Lunatic Fringe Republican Attempting To Recall Schwarzenegger-- Should Anyone Care?

I've been trying to figure out who Edwin T. Snell is. He hit the big time today-- a story about himself in the L.A. Times, Edwin T. Snell launches recall of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. He has a rough website, RecallsCalifornia.com which seeks to recall a gaggle of California politicians Snell doesn't like. It appears Snell doesn't like paying taxes. The Politicians he's targeting are Republican Assemblyman Jeff Miller, who represents the Inland Empire's 71st AD (Santa Margarita, Mission Viejo, Lake Forest, Foothill Ranch, Corona and Norco in Riverside and Orange Counties); Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt, the San Bernardino Republican who represents the 1st district; state Senator Abel Maldanado of San Luis Obispo, also a Republican; Assemblyman Anthony Adams, a Republican representing the 59th AD in San Bernardino and L.A. Counties (Apple Valley, Hesperia, Lake Arrowhead, Crestline, San Bernardino, Highland, Mentone, Claremont, LaVerne, Glendora, San Dimas, Monrovia, Bradbury, Arcadia and LaCrescenta); and now Schwarzenegger.

His campaign skills may not be as slick or well-funded as the governor’s. But the San Bernardino County resident has garnered the 50 necessary signatures for a notice of intent to circulate a recall petition against the governor.

According to Snell’s filing with the state, complete with errors in grammar and punctuation, “Arnold Schwarzenegger does no longer represent the interest of the people and has betrayed the trust of the voters. Schwarzenegger initiatives on prisons, water and the environment has been a complete disaster.”

Schwarzenegger has until Monday to answer Snell, who really doesn't seem to like Republicans who want to make government work. Maybe he should consider moving to South Carolina or Louisiana.

Paul Ryan Throws A Poisoned T-Bone Towards The Blue Dogs

John Spratt (D-SC) has long been considered a decent moderate and a budget hawk. Unlike the Republican party-line rubber stamps, he believes the emergency our economy is experiencing now-- after 8 years of GOP governance and bankster looting-- means that he'll have to loosen up on the hawkishness. The ranking Republican on Spratt's committee is Wisconsin wingnut Paul Ryan. Ryan is also a budget hawk-- or at least he has turned into one now that Bush is no longer handing out tax cuts for billionaires and promulgating the most catastrophic economic and financial policies since the 3 Bush-like presidents of the 1920s. The difference between Ryan and a sane-- and consistent--legislator can be summed up by a statement from California Republican, state Senator Abel Maldonado who told the Santa Barbara Independent that his fellow Republicans "urged him to withhold his vote so that the stalemate would bankrupt California... It was ‘Abel-- let it go into bankruptcy, let it go off a cliff, we need to prove a point, that it’s the majority’s fault.’”

Maldonado has been excoriated for his vote on the budget by doctrinaire, anti-tax Republicans [Ryan type Republicans] because it includes $15 billion in higher taxes. Although a right-wing recall effort against him fizzled, the California Republican Party voted formally to deny him financial or any other political support. And most other Sacramento Republicans are giving him the cold shoulder.

Last month’s GOP convention was nasty, he said. “It wasn’t pretty,” he added. “There was a lot of shouting and a lot of insults. People were yelling at me, calling me a sell-out and stuff like that. I took my wife and maybe I shouldn’t have.”

..."I regret signing” the pledge, he said. “I regret not having a couple of words added-- ‘unless there’s an emergency.’ We have a fiscal emergency in our state. People want ideas and solutions, not political positions.”

Ahhh... "ideas and solutions, not positions." He's in the wrong party. Paul Ryan speaks for Republican obstructionism on all matters budgetary. And he's all about the hackneyed old right-wing nostrums that have laid our country low. That and... political positions. Yesterday at the Budget Committee markup of Obama's spending plans-- in effect his policy agenda-- Ryan reached out, quite eloquently, albeit disingenuously, to Blue Dogs and asked them to join him sabotaging President Obama's rescue plans and staying with Bush-Cheney economics. Even the Blue Dogs aren't-- well, most of them; I'm not counting the congenitally stoopid ones like Bobby Bright (AL) or the hopelessly reactionary ones like Walt Minnick (ID) and Heath Shuler (NC)-- lame enough to buy into Ryan's sophomoric and transparent partisanship. While you watch Ryan spreading his smooth GOP venom below, please consider making a contribution to StopPaulRyan.



