Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Señor Trumpanzee, the Republican Party's "der Leader," on President Obama's golfing:

          President Obama played golf yesterday??? (Tweet, November 18, 2013)

          Can you believe that, with all of the problems and difficulties facing the U.S., President Obama spent the day playing golf. Worse than Carter. (Tweet, October 13, 2014)

          We pay for Obama's travel so he can fundraise for millions so democrats can run on lies. Then we pay for his golf. (Tweet, October 14, 2014)

          Presidents don't have time to take time off. I would rarely leave the White House because there's so much work to be done. (June 23, 2015)

          While our wonderful president was out playing golf all day, the TSA is falling apart, just like out government! Airports a total disaster! (Tweet, May 2016)

          I'm going to be working for you. I'm not going to have time to play golf. (On the campaign trail, Summer 2016)

You get the picture. When it came to criticizing President Obama for playing golf, Señor Trumpanzee had no off button; neither did the gross hypocrisy that comes with the man. The tweets above barely scratch the surface. Dozens exist. Hard to believe, you say? Here's a few more!

2017 In Review, A Hell Bound Train Of A Year (Part 9) Donald Trump: The Mind Planet Of A Completely Bonkers President

-by Noah

The above clip, from The President Show, is satire, but the best satire has much more than a grain of truth to it. As you begin to watch it, it’s all too real. Such are the words and behavior of the 45th president of the United States. He lives in his own world, his own reality, and he’s dragging us down with it.

History is filled with examples of lunatic heads of state. Shrinks are still trying to get into the minds of people like Caligula, Nero, Henry the 8th, George the 3rd, and far more recent and even more horrid examples of humanity who made it to a position great power where they created massive mayhem and pain. The mind of Donald Trump appears to be no different.

Let’s start with this:

Trumpian Deductive Reasoning:

Comey is a liar.
Comey’s testimony “completely vindicated me.”
Therefore, it takes a liar and lies to vindicate Trump.

Right there, in those three lines, you see a creature that lacks the ability to reason his way, step by step, through life. The brain synapses are in a state of severe malfunction. Imagine if Trump was the president during the Civil War instead of Lincoln. Imagine a President Trump in the 1930s deciding that the best way to help Americans was to just hand out tax cuts to the wealthy, or suppose he was president in 1940 as WWII approached. Who would he have sided with? We are now in another era that is extremely dangerous to the future of the United States, and we have the severely mentally ill Don the Con sitting in the Oval Office, surrounded by sycophant staffers and congressional accomplices.

Trump’s mental illness is not just about his narcisism of a bigly scale. It is also the type of derangement that leads him to defend Nazis, endorse a credibly accused pedophile, appoint cabinet officials and give them the job of dismantling their department to the great harm of the country’s citizens, re-tweet Al Qaeda propaganda videos, demonstrate his envy of brutal dictators like Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines and Vladimir Putin of Russia, and fight to take away health care from millions in this country. Trump is a villain of comic book and horror movie proportions. The problem is that he is real and he’s destroying the United States Of America better and faster than Russia and China could have ever hoped for. Even worse, he has the help of the whole Republican Party and a tail-dragging media. The planet Trump; or at least his mind, lives on is not the same one as you or I.

All politicians have a bit of narcissism in them. It takes a touch of that to stand before a crowd, think you deserve to be elected, and to yell out “Vote. For. ME."

But, Trump has taken this to a whole new world. He has taken it so far that he has broken all barriers to the world of the insane. The following comes from the American Psychiatric Association “Official Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders:

Narcissistic Personality Disorder/DSM-IV TR Diagnostic Criteria

Pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, lack of empathy; beginning in adulthood, indicated by five or more of the following:

1. Grandiose sense of self-imporatance
2. Fantasies of unlimited success, power, beauty, etc.
3. Believes he/she is “special”
4. Requires excessive admiration
5. Has a sense of entitlement
6. Is interpersonally exploitative
7. Lacks empathy
8. Is often envious, or believes that others are envious of him
9. Shows arrogant behaviors or attitudes

Trump scores a perfect 9. We can all fill in the examples from what we see and hear of him every day. Forget the minimum of 5 of 9. Here is something where Trump actually does get the top grade. And, by the way, the cause of Trump’s insanity doesn’t matter. Dementia? Syphilis? Brain damage. A bad father? All that matters is what is.

One of many things that bother me about Trump and his supporters is that all of us, regardless of where we are on the political spectrum, can easily recognize that North Korea’s Kim Jong-un is insane but the Republican half of America refuses to see the obvious fact that Trump is not far from North Korea’s Kim Jong-un when it comes to “the crazy.” In North Korea, Kim Jong-un demands praise from his people. Trump follows suit right here. I’ve said it here before. They are like brothers from another mother. If, as normal people do, we accept that Kim Jong-un is stark raving bonkers, why wouldn’t we admit that our own president is as well? It’s plain as day.

As I write this (Tuesday night) reports have just come in that Kim Jong-un warned that he has nukes that can reach some of our territories and a button to control them always at the ready on his desk. Trump, a man every bit as out of control, insanely took the bait and responded that his button is bigger. Have at it shrinks! When is a button more than a button?

Insecure? You bet. Massivly insecure. Think about it. Trump has his cabinet brown-nose him on live TV. When his cult-like Republican Party passed his tax scam just a few weeks ago, he held another get together just so lowlifes and fellow psychotics like Paul Ryan and his congressional accomplices could verbally fellate him in the Rose Garden on live TV. This is crazy banana republic dictator stuff. All of this adds up to a derangement that equals clinical insanity. Ask yourself how off the grid psychotic do you have to be to celebrate steeling money from 98 percent of America while fellow Americans in Puerto Rico are dying from lack of medical attention and clean water and power.



There’s a lot more to the Kim Jong-un-Donald Trump comparison. For instance both Trump and Kim Jong-un love golf. We all know how much time Trump spends golfing. He claims to have made a hole-in-one and won many championships. We’ve also heard how much he cheats to improve his score.



Not to be outdone, Kim Jong-Un has his minions spin tales of his golf exploits, including a record 5 holes in one in his very first game of golf, never mind that the true greatest golfers in the world are lucky to have one in their entire career. North Korea’s madman also had his state news organization report that North Korea had won Soccer’s 2014 World Cup! Trump has his version. It’s called FOX “News.”

Think Trump isn’t as bad? Do you think Trump can’t top that World Cup claim? How about his claim that he is responsible for the lack of any fatal commercial aircraft disasters in 2017? Well, check this out. It’s his tweet (one of them) from this morning:

Since taking office I have been very strict on Commercial Aviation. Good news-- it was just reported that there were Zero Deaths in 2017, the best and safest year on record!

That’s worldwide and he has nothing to do with flights outside the U.S. even if he could credibly claim that he had anything to do with the happy news here. Besides, one of the first things he did when he moved into the White House was to ease regulations on the airline industry, so, if anything, he was lucky, as are we all if we flew this past year.

Trump likes to give himself other trophies. Some come in the form of fake Time Magazine covers on the walls of at least four of his golf clubs. One “trophy” in particular is a faked up cover of TIME Magazine, complete with the headline claim that his TV show, The Apprentice is a “television smash” and, “Trump Is Hitting On All Fronts… Even TV!” Says Time spokesperson Kerri Chyka:

I can confirm that this is not a real TIME cover.

