Rush: We've Been Played for Saps by the Establishment ... .

Rush: We've Been Played for Saps, Folks

Alan West: caved because Wasserman was effective in saying he would destroy Medicare.  Paul Ryan.  PAUL RYAN!!?  Anyway, the teapartiers held their ground and denied Boehner his vote.  I'll guarantee you that this segment by Rush today is what cost him the 217 votes he needed. You may not agree with Rush's analysis, but after listening to this you'll at least be the best informed kid at the water cooler tomorrow.

Baghdad Bob Award Winner

House Delays Debt Plan Vote An earlier Roll Call story announcing that Boehner was postponing the vote on his massive $29B deficit reduction bill (Ahem) contained this Baghdad Bob Award winning spin on tea-partier resistance to that piece of crap.

“ A second Democratic aide said more seriously, “It’s clear Republicans are having trouble getting the votes on their side for Speaker Boehner’s partisan bill, which shows that they should be working with Democrats on something that can actually pass both chambers and be signed into law. ” There was a time when I thought idiocy like this was tongue-in-cheek.  I was stupid.

No Thongs Either

Sandals Only

Okie-Dokie  Tom Mann

Quote of the Week

QOTW “ What we're trying to do is save the world from the Republican budget. We're trying to save life on this planet as we know it today. Nancy Pelosi on raising debt limit ”

How Hot Is It in Texas?

How Hot Is It in Texas?

R.W. Forsythe

Where's Ali-Waldo?

Army: AWOL soldier admits to Fort Hood attack plan I'm sorry, did I say his name was Pfc. Naser Abdo?

“ Abdo's arrest came after the owners of a local gun store - the same store where the 2009 Fort Hood shootings suspect (suspect?)  Maj. Nidal Hasan (also Muslum) bought a pistol used in the attack - called police, the Army's alert said. Store clerk Greg Ebert said the man arrived at Guns Galore LLC by taxi Tuesday and bought 6 pounds of smokeless gunpowder, three boxes of shotgun ammunition and a magazine for a semi-automatic pistol, paying about $250. Ebert said he became concerned when the man asked questions indicating he didn't know much about the items. ” Not one of the 544 words in this AP story  is "Muslim;" or "Muslum," Islamo fascist," nor "Mahometan." The Toronto Star told me.

Rep. Jim Jordan: The Right Stuff

Today's Greatest Republican Who Ever Lived Jim Jordan:  Next House Speaker?

“ U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan's open defiance of Speaker John Boehner's efforts to solve the debt-ceiling crisis could cost the Urbana Republican his safe seat in next year's election. Two Republican sources deeply involved in configuring new Ohio congressional districts confirmed to The Dispatch today that Jordan's disloyalty to Boehner has put him in jeopardy of being zeroed out of a district. "Jim Jordan's boneheadedness has kind of informed everybody's thinking," said one of the sources, both of whom spoke only on condition of anonymity. "The easiest option for everybody has presented itself." Jordan's rural 11-county district, which has a 60 percent Republican voter index, "is easy to cannibalize because it stretches so far," said the other source. [Payback may be coming for congressman's 'disloyalty'] ” If Boner's a hidebound jackanapes, and he is, then Jordan must be very speciual indeed. Carry on sir.

Give me your credit card, or ... .

Give me your credit card, or we want a f'n divorce.

“ The White House has warned of "catastrophic" consequences if a deal is not reached by August 2, rejecting the idea that Obama could invoke an obscure constitutional clause to raise the debt limit. Several House Democrats planned to hold a news conference on Thursday to urge Obama to take that option if necessary. [Full] ” "The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law ... shall not be questioned," it reads.  But, is this an argument about not paying our debt?  Or an argument with a crazy bitch who keeps charging more stuff to the credit card?   Rhetorical question of course, but that sliver from the 14th Amendment does not begin to apply here.  We'll pay our debts, but we want the credit card, and we want a lot of useless crap she purchased returned (like Obamacare).  At least I hope that's what we want.

National Piss on Lenin Day

Yesterday was National Piss on Lenin Day and nobody told me.

Hippie Jailed

Eco-activist gains fame for civil disobedience

“ Protesters gathered around the courthouse and dozens were arrested Tuesday as Tim DeChristopher launched into a lengthy address urging others fight climate change by taking similar steps of civil disobedience. But U.S. District Judge Dee Benson said there was no excuse for the 29-year-old former wilderness guide's blatant disrespect for the rule of law.  Benson sentenced DeChristopher to two years in prison on Tuesday ... . He was jailed for for failing to make good on bids at a lease auction of Utah public lands. He ran up bids on 13 parcels totaling more than 22,000 acres in order to keep them from gas and exploration.   Look for Hollywood asshats to turn him into another Billy Jack, the 6o's counter-culture hippie hero.  Yes, we are living in the 60's again.  See also: Ohio National Guard gains fame for stopping civil disobedience

America's Burden

Today's Metaphor

1979 dela vu all over again

1979  deja vu all over again That Jimmy Carter was president was quite enough, thank you.