Tuesday night Condoleezza Rice said something to the American people that knee-jerk obstructionists like Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan should have listened to carefully:

"My view is we got to do it our way; we did our best. We did some things well, some things not so well. Now, they get their chance. And I agree with the president [Bush]. We owe them our loyalty and our silence while they do it. Because I know what it's like to have people chirping at you when they perhaps don't know what's going on inside. These are quality people. I know them. They love the country. And they won't make the same decisions, perhaps, that we did. But I believe they'll do what they think is best for the country..."

Despite Ryan's dramatics, the House Budget Committee voted to send the president's budget to the full House, all 24 Democrats voting yes, including Blue Dogs Allen Boyd (FL), Dennis Moore (KS), Marion Berry (AR), and even Jim Cooper (TN), and every single Republican, led by Ryan, voting to obstruct. Ryan tried disparaging it by likening it to the New Deal, something dittoheads and extreme right partisans hate but almost all Americans love and admire. In voting "yes," Marion Berry, a lifelong budget hawk, said "We hadn't heard a president in 8 years say the word 'infrastructure.' It is such a relief to have a president that understands that if you don't make the necessary investments in education and infrastructure, no matter what else happens you have absolutely no reason to expect that anything is going to get any better."

GOP House Chief Obstructionist Boehner popped out of his tanning booth long enough to fellate some lobbyists and slam the door on the paws of the very Blue Dogs the hapless Ryan was trying to woo. "To chuckles from the assembled lobbyists, Boehner called the Blue Dogs 'lap dogs' and said they refuse 'to get off people’s laps and actually do something.'”


UPDATE: Ryan Admits He's A Clown

Last week he did something he had never ever, ever thought he would do-- he voted against the rich, corrupt banksters who have completely financed his disgraceful political career. In a move that shocked everyone who knows what a sleazebag Ryan (R-WI- $1,555,321) he joined most House members, including half the Republicans, to vote for a tax to get back the hundreds of millions of dollars in government funds allocated as bonuses for AIG and other bankrupt companies on the dole. Now he's telling the rich banksters who make it possible for such a worthless shill to prosper as a politician that he's sorry... and he'll never do it again. He's says he was confused and blame sit on the Democrats, but that the banksters were naughty boys for handing out the bonuses which he termed "completely ridiculous. They rewarded failure." But if he had it to do all over again he wouldn't vote for it. In other words, he wants his cake and to eat it too, except it isn't cake; it's hundreds of thousands of dollars in legalized bribes from banksters per election cycle.

Ryan and party Whip Eric Cantor (Va.) voted for the legislation while Republican Leader John A. Boehner and the bulk of the party's conservative wing voted against it.

Ryan said he "wanted to send a message" to the companies that received bailout money.

But that vote last week stands in stark contrast to one late last fall when Ryan, Cantor, Boehner and others granted the administration approval to spend $700 billion to buy troubled mortgage-related securities. Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson quickly retooled the program to directly inject money into banks and other struggling financial institutions — an audible that caused heartburn for members on both sides of the aisle.

"I voted for TARP initially because I thought we were on the brink of a crisis," Ryan said.

Reminder: StopPaulRyan.

Looks Like Arnold Schwarzenegger Isn't Being Invited To CPAC, The Extreme Right's Big Annual Powwow

Michael Steele, Mike Huckabee and John Boehner???

Next week hard core extremists and obstructionists from around the Beltway will descend on Washington's Omni Shoreham Hotel again for their annual ritualistic embrace of a kind of uniquely American fascism. Today's Washington Post features a dizzy, if not delusional, preview by GOP media shill S.E. Cupp. She fights back against the conventional wisdom that this year's get together will be a bust because of the lack of star power, many respectable conservatives distancing themselves from the fanatics, Know Nothings and radicals-- the Ann Coulter wing of the Republican Party-- who dominate the conclave. But Cupp, who will be signing her childish book, Why You're Wrong About the Right next Saturday, disagrees completely: "See, in my world," she writes, "stars don't come any bigger than Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove, Mitt Romney and Mike Pence (if there were a congressional version of Teen Beat, the Indiana congressman would be on its cover every month). Michael Steele, Mike Huckabee and John Boehner are the Jonas Brothers of conservative celebrity."