Apparently, the TIME cover, dated March 1, 2009, is only real in the sick mind of President Trump, or, perhaps, it’s all, just as the equally insane Kellyanne Conway would say, “alternative facts”. And, when it comes to TIME, the fake cover is not the only story. It is reported that in his own mind, Trump thinks he has been the TIME cover boy more than Richard Nixon not on the real Earth, of course, just on the one his mind lives in. Trump has almost 50 more appearances to go. Trump might get there. The fact that Nixon was forced to resign led to a lot of those covers. Even Hillary Clinton has graced the cover about 3 times as often. I be that irritates Trump bigly. The faux magazine cover was just another example of his addiction to praise and worship as if he were some fake god that rules a mythical jungle culture. His cultist followers love it. Sane people are getting wise to it.

Señor Trumpanzee is no stranger to the promulgation of fake news. During the 2016 Republican primary, he famously accused the father of Texas Senator Rafael “Ted” Cruz of being involved in the assassination of JFK in 1963. Then there’s also that thing about the inauguration attendance, and so much more. It’s a non-stop tsunami of crazy.

One wonders what other magazine covers Trump will soon be displaying. How about a copy of Sports Illustrated with Trump as the hero quarterback of the 2014 Super Bowl Champion New York Jets after he threw an NFL record 8 touchdown passes in the game. Oh, wait, the Jets haven’t been to the Super Bowl since 1969. The Jets are desperate for a quarterback, though. I’d love to see Trump in there, on the field, as the best, fastest, and strongest defensive ends and linebackers rushed at him, ready to slam his ugly puss into the mud.

Trump’s real brush with pro-football? He owned the failed New Jersey Generals of the extinct United States Football League. His bonkers stewardship of the Generals was instrumental in the failure of the entire league.

Trump thinks things like fake magazine covers and the cloying, pathetic, and obsequious praise of his cult of mental midgets like Paul Ryan and Mike Pence say how great he is but one thing they say for sure is that he is the real king of fake news. He misses the irony, of course.

I don’t even have to get into Trump’s pathological lying that his sick followers lap up like honey from the gods. We see them with virtually every tweet and every pronouncement. The list is so long that newspapers see fit to publish it. The psychotic grandiosity of it all is Trump’s taking of the Josef Goebbels “Big Lie” theory to a max that might even scare Goebbels himself.

All of Trump’s personality amounts to the actions and ravings of a madman. As Larry Wolfe’s recently released book makes clear, all of those rumors about Trump screaming and ranting around the White House are true. Reportedly, even White House staffers are bothered by his lack of both intelligence and sanity. Apparently, though, they aren’t bothered enough about Trump’s mental condition to do anything to save this country and possibly the world. His entire Republican Party is being even worse as they move to obstruct justice and pervert the Constitution and our laws.

I’m not here to officially diagnose Donald Trump. What I’m writing is what I, like you, can see: the obvious. Psychiatry is not my field but it’s safe to say that any reasonably stable and intelligent person knows a crazy person when they see one. I have enough experience with the mentally ill to know that, if you are in the room with a crazy person, they don’t have to say a word. You will know. It doesn’t even take a sixth sense. Given that, the people who deal with Trump up close and personal every day, have zero excuse for not going public just as Congress has zero excuse for not invoking the 25th amendment or calling for impeachment. Sadly, they have decided to throw their country away in the service of their wallets. What will happen the day, Senor Trumpanzee hands them all little cups of hemlock , cyanide-laced grape juice, or Drano?

To me, it’s impossible not to watch Trump speak for 2 minutes and not know what I’m looking at. That has nothing at all to do with his positions, his racism or whatever. One could agree with him on every issue and still see the obvious insanity that should have automatically, disqualified him from any public office while also qualifying him for removal from free society and placement in a facility for the deranged.

That said, why don’t I leave it to the professionals. Here is a November 30th letter from forensic psychiatrist Dr. Bandy X. Lee of the Yale School of Medicine to the New York Times:

To the editor:

I am the editor of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President. We represent a much larger number of concerned mental health professionals who have come forward to warn against the president’s psychological instability and the dangers it poses. We number in the thousands.

We are currently witnessing more than his usual state of instability-- in fact, a pattern of decompensation: increasing loss of touch with reality, marked signs of volatility and unpredictable behavior, and an attraction to violence as a means of coping. These characteristics place our country and the world at extreme risk of danger.

Ordinarily, we carry out a routine process for treating people who are dangerous: containment, removal from access to weapons and an urgent evaluation. We have been unable to do so because of Mr. Trump’s status as president. But the power of the presidency and the type of arsenal he has access to should raise greater alarm, not less.

We urge the public and the lawmakers of this country to push for an urgent evaluationof the president, for which we are in the process of developing a separate but independent expert panel, capable of meeting and carrying out all medical standards of care.

When I first read the above letter, I was struck by how it covered so much of what I already felt. However, I am also struck by how reserved it is. Sure it deals with Trump’s potential for extreme violence by dancing around the idea that he has, as he himself would say, the “big button.” It also covers Trump’s being out of touch with reality.

What Bandy X. Lee’s letter doesn’t mention is Trump’s obvious incapability of anything reassembling empathy. I really hope this man never had any pets as a child. As for his treatment of American citizens, his psychosis is there for all to see, whether it’s in his overt racism, his hate for the environment, his hate for education; the later two exemplified by his cabinet appointments, the former in his words and policy preferences and the white nationalists he surrounds himself with. Then there’s his general total disregard for anyone who isn’t extremely wealthy, especially so extremely wealthy that they have no reason other than morality or patriotism to be loyal to their fellow Americans. This is clearly exemplified by his tax scam and his antipathy towards health care.

Back in December, Dr. Lee was asked to come to Washington to brief a dozen members of Congress. Incredibly, one was even a republican, although I think it’s safe to say that that republican was just attending in order to be a set of eyes and ears. Dr. Lee would not reveal the names of those who attended, but, her professional warning was clear

He’s going to unravel, and we are seeing the signs.

She added that

Trump is going back to conspiracy theories, denying things he has said before, his being drawn to violent videos… We feel that the rush of tweeting is an indication of his falling apart under stress. Trump is going to get worse and will become uncontainable with the pressures of the presidency.

It’s time to forget impeachment. The sands of the hourglass have run out. We can always learn the details of the treachery of Trump and his party and we must. It’s more important right now that he be gone or we will all be gone, as a country, maybe as much more. As Dr. Lee indicates, the tweets alone reveal that Trump is so mentally unstable that the 25th amendment should be invoked within the hour. Once Robert Mueller comes forward with his complete report, we should lock Trump up along with his entire family and all of his criminal accomplices in Congress: not that that would ever happen, but, if it doesn’t it will set a horrific precedent and, sooner are later, the country and the world will pay when the next lunatic comes along and takes over the Oval Office.

Phil Mickelson Got Very Rich Playing Golf... So He Doesn't Think He Should Have To Pay Taxes

What could be more fitting? Mickelson & the tainted HSBC cup

I met Bob Lord when he ran for Congress against freaky Arizona Republican sex maniac John Shadegg (since driven out of politics, thank God). Bob, an attorney and still a progressive force inside the Arizona Democratic Party, blogs on a variety of DWT-type topic for BlogForArizona and Monday he said it would be OK for us to republish the post he ran about... Phil Mickelson. When you read it, imagine that golf is an actual sport rather than a hobby for rich white men.

Pity Poor Phil Mickelson
-by Bob Lord

It's irritating enough when we hear a plutocrat whine about his tax burden, but when a guy who has become fantastically wealthy playing golf does so, he ought to be facing jail time.

  I love the game of golf. I've been playing since I was 11, and introduced my sons to the game when they were 6. But I don't care all that much for golfers (except the ones I drink with after I play. I have a soft spot in my cold liberal heart for them). Golfers utterly fail to appreciate how fortunate they are to be playing golf on a regular basis. I especially don't care for pro golfers-- not the ones who work in golf shops, but the ones you see on TV. They're insanely fortunate to accumulate unbelievable wealth doing something inherently frivolous, yet most come to see themselves as really important figures.

