Just a few days ago Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell R-Kentucky said that the Fall 2014 elections would circle around the failure of Obama's signature health plan known as Obamacare. Paul Ryan in his most recent scary budget plan calls for a repeal, but strangely also includes ways to amend Obamacare, so citizens can keep what they like but get rid of the rest. Somewhere Ted Cruz and Michele Bachmann and others are mumbling to themselves that the purest of pure Tea Party members still deserve a full repeal, as well as the impeachment of Barack Obama, who was never fit to be President in the first place.
Yep, they can plan, they can chew and re-chew their grumblecake, they can churn out nonsensical budgets with thousands of pages, they can vote to repeal Obamacare for the fifty-fifth time or whatever - but as President Obama said recently, Obamacare is here to stay. End of story. Get off it. Move along. Move Forward in spite of yourselves.
And the best thing ever is this New Yorker Cover, showing Ted Cruz, Bachmann, House Speaker John Boehner, and especially Mitch McConnell lining up as whiny toddlers as grown-up President Obama makes them take their medicine. As a piece of political art, it's sublime. And like Obamacare, it's forever.
“This whole enterprise was just an elaborate excuse,” says Barry Blitt about his cover for this week’s issue. “I enjoyed drawing Ted Cruz, John Boehner, and Michele Bachmann as petulant children—and I especially wanted to draw an open-mouthed Mitch McConnell being spoon-fed his meds.”
Here's a great video by Ed Marksberry, who is running in the Democratic Primary in Kentucky and hoping to "Ditch Mitch" McConnell from the Senate in 2014.
Catchy song with great lyrics written by Marksberry himself! I like him! :)
For Immediate Release
April 18, 2013
Lela Graham
info@marksberry2014.com
Marksberry for Senate Releases “What About Us”
The Marksberry for Senate campaign has released a song, “What about Us” which was written and performed by Democratic Senate candidate, Ed Marksberry and will be the theme of the Senate race against Mitch McConnell. On top of being a small businessman, veteran and community activist we can add singer and songwriter to Ed's resume.
Ed Marksberry is running a campaign that is about the hard working people that have been forgotten by their current representation in Washington. The song is about all those who have been left behind.
Ed’s campaign is proving to be a fresh new style that will not only resonate with the hard working people of Kentucky but will give them a candidate that is not a career politician corrupted by the influence of money.
The past week has been dotted with Republican fail the likes of which we have rarely seen in the modern era, and it shows just how off-kilter they are. Of course, as my witty husband says, were they ever 'on kilter'? Well, maybe not in terms of a philosophy we can all understand, but at least they were able to stay on the same page and agree on the same mass delusions. Right now, not so much. In fact, the re-election of Barack Obama seems to have thrown them into complete disarray that seems to echo a death knell for the national party. It's sort of like watching a rabid skunk foaming at the mouth and jumping around snapping at invisible enemies in the air. You can be pretty darn sure the rabies will get them in the end.
For instance, take Rick Santelli, please. The CNBC guy threw another tantrum on the air last Friday, calling for a "Waaaahmbulance" over Obama and tax reform. Do these guys not realize that we all know they are crying for themselves and their own bank accounts, not for the other 99% of Americans? Cry me a river. He really does seem to be foaming at the mouth, though, doesn't he?
New York Mag reported that Karl Rove and Dick Morris are now in Disgrace at Fox News for their ridiculous and over-zealous predictions that Mitt Romney would win the presidency in the landslide:
According to multiple Fox sources, Ailes has issued a new directive to his staff: He wants the faces associated with the election off the air — for now. For Karl Rove and Dick Morris — a pair of pundits perhaps most closely aligned with Fox’s anti-Obama campaign — Ailes’s orders mean new rules. Ailes’s deputy, Fox News programming chief Bill Shine, has sent out orders mandating that producers must get permission before booking Rove or Morris.
. . . Multiple sources say that Ailes was angry at Rove’s election-night tantrum when he disputed the network’s call for Obama. While the moment made for riveting television — it was Ailes’s decision to have Kelly confront the statisticians on air — in the end, it provided another data point for Fox’s critics. A spokesperson for Ailes denied any rift between Ailes and Rove, and said the two plan to meet this week.
Rove may have lost Ailes for the present, but he is still probably laughing all the way to the bank with his Super-Pac money. Dick Morris is in a different place, tangled up with Glenn Beck and his scary conspiracy theory, Agenda 21. As you may recall, a guy in Georgia named Chip Rogers organized an embarrassing seminar on how Obama was practicing "Mind Control" on us all (thanks to the evil U.N.) and soon the black helicopters will come to take our guns (if we have any) and herd us into the concentration camps.
Another "Dick" had to resign this week: Former House member Dick Armey, who broke his association with tea party group Freedomworks over a badly negotiated book deal - at least that's what he says. Cushioning the blow is the fact that he is running away with an $8 million golden parachute - for doing what, I wonder? Time Magazine has more here.
Then in a move that surprised many on the Right and the Left, Senator Jim DeMint R-SC left the Senate to become the new head of the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation. While most think he did it for the money, other pundits assume DeMint was tired of having to vote with the more moderate members of his party (the few that are still there), and wanted to be among a group of like-minded wingnuts. That's probably a mistake for the Party, as Ezra Klein pointed out in a Washington Post piece called The Death of the Think Tanks.
Incredibly, the pundit who has often been most-described as "rabid" in the past - Ann Coulter - seems to have found a truth antidote and is now the voice of reason. She went on Fox News and schooled Sean Hannity on the new reality, telling him that Democrats are "going to win" the tax battle with the House, and it's "not winning" to raise taxes on everyone just to save the top 2%, a message he did NOT want to hear! Transcript Here
And finally, we reached the height, the apex, the crowning glory of Republican Off-Kilterness yesterday when Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell, pretending to introduce legislation on the Debt Ceiling in an effort to show up Harry Reid, was forced to filibuster his own bill when "Honey Badger" Reid called his bluff.
