No matter how safe the district is. No matter how lurid the indiscretion was. Democrats should never resign. Republicans are just too good at tricking people into voting against their interests.
In the end, no matter how terrible it was for a Democratic congressman to text a picture to a woman – the act shrinks to irrelevancy compared to the organized crimes perpetrated by the GOP.
The best being Rob Tornoe’s which, in one panel, perfectly captured the ten years of bungling, stupidity and heartbreak that we’ve had to endure because the terrorist stuck while we had Cheney (a psycho) and Bush (a retarded psycho) and in the White House.
It is dress like Steven Jobs Day today. Everybody in your jeans and black mock turtle neck? Good. You look fantastic.
In other jobs news: The President gave a speech. I guess he called out the Republicans directly because some professional lefties like Paul Krugman seemed to like it:
First things first: I was favorably surprised by the new Obama jobs plan, which is significantly bolder and better than I expected. It’s not nearly as bold as the plan I’d want in an ideal world. But if it actually became law, it would probably make a significant dent in unemployment.
Of course, it isn’t likely to become law, thanks to G.O.P. opposition. Nor is anything else likely to happen that will do much to help the 14 million Americans out of work. And that is both a tragedy and an outrage.
That’s sort of a win right? Getting Republicans viewed as the guys who are trying to fuck the economy for political gain doesn’t help unemployed people, but at least the universe makes a little more sense.
My take? I’m not jumping up and down.
1) Tax cuts suck as a jobs program. You know it. I know it. Everyone except congressional Republicans and White House Democrats know it.
2) At this point, I don’t trust Team Obama to pound Republicans flat on this anvil of justice with the hammer of reason.
Have at it.
That’s the rallying cry of a group of “concerned state legislators.” The group, State Legislators for Legal Immigration, was founded by State Representative Daryl Metcalfe or Pennsylvania.
Metcalfe is a colorful character. In 2009, he held up a resolution declaring October “Domestic Violence Awareness Month” because he claimed that the bill “had language in it that brought men into the situation”, citing this as evidence of a homosexual agenda. Again in 2009, he criticized Operation FREE, an organization that works to raise awareness of the national security threat posed by climate change by saying “As a veteran, I believe that any veteran lending their name, to promote the leftist propaganda of global warming and climate change, in an effort to control more of the wealth created in our economy, through cap and tax type policies, all in the name of national security, is a traitor to the oath he or she took to defend the Constitution of our great nation!”
I guess you can call this guy a teabagger. Hell, he was a teabagger before teabagging was cool (in the GOP).
His new soapbox has the following mission statement:
State Legislators for Legal Immigration is a nation-wide coalition founded by Pennsylvania State Representative Daryl D. Metcalfe (R-Butler) to provide a network of state legislators who are committed to working together in demanding full cooperation among our federal, state and local governments in eliminating all economic attractions and incentives (including, but not limited to: public benefits, welfare, education and employment opportunities) for illegal aliens, as well as securing our borders against unlawful invasion.
It gets better. Under the “problems and solutions” link, we find the following:
Problems
Increasingly documented incidences of homicide, identity theft, property theft, serious infectious diseases, drug running, gang violence, human trafficking, terrorism and growing cost to taxpayers are just some of the most detrimental ‘imports’ being brought across America’s unsecured borders by illegal aliens.
Solutions
1.Legislation has been introduced by state legislators across the nation to address the illegal alien issue.
2.All levels of government, working together to end access to the economic attractions for illegal aliens, will bring an end to our illegal alien invasion. Turning off the economic faucet that illegal aliens draw from will create a situation that will facilitate the illegal aliens returning to their home country of origin on their own volition.
3.The federal government must secure our borders from the entry of illegal aliens.
4.American citizens, both born and naturalized, along with legal resident aliens must be shown the respect that they deserve by requiring each and every person who desires to reside in our nation do so through the legal immigration process.
Now why am I writing about something that some schmuck in Pennsyltucky is organizing? Well, our very own Rep. Deborah Hudson is the Delaware member of this group. Yeah, that Deborah Hudson, the Greenville matron who got her Greenville address by marrying Louis Capano (yeah, that Capano family), who opposes any tax on the rich as oppressive.
