Boehner, William Wallace? Um... Mel Gibson... Maybe

Gibson and Boehner are both drunken right-wing slobs. That's about as close to Braveheart as the congressional Republicans are going to manage to get. Unless David Dreier, Patrick McHenry and Aaron Schock decide to use their makeup kits to lather on some warpaint. No one can see how raising taxes on 160 million Americans a week before Christmas somehow conflates to Phil Gingrey's Braveheart moment-- with Boehner, no less, in the role of a kilt wearing William Wallace. Are these delusional handmaidens of the one-percent really that delusional?

Apparently not every single one of them. Tuesday, despairing and freaking out over Elizabeth Warren's polling numbers, Scott Brown (R-MA) called Boehner's inability to control the House Republicans "irresponsible and wrong," just a few minutes before McCain ran to CNN to whine that the House Republicans are "harming" the party. And this morning it was Tennessee Republican Bob Corker's turn, claiming his own party is "losing the public relations battle over a payroll tax cut extension and should find a way to extend the tax holiday and move on:"

"Are Republicans getting killed now in public opinion? There's no question," Corker said Wednesday on CNBC. 

"Both Republicans and Democrats have agreed that this is going to happen and probably the best thing to happen now is just to get it over with-- one more policy blunder-- but just get it over with and move on because now it's been framed as a tax increase which it's not," he said.

Gingrey needs to tell Aaron Schock to try a different kind of makeup for today's talking point

Corker was responding to a Wall Street Journal missive that basically said Boehner and his extremist House caucus are not only putting their majority in jeopardy, but handing Obama reelection and making it harder for the GOP to capture the Senate.

GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell famously said a year ago that his main task in the 112th Congress was to make sure that President Obama would not be re-elected. Given how he and House Speaker John Boehner have handled the payroll tax debate, we wonder if they might end up re-electing the President before the 2012 campaign even begins in earnest.

...House Republicans yesterday voted down the Senate's two-month extension of the two-percentage-point payroll tax holiday to 4.2% from 6.2%. They say the short extension makes no economic sense, but then neither does a one-year extension. No employer is going to hire a worker based on such a small and temporary decrease in employment costs, as this year's tax holiday has demonstrated. The entire exercise is political, but Republicans have thoroughly botched the politics.

Their first mistake was adopting the President's language that he is proposing a tax cut rather than calling it a temporary tax holiday. People will understand the difference-- and discount the benefit.

Republicans also failed to put together a unified House and Senate strategy. The House passed a one-year extension last week that included spending cuts to offset the $120 billion or so in lost revenue, such as a one-year freeze on raises for federal employees. Then Mr. McConnell agreed with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on the two-month extension financed by higher fees on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (meaning on mortgage borrowers), among other things. It passed with 89 votes and all but seven Republicans.

...One reason for the revolt of House backbenchers is the accumulated frustration over a year of political disappointment. Their high point was the Paul Ryan budget in the spring that set the terms of debate and forced Mr. Obama to adopt at least the rhetoric of budget reform and spending cuts.

But then Messrs. Boehner and McConnell were gulled into going behind closed doors with the President, who dragged out negotiations and later emerged to sandbag them with his blame-the-GOP and soak-the-rich re-election strategy. Any difference between the parties on taxes and spending has been blurred in the interim.

After a year of the tea party House, Mr. Obama and Senate Democrats have had to make no major policy concessions beyond extending the Bush tax rates for two years. Mr. Obama is in a stronger re-election position today than he was a year ago, and the chances of Mr. McConnell becoming Majority Leader in 2013 are declining.

At this stage, Republicans would do best to cut their losses and find a way to extend the payroll holiday quickly. Then go home and return in January with a united House-Senate strategy that forces Democrats to make specific policy choices that highlight the differences between the parties on spending, taxes and regulation. Wisconsin freshman Senator Ron Johnson has been floating a useful agenda for such a strategy. The alternative is more chaotic retreat and the return of all-Democratic rule.

