Little Miss Purity Gets Another Stain On His Frock

Paul Ryan, whose Wall Street handlers try-- often with a degree of desperation-- to portray him as Little Miss Purity, are losing another battle that exposes him as a wanton whore. I'm betting, though, that this one-- his support for Boehner's tax increases on the rich-- won't be any more difficult to explain away to the dull-brained Republican/Fox base than when Ryan led the battle to pass the TARP bailouts for Bush. Ryan's spokesperson, Conor Sweeney: "Chairman Ryan will continue to work to protect as many Americans as possible from tax hikes. Chairman Ryan believes that Speaker Boehner’s ‘Plan B’ meets that criteria.” Club for Growth and Heritage don't, even though Norquist sold indulgences to Republicans looking to support Boehner.

Ryan Ellis, American for Tax Reform’s tax policy director, said that the “sole purpose” of the House proposal-- which would allow rates on annual income above $1 million to go up at year’s end-- was to prevent tax increases for most people.

ATR, which oversees an anti-tax pledge signed by the vast majority of congressional Republicans, also noted that the House had already voted to extend all income tax rates.

“When viewed with this in mind, and considering this tax bill contains no tax increases of any kind-- in fact, it permanently prevents them-- matters become more clear,” Ellis wrote.

“Having finally seen actual legislation in writing, ATR is now able to make its determination about a legislative proposal related to the fiscal cliff.”

Norquist’s move could give cover to Boehner, with it still far from certain whether the Speaker can find enough Republican votes to push his “Plan B” through the House.

And Little Miss Purity, despite Club for Growth terming Plan B "anti growth... “It increases tax rates for those making over $1 million while also raising taxes on capital gains and dividends. We don't buy into the Washington-speak, suggesting that these are actually tax cuts."

Meanwhile, on the Democratic side of the aisle, Democrats are also concerned about how to message their betrayal of the American people by couching their agreement to gut Social Security as "strengthening Social Security." What a horrible and ignominious end to Nancy Pelosi's career! Tragic. This statement makes her sound senile:

President Obama's latest fiscal cliff offer includes chained CPI, which isn't exactly attracting praise from Democrats. But House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi seems to be giving the president room on that.

Asked whether she considers chained CPI a benefit cut, Pelosi told reporters Wednesday, “No. I don’t. I consider it strengthening of Social Security."

A number of Democrats have been dodging questions over how Obama's latest offer handles entitlements. Some have been sending out statements against including chained CPI or speaking against including anything that touches Social Security in a fiscal cliff deal.

“I’ve said to the members, ‘Express yourselves. Speak out against it.’ Because I’m not thrilled with the president’s proposal,” Pelosi said. “It’s what it is in order to save the day, but that doesn’t mean we all identify with every aspect of it. So they go forth with my blessing.”

No Democrat who supports the chained CPI proposal will be eligible for a Blue America endorsement. And according to Hoyer, some Democrats-- presumably some of the trashy Blue Dogs who have evaded extermination so far-- are planning to vote for Boehner's Plan B tomorrow. There are probably at least a dozen Republicans who won't vote for it but if 24 vote "no," Boehner will need at least a few Blue Dogs fulfill their regular role of bolstering the far right and also making it possible for him to claim the vote was "bipartisan." As of now Boren is thought to be in the bag for Boehner and these Republicans are against Plan B: Justin Amash (MI), Joe Barton (TX), Paul Broun (GA), John Fleming (LA), Tim Huelskamp (KS), Jim Jordan (OH), Raul Labrador (ID), Doug Lamborn (CO), Joe Walsh (IL), Allen West (FL) and Lynn Westmoreland (GA). Still uncommitted are far right-wingers who may hold the balance: Todd Akin (MO), Michele Bachmann (MN), Marsha Blackburn (TN), Jeff Flake (AZ), Trent Franks (AZ), Scott Garrett (NJ), Phil Gingrey (GA), Cynthia Lummis (WY), Ron Paul (TX), Steve Scalise (LA), Steve Southerland (FL), Marlin Stutzman (IN), and Mike Turner (OH). That's 24-- enough to kill the bill without Blue Dog support. This is a press release sent out yesterday by the Congressional Progressive Caucus. We're excited that so many Democrats are remembering that they're in Congress for ideals and values, not to support the Wall Street crooks who helped give Obama a lovely career.

