errr........because he chaired the convention for five years.
and btw, maybe he watched this year's convention on cspan.
http://www.c-span.org/
get better informed.
The graph is from the numbers provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the red bits were added for emphasis and lulz.Originally Posted by Jet Gorgon
/now that you have questioned the provenance of the figures would you like to discuss them, or shall we just say that Bush's economic brilliance is entirely responsible for the economic miracle that he presided over from 2001 and praise the lord that he wasn't black?
bibo ergo sum
If you hear the thunder be happy - the lightening missed.
This time.
Right-Wing Activists Make Case - WSJ.com
WASHINGTON—The divisions roiling American conservatives were on display Thursday at an annual gathering of activists, with the movement's emerging leaders directly challenging the Republican establishment.
The crowd assembled for the Conservative Political Action Conference greeted grass-roots darlings with cheers and standing ovations, including U.S. Senate candidate Marco Rubio of Florida and conservative Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina.
The crowd roared Thursday morning when Mr. DeMint, opposing his own party leaders' decisions to recruit centrist candidates, said he would prefer an ideologically pure 30-member caucus than 60 Republicans "who don't believe in anything."
And the crowd gave standing ovations to Mr. Rubio, who has climbed in the polls by attacking his primary rival, Republican Gov. Charlie Crist, for his support of President Barack Obama's stimulus. "We are witnessing the single greatest pushback in American history," Mr. Rubio said. "Never has the political class or the mainstream media been more out of touch with the American people than they are today."
---
Choice quote:
"We are the anti-establishment establishment," said longtime movement leader David Keene, a former Reagan political hand who is chairman of the American Conservative Union, the group that runs CPAC. You're also either insane or pretending to be. Why not employ a party symbol and call yourselves the "anti-peanut elephants"?
“You can lead a horticulture but you can’t make her think.” Dorothy Parker
Heh...Democratic incumbents are running scared and the fear factor is only intensifying.
“The nonpartisan Cook Political Report released a new update on the 2010 elections yesterday. A full 54 Democratic seats in the House are now rated as “highly competitive,” with nearly half already seeing the GOP challenger running even or ahead of the Democratic incumbent. Only six GOP-held seats are in play as possible Democratic pickups. Republicans need to win 40 seats to take back control of the House. Nervousness in Democratic ranks will be heightened even more by Cook’s finding that a total of 95 Democratic seats are potentially vulnerable — almost two-fifths of the entire Democratic caucus."
A Deplorable Bitter Clinger
This is interesting for the GOP, Ron Paul won the CPAC straw poll as people's favourite candidate for prez:
FOXNews.com - Ron Paul Wins Presidential Straw Poll at CPAC
2010 CPAC Straw Poll Results
Ron Paul 31%
Mitt Romney 22%
Sarah Palin 7%
Tim Pawlenty 6%
Mike Pence 5%
Newt Gingrich 4%
Mike Huckabee 4%
Mitch Daniels 2%
John Thune 2%
Rick Santorum 2%
Haley Barbour 1%
Santorum is going to be frothing about that..
And this line from the article: "Results of this year's poll were announced just as the crowd prepared for the conference's keynote speaker, Fox News host Glenn Beck." stood out a bit; are FOX now saying that Beck does news and not opinion?
A question: Do the teabaggers like Paul? I thought they hated him, but I can't remember why.
Glenn Greenwald has an interesting piece on Salon.com about Paul, CPAC and other things:
The very idea that a political party dominated by neocons, warmongers, surveillance fetishists, and privacy-hating social conservatives will be a party of "limited government" is absurd on its face.
An excerpt:
There's a major political fraud underway: the GOP is once again donning their libertarian, limited-government masks in order to re-invent itself and, more important, to co-opt the energy and passion of the Ron-Paul-faction that spawned and sustains the "tea party" movement. The Party that spat contempt at Paul during the Bush years and was diametrically opposed to most of his platform now pretends to share his views. Standard-issue Republicans and Ron Paul libertarians are as incompatible as two factions can be -- recall that the most celebrated right-wing moment of the 2008 presidential campaign was when Rudy Giuliani all but accused Paul of being an America-hating Terrorist-lover for daring to suggest that America's conduct might contribute to Islamic radicalism -- yet the Republicans, aided by the media, are pretending that this is one unified, harmonious, "small government" political movement.
