Mario Piperni dot Com

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It’s getting all so dumb. Republicans are now down to criticizing the length of the President’s health care proposal. From John Boehner’s office comes this nonsense…

“The White House’s ‘plan’ consists of an 11-page outline, which has not been scored by the Congressional Budget Office or posted online as legislative text. So they want to reorganize one-sixth of the United States’ economy with a document shorter than a comic book…”

Previously, Boehner has had this to say…

“The best way to get a sense of what Speaker Pelosi’s takeover of health care looks like is to actually look at it. Just shy of 2,000 pages, it runs more than 620 pages longer than the government-run plan Hillary Clinton proposed in 1993.”

[The bill is] “1,990 pages of bureaucracy.”

Of course the White House plan is essentially the Senate health care proposal along with some modifications outlined in the 11 pages they released yesterday.  Boehner knows this but why let the truth get in the way of a good soundbite.  Can these people be any more transparent?

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Republicans just keep on making fools of themselves at every turn.

South Carolina Rep. Mike Pitts has introduced legislation that would mandate that gold and silver coins replace federal currency as legal tender in his state.

As the Palmetto Scoop first reported, Pitts, a Republican, introduced legislation this month banning “the unconstitutional substitution of Federal Reserve Notes for silver and gold coin” in South Carolina.

In an interview, Pitts told Hotsheet that he believes that “if the federal government continues to spend money at the rate it’s spending money, and if it continues to print money at the rate it’s printing money, our economic system is going to collapse.”

Speechless.

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How I wish I had thought of this first.  This is how MoveOn portrayed the Republican’s list of demands they require fulfilled before they’d attend the President’s health care summit.  Perfect.

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Obama at today’s daily press briefing…

“Bipartisanship can’t be that I agree to all the things that they believe in or want and they agree to none of the things that I believe or want.”

Obama’s playing some fine chess these days.  He’s invited Republicans to attend a televised bipartisan summit on health care reform to take place at the end of the month.  The GOP has been complaining for months how they’ve been left out of health care talks and that Dems have had closed door meetings on reform.  So Obama calls them on their bluff and how do Republicans respond?  They send out an open letter stating they’ll attend on the condition that Dems throw out the current health care bills in Congress and start over. Eric Cantor and John Boehner asked…

“Assuming the President is sincere about moving forward on health care in a bipartisan way, does that mean he will agree to start over so that we can develop a bill that is truly worthy of the support and confidence of the American people?”

How much more transparently stupid can these guys get?  They’ve made a request which they know will get rejected hoping it gives them a way out from attending the summit.

Here’s where Obama has them over a barrel.  If Repubs do attend, they’ll in all likelihood get trashed as they did when Obama met House Republicans last month.  If they don’t attend, then their cries of lack of bipartisanship will be that much more hallow.

It’s a classic lose-lose proposition for the Party of NOthing.

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A couple of state Republicans in Tennessee had this brilliant bit of dialogue. Maclin Davis is a former attorney for the state Republican party and Ron Ramsey is the Lt. Governor running for Governor.

Mutt and Jeff do their thing.

Davis: Now since the Republicans control both houses of the Tennessee legislature, it seems to me that they might consider passing a state law that says in all future elections no candidate for president can be put on the ballot in Tennessee unless they produce positive proof they are a native-born citizen. If we had one like that a few years ago, we’d be a whole lot better off today. Is there any chance that you would consider that?

Ramsey: … I suppose that every state could individually do that.

Davis: It seems like it would be really good if somebody would file a suit against our present president to get back all the money he’s been paid as president on the grounds he’s not a legitimate president since he’s not a native-born citizen. The great preponderance of the evidence is he’s not a citizen. …

Ramsey: … I’ve got a tableful of advisers sitting over there and they’ll probably start cringing right about now when I start talking about some of this stuff right here. … I’m going to tell you something. I don’t know whether President Obama is a citizen of the United States or not. I don’t know what the whole deal is there. But I’m going to tell you something. When you walk out on the street down, people don’t really care about this issue. I’m all about winning elections, not as Republicans in this nation but also as Republicans in this state of Tennessee.

Ramsey’s camp is backtracking from the “I don’t know whether President Obama is a citizen…” remark.  They claim it’s taken out of context.  Geez.  Every time one of these assholes makes a remark that highlights either their racist attitudes or simple lack of intelligence, they claim foul.  If Ramsey is not a birther, what prevented him from making his thoughts on the subject clear?  Nothing except the fact that he is obviously a birther.

Politico has more on the story.

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I’m starting to be of the firm belief that the ability to make completely outrageous and stupid statements is a prerequisite for anyone hoping to run for Congress as a Republican.

…during a hearing of the Helsinki Commission — an independent U.S. agency charged with promoting security and economic cooperation with eastern Europe and central Asia — that featured Kazakh foreign minister Kanat Saudabayev, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) showed contempt for human rights by telling Saudabayev that Kazakhstan’s nature as a virtual dictatorship doesn’t concern him because “Washington, D.C. is exactly the same” because it is controlled by Democrats:

ISSA: I want to share with you something here today. Washington, D.C., is exactly the same. This is a one-party town, even though there are people who are not Democrats. And this town has decided to have representation, at least one member of the council, who is chosen simply to represent minorities.

