculous. Bush/Cheney's national security policy consisted mostly of lying and cheating to invade countries that posed no threat to the United States. Obama used proven counter terrorism methods to target and eliminate a real threat. Not even close to the same thing.

Bush Is Not Running

MSNBC Democratic consultant/contributor this morning: Republicans can't both run from Bush's economic record and embrace...

Wait. Stop right there. The economic meltdown we were in when Obama took over had nothing to do with Bush. It was a result of Republican party public policy. Their policy has not changed. And neither will the result if we let it come into effect again.

Love Fetuses, Hate Kids

Chris Smith (R-NJ): Fetuses "the most persecuted minority in the world"

If we could get past the fact these men want to force women who have been raped, who have been a victim of incest, who are way too young or poor or in ill health to have a baby - to have a baby, we could then consider the brutal irony of being a big fan of fetuses but dead set against any kind of public policy that would give most of these kinds of kids a chance.