How Far Would Republicans Go To Undermine America For Partisan Gain-- And To Sate Their Racism?

The racists and plutocrats who, hand-in-hand, have long taken over the Republican Party are tickled pink-- or deep red-- that their avowed strategy from the day after Obama had the temerity to beat John McCain has worked. They set out to poison the well… and blame Obama for the results. And if the new Washington Post-ABC News poll is correct, an exhausted public has finally thrown in the towel.

Republicans were so ecstatic seeing all those people who say that the country is on the wrong track that they even tweeted out an exaggerated, misleading version of the results:

Not so fast, though, treachery-minded, anti-America Republicans. More Americans feel negatively about Republicans in Congress than they do about Obama or about Democrats in Congress. Republicans son't care about those numbers because most of them feel safe in their carefully gerrymandered little districts created specifically to reelect Republicans regardless of issues.

Georgia far-right Republican Jack Kingston, recently defeated by some random guy in a GOP Senate primary despite endorsements from Hate Talk Radio freaks Sean Hannity and Neal Boortz, will soon be a lobbyist. But KIngston has been disgracing Congress with his partisan mania and extremism since he was first elected to represent white people in southeast Georgia in 1992. Now he'll be handing out bribes instead of taking them. On the way out, though, he revealed the Republican mindset of wrecking America to the fullest extent they can in order to make Obama look bad and incapable of governing. Yesterday, in an analysis of the ISIS conundrum our political elites are facing, the NY Times mentioned that "Democratic leaders in the Senate and Republican leaders in the House want to avoid a public vote to authorize force, fearing the unknown political consequences eight weeks before the midterm elections on Nov. 4." No great revelation! But… they followed up with a statement by Kingston who really is, in every day, every Southern racist Republican pig breathing God's air today:

"It’s an election year. A lot of Democrats don’t know how it would play in their party, and Republicans don’t want to change anything. We like the path we’re on now. We can denounce it if it goes bad, and praise it if it goes well and ask what took him so long."

That is what passes for a philosophy of governance from a senior Republican in Congress who has a plum position on the Appropriations Committee and is the chairman of the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education, where he's done nothing but serve the interests of Big Business against the interests of his own struggling-- if idiotic-- Georgia constituents (one of the poorest districts in the entire country).

No doubt Buddy Carter, who will be taking over the seat for the plutocrats and racists, will have the same sick view of governance that Kingston expressed. What else what you expect from south Georgia? But this isn't really any different from any garden variety Republican congressional zombie fearful that the Koch brothers and their teabaggers might take away his career. When southwest Michigan voters first elected Fred Upton, for example, he was kind of mainstream/kind of moderate-- as the district is. Several years ago, gripped by fear, he turned into a hard right fanatic and makes the exact same calculations as his pal Kingston. same situation is northwest Wisconsin and northeast Ohio where, respectively, Kelly Westlund and Michael Wager are battling walking dead Republican incumbents Sean Duffy and David Joyce. It's certainly too late-- compliments of Steve Israel-- to win back the House but it's not too late to elect progressives who want to solve problems, not create them, like Paul Clements, Kelly Westlund and Michael Wager, all of whom you can find on this page.

Today At The Races: Georgia

It's another vile lesser of two evils election in Georgia today. Neither Jack Kingston nor David Perdue is fit for any public office, let alone for the U.S. Senate. But, then again, neither was Saxby Chambliss, the imbecile who's resigning the seat. The Republican primary itself was May 20 and the top 5 candidates didn't generate much enthusiasm:

• David Perdue- 185,466 (30.64%)
• Jack Kingston- 156,157 (25.8%)
• Karen Handel- 132,944 (21.96%)
• Phil Gingrey- 60,735 (10.03%)
• Paul Broun- 58,297 (9.63%)

Perdue, who was endorsed by his cousin, Sonny, the ex-Governor, by professional Republican clown Herman Cain and by a shady super PAC (Citizens for a Working America, which has spent over $1.5 million attacking Kingston), won with the weakest showing of any first place finisher in a senate primary by either party in Georgia history. Kingston, who has been endorsed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (i.e., the GOP Beltway Establishment, and has already spent $920,000 on his behalf) and by Brent Bozell, Michelle Bachmann, Sean Hannity, Steve Forbes and other right-wing celebrities, will probably win today's runoff. All 4 polls released this month show Kingston with 41%. PPP has Kingston with 47% with voters who say they are definitely voting today. Neither candidate is especially popular in the Atlanta area, where most of the state's voters live, maybe 70% of the expected GOP turnout.

[No] candidate can ignore metro Atlanta and north Georgia and have any hope of winning a statewide election. But the dynamics of this particular race, which has already garnered national attention as Republicans seek control of the Senate, means the election will likely be won or lost based on what happens there.

...With a competitive primary for Kingston's current seat in Congress, turnout is expected to be strong along the coast and Kingston will have to run up the numbers like he did during the primary when he claimed 78 percent of the vote in his home base of Chatham County. But the coastal areas alone can't carry him across the finish line, and Kingston will have to perform very well in metro Atlanta and north Georgia.

"Jack Kingston can still win statewide without winning those areas," Lake said. "He just needs to run up his margins on the coast and he needs to make sure that even though he's not winning in those north Georgia counties, he's not losing by a wide margin."

Perdue, who hails from middle Georgia but has a home on the coast, did very well in north Georgia during the primary, capturing a majority of counties across the area. Although it's his first political campaign, his cousin is former Gov. Sonny Perdue and his campaign and advisers are all veterans of state politics.

Perdue knows he must build on his primary vote totals and broaden his base of support. Meanwhile, Kingston has smartly collected endorsements from two of their former rivals with broad metro Atlanta support who finished third and fourth in the primary.

Kingston is banking on those endorsements to help him cut into Perdue's lead, while Perdue has been using those endorsements to hammer Kingston as the establishment candidate who's been in Washington too long.

If Kingston wins, he will face off against conservative Democrat, Michelle Nunn in November. Although most polling shows Nunn ahead, I'd bet that once the primary runoff is over and the Perdue votes get behind Kingston, he'll overtake her. Democrats will waste millions of dollars on her campaign that could easily elect Rick Weiland in South Dakota and save the Senate for the Democrats.