The Right is petrified that this fraud will be exposed and is thus bending over backwards to sustain the myth. Paul was not only invited to be a featured speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference but also , whereas, when Bush was in power, there was no government power too expanded or limitless for Fox propagandists to praise.
This thread is about the GOP, WTF are you going on about?Originally Posted by Jet Gorgon
Oh, and the 'minutiae' are the bits that make observing US politics so interesting. At least for me.
Just for my good friend RA! - & usual suspects...
Oh my: Student poll analysis of midterms shows GOP might pick up … 60 seats
he generic House ballot is tilting to Republicans in ways not seen… ever. Or as Michael Barone put it, the Republican margin currently seen is “historically unprecedented”. To those unfamiliar with the generic ballot, it is the question asked on national surveys that goes something like this “If the elections for Congress were being held today, which party’s candidate would you vote for in your Congressional district?” I have often (in my own head) questioned the usefulness of the generic ballot because House elections are held in districts not nationally, and surveys are only getting at most a few respondents from each district for each survey. But the fact of the matter is that vast majority of research indicates (see Charles Franklin, Matthew Shugart, and the Pew Research Center among others) that if you properly use the results from the question, you can get a pretty good idea of what is going to happen… How will the generic ballot results from 2010 at this point translate into vote in the general election? Based off the Bafumi et al. regression (see page 6), we would expect Republicans to win the national vote by anywhere from 7.3% (all polls but Rasmussen and Republican pollsters) to 9.3% (all polls), which extends well beyond the root-mean-sqaured error. Thus, I have a hard time believing based off the polling that the Democrats will win the national party House vote…
With current polling in conjunction with Bafumi et al.’s paper predicting a Republican national vote between 53.6% and 54.7%, the Republicans could easily gain 50-60 seats from their current 178. Gains of greater than 60 seats also look quite possible. Even in the best case scenario for the Democrats, it would seem that holding the House would be very, very difficult.
HeH
Hmm, nice to see the GOP thinks so highly of its supporters..
Leaked Republican memo cites its fearful, ego-driven, and reactionary donor base as secret to its fundraising success
The most unusual section of the presentation is a set of six slides headed “RNC Marketing 101.”
The presentation divides fundraising into two traditional categories, direct marketing and major donors, and lays out the details of how to approach each group.
The small donors who are the targets of direct marketing are described under the heading “Visceral Giving.” Their motivations are listed as “fear;” “Extreme negative feelings toward existing Administration;” and “Reactionary.”
Major donors, by contrast, are treated in a column headed “Calculated Giving.”
Their motivations include: “Peer to Peer Pressure”; “access”; and “Ego-Driven.”
Birthers aren't banned on this site:
Write to your local areas Newspapers! Ask if Obama is legal. - PUMA Party Forums
Hillary supporters were onto the birth certificate issue very early on. I wonder if they originated it?
For days, Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky exploited Senate rules to block a one-month extension of unemployment benefits. In the end, he gave in, although not soon enough to prevent an interruption of payments to around 100,000 workers.
.... Consider, in particular, the position that Mr. Kyl has taken on a proposed bill that would extend unemployment benefits and health insurance subsidies for the jobless for the rest of the year. Republicans will block that bill, said Mr. Kyl, unless they get a “path forward fairly soon” on the estate tax.
Now, the House has already passed a bill that, by exempting the assets of couples up to $7 million, would leave 99.75 percent of estates tax-free. But that doesn’t seem to be enough for Mr. Kyl; he’s willing to hold up desperately needed aid to the unemployed on behalf of the remaining 0.25 percent. That’s a very clear statement of priorities.
Op-Ed Columnist - Senator Bunning’s Universe - NYTimes.com
Welcome to Planet GOP, in a far away Galaxy. Conclusion -
Someday, somehow, we as a nation will once again find ourselves living on the same planet. But for now, we aren’t. And that’s just the way it is.
I personally fail to see how any thinking US citizen could support the current GOP, unless for selfish reasons if he is in the top wealth bracket. Then again, as Paul Krugman points out, it does appear we inhabit different Universes, "both intellectually and morally"
^ There is no money for these payments. Don't you get it? Get rid of the libbie union pay-outs to low-life govt workers and their inflated pensions and there would be some money.