Members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) are standing up against a proposal to cut Social Security benefits by changing the way we calculate inflation. Last week, 102 Democrats, including both Progressive and New Democrats, signed a letter calling for Social Security to be off the table in current negotiations. The deal proposed by the Speaker cannot pass without some of those 102 Democrats. Tying Social Security to chained CPI is a benefit cut and members of the CPC will not vote for a deal that cuts the benefits that millions of Americans rely on.

  Press statements from Caucus members are below: 

Rep. Keith Ellison (Co-Chair of Congressional Progressive Caucus): “I am committed to standing against any benefit cuts to programs Americans rely on and tying Social Security benefits to chained CPI is a benefit cut."

Rep. Raúl Grijalva (Co-Chair of Congressional Progressive Caucus): "Chained CPI makes life harder for millions of retirees, weakens Social Security and doesn’t reduce the deficit by a penny. It’s a Beltway fig leaf that I will never support, and I call on my colleagues to make their feelings known as soon as possible before this becomes yet another piece of conventional wisdom that makes things worse."

Rep. Charles Rangel: “Reducing cost of living adjustments is a Social Security benefit cut. Any deal that cuts Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid benefits is unacceptable and I will oppose it.”

Rep. Jan Schakowsky: "We should not put a higher burden on lower-income and middle-class seniors and the millions of American families who depend on their earned benefits. To do so in order to shield the wealthiest Americans from a tax increase is nothing less than immoral.” 

Rep. John Conyers: “Any debt deal that cuts Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid benefits is unacceptable.”

Rep. Barbara Lee: "Any deal that cuts Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid benefits is unacceptable”

Rep. Jerry Nadler: “I do not support any deal that cuts Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid benefits.”

Rep. John Lewis: "The reward of their hard work should not be a significant reduction in resources the longer they live and the more vulnerable they become. Something is wrong with this equation."

Rep. Elijah Cummings: "It is fundamentally unfair to ask our most vulnerable citizens-- our elderly and our poor-- to shoulder the burden for our country; it is morally wrong and unacceptable. We must do better."

Rep. David Cicilline: "I will vote against any agreement that imposes cuts to already modest Social Security benefits and does not ask millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share."

Rep. Jim McDermott: "Reducing cost of living adjustments is a Social Security benefit cut. Any deal that cuts Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid benefits is unacceptable and I will oppose it." 

Rep. Peter DeFazio: “Using the chained CPI to calculate COLAs would cause the average senior to lose over $16,000 over 25 year retirement. Nearly 70 percent of Social Security beneficiaries depend on Social Security for at least half of their income. Social Security is the sole source of income for 15 percent of recipients . Asking these retirees on a fixed income to bear the brunt of reducing a deficit that they did not create is inappropriate and unacceptable.”

Moving Forward, Will Congress Treat Grover Norquist As Just Another Rapacious K Street Lobbyist?

Of the three Democrats who signed Grover Norquist's anti-tax pledge only one, Rob Andrews (NJ), will be returning to Congress. Nebraska reactionary and corporate whore Ben Nelson was driven from office and will return to lobbying and Kentucky Blue Dog Ben Chandler was defeated despite hundreds of thousands of dollars wasted on his race by the DCCC. Not that big a deal in Norquist-world. In the current Congress all but 6 of the 242 Republicans had signed-- plus 40 of the 47 Republican senators. Yesterday in The Hill, Russell Berman reported that the next Congress will be very different for Norquist.

Fewer incoming members of the House and Senate have signed the pledge against tax increases run by Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, in a reflection not only of the seats that Democrats gained but of the success they’ve enjoyed in vilifying Norquist.

About a dozen newly elected House Republicans refused to sign the anti-tax pledge during their campaigns, and another handful of returning Republicans have disavowed their allegiance to the written commitment.

With Democrats picking up seven or eight seats, that means the pledge guides fewer than the 218 members needed for a majority. In the Senate, where Republicans lost two seats, just 39 members of the chamber are pledge-signers, according to the group’s records. That is a drop from 238 members of the House and 41 senators  who committed to the pledge at the start of the 112th Congress.

Norquist’s diminished clout could have ramifications during intensifying negotiations over the so-called “fiscal cliff” and a grand bargain on taxes, spending and entitlements that leaders in both parties want to strike in the coming months.

  In the wake of President Obama’s reelection, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has said Republicans could accept a deal that includes new revenue under certain conditions. Legislation that increases overall federal revenue could violate the pledge, which forbids its signers from supporting increases in the marginal income tax rate or the elimination of deductions and loopholes that are not offset with tax cuts elsewhere.

