bad news, Rick….

(Pardon me for not being able to give adequate credit to the creator; I found this via one of those endless Facebook share chains where it’s impossible to find out who actually made it.)

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WONKETTE EXCLUSIVE: Breitbart Was A Pimp; O’Keefe Just a Whore

For serious. Hat tip to commentor Egg Berry, and much applause for Wonketteers Matthew Phelan and Liz Farkas:

... Very independent citizen-journalist James O’Keefe and his equally self-funded co-star in the ACORN stings, Hannah Giles, got real paid shortly after finishing their videos in the early fall of 2009, according to depositions taken three weeks ago. The pair admitted under oath to signing contracts with (the now recently deceased) Andrew Breitbart and his business partner, attorney Larry Solov, for the sum total of $120,000. Pretty shocking, right? You could buy a fairly high-end sex boat with that kind of cash. Or, one could, anyway…

Studious observers of the ACORN video controversies may recall that Vera was the ACORN employee who called local police to report on James O’Keefe’s and Hannah Giles’ pimp/boyfriend and prostitute characters just hours after speaking with them. Really abnormally obsessive observers might also recall that the full transcript of the hidden-camera video concludes with O’Keefe and Giles debating with each other over why exactly Vera is photographing their license plate from across the parking lot. The two would ultimately tell the media that Vera had agreed to help them smuggle underage prostitutes through Tijuana and that he wanted to solicit the services of Giles’ prostitute character.

According to his recent testimony, O’Keefe ultimately received $65,000 for his “life rights” from Breitbart in $5000/month installments from September 2009 until September 2010 (terminating roughly around the time that O’Keefe’s failed sex boating of a CNN reporter started to make headlines). Giles, who testified the day after O’Keefe, was also supposed to receive $60,000 per year (or $5,000 per month) but was only compensated $32,000 over the course of ten months from December 2009 to September 2010. Breitbart had reduced her monthly salary to $3,000 beginning around April 2010 and terminated Giles that summer. (There may be a Lily Ledbetter Act lawsuit in Ms. Giles’s future.)...

The new details brought out by the recent depositions have done much to complicate the carefully crafted public narrative of the videos’ development. Breitbart and several others had been involved in the planning stages beginning in July 2009, following a period wherein O’Keefe and Giles had shopped around their East Coast ACORN videos basically like a pilot. “They discussed ACORN during their [Breitbart and O’Keefe’s] first phone conversation,” Iredale tells us. “Andrew Breitbart knew about Mr. O’Keefe’s plans before the West Coast videos were made, and he was aware they were recording people without their knowledge or consent.” During his deposition, O’Keefe refused to provide any details from those early discussions that did not directly pertain to the making of the San Diego video, as per the instruction of his attorney, Mike Madigan….

Much more detail at the link. Be nice if Mr. Vera could get his reputation restored, even though it’s too late to save ACORN from being (further) codified by Wingnut Wurlitzer slander. Given past performance, I assume that O’Keefe has already attempted to pin everything on his dead capo… in the best Breitbart/Drudge tradition, perhaps a chainmail rumor will be mounted that St. Andrew the Angry was murdered by his treacherous underling(s) in an attempt to shift the limelight? Be interesting to see whether O’Keefe’s d/b/a Project VeritasMyAss rates go up or down as a result of this.

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Romney/Ryan: What’s in Your Wallet Platform?

(Ben Sargent via GoComics.com)

I can’t stop, because they won’t. The Economist’s Will Wilkinson goes gooey for the Zombie-Eyed Granny Starver:

... Unfortunately for Mr Obama, Mr Ryan is no Newt Gingrich. He is not a pompous, self-aggrandizing bloviator in the grand southern style. He’s a likeable, hardworking, detail-oriented, Midwestern wonk who just happens to be something of a looker. Moreover, Mr Ryan’s conservatism largely eschews the odious cultural politics of social conservatives and focuses instead on a pragmatic, fiscally conservative market-oriented meliorism, the appeal of which is by no means limited to the hard right. He’s an attractive politician offering an attractive comprehensive alternative to the administration’s approach. And that’s why it is a matter of urgent political necessity for Mr Obama to try to smear Mr Ryan’s budget as a recipe for brutal, devil-take-the-hindmost injustice…

Mr Ryan is ready and able to debate the substance of public policy in way only a few members of congress, left or right, can match. He’s become a de facto leader of the GOP not because he’s a big idea man in the Gingrich mold, but rather because he’s extraordinarily capable of approaching America’s big-ticket structural problems with coherent, detailed policy proposals. After Mr Obama’s Tuesday speech, Mr Ryan’s office released a sharp, systematic rebuttal on Facebook. You don’t have to agree with Mr Ryan’s politics to see the substance here. Although he is at least Mr Ryan’s equal as a debater and policy wonk, Mr Obama has not and will not win every fight he picks with him. Mr Obama seems to be gambling on the assumption he is safely encamped on the moral high ground, and can therefore lose a good few battles and nevertheless win the war…

First off, humectified much, W.W.? If Ryan-mania doesn’t blow over like every other GOP fad this season, Rick “Sarah Starbursts” Lowrey may lose the Most Transparently Embarrassing Media Moment award he stole from Chris “Dubya’s flightsuit package sends a tingle up my leg” Matthews. Secondly, because I am old enough to remember stuff that happened even before 2001, I do not believe the words “sharp, systematic rebuttal” and “Facebook” should be used in the same sentence. As for content, let’s defer to a real economist, discussing “The Gullible Center“:

The Ryan cult was very much on display last week, after President Obama said the obvious: the latest Republican budget proposal, a proposal that Mitt Romney has avidly embraced, is a “Trojan horse” — that is, it is essentially a fraud. “Disguised as deficit reduction plans, it is really an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country.”