Looks like the House Republicans hadn't read the Journal's suggestions before this morning's session, when Michael Fitzpatrick (R-PA) gaveled the session to a close as soon as the Democrats tried to get a vote on the Senate payroll tax bill. Hoyer, playing his role, feigned concern: "You're walking out, you're walking away, just as so many Republicans have walked away from middle class taxpayers, the unemployed, and… those who will be seeking medical assistance from their doctors... We regret, Mr. Speaker, that you have walked off the platform without addressing the issue of critical importance to this country." Boehner's office then turned off the CSPAN cameras as fast as they could find the controls.



UPDATE: Reid Tosses Boehner A Lifeline

A couple of hours ago Harry Reid sent Boehner a letter that could help him save face and get himself out of the predicament his insane caucus got him into:

Dear Speaker Boehner,

Our respective chambers have been seeking for weeks to negotiate a year-long extension of the payroll tax cut for middle-class families, as well as unemployment benefits and Medicare payments for physicians.

You and I agree that this should be our goal. But as these weeks have made clear, there remain differences between our parties over how to fund and implement these programs that will take longer then a few days to reconcile.

Recognizing this reality, eighty-nine Republican and Democratic senators came together to agree to a short-term extension of these programs. As you requested when we met last Wednesday, Senator McConnell and I worked together to find this common ground. Once the House of Representatives acts on this immediate extension, we will be able to sit down and complete negotiations on a longer extension. But because we have a responsibility to assure middle-class families that their taxes will not go up while we work out our differences, we must pass this immediate extension first.

As the Senate vote made clear, there is no reason for this to be a partisan issue. I am fully confident that we can work out our differences and find common ground on a year-long extension. But in the meantime, families should not have to worry that they will wake up to a tax increase on January 1, 2012.

To provide middle-class families the certainty they deserve, I urge you to reconvene the House to act on the Senate’s bipartisan compromise as soon as possible.

Sincerely,

Senator Harry Reid

ANOTHER UPDATE: How's This Playing Out In The Congressional Districts With Hot Elecions?

You're not going to find House race anywhere with a clearer difference than in northwest Arkansas where one-percenter Steve Womack is desperately fighting off a challenge from blue collar progressive Democrat Ken Aden. Womack, as always, rubberstamped the House leadership's decision to torpedo the unemployment extension and the payroll tax cut for middle-class workers. As Ken showed us last night, that means the average Arkansas working family will have $900 a year left in their pockets to spend every month. Boehner, who lives in a gated golfing community, dismissed that as "chickenshit." Womack should know better; Ken Aden sure does.

Congressman Steve Womack’s vote yesterday against bi-partisan legislation extending tax cuts to middle class families is the equivalent of a giant lump of coal in the stockings of thousands of Northwest Arkansas families and seniors, the campaign of Ken Aden, Democratic candidate for Congress from Arkansas’ Third Congressional District said early Wednesday.

Aden notes that not only does Womack’s vote against the tax cut harm middle class families now facing a tax hike, but it hurts the district’s long-term unemployed because an extension of unemployment benefits were included as part of the legislation. In addition, Womack’s “no” vote on the bi-partisan legislation places many Medicare recipients in jeopardy of loosing access to affordable healthcare, as the bill included a two-year fix preventing drastic cuts to physicians serving Medicare patients.

"Congressman Steve Womack gave the voters of the 3rd Congressional District an early Christmas present yesterday when he joined with Speaker Boehner and radical elements in the House in rejecting a bipartisan plan to extend tax cuts to the middle class, give a hand-up to the long-term unemployed, and protect our seniors on Medicare from loosing access to their doctors,” Aden said. “Womack’s holiday gift to his constituents, is a tax hike for middle class families, seniors on Medicare getting shut out of their doctor’s offices, and the long-term unemployed being sent into poverty,” he continued.

Aden said it is time for Womack to stop doing the bidding of House Speaker John Boehner and the radical Tea Party elements in Congress and do what is right for middle class families.

"Speaker Boehner has devised a perfectly evil plan for the citizens of this country. His plan raises taxes for middle class families and adds in massive amounts of red tape to the heart wrenching process of filing for unemployment insurance-- and Steve Womack is sticking with Boehner like a wrapper on a candy cain,” Aden said. “It is unconscionable,” he noted.

