No Rest for the Resistance in Kentucky

The Kentucky repugs are already gearing up to steal the governship from Andy Beshear, and they're not even trying to hide it.

There are obstacles, but they could definitely do it.  This isn't politics anymore; it's fighting to the death.  Every day, over everything large and small.

But there are election results far more disturbing than possibly losing the governorship.

Repugs have taken the only two state officers held by Democrats, and they are the most important ones:  Attorney General and Secretary of State.

With those in Democratic hands even while repugs took the entire fucking legislature and the Governor's Mansion, Democrats could still protect Kentuckians from the worst of Bevin's attacks on women, teachers, and families of disabled children, and from the massive voter suppression and election fraud repugs always run when they have the Secretary of State position.

The repug AG and SoS have more power than even a repug governor like Bevin had, and they will try to turn Kentucky into fucking Mississippi as fast as they can.

If they succeed, We. Are. Completely. Fucked.

There's only one way to stop them: Donate to the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky, who will be filing a blizzard of lawsuits to try to stop the Mississippification of Kentucky.

Keeping Beshear in the Governor's Mansion is great.  Obstructing the repug Attorney General and Secretary of State is absolutely critical.

Hoping Repugs Will Change is Political Suicide

Digby:

The majority of Republicans only want to pass their own policies and somehow force the president to sign them.  They do not want compromise and they do not want moderation.  Democrats, on the other hand, are much more likely to want both.

This isn't brain surgery. As long as this dynamic exists the government will get more and more conservative regardless of what the more pragmatic Republican leaders and the Democratic Party wants.  There is no incentive for the right wing to do anything but hang in there.  They may not get everything they want in one fell swoop, but they'll be getting more of what they want than if they compromise. And they simply do not want "moderation" they want to make a point.

The Democratic plan to deal with this seems to be that a bunch of Republicans will eventually wake up and realize that they have been wrong. Good plan.

Advice for Democratic Candidates

Inspiring discouraged Democrats to get out and vote in the numbers that will prevent a repug tsunami is not going to be easy, but neither is it rocket science, if dems just concentrate on what's really happening.

Steve M:

So what can Democrats do? I think they have to start talking about why popular Democratic policies don't get enacted. The reason is that there are too damn many Republicans in Congress.

I think they have to say, "When you elect Republicans, they block any increase in the minimum wage. When you elect Republicans, they block every bill that would put people to work. When you elect Republicans, they block immigration reform. When you elect Republicans, they insist on trying to get the budget under control by cutting programs that people really need because they refuse to allow the taxes of the wealthiest Americans to go up by even one dime." And so on and so on.

Maybe you even need to explain the filibuster -- yes, on the campaign trail. Don't you think Bill Clinton could pull that off in a speech and still keep an audience's attention? Well, why should that be a unique skill? The president is a pretty good speaker, too, isn't he?

According to a recent New York Times/CBS poll, 59% of voters are at least somewhat "disappointed" in the Obama presidency, including 24% of Democrats. Why is that? Partly it's because people thought he could do more. Well, most voters don't have a clear picture of why he can't do more. They need some Civics 101 so they'll understand. And they need someone to explain what the solution would be, even if it's highly unlikely to be attainable.

Why is it so difficult for Democrats to say that Republicans are the problem? Republicans have no problem blaming Democrats, and they're not punished at the polls for "divisiveness," at least in non-presidential elections.

Assess the blame where it belongs. Otherwise, voters just think that ineffectual Democrats are the real problem.

As Kevin Drum put it:

 Democrats simply don't consistently support concrete policies that help the broad working and middle classes. Half of them voted for the bankruptcy bill of 2005. They've done virtually nothing to stem the growth of monopolies and next to nothing to improve consumer protection in visible ways. They don't do anything for labor. They're soft on protecting Social Security. They bailed out the banks but refused to bail out underwater homeowners. Hell, they can't even agree to kill the carried interest loophole, a populist favorite if ever there was one.

Sure, Democrats do plenty for the poor. They support increases in the EITC and the minimum wage. They support Medicaid expansion. They passed Obamacare. They support pre-K for vulnerable populations. They expanded CHIP. But virtually none of this really benefits the working or middle classes except at the margins.

Now McElwee wants to use environmentalism to appeal to the working class. I'm all for that. But you don't have to play 11-dimensional chess to figure out how Republicans will respond. They'll say that Democrats want to raise your taxes. They'll say Democrats want to take away your plastic bags. They'll say Democrats want to make us all drive tiny cars or take the train everywhere. In coal country they'll say Democrats want to take away your jobs.

