But Still No Plan of Their Own

The Republican party has become a collection of world-class infantile bitchers and moaners but they still refuse to offer any helpful suggestions or solutions on the economy. Only cries of how Obama is wrong.

We're still waiting, you guys. Put down your nuks-nuks and say something useful for once in your God-forsaken lives.

Quote This

"(1) Most of our nation wants our nation to succeed; (2) most people are ready to move on to the future, not live in the past; and (3) most of the old school Republicans are scared shitless of that future."

-Meghan McCain

No. We Don't Know Who You Are, Mr. Douchebag.

GOP Rep. David "Hookergate" Vitter blew a nut in a much different way at the airport. Fortunately, TPM subscribes to Roll Call so you don't have to.

Vitter, our spy said, gave the airline worker an earful, employing the timeworn "do-you-know-who-I-am" tirade that apparently grew quite heated.

That led to some back and forth, and the worker announced to the irritable Vitter that he was going to summon security.

Vitter, according to the witness, remained defiant, yelling that the employee could call the police if he wanted to and their supervisors, who, presumably, might be more impressed with his Senator's pin.

But after talking a huffy big game, Vitter apparently thought better of pushing the confrontation any further. When the gate attendant left to find a security guard, Vitter turned tail and simply fled the scene.

Their President: In the Bottom Ten

The one they gave all their "yea" votes to for eight solid years.
The one to whom they obligingly gave everything they had.
The one who got their overwhelming support while President Obama gets absolutely none.

The one who came in #36 out of 42.

THIS is their idea of a president they can support:

We Need To Understand This...

We're seeing a tragic game being played by GOP lawmakers, and it's pretty damned obvious they've banded together on this.

Simply, they're using Obama's desire to see a more united Washington as a tool to their advantage - if they don't get their way 100%, then they accuse Obama of being partisan and therefore he's a hypocrite. Moreover, their way is crafted to be intentionally destructive so they can paste it on the Democratic leadership.

You can see it on C-SPAN and you can hear it on talk radio.

It speaks volumes about the Republican party. And it speaks volumes about how they should be treated from this day forward: As the marginalized and destructive faction America voted against three months ago.

They have again proven themselves unworthy of any serious consideration. As Anon said in the comments:

The GOP are the arsonists who caused the blaze - shooting at the firemen who are trying to put it out.

Stop being courteous to these bastards.

The Lesson Learned

Republican lawmakers do not understand bipartisanship.
Republican lawmakers do not understand Super Bowl parties.
Republican lawmakers do not understand reaching out.
Republican lawmakers do not understand people.
Republican lawmakers do not understand cocktail parties.
Republican lawmakers do not understand when a president is spending what turns out to be too much wasted time trying to understand them.
Republican lawmakers do not understand civility.

All they understand is a good hard and loud smackdown.
That's all they try to do.
That's all they deserve to be done to them.

John McCain showed what a miserable failure he would have been as a leader yesterday by loudly urging his party not to frame the tentative stimulus deal as a bipartisan effort. This was a new extraordinarily partisan McCain than he was even before he ran for president. And the media noticed.

Okay, John. Screw you and your party. We'll be more than happy not to give you bastards a scintilla of credit for any attempt to breathe life into the economy you and Bush tried to kill.

Be crybabies. Be bitter. Be the fat obstructionists you're showing yourself to be.

We'll fix America. And we'll make sure America knows who's looking out for them.

Rich: GOP is Rudderless, Visionless, Leaderless

Aside from that, they're just a party filled with ideas. In my pants. Frank Rich's column today is appropriately titled, "Herbert Hoover Lives." An excerpt:

If anything, the Republican Congressional leadership seems to be emulating John McCain’s September stunt of “suspending” his campaign to “fix” the Wall Street meltdown. For all his bluster, McCain in the end had no fixes to offer and sat like a pet rock at the White House meeting on the crisis before capitulating to the bailout. His imitators likewise posture in public about their determination to take action, then do nothing while more and more Americans cry for help.

The problem is not that House Republicans gave the stimulus bill zero votes last week. That’s transitory political symbolism, and it had no effect on the outcome. Some of the naysayers will vote for the revised final bill anyway (and claim, Kerry-style, that they were against it before they were for it). The more disturbing problem is that the party has zero leaders and zero ideas. It is as AWOL in this disaster as the Bush administration was during Katrina.

If the country wasn’t suffering, the Republicans’ behavior would be a laugh riot. The House minority leader, John Boehner, from the economic wasteland of Ohio, declared on “Meet the Press” last Sunday that the G.O.P. didn’t want to be “the party of ‘No’ ” but “the party of better ideas, better solutions.” And what are those ideas, exactly? He said he’ll get back to us “over the coming months.”

