Republican Talking Points

Yesterday on Meet the Press John Boehner continued the same old line that President Obama was the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate.

He also seems to be throwing out the idea of ever working together:

MR. GREGORY:  Does he have a point?

REP. BOEHNER:  No.  If, if you think about what I said, I was referring to the--all the president's policies.  Wasn't demonizing him, wasn't demonizing the White House.  And I'm usually very careful about dealing with the subject at hand.  Listen, there aren't that many places where we can come together. The president is--well, he was the most liberal member of the United States Senate.  You don't get there by accident.  And if you look at the policies that we've seen over the course of this year from the administration and his Democratic colleagues in Congress, they're all these leftist proposals.  And the people of Massachusetts, the people of Virginia, the people of New Jersey are sending a pretty loud signal, just like the other 47 states, to the--to Washington, saying, "Stop!  This is, this is way more than we ever wanted Washington to do."

Again – this is a flat out lie and John Boehner knows it. Let’s see how “liberal” Senator Obama really was. Here is a graph that automatically rates members of Congress based upon their voting records, which is generated by GovTrack.us:

(Click for the full Congress view)

Yes Obama is not a “centrist” Democrat, but he is far from being the most liberal person we had in the Senate. Hell, even Hillary is more to the left of Obama, but these are facts John Boehner seems to totally ignore.

There’s no way we will ever see bi-partisanship when we have people like John Boehner, who never worries about governing and instead chooses to live on the campaign trail. Perhaps the Democrats should start saying that John Boehner is the biggest neo-con in the House. He wants to get rid of government, tell you how you should have sex, not give you any help if you hit on hard times, believes that insurance companies should make huge profits off your hard times and make Americans subservient to big business and destroy America by creating our own caste system.

When you buy a gun you may have a background check, depending on where you buy it from. Go to a local gun show and buy one from some fellow enthusiast there and chances are you won’t receive a background check, unless that person is registered as a federal dealer. That’s the extent of it.

So I am sitting here wondering why all these Republicans are screaming for profiling of darker skin men before they get on the airplane. Why didn’t we hear this after  Major Nidal Malik Hasan took his personal weapons into a building on a United States Army base and killed 13 people while wounding 30 others? Why didn’t one of these Republicans call for better “profiling” on potential gun owners? If you would even bring this up to a Republican they would yell and scream about you taking away their 2nd amendment rights, but profiling also violates our Constitution, and no where in the Constitution does it say one right trumps the other.

Take this picture:

That is the view of Newark airport today after the terminal was reopened. Bob points out how easy of a target it would be for a suicide bomber, which it would be, but imagine a Major Hassan going in there and opening fire. This is before any security checks and sneaking a gun, or 20 in would be very simple. If that happened I can guarantee that Republicans still wouldn’t talk about profiling potential gun buyers. They would rather see a law requiring everyone to be naked before that.

So the next time some Republican is on the television going on about profiling people who don’t look like them, then would the host of that show please ask them if they would support profiling potential gun buyers. It’s time to put them on the spot to see exactly how serious they are about terrorism.

I noticed a general message giving birth today – that we should have started focusing on Yemen back in the beginning of the whole war on terror. I can’t say I entirely disagree with that, but what makes it post-worthy is that I am hearing this argument from a lot of GOPers, the same ones who were cheerleading for us to go to war in Iraq.

Given the fact that fighting Iraq stripped our resources from Afghanistan, a fact that is extremely obvious, wouldn’t it have been better for these former Iraq cheerleaders to speak up back in 2002? Instead they took to backing the Bush administration, no matter what. I can only assume that is because “you don’t question the commander in chief at a time of war”, yet that is exactly what they are doing now.

So would someone in the media please ask these people when they spin this whole “we should have been in Yemen for years” mantra, why didn’t they push for this instead of Iraq? Also ask them if they think we could have fought Yemen, Afghanistan and Iraq all at once.

We are talking about terrorism and people’s lives, so it’s time to stop the bullshit talking points game and actually address the situation. The best people to do that is the media and after they were accomplice number 1 in lying this nation into war with Iraq, they sure as hell better stand up now and do their jobs.

That is the new meme emerging following the two gubernatorial losses last night for Democrats. I seemed to have missed it where Obama was on the ballot, but that’s what all the talking heads want us to think.

Let’s take a look at Creigh Deeds and the Virginia race. Actually have a look at Think Progress and you will notice how Deeds made a sharp move to the right towards the end of the race. Moves like that won’t bring in any last minute voters, but it will certainly tell the more progressive crowd to just stay home, including those Obama voters.