And then Democrats will wonder yet again why a big chunk of the working class votes for Republicans. It's a stumper all right.

Apologies for being peevish. But honestly, Democrats have done virtually nothing for the middle class for three decades now. They're nearly as reliant on the business community for campaign funding as Republicans. Can we all stop pretending that there's some deep mystery about why lots of working and middle class voters figure there are no real economic differences between the parties, so they might as well vote on social issues instead?

"All of them have been blocked or ignored by Republicans in Congress"

This cannot be said often or loudly enough, Mr. President.  Most voters don't know enough to understand that the persistent economic crisis is not the fault of the President.  It's the fault of obstructions repugs in Congress.  Keep banging this drum.



Full transcript here.

"Republicans in Congress keep blocking or voting down almost every serious idea to strengthen the middle class."

This is the Barack Obama I voted for.

Full transcript here.

"Where Congress Won't Act, I Will."

If this be tyranny, I say make the most of it.




Full transcript here.

Mitch McConnell Killed Bipartisan Energy Bill Just to Help Repug Candidate in New Hampshire

Yet more proof that Mitch does not give a flying fuck about the Kentuckians he supposedly represents. He deliberately scuttled a bill that would have helped everyone in Kentucky who drives or uses electricity because he cares more about repug candidates in foreign states.

Kevin Drum:

Earlier this week, Republicans killed a carefully crafted, bipartisan energy bill that was three years in the making. Ostensibly, this was done in protest against Harry Reid's refusal to allow votes on additional amendments, an issue that's been a longtime grievance for the GOP. But that wasn't the real problem. After all, everyone knows that delicately constructed bills like this one need to be passed on an all-or-nothing basis once a majority coalition has been painstakingly assembled. What's more, the Republican amendments were all on tangential hobbyhorses (Keystone XL, EPA power plant regs, etc.) that were designed solely as election-year rube bait anyway.

No, it turns out that the bill was killed because Scott Brown, who's running for a Senate seat in New Hampshire against Jeanne Shaheen, asked Mitch McConnell to kill it. Jon Chait tells the story:

Brown is running against Shaheen this November, and Republicans — especially would-be Majority leader Mitch McConnell — want Brown to beat Shaheen because they want to win a majority. 

Brown needs to deprive Shaheen of the afterglow that would come from shepherding a (now rare) bipartisan bill through Congress....

Brown's gonna lose big to Shaheen, but Mitch will probably beat Alison Lundergan Grimes, who's running so repug-lite she should be on the repug primary ballot, not the Democratic one.

No, Mitch-n-Elaine Are Not Nice People, Not At All

Steve M:

A facade of decency, rationality, and conviviality shouldn't blind the rest of D.C. to the fact that Republicans are nonsense-spewing take-no-prisoners extremists. But it does.

"Republicans in Congress have blocked or voted down every serious idea to create jobs and strengthen the middle class. "

Which is why the only way to restore an economy that works for working people is to throw the bums out - vote Democratic in November.



Full transcript here.

Mitch McConnell Kills Minimum Wage Increase

So not only does he refuse to lift a fucking finger to create jobs for suffering Kentuckians, he kills any attempt by Democrats to give working Kentuckians a living wage.

The final Senate roll call is online here. Note, the official final tally was 54 to 42, but it was 55-41 before Reid had to switch his vote for procedural reasons. Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee was the only Republican to vote with the majority, not because he supports a wage hike -- he was likely to vote against it -- but because he thought it was a debate worth having.  

Indeed, it's worth remembering that what transpired on the Senate floor this afternoon wasn't a vote on whether to raise the minimum wage; it was a vote on whether to end a Republican filibuster and begin a debate on raising the minimum wage. The GOP minority -- including "moderates" like Susan Collins and Mark Kirk -- blocked wage increase, but in the process, they also rejected the World's Most Deliberative Body from even debating the issue.

Seriously, if Democratic candidates can't beat a party whose members blatantly ass-rape working people in broad daylight and then brag about it, they really don't deserve to be elected.

But we don't deserve the alternative.

"It's time to give America a raise"

Think big, Mr. President; demand a $20 per hour minimum wage, which would barely match the productivity increase that the one-percenters have stolen from workers since 1969.  Nice dig at congressional repugs, though.



Full transcript here.