His deputy, the Virginia congressman Eric Cantor, has followed the same script, claiming that the G.O.P. will not be “the party of ‘No’ ” but will someday offer unspecified “solutions and alternatives.” Not to be left out, the party’s great white hope, Sarah Palin, unveiled a new political action committee last week with a Web site also promising “fresh ideas.” But as the liberal blogger Markos Moulitsas Zúniga observed, the site invites visitors to make donations and read Palin hagiography while offering no links to any ideas, fresh or otherwise.

For its own contribution to this intellectual void, the Republican National Committee convened last week under a new banner, “Republican for a Reason.” Perhaps that unidentified reason will be determined by a panel of judges on a TV reality show. It had better be brilliant given that only five states (with 20 total electoral votes) now lean red in party affiliation, according to Gallup. At this rate the G.O.P. will be in Alf Landon territory by 2012.

The Republicans do have one idea, of course, but it’s hardly fresh: more and bigger tax cuts, particularly for business and the well-off. That’s the sum of their “alternative” stimulus plan. Obama has tried to accommodate this panacea, perhaps to a fault. Mainstream economists in both parties believe that tax cuts in the stimulus package will deliver far less bang for the buck than, say, infrastructure spending.

Rich also goes deep into the new titular head of the GOP: Rush Limbaugh. Read it and see why Republicans are more afraid of Limbaugh than they think Obama is.

“It’s up to me to hijack the Obama honeymoon,” Limbaugh soon gloated, “and I’ve done it.” In his dreams. He has hijacked what’s left of the Republican Party; the Obama honeymoon remains intact. The nightmare is that we have so irrelevant, clownish and childish an opposition party at a moment when America is in an all-hands-on-deck emergency that’s as trying as war.

Trust Us On This

If Limbaugh ran as head of the GOP, he'd be leading 106-62.

More GOP Wussery

Rep. Mike Pence (R-Indiana) kinda sorta peripherally in a roundabout fashion tiptoes around not completely or even partially disagreeing with Limbaugh's wish for the failure of the president, but agrees with everything else Rush says, even though Rush wasn't really wrong to wish for the president's failure which would be a bad thing to think unless you plan to vote for Pence.

Got all that?

And Look Who's Now Telling Limbaugh to Back Off

Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.)

UPDATE: Look who peed their pants. Don't get your kneepads wet there, Phil. Wuss. Spineless hack. Conservative edict prohibits disagreeing with fat circus clowns, I guess.

But He's So HOT! LOL He'd B Such a Kewl BFF

Republicans Tweet about Obama.

Look Who Finally Decided Bush Was a Failure

The ever-more-splintered RNC. They couldn't even muster the balls to say so two weeks ago while the guy was still president.

With six candidates competing for the party's helm at the winter meetings this week, some committee members are determined to remove the current RNC chairman, Mike Duncan, who is seen as a candidate of the status quo at a time when they want to sever all ties to the former president. Duncan has held the office since 2007, when he ran unopposed after Bush chose him for the post.

Duncan "has never criticized Bush when the president was wrong," said Shawn Steel, an RNC member from California. "He's the agent of the establishment, and we need a change in personnel."

In a further sign that the group wants to signal its displeasure with Bush policies, members are expected to adopt an unprecedented resolution attacking "the bloated bank bailout bill" that Bush championed and demanding that the committee "take all steps necessary to oppose bailouts of industries, individuals or governments."

This Oughta Be Good

Obama's making good on another promise - to consult the GOP to see what kind of cures they have for the economy they helped turn into barrel of crap.

Once he hears the first "tax cuts for the top 1% and repeal of the 'death tax'" squeal, he'll lose it and leave.

MSM: The GOP Said It, So It's True

Lazy punkasses still haven't learned a damned thing. Steve Benen at Washington Monthly:

It appears that the preliminary, incomplete numbers put together by the CBO were distributed to a small handful of lawmakers in both parties earlier in the week. Someone (Republican congressional offices) then passed the misleading data onto the AP, which predictably ran with the incomplete numbers, telling the public that it "will take years before an infrastructure spending program proposed by President-elect Barack Obama will boost the economy."

Other major media outlets quickly followed, and voila, Republicans had a talking point: "Boehner and other Republican aides roamed the Capitol press galleries, flogging the CBO numbers."