And they're rabidly conservative as a group. I read a golf digest article in 2004, where a poll of professional male golfers came out 64-0 in favor of Bush over Kerry. When a group's views are that uniform, something is wrong.

Enter Phil Mickelson.

He's one of the most successful golfers of all time. Including endorsements, he's made hundreds of millions playing golf. He's never spent a day in a regular job. He hasn't had it easy in every respect, with more than his fair share of family health issues. But financially, he's been insanely lucky.  And here he is, in the NY Times Sports Section, whining about his increased tax burden. 

“I’m not going to jump the gun and do it right away,” he said after carding a six-under-par 66 to finish in a 10-way tie for 37th, “but there are going to be some drastic changes for me because I happen to be in that zone that has been targeted both federally and by the state. And, you know, it doesn’t work for me right now. So I’m going to have to make some changes.”

... Last year, he was ranked by Forbes magazine as the seventh highest-paid athlete, with $47.8 million in earnings, including $43 million in endorsements.

“If you add up all the federal and you look at the disability and the unemployment and the Social Security and state, my tax rate is 62, 63 percent,” Mickelson said. “So I’ve got to make some decisions on what to do.”

To start out with, he's clueless about his marginal tax rate. If you factor in the rate at which his federal tax burden is reduced by his state tax payments, his total marginal rate, including the new medicare tax, is between 52 and 53 percent. And, in all likelihood, he's avoiding the medicare tax on a good bit of his income outside his tour winnings. And he likely has capital gains income not reflected in the $47.8 million, which would be taxed at a much lower rate.

  At a minimum, if he does as well this year as he did in 2012, poor Phil will net more than $23 million after tax. I'd love to be the reporter at his next tour stop. "So, Phil, which social safetly net programs do you propose be slashed so you can have more than $23 million per year to spend?" "Phil, which poor people should pay more in tax so you can pay less in tax and spend more on jet fuel?" "Phil, how long did it take you to become the consummate elitist prick?" "Phil, do you think perhaps you should stick to golf?"

I would be less offended hearing these remarks from a professional basketball or football player. They have short careers. The money they make in a decade or so has to last them their entire lives. But golfers don't have that disadvantage and Phil Mickelson certainly doesn't. He's in his 21st year as a pro, still at the top of his game. And, when he retires from the PGA tour, he'll be able to play the Senior's tour, where he will be able to pocket more than a quarter mil for three days of toiling on the golf course. And even when that door closes, he'll still have endorsement deals, speaking opportunities, and course design work.

Why is it exactly that we lionize these assholes? Isn't there a lesson to be learned from the Lance Armstrong and Joe Paterno fiascos? This is not meant as a categorical put-down of professinal sports. Sports have a place in our society. But that place has become too large, in my opinion. The relative amounts by which we celebrate those who do great things with their bodies compared to those who do great things with their minds is horribly out of balance. How do I know that? Because we've arrived at the point where the New York Times pays attention when Phil Mikelson whines about his heavy tax burden.

Joe Baca-- Golfer... And Blue Dog

Baca, with the Golf Channel's Michael Breed, comes to life

This spring, avid golfers were furious at 4 holier-than-thou teabagger congressmen-- Justin Amash (R-MI), Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), Reid Ribble (R-WI) and Scott Rigell (R-VA)-- for voting against awarding a Congressional Gold Medal to Jack Nicklaus "in recognition of his service to the Nation in promoting excellence and good sportsmanship in golf." The resolution passed anyway-- 373-4. An awful lot of congressmen (and women) just love golfing. So do presidents, vice presidents and, over on the dark side, lobbyists. Golf Digest keeps track:

Top-ranked among elected officials-- after considering reports from multiple sources and a shortage of posted rounds by him or his closest contenders-- is Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.), a widely acknowledged 2-handicapper. (Udall was the leading proponent of the novel bipartisan seating arrangement at this year's State of the Union address.) He earns the honor over Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.). Yarmuth, the former publisher of Kentucky Golfer, has a +0.4 Index but says he's closer to a 3. Corker, who told us in 2008 he'd have a hard time playing to his then-4.7 Index, has improved to a 2.1— as noteworthy as Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) improving from a 14 in 2008 to a 7.5.

Although the U.S. Congress' freshman class of 2010 includes a wave of doctors, there are few golfers among them. The notable exception is ophthalmologist and Tea Party favorite Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who has an 11.6 Index at his hometown Bowling Green Country Club. Best of the newbies is Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), a former federal prosecutor and circuit solicitor who previously played to a plus-1 but now says he's a 4.

When Blue America started running a drunken golfer campaign against John Boehner in 2010, not all Democrats were thrilled. Boehner was on the links over 100 times that year-- but so were more than a few Democrats with the same attitude about privilege and entitlement, including execrable California Blue Dog Joe Baca.

As the self designated “Working Joe,” who spends considerable effort and focus on his golf game, the current congressman has decided to run for re-election in a district in which he does not live. As the presumptive front-runner in the 31st district in which he lives “working Joe” decided that running in this competitive district would be too much work. And instead he decided to run in the 35th a newly drawn district that is located almost entirely within the boundaries of state senator Gloria Negrete McLeod's legislative district and is about as bright blue as a district can be in southern California. McCain and Whitman each got about a third of the vote there and it's only 16% white. This miscalculation will cost the Democratic Party dearly since no Democrat secured a top two placement in the 31st. We are left wondering why a congressman who has made a career of casting himself as the working Joe failed to work his home district and trust that his constituents would send him back to Washington.
 
Could it be that his record of missing twice as many votes as his colleagues or his failure to bring home valuable resources to one of the nation’s neediest areas was the deciding factor in running in a new district? Astonishingly, is ten-year record in Congress is limited to three naming resolutions. It is indeed unfortunate that the 35th district will become a costly battleground when this all could have been avoided. Senator McLeod has lived in this new district since 1970 and has represented over 80% of the district over the past 12 years. It is no wonder that even after being outspent 10 to 1 she is within striking distance of unseating him.
 
There have been some successes that have not been kind to the district. Since his election he has worked hard to create his own dynasty of Baby Bacas akin to the Kennedys Bushs. Jeremy Baca the congressman's youngest son had an unsuccessful bid for the State Assembly after his past DUI arrest records became public. Jeremy has received over $55,000 in “Working Joe” campaign funds joining his sister as beneficiaries of the family campaign war chest.

Working Joe turns out to be just another tired politician that raises political dollars and creates real work for other Democrats trying to win back the Congress from out of touch Republicans. according to ProgressivePunch Baca's lifetime score on crucial roll calls is an abysmal 71.25, considerably more conservative than other California Blue Dogs, like Loretta Sanchez (82.05), Adam Schiff (81.41), and Mike Thompson (81.31). He tends to cross the aisle most and vote with the GOP when the issues are about the environment, about protecting us from corporate predators, issues involving war and everything about human rights and civil liberties. He's one of the most anti-gay Democrats in Congress and he's a 100% vote against curbing government and corporate spying on citizens. Sheila Kuehl, one of the most reliably progressive champions of working families to have served in the California Assembly and Senate knows Gloria McLeod well and is enthusiastic about her challenge to Baca. She told me that McLeod "has been very good on reasonable bills protecting women's health, equal pay, equality in the workplace, reasonable accommodation for pregnant workers," all issues on which Baca can usually be depended on to be a problem.