UPDATE: GEORGIA RESULTS

Confounding all the pollsters in a very low turnout election-- not one showed Perdue even close (of the 2 most recent, Landmark had Kingston up by 7 and Insider Advantage had him up by 5)-- and freaking out the GOP Beltway Establishment, Perdue beat Kingston 245,493 (51%) to 236,987 (49%). It was close, but outside the margin of recount and Kingston, no doubt bound for K Street, conceded before all the votes were counted. Kingston spent $6,174,978 and Perdue spent over a million less-- $5,031,036. (For those who care: Perdue has $783,540 cash on hand to Nunn's $3,681,570.)

Hice

Paul Broun's replacement in GA-10 won't be the Establishment favorite either. Crazy right-wing extremist, Hate Talk Radio host and bigoted Baptist preacher Jody Hice beat Mac Collins' son Mike 26,959 (54%) to 22,673 (46%). Both are far right crackpots but Hice has much more potential to regularly embarrass the House Republicans and reduce their approval rating by even more. With Bachmann and Broun retiring, Hice will immediately be in contention for the title, "craziest clueless Republican in the House." Move over Louie Gohmert. Hice and Collins spent around the same amount, respectively $493,490 and 479,576 (as of the July 2 FEC report). Two gun nut groups put in around $9,000 for Hice. Santorum's endorsement didn't help Collins, who was slightly ahead in the May primary.

Over in GA-11, Gingrey's district, Barry Loudermilk crushed ex-Congressman Bob Barr 34,641 (66%) to 17,794 (34%), successfully portraying him as a serial flip-flopper. Barr had outspent him $709,714 (including contributions made in BitCoin) to $599,119. Loudermilk had been endorsed by Club for Growth, RedState, FreedomWorks, the Madison Project and Georgia Right to Life. Barr was endorsed by Tom Tancredo, Richard Viguerie and Gun Owners of America.

We On The Grind In... Georgia

In Georgia, they want Medicare expansion and they want to keep their crazy anti-healthcare Governor. Maybe they listen to too much Hate Talk Radio and watch too much Fox News and have wound up with addled brains, but an Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll released today yields a portrait of one very confused electorate. Let's start with this interesting finding among Peach State respondents: 57% of them favor Medicaid expansion. OK, that makes sense and is pretty much in line with what voters in other red states without Medicare expansion want. But the guy who's preventing Medicare expansion-- and keeping 450,000 from getting healthcare-- in their state, right-wing Governor Nathan Deal, has a healthy 54% job approval rating going into his reelection campaign. The poll shows him leading Democrat Jason Carter 47-38% in a head-to-head matchup (although Carter leads in metro-Atlanta and it's basically the really backward parts of the state where Deal piles up his big margins).

The poll shows that the Senate race to replace retiring Saxby Chambliss is also a hodgepodge that defies reason. Anti-Choice extremist Karen Handel seems to be the frontrunner among the Republicans… maybe-- and depending how you look at the numbers. OK, so, keeping in mind, there are no Republican candidates that are objectively better than any of the others and that any of them would go immediately to the bottom of the senatorial barrel, let's look at this hot mess. The 3 percentages are favorable/unfavoranble/never heard of

• Karen Handel- 39/24/21
• David Perdue- 35/20/27
• Michelle Nunn (D)- 31/18/33
• Paul Broun- 31/21/29
• Phil Gingrey- 31/26/26
• Jack Kingston- 30/19/32

I included Michelle Nunn's numbers in that little chart as well, but the primary is May 20 (with a July 22 runoff) and the Republicans still have plenty of time to bash each other up but good before then. Broun, a John Bircher and former drug addict, has been endorsed by Ron Paul and the dangerous radical right Gun Owners of America. David Perdue has been endorsed by his cousin, Sonny, a former Georgia governor. And Handel has been endorsed by Vivien Scott and Betty Price, whose husbands are crazed right-wing congressmen Austin Scott and Tom Price.

Before today's poll, a PPP survey in August showed Gingrey ahead with 25%, followed by Broun with 19%, Kingston with 15%, Handel with 13% and Perdue with 5%. That same poll also showed Nunn beating Broun 41-36%, beating Handel 40-38%, beating Kingston 40-38%, tying Gingrey 41-41%, and tying Perdue 40-40%. At the time, Tom Jensen wrote that PPP's first poll showed the race was competitive and PPP President Dean Debnam said "The Georgia Senate race starts out as a toss up. None of the Republican candidates are particularly well known or well liked to begin the race. Meanwhile the Nunn name still carries a lot of weight with voters in the state."

Since then Gingrey, Broun and Kingston has made repeated missteps and shocked people with their extremism and obvious lack of qualifications for the job. Just this week, for example, Kingston, who had insisted school children from poor families be put to work because "there is no such thing as free lunch," was exposed for taking thousands of dollars for his own free lunches… and dinners from lobbyists and other trying to bribe him to vote for their own special interests, something Kingston is notorious for in Washingtion.

As a member of the House Appropriations Committee, Kingston has traveled to four continents, racking up $24,313 in per diem allowances. While the allowances were allotted for more than just lunch money, midday meals were included.

…Beyond taxpayer dollars, Kingston has enjoyed many free meals on the campaign trail. WSAV 3 reported $145,391.26 in expensed meals and catering for campaign events, $26,066.45 of which was charged at the Republican Club of Capitol Hill, an exclusive, members only venue.

"Isn't this a free lunch?" a WSAV 3 reporter asked Kingston.

"This is what we need in America," Kingston responded. "We need workfare over welfare. I learned a lot when I was 14 and 15 years old doing chores inside and outside the household and as a result i grew up with a good work ethic. ... It's hard in today's society to have a discussion where you want to challenge the status quo because of the 'I gotcha' politics."

It's going to be a long campaign. And to put it in a little context, let me go back to the healthcare reform that 57% of Georgia voters seem to say they want-- albeit while voting for political leaders who solemnly swear to prevent them from having it. According to a report from the House Ways and Means Committee, repealing the Affordable Care Act-- which all the Georgia Republicans advocate-- would be a catastrophe for the state's residents. Thanks, the report asserts, to the Affordable Care Act, in Georgia:

• 2,202,000 individuals on private insurance have gained coverage for at least one free preventive health care 
service such as a mammogram, birth control, or an immunization in 2011 and 2012. In the first eleven months of 2013 alone, an additional 728,900 people with Medicare have received at least one preventive service at no out of pocket cost.

• The up to 4,324,000 individuals with pre-existing conditions such as asthma, cancer, or diabetes-- including up to 613,000 children-- will no longer have to worry about being denied coverage or charged higher prices because of their health status or history.

• Approximately 2,036,000 Georgians have gained expanded mental health and substance use disorder benefits and/or federal parity protections.