^^Obama signs ‘pay as you go’ legislation into law
By Raw Story
Saturday, February 13th, 2010 -- 10:05 am
US President Barack Obama called Saturday for new spending cuts, warning the country must bring its ballooning deficit under control in order to be able to move forward.
Measured against the size of the economy, the 1.556 trillion budget shortfall in 2010 would equal a hefty and unsustainable 10.6 percent of the gross domestic product, the basic measure of a country's overall economic output.
Vowing to rein in this trend, the president praised so-called "pay as you go" legislation that he has just signed into law and that prevents Congress from approving new spending unless it is offset by budgetary cuts elsewhere.
Obama signs ‘pay as you go’ legislation into law | Raw Story
Senator Bunning drew attention to the "pay as you go" legislation signed a month prior. He was asking what's the sense of passing a law if it's ignored? Feeling good about appearances doesn't cut it.
The emotional core of opposition to reform was blatant fear-mongering, unconstrained either by the facts or by any sense of decency.
It wasn’t just the death panel smear. It was racial hate-mongering, like a piece in Investor’s Business Daily declaring that health reform is “affirmative action on steroids, deciding everything from who becomes a doctor to who gets treatment on the basis of skin color.” It was wild claims about abortion funding. It was the insistence that there is something tyrannical about giving young working Americans the assurance that health care will be available when they need it
... The Democrats have done it. The House has passed the Senate version of health reform, and an improved version will be achieved through reconciliation.
This is, of course, a political victory for President Obama, and a triumph for Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker. But it is also a victory for America’s soul. In the end, a vicious, unprincipled fear offensive failed to block reform. This time, fear struck out.
Op-Ed Columnist - Fear Strikes Out - NYTimes.com
It appears the GOP in the immediate future is poised to go the same way as the GOP now, at least if their rhetoric is to be believed. Obstructionist, populist, mendacious- catering to the lowest common denominator in every regard. Their only policy agenda, it seems, to fight Obama. Even in some cases, to the point of racism and homophobia.
Will this play well with the American people, now that the HC reform bill is a fait accompli? I doubt it. Opposition to HC reform gained them some momentum, and strident support in some quarters- but it failed, and rightly so given the tactics employed. It still seems to me the GOP is in Meltdown.
Now that it is a done deal, it will become a political exercise between now and the mid term election in convincing voters the bill is good for them or not.Originally Posted by sabang
The side who wins the argument will have a leg up in the election.
Obama is off tomorrow on a nationwide trip to convince the electorate that the bill is good. The GOP will be arguing the bill is no good.
HC bill will be the primary political rhetoric theme until the next election.
"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect,"
John McCain is having a serious tantrum:
Democrats shouldn't expect much cooperation from Republicans the rest of this year, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) warned Monday.
McCain and another Republican senator decried the effect health reform legislation has had on the Senate, a day after the House passed the upper chamber's bill.
GOP senators emerged Monday to caution that the health debate had taken a toll on the institution, warning of little work between parties the rest of this year.
"There will be no cooperation for the rest of the year," McCain said during an interview Monday on an Arizona radio affiliate. "They have poisoned the well in what they've done and how they've done it."
I think the Dems should call his bluff, as far as I can see the GOP hasn't done anything except try to obstruct everything anyway, so what's new? A bill on something Obama campaigned on passes and McCain responds by saying he is going to hold his breath until he turns blue and not do his job until the end of the year?
The Dems should say right, game on, and then push through every damn progressive agenda item they can think of using reconciliation. Fok it. Scorch the earth. Make the Repubs run on the pro-war, pro-big insurance, anti-minority stances that they love so much.
^ Thanks, slack.
Where is this from?
Oops. Sorry I forgot to include the link. It is from TheHill.com:Originally Posted by Milkman
McCain: Don't expect GOP cooperation on legislation for the rest of this year - The Hill's Blog Briefing Room
"There will be no cooperation for the rest of the year," McCain said
So, the GOP will change tactics from year to date.
I think this talk is "politician-talk" by McCain, as he's is running for re-election and has been beating up a bit by J.D. Hayworth. The AZ economy is very bad at the moment (I have family there) and incumbents are taking some heat.
I still expect McCain to win.
Cooperation, or lack?
McCain is talking about a House bill, but McCain's in the Senate.
Politicians are....politicians.
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