Please read this for a fresh perspective on the nest of vipers officially known as the Republican Party…
Category: Wing Nuts
Obama’s ‘odd strategy’ for pushing jobs bill
Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich looks bemused, even dumbfounded, and I can’t help thinking it’s because President Obama’s policy decisions are slowly driving Reich crazy…
Hoffa
Too bad our president can’t cop this guy’s style. Imagine the effect it would have if he did:
Some have called Teamsters President James Hoffa’s Monday remarks ill-advised, but he isn’t backing away and, instead, is claiming to have gotten a positive response from his members.
The controversy erupted when Hoffa told a cheering crowd at a Labor Day celebration attended by President Obama, “We are at war! . . . President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march . . . Let’s take these sons of bitches out, and give America back to an America where we belong.”
In a cable TV appearance on MSNBC’s “The Ed Show” on Tuesday, Hoffa told host Ed Schultz about the response and how his tough-sounding tack has resonated.
“The phones rang off the hook at all of our locals today,” Hoffa said. “The members are calling in. Finally, somebody’s standing up for us. Somebody’s saying what has to be said. We’re tired of this namby-pamby talk that’s out there. Let’s go out and call these people what they are. Let’s go after the issue of voting. Let’s talk about the war on workers. And let’s make sure we mobilize and vote in November. It was a tremendous response today. The phones rang off the hook in tremendous support from working families.”
Schultz asked Hoffa if he really thought “the Republicans are sons of bitches,” and Hoffa doubled down.
“I think they are, if they’re trying to take food out of the mouth of working people,” Hoffa declared. “What kind of a person does that? What kind of a person tries to take away collective bargaining from public employees, from firemen, from policemen, from teachers? What kind of person wants to go in and take away their pensions? You know what? That’s a bad person, and that’s the kind of people we’re talking about, because that is the war on workers. The war on workers started January of this year. The minute those people got in, one of the first things they did was to introduce right to work in 14 states almost simultaneously. That is the Tea Party, and that’s their agenda. I’m very proud of what we did.”
No relief in sight from Eric Cantor disaster
The dapper super-nerd with the smug grin is leading the latest Republican attempt to shrink government to the size of an antebellum plantation…
Some ‘Rain’ to stay sane in Philly
Some people don’t like the rain, as the Beatles noted in 1966. Not me. I’ll take the rain over the heat, and I feel fortunate to be far from Texas, where a record drought continues despite Rick Perry’s rain dance back in April.
The Philly heat seemed to break most emphatically last Sunday, when a morning drizzle turned into a downpour that rarely let up until evening. I took a break from writing to go for a run in the late afternoon after I dug through the rubble in my basement and found a big ugly bill cap to keep the rain off my glasses.
Ayn Rand would rap Ryan’s knuckles
Paul Ryan has always insisted on “revenue neutral” tax reform, but now that congressional Dems have been trounced, he’s singing a slightly different tune. The Wisconsin wing-nut said today he’d be open to a deal that would include revenue increases.
The revenues would fall far short of the spending cuts, but you know the economy is tanking again when an Ayn Rand asswipe pretends to give an inch on taxes.
‘Goons of August’ usher in new era
Nobody’s shooting yet, but I’ll bet Barbara Tuchman would appreciate Robert Kuttner’s headline. Kuttner does a good job summarizing Democratic stupidity regarding the debt deal, and of explaining why our government, in its current form, is in worse shape than those of most European democracies.
It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s … Super Congress!
To those concerned that nations will soon fight over diminishing oil reserves: If you think that’s bad, wait until world population booms to 10 billion or so, and fresh water dries up. But that stuff is long-term. The short-term disaster at home is all I can stomach for now, just barely.
Onion’s Obama b-day joke, with an edge
The Onion’s Obama birthday joke was satire, I guess, in the lamest sense of the word. Here’s how it would read if the Onion writer had acknowledged what happened this week in D.C.
People in Glass Houses Shouldn’t Throw Stones. Or Teabags.
Freshman U.S. Rep. Joe Walsh, a tax-bashing Tea Party champion who sharply lectures President Barack Obama and other Democrats on fiscal responsibility, owes more than $100,000 in child support to his ex-wife and three children, according to documents his ex-wife filed in their divorce case in December.
“I won’t place one more dollar of debt upon the backs of my kids and grandkids unless we structurally reform the way this town spends money!” Walsh says directly into the camera in his viral video lecturing Obama on the need to get the nation’s finances in order.
The whole article is a hoot. While steadfastly avoiding his child support obligations candidate Walsh, the very model of financial rectitude and responsibility, was able to loan his own campaign $35,000. Seriously!
court documents examined this week by the Chicago Sun-Times during research for a profile on the increasingly visible congressman showed his financial issues also included a nine-year child support battle with his ex-wife.
Before getting elected, he had told Laura Walsh that because he was out of work or between jobs, he could not make child support payments. So she was surprised to read in his congressional campaign disclosures that he was earning enough money to loan his campaign $35,000.
“Joe personally loaned his campaign $35,000, which, given that he failed to make any child support payments to Laura because he ‘had no money’ is surprising,” Laura Walsh’s attorneys wrote in a motion filed in December seeking $117,437 in back child support and interest. “Joe has paid himself back at least $14,200 for the loans he gave himself.”
He also found time to go on vacation with his girlfriend. In Mexico.
In 2004, Laura Walsh complained in a motion that despite her ex-husband’s claims of poverty, he took a vacation to Mexico with his girlfriend and another to Italy. The following year, he complained in a court filing that his ex-wife mailed him a motion while she knew he was in Nicaragua doing charitable work with one of their children.
In her December filing, Laura Walsh’s attorneys wrote, “The apparent availability of large sums of money from either his employment, his family or his campaign has allowed him to live quite a comfortable lifestyle, while at the same time, due to his failure to pay child support or any of his share of the education costs or medical expenses, Laura and his children were denied any of these advantages.”
I’d LOVE to go to Mexico, Italy, and Nicaragua with my girlfriend too, but not if it means stiffing my kid on the child support.
And that’s kind of what’s fascinating to me about this whole story. Yeah, the hypocrisy of the tea bag “get out financial affairs in order” politician is funny. But really gets me is that Walsh seems to think that refusing to pay is a way to fuck with his ex-wife: you can see it in the letters that go back and forth, the claims of poverty, the one-time attempt to claim his wife was mentally ill, etc.
But that’s not who’s on the receiving end of his fuckery: it’s his KIDS who take the hit. They not only suffer from less money in the primary household, they get to watch their father act like a complete and royal jackass to their mother. And yeah, maybe she’s a bitch,, but you know what? You put away your hatred for your ex, because your love for the kids means a lot more than petty vengeance.
And there you have a tea bagger, in a nutshell: driven by nothing more than petty vengeance. That’s what you’ve been seeing play out for the past three years on the right. Petty vengeance and temper tantrums.