Category: Congress

I Got Nothing Here

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Seriously, this actual letter from Michelle Bachmann (R-Land of Oz), leaves me without a proper rejoinder.

I know that there should be some sort of rejoinder to this, something witty and devastating, but the stupidity, and self-centered immaturity stun me, and I’ve got a 12 year old daughter:

Don’t let them Palinize me!

Dear Friend:

Last month, I appeared on Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News Channel. I was talking about the Democrats’ latest scheme to pick the taxpayer’s pocket to pay for a $1.5-billion slush fund for ACORN.

Before getting into the meat of this terrible new anti-taxpayer proposal, Sean Hannity said that he considers me “the second most hated Republican woman,” second only to Governor Sarah Palin.

With Governor Palin taking a well-deserved step out of the spotlight, it appears that I may be absorbing even more of the liberals’ scorn.

And, I’d really appreciate your support so that I can defend myself against their attacks. Click here to make a donation!

I’m out there every day speaking the truth about their attempts to guide this nation into socialism:

• Their government-run health care proposal that will put government bureaucrats in between you and your doctor and end up rationing care — and the most vulnerable will suffer first and most.

• Their cap-and-trade national energy tax that will drive up energy costs for every American and send our jobs overseas.

• Their spending spree that has pushed the national budget deficit over the $1 trillion mark for the first time in our history. We’re already closing in on $2 trillion and there’s no end in sight to their spending.

• Their dozens of White House czars with power over your lives and futures and absolutely no accountability to Congress or the people.

• And, speaking of unaccountable — when are they going to open up the Fed’s books to the public?

• Their political patronage to groups like ACORN — doling out billions of your tax dollars and partnering with them to collect your private information for the Census.

But just as they did with Sarah Palin, the more I talk about the issues, the more they attack with below-the-belt personal hits. In fact, yesterday, a Minnesota paper gave a full column to a hit piece on one of my kids!

Can you help me to defend against these attacks? Click here to make a donation! [Yeah, like I’d supply a frelling link to that nutjob]

I’ll tell you the truth: Their sticks and stones will not stop me from going out and speaking the truth about their bad policies! And, your support really helps!

God bless and thank you for your support.

Sincerely,

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann

From the Urban Dictionary:

Palinize:

To smear or mock someone using falsehoods, baseless accusations or unsubstantiated character assassinations for the purpose of blocking them from achieving a goal.

To exaggerate the truth or lie by omission.

To attack a person for his or her conservative values by focusing an inordinate amount of attention on a single example of that person falling short (or being perceived as falling short) of the values they espouse.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to wrap my head before it f$#%ing explodes.

I would note, however, that she does not give one of the more popular definitions from the Urban Dictionary, you know, something like, Palinize, “When someone answers a question without any form of intelligence or foresight. In an attempt to divert from giving a correct answer and in the process sounding unintelligible.”

Senator Mel Martinez (R-FL) Resigns

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No indications of any “hikes along the Appalachian trail,” my guess is that he is just sick and tired of an increasingly racist and anti-Hispanic GOP, and wants out.

It may also be that he does not want to be in the position of ,making the swing vote for cloture on healthcare reform, and you still need 60 votes even if he is gone (it rounds up).

Charlie Crist, who is running to replace him in 2010 (he had announced that he would not seek reelection) would appoint his successor, but has promised that he will nto appoint himself, so the dynamics are interesting.

Senate Votes to Confirm Sotomayor

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The vote was 68-31 in the Senate.

About the only real surprise here is that Republicans have structured this entire thing in a way seemingly designed to piss off the Hispanic Americans, all for a Justice who really won’t matter:

  • She will not be a big change from Souter.
  • She won’t serve that long, she is 55, and has a condition, Diabetes, that statistically means that her lifespan will be on the order of 10 years less than that of a similar person.
  • The Dems had the 60 votes to close off debate pretty much from the start.

Not clear why they decided to be assholes about this…..Maybe Rush really does own the ‘Phants.