A.)  Democrats are in power because they were democratically elected by a majority of citizens of the United States.

B.)  Kazahkstan is an authoritarian state where it’s citizens enjoy limited freedoms.

C.)  A few more years of Bush/Cheney and the U.S. might very well have become a Kazakhstan. (Ok, a bit of an exaggeration, but they sure as hell were headed in that direction. Torture and phone tapping anyone?)

D.)  When do the smart Republicans come out to play?

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It’s getting increasingly difficult to keep one’s calm when we’re forced to put up with the blatant ignorance and nonsense of the likes of a Michele Bachmann.  Referring to some Japanese man who made unsubstantiated claims about the Japanese health care system, the brainless and unethical Bachmann had this to say:

He said that in Japan, to wait and get health care is almost impossible. You get on a list and you wait and you wait and you wait. But he said this is something people don’t know: in Japan, people have stopped voicing their opinion on health care. There are things that are wrong with Japanese health care, but people are afraid of voicing. ‘Well why is that,’ I asked. [He said], ‘Because they know that would get on a list and they wouldn’t get health care. They wouldn’t get in. They wouldn’t get seen. And so people are afraid. They’re afraid to speak back to government. They’re afraid to say anything.’

Is that what we want for our future? That takes us to gangster government at that point!

Here we go. This is going to be another death panels bullshit comment that is going to go viral among brainless conservatives. Let me first note that there is NO basis for anything Bachmann said about the Japanese health care system.  But we know that truth has never stopped a Republican from spreading a good lie.

These people have the game down to an art. They make inane statements which they know will leave the left in a dilemma.  If liberals comment on it and refute the idiocy of the statement, they’re giving life to the story by keeping the lie in the news cycle. If  on the other hand, liberals choose to ignore the stupidity, then they risk the lie taking hold.

Every thinking conservatives should be embarrassed by the disgusting tactics used by their inept leadership who show no shame in spreading misinformation in as blatant and revolting a manner as they do. Politics has always been a slimy business but Republicans keep on finding ways to bring it to new lows.

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I’m never sure who the biggest GOP clown is these days. There are so many to choose from. For the moment I’m giving the honor to Rudy Giuliani who sounds a bit more ridiculous every time he says anything about anything.  Here he is on Fox and Friends complaining about Obama’s SOTU speech and rambling on about his one trick pony.

“The reality is he spent something like a page and a half — on what with a 14-, 15-page speech — on national security, as if it’s an afterthought. It was a footnote to the speech. It was in the — when the speech was running over an hour and people were starting to yawn, part of the speech. National security is a lot more important than that.”

“Part of the problem this president has had is he hasn’t made national security important enough. He began with not wanting to call it a war, didn’t mention the word “war” last night, didn’t mention the word “Islamic terrorism” last night. This would be like Franklin Roosevelt giving a State of the Union speech during the Second World War and not mentioning Nazism and not mentioning the war.”

No Rudy, the reality is that you’re an imbecile and an embarrassment to yourself. In fact, the President mentioned the word “war’ seven times in his speech.  And if you’re right that Obama spent “a page and a half” of a “14, 15 page speech” on national security, what more would you want? Fourteen pages on national security and a single page dedicated to the economy, jobs and health care?

This guy is so fixated with 9/11 and “Islamic terrorism” that it’s turned him into a cartoon. The irony of it all is that he has absolutely no credentials in the area of national security aside from the fact that he happened to be mayor of New York on September 11 2001.  It’s the equivalent of the mayor of New Orleans claiming he’s now an expert on climatology and hurricane prediction because of Katrina.

And this clown wanted to be president.

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Do you think they actually believe their own drivel?

RNC:

As we celebrate his [Martin Luther King's] legacy, I’m reminded that his message is rooted in ideals and principles that the Republican Party has advocated since its inception. Today, our Party and the nation honors Dr. King’s dream by continuing his fight — the fight for all Americans to have an equal chance at the American Dream.”

Sarah Palin:

“Please take a moment to tell your children about this great man. He fought for liberty and equality because he knew they were God-given and he knew that no government should be empowered to thwart our freedom.

For the record, here’s what King had to say about health care.

“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.”

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If this is true, then it should silence John McCain and his fellow hawks who claim that setting a withdrawal date from Afghanistan weakens the cause.

Via Sen. Carl Levin we learn this.

According to Gen. William Caldwell, the new head of training the Afghan security forces, President Obama’s announcement that U.S. troops would begin to hand over combat responsibilities to Afghan forces in July 2011 had a “stunning” impact on Afghan recruiting for the Army and police.

“That had a very positive effect on the Afghan leadership and focused their energies on, for instance, obtaining a larger number of recruits for their army,” Levin said. While he said he didn’t have a total breakdown of the number of recruits, Levin said he was told that there were only 3500 Afghans going through an eight-week basic training course for the security forces in November. That’s up to 11,000 today.

Of course none of this will shut McCain up.  Minuscule minds don’t adapt well to ideas which differ from their own no matter what the facts say.

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