UPDATE: The Playing Field Evens Out

The highly successful and bipartisan Campaign for Primary Accountability, which has had a pivotal role in defeating a string of corrupt incumbents of both parties this year, just announced they're going to help make sure voters in CA-35 know just what a complete waste of a congressional seat Joe Baca has been. The spokesperson for the group, Curtis Ellis, told the Riverside Press-Enterprise that “Ms. McLeod is running very strong there. There is a significant percentage of the people in that district who are ready to consider someone else.”

Banksters Let Their Politicians Know It's Time To Wrap Up This Occupy Stuff

Who wouldn't find a touch of irony in that fact that Obama's UN Ambassador, Susan Rice, crowed that "We will stand up for people who seek to assert their basic human rights" as the Obama Administration stood by while a gang of police thugs attacked and brutalized the OccupyOakland encampment? And, oddly, that was at the same time police were harassing American citizens exercising their constitutional rights of free assembly in Atlanta, Baltimore, Orlando, Clarksville, San Diego and several other cities. Looks like a breakdown in law and order again. Matt Taibbi:

Cain said he believed that the protesters are driven by envy of the rich.

"I find the one thing [the protesters] have in common revolves around the human emotions of envy and entitlement," he said. "What you have is more than what I have, and I'm not happy with my situation."

Cain seems like a nice enough guy, but I nearly blew my stack when I heard this. When you take into consideration all the theft and fraud and market manipulation and other evil shit Wall Street bankers have been guilty of in the last ten-fifteen years, you have to have balls like church bells to trot out a propaganda line that says the protesters are just jealous of their hard-earned money.

Think about it: there have always been rich and poor people in America, so if this is about jealousy, why the protests now? The idea that masses of people suddenly discovered a deep-seated animus/envy toward the rich-- after keeping it strategically hidden for decades-- is crazy.

Where was all that class hatred in the Reagan years, when openly dumping on the poor became fashionable? Where was it in the last two decades, when unions disappeared and CEO pay relative to median incomes started to triple and quadruple?

The answer is, it was never there. If anything, just the opposite has been true. Americans for the most part love the rich, even the obnoxious rich. And in recent years, the harder things got, the more we've obsessed over the wealth dream. As unemployment skyrocketed, people tuned in in droves to gawk at Evrémonde-heiresses like Paris Hilton, or watch bullies like Donald Trump fire people on TV.

Moreover, the worse the economy got, the more being a millionaire or a billionaire somehow became a qualification for high office, as people flocked to voting booths to support politicians with names like Bloomberg and Rockefeller and Corzine, names that to voters symbolized success and expertise at a time when few people seemed to have answers. At last count, there were 245 millionaires in congress, including 66 in the Senate.

And we hate the rich? Come on. Success is the national religion, and almost everyone is a believer. Americans love winners. But that's just the problem. These guys on Wall Street are not winning-- they're cheating. And as much as we love the self-made success story, we hate the cheater that much more.

In this country, we cheer for people who hit their own home runs-- not shortcut-chasing juicers like Bonds and McGwire, Blankfein and Dimon.

That's why it's so obnoxious when people say the protesters are just sore losers who are jealous of these smart guys in suits who beat them at the game of life. This isn't disappointment at having lost. It's anger because those other guys didn't really win. And people now want the score overturned.

All weekend I was thinking about this “jealousy” question, and I just kept coming back to all the different ways the game is rigged. People aren't jealous and they don’t want privileges. They just want a level playing field, and they want Wall Street to give up its cheat codes, things like:


FREE MONEY. Ordinary people have to borrow their money at market rates. Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon get billions of dollars for free, from the Federal Reserve. They borrow at zero and lend the same money back to the government at two or three percent, a valuable public service otherwise known as "standing in the middle and taking a gigantic cut when the government decides to lend money to itself."

Or the banks borrow billions at zero and lend mortgages to us at four percent, or credit cards at twenty or twenty-five percent. This is essentially an official government license to be rich, handed out at the expense of prudent ordinary citizens, who now no longer receive much interest on their CDs or other saved income. It is virtually impossible to not make money in banking when you have unlimited access to free money, especially when the government keeps buying its own cash back from you at market rates.

Your average chimpanzee couldn't fuck up that business plan, which makes it all the more incredible that most of the too-big-to-fail banks are nonetheless still functionally insolvent, and dependent upon bailouts and phony accounting to stay above water. Where do the protesters go to sign up for their interest-free billion-dollar loans?

CREDIT AMNESTY. If you or I miss a $7 payment on a Gap card or, heaven forbid, a mortgage payment, you can forget about the great computer in the sky ever overlooking your mistake. But serial financial fuckups like Citigroup and Bank of America overextended themselves by the hundreds of billions and pumped trillions of dollars of deadly leverage into the system-- and got rewarded with things like the Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program, an FDIC plan that allowed irresponsible banks to borrow against the government's credit rating.

This is equivalent to a trust fund teenager who trashes six consecutive off-campus apartments and gets rewarded by having Daddy co-sign his next lease. The banks needed programs like TLGP because without them, the market rightly would have started charging more to lend to these idiots. Apparently, though, we can’t trust the free market when it comes to Bank of America, Goldman, Sachs, Citigroup, etc.

In a larger sense, the TBTF banks all have the implicit guarantee of the federal government, so investors know it's relatively safe to lend to them -- which means it's now cheaper for them to borrow money than it is for, say, a responsible regional bank that didn't jack its debt-to-equity levels above 35-1 before the crash and didn't dabble in toxic mortgages. In other words, the TBTF banks got better credit for being less responsible. Click on freecreditscore.com to see if you got the same deal.

STUPIDITY INSURANCE. Defenders of the banks like to talk a lot about how we shouldn't feel sorry for people who've been foreclosed upon, because it's they're own fault for borrowing more than they can pay back, buying more house than they can afford, etc. And critics of OWS have assailed protesters for complaining about things like foreclosure by claiming these folks want “something for nothing.”

This is ironic because, as one of the Rolling Stone editors put it last week, “something for nothing is Wall Street’s official policy." In fact, getting bailed out for bad investment decisions has been de rigeur on Wall Street not just since 2008, but for decades.

Time after time, when big banks screw up and make irresponsible bets that blow up in their faces, they've scored bailouts. It doesn't matter whether it was the Mexican currency bailout of 1994 (when the state bailed out speculators who gambled on the peso) or the IMF/World Bank bailout of Russia in 1998 (a bailout of speculators in the "emerging markets") or the Long-Term Capital Management Bailout of the same year (in which the rescue of investors in a harebrained hedge-fund trading scheme was deemed a matter of international urgency by the Federal Reserve), Wall Street has long grown accustomed to getting bailed out for its mistakes.

The 2008 crash, of course, birthed a whole generation of new bailout schemes. Banks placed billions in bets with AIG and should have lost their shirts when the firm went under-- AIG went under, after all, in large part because of all the huge mortgage bets the banks laid with the firm-- but instead got the state to pony up $180 billion or so to rescue the banks from their own bad decisions.

This sort of thing seems to happen every time the banks do something dumb with their money. Just recently, the French and Belgian authorities cooked up a massive bailout of the French bank Dexia, whose biggest trading partners included, surprise, surprise, Goldman, Sachs and Morgan Stanley. Here's how the New York Times explained the bailout:

To limit damage from Dexia’s collapse, the bailout fashioned by the French and Belgian governments may make these banks and other creditors whole — that is, paid in full for potentially tens of billions of euros they are owed. This would enable Dexia’s creditors and trading partners to avoid losses they might otherwise suffer...