Democratic leaders have blamed Norquist for the failure of previous deficit talks, accusing Republicans of bowing to his pledge in opposing an agreement with new tax revenue. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has compared Norquist to a “puppeteer” and dubbed the House majority “the Grover Norquist Congress.”

The Republican candidates who declined to sign the pledge in 2012 hail from a variety of states and districts, some safely red and others competitive. Most of the candidates said their decision should not be interpreted as support for tax increases.

...At the height of deficit talks in 2011, Norquist faced criticism from some Republicans who said they did not feel bound by a pledge many of them took years ago when they first ran for the House. Returning Republican Reps. Mike Simpson (Idaho), Howard Coble (N.C.), Jeff Fortenberry (Neb.) and Scott Rigell (Va.), among others, all disavowed the commitment. A pledge-signer in the Senate, Tom Coburn (Okla.), also publicly battled with Norquist... A House Democratic leadership aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity, was more hopeful. “As far as [Norquist’s] ability to sway votes, it’s gone,” the aide said. “So I don’t think he’s a concern.”

And from now until forever Norquist will always be known as the "poopy-head" guy... which probably won't make him more influential, especially now that Joe Walsh and Allen West have been defeated for reelection. 

Why Not A Single Sitting Senator Is Willing To Endorse Santorum

We started this post on Sunday-- Why Won't Santorum's Former Senate Colleagues Endorse Him?-- but there's more to it than just the desire of Republican senators to stay out of the way of the still presumptive party nominee and the choice of most GOP Big Money. First of all, many Republican senators don't view Santorum's off-the-tracks extremism and radical right vision as anything foreign to their own crabbed world views. Among the 14 senators who have endorsed Romney-- who, unlike Santorum, never served a day in the Senate-- there are both former Santorum colleagues like Thad Cochran (MS), Richard Burr (NC), Orrin Hatch (UT) and John McCain (AZ) and extreme right fanatics who are just as far from the American mainstream as he is, from Jim Risch (ID) and Roy Blunt (MO) to Mike Johanns (NE) and Kelly Ayotte (NH). So what's keeping the whole lot of them away from the surging Santorum?

And it's more than just the conservative consensus in Washington that if Santorum gets the nomination, the Republicans will lose any chance they have to regain control of the Senate and that they will lose control of the House as Obama rides a tidal wave of revulsion to a second term. It's Santorum himself-- or rather his record of astounding personal corruption. That's right... it hasn't been mentioned in the Republican primary battles, but every senator knows that Santorum, for all his moralistic posturing, is one of the most corrupt men to have sat in the U.S. Senate in decades.

Do you recall the K Street Project? Criminally indicted Tom DeLay, forced to resign his leadership post and then from Congress altogether-- and barely keeping himself out of prison-- usually gets all the "credit" for the K Street Project. But as every senator knows, half the credit belongs to DeLay's (and Grover Norquist's) partner in crime, Rick Santorum. In short, the K Street Project was an effort by the congressional Republicans to pressure Washington lobbying firms to hire Republican staffers in top positions and to defund the Democratic Party. Norquist and Abramoff were the overall masterminds and DeLay was their cat's paw in the House while Santorum had the same role in the Senate.

Last month, the Washington Post examined Santorum's role and his preposterous denials of involvement.

“I had absolutely nothing to do-- never met, never talked, never coordinated, never did anything-- with Grover Norquist and the, quote, K Street Project.”

-- Rick Santorum, during an interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Jan. 25, 2006

“I have never called anybody or talked to anyone to try to get anybody a position on K Street with one exception, and that is if someone from my office is applying for a job and an employer calls me.”

-- Santorum, in an interview with the Washington Times, Jan. 30, 2006

Santorum made these comments while trying to distance himself from the so-called “K Street Project,” an effort by key Republicans to place party loyalists in top lobbying positions. The program, led by conservative activist Grover Norquist and former House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas), took place to varying degrees from roughly 1995 until about 2006. Its name refers to the D.C. corridor where lobbyists have set up shop in large numbers.

Santorum and other Republicans first defended the project as a mere job-listing program, but critics said lawmakers were threatening to block government access and jobs from those who didn’t cooperate. The effort turned politically toxic after federal authorities indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff for corrupting public officials. Most lawmakers disassociated themselves from the program at that point.

