Suck one, Glenn Beck!

And anyone else who bitched about Democrats "cramming this down their throat". I think that includes Rusty T. or OBD or what ever the fuck he wants to tattoo on his arm next. The part I'm a little fuzzy on is, if it was crammed down your throat, why did you regergitate it and proceed to recram it from whence it came? I will never understand. Maybe it was just to bide time until election season. What can't be denied is ever since Dems got they cram on, Congress as a whole ain't done shit. I should have put this post under the "KFTC" series.

KFTC: OBD

Hey, OBD, why couldn't your vaunted, all-knowing Bush administration pull this one off? Seems funny to me how the 15-year low was achieved in 2009, after BHO got to work. Skrimp. Actually, you really have to give credit to Ol' Skull & Bones. After all, the economy being in the toilet was likely the number one contributor. If we could convince India and China to eat each other and take piggy-back rides to work, we might be in good shape.

You Don't Say...

I'm kind of tired of ninjas waiting a decade to start talking about shit.

Did you digest that? How's this for holy shit?

Keeping It Jackal: Barack Obama

"I said, 'You want to repeal health care? Go at it. We'll have that debate. You're not going to be able to do that by nickel-and-diming me in the budget. You think we're stupid?'"

Mr. Obama said he told House Speaker John Boehner and members of his staff that he'd spent a year and a half getting the sweeping health care legislation passed -- paying "significant political costs" along the way -- and wouldn't let them undo it in a six-month spending bill.

Keeping It Jackal: Rich Motherfuckers

This is what I'm talkin' bout.

Facebook? Is That You?

I had no idea Facebook could be so jackal.

KFTC: John McCain

Maybe this dude left his brain in a Vietnamese POW camp, but the last thing we need right now is to try and build another democracy in the Middle East from scratch.

Anniversary of Joseph McCarthy's Witch Hunt

"McCarthy enthusiastically agreed and took advantage of the nation’s wave of fanatic terror against communism, and emerged on February 9, 1950, claiming he had a list of 205 people in the State Department who were known members of the American Communist Party."


The Den is rapt by a hunt of it's own. Dissent and mistrust are afoot...

JOTD: Bob Menendez/Democrats w/ Balls

It kind of makes you wonder why we even fucking bother.

KFTCTTBFO: GOP

I never thought I would use this godforsaken acronym, but BMR already had these guys banging poultry today (with good reason) and I just couldn't wait until tomorrow to post this.

This is, in one chart, what the debate over the Bush tax cuts is all about:The blue is what everyone saves per year under the Democrats partial repeal, which passed the House today (and I think is a bad idea anyway, though obviously not as bad as the GOP plan). The red is what would be tacked on by the GOP's full extension, except that the last bar, for those making $1 million or more a year, which actually should go up over $100,000 - there just wasn't room to fit it without destroying the rest of the graph.

And we're arguing about this when either policy would hugely increase the national debt, while at the same time freezing federal pay, letting unemployment benefits expire, and receiving new deficit-reduction proposals virtually every day.

Wow I fucking hate U.S. politics sometimes.

Random Election Thoughts

Per requests from BMR and SS, here are some random election thoughts:

• My representative, Rick Boucher, was one of just a handful of surprising house results, according to Nate Silver's model. Not sure what to say about it...he was one of the most valuable Congressmen in the country for Democrats - a moderate Democrat in a pretty Republican district - and I guess his vote for Cap and Trade and the general Republican mood was just too much for him to sustain. I was surprised that Tom Perriello came closer than he did - I guess there's something to be said for running on your record to motivate your base to turn out. Speaking of which....
  
• So what happened yesterday? Basically (1) the economy sucks and (2) old people showed up and young people didn't. Kind of depressing (and I don't mean in a "wow, it sucks that we lost" kind of way, but rather a "wow, our country is pretty apathetic" kind of way) that huge swings in our government can basically be dictated by who feels like showing up to do what took me about 10 minutes to do from the time I left my house to the time I got back.
  
• I wonder how many of yesterday's voters know that our current huge deficits are not the result of spending skyrocketing under Obama?
• To some extent I think it's bad for the Dems in the short run that they maintained the Senate - if the GOP controlled all of Congress, it would be all the best for demonstrating the contrast between them and Obama and easier to blame them for the continuing economic malaise (which will continue absent substantial intervention).
• [From CloneBook] This isn't really related to the election, but this graph really illustrated how much of a role trust plays in politics - the extent to which voters mostly just follow politicians from "their" party irrespective of what policies they pursue, just as they would follow their favorite football team or whatever. So when Barack Obama proposes basically the same health care reform that ...the GOP promoted in 1994, Republicans call him a socialist. And when he also basically maintains Bush's policies on civil liberties and national security, the Left barely manages a whimper.

On a related note, holy crap is Virginia Tech football awesome and man are we going to destroy Georgia Tech tomorrow night!

GCOTD: Pat Roberts

"He needs to take a Valium before he comes in and talks to Republicans," Sen.Pat Roberts, R-Kan., told reporters. "He's pretty thin-skinned."

Sen. Roberts, any advice for the president that doesn't involve substance abuse? KFTC, Republican party.

Joint JsOTD: James Carville and Joe McGinnis

This guy is keeping it jackal. Get all up in that Palin family. You know the older one is pretty easy and doesn't like condoms. This guy is calling out Obama and scowling. Check out how pissed he gets at our real live jackal, Barack. The be-all-end-all Jackal of the Day? You decide.

I'm Just Sayin': Go To Hell and Die, Bitch!

Somehow, dumb motherfuckers keep giving this dumb bitch a podium. They're standing in line, believing the lies, bowing down to the flag, they've got a bullet in the head.