Largest Arbitration Firm in Nation Shut Down

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Three cheers to Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson (pictured) who just put the criminally corrupt National Arbitration Forum (NAF) out of business.

As of the end of this week, they will no longer be accepting any cases on consumer disputes under a consent decree.

The NAF, the favorite venue for credit card and cell phone company kangaroo courts, argues that they did not have the resources to defend themselves in this case, but the reality is that they do not have the facts to defend themselves in this case:

….In one case, NAF ordered a woman to pay the credit card company MBNA almost $8000 because she had the same name as another woman who owed MBNA money. Conversely, when a Harvard Law Professor named Elizabeth Bartholet, who used to work part-time as an NAF arbitrator, handed down a single decision against a credit card company she was immediately stripped of her caseload by NAF at the request of the credit card industry.

….

Unfortunately, NAF was vulnerable to this kind of attack because the evidence against it was so overwhelming–not every forced arbitration company has a Harvard Law professor prepared to testify about how they were strongarmed into shafting consumers–so it remains to be seen whether another, equally offensive company will emerge to fill the void (a bill, currently pending in Congress, would end the practice of forced arbitration in consumer and employment contracts altogether). Even so, the near-total demise of NAF is one of the most important pro-consumer developments in decades; for the first time in years, credit card companies may actually have to follow the law.

When a member of the Harvard Law faculty gets kicked for ruling for the consumer once, it will be hard impossible to get a jury not to throw your sorry asses in jail.

Pam Martens of Counter Punch properly calls the mandatory arbitration system Judicial Apartheid, and she also notes that the NAF was quite literally owned by the bill collection agencies like Mann Bracken, Wolpoff & Abramson, and Eskanos & Adler, and testimony that, “Management meetings in which personnel were instructed to call arbitrators and tell them, prior to the release of the decision to the parties to the arbitration, to change decisions they had issued that found against the Famous Parties [credit card companies].”

There is a bill in Congress to put an end to this, but I am not inclined to believe that it will see the light of day, and in any case, the people behind this need to go to jail, not just be put out of business.

Previous posts are here.

Specter Loses Lead to Toomey In General Election Matchup

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The latest Quinnipiac poll has them in a dead heat, Specter 45%, Toomey 44%, while a Sestak/Toomey matchup has Toomey leading 39% to 35%.

The obvious implication here, beside the fact that a lot of people do not know who eityher Sestak or Toomey are, is that there are a lot of people who are voting for Specter, and not for Toomey, and that despite the strong support of the Democratic establishment, he is not a strong candidate in the general.

Specter is also generally a weasel, but that is another story.

This is an Unalloyed Good Thing

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The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee has voted to require airlines to allow passengers to deplane if the flights are held on the tarmac for more than 3 hours.

The measure is attached to a $34.6 billion FAA authorization bill.

The airlines are complaining that they do not want to lose the flexibility, but these long stays are most often about not having to put up passengers in hotels or paying for meals.

F$#@ the airlines.

A Republican Proposes a “Bristol Palin” Tax

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That name may not be entirely fair, since it the tax would also apply disproportionately to Republican lawmakers, particularly those living on the now infamous “C Street” Christo-Fascist funded residences.

I’m of mixed emotions here. A tax on unprotected sex is a really stupid idea, but the idea of making Bristol Palin, and the residents of “C Street” pay an “Ass Tax”, amuses me no end.

And here we thought paying for sex was a no-no, especially for scandal-wary Members of Congress. But Rep. Steve Buyer thinks people who engage in the act (specifically, the kind that takes place sans protection) should have to pony up.

The Indiana Republican floated his unlikely cash-for-sex proposal Thursday during the markup of the health care bill in the Energy and Commerce Committee. Under the plan Buyer posited, those who engage in risky behavior, like smoking, not exercising and (ding, ding!) having unprotected sex, should have to pay a premium for their health care. After all, the reasoning goes, those people are more likely to incur higher health care costs than cigarette-eschewing, condom-wearing gym bunnies.