We reviewed the K Street Project to determine whether Santorum and Norquist were involved in identical efforts. We also wanted to know whether the former senator violated any rules while trying to strengthen the GOP lobbying presence.

Santorum has not publicly discussed the K Street Project since 2006, so his quotes are obviously dated. We’ll re-visit the issue if more information emerges or if he characterizes his involvement differently.

...Norquist asked lobbyists for help completing the profiles during a private meeting in June 2002, according to a report that year from the Post. Santorum, who was serving as chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, hosted the gathering, the article said.

The previous year, Santorum had started holding twice-monthly conferences with handpicked lobbyists and GOP officials to review job openings in the lobbying world. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette quoted the former senator referring to those discussions as the “K Street meetings.”

Former GOP congressman and lobbyist Rod Chandler explained to Washington Monthly how the gatherings worked. “The underlying theme was [to] place Republicans in key positions on K Street,” he said. “Everybody taking part was a Republican and understood that that was the purpose of what we were doing.”

Santorum acknowledged his involvement with the routine lobbyist meetings, and even admitted to holding conferences with Senate Republicans to discuss the appointment of Democrat Dan Glickman as head of the Motion Picture Association of America.

“Yeah we had a meeting, and yeah, we talked about making sure that we have fair representation on K Street,” he told Roll Call in 2004. “I admit that I pay attention to who is hiring, and I think it’s important for leadership to pay attention.”

Santorum also used the term “K Street Project” at one point to describe his job-placement discussions. “The K Street Project is purely to make sure we have qualified applicants for positions that are in town,” he told the Post-Gazette in 2005. “From my perspective, it’s a good government thing.”

The former senator later said he had thought of the term as a generic reference that could include his outreach efforts, suggesting he believed Norquist’s initiative was separate from his own.

The Senate ethics committee issued a letter in 2002 warning lawmakers not to use the lobbyist dossiers to block people from government access or jobs based on party affiliation, which would violate Senate rules.

The Post gave Santorum "2 Pinocchios" for his pattern of lying about his role in the K Street Project and for his refusal to answer questions about it this year. "No one," they conclude, "has established that the surging GOP candidate threatened to limit government access for Democrats, but we know that he took steps to improve the odds of a strong Republican presence in the lobbying game... Santorum’s remarks about Norquist don’t match the facts. Norquist himself acknowledged that he attended at least one meeting with the former senator to discuss the K Street Program."

Senators know, from first hand experience, how corrupt the K Street project really was and while they were grateful to Santorum for the corporate and lobbyist money it brought them... the unsavory nature of the whole project is nothing anyone familiar with the sordid details wants to embrace. (In his own failed reelection bid in 2006, Santorum vacuumed up $496,683 from his K Street lobbyists, the most of any candidate during the cycle, and over his career he took $731,937 from DC lobbyists). Still... some of them may well be asking the same question David Atkins did yesterday, is Santorum more stupid or more crazy? Atkins wonders aloud if Rick is "a power-mad situational ethicist who simply doesn't give credence to any spiritual beliefs that might reject other things government pays for that people find morally objectionable, such as illegal wars, capital punishment, faith-based initiatives, etc. In which case he intends to rule with a dominionist iron fist of theocracy in which government needn't pay a dime for anything his narrow of band co-religionists find objectionable, but must pay for things that others might well find immoral. In which case he shouldn't be allowed anywhere near power of any kind, even as a manager at McDonalds, to say nothing of Commander-in-Chief." And, yes, there are even some Republican senators uncomfortable with that notion. Although... I don't know what's holding back DeMint and Inhofe.

ANN COULTER ENDORSES HILLARY OVER McCAIN WHILE DENNY HASTERT REMINDS VOTERS THAT McCAIN IS A BRIBE TAKER; RON PAUL OUT-RAISES THE OTHER PYGMIES

Few know as much about bribery as Denny Hastert-- and he pins the tail on the McCain

When you think of the really crazy wingnuts, the deranged ones, who are crying that McCain isn't far right enough for them, you think of drug addicts, petty criminals and delusional psychopaths like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Mark Levin, Santorum, Dobson, Michele Malkin... No one cares what they say but themselves and a few crazy toe-suckers, so when some of them claim they'd rather see Hillary in the White House than McCain... well, don't get your hopes up. Aside from each other, no one is taking any of them seriously. True, average Republican voters have been unhappy by their nominees but None of the Above is no longer an option. In the last quarter they expressed their disdain for the GOP field by staying away from the caucuses and primaries-- and by not donating any money (except for Ron Paul, who is popular and outraised the rest of the pygmies).

Clinton brought in $26.8 million, while Obama raised $22.8 million.

...McCain, the Arizona senator who has emerged as the front-runner, raised $6.8 million, but had to take out a loan to keep his campaign afloat. Romney, the wealthy former Massachusetts governor, brought in $9 million in contributions, but loaned his campaign twice that amount. Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, raised $6.6 million. And topping the field with an impressive $19.7 million raised in the fourth quarter was Paul, the libertarian-leaning Texas congressman, though he barely registers in polls.

Taking into account the full year, Clinton and Obama in 2007 out-raised the four remaining Republicans $209 million to $128 million.

Still, I was somewhat surprised today when Former Planet, Denny Hastert threw off the carefully maintained disguise of a mainstreamish conservative and revealed himself as a raving lunatic on a level with the rest of these yammering imbeciles.

Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert questioned John McCain’s Republican credentials today, saying he was always known among the GOP as “the undependable vote” in the Senate and always “allied with Democrats.”

None of McCain's rivals have brought up McCain's days as a bribe-taking scumbag and now that he's got a lock on the nomination, it was bizarre to hear Hastert-- who may need a presidential pardon in the not too distant future-- inject McCain's lowest moment in public life, his part in the "Keating 5" corruption scandal, into the public debate.

Hastert is a political protege of another Republican criminal, Tom DeLay, who also would rather cut off his weener than see McCain become president. Hastert, a closet case and former high school wrestling coach, has a bit of a crush on Willard (who was also greatly admired by Larry Craig) and went on the attack for the sake of his man today.

Speaking later to the [Chicago] Tribune, Hastert, who retired from Congress in November of last year, said McCain changed after the Keating Five to become “more of a populist.”

“He was gearing up for a run for the presidency in 2000 so he had to change track and clean up his image, from my point of view,” Hastert said.

The former House speaker has not had a lot of good to say about McCain in recent years. He contended that on agenda items under the Republican-controlled Congress, “it just seems like everything we did, John was someplace else.”

“It was McCain-Kennedy, it was McCain-Lieberman, it was McCain-Feingold on campaign finance reform,” Hastert said, noting Democratic co-sponsors. “He was against us on tax cuts and his form of immigration reform was to open the gates and let everybody in.”

Asked if he considered McCain a conservative, Hastert said, “In my opinion, he is not.”

“He is a moderate,” the former speaker said. “In almost everything he’s done, he’s done (things) against what mainstream Republicans thought and he’s allied with Democrats. He was always the undependable vote in the Senate.”

Tomorrow NY Times reports on the split in the far right segment of the GOP, much of which is now accepting that McCain is their man, even if they don't like all his stands. First to sell out any semblance of principle, of course, were the right-wing lobbyists like Grover Norquist for whom it has always been and will always be about who shoves a buck up his ass first. Religionist charlatans like Tony Perkins and Richard Land weren't far behind. But as David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union explained, the far right is becoming "resigned" to McCain and for many of them who makes ends meet as lobbysists, like himself and Norquist, a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. “There are people who don’t like the idea of a being off a campaign or being on the bad list if the guy gets into the White House. This is a town in which 90 percent of the people balance their access and income on the one hand versus their principles on the other.”

We noticed. If you missed Hillary campaigner Ann Coulter on Hannity... this is for real:




UPDATE: RICK SANTORUM AND LAURA INGRAHAM ENDORSE WILLARD

This audio is pretty bizarre and it clearly shows why Santorum was beaten so profoundly in his re-election bid in 2006. He's genuinely out of his mind. And is he filled with hatred; nice to see it directed at McCain instead of at decent Democrats trying to do what's right for America. And Obama also has some extreme right wing nuts who like him too-- even beyond the Ron Paul supporters. And moderate Republicans, recognizing McCain for the fake he is, have been endorsing and supporting Obama as well. Last week the daughter of President Kennedy endorsed Obama; today is was the granddaughter of Kennedy's predecessor, Dwight Eisenhower.