Thanks, Repugs, For Preventing It

Divine Irony:

It's the Repugs' Fault: Pass It On

QOTD, from Steve M:

I just want one prominent Democrat to say that our problem isn't "partisanship," it's Republicans. Or it's conservatism. Blaming "partisanship" reinforces the apparently unkillable conventional-wisdom notion that the two parties are equally responsible for our political system's failure because neither one will compromise.

Say it, Alison. Stand up on national television and say that you're going to Washington D.C. not to "change things," not to "fix what's broken," not to "work in a spirit of bipartisanship," but to hunt down and kill with your bare hands every republican you can find.

Say "Every single thing that has gone wrong in this country for the past 13 years is the direct and 100 percent fault of republicans elected to serve in Congress and appointed to serve in the White House."

Say "Starting with the conversion of the Clinton $2 Trillion Surplus into the Smirky/Darth $6 Trillion Debt and continuing through the deliberate cold-blooded murder of 5,000 of the nation's finest service members and the premeditated destruction of the middle-class economy, republicans have shit on everything that made this country great."

Say "Then, when the nation against all odds elected a man - a black man - with the unique potential to clean up the repugs' mess and rebuild what they destroyed, republicans - led by and in the exact words of my opponent Mitch McConnell - determined to flip the half-dead nation over and rape it again, using every violent weapon they could find to prevent President Barack Obama from creating jobs, establishing health care, preventing the catastrophe of global climate change or lifting a finger to save the nation from its mortal enemy: Republicans."

Say that to the nation, Alison, and I will quit my job, sell everything I own, cash out my retirement, and knock on every single door in the Commonwealth to guarantee your election.

Otherwise, fuck you.

Russia is Repugs' Fault

Believe me, I'm just as tired of calling out repugs for their lies and their obstruction and their venality and their hypocrisy and their war on women and their racism and on and on and on as you are of hearing it.
But the moment we stop catching them in every anti-democratic, anti-american word and act is the moment they win and we're fucked.
Rude Pundit:

Perhaps when speaking about Obama's muscle or fat on dealing with crises overseas, every so-called expert should put in a big, neon-glowing caveat: Anyone who can send a drone plane to missile murder the fuck out of someone any time he wants while most foreign leaders just roll their eyes over it is never truly weak on the world stage.
However, that said, what Republicans ought to be doing is crowing about how they weakened the president. For what was their goal in the last five years except to use obstruction, attack, and lying to degrade Obama and his presidency? Rather than get all pissy that Obama appears weak, do a fuckin' victory lap. Slap each other on the back. Have a celebratory Scotch and a circle jerk. You did it, GOP. You so weakened President Obama at home that it may well have weakened him when it comes to foreign policy.
See, Republicans love to say that Obama ultimately relenting on bombing Syria or refusing to admit that Benghazi is the worst thing that ever happened, worse than a dozen 9/11s covered in a Pearl Harbor sauce, demonstrates to Vladimir Putin that he's just a pushover, a pussy, a child when it comes to dealing with world powers. But they don't mention that the Senate GOP has prevented confirmation of dozens of officials in the State Department, that place that handles this part of the job. This follows years of filibustering of nominees. When she was Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton once told a Senate panel regarding the blocking of nominees to diplomatic positions, "It became harder and harder to explain to countries, particularly countries of significance, why we had nobody in position for them to interact with...their view does color whether the United States … is in a position going forward to demonstrate the kind of unity and strength and effectiveness that I think we have to in this very complex and dangerous world."
You know what emboldens foreign leaders to do shit without giving a damn what the United States might do? You know what weakens this country in the eyes of the world? When they see that the president can't get anything passed in the Congress. When they see that he can't even get a fucking ambassador confirmed by lawmakers. So take a fuckin' bow, Republicans, especially the ones who are bitching about Obama's "weakness." You did it. Own that shit.
Of course, Republicans never own what they've done. Because ultimately, if their talking point, their fiction, of a weak Obama is true, it's also because of the wreckage left behind by the last president, who was enabled by the very people who still, for some reason, are allowed to talk about what is good for the country.

Climate, Fracking and Water: Anti-Science Repug Obstruction is Literally Killing Us

From Firedoglake, things that are not coincidental:

- An academic journal, under pressure from right-wing climate deniers, decided not to publish a report linking climate change denial to conspiracy theories

- The UN reported our growing reliance on hydrofracking and biofuels is unstable, aggravating water shortages

Mitch and AynRandy Kill Veterans Benefits Increase

All right, Kentucky veterans, I know most of you are republicans and you hate President Obama. Is this really what you want from your only U.S. Senators?  Sacrificing veterans to kick sand in the face of That Ni**er in the White House?  Do you really think McConnell and Paul are acting on "principle?"  Do you think they give a flying fuck about you?  How fucking stupid are you?