*DERP* With leaders like McConnell, Boehner, Jim Demint, and the Fox Fools, it can only get worse before it gets better!
Health care is a big hot-button issue in light ofthe Supreme Court ruling so surely the Republicans had some agreed-upon talking points ready, right? At the very least, they could all get on board with the idea that the health care mandate is a tax - Obamatax - because at least their own Tea-publican base loves that idea, right? Am I right?
Wrong. They cannot get on the same page. Confusion reigns. They have a few memes like "Repeal and Replace" but beyond that each talking head seems to not know what the others are saying, so they are like a cross between a mythical Chimera with several heads and Dr. Dolittle's Push-Me-Pull-You. If what they babble about seems chaotic, what the public hears is mostly crickets chirping. There is no there there. They got nothin'.
Mythical Chimera = Republicans on Health Care
Mitch McConnell: Diabolically unable to show compassion, but also no plan.
WALLACE: One of the keys to "Obama-care" is that it will extend insurance access to 30 million people who are now uninsured. In your replacement, how would you provide universal coverage?
MCCONNELL: Well, first, let me say the single the best thing we could do for the American health care system is to get rid of Obamacare....
WALLACE: But if I may, sir, you've talked about repeal and replace. How would you provide universal coverage?
MCCONNELL: I will get to it in a minute. The first step we need to take is to get rid of what is there....
WALLACE: But respectfully sir, because we are going to run out of time and I just want to ask, what specifically are you going to do to provide universal coverage to the 30 million people who are uninsured?
MCCONNELL: That is not the issue....
WALLACE: You don't think the 30 million people that were uninsured is an issue?
MCCONNELL: Let me tell you what we are not going to do....
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) attacked the new law, saying it amounts to a “middle class tax increase” that’s largely going to affect Americans making less than $120,000 a year.
“It will cost the economy between 800,000 and a million jobs,” Mr. McConnell said on “Fox News Sunday.”
. . . White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew hit back, saying that the new health-care law was a “penalty” that only 1% of the population who can afford insurance, but decide not to purchase it, will pay.
“The law is clear: it’s called a penalty. Second of all, what the Supreme Court ruled was that this law was constitutional,” Mr. Lew said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “Everyone who has insurance–everyone who chooses to buy insurance–will not pay it.”
The Romney Campaign Agrees . . . with the White House???
* surrogate confusion *
CHUCK TODD (MSNBC): What you just said is that Governor Romney agrees that it's not a tax. But you guys call it a penalty.
ERIC FEHRNSTROM (TOP ROMNEY AIDE): The governor disagreed with the court. He agreed with the dissent that was written by Justice Scalia which very clearly stated that the mandate was not a tax.
TODD: So ... I think we're talking around each other. The governor does not believe the mandate is a tax, that's what you're saying?
FEHRNSTROM: The governor believes that what we put in place in Massachusetts was a penalty and he disagrees with the court's ruling that the mandate was a tax.
TODD: But he agrees with the president that it is not, that you shouldn't call the tax penalty a tax, you should call it a penalty or a fee or a fine?
NORAH O'DONNELL: But access to affordable health insurance, but you're not saying you would be for a law that would prevent discrimination of those individuals?
REPRESENTATIVE JOHN BOEHNER: No, we just believe there is a better way to make sure that they have affordable access to quality health insurance.
NORAH O'DONNELL: So when you repeal this, what are you going to replace it with?
REPRESENTATIVE JOHN BOEHNER: I just started pointing out. We're going take a common-sense, step-by-step approach that puts in place the kind of policies that will make our-- our health insurance system more what I call patient-centered and lower cost. The only proposal out there last year that would lower the cost of health insurance came from Republicans. Why? Because we've got policies that really will help bring down the cost of health insurance. It's clear that Obamacare is increasing the cost of health insurance for all Americans and making it virtually impossible for small employers to hire new workers.
NORAH O'DONNELL: How does it make it hard for small employers to hire more workers?
REPRESENTATIVE JOHN BOEHNER: Because they're being required to either provide health insurance or pay a fine. Well, I'm sorry, a tax. It's now a tax since the court said it was a tax.
NORAH O'DONNELL: Chief Justice John Roberts said it was a tax.
REPRESENTATIVE JOHN BOEHNER (overlapping): He-- even though, the President had tried to admit for, you know, over a year that it wasn't a tax and nobody believed it and now we know it. But it-- it's getting in the way of employers hiring new workers. Because of these increased costs of government-run health insurance and the fact that, if they don't, they have to provide a tax, so employers--
~~~*snip*~~~
NORAH O'DONNELL: Why not, then, if you like some of the provisions in the Affordable Care Act, why not work with it rather than ap-- repeal the whole thing.
REPRESENTATIVE JOHN BOEHNER (overlapping): No, no, no.
NORAH O'DONNELL: Even Mitt Romney said--
REPRESENTATIVE JOHN BOEHNER (overlapping): No, this has to be-- this has to be ripped out by its roots. This is government taking over the entire health insurance industry. The American people do not want to go down this path. They do not want the government telling them what kind of insurance policy they have to buy and how much they're going to pay for it and if you don't like it, we're going to tax you. It has to be ripped out and we need to start over, one step at a time.
NORAH O'DONNELL (overlapping): And so you say so-- so-- so to heck with all these provisions like additional preventative care for children, for women--
REPRESENTATIVE JOHN BOEHNER (overlapping): All of them. All of-- we can-- we can replace. While we replace this, we can have a common-sense debate about which of these provisions ought to stay and which ought to go.