Obviously, congressional Republicans were less concerned about reality than undermining an economic rescue package. But as DDay noted, let's not brush past media culpability: "It's pretty clear that the media has no ability to or interest in understanding this stuff, because then they wouldn't have their precious 'conflict.' So they regurgitate whatever some GOP staffer feeds them, just to spice things up."

OMB Director Peter Orszag, who used to head the CBO, has already responded to the bogus reports and talking points. Republicans and reporters might want to check it out.

More details on this Kool-Aid buffet here.

(Act Scared If You See Him - Otherwise He'll Stop Being Delusional)

Inhofe cracks me up.

Ready? Here's the New GOP Truthiness Rule

If we say it, and the papers quote us, it becomes a hard cold fact.

Apparently, it's all they have left.

The Senate Dream Dies - Twice

Not only will Jeb Bush stay away, but it looks like Alaska has had enough of being embarrassed on the national stage by Sarah Palin. Hopefully, the country saw the last of her.

Even with the last election barely two months in the rearview mirror, some in the national media have speculated that Gov. Sarah Palin might make a run for the U.S. Senate in 2010 as a prelude to running for president in 2012.

But a new poll out Monday shows Palin would have a tough time if she decides to take on Sen. Lisa Murkowski.

Pollster Dave Dittman just finished a statewide survey on a possible Palin-versus-Murkowski matchup - and Murkowski beats Palin, at least in this poll, hands down.

Murkowski garnered 57 percent to Palin's 33 percent; 9 percent said they were not sure.

And given the senator's popularity, Dittman says Palin would not be wise to challenge Murkowski.

Can We Get You Guys Anything?

'Cuz we're popping some corn over here watching you implode.

RNC: Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha. Negro.

Ladies and gentlemen...the new RNC. Same as the old RNC.

RNC candidate Chip Saltsman’s Christmas greeting to committee members includes a music CD with lyrics from a song called “Barack the Magic Negro,” first played on Rush Limbaugh’s popular radio show.

Saltsman, a personal friend of conservative satirist Paul Shanklin, sent a 41-track CD along with a note to national committee members.

“I look forward to working together in the New Year,” Saltsman wrote. “Please enjoy the enclosed CD by my friend Paul Shanklin of the Rush Limbaugh Show.”

The CD, called “We Hate the USA,” lampoons liberals with such songs as “John Edwards’ Poverty Tour,” “Wright place, wrong pastor,” “Love Client #9,” “Ivory and Ebony” and “The Star Spanglish banner.”

Several of the track titles, including “Barack the Magic Negro,” are written in bold font.

Republicans searching for ways to attack Obama have been hesitant to embrace any reference to his race.

As we've said, Republicans' incessant bellyaching about "political correctness" is just a ruse they use to excuse their behaving like racist barbarians.

Didn't Gray Davis Get Canned for This?

California's GOP obstructionists at work, holding us hostage.

California is bleeding Republican red as the state's minority party tries to squeeze a spending cap and pro-business policies from fiscal chaos.

Badly outnumbered and often ignored by the Democratic-dominated Legislature, the GOP is not getting sand kicked in its face these days.

California is hurtling toward a financial abyss, projecting a $40 billion shortfall by July 2010, and no deal can be struck without at least three Republican votes in both the Assembly and Senate.

GOP officials clutch that trump card with relish as the state braces to pull the plug on $5 billion in public works projects and warns it won't be able to pay all its bills by February or March.

Democrats and Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger want to shrink the gap through a combination of program cuts and tax increases – but Republican lawmakers adamantly oppose raising taxes and nearly all have signed national pledges to hold firm.

Democrats say the GOP is holding California coffers hostage.

But Jon Fleischman of the state GOP's board of directors said time is on their side.

"At some point, I have to think (Democratic leaders) are going to say, 'OK, the Republicans are serious,' " Fleischman said.

All they have to do is crank up the juice on the electrodes...

MSNBC: REPUBLICANS INTENTIONALLY PUNISHED LABOR

This is just disgusting and horribly sad for the American worker. Countdown has obtained an internal GOP memo with the intention of punishing both Democrats and the unions for their support of the Dems by deciding to crush the auto industry loan long before last night. Video coming soon.

Jonathan Alter: "This is a partisan sledgehammer."

Giuliani: Obama's Election a "Consolation Prize"

They can't even be gracious without some kind of asinine slam.

He says the election of America's first black president should be welcomed by Republicans as well as Democrats.

"Even those who voted against him, like me, say 'We're very thankful this has happened. This is the consolation prize'," he said.

"In having lost in terms of the ideology we wanted, or the person we wanted - John McCain - the benefit that we got was an America that can say to the world we've overcome the worst thing in our history."