When was the last time the government stepped into help you "avoid losses you might otherwise suffer?" But that's the reality we live in. When Joe Homeowner bought too much house, essentially betting that home prices would go up, and losing his bet when they dropped, he was an irresponsible putz who shouldn’t whine about being put on the street.

But when banks bet billions on a firm like AIG that was heavily invested in mortgages, they were making the same bet that Joe Homeowner made, leaving themselves hugely exposed to a sudden drop in home prices. But instead of being asked to "suck it in and cope" when that bet failed, the banks instead went straight to Washington for a bailout-- and got it.

UNGRADUATED TAXES. I've already gone off on this more than once, but it bears repeating. Bankers on Wall Street pay lower tax rates than most car mechanics. When Warren Buffet released his tax information, we learned that with taxable income of $39 million, he paid $6.9 million in taxes last year, a tax rate of about 17.4%.

Most of Buffet’s income, it seems, was taxed as either "carried interest" (i.e. hedge-fund income) or long-term capital gains, both of which carry 15% tax rates, half of what many of the Zucotti park protesters will pay.

As for the banks, as companies, we've all heard the stories. Goldman, Sachs in 2008-- this was the same year the bank reported $2.9 billion in profits, and paid out over $10 billion in compensation-- paid just $14 million in taxes, a 1% tax rate.

Bank of America last year paid not a single dollar in taxes-- in fact, it received a "tax credit" of $1 billion. There are a slew of troubled companies that will not be paying taxes for years, including Citigroup and CIT.

When GM bought the finance company AmeriCredit, it was able to marry its long-term losses to AmeriCredit's revenue stream, creating a tax windfall worth as much as $5 billion. So even though AmeriCredit is expected to post earnings of $8-$12 billion in the next decade or so, it likely won't pay any taxes during that time, because its revenue will be offset by GM's losses.

Thank God our government decided to pledge $50 billion of your tax dollars to a rescue of General Motors! You just paid for one of the world's biggest tax breaks.

And last but not least, there is:

GET OUT OF JAIL FREE. One thing we can still be proud of is that America hasn't yet managed to achieve the highest incarceration rate in history-- that honor still goes to the Soviets in the Stalin/Gulag era. But we do still have about 2.3 million people in jail in America.

Virtually all 2.3 million of those prisoners come from "the 99%." Here is the number of bankers who have gone to jail for crimes related to the financial crisis: 0.

Millions of people have been foreclosed upon in the last three years. In most all of those foreclosures, a regional law enforcement office-- typically a sheriff's office-- was awarded fees by the court as part of the foreclosure settlement, settlements which of course were often rubber-stamped by a judge despite mountains of perjurious robosigned evidence.

That means that every single time a bank kicked someone out of his home, a local police department got a cut. Local sheriff's offices also get cuts of almost all credit card judgments, and other bank settlements. If you're wondering how it is that so many regional police departments have the money for fancy new vehicles and SWAT teams and other accoutrements, this is one of your answers.

What this amounts to is the banks having, as allies, a massive armed police force who are always on call, ready to help them evict homeowners and safeguard the repossession of property. But just see what happens when you try to call the police to prevent an improper foreclosure. Then, suddenly, the police will not get involved. It will be a "civil matter" and they won't intervene.

The point being: if you miss a few home payments, you have a very high likelihood of colliding with a police officer in the near future. But if you defraud a pair of European banks out of a billion dollars-- that's a billion, with a b-- you will never be arrested, never see a policeman, never see the inside of a jail cell.

Your settlement will be worked out not with armed police, but with regulators in suits who used to work for your company or one like it. And you'll have, defending you, a former head of that regulator's agency. In the end, a fine will be paid to the government, but it won't come out of your pocket personally; it will be paid by your company's shareholders. And there will be no admission of criminal wrongdoing.

The Abacus case, in which Goldman helped a hedge fund guy named John Paulson beat a pair of European banks for a billion dollars, tells you everything you need to know about the difference between our two criminal justice systems. The settlement was $550 million-- just over half of the damage.

Can anyone imagine a common thief being caught by police and sentenced to pay back half of what he took? Just one low-ranking individual in that case was charged (case pending), and no individual had to reach into his pocket to help cover the fine. The settlement Goldman paid to the government was about 1/24th of what Goldman received from the government just in the AIG bailout. And that was the toughest "punishment" the government dished out to a bank in the wake of 2008.

The point being: we have a massive police force in America that outside of lower Manhattan prosecutes crime and imprisons citizens with record-setting, factory-level efficiency, eclipsing the incarceration rates of most of history's more notorious police states and communist countries.

But the bankers on Wall Street don't live in that heavily-policed country. There are maybe 1000 SEC agents policing that sector of the economy, plus a handful of FBI agents. There are nearly that many police officers stationed around the polite crowd at Zucotti park.

These inequities are what drive the OWS protests. People don't want handouts. It's not a class uprising and they don't want civil war-- they want just the opposite. They want everyone to live in the same country, and live by the same rules. It's amazing that some people think that that's asking a lot.

Coincidentally, Glenn Greenwald's new book, Liberty And Justice For Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful has just been released. I haven't read it yet. But Mark Karlin interviewed him for Truthout and I don't think Greenwald and Taibbi will find much to disagree about. "[W]hat is happening with the Occupy Wall Street protests," Greenwald told Karlin, "is as perfect an illustration of the book's argument as anything I could have imagined. The book's central theme is that law is no longer what it was intended to be-- a set of rules equally binding everyone to ensure that outcome inequalities are at least legitimate-- and instead has become the opposite: a tool used by the politically and financially powerful to entrench their own power and control the society. That's how and why the law now destroys equality and protects the powerful.

"What we see with the protests demonstrates exactly how that works. The police force-- the instrument of law enforcement-- is being used to protect powerful criminals who have suffered no consequences for their crimes. It is simultaneously used to coerce and punish the powerless: those who are protesting and who have done nothing wrong, yet are subjected to an array of punishment ranging from arrest to pepper spray and other forms of abuse.

That's what the two-tiered justice system is: elites are immunized for egregious crimes while ordinary Americans are subjected to merciless punishment for trivial transgressions."

No, not a brand new message. One can never watch this too many times:

Republican Freeloaders

This week Boehner has been raising campaign money from wealthy backers on the links at super-posh Muirfield Village Country Club in the hope of keeping the GOP in control of the House. One of the perks is a golf ball the classy drunken Speaker, according to Politico, gave out to his cronies-- a golf ball with Nancy Pelosi's face on it. Meanwhile Wall Street's boy in Wisconsin, Paul Ryan, is urgently asking rightists to send him money so he can advertise... in Iowa. Ryan doesn't exactly need grassroots contributions since he's taken $2,416,997 in legalistic bribes from the Financial Sector, far more than any other politician in the history of Wisconsin. Ryan and Boehner have been desperately running around to every open mike either can find to insist that the S&P downgrade they forced the country into-- and which was cheered by their teabagger followers (and which resulted in the current stock market crash)-- wasn't their fault; it was Obama's fault! If Obama can be faulted in any way, it was for having too much patience with their nihilism, treason and willful, obvious agenda to destroy the American economy in the name of the 2012 campaign.

Ever since the credit rating agency S&P downgraded U.S. credit to AA+ on Friday night, Republicans have desperately trying to pin the blame on President Obama, even though, as National Journal put it, “it’s hard to read the S&P analysis as anything other than a blast at Republicans.” S&P called out the GOP for using the debt ceiling as a political football and for its flat refusal to consider new revenue as part of any plan to reduce long-term deficits.