Am I the only one who gets excited at the thought of a two-hour discussion on "Protecting the Secret Ballot" or "Taking Action Through Citizen-Led Reform" in the Regency Ballroom? When I see such clever lecture titles as "Will Congress Take Your Guns?" and "Are We All Socialists Now?" I start salivating. Will it? Are we? I can't wait to find out.

Just announced-- Mario Lopez is speaking! Okay, it's Mario Lopez of the Hispanic Leadership Fund, and not the hunky headliner of Saved By the Bell and Dancing With the Stars, but still-- he's going to be great, I just know it.

And doesn't everyone want to have "Breakfast With Phyllis Schlafly"? Just me?

...I'm also looking forward to drinking boxed wine with such friends and colleagues as Tucker Carlson, Stephen Baldwin and Andrew Breitbart during the forced socialization of conference happy hours. You'd be surprised how many big deals are done over pigs-in-a-blanket and cubed cheese. And yes, I just totally name-dropped.

Even Sarah Palin, "the Angela Jolie of the GOP," is staying away-- although she will address her adoring fans with a video especially for them. Instead of Rudy Giuliani, Dick Cheney, John McCain, George Bush, Bobby Jindal, Charlie Crist-- or even Arnold or chief House obstructionist Eric Cantor, the nuts and loons will have to make do with some sorry scrapings from the bottom of the barrel: Rush Limbaugh, Coulter, Rick Santorum, the 2 bizarre Micheles-- Bachmann and Malkin-- John Shadegg, Jim DeMint... and, fingers crossed, internationally acclaimed neo-Nazi, racist and right-wing posterboy Geert Wilders. And, in a nod towards Obama's sense of post-partisanship, there will be an award ceremony honoring doddering former progressive George McGovern for his anti-union rantings. (He isn't doddering enough to bother to show up in person though. Perhaps anti-labor lobbyist and Republican stalwart Rick Berman will accept the honor on his behalf.)

Rick Moran knows exactly what he is-- which is why he named the demented Republican Party blog he runs Rightwing Nuthouse. His essay on next week's CPAC convention appeared in another virtual nuthouse, though, The Next Right. "The theme of this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC)," he begins, "should be 'Cocooning our way to Irrelevancy' or perhaps 'How to lose the next 5 elections in 10 easy steps.'”

From my point of view, it really is that bad. With the exception of some effort to bring conservatism into the 21st century communications-wise, the program appears to be an excellent panacea for what ailed conservatism in about 1980. It’s as if the debacles of 2006 and 2008 never happened. Does it matter that the very same people who helped get us clobbered the last two election cycles are running seminars and roundtables at the conference? Not if you’re a movement still in denial that it will take more than “message tweaking” and better utilization of the internet to bring conservatism back and make it relevant to a large portion of Americans again.

...My idea of “reform” is probably a helluva lot different than most conservatives. But maybe we could start with the recognition that in elections, the way you win is by getting one more vote than the other side. And no matter how you want to add up the numbers, the 30% of so of the nation that identifies itself as “conservative” will always fall short of 50% + 1. I hate to break this news to my fellow conservatives; you can use any kind of mathematical hocus pocus you wish but there just aren’t enough of us to only allow “true conservatives” a place at the table. The absence of conservatives like David Frum, Peggy Noonan, David Brooks, and others who probably agree with 90% of conservative positions on the issues but have been driven from the movement for their apostasy-- real or imagined-- is as incomprehensible as it is depressing.

This is the way back? It’s not a question of being “moderate” or “true-blue” but rather how long does conservatism want to wander in the wilderness? Ideas on how to reform conservatism-- and I speak of real reform, not the cosmetic solutions that appear will be offered at CPAC-- must come from as many sources as possible. Some conservatives might not like the smell inside the “Big Tent” but turning up your nose at people who disagree with you on one or two issues is just plain nuts. “Litmus tests” and the like are all well and good unless you are a minority, getting smaller and less relevant, and don’t wish to find a way back in order to compete in the marketplace of ideas.