• 1,699,000 uninsured Georgians will have new health insurance options through Medicaid or private health plans in the Marketplace.

• As a result of new policies that make sure premium dollars work for the consumer, not just the insurer, in the past year insurance companies have sent rebates averaging $82 per family to approximately 247,900 consumers.

• In the first ten months of 2013, 94,400 seniors and people with disabilities have saved on average $875 on prescription medications as the health care law closes Medicare’s so-called “donut hole.”

• 123,000 young adults have gained health insurance because they can now stay on their parents’ health plans until age 26.

• Individuals no longer have to worry about having their health benefits cut off after they reach a lifetime limit on benefits, and starting in January, 3,317,000 Georgians will no longer have to worry about annual limits, either.

• Health centers have received $102,945,000 to provide primary care, establish new sites, and renovate existing centers to expand access to quality health care. Georgia has approximately 175 health center sites, which served about 321,000 individuals in 2012.

Right Wing Revolution Eating Its Children-- And Parents… GOP Needs A Time Out

It's nothing new to hear progressives bloggers-- particularly this one-- try to persuade donors, and even Members of Congress, to defund the DCCC, particularly while Steve Israel is recruiting fellow corrupt conservatives to serve in the interests of Big Business and undercut ordinary working families. The Democratic Establishment, Beltway "professional Democrats," don't care for us either. You might have caught Wall Street whore Chuck Schumer's hissy fit about liberal bloggers the other day. He was bitching to Isaac Chotiner about how misunderstood his Wall Street financiers are: "You don’t want to go after them for the sake of going after them. The left-wing blogs want you to be completely and always anti–Wall Street. It’s not the right way to be." Chotiner asked him if he thought the left-wing blogs are as bad as the Tea Party. He probably thinks the left-wing is even worse. What he said though was "Left-wing blogs are the mirror image. They just have less credibility and less clout." Wow less credibility than the Tea Party… at least in Schumerland-- the exact same creepy, self-obsessed guy I remember from high school in Brooklyn.

I had to laugh yesterday when I saw a report that one of the tea baggy operations, DeMint's old Senate Conservatives Fund, was calling on Republicans to defund the NRSC, as corrupt a mainstay but of the stinking Beltway Establishment as the DCCC is.

The Senate Conservatives Fund said Friday that its supporters say Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Lamar Alexander (R-TN) need to be replaced and the National Republican Senatorial Committtee (NRSC) needs to be defunded.

In an email to supporters, Senate Conservatives Fund executive director Matt Hoskins said that results of a new poll show that the group's supporters want Graham, Alexander and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to be replaced.

…Hoskins also wrote in the email on Friday that a majority of supporters want Senate Republicans' campaign arm to be defunded: "On the question of whether the grassroots should stop donating to the NRSC because of its bias against conservative candidates, 86% said the NRSC should be defunded, 5% said it should not, and 9% were unsure."

Having missed Jacques Mallet du Pan's tragic adage from the French Revolution, "la révolution dévore ses enfants," the GOP, in the midst of a deadly civil war, is doing just that. Georgia crackpot Paul Broun-- in the ad above-- claims he's a doctor but neglects to say he was a severely strung out drug addict while he was going door to door soliciting patients. He's running for senator and making it clear that he's far to the right of all the other extreme right-wing candidates, especially of Jack Kingston. And he's scared Kingston so badly that he's running far off into right field as well.

And after some right-wing heroes praised Nelson Mandela-- who conservative mouth-breathers had always been taught to despise-- the National Review website comments section exploded into an orgy of hatred and insane bigotry. Ted Cruz, the gold standard for a deranged neo-fascist, who was just the other day wishing aloud that there were 100 Jesse Helms in Congress, said he mourns the loss of Nelson Mandela and said he "will live in history as an inspiration for defenders of liberty around the globe. He stood firm for decades on the principle that until all South Africans enjoyed equal liberties he would not leave prison himself, declaring in his autobiography, ‘Freedom is indivisible; the chains on any one of my people were the chains on all of them, the chains on all of my people were the chains on me.’ Because of his epic fight against injustice, an entire nation is now free." Cruz's Facebook page went bonkers and so did the neanderthals who comment at National Review.

One GOP lunatic fired the first salvo: "Yes, you can tell that to the civilians who never harmed anyone, many of them well under 18, whose murder Mandela sanctioned via one of his goons. Mandela should have known better as forcible confiscation of land had such bloody consequences in the past, and the idea that anyone could associate with a communist party in the aftermath of what was known in the mid 20th century and still be considered an ethical person is unfathomable. Mandela also praised Mugabee after he knew that Mugabee had tortured and killed well beyond anything done by any colonial government. The track record of post colonial governments has been violence and brutality well in excess of the proportion allotted to their predecessors. South Africa is the last chapter in a very sad saga. He is nothing like a hero in the way that Solzhenitsyn is, someone who suffered and endured just as much and who did not resort to such things, though he could have and someone who's death, because he stood up to their moral and political nonsense, the left largely ignored."

Last I looked there were 410 comments, mostly from people in bad need of professional psychiatric help who seem to think Ted Cruz isn't right-wing enough. I hope some of them caught President Obama this morning though and listened with open minds and open hearts as he urged Congress not to leave for their vacations before extending unemployment insurance for 1.3 million workers who lost their jobs because of the ideologically-driven GOP economic agenda in the Bush years.

Our top priority as a country should be restoring opportunity and broad-based economic growth for all Americans. And yesterday, we learned that our businesses created about 200,000 jobs in the month of November. That’s more than 8 million new jobs in the last 45 months. And the unemployment rate fell to its lowest level in five years.

But we need to do everything we can to help businesses create more good jobs that pay good wages even faster. Because the hole that we’re still digging out of means that there are still millions of Americans looking for work-- often because they’ve been laid off through no fault of their own.

We also have to look out for the Americans working hard to get those jobs. That’s why, as a country, we offer temporary unemployment insurance-- so that job-seekers don’t fall into poverty, and so that when they get that job, they bounce back more quickly.

For many families, it can be the difference between hardship and catastrophe. It makes a difference for a mother who suddenly doesn’t know if she’ll be able to put food on the table for her kids. It makes a difference for a father who lost his job and is looking for a new one. Last year alone, it lifted 2.5 million people out of poverty, and cushioned the blow for many more.

But here’s the thing: if Members of Congress don’t act before they leave on their vacations, 1.3 million Americans will lose this lifeline. These are people we know. They’re our friends and neighbors; they sit next to us in church and volunteer in our communities; their kids play with our kids. And they include 20,000 veterans who’ve served this country with honor.