Finally, Speaker Boehner and his ally Womack, have added in a proposal to use American tax payer funds as part of a scheme to build out the KeystoneXL pipeline, the primary purpose of which is to aid Canadians in selling oil extracted from tar sands to China.

“Why on earth Rep. Womack would rather help China than his own constituents should be perfectly understandable. He's not there to represent the people of Arkansas, he's in Congress to help out Speaker Boehner. It's offensive and positively anti-American."

By contrast, while Womack was voting in Congress to kill unemployment benefits, raise taxes, and block seniors on Medicare from their doctors, Ken Aden and his campaign staff were collecting and distributing toys to children’s homes across Northwest Arkansas.

“The citizens of the Third District should look carefully at these two men and observe this contrast. While Womack is in Washington voting with Speaker Boehner to hurt thousands of people in our district, Ken is out helping he less fortunate,” said Jacob Burris, campaign director for Aden’s campaign.

You can help Ken Aden get Womack out of government by contributing to his campaign here. And just west of Arkansas, is great big Texas, where all the Republicans voted against the payroll tax break for the middle class and against an unemployment extension. Dan Grant recently declared he'd be taking on reprehensible reactionary plutocrat Michale McCaul, a multimillionaire who married into the Clear Channel family. Dan sent a summary of what happened yesterday to Austin area voters:

Yesterday, millionaire Michael McCaul, the single richest member of Congress, voted to do nothing to stop a tax increase on working families that will take effect on January 1st. He rejected a bipartisan measure backed by nearly 90% of the Senate, and supported across America. This forces Congress into another dangerous game of political chicken that threatens to add $1000 annually-- or $40 per paycheck-- to the tax burdens of millions of families while the country is still struggling out of the worst recession in decades. This complete refusal to act and rejection of the most basic Congressional responsibility-- to govern-- hurts all Americans and threatens our economy. It’s a shameful failure of both priorities and leadership in Washington.

This is infuriating. But sadly it's not surprising.

Michael McCaul and this out-of-touch Congress have spent more time playing politics than doing their jobs: supporting political theater, showdowns, and standoffs, rather than working to address the issues that truly matter.

We need more people in Congress who understand that their job is to look out for hardworking families, not to play games with their lives and livelihoods. We need people in Congress who understand what $1000 dollars means to a family at Christmas, to a family saving for college, or struggling to stay afloat in these tough times.

And, despairing, one of Miss McConnell's top aides told media sources that the House Republicans have put the party into an untenable position and that their stupidity and blundering is "inexcusable... This is a lose/lose situation for us. They've let the Democrats get the messaging advantage and more specifically we've turned one of our key issues on its head. The Republicans look like they are the ones blocking tax relief... The House Republicans pulled defeat from the jaws of victory."

The Right's Culture Leaders Have Refudiated Mel Gibson But When Will Their Political Leaders Refudiate Palin?

Yesterday there was a mini-tempest in a Tea Party Pot when some bloggers had to explain to Sarah Palin that refudiate isn't a word. Fortunately for posterity I saved her idiotic tweet before she deleted it:


Then she compared herself to Shakespeare. No, really. She did. Just look up top at the original twitter record of her Facebook page-- the one notably missing the deleted first reference to her Shakespearean usage of "refudiate." At least she didn't claim Trig or Track was had the steering wheel at the time! By while the clownish figure the mass media insists on elevating to the status of quasi-serious presidential contender for a formerly serious American political party was stumbling all over herself in Twitterland, Frank Rich was putting into context the bitter end of another right-wing cultural figure and destructive sociopath. Roland says no one cares about Palin but everyone wants to watch Gibson writhing in agony and self-destructing in real time.

For Fourth of July weekend fireworks, even Macy’s couldn’t top the spittle-spangled eruptions of Mel Gibson. The clandestine recordings of his serial audio assaults on his gal pal were instant Web and cable-TV sensations-- at once a worthy rival to Hollywood’s official holiday releases and a compelling sequel to his fabled anti-Semitic rant of 2006. A true showman, Gibson offered vitriol for nearly all tastes, aiming his profane fusillade at women, blacks and Latinos alike. The invective was tied together by a domestic violence subplot worthy of Lethal Weapon. There was even a surprise comic coda, courtesy of Whoopi Goldberg, who, alone among Gibson’s showbiz peers, used her television platform on The View to defend her buddy’s good character.