Yes, those two worthless pieces of shit are exactly what you deserve.  But the rest of us don't.

From the Washington Post:

A divided Senate on Thursday derailed Democratic legislation that would have provided $21 billion for medical, education and job-training benefits for the nation’s veterans. The bill fell victim to election-year disputes over spending and fresh penalties against Iran.

SNIP

Republicans used a procedural move to block the bill after Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., chided GOP lawmakers about their priorities.

“I personally, I have to say this honestly, have a hard time understanding how anyone could vote for tax breaks for billionaires, for millionaires, for large corporations and then say we don’t have the resources to protect our veterans,” said Sanders, the measure’s chief author.

The Post plays false equivalence by pretending the Democratic members are equally to blame, but that is a lie.

Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul hate Kentucky's veterans and don't you ever forget it.

AynRandy: Fuck Public Health, We Need More GUNZZZZ!

Truly, only Wonkette can do the Tribble-Toupeed One justice:

Has it been more than ten minutes since Rand Paul reared his ugly reactionary head to yammer about if only you could keep a nuclear silo made of guns in the bedroom, you could defend your home against all enemies? It has? Then it must be time for another installment of How Criminally Awful Is Rand Paul? Today’s episode teaches us that he is really really awful!

The youngest cruelest Paul is trying to block Obama’s nomination for Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy. Generally, the surgeon general post is not a particularly controversial thing, because most people dig on promoting public health, unless they are idiots named Rand Paul. (A notable exception, of course, is Joycelyn Elders, Clinton’s surgeon general that got herself tossed because she didn’t hate the idea of children masturbating enough for Republicans.) Does Dr. Vivek Murthy want children to touch themselves? Not to the best of our knowledge, but he does unforgivably believe in regulating guns so people don’t just get themselves killed all over the place, and this sentiment is completely unacceptable to Rand Paul because guns guns gunsgunsgunsGUNSGUNS.

“In his efforts to curtail Second Amendment rights, Dr. Murthy has continually referred to guns as a public health issue on par with heart disease and has diminished the role of mental health in gun violence,” wrote Paul in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. “As a physician, I am deeply concerned that he has advocated that doctors use their position of trust to ask patients, including minors, details about gun ownership in the home…Dr. Murthy has disqualified himself from being Surgeon General because of his intent to use that position to launch an attack on Americans’ right to own a firearm under the guise of a public health and safety campaign.”

Ohemgee! Can you imagine a world where doctors are allowed to ask if you have guns and if that makes you feel a little bit not safe? Those doctors might as well drive to your house and steal the guns right out of your kids’ hands. Funny you should mention the whole part about how you’re a physician, Rand Paul, since pretty much every other physician believes that having shooty things in the house exacerbates public health issues because of how people get deaded from gunshots.

It gets even better.

And of course the good doctor's not-quite-Mayflower-descendant name and appearance have nothing to do with AynRandy's disapproval.

Forget the ACA; If Obama Doesn't Fill the Courts With Lefties, He'll Have No Legacy At All

Don't be fooled by the recent decisions by federal district judges to make states stop discriminating: the federal judiciary is infested with reich-wing corporatists hell-bent on reversing a century of economic and social progress.

Fortunately, there are hundreds of vacancies in the federal court system, all of them begging for far, far, FAR left judges to counteract the anti-democratic drag of Smirky-Darth appointees.

Unfortunately, President Obama has no interest in correcting the right-wing judicial threat to the Constitution.

Digby:

I wrote about the Michael Boggs nomination to the Federal bench earlier, but it's worth revisiting today as it seems likely to go forward. Remember, it isn't just him, it's three more totally unacceptable neanderthal wingnuts on the federal courts in exchange for a couple of moderates. This is a result of a "painstaking process of negotiations" --- which the president obviously lost.

The White House has not backed down from the nominations, arguing that the deal was part of a long, painstaking process of negotiations that they don’t want to toss out the window. According to The Hill, White House adviser Valerie Jarrett told the Congressional Black Caucus at a meeting in early February that the administration wouldn’t be withdrawing the nominations. The Obama administration is also frustrated with what they see as inadequate recognition of the fact that the administration has nominated the most diverse slate of candidates for the federal bench in history — including one who would be the first openly gay black nominee —and that the Georgia delegation failed to weigh in on the process before the deal over the Georgia nominees was cut.