If Congress refuses to act, it won’t just hurt families already struggling-- it will actually harm our economy. Unemployment insurance is one of the most effective ways there is to boost our economy. When people have money to spend on basic necessities, that means more customers for our businesses and, ultimately, more jobs. And the evidence shows that unemployment insurance doesn’t stop people from trying hard to find work.

Just this week, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicted that allowing benefits to expire will be a drag on our economic growth next year. A report by the Department of Labor and my Council of Economic Advisors estimated that it could cost businesses 240,000 jobs. And without the ability to feed their families or pay the bills, many people currently looking for work could stop looking for good.

So extending unemployment insurance isn’t just the right thing to do for our families-- it’s the smart thing to do for our economy. And it shouldn’t be a partisan issue. For decades, Congress has voted to offer relief to job-seekers-- including when the unemployment rate was lower than it is today.

But now that economic lifeline is in jeopardy. All because Republicans in this Congress-- which is on track to be the most unproductive in history-- have so far refused to extend it. So this holiday season, let’s give our fellow Americans who are desperately looking for work the help they need to keep on looking. Let’s make it easier for businesses to attract more customers, and our economy to grow. And together, let’s keep doing everything we can to make this country a place where anyone who works hard has a chance to get ahead.

No, It's Not Likely Jack Kingston (R-GA) Will Switch Parties

Rep. Kingston (R-GA) is the one on the right

It would be a very alternative universe, indeed, if Georgia Republican Congressman Jack Kingston were ever looked at as anything other than a hard-right conservative-- except of course if you compare him to other Georgia Republicans. I'm not sure how fine-tuned ProgressivePunch is in measuring how conservative right-wing voting records are but there are the records of the 14 Georgia Congressmen based on their lifetime votes on crucial roll calls. It goes from most liberal to most conservative:

• John Lewis- 94.92
• Hank Johnson- 84.74
• David Scott- 68.47
• Sanford Bishop- 58.71
• John Barrow- 35.93
• Paul Broun- 9.23
• Tom Graves- 6.99
• Rob Woodall- 6.79
• Dog Collins- 4.76
• Jack Kingston- 3.95
• Austin Scott- 3.80
• Phil Gingrey- 3.19
• Tom Price- 2.62
• Lynn Westmoreland- 2.27

First a brief note: John Bircher Paul Broun is so extreme that he often votes against Boehner because the Republican positions are "too liberal" for him. That explains his relatively "progressive" score, although it would be more accurate to say that he's is the most right wing and most extreme member of the Georgia delegation and in contention as the most right wing member of the House. A better way of judging Kingston on the issues is to keep in mind that since being elected in 1992 he has zero scores categories like Corporate Subsidies, Family Planning, Health Care, Justice, Union Rights, Pension Protections, Occupational Safety, Air Pollution, Clean Water, the Iraq War, Nuclear Energy, Renewable Energy, Wilderness Conservation, Humane Treatment of Animals… You get the picture. That's a long career of zeroes. When it comes to being an anti-Choice fanatic, count on Jack. The Affordable Care Act? He voted against it and voted to wreck it all 46 times it came up. He voted against raising the debut ceiling, against extending the payroll tax cut, and for every crackpot version of the Paul Ryan budget. And yet, the headline at RedState yesterday was Jack Kingston Has Surrendered On Obamacare.

Coming to terms with Obamacare is nothing new for Kingston. At the beginning of the year, he said “I don’t want to go in there saying, ‘By golly, there’s a new sheriff in town.’” “Obamacare has been the law of the land, and it is getting implemented. We have to work in that context.”

The scary thing is that Kingston is the chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on healthcare. What is ever scarier is that he wants to be the next U.S. Senator from Georgia. We all know that the Senate has a way of turning those who are conservatives into statists. See Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ) for a vivid example. If Kingston is starting out his campaign with a mindset of surrender on Obamacare, it is clear he will never move this seat one inch to the right from Senator Saxby Chambliss. And that is an extremely low bar to cross.

Here's the Monday morning radio interview that is freaking out the lunatics at RedState:



The Hill reported that Kingston mentioned the “Small Business Fairness in ObamaCare Act" that he introduced, which would exempt some small businesses from the mandate to provide insurance to their employees under ObamaCare.

"And there’s some criticism, 'Well, are you helping improve this law when you make that change? And should we be doing that?'" Kingston said of pushback to his bill.

"A lot of conservatives say, 'Nah, let’s just step back and let this thing fall to pieces on its own.' But I don’t think that’s always the responsible thing to do," he added.

"I think we need to be looking for things that improve healthcare overall for all of us. And if there is something in ObamaCare, we need to know about it."

…While he had some criticism for the law-- he said he believes the demand on Medicaid could overcrowd the system-- he also expressed hope that Democrats would bring to the hearing some good feedback they've received on ObamaCare.

"If you get a lot of letters that say, 'Hey, back off, it works. I have a special needs child and here's why its been good for me,' we want to listen to that," he said.

Time for the Republicans to amp of their civil war again, I guess… against this flaming liberal"

Ba-a-ad Republcans! Ba-a-ad Republcans!

"Not since my children were 3 or 4 years old," says NY Democratic Rep. Louise Slaughter, "have I seen such obstinate inability to accept the facts."

by Ken

The Republican shutter-downers think they can hornswoggle American into believing that they're just trying to get a fair hearing from those Kremlin-red Democrats, including the president, for their noble ideas. Of course, they have no noble ideas, and there's a reason why they can't get a fair hearing. They're the ravings of lunatics and thugs. But I think they may do well persuading fact-deprived and reality-challenged Americans, who are likely to take the "plague on both their houses" approach.

Except in this case we know where the plague is.

The right-wing devils love, of course, to play the tune sounded by, for example, the Dunce of Georgia, Rep. Jack Kingston, about how that hyperpartisan President Obama "is proudly negotiating with the Iranians" but "will not negotiate with the Republicans." It never occurs to these buttwipes that they themselves are, quite properly, the butt of their imagined cleverness. Yes, by comparison with the House Republicans, the Iranians whom reasonable people can talk to.

"On the second day of the shutdown," Dana Milbank writes in his Washington Post column today ("Republicans are going to need a bigger lifeboat"), "House Republicans continued what might be called the lifeboat strategy: deciding which government functions are worth saving."

In: veterans, the troops and tourist attractions. Out: poor children, pregnant women and just about every government function that regulates business or requires people to pay taxes.