The reaction from many commentators was a howl of outrage. The president was being rude; he was being partisan; he was being a big meanie. Yet what he said about the Ryan proposal was completely accurate.

Actually, there are many problems with that proposal. But you can get the gist if you understand two numbers: $4.6 trillion and 14 million.

Of these, $4.6 trillion is the revenue cost over the next decade of the tax cuts embodied in the plan, as estimated by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. These cuts — which are, by the way, cuts over and above those involved in making the Bush tax cuts permanent — would disproportionately benefit the wealthy, with the average member of the top 1 percent receiving a tax break of $238,000 a year…

Meanwhile, 14 million is a minimum estimate of the number of Americans who would lose health insurance under Mr. Ryan’s proposed cuts in Medicaid; estimates by the Urban Institute actually put the number at between 14 million and 27 million.

So the proposal is exactly as President Obama described it: a proposal to deny health care (and many other essentials) to millions of Americans, while lavishing tax cuts on corporations and the wealthy — all while failing to reduce the budget deficit, unless you believe in Mr. Ryan’s secret revenue sauce. So why are centrists rising to Mr. Ryan’s defense?

My personal response would be “Because those self-styled ‘centrists’ are either morons or liars, or both”, but you can check the link Professor Krugman’s sober, reasoned, adult conclusions.

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Romney/Ryan: Embrace the Giant Sucking Sound

(Mike Thompson via GoComics.com)

Irredeemable WaPo jagoff Chris Cillizza on “Paul Ryan’s Rapidly-Improving Vice-Presidential Prospects“:

... In what was a defining speech of his 2012 reelection campaign, Obama repeatedly called out Ryan and Republicans for their “laughable” approach to deficit reduction, describing the budget plan put forward by the Wisconsin Republican as a “Trojan horse”. Added Obama: “Disguised as deficit reduction plans, it is really an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country. It is thinly veiled social Darwinism.”...

Knowing now that Obama is going to go all-out on the Ryan plan, it makes an increasing amount of sense for Romney to not only fully embrace the plan (as he has done) but to fully embrace the man too.

It’s not hard to imagine this thought in Romney headquarters this morning: You want to make the Ryan plan the centerpiece of this campaign? Fine. Game on. That’s a fight we want.

If you believe — and you should — that the dominant issue of this campaign is over which party has the best plan to put the country on sound financial footing then there’s no better way for Romney to drive a contrast with Obama than to put the face of the conservative approach to budgeting on the national ticket. (It doesn’t hurt that Ryan is telegenic, beloved by tea party conservatives and from a swing state like Wisconsin.)...

By all means, Republican base-rs, embrace the Zombie-Eyed Granny-Starver! Make this Randroid phantasy the public face of your party! Cillizza actually quotes Ezra Klein’s wonkish dissection of the way Ryan’s budget undermines Romney’s careful all-things-to-all-voters “moderation”... and then manages to proclaim this as a positive for the general election.

I think former theatre critic Frank Rich, at NYMag’s Daily Intel, has a sounder understanding of the reality-based community:

The president called the budget “social Darwinism” — is this a strategy the Democrats can keep up throughout the general election?
“Social Darwinism” that budget clearly is, for it enshrines two principles: More tax cuts for the rich, and the gutting of programs that might benefit those who have not reached the pinnacle of economic evolution. Not just Medicare and Medicaid, but Head Start, Pell grants, and federal regulation of toxins as various as derivatives on Wall Street and “pink slime” in food. The House budget is a Pandora’s box of potential horrors that Democrats can roll out throughout 2012. And that political task is made easier by the fact that the Republicans, including Romney, are leaving the details blank, allowing voters (with Democratic prodding) to let their imaginations and fears run riot. Romney actually told The Weekly Standard that he would not “give you a list right now” of what federal departments and programs he would eliminate as President — and he said this just two weeks before he had the audacity to accuse Obama of playing “hide-and-seek.” Freud had a term for this — projection…

Will it help or hurt Obama that the GOP budget’s author, Paul Ryan, is a relative newcomer to the national stage? Even Americans who know his name probably only have a vague idea of who he is other than a “Wisconsin budget wonk.”
Ryan is too dull to serve as a political piñata — he’s “9-9-9” without the charisma. Should Romney pick him for Veep, as Washington’s current “whispering” has it, the GOP will at least have an all-white-male ticket in perfect sync with the party’s demographics. The bland leading the bland.