“ What big news do you remember from April 1979? That Iran voted to become an Islamic Republic? That a threatening swamp rabbit was stopped short of President Jimmy Carter's fishing boat? That Jane Byrne took office as Chicago's mayor? How about the heated debt-ceiling debate on Capitol Hill up until the last minute, followed by some missed Treasury bill payments? [Chicago Tribune]

Cat Nip ...

I think we're all a little tired of this genre of cheap joke fodder, after this one..

G'dt

My memory is not completely shot.  News that  AOLHUFFPO STOCK HITS ALL-TIME LOW  reminded me that I gave Huffington title instead to Newsweek in a plea to save Reader's Digest.  Shit. I need an editor.  Any volunteers?

Boner cracks the RINO whip

Boehner tries to tame GOP on debt ceiling plan

“ In a closed-door Republican Conference meeting on Wednesday, Boehner demanded his wavering members “get your ass in line” to back his proposal, and some members obliged. Michigan Rep. Thad McCotter, who is running for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012, switched from voting no to yes during the 90-minute session. Reps. Blake Farenthold of Texas, Billy Long of Missouri and Jeff Denham of California are now backing the speaker’s plan, as are Reps. Darrell Issa of California, Renee Ellmers of North Carolina, Nan Hayworth of New York and Dan Lungren of California. Lungren even got up during the meeting and likened Boehner to Ronald Reagan, the conservative icon who was president during Lungren’s first stint in the House. Other hard “no” voters have flipped to leaning no or even undecided. ”

Dem's shortcut to closing wealth gap backfired

Feds' Dem's shortcut to closing wealth gap backfired on minority homeowners

"Did you see the devastating numbers about the wealth of minority families? Their savings have largely been wiped out. White households now have 20 times more wealth than black households and 18 times more wealth than Hispanic households."

“ There are various reasons. But a big one is this: The federal government turned home ownership into an affirmative-action program, complete with quotas. And a lot of people who had no business buying houses bought them and then lost them. "As sad as it is to say, this began in the Clinton Administration as a response to the argument that the poor and minorities couldn't get credit and were being left out of the home-ownership dream," says James Wright, a sociology professor at University of Central Florida. "They couldn't meet credit requirements. There was a lot of pressure in progressive circles" to change those requirements.  [Full] Holy Crap! Orlando Sentinal columnist Mike Thomas comes closeer to articulating the truth about this as I've seen in print.  “ To further this goal, Fannie Mae agreed to buy high-risk subprime loans in 1999. This meant lenders could sell the loans to unqualified buyers and then dump them on Fannie and the taxpayers. The Department of Housing and Urban Development set a goal that, by 2001, half the portfolios of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae should be composed of loans to low-income and moderate-income buyers. Once Freddie and Fannie were fully engaged in the subprime business, the market went crazy. Lenders enticed unqualified and unsophisticated borrowers into signing loans they couldn't possibly pay off. ” I'll take small victories where I can find them.

Franken's Monster Mash

Monster Mash-up Democrats see wiggle room on Obama’s Aug. 2 debt-limit deadline The Aug. 2 deadline for raising the nation’s debt ceiling might not be as rigid a cutoff date as the administration has been saying, according to some senior Senate Democrats.

Meanwhile Franken's SNL moment in Senate “ For a moment Wednesday, Al Franken looked like he was back on the set of Saturday Night Live and not on the floor of the U.S. Senate. In a speech explaining that there would be no money to pay for military and security personnel if Congress doesn’t pass a bill increasing the debt ceiling by Aug. 2, Franken unveiled a large poster in the chamber that said, “Welcome Terrorists. Franken aimed his theater of the absurd at those who believe the U.S. doesn’t have to raise the debt limit to avoid economic catastrophe. He couched it as black humor, but certainly not as comic relief in a House and Senate deadlock that economists say puts the U.S. at risk of a financial meltdown. [Star Tribune] ” Franken's charts A previously referenced  Red State's "Seven Reasons Why August 2 Isn’t the End of the World"  chart compared with Franken's: RED STATE FRANKEN Federal Debt Interest $30 29 Social Security $50 49.2 Medicare-Medicaid $50 50 Veterans and active-duty military $9 — Defense vendor payments  — $32 Federal Unemployment Payments — $12.8 TOTAL $139 $172.7 Red State concludes: “ So that’s a total bill of $136 billion, easily covered by the $170-200 billion we’ll take in.  Of course, we won’t be able to afford everything the government currently spends on.  The Departments of HUD, Transportation, Commerce, Energy, and Education, for example, may have to take a pause while Congress works out a deal with the President.  But is that really “the end of the world”? ” Franken concludes: ???? I guess by saying if we cut anything, the terrorists win.  But it's really very simple.  It took me just 3 minutes to save $71B a month. Plus, cutting EPA's  $900 million would result in immediate 200% increased production and several $B of increased tax revenue.  End of story.