The lifeboat strategy was the brainchild of Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.), the freshman who has become the de facto leader of congressional Republicans in the shutdown. On Tuesday, GOP House members introduced bills that would exempt three entities: the national parks, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the District of Columbia. On Wednesday, they added the National Institutes of Health and pay for National Guard members and military reservists.

And then there's all the stuff ruled ineligible for the lifeboats, which includes:

market regulation, chemical spill investigations, antitrust enforcement, worksite immigration checks, workplace safety inspections, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Internal Revenue Service's audit capabilities, communications and trade regulation, nutrition for 9 million children and pregnant women, flu monitoring and other functions of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and housing rental assistance for the poor.

It's not hard to figure out the "strategy" at work here.

The pattern, it seems, is that House Republicans propose to rescue the most visible casualties of the shutdown, such as the national parks and trash collection in the capital. Efforts to help veterans, active-duty troops and reservists are popular but largely unnecessary because most of them were unaffected by the shutdown. The NIH's work isn't always visible, but the agency has powerful supporters who want research on their pet causes.

Perhaps more revealing were those who haven't earned a place in the conservatives' lifeboat: entities that check the power of industry and entities that protect workers and the poor. They may be the most hurt by a government shutdown, but they don't have a place in the conservative utopia as defined by the lifeboat strategy.

Dana quotes NY Rep. Louise Slaughter, the ranking Democrat on the House Rules Committee: "Not since my children were 3 or 4 years old have I seen such obstinate inability to accept the facts." That sounds about right.

#

Which Georgia Extremist Will Out-Extreme All The Others?

Republican voters seem more and more insane lately-- like in the last decade. No one believes in all the trumped up "scandals" Republican congressional obstructionists are pushing out to a media desperate for fireworks except GOP voters. And in the Old Confederate states, the Republican base is far crazier than the representatives they elect (except for a few like Louie Gohmert, Paul Broun, Phil Gingrey and domestic terrorist suspect Steve Stockman). And speaking of Paul Broun and Phil Gingrey...

Those two crackpots are among a gaggle of crackpots running for the Republican nomination for the open Georgia Senate seat. They're all running to the extreme right-wing fringes, the lunatics who vote in the Republican primaries. And their antics are turning off mainstream voters and independents. The latest polling in Georgia shows the main candidates bunched up together and "undecided" (which can also be interpreted as "none of the above") way ahead.

• Jack Kingston- 17.61%
• Phil Gingrey- 15.98%
• Karen Handel- 15.81%
• Paul Broun- 14.14%
• David Perdue- 5.77%
• Undecided- 30.69%

And the more radical and extreme the candidate the GOP primary comes up with, the more likely Sam Nunn's daughter, Michelle Nunn, will snatch the seat from the Republicans. Nunn is competitive polling wise, and would beat former Secretary of State Karen Handel hands down. But is she going to run? Sunday she was the big buzz-- along with Obama-- at an Atlanta DSCC fundraiser. Michael Bennet (D-CO), chair of the DSCC said "We believe Georgia presents us with the greatest opportunity for a pickup." And, needless to say, all the Republican crackpots have, for example, come out against the bipartisan immigration reform bill. They know well who the Know Nothing primary voters are.

"We absolutely must deal with it but we don't need any new laws," Broun said. "The solution is to secure the borders, both north and south."

"We absolutely are going to be opposed and stand strong against any amnesty," Gingrey said. "My idea about solving this problem is to enforce the laws that are currently on the books."

Gingrey and Handel both said the current proposal was too similar to a 2007 immigration bill that ultimately failed.

"We are about to have deja vu all over again," Handel said. "Only in Washington could the same failed policies be put forward as 'reform.' We need to secure the borders now before we do anything else."

Kingston also called for the end of automatic citizenship for those born in the United States. "When you come to America as a visitor and if you have a child, that child should not automatically be an American citizen," Kingston said. "We are one of the few nations left that still have that relic on the books. It was needed at one time but it is not needed anymore."

The Governor asked them not to behave like the Hatfields and the McCoys and destroy each other's chances. Broun, a former drug addict and a current John Bircher, is probably the most extremist of the candidates, though not by much. When he first entered the race, he claimed he was the "only" conservative running and that the others are, essentially, poseurs. "I believe in the original intent of the Constitution," he clucked. "There’s no other candidate that’s going to get into this race that does. I believe in the Constitution as the Founding Fathers meant it. They believe in a Constitution where government finds all the solutions for all the problems. So there are big differences between me and all the other candidates that can get in this race."

Can The Democrats Take A Senate Seat In Georgia? With Barrow Out, It's A Real Possibility

If you thought the Dems got lucky with Akin & Mourdock, wait 'til you meet Paul Broun

Teabaggers decided right-wing senator Saxby Chambliss wasn't pure enough-- after all, with a 1.95 lifetime ProgressivePunch score (and a ZERO for 2013), look how much more conservative he could be voting-- so they threatened him with a primary and he decided to retire. That leaves a Senate seat in a very Republican state up for grabs. Chambliss won in 2008 with 57.5% and in November Romney beat Obama 53-46%. Very Republican-- but not very, very Republican. Chambliss probably wouldn't have had to break a sweat to win reelection. But the teabaggers screwed that up for the RNSC. So now they have two declared candidates, two of the most certifiably insane extremists in Congress-- Paul Straight-From-The-Pit-Of-Hell Broun and Phil Akin-Was-Right Gingrey-- another lunatic (anti-Choice sociopath Karen Handel) threatening to jump in, a more respected right-winger (Tom Price) pulling out and Rove's handpicked Establishment candidate, Steve Kingston, under fore by the extremists for not being conservative enough for the party base. Broun had Kingston in his sites when he said the other Republicans running don't believe in the Constitution, "I believe in the original intent of the Constitution. There’s no other candidate that’s going to get into this race that does. I believe in the Constitution as the Founding Fathers meant it. They believe in a Constitution where government finds all the solutions for all the problems. So there are big differences between me and all the other candidates that can get in this race."

I wish there was more of a difference. But the 4 of them are all crackpots-- and that creates an opening for the Democrats, particularly a Democrat with a respected and beloved name in the state: Nunn. The Republicans, who were dying for weak, pusillanimous Blue Dog shill John Barrow to run, are petrified that Sam Nunn's daughter, Michelle Nunn, will run instead. (The Wall Street Journal announced Barrow's decision to not run as good news for Georgia Democrats.) The DSCC tested candidates against the least extremist of the 4 GOP extremists, Jack Kingston, and they found that Michelle Nunn would have the best chance to win the seat.