Rudy did give Obama high marks for his cabinet, but to reduce this to being a consolation prize for Republicans is just plain trivializing.

Republicans: Let 'Em Die

While I have little pity on a company that kept pushing Hummers when we needed something less dicky, the few American workers they do have deserve a better fate.

Kyl and Shelby are declaring the U.S. auto industry dead. That will come as great news to the UAW and all the employees these companies hire. The incoming administration has made it clear that corporations will get their tax breaks when they hire American workers. To not let American auto companies and their employees get that chance is suicide.

Jon Kyl and Richard Shelby. They're about as anti-American as they get.

Sens. Richard Shelby of Alabama and Jon Kyl of Arizona said it would be a mistake to use any of the Wall Street rescue money to prop up the automakers because a bailout would only postpone the industry's demise.

"Companies fail everyday and others take their place. I think this is a road we should not go down," said Shelby, the senior Republican on the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee. "They're not building the right products," he said. "They've got good workers but I don't believe they've got good management. They don't innovate. They're a dinosaur in a sense."

Added Kyl, the Senate's second-ranking Republican: "Just giving them $25 billion doesn't change anything. It just puts off for six months or so the day of reckoning."

Yeah, they're right. Kill them all. Don't give them a chance to get their affairs in order. Just kill 'em. Make it Obama's fault, and you'll be the first to declare it so.

They wonder why America's turning on them. Look in the goddamn mirror.

Rich: The Moose Has Left the Building

Frank Rich reminds us all why (a) the GOP needs to finally reign in their horribly outdated Southern Strategy and (b) why their new shiny icons don't move the stakes in their lame attempt to make their tent bigger.

In defeat, the party’s thinking remains unchanged. Its leaders once again believe they can bamboozle the public into thinking they’re the “party of Lincoln” by pushing forward a few minority front men or women. The reason why they are promoting Palin and the recently elected Indian-American governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, as the party’s “future” is not just that they are hard-line social conservatives; they are also the only prominent Republican officeholders under 50 who are not white men. The G.O.P. will have to dip down to a former one-term lieutenant governor of Maryland, Michael Steele, to put a black public face on its national committee.

Such window dressing aside, there remains only one Republican idea for reaching out to minority voters: Richard Land, of the Southern Baptist Convention, recommends pandering to socially conservative blacks and Hispanics with yet more hyperventilation about same-sex marriage. Weird though it may be, gays were the sole minority group that actually voted slightly more Republican this year (though still going Democratic by 70 to 27 percent). Pitting blacks and Latinos against them could open up a whole new bloody front in the G.O.P. civil war.

The only other widespread post-election conservative ideas are Bush 2000 retreads (market-based health care and education reform). Jindal offers generic gab about how the party must offer Americans “real solutions” and “substance,” but he has yet to offer a real solution to his own state’s gaping $1 billion budget shortfall. Indeed, the only two “new” ideas that the G.O.P. is pushing in defeat are those they condemn when practiced by Democrats: celebrity and identity politics. Palin’s manic post-election publicity tour, which may yet propel her and “the first dude” to “Dancing With the Stars,” is almost a parody of the McCain ad likening Obama to Paris and Britney. Anyone who says so is promptly called out for sexism by the P.C. police of the newly “feminist” G.O.P.

At the risk of being so reviled, let me point out that in the marathon of Palin interviews last week, the single most revealing exchange had nothing to do with her wardrobe or the “jerks” (as she called them) around McCain. It came instead when Wolf Blitzer of CNN asked for some substance by inviting her to suggest “one or two ideas” that Republicans might have to offer. “Well, a lot of Republican governors have really good ideas for our nation,” she responded, without specifying anything except that “it’s all about free enterprise and respecting equality.” Well, yes, but surely there’s some actual new initiative worth mentioning, Blitzer followed up. “Gah!” replied the G.O.P.’s future. “Nothing specific right now!”

Real America

It comes from the parents. Period.

Students chant 'Assassinate Obama' on school bus

Controversial words spoken by kids on a school bus have some Madison County [Idaho] parents concerned.

Matthew Whoolery and his wife aren't blaming the school district for what happened on the bus but they do think all parents need to be careful about what they say and teach their children.

Whoolery and his wife couldn't believe it when their second and third graders got off the bus last week and told them what other students were saying.

"They just hadn't heard anything like this before," said Whoolery. "They were chanting on the bus, 'Assassinate Obama. Assassinate Obama.' Then adding in a name sometimes of a classmate on the bus, 'Assassinate Obama and Kate.'"