So now that the President’s speech on jobs in front of a joint session of Congress has a date (next Thursday instead of Wednesday) and the White House has promised that it’ll have an early start (can’t have it interfering with the NFL opener, god forbid), is everyone excited and happy?  Well, don’t be.  Ezra Klein explains.

Obama’s speech will achieve nothing. It will go nowhere because it has nowhere to go. A speech can rally the base, and maybe even temporarily change the topic in the news. But it can’t change the fundamental fact of politics right now, which is that the two parties disagree on the most profound question in Washington. It’s not: How do we fix the economy? It is: Who should win the next election? So long as Republicans and Democrats disagree on that, there will be no significant cooperation on substantive issues. Boehner simply will not cut off his party’s candidates at the knees, especially its presidential contenders, by handing Obama a major economic accomplishment. Because he controls the House of Representatives, that means Obama — and, by extension, the U.S. — is not going to get a major economic accomplishment.

And if anyone believes differently, they simply have not been paying attention to the political scene for the last three years. Here’s the opening paragraph from a NYT’s piece written 18 months ago.

Before the health care fight, before the economic stimulus package, before President Obama even took office, Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader, had a strategy for his party: use his extensive knowledge of Senate procedure to slow things down, take advantage of the difficulties Democrats would have in governing and deny Democrats any Republican support on big legislation.

If that was true then (it was), it’s even more true now with the general election a little more than a year away.  Republicans understand only too well that any recovery in the economy between now and election day works against their ultimate goal – victory in 2012.  For all their bluster and rhetoric (“[Republicans] have made creating a better environment for job creation our number one focus”), Republicans would rather see the unemployment numbers exceed 10%.  And as a result of that mindset, no matter what the President says next Thursday, it will be criticized and ripped to shreds by Congressional Republicans, by every candidate in the GOP primary, by every Tea Party official across the country, by Fox News and by every right-wing radio jock, newspaper and blog.

You don’t have to wait for the morning after President Obama’s job speech to read what Republican’s thought about it.  Those reviews were written three years ago – November 4, 2008 to be precise.

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There’s not too much more one can say about Republican’s total disregard for the middle class and poor which has not been said before.  Trying to play nice with these heartless bastards is pointless.  They just don’t care and appear to be incapable of feeling embarrassment or shame as they continue their campaign of blatant hypocrisy, lies and spin.  Bernie Sanders spells it out.
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• Majority of Republicans in Congress:  scum.

• Majority of Democrats in Congress:  cowards.

• Majority of Conservatives:  pathetically misinformed.

• Liberals and progressives:  disillusioned if not downright discouraged.

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It takes a special kind of evil to deny the unemployed extended benefits while at the same time calling for permanent tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires – a move which will increase the deficit by $700 billion over the next decade.

Washington is poised to stop providing extended unemployment benefits despite the huge number of laid-off workers, the paucity of job openings, the high rate of underemployment in every sector of the economy and stubbornly slow economic growth. That’s because Republicans in the Senate insist that, unlike the hefty tax cuts they covet for the wealthy, the comparatively slender subsidies for the unemployed must not be financed with borrowed money. This penuriousness is not just hypocritical, it’s bad economics.

The current federal program, which offers up to 73 extra weeks of unemployment benefits to idled workers, is due to expire Nov. 30. If it does, about 2 million unemployed people will have their benefits cut off in December.

…and it takes a special and pathetic kind of stupid to buy into so blatant an example of Republican hypocrisy.

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By September 2006, the situation in Iraq had deteriorated horribly and Democrats were calling for a reduction of troops in Iraq.  Sen. Mitch McConnell, outraged, lashed out at Dems.

“The Democrat leadership finally agrees on something — unfortunately it’s retreat,” McConnell said in a Sept. 5, 2006, statement in response to a Democratic letter asking Bush to change his Iraq policy. Using blistering language, McConnell continued:

“Whether they call it ‘redeployment’ or ‘phased withdrawal,’ the effect is the same: We would leave Americans more vulnerable and Iraqis at the mercy of al-Qaeda, a terrorist group whose aim — toward Iraqis and Americans — is clear.”