The March poll of 800 respondents found Kingston leading Nunn 33 percent to 32 percent, while Kingston led Barrow 33-29.

Barrow announced Tuesday that he would not run for Senate after months of flirting with the idea, and indications are that Nunn's refusal to step aside in a primary was a major reason for his decision. Democrats are now trying to spin Nunn as the superior candidate who can better turn out the base, while Republicans are crowing about how the battle-tested Barrow turned down the DSCC and dampened Democrats' dreams of taking over the seat after the retirement of Republican Saxby Chambliss.

...Nunn, daughter of the former senator Sam Nunn, is the CEO of the volunteer service organization Points of Light. She has not run for office before and is mostly a blank slate to Georgia voters, according to the DSCC poll. She was viewed favorably by 14 percent of respondents and unfavorably by 5 percent. Barrow stood at 18-10 favorable/unfavorable, identical to Kingston and the latest sign of how little-known these members of Congress are outside their districts.

After unspecified "positive and negative messaging" about the candidates was read to the respondents, Nunn pulled ahead of Kingston 37 percent to 34 percent, while Kingston led Barrow 33-32. The AJC was not provided any additional information about the poll, such as how the Democrats performed against the other Republicans in the race.

POLLING UPDATE

On Monday Better Georgia released a poll showing the GOP extremists make the open Senate seat very mich up for grabs. Michelle Nunn would beat Handel substantially and is in position to beat any of the crackpot congressmen the Republicans are looking at.

The survey shows a Republican advantage of 4 percentage points before either party has chosen its candidate. It also shows that in a crowded primary, Republican voters favor the most conservative candidate, Congressman Paul Broun.

Michelle Nunn, the founder and CEO of an international non-profit and the daughter of former United States Senator Sam Nunn, performs best when compared with potential GOP candidate Karen Handel, former Georgia Secretary of State. In a head-to-head match-up of the two women, Nunn draws 47 percent to Handel’s 39 percent. Nunn is tied with Congressman Phil Gingrey at 46 percent for each candidate. The most moderate Republican candidate, Congressman Jack Kingston, performs best against Nunn, 48 percent to 42 percent. None of the Republican candidates top the 50 percent mark when tested against Nunn.

“Georgia voters are growing increasingly tired of status quo conservatives who put ideology before common sense solutions to Georgia’s biggest challenges,” said Better Georgia Executive Director Bryan Long.  “Georgia is simply not a ‘red state’ where the most conservative candidate is assured victory. Anyone who believes otherwise simply has not looked at the data.”

Congressman Jack Kingston (R-GA) Has A Plan That-- With A TINY Bit Of Tweaking-- Could Erase The Budget Deficit Forever And Clean Up Washington

Thursday we looked at how strongly the Republican Party Establishment backed sequestration. Even Speaker Boehner, who normally doesn't vote, but who had a loud message to send, voted in favor of it-- as did every single Republican Party leader, from Cantor and McCarthy all the way down the food chain to Armed Services Committee chairman Buck McKeon, who's been whining about it ever since. But now they're all whining about how it will devastate the economy-- which they seem to have picked up from hearing President Obama drill through their heads. But Boehner claims it's "our vest leverage" and is demanding pain for working families in return for them not imposing it on the economy. What the hell is wrong with these people?

Yesterday Greg Sargent laid out the Senate Democrats' offer to the Republicans for a rational détente on this insanity, which he got from Sherrod Brown (D-OH). The Dems think they can save taxpayers $120 billion over ten months in a proposal that will avert sequestration with a balanced 50-50 mix of new revenues and spending cuts-- but with no benefits cuts to society's most vulnerable members.

“Reid made a decision to do something the country will support,” Brown told me. “We just have to get Republicans off of their intransigence on this.”

...Brown said that some of the spending cuts being considered for the plan include cutting farm subsidies, some defense cuts, and perhaps cuts to Medicare, but only on the provider side. A senior Senate Democratic leadership aide told me that when it comes to the defense cuts in the plan, it will be a “scaled back version of what the sequester already does.”

Meanwhile, Democrats are mulling an array of new revenues for the plan: The Buffett Rule, ending the carried interest loophole, nixing tax breaks for companies that offshore jobs, and cutting farm subsidies (many of which were expected).

It may not be a plan as comprehensive and positive as the one offered by the House Progressive Caucus but... well Max Baucus is never going to be Raul Grijalva, Keith Ellison, Ed Markey or Barbara Lee. In fact, we should probably be grateful that Max Baucus is also never going to be the Georgia Republican and prospective Senate candidate, Jack Kingston, who has his own crackpot ideas on what to do about balancing the budget. The Ayn Rand fan club at the Wall Street Journal jumped right on board:

At the heart of his reform plan is restoring the process of automatic spending cuts that prevailed in the late 1980s under the name Gramm-Rudman. In the 1980s deficits were the budget cut trigger, but Mr. Kingston would apply it to spending levels. If Appropriators exceed the spending targets set early in the fiscal year under the Budget Act, automatic "sequesters," or across the board program cuts, would be imposed. When this process was in place in the 1980s, the deficit as a share of GDP fell to below 3% from 6%. Mr. Kingston says his goal is to reduce spending over time to 18% of GDP, down from 24% to 25% today.

Mr. Kingston says one of his main goals is to "destroy the infrastructure of spending." This would include removing Members from subcommittees on which they are unable, for home state political reasons, to cast difficult antispending votes. He would end the concept of "emergency spending," which both parties routinely use to evade spending targets and inflate the deficit with little public scrutiny.

"Removing Members from subcommittees on which they are unable, for home state political reasons, to cast difficult antispending votes" sounds good-- but not nearly as good as removing Members from subcommittees on which they are unable, because of campaign contributions they've taken from lobbyists and corporations, to cast difficult antispending votes. Now if that was implemented, Washington would be fixed... overnight.

This morning in his weekly address to the nation, President Obama again urged Congress to stop playing games and avert the sequester which everyone in Washington who doesn't want to wreck the economy, knows will be a disaster.

Over the last few years, Democrats and Republicans have come together and cut our deficit by more than $2.5 trillion through a balanced mix of spending cuts and higher tax rates for the wealthiest Americans. That’s more than halfway towards the $4 trillion in deficit reduction that economists and elected officials from both parties say we need to stabilize our debt.

I believe we can finish the job the same way we’ve started it-- with a balanced mix of more spending cuts and more tax reform. And the overwhelming majority of the American people agree-- both Democrats and Republicans.