The Gibson tapes-- in plain English and not requiring the subtitles of some of the star’s recent spectacles-- are a particularly American form of schadenfreude. There’s little we enjoy more than watching a pampered zillionaire icon (Gibson’s production company is actually named Icon) brought low. The story would end there-- just another tidy morality tale in the profuse annals of Hollywood self-destruction from Fatty Arbuckle to Lindsay Lohan-- were it not for Gibson’s unique back story.

Six years ago he was not merely an A-list movie star with a penchant for drinking and boorish behavior but also a powerful and canonized figure in the political and cultural pantheon of American conservatism. That he has reached rock bottom tells us nothing new about Gibson. He was the same talented, nasty, bigoted blowhard then that he is today. But his fall says a lot about the changes in our country over the past six years. We shouldn’t take those changes for granted. We should take stock-- and celebrate. They are good news... In the America of 2004, Mel Gibson, box office king and conservative culture hero, was invincible.

Once The Passion could be seen by ticket buyers-- who would reward it with a $370 million domestic take (behind only Shrek 2 and Spider-Man 2 that year)-- the truth could no longer be spun by Gibson’s claque. The movie was nakedly anti-Semitic, to the extreme that the Temple priests were all hook-nosed Shylocks and Fagins with rotten teeth. It was also ludicrously violent-- a homoerotic “exercise in lurid sadomasochism,” as Christopher Hitchens described it then, for audiences who “like seeing handsome young men stripped and flayed alive over a long period of time.” Nonetheless, many of the same American pastors who routinely inveighed against show-business indecency granted special dispensation to their young congregants to attend this R-rated fleshfest.

It seems preposterous in retrospect that a film as bigoted and noxious as The Passion had so many reverent defenders in high places in 2004. Once Gibson, or at least the subconscious Gibson, baldly advertised his anti-Semitism with his obscene tirade during a 2006 D.U.I. incident in Malibu, his old defenders had no choice but to peel off. Today you never hear conservatives mention their embrace of The Passion back then-- if they mention Gibson at all. (Fox News has barely covered the new tapes.) But it isn’t just Gibson who has been discredited. Even as he self-immolated, so did many of the moral paragons who had rallied around him as a culture-war martyr.

Take, for instance, the president of the National Association of Evangelicals. During the “Passion” wars, he had tried to blackmail Gibson’s critics by publicly noting that Christians are “a major source of support for Israel” and that Jewish leaders would be “shortsighted” to “risk alienating two billion Christians over a movie.” That evangelical leader was Ted Haggard, the Colorado megachurch pastor since brought down by a male prostitute. Gibson’s only outspoken rabbinical defender in 2004, the far-right Daniel Lapin, would be sullied in the scandals surrounding the subsequently jailed Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff. William Donohue of the Catholic League-- who defended Gibson in 2004 by saying, “Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular”-- has been reduced these days to the marginal role of attacking the Times for reporting on priestly child abuse.

The cultural wave that crested with “The Passion” was far bigger than Gibson. He was simply a symptom and beneficiary of a moment when the old religious right and its political and media shills were riding high. In 2010, the American ayatollahs’ ranks have been depleted by death (Falwell), retirement (James Dobson) and rent boys (too many to name). What remains of that old guard is stigmatized by its identification with poisonous crusades, from the potentially lethal antihomosexuality laws in Uganda to the rehabilitation campaign for the “born-again” serial killer David Berkowitz (“Son of Sam”) in America.

Conservative America’s new signature movement, the Tea Party, has its own extremes, but it shuns culture-war battles. It even remained mum when a federal judge in Massachusetts struck down the anti-same-sex marriage Defense of Marriage Act this month. As the conservative commentator Kyle Smith recently wrote in the New York Post, the “demise of Reagan-era groups like the Christian Coalition and the Moral Majority is just as important” as the rise of the Tea Party. “The morality armies have failed to inspire their children to join the crusade,” he concluded, and not unhappily. The right, too, is subject to generational turnover... The death throes of Mel Gibson’s career feel less like another Hollywood scandal than the last gasps of an American era.