Isn’t that precisely why Romney shouldn’t choose Ryan?
You’d think. Then again, it’s hard to imagine how any vice-presidential choice could undo his and his party’s poor standing with two minorities, African-Americans and Hispanics, and one majority, women. This week Romney became clenched, awkward, and terse when asked to expound on the Mormon church’s egregious and tardy history in awarding blacks equal status to whites. He has endorsed Arizona’s Draconian anti-immigration law, which would punish Latinos for the crime of acting or looking “Latino,” and he has given the nation the concept of “self-deportation,” which some Hispanic voters might rightfully mistake for “self-flagellation,” or perhaps “self-annihilation.” Romney has also endorsed the so-called Blunt Amendment, and called for the elimination of Title X and Planned Parenthood funding — which would collectively deny poor and working women alike coverage not just for contraception but for cancer screening, among other health-care essentials…

It’s not hard to understand why this is latest (free!) bumper sticker from Democrats.org ...

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Getting Worked Over

What’s going on here in Kentucky’s employment scene is typical nationally:

With the economy slowly reviving, an executive from Atlas Van Lines recently visited Louisville, Ky., with good news: the company wanted to hire more than 100 truck drivers ahead of the summer moving season.

But a usually reliable source of workers, the local government-financed job center, could offer little help, because the federal money that local officials had designated to help train drivers was already exhausted. Without the government assistance, many of the people who would be interested in applying for the driving jobs could not afford the $4,000 classes to obtain commercial driver’s licenses. Now Atlas is struggling to find eligible drivers.

Across the country, work force centers that assist the unemployed are being asked to do more with less as federal funds dwindle for job training and related services.

And that’s because Republicans have cut job training programs again and again.  Both this year’s version of the Ryan Austerity Plan and last year’s version called for massive cuts to job training programs, and the Republicans got a healthy chunk of those cuts as part of budget deals (that they are looking to renege upon now).  By the way, every single Republican in Congress voted to keep paying federal oil subsidies which would have more than covered the job training budget several times over.  Instead, these programs are out of money in April already.

To bolster training and other services for jobless workers, the Obama administration recently proposed consolidating two programs. The general dislocated worker program paid for under the Workforce Investment Act would be combined with the Trade Adjustment Assistance program, which provides training and other benefits to workers who lose their jobs because of foreign competition.

The trade program, which has an annual budget of $575 million, is typically more generous, but narrow in eligibility. The combined program would make all funds available to anyone who had lost a job, regardless of the reason.

In his latest budget proposal, President Obama also requested an additional $2.8 billion a year for job training over the next decade. “Even in this very tight budget,” said Gene Sperling, national economic adviser, “the president felt that there was an imperative to call right now for a more simplified and effective training system” that also had an increase in funds.

You’re probably saying to yourself “Why cut job training programs for people who want to work when unemployment is as high as it is?”  You’ve answered your own question, same as why Republicans want to eliminate federal programs for birth control, preventative care, sex education, early childhood education, and day care.  They don’t want anything to get better for the working poor.  They might end up with an extra five bucks to give to a Democrat.  Can’t have that.  Gotta have tax cuts for the Job Creators instead.  That’ll teach you to be poor.

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Open Thread: Treachery — It’s In Their Nature

A little schadenfreude to counteract the holiday sweetness. The GOP scorpions are feeling bottled in, and reacting as scorpions in a bottle will. Eric Cantor can’t resist the wiles of a winsome young lad…

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor went into damage control mode Friday following the revelation that he contributed $25,000 to a super PAC devoted to defeating incumbent House members — including numerous Republicans.

The news of Cantor’s contribution to the Campaign for Primary Accountability, first reported by Roll Call Friday afternoon and confirmed by a spokesman for the super PAC, was said to have taken party leaders by surprise. House Speaker John Boehner, House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, and National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Pete Sessions, knowledgeable aides said, had not received advance word that the contribution had been made…

Cantor’s contribution came during last month’s heated incumbent vs. incumbent primary between GOP Reps. Adam Kinzinger and Don Manzullo, a contest where Manzullo was targeted with more than $200,000 in CPA spending. The super PAC had been running TV ads against Manzullo, a 20-year-incumbent who had been drawn into the same district as the freshman Kinzinger, whom Cantor was openly supporting…

Ray Allen, Cantor’s political consultant, said in a written statement that Cantor’s donation to CPA had been earmarked expressly for use in the Illinois race and not in any other contests. Allen also said that Cantor had made the contribution after being approached by Rep. Aaron Schock, an Illinois Republican who also supported Kinzinger and who had asked Cantor to donate to CPA…

That would be this Aaron Schock. Cantor’s always had an eye for the ‘young guns’, as per the name of his personal PAC…

But CPA is challenging that version of events. Appearing on CNN Friday evening, Leo Linbeck, a Houston construction magnate who is one of the super PAC’s primary funders, said he was not aware that Cantor’s donation had been earmarked specifically to target Manzullo…Linbeck also framed the Cantor donation in terms that are sure to roil the House Republican Conference.