Understandable.  McConnell was concerned about endangering American lives.  Furthermore, the Senator, compassionate man that he is, had the well-being of Iraqis in mind.  Sweet.  I had always thought of McConnell as being little more than a scumbag.  Might I have been wrong?  It’s difficult to not respect a man who places country before all other considerations and shows compassion for the citizens of a nation of which he had a hand in blowing up to hell and back .  Quite a guy that Mitch McConnell.

In passing, here’s a passage from President Bush’s Decision Points...

In September 2006, with the midterm elections approaching, my friend Mitch McConnell came to the Oval Office. The senior senator from Kentucky and Republican whip had asked to see me alone. Mitch has a sharp political nose, and he smelled trouble.

“Mr. President,” he said, “your unpopularity is going to cost us control of the Congress.”

Mitch had a point. Many Americans were tired of my presidency…

“Well, Mitch,” I asked, “what do you want me to do about it?” 

“Mr. President,” he said, “bring some troops home from Iraq.”

What?!!?  What happened to Mitch’s concern about weakening national security and leaving Americans more vulnerable?  What about al-Qaeda evildoers terrorizing innocent Iraqis?  Surely the lives of Americans was more important than winning a stinking midterm election, was it not?

C’mon Mitch, say it ain’t so, you two-timing, hypocritical weasel!

That folks, is your Republican Party of America – a party that never ceases to find new ways to screw and deceive you.

Scumbags, the entire lot.

UPDATE.

McConnell’s hometown paper, the Louisville Courier-Journal, had this to say in an editorial.

At the time that Sen. McConnell was privately advising Mr. Bush to reduce troop levels in Iraq, he was elsewhere excoriating congressional Democrats who had urged the same thing. “The Democrat[ic] leadership finally agrees on something — unfortunately it’s retreat,” Sen. McConnell had said in a statement on Sept. 5, 2006, about a Democratic letter to Mr. Bush appealing for cuts in troop levels. Sen. McConnell, who publicly was a stout defender of the war and Mr. Bush’s conduct of the conflict, accused the Democrats of advocating a position that would endanger Americans and leave Iraqis at the mercy of al-Qaida.

Unless he is prepared to call a former president of his own party a liar, Mr. McConnell has a choice. He can admit that he did not actually believe the Iraq mission was vital to American security, regardless of what he said at the time. Or he can explain why the fortunes of the Republican Party are of greater importance than the safety of the United States.

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Republican hypocrisy exposed in Jon Stewart fashion.

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What do you have to look forward to when Republicans finally do take over the reins of government?   This.  And it ain’t pretty.

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) believes that a “political rebellion” akin to the American revolution of 1776 is brewing, that the Social Security retirement age should be raised to 70, and that the Wall Street reform bill currently moving through Congress is comparable to “killing an ant with a nuclear weapon.”

In an explosive interview with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, the GOP leader also charged that Democrats are “snuffing out the America that I grew up in.” He added, “Right now, we’ve got more Americans engaged in their government than at any time in our history. There’s a political rebellion brewing, and I don’t think we’ve seen anything like it since 1776.”

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Ensuring there’s enough money to pay for the war will require reforming the country’s entitlement system, Boehner said. He said he’d favor increasing the Social Security retirement age to 70 for people who have at least 20 years until retirement, tying cost-of-living increases to the consumer price index rather than wage inflation and limiting payments to those who need them.

“We need to look at the American people and explain to them that we’re broke,” Boehner said. “If you have substantial non-Social Security income while you’re retired, why are we paying you at a time when we’re broke? We just need to be honest with people.

Honest?  The hypocrisy is astounding.  Cut down on Social Security but extend the Bush tax cuts for the rich is what this guy is saying.  Why is it that honesty is something which the middle class and poor need to deal with but the rich are exempt?  The same people who didn’t give a damn for deficit spending during the eight years of insanity and abuse under Bush have now made this their number one priority.  And they’re asking to be taken seriously.  Really?

Why not get the hell out of Iraq and Afghanistan, wars which cannot be won under any conditions, and then they would not have to worry about finding funds to pay for them?  Is the trillion already spent on those two pointless wars not enough?

Imagine a Sarah Palin White House with Boehner and McConnell in charge of the House and Senate respectively and know that there is no terrorist organization in existence which could be more destructive to America than what these fools are capable of doing.