Earlier this week Rep. Allen West (R-FL) claimed that the S&P downgrade “has nothing to do with increasing revenues,” while some Republicans have said that passing a Balanced Budget Amendment would have prevented the downgrade, both of which S&P disagreed with. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) yesterday jumped into the same pool, saying that the downgrade could have been avoided if only Democrats had embraced the House Republican budget and its plan to eliminate Medicare:

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) blamed President Obama and the Democrats Tuesday for the recent downgrading of the U.S. credit rating, saying that if Democrats had joined with Republicans in passing the GOP budget, which the House passed in April, “it’s unlikely anyone would be talking about the United States being downgraded today.”

Both Boehner's and Ryan's states' citizens pay about the same in federal taxes as comes back to them from the federal government in terms of services and infrastructure. Yet both lead the Republican squawkbox against federal taxes that basically subsidize the freeloader Republican states, especially Mississippi, Alabama, Arizona, West Virginia, the Dakotas, Louisiana, Alaska, and South Carolina. The state's the give far more than they get in return include Minnesota, New York, Illinois, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware... all blue states. PoliticalProf, who lives in Illinois, wants his money back:

Most people don’t understand that the federal government doesn’t really take taxes to put in a gilded room in DC to buy teak desks for Senators. Rather, much of the federal government’s operations are a pass through program, meaning taxes taken today are sent out to program beneficiaries today. Both Social Security and Medicare work this way, for example-- and that’s over 40% of the US budget.

As it happens, it is usually the case that the citizens living in a state do not receive the same amount in total benefits and other federal spending as they contribute. The citizens of some states—the ones in various shades of green in this map-- pay more in taxes than they receive. The ones in red receive more federal tax money than its citizens pay.

While the pattern is not perfect, a few things stand out here. First, many “conservative” states are in fact net tax recipients-- e.g., they get more than they pay. Many such states have lots of poverty, farms, military bases and retired persons, and such persons and programs get lots of federal tax support.

Another thing that stands out here is that, in general, the “rich”-- or net tax contributing-- states are those with the United States’ major cities: NY, California, Illinois, Texas, Georgia, etc. (The latter two are exceptions to the “conservative = welfare states point I made above.)

UPDATE

Turns out Boehner wasn't the one handing out the Nancy Pelosi golf balls. Politico reported the story wrong; it was some other right wing idiot.

John Boehner Belongs On TV

Yesterday's appearance by John Boehner on Meet The Press was tantamount to an unpaid advertisement for Justin Coussoule's campaign for the western Ohio congressional seat that Boehner has been squatting in since 1990 when Buz Lukens, his Republican predecessor, was caught buying the sexual favors of a sixteen year old girl. Apparently Boehner was so traumatized by the Lukens incident that he joined the one remaining golf club in the DC area that not only doesn't admit women-- but doesn't even permit them on the premises! Burning Tree has been Boehner's home away from home when he's not on Meet The Press advocating raiding the Social Security Trust Fund to finance more tax breaks for multi-millionaires.

One could only wish that the Meet The Press segment would play on TV from Fairfield and Hamilton up through Huber Heights, Troy, Piqua and Celina from now til November. But it won't. If the DCCC were serious about defeating Boehner... but they're not. Instead of working on defeating the Orange Golfer who would be Speaker, they're wasting everyone's time and money with Diana von Furstenberg designer tote bags. What the hell is wrong with these people?


Blue America isn't waiting around to watch them hand Congress over to dangerous sociopaths and corporate shills like Boehner, Cantor, Pence and Paul Krugman's bff Paul Ryan. With your help we've raised the funds for a series of BeatBoehner billboards and with Boehner's help, the Ohio media caught on and started reporting them as news. And since Boehner has decided to lie to the press about his golfing addiction, we decided to take it a step further... with the TV ad you see up top. I mean the next couple of billboards aren't rolling out for a few weeks and since Boehner never comes to the district who else is going to keep his bumbling in front of the voters there?

Here are some quotes from the press release we sent out to Ohio media outlets this morning:

According to public records, Boehner’s golf habit has cost him, his PAC, and special interests between $150,000 and $250,000 over the past 10 years-- between three to five times the median household income of his constituents ($46,000).

Despite his own lax, golf-friendly work ethic, Boehner believes Ohio and America workers should work harder and longer-- and don’t deserve help if they lose their jobs.
 
Boehner grabbed headlines when he told the Pittsburgh Tribune in June he believes the Social Security retirement age should be raised to 70. Boehner has also been the GOP’s point man, along with Senator Jim Bunning (R-KY), in their attempts to block extending unemployment benefits to jobless Americans, even in the current tough recession-- and despite the fact his own brother lost his job.  

Now Boehner is leading House Republicans in opposing aid to states to avoid laying off teachers, police, firefighters and other state employees in a vote to be held next week.

“John Boehner is angry at teachers, cops, and firefighters for interrupting his summer golf schedule,” said Dan Manatt, co-founder of Americans America PAC. “After all, his golf game is more important than their jobs.”

Boehner, ever the golfing competitor, responded forcefully to attacks on his lavish golf habit. Responding to a billboard sponsored by Blue America on the same theme, Boehner’s office said the billboard was false, and that the Republican golfed only seven at events held by his leadership PAC in 2009.

But Golf Digest, the golfing world’s publication of record, reported in 2005 that Boehner golfs “100 plus” times per year. And Boehner’s trips to St. Andrews in Scotland, Pebble Beach and other golfing meccas are well documented.

“Where did Boehner golf, and how many times did he golf there,” asked Howie Klein, co-founder of Blue America. “The question seems a Watergate parody-- but it is a fair question to ask of the Republican leader who seeks to raise Ohioans’ retirement age, cut their unemployment, and cut funding for their teachers, firefighters and cops-- even as he plays hooky from work on a weekly basis to play golf.”

Boehner’s willingness to engage Blue America and Americans for America on how frequently he golfs thrilled the PACs.

“John Boehner’s press office just hit the issue of his golf habit into the sand trap-- and now they’re acting like the golfer who takes repeated whacks at the ball, but only digs the ball deeper and deeper in,” said Manatt.  

“A debate on the number of times John Boehner plays golf-- that’s a debate we would love to have,” added Klein. “Boehner’s staff has a bunker mentality-- they say he only golfs seven times a year-- but Golf Digest says he golfs 100 plus times. So which is it? Hopefully reporters can ask him-- and get hard evidence.”

Boehner regularly records his golf score with the USGA, such that the frequency of his golfing would be a recorded statistic.

The ad also notes that Boehner belongs to the all male Burning Tree Club in Maryland, which bars women from setting foot on the grounds-- a discriminatory policy far in excess of even Augusta National in Georgia. Boehner has not said if he will resign his membership if he replaces the first even female Speaker, Nancy Pelosi.

..."Boehner has a record of catering to wealthy corporate special interests and ignoring the needs of working families and his own constituents. Whether it's handing out Tobacco lobbyists' checks on the floor of the House or using shady PAC contributions to help elect other corporate shills like himself, hardworking families in western Ohio deserve much more. That's why Blue America is so enthusiastic about supporting Justin Coussoule, who is a smart, dedicated, honest and committed West Pointer with a young family and an urge for the kind of Change Ohio is craving, rather than the stale, failed formulas that Boehner has been pushing for decades," said Howie Klein, co-founder of Blue America.

“Americans for America and Blue America are fired up this fall to shine a light on the Republican/Tea Party’s hypocrisy and wrongheadedness-- and, despite challenges from the economy and Republican obstructionism, the remarkable accomplishments of the Obama Administration and this Congress,” said Dan Manatt, co-director of Americans for America.