“We are delighted that the House leadership of the GOP shares our vision of creating real competition for entrenched incumbents,” Linbeck said. “I mean, that’s so forward-thinking of them. This idea that committee chairs and House leadership ought to actually compete for the support of their district, we applaud their foresight.”

[via NYMag]

And while a sobbing John Boehner drunk-dialed Nancy Pelosi, the National Weasel Federation has quietly contacted their legal representatives to quash media comparisons of Eric Cantor to any of the better-known Mustelidae family. Meanwhile, Pastor Huckabee might not have been able to beat John McCain in 2008, but he figures he can do better on the radio than that other bitter old man:

On Monday, former Arkansas governor and one-time Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee will launch a three-hour radio program on almost 200 stations across the country, going voice-to-voice with Limbaugh in the noon-to-3 p.m. time slot, Monday through Friday.

Cumulus Media, which owns and operates the new program, is already pitching Huckabee to listeners and advertisers as the “safe alternative” to a man who has recently found himself under weeks of intense fire – not for the first time – and who some believe could be vulnerable to a challenge from someone offering a kinder, gentler conservative voice.

“Our tagline is, ‘More conversation, less confrontation’,” Huckabee told POLITICO. “I’m going to treat every guest with respect and civility. Nobody is going to come on and get into a shouting match with me. That’s just not my style.”

Making a direct comparison with Limbaugh, John Dickey, the co-COO of Cumulus Media, adds, “This is going to be safer from a commercial standpoint, and more respectful from a listener’s perspective. I think that environment has been sorely lacking in talk radio.”...

Meanwhile, Leader (Perhaps) of the Civilising Forces, Newt Gingrich, tells Fox News that he’s ready for a kinder, gentler relationship with his fellow alpha Republican:

Newt Gingrich acknowledged Sunday that his campaign is “operating on a shoestring,” as he signaled he is preparing to transition from candidate to surrogate in anticipation of Mitt Romney winning the nomination…

Gingrich spoke openly about his campaign’s money troubles. He said the campaign has had to dip into personal funds—“a little bit, but not dramatically”—and that the campaign is “slightly less” than $4.5 million in debt.

“We owe much more than we wanted to,” Gingrich said. He explained that the Florida primary in late January “got to be a real brawl” and that his campaign “tried to match Romney.”...

Though Gingrich and Romney throughout January engaged in some of the most personal attacks of the presidential primary campaign, Gingrich said Sunday that the two are at peace with one another.

“I hit him as hard as I could, he hit me as hard as he could—turned out he had more things to hit with than I did,” Gingrich said. “That’s part of the business.”

Gingrich said that if Romney wins 1,144 delegates and clinches the nomination, he will do “everything I can” to support him going into November.

“We are absolutely committed to defeating Barack Obama,” he said. “I will work as hard for (Romney) as I would for myself.”

Shorter Newt: C’mon, Mitt, you’re the only reason I’m not lead dog this season! You owe me a paid consultant spot… Callista’s Tiffany jones is a lot more burdensome than Ann’s horsey dressage toys when you don’t have a quarter-billion in Bain-fed Swiss bank accounts to support it. Hey, it’s not like YOU enjoy standing in front of the media lights defending the indefensible…

***********
So, apart from natural history narratives, what’s on the agenda for a Sunday evening?

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Working As Intended, Folks

This Easter Sunday, the NY Times has this Jason DeParle story on red states shredding welfare safety nets and the people who keep falling through them.

Faced with flat federal financing and rising need, Arizona is one of 16 states that have cut their welfare caseloads further since the start of the recession — in its case, by half. Even as it turned away the needy, Arizona spent most of its federal welfare dollars on other programs, using permissive rules to plug state budget gaps.

The poor people who were dropped from cash assistance here, mostly single mothers, talk with surprising openness about the desperate, and sometimes illegal, ways they make ends meet. They have sold food stamps, sold blood, skipped meals, shoplifted, doubled up with friends, scavenged trash bins for bottles and cans and returned to relationships with violent partners — all with children in tow.

Esmeralda Murillo, a 21-year-old mother of two, lost her welfare check, landed in a shelter and then returned to a boyfriend whose violent temper had driven her away. “You don’t know who to turn to,” she said.

Maria Thomas, 29, with four daughters, helps friends sell piles of brand-name clothes, taking pains not to ask if they are stolen. “I don’t know where they come from,” she said. “I’m just helping get rid of them.”

To keep her lights on, Rosa Pena, 24, sold the groceries she bought with food stamps and then kept her children fed with school lunches and help from neighbors. Her post-welfare credo is widely shared: “I’ll do what I have to do.”

And as any conservative can tell you, this is working 100% as intended.  If those on welfare turn to crime, then it’s clearly permissible to cut welfare even further to stop coddling these criminals, and then of course pass those savings through tax cuts on to the Almighty Job Creators, who will then certainly create more jobs and uplift these broken souls back into society.  Any time now, those jobs will be just pouring out.  Yep.