So a few questions for Ms. Hudson:
1. Where is your proof (or your organization’s) that immigrants, whether legal or illegal, have caused an increase in the number of cases of “serious infectious diseases” in the US?
2. Will you force your Greenville neighbors and constituents to turn in their maids, nannies, gardeners, etc., or will you turn a blind eye to any of them who employ suspected illegal immigrants?
3. Since your organization supports Arizona-type immigration laws (which have been held up by the courts as being unconstitutional), do you also support racial profiling as a way to determine someone’s immigration status?
Ms. Hudson, you’re on the wrong side of this issue, as you are on many other issues.
It’s hard to take the slogan “never forget” seriously when, as a country, we never learned the true lessons of 9/11 in the first place.
I know it probably makes you angry to read this. After all, it’s a solemn occasion, and as an American, I have a duty to cast aside everything, wrap myself in an American flag and blindly remember the terrible day our nation experienced 10 years ago.
But it makes me angry we are so willfully ignorant of the reasons behind an event that not only claimed 3,000 innocent victims, but due to our “War on Terror” has cost the lives of over 6,000 of our service people, as well as caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians. Wait, I need to be more politically correct… not civilian deaths, “collateral damage.”
Matthew Yglesias writes:
Federal income tax brackets are “indexed” to inflation in order to prevent “bracket creep” by which real taxes would just rise year after year. But the federal gasoline tax is levied in terms of cents on the gallon and is not indexed, meaning that every year we don’t raise the tax the real value falls every year:
Erick Erickson writes:
Sarah Palin is a great person. She’s a great fighter. She draws in awesome attention and rallies a crowd. She has some terrific and loyal supporters I don’t want to lump in with the loud voices largely now disconnected from political reality. Ron Paul is the same way. But at some point, Sarah Palin has to take some responsibility for her supporters as Ron Paul must for his. Palin’s dragging out the tease on her decision has compounded the problem and we’ve reached a breaking point.
[snip]
As Ann Coulter said, “Fish or cut bait.” Governor Palin has teased us long enough. Most of us are tired of it. She has harmed her own entry into the race and now, even if she got in, would only see a modest rise in polling.
via The Dish
Former Vice President Al Gore wrote:
On Friday afternoon, as brave and committed activists continued their non-violent civil disobedience outside the White House in protest of the tar sands pipeline that would lead to a massive increase in global warming pollution, President Obama ordered the EPA to abandon its pursuit of new curbs on emissions that worsens disease-causing smog in US cities. Earlier this year, the EPA’s administrator, Lisa Jackson, wrote that the levels of pollution now permitted — put in place by the Bush-Cheney administration– are “not legally defensible.” Those very same rules have now been embraced by the Obama White House.
Instead of relying on science, President Obama appears to have bowed to pressure from polluters who did not want to bear the cost of implementing new restrictions on their harmful pollution—even though economists have shown that the US economy would benefit from the job creating investments associated with implementing the new technology. The result of the White House’s action will be increased medical bills for seniors with lung disease, more children developing asthma, and the continued degradation of our air quality.
This survey should come to no surprise to our readers.
- 63% believe that discrimination against whites is as big a problem as discrimination against minority groups.
- 66% believe that the values of Islam are at odds with American values.
- 54% believe that American Muslims are trying to establish Shari’a law in the U.S.
- 56% believe that newcomers from other countries threaten traditional American customs and values.
- 72% believe we should deport all illegal immigrants back to their home countries.
From Politico:
Perry’s bet is on a conservative, confrontational and mad-as-hell Republican Party. Romney’s is that GOP activists want, above all, to win and will come to recognize that nominating the Texas governor would be an act of political suicide.
The divide between the two men reflects an ongoing debate that’s splitting the Republican Party both on the campaign trail and beyond it. Some of its leaders, looking back at the 2010 midterm elections, believe that the party – and the nation – are ready to gorge on red meat as never before. The American people, goes this line of thinking, recognize that entitlements must be addressed and that old-style demagoguery over the issue has become less effective.
Have at it.