GCOTD:Steve King (Iowa-R)

"I can tell you for a fact, he gets elected because of the very large immigrant population in Sioux City. Mostly cities are liberal. You get lots of people together and they usually find common ground. Not Sioux City. Between the Mexicans, Vietnamese, Laotian and others, the white population has gotten crazy Conservative. Seriously batshit crazy Conservative. If the so-called minorities in Sioux City registered to vote and actually did it, no way this assclown King gets elected."

JOTD: Paul Krugman

Paul Krugman has balls of big steel and he ain't taking shit from nobody. Especially not Andrew Ross Sorkin, so what did ol' Krugsy do? He called him out. Look, I know Head turned me on to this dude's column and the Den has linked a great deal of his opinions and research and I don't want to turn our blog into the blog equivalent of those tiny fish that swim with sharks, but along with Boogerdamus, this ninja speak da' troof. America is scaring the fuck out of a jackal these days. Love me some political/economic common ground. Do ya' thang, Krugs!

Rusty Teez Nutz

Yo, Rusty T. We missed you in the woods last weekend. Although, I probably would have been kindling if you had been there.

In other news, I thought you'd appreciate what Head's boy Paul Krugman pointed out about the kielbasa you and the rest of America had to choke down last week. In case you don't want to click the link and get yo knowledge on, here's a key to help decipher this here graph:

Key:

JGTRRA - Bush Tax Cut #1(fuck you, middle class)

EGTRRA - Bush Tax Cut #2(fuck you, middle class a.k.a. Jackal's Den, OBD, SS's grandjackal, etc.)

Iraq - Iraq War

PPACA - Obama Healthcare reform

Tax cuts sound really great when it's time to vote, but they're not good for surpluses.

What Republicans Are Up To

BMR, you asked "what the fuck Republicans are doing"? It's relatively simple: They don't see any electoral benefit in supporting anything Democrats do. If bills pass, the majority gets credit for them, which helps Democrats in November. If bills don't pass and Washington is seen as ineffective, the majority party gets punished in November. So the Republicans are doing everything they can to ensure that the latter is the case.

This is exacerbated by Obama's campaign focus on bipartisanship and reforming Washington, which means he'll get extra credit from the public if he is seen as actually delivering bipartisanship. And the GOP obviously doesn't want that.

A key problem here is that the filibuster gives the minority party a means of obstructing bills that have a majority of votes and the public doesn't necessarily understand this, so the majority often still gets punished. In some ways, the Democrats' 60-vote supermajority may have made this worse, because even informed members of the public could ask "well, you guys have the votes you need, so why are you complaining?" We may have seen this effect a little bit when a handful of Republicans joined with Democrats to pass the HIRE act; I'm assuming that they felt the pressure of the bill's potential failure if they didn't vote for it. The crazy thing is that, after 5 Republicans joined with Democrats in voting for cloture, THIRTEEN Republicans voted for the bill's passage. This particularly ironic screengrab from Lamar Alexander's (R-TN) website pretty much sums it up:

The HIRE Act and the "Partisan Jobs Bill" are the same thing. The ironic thing is that this bill was (1) an effort to create jobs in the worst economy in 75 years and (2) was composed almost entirely of tax cuts and credits. In other words, there was virtually no rationale for this bill not passing with massive (think 90+ votes) majorities.

In summary:

• Republicans know that helping Obama hurts them, so they're not doing it, even on bills that make a ridiculous amount of sense.
• Democrats are pussies for not passing their shit with the massive majorities they had.
• Republicans' "no-to-everything" strategy may not work anymore because they now can actually block everything, as opposed to just slowing everything down. Of course, actually voting for things also may not work because they may turn on themselves.
  

Well, well, well, Boogers Speak da Troof?

Head,

Please tell me what the fuck the Republicans are doing. Between NPR and the Daily Show, I've pieced it together, but I was hoping you could break it down in smartpeoplese.

Serious Post: Call to Action

I apologize for disrupting the Jackitude, but this is important: The Democrats in Congress are dangerously close to deciding that, because some bitch in Massachusetts didn't like shaking hands or know who Curt Schilling was, they're going to tuck their tails between their legs and quit on health care reform. With nearly 60/40 majorities in both houses of Congress. When most Americans like what's in the bill. Even though it would severely damage Obama's presidency.This bill, which has gone through five Congressional committees and been passed by both chambers, is a single vote from the finish line. Literally - this thing could be done tomorrow, chalked up as a success, and out of the headlines a week from now.This is the major policy goal that progressives have been seeking for something like 100 years (there was a major health care reform effort in the 1930s!). It will cover 30 million sick and poor Americans, save all of us from fear of losing coverage due to loss of job or rescission, and begin the much-needed reforms of the delivery system (e.g. doctor & pharmaceutical reimbursement) needed to save this country from eventually being bankrupted by health care costs. And it will do all of this while reducing the deficit.

If they don't pass this bill, then what the fuck are they in Congress for? So what can you do? Call your Representative and tell them to pass the Senate's bill, particularly if they happen to be one of the following:

• Elijah Cummings (MD-07)
• Donna Edwards (MD-04)
• Frank Kratovil (MD-1)
• Bill Pascrell (NJ-08)
• Donald Payne (NJ-10)
• Albio Sires (NJ-13)

Seriously if one of those is your rep and you don't call them, I'll kick you in the dick the next time I see you.

Then call some of the other representatives on the fence (a good list is at the bottom of this post) and tell them to pass the Senate's bill.

If they fail to pass this, my Representative and Senators (all three of whom are Democrats) will lose my votes forever. Because I don't vote for pussies. Period. And I'm going to make sure they know it before they make their decision.

UPDATE: It might be worth calling your Senators, too, and telling them to pass the amendments to the Senate bill via reconciliation.