Our dire situation doesn’t seem to have sunk in yet. This is evident by how many sessions are scheduled that appear to have been lifted from the agenda of a decade or more ago.

He goes on to bemoan speakers from the fringes of American politics like North Carolina neo-fascist Virginia Foxx, Illinois' two most extreme congressional wingnuts, Aaron Schock and Peter Roskam, Phyllis Schafly, and Ralph Reed and warns his fellow rightists that "fleeing the mindset that re-enforces the notion that there isn’t much really wrong with conservatism that a dab of message clarification here and a spot of renewed enthusiasm there won’t cure" isn't going to help them reach outside of their delusional drooling base. "Accepting the fact that there are fundamental problems is the first step toward recovery. Unfortunately, CPAC fails miserably in that regard."

Perhaps instead of a forward-looking strategy they can just cheer themselves up a little in preparation for the disaster that awaits them in 2010 when voters let them know what they think of obstructionism. They could probably start with a hissing session for-- in absentia, of course-- California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the elected GOP politician with the most constituents anywhere in America. And do they hate him-- especially now that he's calling on Republicans to put partisanship aside and be team players with Obama! Friday he signed a state budget that includes $12.5 billion in tax hikes.

"Their last gasp has been taken from them," said Larry N. Gerston, a political scientist at San Jose State, citing the unpopularity among most California voters of the party's conservative stands on abortion, illegal immigration and other touchstone issues. "It puts them in a very precarious position."

By repudiating the thrust of his candidacy in the 2003 recall-- "I will not raise taxes," Schwarzenegger stated flatly the day after he won-- the governor has also enraged the conservatives who dominate the party.

For Republicans convening at a state party convention this weekend in Sacramento, it is a wrenching moment. Schwarzenegger is skipping the event to attend a governors' conference in Washington. But his turnaround on taxes has darkened the mood of the hundreds of party loyalists venting their frustration in a hotel where the governor often stays in a penthouse suite.

To be sure, none of the GOP lawmakers who demanded that the state close its $42-billion shortfall without raising taxes detailed the doomsday cuts that approach would entail, nor did the activists who lobbied against the tax increases. If the state had laid off its entire workforce of 238,000-- every prison guard, firefighter and clerk-- it still would have fallen billions shy of a balanced budget.

Still, in a nod to the GOP's internal realities, two of the party's top contenders for Schwarzenegger's job in the June 2010 primary have split with the governor over the tax hikes.

One, former EBay Chief Executive Meg Whitman, said they will "kill jobs, hurt families and make future deficits even worse." The other, state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, called the budget a "fiasco." The heavier tax burden, he warned, will increase unemployment.

...Like the governor, the six Republican lawmakers who joined Democrats in approving the tax increases are also facing vitriol within the party. Chief targets include Sens. Dave Cogdill of Modesto, whose support of the budget led to his overthrow as Senate Republican leader, and Abel Maldonado of Santa Maria, who cast the deciding vote.

Conservative blogger Matthew Cunningham has started a Facebook group, "Never Elect Abel Maldonado to Anything, Ever Again." More threatening, Ernie Konnyu, a former Bay Area congressman, has launched a campaign to recall Maldonado.

Efforts to recall other GOP lawmakers for their break with the party on taxes have sprouted. Conservative purists are pushing the state party to censure them Sunday.

The party's turmoil over taxes comes as Republicans nationwide are still reeling from their 2008 defeat. Their White House nominee, John McCain, lost California by more than 3 million votes in the party's worst presidential rout in the state since the 1930s.

S.E. Cupp has a bizarre imagination

And for Republicans in California-- and across most of the nation-- 1930's-era abhorrence is exactly what they can look forward to. Republican governors are in DC arguing amongst themselves whether or not to reject the Stimulus money that would help people who have lost their jobs, the "not" position being championed by right-wing maniacs like Bobby Jindal (LA), Haley Barbour (MS) and Mark Sanford (SC). The kind of last gasp obstructionism being put in place by these crazies plus your Jim DeMints, John Cornyns, Jim Bunnings, Richard Burrs, Johnny Isaksons, Tom Corburns, Eric Cantors and John Boehners-- and being cheered on and even demanded by the lunatic fringe CPAC core-- is exactly what led to the GOP with 16 members of the Senate in 1936 and jut 88 members of the House.