Of course without that vital last part, it becomes and endless conveyor belt to transfer wealth to the wealthy and drive the poor into other states (preferably blue ones) where they become somebody else’s problem.  Meanwhile, red states like Arizona get to claim they’ve cut welfare rolls and that the rest of America needs to follow their success.

Meanwhile, the expensive private prison conglomerates designed to incarcerate the increasingly desperate among us costing taxpayers far more per person than the welfare did in the first place is beside the point, that money’s well spent because we’re tough on crime.  Certainly the GOP is licking their chops at the latest iteration of the House GOP budget, turning safety net programs into block grants they can raid for even more tax cuts and wealth transfer.  And if the GOP gets control, guess what’s happening to these programs in the future?

Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, the top House Republican on budget issues, calls the current welfare program “an unprecedented success.” Mitt Romney, who leads the race for the Republican presidential nomination, has said he would place similar restrictions on “all these federal programs.” One of his rivals, Rick Santorum, calls the welfare law a source of spiritual rejuvenation.

“It didn’t just cut the rolls, but it saved lives,” Mr. Santorum said, giving the poor “something dependency doesn’t give: hope.”

As in “hope God chose you to be rich, because otherwise you’re screwed.”  Happy Easter Hunger Games from the GOP.  Don’t worry, when you die, your suffering will be rewarded in the next life.  Oh wait, it won’t because you were poor and wasted your life so you obviously sinned, so it’s okay if we kick your face in a few more times.

Like I said, working as intended.

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Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

Scary black guy is scary.

Sen. Mike Johanns (R-Neb.) on Tuesday accused President Obama of “threatening” the Supreme Court as it prepares a ruling on the constitutionality of the healthcare reform law.

Speaking a day after Obama warned against “unelected” judges overturning the law, Johanns said Obama crossed the line with his remarks.

“What President Obama is doing here isn’t right,” Johanns said Tuesday in an interview with local Nebraska radio station KLIN. “It is threatening, it is intimidating.”

Seven more months of “But he’s The Uppity Kenyan Colonialist Gangsta Thug!  Hide your nubile daughters!” is going to be awesome like a migraine surrounded by smaller autonomous migraines.  Then again, it’s not like Republicans can run on issues or anything, so the full court press on BLOOGITY BLOO HE’S BLACK is pretty much their entire hand at this point.

I for one think people would remember 15 months of this in 2007-2008 not working, but it really hasn’t stopped these guys from regularly visiting the dog whistle factory, ordering crates of dog whistles, melting them down into slag and then using the slag to paint HE’S BLACK in 50 foot tall letters on the side of every skyscraper in America as a stimulus project.

I swear if the President ever gave anyone the side-eye, there would be Articles of Banishment to the Phantom Zone before the end of the day.

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Monday Morning Open Thread: “Pink Slime Economics”

(D.B. Echo at Another Monkey)

Professor Krugman reminds us not to get so distracted by the SCOTUS anti-ACA antics that we forget to keep a sharp eye on zombie-eyed granny-starver[*] Paul Ryan:

... The Ryan budget is a fraud; Mr. Ryan talks loudly about the evils of debt and deficits, but his plan would actually make the deficit bigger even as it inflicted huge pain in the name of deficit reduction. But is his budget really the most fraudulent in American history? Yes, it is.

To be sure, we’ve had irresponsible and/or deceptive budgets in the past. Ronald Reagan’s budgets relied on voodoo, on the claim that cutting taxes on the rich would somehow lead to an explosion of economic growth. George W. Bush’s budget officials liked to play bait and switch, low-balling the cost of tax cuts by pretending that they were only temporary, then demanding that they be made permanent. But has any major political figure ever premised his entire fiscal platform not just on totally implausible spending projections but on claims that he has a secret plan to raise trillions of dollars in revenue, a plan that he refuses to share with the public?

What’s going on here? The answer, presumably, is that this is what happens when extremists gain complete control of a party’s discourse: all the rules get thrown out the window. Indeed, the hard right’s grip on the G.O.P. is now so strong that the party is sticking with Mr. Ryan even though it’s paying a significant political price for his assault on Medicare.

Now, the House Republican budget isn’t about to become law as long as President Obama is sitting in the White House. But it has been endorsed by Mr. Romney. And even if Mr. Obama is reelected, the fraudulence of this budget has important implications for future political negotiations…

[W]hat we learn from the latest Republican budget is that the whole pursuit of a Grand Bargain was a waste of time and political capital. For a lasting budget deal can only work if both parties can be counted on to be both responsible and honest — and House Republicans have just demonstrated, as clearly as anyone could wish, that they are neither.

[* h/t Charles Pierce]

Apart from empty-eyed GOP charlatans, what’s on the agenda for the new week?

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On, Wisconsin: Scott Walker Will Face Recall

Quick hit, pending updates from Kay or other posters more knowledgeable about the primary situation, but looks like we’ll be highlighting another GOTV / ActBlue drive:

Scott Walker, the embattled first-term Republican governor of Wisconsin, will face a recall election on June 5, the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board (GAB) ruled Friday. Walker’s Lieutenant Governor, Rebecca Kleefisch, will also face a recall.

The board voted 5-0 in favor of a holding a recall election after finding that the recall ballots for both candidates garnered a sufficient number of valid signatures to proceed.

More than 900,900 valid signatures were collected in a petition to recall Walker, and more than 800,000 valid signatures were collected in a petition to recall Kleefisch. Only 540,208 signatures were required…

Democratic primaries will take place on May 8.

So far, there are four Democrats in the running: Former Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk, who has already secured the endorsements of a number of labor groups, elected officials, and liberal organizations, as well as Secretary of State Doug La Follette, state Sen. Kathleen Vinehout and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, who ran an unsuccessful bid against Walker in 2010.

Any Wisconsinites (Badgers?) want to tell us who we should be supporting?

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Totally Called It

And it seems the unofficial and unconfirmed winner of the Ni-CLANG Sweepstakes is Rick Santorum, folks!

Speaking to a group of voters in Janesville, Wisconsin on Wednesday, the candidate seemed to catch himself before using a word that sounds like “n*gger” to describe the president. (The original video of the speech is available here. The remarks in question take place at about 34:50.)

“We know the candidate Barack Obama, what he was like – the anti-war government nig… America was a source for division around the world, that what we were doing was wrong,” Santorum said.

“Oh, come on!” Santorum spokesman Hogan Gidley told Raw Story when asked for comment. “Give me a break. That’s unbelievable. What does it say about those that are running with this story that that’s where their mind goes. You know, I’m not going to dignify that with [a response].”

“That is absolutely ridiculous.”

Right.  He meant to say “the anti-war government blah person.”

It’s probably ridiculous.  Santorum, speaking for 30 plus minutes, might have gotten tongue tied.  The video’s inconclusive at best as far as I can tell.  But you know what?  It’s end of March, coming up on April.  We’ve got seven months to go still and we’re reasonably close to having one of the major GOP candidates go there.  Slick Rick here may have reasonable doubt in this instance.  Sometime before November, it’s going to happen.  Santorum wasn’t exactly singing the President’s praises in the speech.

But hey, Santorum’s campaign and at times Santorum himself accused POTUS of promoting infanticide, promoting eugenics, of having radical Islamic policies and of being a bigot towards Santorum’s anti-gay bigot buddies.  These are things Santorum and his people have gone on record of having said, so frankly dropping the n-word really can’t make him much more of an odious, self-righteous jagoff.

Santorum crossed that line long ago.

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The Rock Biter Theory Of Health Care Reform Legislation

“So,” they said.  “We don’t think SCOTUS will repeal the entire health care reform law, or gut the law and effectively end it, because that would put all the pressure on the GOP to replace it with something.  There would be a hole in one-sixth of the US economy.  They’d have do something about it.”

And as anyone who is familiar with The Neverending Story can tell you, the GOP is all about embracing the Nothing as far as health care reform (and with it, government itself).  As the Rock Biter said when asked what was destroying his peoples’ lands and what was left as a result:

A hole would be something. No, it was…Nothing.

Steve Benen points out that the GOP is perfectly okay with the HCR Nothing taking over. Repeal and Replace is now just Repeal and The Nothing.

When the debate over health care reform got underway in earnest in 2009, Frank Luntz and other GOP pollsters/strategists warned the party that Americans expected improvements to the dysfunctional system, and Republicans couldn’t simply say “no” to everything.

Three years later, that’s effectively where the party has ended up: wanting to go back to the mess “Obamacare” is cleaning up.

But what about McConnell’s main idea? It’s one of the GOP’s favorite talking points: we don’t need real reform; we just need to let consumers buy across state lines. President Obama and the Affordable Care Act allow this, but set minimum standards that states must abide by. McConnell and his party want to go further, removing, or at least severely weakening, those standards.

This is generally called the “race to the bottom.” Under McConnell’s vision, state policymakers would tell insurers that if they were to set up shop in their state the rules would be written in the industry’s favor. The industry would go with the state that offered the sweetest deal—which is to say, the most lax oversight with the fewest restrictions—and before long, it would be consumers’ only choice. Why? Because every insurer would move to that state, leaving Americans with no other coverage to buy.

That’s exactly what happened with the credit card industry, and it’s a model to be avoided, not followed.

But tossing us all into The Nothing is what the GOP wants. They “want to give the power to the states” because it’s FREEDOM and junk, and instead we’ll get the same awful abuses that the credit card industry has been perpetrating on consumers for years, only far worse because this time it will involve health insurance and health care itself. The cheapest, meanest policies that cover the least in health care and have massive deductibles will be the only ones left for the vast majority of Americans and the insurance industry will pocket the difference.  Can’t afford it?  There’s Nothing you can do about it.  Keen observers will note that the Nothing applies to any social government functions:  Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and retirement, environmental protections, education, food safety, financial products, everything.  You can’t provide it yourself because you can’t afford it?  You get Nothing.

So no, I don’t believe for a second that the GOP will have to replace HCR with something. That would be something, after all. What they want is Nothing.

[UPDATE]  And the folks that are expecting single payer to rise from the ashes should HCR get mauled?  With a GOP House?  No.  the rocks must be delicious in your world, but single payer ain’t happening until there’s a seismic shift in the red/blue ratio.  Unless you think this particular SCOTUS is going to rewrite the universe and declare that Congress has to pass a single payer law, in which case the rocks are delicious in your world and they’re made of 100% unicorn poop.

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The moderate Republicans were tied up in the back of the statehouse, unable to resist the Tea Party, until campaign season started

“Moderate” Republicans miraculously find their voice, express “doubts” on union-busting, just in time for the start of campaign season:

For the first time in more than three decades, Minnesota Republicans are basking in majorities in both chambers of the state Legislature, so on matters that need no signature from the Democratic governor, they can do as they please.
And yet, on a recent afternoon, Senator Dave Thompson said he had grown doubtful that the “right to work” amendment he hoped to put before voters this fall — a proposition requiring no approval by the governor — would survive a vote of his fellow Republican legislators, or even find its way out of Republican-controlled committees.
“I’ve been told that no hearing has been scheduled and that a lot of people are concerned, so I guess this isn’t going to move anywhere,” Senator Thompson said on Friday, days after the proposal drew hundreds of protesting union supporters to the halls of the Legislature, and after an advertising campaign critical of the idea began airing around Minnesota. “It’s not about the policy. There is a tremendous fear of the political ramifications — it boils down to that, nothing more or less,” he said.
After costly, bruising political showdowns with union forces last year in Wisconsin and Ohio, Republicans in some state legislatures are facing a tugging match within their party — between passionate conservative members like Mr. Thompson, a freshman who was among hundreds of legislators swept into statehouses in 2010 who want to push forward, and a more moderate bloc not sure it is wise to take on labor so directly now.
The dueling pressure comes at a key moment in an election year — not only for the presidency, but for more than 5,900 state legislative seats around the nation — with Republican leaders eager to keep newfound legislative majorities in capitals like this one.
The much-publicized union battles last year, which led to a recall campaign against Gov. Scott Walker in Wisconsin and to the repeal of a bill limiting collective bargaining backed by Gov. John R. Kasich of Ohio, seemed likely to quiet such efforts. But some Republicans have pushed ahead, to the discomfort, in some cases, of their fellow Republicans.
Many right-to-work advocates were energized this winter when Indiana, with little debate within the Republican ranks that control state government, passed a bill making it the 23rd right-to-work state. It was the first state to take such a step in a decade, bringing new energy to similar proposals in Missouri and New Hampshire.

I understand the impulse to treat this as something other than a press release, but, really. At what point do we all just laugh at these carefully-timed-and-released claims of lessons learned and responding to their voters concerns? How many times can conservatives pull this scam?

They’re backing off these anti-working class measures not because there’s been any sort of “moderation” in conservative-libertarian anti-union dogma in response to public opposition but because they are worried about losing a certain crucial share of union voters in the next election. They’re afraid they’re going to lose their jobs. If they don’t lose their jobs, they’ll be back with a vengeance, because they’ll claim a “mandate” for the same anti-worker legislation they just carefully announced shelving.

I’m just going to quote media darling and principled conservative leader Mitch Daniels here, to get an idea on what their solemn vow on unions is worth:

“We cannot afford to have civil wars over issues that might divide us and divert us from that path. I have said over and over, I’ll say it again tonight: I’m a supporter of the labor laws we have in the state of Indiana,” he said in a speech to the Teamsters 135 Union Stewards Dinner on Sept. 23, 2006. “I’m not interested in changing any of it. Not the prevailing wage laws, and certainly not the right to work law. We can succeed in Indiana with the laws we have, respecting the rights of labor, and fair and free competition for everybody.”

Certainly not! Mitch Daniels was upset at just the mention of right to work. You’ll also notice Daniels talks about “respecting the rights” of labor. That language has completely disappeared from the Republican Party, but I expect it will reappear in states like Minnesota and Ohio and Michigan and Wisconsin, because it’s time once again for conservatives to run away from the policies and practices they support.

Daniels was, of course, lying to his union voters in 2006. Daniels promoted and passed union-busting laws in 2012. Republicans have every intention of pursuing union-busting in Midwest states. Like Daniels, they simply want to wait until after they retain their own jobs to pursue the anti-worker laws they’re committed to passing.

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They’ve Always Been Banking On Failure

A lot of rightful facepalming has been made over GOP Rep. Paul Ryan’s odiously awful budget proposal adding some 50 million Americans to the ranks of the uninsured and basically handing over trillions to the one percent, but in addition to all that the GOP would end up obliterating Dodd-Frank and leaving us with the same “oversight” we had in 2007 when the financial meltdown came barreling through our lives.  Suzy Khimm over at Ezra Klein’s Kaplan Nerd Farm details the carnage:

The Ryan budget, however, would actually repeal the FDIC’s new resolution authority, arguing that it would have the opposite effect of what’s intended by allowing bank regulators “to access taxpayer dollars in order to bail out the creditors of large, ‘systemically significant’ financial institutions.” By doing so, Ryan says he would “end the regime now enshrined into law that paves the way for future bailouts.”