Just a reminder: Clarence Thomas is black. (Also, apropos of nothing, from Georgia.) Choosing more racial minorities, women and gays alone, while a worthy goal, is not enough for a Democratic president. This is especially true of one who has inexplicably failed to even nominate  enough judges to fill the available vacancies. It's just inexplicable that he would agree to "deals" in which Republicans get to put more far right ideologues on the court after the previous president already packed it with them to the fullest extent he possibly could. If there is one area in which ideology, temperament and political philosophy simply must be taken seriously, it's this one. If he can't do any better than this, he should leave the seats unfilled and hope his successor is a Democrat who has better negotiating skills.

Now it must be recognized that the Senate, especially judiciary chairman Patrick Leahy, are clinging to their Senatorial prerogatives and that's a problem. They don't get a pass. But the administration should recognize that a major component of any president's legacy is his federal court appointments and should not be so cavalier as to allow such far right ideologues to obtain lifetime appointment under his auspices.

Why should repugs get all the obstruction fun? I'd like to see Senator Bernie Sanders block any judicial nominee to the right of  Elizabeth Warren.

Ignore Bullshit Calls For An Imaginary Consensus

You can't compromise with people who want you dead.


Ed Kilgore at Political Animal:

I can’t imagine that Jon Huntsman’s strangely anachronistic call for non-partisanship on behalf of the “No Labels” organization at WaPo today is going to strike many chords. Huntsman’s plea to his own party for a less stridently ideological message and agenda during his wildly unsuccessful 2012 presidential campaign didn’t exactly win over the GOP. But more importantly, he doesn’t seem to understand that getting leaders of the two parties together to embrace extremely general goals for the country would leave them a million miles away from practical cooperation.

SNIP

Trouble is, Republicans by and large think “creating 25 million jobs in the next 10 years” should begin by radically reducing benefits under “Social Security and Medicare,” which is how these programs would be “secured,” and how we would achieve a “balanced budget.” Democrats by and large think insisting on a “balanced budget” any time soon would make “creating 25 million jobs” impossible. They also tend to think the path to a “balanced budget” inevitably involves a stronger public role in health care to hold down costs, a strategy which Republicans almost universally reject not only as unworkable but as a direct threat to both economic growth and essential liberties. How does one sit down and work out a “national agenda” for reaching common goals when the two parties diverge so fundamentally on the very basics of how these issues fit together?

As I’ve argued in the past, a “split the difference” approach to economic, fiscal, health care and energy issues, even if it could happen, would produce an incoherent agenda arguably worse than a tyranny of either party.

SNIP

Despite a decisive election victory and Democratic control of Congress (including a super-majority in the Senate), Obama reached out repeatedly to the opposition and had his hand repeatedly slapped away. And while some of that triumph of partisanship reflected a strategy of obstruction by the GOP, a great deal of it represented genuine differences of opinion and principle on how to achieve common goals. Just asserting that unity will be achieved when people of good will desire it is not only naive and obtuse, but an insult to those in a divided country who are trying to offer a clear path ahead.

Repugs think compromise is surrender and consensus is for suckers. Repugs respect power and the threat to use that power violently.  I swear, Obama would get more cooperation from congressional repugs if he implemented his domestic agenda by exercising the "unitary executive" power that Smirky/Darth used to kill 10,000 Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And threatened to spend billions in corporate campaign cash to take out every repug congress critter who so much as uttered a peep in protest.

Power and violence. That's what they respect. That's the only thing they respect.

QOTD: Rude Pundit

On the President failing to call out the repugs in the SOTU:

It needs to be said again and again: We never got to see what an Obama presidency would be like because Republicans decided that there wouldn't be an Obama presidency.

SNIP 

Republicans changed the rules of the game on Obama. If they had been playing baseball, they'd have said, "Okay, we demand four outs, five strikes, and no foul balls, just for us." And Obama would have said, "Sure. Now can we play?" And they would have said, "And you have to play without shoes and gloves." And Obama would have said, "Sure. Can we start the game?" And they would have said, "And each of us gets to fuck your wife in the ass on the pitcher's mound while you watch." And when Obama said, "No, that's bullshit," they'd've said, "Why don't you want to play baseball?"