KEN ADDS --

Could I just underline the point made above by self-identified rightwing nut Rick Moran? The conservative movement has apparently become so loony that it has no room for people as loony as David Frum, Peggy Noonan, and David Brooks.

Okay, those may not be Rick's exact words. Still, that's some kind of loony!

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Trapped in the meltdown: Is it possible being a state (or even U.S.) senator isn't as glamorous as it's cracked up to be? (Hint: Ask Governor Arnold)

The one and only Darren McGavin as Carl Kolchak

by Ken

In her NYT column today, "The Devil Made Me Do It," Gail Collins recalls an episode of the halcyon TV thriller Kolchak: The Night Stalker in which Kolchak, "a newspaperman who spent most of his time tracking down demons of the underworld" -- and, "since his editor never believed his stories, did not get in the paper much" -- "was confronted by a politician who sold his soul to the devil in order to win a seat in the State Senate."

When I first saw this particular program, coyly titled "The Devil's Platform," I was covering a real-life State Legislature in Connecticut. My first thought was that accepting eternal damnation in return for a career as a state senator was a little like swapping your house for a pair of socks.

But lately I am beginning to wonder if, in our troubled times, being in a Senate -- any Senate -- actually is hell. Everybody has seen pictures of the state senators in California, held hostage to a spectacular financial fiasco, sleeping at their desks during the long, long hours of deliberations, which revolve around whether Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger can get a wealthy Republican broccoli farmer to vote for his budget.

And Washington! Imagine you're Harry Reid, the majority leader. Every time something important comes up, you've got to round up 60 votes. And Reid only has 59. One belongs to someone who is apparently doomed to spend the rest of his life in court in Minnesota, arguing about absentee ballot witness registration.

And another, of course, belongs to Roland Burris, cursed with an inability to come up with a consistent story on whether he tried to raise money for Illinois' rogue governor before said governor forked over a Senate seat. The other senators resent Burris because he is proof that just about anybody blessed with strong persistence and a weak memory can join their club. Reid should also consider the possibility that Burris has been infected by a mind-altering demon that could, at any moment, convince him that he dwells in a reverse reality where all good senators vote against the White House agenda.

The U.S. Senate's rules -- like those in California -- wind up leaving the power in the hands of a very few moderate Republicans. Everybody else just sits around reading their mail -- or, in the case of California, napping in the aisles -- while one or two members of the minority party tries to decide whether to let the economy fall off a cliff.

The good news is that in Washington, the whole world is now run by Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, both of Maine. True, not what you had in mind when you spent the last year obsessing about the next president. But way better than California, which is facing a series of end-of-times crises that include insolvency, 20,000 imminent layoffs and a halt to all public construction programs. And for weeks, it has all hung on State Senator Abel Maldonado, the above-mentioned broccoli farmer.

As of last night, Maldonado was holding out for changes in the state election laws that would make it easier for him to get the Republican nomination to run for state controller. (I believe there was once an episode of "Marcus Welby, M.D." in which a troubled would-be father refused treatment for sterility on the grounds that it would hurt his chances of being elected controller. Back in the day, it was inspiring what high regard TV scriptwriters had for state government.)

Maldonado has always denied that his political ambitions had anything to do with his inability to make up his mind about the budget. Nevertheless, one of his ongoing demands has been to eliminate money for new office furniture for his mortal enemy, the current controller, John Chiang.

The California situation is so dire that everybody in the state appears to have forgotten that their governor is a movie star. Schwarzenegger used to be one of the most famous people on the planet, and now he's spent months begging members of his own party to throw him three lousy votes so he can keep the Department of Motor Vehicles' offices open. When Arnold's ally, the Senate minority leader, revved up the pressure, the Republicans responded by electing a new minority leader.