The distinguished gentleman from Indiana had to have been a College Republican, he was born in 1958, so he’s of roughly the right age, and this is a classic sort of juvenile CR bullsh%$.

Are there any grown-up Republicans left in Congress?

Student-Loan Overhaul Passes House Education and Labor Committee

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Basically, the proposal becomes law, it will end subsidies to private student loan providers, saving money for students and taxpayers to the tune of $87 billion over 10 years.

The student loan providers are even less deserving than Goldman Sachs, so here is hoping that this becomes law, though getting it through the Senate may be difficult, as the 3rd largest student loan provider is Nelnet, based in Lincoln, Nebraska, home of Senator Ben Nelson, who will almost certainly support a filibuster against the measure.

Senate Kills F-22

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Amendment approving it being stripped from the Defense Appropriations Bill passes passes 58-40.

I’m with SecDef Bob Gates on this. The push behind this is to have the USAF be able to achieve air supremacy against any potential future foe, and the costs end up killing men on the ground, and citizens in the streets, now.

We still maintain the ability to achieve air superiority against any potential future foe, and air supremacy against any probable opponent, and it saves money for better readiness in a counter-insurgency scenarios that are the most likely future conflicts for the next ¼ century.

Additionally, it frees up money to provide for things like vaccinating and educating our children.

The F-22 was about ensuring that in the worst possible conflict the USAF would be at virtually no risk of air to air casualties, at the expense of everyone else.

While that might be nice for the fighter jocks, the marginal utility of air supremacy vs air superiority means very little to the guy on the ground, or the tax-payer.

Card Check Killed in Senate

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Most of the rest of the reforms remain intact, but the card check provision has been removed.

What remains is the right of unions to campaign on company property, a faster election cycle, which gives less time for employers to strong arm and illegally fire employees, making mandatory anti-union meetings illegal, and binding arbitration.

Truth be told, I expect it to be watered down further, because the Barack Obama administration has been studiously silent on this measure, throwing yet another key constituency, unions, under the bus as they have with labor.

This bill will not progress with meaningful reform without White House support, and none is forthcoming.

Democrats Push Back on Needle Exchange

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Well, it looks like Barack Obama is going to be getting some well deserved push-back on his proposal to keep the ban on needle exchange programs.

Obama put it in his budget, and the House Appropriations Committee pulled it from their budget, and it’s what comes out of the Congress at the end of the day that makes law here.

Here is the background on Barack Obama going out of his way to reverse a campaign promise, and I still think that this is a deliberate attempt to enrage the gay community in order to score points with right wingers.

That being said, Obama also opposing sane harm reduction policies with regard to drugs in the context of international diplomacy, so maybe he actually buys into this whole “War on Drugs” charade, so maybe he is just worried of being demagogued on the issue.

I’m not sure which state of mind is worse.

GM Exits Bankruptcy

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That was blisteringly fast.

Normally, you can’t go through a re org for an ice cream stand this quickly, but they will be back, courtesy of Congressmen who are bought and paid for by automobile dealers.

221 of said legislators have cosponsored a bill reversing GM and Chrysler’s cutting tyheir dealer rolls.

It’s not surprising. Auto dealers are always big political donors, having their thumbs on the scales is part of the business model, so now they are showing their clout.

It Would Be Nice if Obama Didn’t Try So Hard to Emulate the Worst Excesses of Bush and His Evil Minions&trade

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In this case, it’s his veto threat of the intelligence authorization bill, because the notification requirements have been strengthened in it.

As opposed to just notifying the gang of 8 (4 actually) who are not allowed to discuss the contents with anyone else, the whole intelligence committee would have to be notified.

It appears that Barack Obama wants to preserve the, “long tradition spanning decades of comity between the branches regarding intelligence matters,” which BTW, involves the CIA having, “affirmatively lied to” the panel, according to House Intelligence Chairman Silvestre Reyes.

The idea that a briefing be given in a closed room, with no notes taken, and so few people as to make verification of a felony impossible is somehow “comity,” is setting George Orwell spinning so rapidly in his grave that he could power all of Sussex.