Thanks to our friends at People For the American Way and the AFL-CIO the BeatBoehner billboard contest raised more than we needed for the billboard we planned. We decided to put the extra money into more billboards and into the TV ad buy that repudiates Boehner's lies about the content of our campaign. Please watch the ad again and if you'd like to see it up on broadcast TV... well, let's put it like this: the DCCC is too busy with von Furstenberg designer totes and trying to save the asses of worthless Blue Dogs like Frank Kratovil, Bobby Bright and Travis Childers to help true blue progressives like Coussoule or to even make an effort to defeat their own worst enemies, like Boehner. They won't help. Can you? If you can, everything donated on this ActBlue page goes into defeating John Boehner. Not one cent for Blue Dogs and not one cent for consultants.

Did John Boehner Play 119 Rounds Of Golf Or 120 Rounds Of Golf Last Year? Or Was It Merely 117 Rounds?

It's a miracle I got any blogging done at all in the last few days. It's like non-stop phone calls and e-mails from all these media folks in John Boehner's district wanting to know why we're picking on him, where'd we get the money for the billboards, why is the billboard not inside the district, and how, exactly, do we know he played 119 rounds of golf in 2009. I mean, those calls haven't stopped in 3 days. Everyone has been pretty nice and polite though. And I think they appreciate the transparency with which we handle all the questions, rather than the way the Boehner folks weave and dodge and never seem to manage to give a straight answer to any questions. The big Cincinnati Enquirer website kicked off the fetsivities even before the first of our BeatBoehner billboards went up. The video up top was the report that ran yesterday at News 5, WLWT, the powerhouse NBC affiliate for southwest Ohio.

Boehner's spokesman says he only "held 7 golf events last year," but no one cares how many events he hosted. The question is how many times he's been out golfing instead of working. One day out of three seems like an awful lot, don't you think? Especially for someone who's advocating raising the retirement age-- for the rest of us-- to 70. Meanwhile, between his lobbyist-financed political action committee and his own considerable personal wealth-- apparently being a career politician pays a lot more than anyone ever guessed-- he's put at least a quarter million dollars into his favorite sport-- not counting the fetching shorts.

Boehner's spokesman referred to us, contemptuously, as "Ultra-liberal Democrats." They ought to check out my bona fides with Chris Van Hollen, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Rahm Emanuel and John Barrow if they want to know how tight we are with the Democrats! But even if he persuades Butler County voters we're... ultra-liberals, how's he going to smear Golf Digest? In October, 2005 that magazine reported that "Despite all of the problems facing Ohio families, according to Golf Digest Magazine, Congressman Boehner finds time to play about 100 rounds of golf a year-- most with special interest lobbyists. He says he pays special attention to the lobbyists he meets on the golf course, bragging “...if someone I’ve gotten to know on the golf course comes into my office with a good argument, I tend to want to listen.” Yeah, especially if they bring their checkbook. Oh, and speaking of checkbooks, can we hit you up again? We want to keep the billboards up-- and there are so many more nice messages Boehner's constituents ought to see about him-- and we want to run our TV spots. This page has pictures of all six billboards but the contest is over and we're just going to use it to collect money to BeatBoehner: more of these billboards everywhere from Darke and Mercer counties down to the southern tip of the district where Boehner keeps a home (at the 10th hole) and more TV spots.



So... if you want to donate you can do it online by clicking this link or you can send a check to the Blue America PAC, PO Box 27201, Los Angeles, CA 90027.

FORE! Boehner Is Lying Again... Lying About Taxes, Lying About The Deficit, Lying About Discrimination Against Women, Lying About Golf

The first Blue America billboard went up this week along the I-75 not far from John Boehner's gated golfing community in West Chester. Boehner reacted immediately, whining and equivocating to the Cincinnati Enquirer-- which promptly demolished his absurd excuses for golfing away the days. He's trying to claim there's a difference between "golf events" paid for with lobbyist cash and the fact that he spent one day out of three on the links. No one's falling for that-- not any more than they fell for his bogus claims earlier this week that he was ignorant that his support for Bush's tax cuts for multimillionaires would lead to an explosion of the deficit. David Stockman, Reagan's Office of Budget and Management chief, wrote Sunday that this argument is blatantly, even willfully, deceptive, and we'll be getting more into Stockman's analysis later today. Speaker Pelosi called Boehner out on his obfuscation last week as well.

In a meeting at the White House with President Obama and Congressional leaders from both parties yesterday, House Republican Leader John Boehner reportedly claimed he didn’t know the deficit-exploding Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans were intentionally designed to kick their enormous cost down the road to the next Administration:

Mr. Obama, who did not join the Senate until 2005, reminded Mr. Boehner and the Senate Republican leader, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, that the tax cuts’ architects purposely left the deficit problem to a future administration, according to aides from both parties.

“I wasn’t there,” Mr. Boehner quickly countered. “I didn’t structure that deal.”

The room briefly went quiet as participants seemed to ponder that statement from a legislator first elected in 1990…

It’s difficult to understand how Mr. Boehner “wasn’t there” as the tax package was crafted with a 10-year sunset to disguise the true cost when he, as Chairman of the House Education and Workforce Committee, was instrumental in designing the education provisions included in the tax cut package, voted in favor of it and witnessed George W. Bush sign the bill into law at the signing ceremony.

Boehner went running to the Cincinnati Enquirer then too, which reported on June 8, 2001, "'This was a very big success for President Bush and the Congress,'" said Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, one of several Tristate lawmakers who attended the signing ceremony at the White House." He was as "there" as he has been at the 19th hole for so much of his career.


And not just any 19th hole. According to a January 12, 2006, report in U.S. News & World Report, Boehner has a very serious handicap that has largely been swept under the carpet: his golf club near DC, Burning Tree, doesn't just bar women members, it doesn't even allow women on the premises! They pointed out he has a "girl problem."

He's a member of one of Washington's few places where women still can't go: The Burning Tree Club in Bethesda, Md. "I do belong to Burning Tree," he told us unapologetically. And, he kids, "I don't know of a female who would want to go out there with all those old fogies." The country club's rules have sometimes been a problem for the collection of politicians who play there...

Boehner's one of the House's well-known golfers. He claims a 6 handicap. When we first asked his office about the issue, they skipped the spin and put him on the phone in five minutes. During the interview, Boehner explained how he ended up a member of the club some three years ago. First, he was invited to a golf event and then tapped to talk to members when the scheduled speaker backed out. "I guess they liked the job that I did and invited me to become a member," he said. Like other members, Boehner had sponsors, a retired Army general, and the then head of Norfolk & Southern's Washington office. And, he added, "I pay the same fees that everybody else does." That's a $75,000 initiation fee plus monthly dues of $500 a month, according to reports.

Back to the issue at hand. We asked how he'll deal with criticism that he belongs to a sexist club. "I belong to a club in Ohio that is wide open, Wetherington Golf & Country Club, where I play with my neighbors and wife, whatever. My wife doesn't live here, she lives back in Ohio. I don't get out to Burning Tree to play very often. Wish I could, there's just not enough time." So, we ask, "you don't think it's that big of an issue? Boehner: "No, no, no."

Last week, writing for the Washington Monthly, Steve Benen also noticed Boehner's propensity for dishonesty, and went beyond where Speaker Pelosi was willing to venture. If you recall, she left off after the room went quiet at Boehner's assertion of not having been there. But the paragraph didn't actually end that way. It ended with this: "'How long have you been here?,' a Democrat asked Mr. Boehner, and the others broke out in laughter."

They're laughing at you, John, not with you.

