Thursday Open Thread

Welcome to your Thursday open thread. I know you have a lot of burning ideas that you need to get off your chest and here’s the thread for you to do it.

Mitch McConnell has done a lot of media interviews calling the new financial reform bill a permanent taxpayer bailout for banks. I have no idea why the media has finally decided to call him on his lies.

But the pushback he received yesterday was pretty fierce. Among Democrats, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) was unusually incensed, while Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) all but called him a liar on the Senate floor.

Even Republicans were reluctant to rally behind McConnell’s absurdities. Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) characterized the new argument as “a touch over the top.” Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) compared McConnell’s pitch to “death panel” rhetoric. The Maine moderates — Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins — pretended not to know what McConnell had said so they wouldn’t have to defend it.

Even the media seemed unwilling to play along with McConnell’s willful ignorance. CNBC’s John Harwood told MSNBC that McConnell’s anti-reform argument is “a little silly when you look at the text of the bill.” And perhaps most importantly, Capitol Hill reporters pressed the Kentuckian on the fact that his bizarre opposition to reform comes on the heels of a private meeting McConnell attended last week with hedge fund managers and other Wall Street elites last week.

Did Democrats learn something from the health care reform battle?

Did you ever wonder why Republicans have to wear flag pins or modify their usernames with some form of “patriot?” It’s because they’re desperately trying to convince you that it’s true. Just listen to “pro-America” politician Michele Bachmann:

In an interview with radio host Scott Hennen yesterday, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) said that conservatives were hoping “that President Obama’s policies don’t succeed”:

HENNEN: I’m proudly accepting that label of rooting for failure for his policies, not for any one personal individual or anything else, but, I mean, should we, is that what Republicans are doing? Are we rooting for failure? Is David Axelrod right?

BACHMANN: We’re, we’re, we’re hoping that President Obama’s policies don’t succeed, exactly as you said. And of course, David Axelrod unfortunately seems to be wanting to smear people who disagree with the president. We’ve seen that over and over at Tea Party events, at gatherings where people say, “look, I don’t like this idea of out of control spending and accumulating deficits that our kids have no possibility of paying back.” And to think that those of us, we who disagree with that very ill-thought out idea are being smeared, I think that’s really wrong.

Michele Bachmann, along with Rush Limbaugh, hopes the American people will suffer so they can regain power.