Eisenhower is one of a small but symbolically powerful group of what Obama recently called "Obamacans"--disaffected Republicans who have drifted away from their party just as Eisenhower Democrats did and, more recently, Reagan Democrats in the 1980s. They include lifelong Republican Tricia Moseley, a former staffer for the late Sen. Strom Thurmond, the one-time segregationist from South Carolina. Now a high-school teacher, Moseley says she was attracted to Obama's positions on education and the economy.

Now that is something: ex-KKK enthusiasts for Obama!

ONE MORE TIME-- HOW MUCH RESPONSIBILITY DOES BUSH-STYLE REPUBLICANISM BEAR FOR THE CATASTROPHE IN CALIFORNIA THIS WEEK?

Driving home from a long overdue dash to accomplish a boatload of chores-- everything from buying a new spare tire and a new printer/fax and getting a visa for India to stocking up on antioxident-rich fresh berries for my morning shakes-- I heard an extraordinary interview on the radio. It was with a former Southern California fire chief. I've been looking everywhere online for a transcript but, with no recollection of his name, have had no luck. Basically he explained how badly government, primarily Republican-led government, has let us down. He also pointed out that when San Diego County voters were asked to approve taxes to build new fire prevention infrastructure, they ran in the other direction.

A friend of mine in San Diego just sent me an AP story about another Southern California fire chief, Chip Prather of Orange County.

Unable to slow, much less stop, many of the wildfires that have charred Southern California, some local officials lashed out Tuesday at what they described as state authorities who offered inadequate help and seemed unprepared for a foreseeable disaster.

Most blistering in his critique was the head of Orange County's fire authority, who said a quick deployment of aircraft could have corralled the massive blaze his crews were fighting near heavily populated Irvine.

"It is an absolute fact, had we had more air resources we would have been able to control this fire," Chief Chip Prather told reporters.

His remarks came shortly before Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger praised the rapid deployment of fire crews and equipment across a region where 16 wind-stoked fires were scattered over an area larger than some states. The blazes destroyed nearly 1,300 homes and forced the largest mass evacuation in California history.

Prather said that a dozen firefighters' lives were threatened at one point because too few crews were on the ground. It was not an isolated problem, he suggested, saying the bigger issue was the lack of an overarching scheme to attack several large fires at once.

"What we need to have is a national strategy and a state strategy," he said.

He sounds very much like the fire chief I heard on the radio. They're both victims-- we are all victims-- or the Grover Norquist philosophy of drowning government in a bathtub, the paramount domestic policy of the Bush Regime. The radio guy talked a lot about the blue ribbon panel outgoing Governor Davis and incoming Governor Schwarzenegger put together after the 2003 wildfires that destroyed thousands of homes and killed 2 dozen people. The panel made dozens of recommendations-- man of which Schwarzenegger ignored, much to the detriment of the families losing their homes this week.

Tomorrow's NY Times brings the California debate national. "Questions were being raised about how the fight against the fires had been coordinated, how resources had been deployed and whether Southern California had become smarter after the 2003 fires that ripped the region and its psyche..."

Some fire chiefs and elected officials said that they were angry with the state government for not adopting recommendations made by a blue-ribbon panel after the fires in 2003, in particular those that called for more firefighting equipment.

“There were a lot of calls for equipment and resources,” said Assemblyman Todd Spitzer, who represents a district in Orange County. “When you have a finite amount of resources, you have to prioritize life and property first, and so we didn’t get water dropping until we started to lose structures.”

The fires of October 2007 have sharpened questions about the costs of protecting the increasing numbers of people who live in remote and highly flammable areas, reawakened old jealousies that simmer across Southern California and forced new examination of the tension between the need for local emergency services and the willingness to pay for them.

San Diego County, the largest county in California without a fire department, relies on a hodgepodge of local departments that are almost all serving areas where populations are growing faster than their tax bases, and which are often low on money among a constituency that is generally allergic to taxes.

Norquist, Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, the whole Republican Party have taught these people very well how unnecessary governement, and the hated taxes that make government effective, are. I hope you read how Ken dealt with this same topic this afternoon. If you haven't had a chance to get to it yet, I strongly recommend that you do. Ken is brief and to the point and ends with two damning paragraphs that bear repeating:

I don't even recall which of the Bush-regime-inspired catastrophes Paul Krugman was commenting on last week on Countdown when Keith Olbermann pressed him for some glimmering of why, and he noted that the right-wing loonies--uh, my phrase, not his--just go crazy over any suggestion that people have any responsibility to help one another. It just drives them nuts. And no one has argued more persuasively than Krugman that one of the central missions of this administration has been to prove that government is truly incompetent to deal with problems, even (or especially) problems that have been attacked with success in the past by honest and competent government officials. (Remember the Clinton-era FEMA that was widely admired for its commitment to emergency preparedness?)