It's a telling anecdote. The White House vision is to largely follow the game plan crafted by congressional Republicans less than a decade ago. It was the GOP's idea-- they passed tax cuts, which overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy, and set the cuts to expire at the end of 2010. The point was to obscure the cuts' cost, play a dangerous budget game, and make it so that the GOP wouldn't have to pay for their own experiment. We saw the results, which can only fairly be described as "total failure."

Obama is prepared to do part of what Republicans included in their own plan-- letting tax rates for those making more than $250,000 return to the same levels that existed when the economy was strong, as was outlined in the Republican plan of the Bush era. Reminded of whose idea this was in the first place, Boehner, in effect, argued that he has nothing to do with the plan he voted for, and which was crafted by his own caucus.

Indeed, Boehner was, at the time, responsible at the committee level for helping shape the tax-cut package, and was on hand at the White House for the bill-signing ceremony.

No wonder the room broke out in laughter.

As for the substance, Boehner told the president allowing the higher rates to return to pre-Bush levels would be bad for small businesses (small businesses that need some help, which Senate Republicans have blocked). As a policy matter, Boehner's argument is patently ridiculous, but the fact that he's pushing it in a private meeting confirms my suspicions-- Boehner actually believes his own nonsense, and isn't quite sharp enough to realize he doesn't know what he's talking about.

In the meantime, Boehner is also urging Republicans to stop referring to the Bush tax cuts as the Bush tax cuts. GOP members are supposed to fight for the failed former president's tax policy, but avoid using the failed former president's name.

They really do think voters are fools.

Blue America will start running the 30-second ad in Ohio's 8th Congressional District. Can you chip in by donating to the Blue America PAC to help us keep them running?

And now a few immortal words from irreverent golfing expert George Carlin:




UPDATE: NBC-TV Seems To Have Noticed Our Billboard

No wonder Boehner is flipping out. The NBC affiliate goes way beyond the reach of our billboard or even our cable TV ads. This is the kind of coverage we were hoping for. Please help us keep the billboard up and spread it-- and the others-- around the district. You can do it here.

John Boehner Would Rather Be Golfing-- Let's Not Give Wall Street A Hole In One By Letting Him Get To The Speaker's Chair

One of the anti-Obama right wing e-mailing circles sent out another of their endless attacks on the president, this time because he played some golf this week. They acknowledged it's a "relaxing game, and a game for all ages" but they went for the jugular: "Do you think it’s appropriate to play golf while lives are being ruined, economies destroyed, and the environment damaged beyond repair? Then congratulations-- you are an Obama-level golf fanatic."

An Obama-level golf fanatic? What would that make John Boehner, who spent one out of three days last year on the links? And they're bitching because Obama played ten times! Boehner managed to crawl out of his tanning booth 119 times! Then they attacked Obama because the First lady went down to the Gulf. "He has focused on everything but the challenges facing the Gulf, and avoided assuming the responsibilities of his office. Bold new leadership? Hardly."

Had enough? Then tell us: since the beginning of the Gulf crisis, which of President Obama's actions have left you furious? You can use our simple widget at GOP.com to let the world know that the President's refusal to do his job is unacceptable. FORE!

Last year Jake Sherman at Politico did a little digging into Boehner's golfing shenanigans. Boehner's PAC spent over 80 grand on golfing outings in the first half of the year. "And the minority leader," Sherman wrote, "doesn’t hold his events at worn-out municipal courses. The most recent outing was a $20,921.34 event at the plush Robert Trent Jones track in Gainesville, Va., an invitation-only private club that was once also home to the Professional Golfers Association's President’s Cup."

DWT covered this last November from the perspective of how little Boehner did for his fellow Republicans' electoral chances.

If you've donated to John Boehner's political action committee, the misnamed Freedom Project PAC, which spent $2,693,033 in 2008, and has already sucked up over a million dollars this year, let me be the first progressive to thank you for the donation. Although a significant amount of your donations was wasted-- in chunks above $10,000 each-- on political losers like Greg Davis (R-MS), Phil English (R-PA), Jay Love (R-AL), Andy Harris (R-MD), Chris Shays (R-CT), Dean Andal (R-CA), Vito Fossella (R-NY), David Cappiello (R-CT), John Stone (R-GA), Fred Dailey (R-OH), Darren White (R-NM), Keith Fimian (R-VA), John Gard (R-WI), and Rick Goddard (R-GA), far more went towards sating the Minority Leader's golf addiction.

The Muirfield Village Golf Club ($41,374), Disney Resorts ($28,787), Big Horn Golf Club ($25,310 + $18,357), Walt Disney Parks & Resorts ($25,200), The Greenbrier ($22,412), La Quinta Resort ($21,818) each got far more than any Republican candidate running for office-- any office. And Boehner is spending at tony golf resorts at the same clip this year. Even with GOP candidates dropping out of races because of an inability to raise money, the high living Minority Leader has already dropped another $29,501-- in campaign contributions-- at the Muirfield Village Golf Club. He spent even more at the Ritz Carlton in Naples (where the golfing is supposed to be sublime). Fact of the matter is, Boehner has already spent around $83,000 on golfing junkets this year. And we are so happy to see that money being spent that way instead of towards electing right wing lunatics.

One Republican electoral expert told us, after lots of prodding and a fifth beer, that had Boehner used that money he's been wasting on golf excursions on Doug Hoffman, who narrowly lost to some little known healthcare-supporting Democrat, Hoffman would have been in Congress and been the deciding vote to stop the healthcare reform bill!

It's only more recently that the Beltway press has exposed Boehner as a lazy lush, who spends all his time when he's not out on the links, bar-hopping and getting drunk... which probably explains his delusional statements about Obama "snuffing out the America that I grew up in." A couple days ago Greg Sargent, in his Washington Post column, dealt with Boehner's drastic little re-write of history. Although gays and women and minorities were still treated as second class citizens when little Boehner was wearing short pants, "the Republican Party platform of 1960," Sargent wrote, referencing the year Boehner was 11, "hailed the GOP's success in extending unemployment insurance. The GOP counted as an achievement its efforts to raise the federal minimum wage. The platform hailed expanded Social Security coverage and pledged an aggressive federal effort to help those struggling with health care costs (in those pre-Medicare days, the primary focus was the elderly). It pledged to continue robust federal intervention to preserve the environment."

Blue America was inspired by Boehner's golfing prowess and suggestions by Congressmen Tim Ryan (D-OH) and Alan Grayson (D-FL) to get a golfing billboard up in southwest Ohio to remind voters there what Boehner does with his time. So, this weekend we're starting a little "contest."

Boehner would probably be more likely to see one of these billboards if we put it up around Florida where he spends most of his time golfing but it's really more for his constituents than for him anyway. We decided to place it just outside Boehner's gated community in Wetherington on I-75, a couple miles from Touchdown Jesus. If you prefer one particular billboard design, please donate to our fund to get it up in Butler County by clicking on the image you like best. We'll choose the billboard design that gets the most "votes"-- a vote being defined as a contribution, regardless of amount. (In other words, whether you give $1.00 or $100, it's one vote.)

Now the good news: our friends at the AFL-CIO and People For the American Way Voters Alliance are big fans of Justin Coussoule, the progressive Democrat running against Boehner, and each is offering to match whatever you donate on this page. So... give $10 and the billboard fund winds up with $30. How's that for a deal? If you want to read more about Justin, we did a live blogging session with him at Crooks and Liars back in April.

Here are all six billboards on one page. Each billboard is a live link to its respective fundraising page. So just click on the one you like best and... vote.






























UPDATE: People Think Obama Deserves A Little Rest

The GOP has manufactured another silly hissy fit about Obama's vacation in Maine. It isn't working. Here's a poll on it: