Greg Sargent asks a very good question.
IOKIYAR
The Party of Personal Responsibility
Let’s get this guy in SuperCongress stat:
While U.S. Rep. Tom Graves was calling for fiscal responsibility in Washington his attorney was arguing in a lawsuit that a North Georgia bank is at fault for issuing Graves a $2.2 million loan the bank knew he could not repay.
Graves was fighting a lawsuit along with business partner Chip Rogers, the state Senate majority leader. The two Republicans, through a limited-liability company, used the loan to purchase and renovate a Calhoun motel that quickly went under.
The bank sued, alleging the two defaulted on the loan. The politicians filed counterclaims against the bank, accusing it of improperly declaring the loan in default after reneging on a promise to refinance it at more favorable terms. Both parties dismissed their claims Wednesday, a day before they were scheduled to attend a hearing on the case in Calhoun. Graves said through a spokesman that the case has been “fully resolved in an equitable and fair manner.” An attorney for the bank declined to comment.
This is the well known Burkean small-government principle of “It’s your fault- you knew I couldn’t pay you back!”
(Via the Benenator 2000)
Drunken wrestling is probably fine, even encouraged, but the kids in the car will do him in
This is sort of small change, but the national situation is so dispiriting and disconnected from reality I think we need a distraction.
Plus. I love this headline:
State rep found drunk was on House speaker’s car
On the car. An important detail.
State Rep. Jerrod Martin was passed out drunk on then-GOP Minority Leader’s William G. Batchelder’s Chevy Suburban when Martin was discovered by Riffe Center security last year.
Newspapers are working backward from the OVI/child endangerment charge which came last week:
The Dispatch reported today that Martin, charged with DUI and child endangerment a week ago, was found intoxicated and unresponsive in the House parking garage early the morning of March 24, 2010. The Beavercreek Republican was treated by a medic at the scene and released shortly after 4 a.m. to Dittoe, then with the GOP House campaign team and now communications director for House Republicans. Dittoe had been sent by Rep. Ron Amstutz, a Wooster Republican and veteran lawmaker who was back in his district.
And there’s more:
On May 16, 2010, the night manager at the Residence Inn in Beavercreek called police about guests yelling and fighting on the fifth floor at 4:30 a.m. Officers found Martin and six other men “highly intoxicated” at a bachelor party. The men said they weren’t fighting; just having a “friendly wrestling match in their hotel room,” a Beavercreek police report said. Martin’s parents were called to pick up the men and their belongings, according to the police report. Police noted that the room was tidied up and not damaged.
An OVI is taken seriously, and a child endangerment charge in Ohio will trigger a concurrent investigation into whether the children in the vehicle with the impaired driver are abused, neglected or dependent.
It looks like he finally staggered over the line. Calling his mom or a GOP hack won’t get him out of the latest charge.
Republicans in Ohio dropped the push for a photo ID requirement at the polls in 2012. I’m starting to think it’s because their leaders won’t have a valid driver’s license.
In Wake of Wisconsin Voter Suppression Laws, Walker Planning to Close DMVs in Democratic Areas
Because of course he is.
Wisconsin’s new Voter ID laws require voters to present a state-issued photo ID card at the polling booth. It’s a pain in the ass, but doable, right? Just head to your local DMV, wait in line for eleventy-three days, and presto! You have an ID card!
Not so fast.
Now, Scott Walker’s Wisconsin criminal syndicate has devised a plan to make it reaaaaaally hard for Democrats to obtain the requisite ID cards. It’s quite stunning in its boldness, really: Wisconsin is planning to close DMVs in Democratic districts and use the money it will save by doing so to expand hours at DMVs located in Republican districts.
Uh-huh:
The Wisconsin legislature is finalizing a bill to close ten Department of Motor Vehicle centers located in Democratic districts within the state. The money saved will be used to extend operating hours at DMV centers in Republican districts. These cuts come on the heels of new voter ID laws that require voters to present a state-issued photo identification card at the poll booths.
The Wisconsin Republicans, led by Governor Scott Walker, have passed a myriad of unpopular bills that have alienated the public, specifically the public employees whose right to collectively bargain was stripped, their pensions cut and many of their jobs lost. Walker, who has strong ties to Koch Industries, Americans for Prosperity and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has served as the poster child for conservative policy in the nation.
Honestly, I feel like I’m taking crazy pills:
Circle Jerks
DougJ’ post about the laughable idiot James Pethokoukis (he’s the clown who spent October 2008 flogging the Goldberg theorem claiming the market was tanking not because of the economic crisis but because of an impending Obama electoral victory) and his “Reagan at Rekyavik” nonsense reminded me of the fawning media coverage Reagan got in 1985 when he met Gorbachev in November in Geneva and the press fellated him for months for not wearing a coat. Here’s a 2006 writeup to jog your memory from “The America That Reagan Built”:
Here is the nauseating write-up in the Washington Post by David Hoffman from 19 November:
Just as the wailing horns of the Soviet motorcade were heard in the distance, President Reagan stepped into the bracing cold winds off Lake Geneva without an overcoat and waited on the steps of the Swiss chateau for his first words with a leader of the Soviet Union.