Couple this fundamental underlying psychosis with that other great philosophical underpinning of modern "conservative" government--that government exists for the purpose of helping its friends, cronies, and cash contributors steal every dollar that isn't nailed down--and you've got, well, the same old same old.

UPDATE: HOLD THE PRESSES... IT'S NOT BUSH'S FAULT

Fox News has made up a story that bin-Laden set the fires. There you go; we should have known.

CAN PAWLENTY, NORQUIST AND BUSH BE CHARGED AS ACCESSORIES TO MURDER IN THE MINNEAPOLIS BRIDGE COLLAPSE?

I just went upstairs to get dressed for my morning hike and CNN was on. I saw Minnesota Tim Pawlenty speaking. He made a vapid, shallow political speech about the goodness of Minnesotans, upon whose goodwill his career depends. He also talked about the debris removal process. For the sake of the safety of all Americans-- in Minnesota and elsewhere-- that process should include the removal of every elected official who subscribes to the Republican Party ideology voiced by Republican Party Chief Propagandist Grover Norquist (AKA- "Field Marshall of The Bush Plan")

"I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."

If you want Republicans in government, you get the inability for a society to act effectively and efficiently in the case of unforseen tragedies like Katrina or you get bridges with structural problems not being attended to. And low taxes for the very wealthy. You get greed and avarice run wild and contempt for the common good.

As my friend Pachacutec mentioned this morning, "Republican government is structurally deficient. It must be replaced. It kills." Was the bridge structurally deficient? Yes, according to today's StarTribune.

The highway bridge that collapsed into the Mississippi River on Wednesday was rated as "structurally deficient" two years ago and possibly in need of replacement.
That rating was contained in the U.S. Department of Transportation's National Bridge Inventory database.

...Many other bridges nationwide carry the same designation that the I-35W bridge received.

Minnesota's right-wing governor, Tim Pawlenty, who vetoed a bill requesting funds for highway repairs and who refused to authorize funds for structural repairs on the bridge, denied this morning that inspections in 2005 and 2006 found any deficiencies. I wonder if second degree murder charges can be brought against him. I doubt it.

Bush would have been crossing that bridge in 3 weeks when he arrived for a fundraiser for right-wing Senator Norm Coleman, a rubber stamp hack Minnesotans are sick and tired of. Bush will be speaking at a fundraising dinner for wealthy Minnesotans happy they didn't have to pay taxes (that might have saved the lives lost in yesterday's bridge catastrophe). Of course, who needs taxes, Republicans-- and the Democrats who think like them-- think you can just you can just raise traffic fines to fix deteriorating highway infrastructure. [Please take special note of the comment at that link.]

An editorial in today's Popular Mechanics makes clear we should get used to things like bridges collapsing if we as a society don't want to spend the money to repair infrastructure. Anti-tax (which amounts, in effect, to anti-society) wingnuts have expressed dismay that a major bridge could just fall down in the United States. I guess they missed this one in California three days ago or this problem over Carr's Creek in New York last year. This one in downtown Albany wasn't quite as bad, but that was a miracle. And the famous collapse of a 100 foot deck of the Mianus River Bridge (I-95) near Greenwich, CT was so long ago... 1983... and only 3 people died.

Our politicians will continue collecting campaign contributions and other bribes from the wealthy, cutting their taxes and endangering our lives for as long as we let them. Just keep voting for Republicans and for Democrats who vote like Republicans. I heard Bush on the radio a few minutes ago. He offered Minnesotans his prayers. He should be impeached.


IF ONLY THE TAX CUTTERS KNEW SOONER

"Minnesota officials were warned as early as 1990 that the bridge that plummeted into the Mississippi River was 'structurally deficient,' yet they relied on a strategy of patchwork fixes and stepped-up inspections." But Pawlenty is running around like a chicken without a head trying to close barn doors now.

THE FDA AND THE GOP-- A MARRIAGE MADE IN HELL, AT LEAST FOR THE REST OF US

I'm not wishing death on Grover Norquist, the Bush Regime's chief ideologist, any sooner than God decided he's given him enough rope. But I suspect that Norquist and I would both agree that of all the things he's said over his years as a far right propagandist, the statement most suited to appear on his tombstone would be:

"I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."