Now, my preference-- and the preference of many Members of Congress-- is to do that in a balanced, comprehensive way, by making sensible changes to entitlement programs and reforming our tax code. As we speak, both the House and Senate are working towards budget proposals that I hope will lay out this kind of balanced path going forward.

But the budget process takes time. And right now, if Congress doesn’t act by March 1st, a series of harmful, automatic cuts to job-creating investments and defense spending – also known as the sequester-- are scheduled to take effect. And the result could be a huge blow to middle-class families and our economy as a whole.

If the sequester is allowed to go forward, thousands of Americans who work in fields like national security, education or clean energy are likely to be laid off. Firefighters and food inspectors could also find themselves out of work-- leaving our communities vulnerable. Programs like Head Start would be cut, and lifesaving research into diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s could be scaled back. Small businesses could be prevented from getting the resources and support they need to keep their doors open. People with disabilities who are waiting for their benefits could be forced to wait even longer. All our economic progress could be put at risk.

And then there’s the impact on our military readiness. Already, the threat of deep cuts has forced the Navy to delay an aircraft carrier that was supposed to deploy to the Persian Gulf. As our military leaders have made clear, changes like this affect our ability to respond to threats in an unstable part of the world. And we will be forced to make even more tough decisions in the weeks ahead if Congress fails to act.

The good news is, there’s another option. Two months ago, we faced a similar deadline, and instead of making deep, indiscriminate cuts that would have cost us jobs and slowed down our recovery, Democrats and Republicans came together and made responsible cuts and manageable changes to our tax code that will bring down our deficit. This time, Congress should pass a similar set of balanced cuts and close more tax loopholes until they can find a way to replace the sequester with a smarter, longer-term solution.

Right now, most Members of Congress-- including many Republicans-- don’t think it’s a good idea to put thousands of jobs at risk and do unnecessary damage to our economy. And yet the current Republican plan puts the burden of avoiding those cuts mainly on seniors and middle-class families. They would rather ask more from the vast majority of Americans and put our recovery at risk than close even a single tax loophole that benefits the wealthy.

Over the last few years, we’ve made good progress towards reducing our deficit in a balanced way.  There’s no reason we can’t keep chipping away at this problem. And there’s certainly no reason that middle-class families and small businesses should suffer just because Washington couldn’t come together and eliminate a few special interest tax loopholes, or government programs that just don’t work. At a time when economists and business leaders from across the spectrum have said that our economy is poised for progress, we shouldn’t allow self-inflicted wounds to put that progress in jeopardy.

So my message to Congress is this: let’s keep working together to solve this problem. And let’s give our workers and our businesses the support they need to grow and thrive. Thanks, and have a great weekend.

Is Keith O running out of kids willing to play with him? Plus: Right-wingers turn their attention from "teh gay" to the economy

by Ken

It appears that finally the remaining shoe has dropped. From the NYT "Media Decoder" blog:

Current TV Dismisses Keith Olbermann

By BRIAN STELTER

6:10 p.m. | Updated Current TV said Friday afternoon that it had terminated the contract of its lead anchor, Keith Olbermann, scarcely a year after he was hired to reboot the fledgling channel in his progressive political image.

The cable channel indicated that he had failed to honor the terms of his five-year, $50 million contract, giving the channel the right to terminate it. Starting Friday night, the former New York Gov. Eliot L. Spitzer will take over Mr. Olbermann’s 8 p.m. time slot.

In a stream of Twitter messages, Mr. Olbermann responded to Current’s announcement by stating that “the claims against me in Current’s statement are untrue and will be proved so in the legal actions I will be filing against them presently.”

Current executives declined interview requests about the termination, apparently due to the expected legal action. But in a letter to viewers, the channel’s founders, Al Gore and Joel Hyatt, wrote: “We created Current to give voice to those Americans who refuse to rely on corporate-controlled media and are seeking an authentic progressive outlet. We are more committed to those goals today than ever before. Current was also founded on the values of respect, openness, collegiality, and loyalty to our viewers. Unfortunately these values are no longer reflected in our relationship with Keith Olbermann and we have ended it.” . . .

There's more detail in the report, and clearly there are legal issues that have to be thrashed out, possibly in courrt. Meanwhile:

(1) Is anyone surprised? I didn't think so. Given the mounting acrimony since . . . well, almost since Keith started the Current gig, it seemed just a matter of time.

(2) I love Keith to death (perhaps because I don't have to deal with him?), but even in the event that he prevails on the legal issues, he clearly has no future at Current, leaving the question whether he's going to be able to find anyone else -- in the TV world or elsewhere -- interested in working with him. He's not that hot a talent, is he?


MEANWHILE, GOP CONGRESSIONAL LOONS LOSE INTEREST
IN SAME-SEX MARRIAGE -- BUT WATCH OUT FOR THOSE EELS!

"[Moray eels] will attack humans - but only when disturbed or provoked and they can be quite vicious. (Although, they actually can be quite friendly once they are used to you - and you are used to them. Careful when you feed them as their teeth are indeed razor sharp and they might lurch at offered food, and offering fingers, very rapidly.)"

-- from the website sharktoothgifts.com

To be clear, although Georgia Rep. Jack Kingston is a celebrated nincompoop, it's not clear whether he spoke or wrote to the reporters, so we can't tell who imagined the "sexual morays" that appeared in the original posting of this piece:

"In one decade, what's shocking on TV is accepted as commonplace in the other. It's the same with sexual morays all over that if you look at campuses and universities, they have a lot of gay pride clubs and so there has been a deliberate and effective outreach to the younger generation about being more accepting of same-sex relationships."

-- Rep. "Crazy Jack" Kingston (R-GA), in the original posting
of Politico's "Republicans retreat on gay marriage"

In the Politico article, by Jake Sherman and Anna Palmer, these, er, thoughts are introduced following this paragraph:

It’s not like the GOP has become a bastion of progressiveness on gay rights, but there has been an evolution in the political approach - and an acknowledgment of a cultural shift in the country. Same-sex relationships are more prominent and accepted. There are more gay public figures -- including politicians -- and it’s likely that many Washington Republicans have gay friends and coworkers. Just as important -- there’s also a libertarian streak of acceptance on people’s sexuality coursing through the House Republican Conference.

This context makes it even tough to puzzle out what Crazy Jack is saying, but I for one don't hear "acceptance" so much as the suggestion that those satanic gay pride clubs are now the leading edge of the long-storied gay recruitment operation, the mission now expanded beyond the recruitment of, you know, new recruits to the brainwashing of nongay civilians -- lurking there among the sexual morays -- into becoming more "accepting."