When Mikhail Gorbachev climbed out of the black Zil limousine with a Soviet flag flying from the right fender and took off his charcoal-gray hat, the first conversation he had with Reagan was about the overcoat. Gorbachev gestured to his own coat and asked the president, in Russian, “Where is your coat?”
“It’s inside,” Reagan said, motioning toward the glass doors and warmth of the 120-year-old Swiss chateau, as they posed for photographers in a chill wind. The president steered his guest by the elbow inside, and so began an extraordinary personal encounter between the American president, who devoted a career to denigrating communism, and the Russian who may rule his Communist nation into the next century.
Here is the Courier-Mail:
Mr Reagan, host for the first day’s meeting, arrived at the mansion first, about 15 minutes early, wearing an overcoat and white scarf and carrying papers under his arm. From an inside window, he flashed a thumbs-up signal as he waited for Mr Gorbachev’s arrival. Mr Reagan stepped outside into the brisk Swiss air without his coat to greet Mr Gorbachev as he got out of his long Zil limousine, one minute behind schedule. Mr Gorbachev wore a heavy grey overcoat and held his hat in his left hand, and smiled as they greeted. They shook hands and posed on a veranda of the tan sandstone building.
Here’s a bit from the NY Times, showing the press pool yukking it up:
At a briefing by Larry Speakes, President Reagan’s spokesman, the questions were even more personal.
”Gorbachev made reference to the fact that the President was not wearing a topcoat,” came the question. ”Was the President wearing Kennedy-style long underwear?”
”No, he wasn’t,” Mr. Speakes replied. ”I think the President was in his customary underwear.”
The theme of attire was pursued at the evening briefing, albeit on a less intimate basis. Possibly to preclude more such questions, Mr. Speakes volunteered that during their stroll to a pool house by the lake, Mr. Reagan wore a coat and a scarf, and Mr. Gorbachev wore a coat and a hat.
Here’s another NY Times write-up:
Mr. Reagan, who was the host for the meetings today, as Mr. Gorbachev will be for Wednesday’s, greeted the Russian warmly in front of the Fleur d’Eau, a villa on the shores of Lake Geneva, at one minute after 10 o’clock this morning. Despite gray skies and a cutting wind, Mr. Reagan was coatless and hatless – a fact commented on by Mr. Gorbachev, who wore both coat and hat. The two men were smiling, cordial, seemingly relaxed.
Those are a few I dug up in a minute or two, but you see how it goes. I was only fifteen at the time, but the nonsense about the coat got such play that it was immediately part of the Reagan legend- so much so that even today, four decades later, I remember it. I guess my point is that when you are a Republican, the press is always little more than a mutual masturbation society.
This Indictment is quite a read…
I live in Baltimore. Last year on Election Day, while I was out working to GOTV we received a robo-call at our house around 6pm telling us:
Hello I’m calling to let everybody know that Governor O’Malley and President Obama have been successful. Our goals have been met. The polls were correct, and we took it back. We’re okay. Relax. Everything’s fine. The only thing left is to watch it on TV tonight. Congratulations, and thank you.
It was yet another dirty trick from the Republican Party of Maryland and former Governor and douchebag Bob Ehrlich.
Well, today Ehrlich’s Communication Director and a well known scum for hire in Maryland politics were indicted on multiple counts of election fraud. TPM has details here and Steve Benen weighs in here.
The Indictment, posted at the Baltimore Sun, is pretty amazing in the way it pulls back the curtain on Republican efforts to suppress the vote by any means necessary.
This kind of voter suppression effort is a pillar of Republican Confederate Party electoral strategy. It is going on in every State in the Union and by any means that they can get away with using. In Maryland they were caught (this time) and prosecuted (this time). But in most places and in most cases there is no penalty.
Why?
You know why: IOKIYAR. That’s why.
And how about a fresh Open Thread.
Cheers
Weiner Out
And the inevitable has now happened:
Representative Anthony D. Weiner has told House leaders that he plans to resign his seat after coming under growing pressure from his Democratic colleagues to leave the House, said a top Democratic official and two people told of Mr. Weiner’s plans.
His decision follows revelations of his lewd online exchanges with women.
The top Democratic official said Mr. Weiner called Representative Nancy Pelosi of California and Representative Steve Israel of New York last night while they were at the White House picnic to inform them he had decided to resign on Thursday.
Mr. Weiner plans to resign in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, on Thursday afternoon, at a senior center where he announced his first campaign for City Council in 1992, according to two people told of his plans.
Question: Why is Weiner resigning for talking dirty to people and sending crotch shots while Ensign was allowed to serve as long as he wanted and Vitter is still in office?
Answer: Liberal media + IOKIYAR.