Norquist's quote, gospel around Republican Party circles, is what should disqualify that party from ever gaining control of any branch of government again, let alone all three. Even a Bush supporting Neocon like Thomas Friedman took Norquist to task for it, writing in his NY Times column after the dismal-- if not studied-- failure of the Bush Regime to respond competently, adequately, or even humanely, to the Hurricane Katrina disaster, that "An administration whose tax policy has been dominated by the toweringly selfish Grover Norquist... doesn't have the instincts for this moment. Mr. Norquist is the only person about whom I would say this: I hope he owns property around the New Orleans levee that was never properly finished because of a lack of tax dollars. I hope his basement got flooded. And I hope that he was busy drowning government in his bathtub when the levee broke and that he had to wait for a U.S. Army helicopter to get out of town."

And that brings us to an article in the Wall Street Journal, no doubt Grover's very favorite daily newspaper and one that consistently espouses his gruesome and selfish philosophy of government on it's addled editorial pages.

Congressional investigators are expected to tell a House subcommittee today that the Food and Drug Administration's ability to ensure the safety of the U.S. food supply is "minimal" and agency plans to overhaul its inspection regime could make a bad situation worse.

FDA officials, under fire for the recent string of high-profile food scares involving both domestic and imported foods, have been asked to appear before a House Energy and Commerce investigations subcommittee hearing to discuss the agency's food inspections.

Committee staff reviewed the system extensively and found that a shrinking inspection staff examines less than 1% of all imported food. A typical inspector in the FDA's San Francisco office examines nearly 1,000 food entries a day-- roughly one every 30 seconds, the committee report found. The agency, it says, allows importers to take possession of their high-risk goods and arrange for testing by a private laboratory. Before melamine-contaminated pet food killed and sickened thousands of pets, the FDA had never inspected those ingredients from China.

The FDA is trying to reorganize its field operations, but the report says some of its measure may backfire. Only a small percentage of its senior scientists are willing to be transferred if the agency closes seven of 13 laboratories. And in boxes of documents delivered to congressional investigators to explain the reasoning behind the closures, the agency didn't appear to have conducted any cost
analysis.

The committee investigators also raise questions about the adequacy of the FDA's mostly voluntary approach to domestic and imported food. Because of lack of authority, FDA inspectors had been refused by some companies to access their records and test results. With the exceptions of several food categories, "FDA has no rules governing testing protocols, record retention...manufacturing, quality assurance and control, or the right to examine any records that a food-processing firm chooses to keep voluntarily," the report said.

...The report, part of today's hearing, comes as Democrats are critical about how the White House has handled food safety. Funding for the FDA's food program has been stagnant, and the agency's effort to fix problems has been limited by funding shortfalls, bureaucratic delays and lack of political will.

How is it possible that a narrow extremist philosophy of government, based on blatant selfishness and on the overt and aggressive disregard for one's neighbors, has gotten into a position where the American people can be victims of poisoned food and a failure of government to respond to natural disasters? It can't all be about George Bush, can it? Nope it can't. It's about the Republican Party-- and Insider Democrats-- obsessed with greed and devoid of conscience or the will to stand up and fight for what was once valued.

Recently Bush's Secretary of Labor, Elaine Chao, told Parade Magazine that American workers would suffer less from the export of jobs if they had better personal hygiene. There's more to this than just the disdain for working people by the selfish rich running Bush's Regime. Elaine Chao, a civil servant married-- in a manner of speaking-- to another civil servant, Kentucky's closeted gay Republican Senator, Mitch McConnell, has gotten enormously wealthy by encouraging big corporations, like WalMart and its suppliers to export jobs overseas, where I doubt the slave laborers use more soap than American union workers. The McConnells have done very well for themselves posing as "free traders," rather than as the vicious predators they have been, using their offices to enrich themselves while jeopardizing the livelihoods of the people whose taxes pay their salaries.

There is something very dysfunctional about the American government. It's called the Republican Party, branches of which are called the DLC and the Blue Dog Democrats.


UPDATE: WHY DID THE BUSH REGIME SABOTAGE THE FDA?

Last week FDA employees testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee and told lawmakers that top political appointees attempted to intimidate them and prevent them from cooperating with Congress in investigations about the agency's ability to keep the nation's food supply safe. Par for the course, the Bush Course.