That said, the piece is worth checking out, even now that the sexual morays have been exiled.

The economy has displaced moral issues in today’s politics. Ask most House Republicans today if they have deep convictions about gay relationships, and it hardly registers.

And some of the great minds of the House GOP majority, DWT faves all, are quoted (wait for it!):

* Allen West of Florida: "I personally have deep convictions about my children having a financially stable country that they can live in,” Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) said in an interview. “I want my daughters to have the opportunities that I had, and that’s what concerns me. That’s what keeps me up awake at night, not worrying about who’s sleeping with who."

* Hal Rogers of Kentucky, chairman of the Appropriations Committee: "I don’t hear it discussed much."

* Louie Gohmert of Texas, described by the Politico scribes conservatively as a "die-hard social conservative": "I don't hear it discussed much."

The Senate, Sherman and Palmer note, "also has undergone a shift. When Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) held the first hearing on the Defense of Marriage Act since it became law, few Republicans showed up and those who were there didn't use it as an opportunity for fire-and-brimstone speeches on same-sex unions."

You have to guess that many of these exceedingly dim bulbs have gradually figured out that their orgy of ideological crackpottery isn't what got them elected -- and there's another election coming up. Of course they haven't exactly been neglecting the economy; after all, they've spent these two years do everything in their power to make sure that any sensible ideas President Obama may have thrown out would die a painful death.


IT'S NOT ENOUGH TO BE STUPID AND CRAZY; YOU
HAVE TO BE THE RIGHT KIND OF STUPID AND CRAZY

Meanwhile, the economic predators who were salivating over the inroads into economic sanity that could be championed by the new Republican House majority seem to be discovering that it's not necessarily a piece of cake dealing with a pack of mental defectives -- see Jonathan Weisman's NYT report "Business Bets on the G.O.P. May Be Backfiring." Here's a sample:

Big business groups like the Chamber of Commerce spent millions of dollars in 2010 to elect Republican candidates running for the House. The return on investment has not always met expectations.

Even though money for major road and bridge projects is set to run out this weekend, House Republican leaders have struggled all week to round up the votes from recalcitrant conservatives simply to extend it for 90 or even 60 days. A longer-term transportation bill that contractors and the chamber say is vital to the recovery of the construction industry appears hopelessly stalled over costs.

At the same time, House conservatives are pressing to allow the U.S. Export-Import Bank, which has financed exports since the Depression, to run out of lending authority within weeks. The bank faces the possibility of shutting its doors completely by the end of May, when its legal authorization expires.

And a host of routine business tax breaks — from wind energy subsidies to research and development tax credits — cannot be passed because of Republican insistence that they be paid for with spending cuts.

Business groups that worked hard to install a Republican majority in the House equated Republican control with a business-friendly environment. But the majority is first and foremost a conservative political force, and on key issues, its ideology is not always aligned with commercial interests that helped finance election victories.

“Free market is not always the same as pro-business,” said Barney Keller, spokesman for the conservative political action committee Club for Growth.

There could be real-world consequences to the conservative rebellion. The 90-day extension of the highway trust fund that House Republican leaders say they will pass this week in lieu of a broad highway bill would keep existing projects moving for now. But business groups say few new government-funded infrastructure projects can get under way without longer-range certainty about federal backing. . . .

The moral: Just 'cause the peeps are stupid and crazy doesn't mean they're the right kind of stupid and crazy. In politics as in other matters, let the buyer beware.

#

IS THERE A REASONABLE WAY OUT OF BUSH'S DISASTER IN IRAQ? RUSS FEINGOLD THINKS SO-- AND REID IS BACKING HIM

The wingnuts are going ape-shit as they see all factions of the Democratic Party coming together to wrap up Bush's escalating catastrophe in Iraq. The Democratic unity is driving them insnane, so insane that far right Georgia extremist Jack Kingston seems to be threatening to turn himself into a suicide bomber "The Democrats' honeymoon is fixing to end" he threatened. "It's going to explode like an IED... It's going to be like the government shutdowns" of 1995 and 1996. Oh yeah; that worked when another crazy right-wing congressman from Georgia tried it back then too. These loons never learn!

Fortunately, there are responsible and serious members of Congress who are dedicated to trying to solve the problems the Bush Regime has been creating. Russ Feingold is usually ahead of the curve. Today he's introduced legislation that would end the war by March 31, 2008. Harry Reid, who is getting quite serious about this thing lately is co-sponsoring the bill. The bill requires Bush to begin safely redeploying U.S. troops from Iraq 120 days from enactment, as required by the emergency supplemental spending bill the Senate passed last week. He explains the whole thing in a piece he published at Salon this morning. Here are the main points of the bill that McConnell must be choking on this morning:

(a) Transition of Mission - The President shall promptly transition the mission of United States forces in Iraq to the limited purposes set forth in subsection (d).

(b) Commencement of Safe, Phased Redeployment from Iraq - The President shall commence the safe, phased redeployment of United States forces from Iraq that are not essential to the purposes set forth in subsection (d). Such redeployment shall begin not later than 120 days after the date of the enactment of this Act.

(c) Prohibition on Use of Funds - No funds appropriated or otherwise made available under any provision of law may be obligated or expended to continue the deployment in Iraq of members of the United States Armed Forces after March 31, 2008.

(d) Exception for Limited Purposes - The prohibition under subsection (c) shall not apply to the obligation or expenditure of funds for the limited purposes as follows:
(1) To conduct targeted operations, limited in duration and scope, against members of al Qaeda and other international terrorist organizations.
(2) To provide security for United States infrastructure and personnel.
(3) To train and equip Iraqi security services.

UPDATE: AND IT LOOKS LIKE REPUBLICAN WAR CRIMINAL HENRY KISSINGER-- STILL A FUGITIVE FROM JUSTICE-- AGREES THAT BUSH BOTCHED IRAQ AND THAT THE WAR CAN'T BE WON

Yesterday's International Herald Tribune reported that Kissinger said the conflict in Iraq is more complex than Vietnam and that a military solution is no longer possible. Kissinger didn't say so explicitly, but it goes without saying that "complex" is not Bush's forte. Despite the impossibility of a military solution, Kissinger predicted that we would be fighting in Iraq for many years. Somewhere in a safe house Osama bin-Laden is smiling serenely and thanking Allah his efforts to make sure Bush was re-elected paid off so handsomely.