On the plus side, all those arguments about whether the Constitution should be amended so people born outside the United States could run for president can be put on the back burner.

If the nation's only action-hero governor is at a loss, clearly new powers are needed. Look up that "Night Stalker" episode on the Web and you will learn that the demon soul-selling senator (Tom Skerritt) got "the ability to assume the form of an indestructible black mastiff, and destroy his enemies both within his own party and opposing him."

I wonder if Harry Reid has heard about this.

UPDATE: THE BROCCOLI FARMER GETS
HIS WAY, AND CALIFORNIA GETS A BUDGET

Earlier today, the NYT reported:

Budget Clears Legislature in California After Scathing Battle

By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

LOS ANGELES -- After five days of intense, nearly nonstop negotiations over how to close a $41 billion gap, California state senators agreed early Thursday morning on a budget that raises taxes, cuts deeply into services and borrows far into the future, leaving nearly every person in the state scathed in some way.

The leadership of the state, including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, agreed several weeks ago to a plan to address the state's severe budget issues, but the plan failed to gain the two-thirds majority approval required by California state law to pass through the legislature. This left Democrats trying to woo a single Republican vote out of the state senate, where Republicans were staunchly against new taxes.

Finally, in the witching hours of Thursday morning, lawmakers caved to some of the demands of State Senator Abel Maldonado of Santa Maria, a Republican who wanted state constitutional amendments banning legislative pay increases during deficit years, and the elimination of a 12-cent increase in gasoline taxes from the plan.

Mr. Maldonado also won legislative approval for an amendment that would make California political primaries open and nonpartisan, a measure that many Democrats resisted to the bitter end.

All told, the budget bills contain $15 billion in spending cuts, $12.8 billion in temporary tax increases, $11.4 billion in new borrowing, and the creation of a $1 billion reserve fund. The intention is that if the state receives anticipated federal funds, the borrowing will be reduced by half, some of the tax increases will be trimmed and some cut spending would be restored.

"If we can solve a $42 billion budget deficit, we can solve anything in this state," said Darrell Steinberg, Democrat from Sacramento, the president pro tem of the Senate, in a news release.

The package of bills was quickly given the nod by the State Assembly -- where lawmakers were less intransigent than in the Senate -- just before 7 a.m. Pacific time

The governor has said he would sign the bill immediately. "This is a very difficult budget," Mr. Schwarzenegger said in a prepared statement, "but we have turned this crisis into an opportunity to make real, lasting reforms for California.

"Some special interests may not like this budget -- but like I always say, what's good for the people is not always good for special interests. I look forward to partnering with the people to make sure these bipartisan reform measures are passed to put an end to our budget roller coaster and get California moving forward again."

The series of budget bills, as passed by the senate around 5 a.m. Thursday, feature billions of dollars in spending cuts for schools, healthcare institutions and entitlement programs and they greatly reduce the dependent credit that Californians may claim on their income taxes.

They also include an increase of the state sales tax by 1 percentage point, and a doubling of the vehicle license fee to 1.15 percent. In lieu of the gasoline tax increase loathed by Mr. Maldonado, residents here will see their personal income tax rates raised by one-quarter of a percentage point. The package also relies on federal stimulus dollars to get through the year.

The lengthy debate over how to address the budget crisis that has befallen the state because of the national recession -- huge numbers of home mortgages have gone into foreclosure and a host of past stopgap budget measures have come home to roost in the form of large debt payments -- has not been without cost.

As legislators fought, hundreds of state workers were put on unpaid furloughs, scores of infrastructure programs were halted, counties went without checks from the state and tax refunds were not issued to citizens. Republican state senators also ousted their leader, and the governor failed to find the allies he needed.

Still, there are at least two winners in the budget package. Small businesses will be given tax breaks, as will some parts of the movie industry, which has long maintained that the state's onerous tax burdens caused it to move shooting elsewhere. Both sets of tax breaks were big victories for Republican lawmakers.

The new taxes are set to last for two years, but could be extended another two years if voters approve a permanent spending cap in a referendum on May 19. The open-primary measure -- which could cover state legislators and members of Congress from the state -- also needs voter approval, and is set to go on the ballot in June 2010.

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