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Republican Rep. Mark Souder:

“I sinned against God, my wife and my family by having a mutual relationship with a part-time member of my staff.”

Dana Milbank asks:

When was it, exactly, that the Republican revolution merged with the sexual revolution?

With each passing year, the class notes for the famous House Republicans Class of ’94 get more lurid.

Yes, Souder is simply another politician, Republican and Democrat, who has been unfaithful.  No big story there…except that Souder is yet another conservative hypocrite who preached family values while screwing around on his wife.  It is that aspect of the story which disgusts me most.  The classic case was Newt Gingrich who, day after day, pounded Bill Clinton over the Lewinsky matter while he himself was in the midst of a sizzling affair.  Scumbags.

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In case you haven’t been following the latest, greatest reality show – Republican Hypocrisy – here’s a snippet from the latest episode.

Republican Senator John Cornyn, 2005 version, comments on Bush’s Supreme court nominee Harriet Miers.

“Although she has no prior judicial experience, this was true for nearly 40 percent of the men and women who have served as Supreme Court justices.  Indeed, rather than make her nomination less desirable, many of us believe that her long career in private practice will be to her credit.”

Republican Senator John Cornyn, 2010 version, comments on Obama’s Supreme court nominee Elena Kagan.

“The president says he wants to appoint somebody who will understand how the court’s decisions will impact regular people,” said Cornyn, a Republican who sits on the Judiciary Committee that will first consider Kagan’s nomination. “I don’t see how Ms. Kagan meets the president’s own standard. Her lack of experience as a practicing lawyer and a practicing judge are things that do not argue in her favor.”

If you’re capable of placing your brain in a box thereby suspending all rational though, then this is the show for you.  A few million Fox viewers can attest to that very fact.

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Good piece by Dana Milbank.

There is something exquisite about the moment when a conservative decides he needs more government in his life.

About 10:30 Monday morning, Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), an ardent foe of big government, posted a blog item on his campaign Web site about the huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. “I strongly believe BP is spread too thin,” he wrote.

The poor dears. He thinks it would be a better arrangement if “federal and state officials” would do the dirty work of “protecting and cleaning up the coast” instead of BP.

Really?  Vitter suddenly doesn’t trust private enterprise to do the job without government interfering in the process.  And then there’s Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama who fought health care reform all the way.

“We’re here to send the message that we’re going to do everything we can from a federal level to mitigate this, to protect the people and make sure when people are damaged that they’re made whole.”

Let’s get this straight.  Sessions believes that when “people are damaged”, it is the role of the feds to “mitigate”, “protect” and to make sure that “they’re made whole.”  That’s strange because those words express exactly what President Obama and Dems were saying about the role of the federal government in health care. That very same health care reform which Sessions and Republicans tried to obstruct with every contorted means they could conjure up.

The case for reform dealt with doing something about the health industry damaging people by way of high costs, cutting individuals off their insurance using pre existing conditions as an excuse and a thousand and one other abuses.  It was about making people “whole” again.

Explain to me why being made whole again is important when a fisherman’s livelihood is destroyed by way of an oil spill but less so when that same fisherman loses his health insurance by no fault of his own and is forced to mortgage his home to pay for a major operation.  What is the difference?

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Republicans are afraid to deal with the immigration issue.  They’re afraid of alienating the Hispanic vote in an election year.

John Boehner…

“There is not a chance that immigration is going to move through the Congress.”

“I’ve been around here for a little while and know that in the middle of an election year after we have had bills like health care shoved down our throats, in a process twisted tortured, pressured, bribed, you can not do a serious piece of legislation this size, with this difficulty, in this environment. It’s nothing more than a cynical ploy to try to engage voters–some segment of voters–ot show up in this November’s election.”

“I think that we ought to have an immigration reform plan move through Congress,” Boehner confessed, without offering specifics. “But you can’t do immigration reform in a boiling political pot here in Washington, D.C.”

And when exactly is D.C. not going to be a “boiling political pot” as long as Republicans remain the Party of NOthing?  Conservatives claim that Arizona was forced to act on immigration because the feds haven’t dealt with the issue head on.  But if Dems make the decision to tackle the issue, Repubs are already saying no.  Really, how does anyone take these clowns seriously?

The chickenshits are getting more transparent by the day.

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