His blueprint doesn’t go into much further detail to explain why this is the case. But other critics of Dodd-Frank have argued that it could enable the FDIC to take control of failing firms and rely on taxpayer funds to keep the systemically important parts running through a government-run “bridge” financial company. That’s likely why Ryan believes the cost of the new resolution authority could far exceed the Congressional Budget Office’s $26 billion estimate.

While outside analysts across the political spectrum have shared Ryan’s concerns that Dodd-Frank doesn’t do enough to stop Too Big to Fail, their specific worry is often quite different than Ryan’s: they’re worried that bank regulators have too little authority, not too much, to quickly take down failing firms. It’s unclear, for example, how swiftly and forcefully the FDIC would use the new rules to liquidate a highly troubled, systemically important firm.

Repealing that authority as Ryan proposes eliminates a new government channel for intervention, but it wouldn’t explicitly prohibit future bailouts, which could become more likely if systemically risky banks aren’t wound down in an orderly fashion.

Of course they would be, that’s the point.  Banks are profitable now only because they got trillions in mulligans from the Bushies (and FOX News has done a terrific job of lying to the American people, convincing them that President Obama bailed out the banks, not Bush and Hank Paulson, and conflating the Obama stimulus with the Bush bank bailout on purpose.)  Here’s the thing: I know everyone says that Ryan’s budget proposal is just empty posturing that has no effect on the actual budget, but if there’s a GOP Senate to go along with the House in 2013, these proposals will end up on the President’s desk.

Let’s not pretend that the GOP getting into actual power will moderate the Ryan Plan.  This is their plan for America’s future, where the rising tide lifts all yachts and drowns the rest of us who can’t tread water.  And speaking of the Kaplan Nerd Farm, when Ezra Klein says things like this:

Today, the Republican Party is in a different place, and my theory is that it’s because they’ve committed themselves to a set of fiscal priorities — lower taxes, higher defense spending, no entitlement changes for 210 years, and lower deficits — that can only be reconciled through draconian cuts to programs for the poor.

The result is that when Republican politicians stop speaking for themselves and begin speaking for their party, their fiscal proposals have to reflect those priorities, and so they end up cutting deep into programs for the poor, even though that may not be their personal preference. But that is, of course, just speculation.

I have to have a good, long laugh, because the dude has it so backwards it’s actually funny.  Draconian cuts to the poor at the expense to give more to the rich was exactly what the Republican party has been engineering since 1980.  We’re just in the endgame now.  They didn’t “accidentally leave themselves no other choice” any more than any other fanatical group of nutjobs have throughout history.  The cuts have been the point all along, knucklehead.  Like I said, let’s stop pretending that a series of unfortunate and non-preventable accidents led the GOP to this sad fate.  This is deliberate, it has been deliberate, they believe this stuff period, and we have to recognize that first thing.

[UPDATE:]  Oh, and for the folks still convinced that none of this is deliberate and that the Ryan Budget will quietly die in the House because it’s an election year, well that’s not happening either.

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Two-Faced Gas Face

GOP, Saturday:

Freshmen Rep. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) – tasked with delivering the weekly party message – ticked off the administration’s initiatives that he contended will exacerbate the problem, instead of alleviate it.

Obama has “called for raising energy taxes, which the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service says would actually lead to higher prices. He’s asked the Attorney General to ‘reconstitute’ an oil speculation task force that has never reported its work to the public. He quietly pushed members of Congress to prevent construction of the Keystone pipeline – despite overwhelming support for the project and the jobs that it would create – and his lobbying may have made the difference in the vote,” Gardner charged.

Under mounting criticism and facing falling poll numbers, Obama addressed the issue in a speech Thursday on his “all-of-the-above” energy policies – a term borrowed from Republicans, who made it popular in the summer of 2008.

Gardner accused the president of failing to follow-through on policies that would bring down the price of gasoline.

GOP, Thursday:

Republicans launched a preemptive strike last week against rumored plans by the White House to tap the country’s emergency oil reserves.

Releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a 696-million-barrel stockpile stored on the Gulf Coast, is a ploy to score political points amid gas prices that are nearing a national average of $4 per gallon, Republicans argued.

“The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is for emergencies – not political disasters,” Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said in a statement Thursday.

Both articles being at The Hill seems to indicate that the President being attacked for not doing anything about gas prices and warned not to do anything about gas prices at the same time is completely logical in every way.  If he doesn’t do anything, he hates America.  If he does anything, it’s a deeply cynical ploy to get re-elected.  Either way, It’s Good News For Conservatives™ if you accept the framing, which of course our wonderful liberal media will.  Horse race and all that.

Job creation?  Boring and soooooo 2011.  The election was always about gas prices, you know.

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