POLITICAL UNITY IN AMERICA? HOW ABOUT THE VOMIT/EXCREMENT TICKET?

Now Donald and Mickey, there would be a real unity ticket!
(No, not Goofy! That would be just, well, you know.)

Politically, the Insider Establishment is being challenged and people respond in various ways. My favorite is when far right Democrats and a smattering of dispossessed mainstream conservatives get together to "save" America from... the radical left. (Hillary? Obama? Edwards?). What a joke! They want a "unity government." Bloomberg/Hagel, McCain/Lieberman, Vomit/Excrement... just what the country needs! No one should even be considered for the presidency who isn't seriously contemplating unifying Bush, Cheney and their top 200 henchmen with prison cells. But it probably won't surprise you to know that the Beltway's worst insider hack journalist is pushing something far different today. Sam Nunn, David Boren, Chuck Robb... all you need is Zell Miller and John Breaux and we can get the Confederacy started again.

With ole Fred Thompson waking up long enough to tell folks “I’m not particularly interested in running for president," and with "None of the Above" the clear winner of every Republican Party poll, there's a real worry that an out of control outsider like Huckabee or a deranged neo-fascist like Ron Paul could grab the GOP nomination away from a reliable-- albeit sure loser-- Insider like Romney, Giuliani or McCain. The way things look now, that's like ceding the presidency to Hillary Clinton-- and the Insiders in our country are even less eager to seer her in power than their equivalents in Pakistan were to see Bhutto take over. Ironically, neither Clinton nor Bhutto was an actual threat to the Insider Establishment.

The voice of the Republican Party-- Fox News-- has been doing what it could to marginalize Huckabee and Scott. In fact, yesterday Scott claimed Fox-- and, by implication, the GOP hierarchy-- is so scared of him that they're going to keep him out of the final debate leading up to New Hampshire.

"They are scared of me and don't want my message to get out, but it will. They are propagandists for this war and I challenge them on the notion that they are conservative."

Today's NY Times describes the last days before the Iowa caucuses as a Republican slaughter house, with all the pygmies at each other's throats. In the last weekend before the Iowa caucuses, the Republican presidential candidates are bloodying the field with a blizzard of negative attacks, showing the strains of a wide-open and unpredictable race." Huckabee has proven himself unqualified to all but those who think that George Bush is qualified-- and that could mean a win in Iowa Republican caucuses. He's given up on reminding everyone in the state that Romney is a Satan worshipping cultist and is concentrating on Romney as compulsive liar.

But if Huckabee is counting on every single far right loon and imbecile in the country to rally to his banner, he was in for a great big disappointment. The man on whose knee Mel Gibson learned to be a racist, a bigot, an anti-Semite and a right-wing extremist, dear ole crazy dad, has endorsed... well, Ron Paul of course.




IOWA STILL UP FOR GRABS AMONG DEMS BUT "NONE OF THE ABOVE" TROUNCES ALL REPUBLICANS

I almost wish I was flying to Des Moines with Jane to watch these crazy, some would say anti-democratic, caucuses up close. But I'm still here in Bangkok monitoring the Thai elections and getting ready to write by big story about Thai massages (at the AroundTheWorldBlog). I'm fascinated to see John Edwards moving up in the polls. I always thought he would win on the second round but now it looks like he could do it in the first. And Huckabee... looks like even Iowa Republicans figured out what a phony this turd is!

Quote of the day: Gail Collins scrutinizes the bona fides of Mr. Security and reports that the security that really matters to Rudy is . . . his own!

"The Giuliani presidential campaign is based on the idea that he understands that the world is a dangerous place and knows the steps that need to be taken to protect us. But his real conviction has always seemed to be that the world was a dangerous place for him. . . .

"If the vision of city police officers cooling their heels outside his mistress's home in the Hamptons is troubling, it's not because of the moral implications. It's a reminder that Rudy is one of those people who doesn't handle power well. The more important he becomes, the more impossible he becomes."

--Gail Collins, in her Saturday NYT column, "Rudy's Security Blanket"

It's a pleasure to see Gail Collins hitting her stride in her return to columnizing. Nobody has a better eye or (especially) ear for telling detail. I'd heard about her for some time during her first thumb-sucking stint, with the New York Daily News, before she joined that glorious, giddy experiment in newspapering, New York Newsday, becoming perhaps the shiniiest star in a firmament of columnists that also included the glittering likes of Murray Kempton, Jimmy Breslin, Sydney Schanberg, and Pete Hamill.

(Naturally the plug had to be pulled on New York Newsday, on the brink of hitting its break-even point--en route to actually making money--in unexpectedly quick time, by the brain-dead Times-Mirror suits who apparently felt it was distracting them from their work destroying the L.A. Times. These were suits so incompetent that they soon, though not soon enough to save New York Newsday, had to be sent to suit heaven, giving way to the even dimmer-witted suits of the Tribune Co., who then had to be replaced by . . . well, let's not get started on the unspeakable Sam Zell.)

Saturday Gail got to thinking about Rudy's "bad week." ("Or, as he might put it, suffering persecutions never seen upon this planet since Mel Gibson was tortured on the rack, castrated, disemboweled and beheaded in 'Braveheart.'") You remember:

* the increasing attention--including Michael Cooper's report in the NYT--being paid to Rudy's campaign-trail habit of "stretching facts or replacing them with more dramatic, more interesting, more untrue ones";

* his unfortunate Florida debate performance;

* the cavalcade of TV appearances by his "protege" Bernie Kerik "in news clips captioned 16-COUNT FEDERAL INDICTMENT";

* and, finally, Ben Smith's Politico.com report "about the peculiar accounting practices the Giuliani administration had used for security details that guarded Rudy when he was out of town pursuing nonmayoral ventures such as golf and adultery," whereby "the bills were stashed away under the budgets of obscure city agencies like the Loft Board and--oh, dear--the Office for People With Disabilities."

Rudy said the story sounded like a "hit job" to him, aimed at reminding primary voters about his divorce-studded private life. Actually, LoftBoardgate is a reminder not of what Rudy does behind closed doors, but of his inability to keep them shut. When he was mayor, his sex life spilled into weird press conferences and court fights over who got custody of Gracie Mansion. Lately, he's contented himself with interrupting his speeches to accept strange cellphone calls from the latest wife.

It's fitting that Giuliani's first big campaign crisis wound up being about his special subject: security. When he was mayor, he got a whole lot of it. The city was at one point paying for police guards to protect and transport not only Rudy, his children and his elderly mother, but also both his wife and his mistress. Really, they were thisclose to assigning a detail to the family retriever and a springer spaniel he was courting down the block.

The Giuliani presidential campaign is based on the idea that he understands that the world is a dangerous place and knows the steps that need to be taken to protect us. But his real conviction has always seemed to be that the world was a dangerous place for him. After American embassies were bombed in East Africa, his administration responded by blocking off the driveways to City Hall, barring protesters and politicians from their traditional press conference site on the building steps, and banishing tourists. Meanwhile, behind the barricades, the mayor was planning to put the city's emergency command center inside the best-known terrorist target in America.

Does this sound like a good plan, people? Do you want the next president putting a nuclear missile at Camp David while he moves the Situation Room to the Louisiana flood plain?

The conflation of the safety of Rudy with the safety of New York reached its peak on 9/11, when the entire public security leadership of the city left ground zero in order to protect the mayor in his walk uptown. And then there was the aftermath, when he tried to postpone the mayoral election under the theory that the factor most critical to our survival was his continued presence at the helm.

If the vision of city police officers cooling their heels outside his mistress's home in the Hamptons is troubling, it's not because of the moral implications. It's a reminder that Rudy is one of those people who doesn't handle power well. The more important he becomes, the more impossible he becomes.

It's a nightmare, the specimens the GOP has assembled for its 2008 "presidential field." But is there a worse nightmare than the specter of a President Giuliani?

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