Then we have a new message being pushed by the right saying that the Democrats should move “more towards the center'”. That’s an interesting angle considering the conservatives want the Republicans to move more towards the right. Sadly we can expect the Democratic leadership to heed this warning and do just that. They are already talking about moving health care reform until next year, and we know what that means. It will then be “well we got to worry about the midterms so let’s go ahead and put it off until 2011”.

The problem is that Democrats are gullible, and not just the elected ones but even the membership at large, including many in the progressive blogosphere. I have pointed out in the past how many Democrats seemed to drink the Kool-Aid that Obama is some uber-liberal, comparable to Ghandi light. Afghanistan is a perfect example of this. The left is acting like Obama has broken some promise by not pulling the troops out of Afghanistan, when he actually is doing what he campaigned on. Instead of listening to the candidate, the left chose to listen to the right wing talking points. This practice is very dangerous for any progressive movement.

The Democrats need to learn how to control the message. Until they can do that they will exist as puppets to the right. Falling for the new meme that the left must move towards the “center” is not a way of doing this.

The word ‘shall’ is the new talking point of the GOP when it comes to the healthcare bill. It started this morning with John Boehner on CNN talking about the word ‘shall’ appearing in the healthcare bill a couple of thousand times. It became on obvious talking point when George Will repeated it on This Week.

Apparently the Republicans believe that healthcare reform will be gained by giving guidelines instead of requirements. In other words they are arguing that this bill does too much.

Are we going to ask the insurance industry to do something and hope they do it out of the kindness of their hearts? I thought that was what got us into this mess to begin with. We can all agree that the health insurance industry shouldn’t be making record profits off of the sick, but they do. That has been the status-quo for too long now and look where it has gotten us.

I just wish some of the big media heads would ask these folks how we can reform healthcare without making requirements.

Something I wish President Obama would have mentioned last night is that there isn’t a bill. For the last couple of months the Republicans have been talking about “how bad this bill is”. Some are referring to the bill that came out of a House committee, and others are talking about other proposals floating through Congress.

For a good example of this, on Morning Joe Senator Judd Gregg was talking about how companies will be better off paying the fines than offering coverage. Of course what Gregg is referring to is the crap Max Baucus plan that appeared Tuesday – a plan quickly rejected by a vast majority of Democrats. But again – it’s just one of many plans circulating Capital Hill, not “the bill”.

This is where the Republicans are being dishonest. Instead of trying to engage in constructive debate, they are acting as if there is some final product ready to be voted on and heading to conference. You would think Republicans would have a better idea of how Congress operates, but apparently they don’t. If that isn’t the case, well then they lie.

What people need to start doing is asking these Republicans where they can find the bill at on Thomas, the library of Congress site that lists all current and past bills. Don’t let them say “well its on so and so’s site”. If it isn’t on Thomas then it isn’t a “bill” yet.

Of course none of this is shocking. The Republicans have cast their “party of no” philosophy into stone, and this just exemplifies that. None of them have shown an interest to actually work towards a common ground – they just want to see the President fail It’s the Limbaugh mentality that has taken over the GOP, and I believe once the campaign season really starts people will be quick to remember that.

Sometimes Sheppard Smith just speaks the truth. Yesterday was one of those days. He took on the right wing furor back in April over the DHS report and responded with:

It was a warning to us all, and it appears now they were right

Of course many others on the right don’t believe this, but the evidence mounting against them is becoming huge, and deadly.

I blogged yesterday about Malkin blaming immigrants for the outbreak of swine flu. It now looks like she was just getting the ball rolling for the racist right.

The fact is that most people in America who have contracted the flu were recently in Mexico, or around someone who has been there. Facts like this quickly get lost when people like Malkin and Beck want to turn a potential tragedy into a reason to hate.

Sadly though what they are recycling is old talking points:

RNC chair Michael Steele has unleashed a new attack on Obama, sending out a mass mailing attacking the President as part of the “blame America first” crowd, an apparent effort to prove to critics that he’s getting tougher with the opposition.

But this might be the most interesting part: The mailing links Obama’s claim that America has shown global “arrogance” with those infamous comments in Pennsylvania, charging that Obama “indicated disdain for small town and working Americans who ‘cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them.’”

As it happens, Obama made those comments almost exactly a year ago.

When you have nothing then you must resort to trying the old tactics. Unfortunately for the GOP these tactics didn’t work for them on the first go around. Obama ended up winning Pennsylvania by an 11 point margin over McCain. Even with this so-called “mass insult”, the people of Pennsylvania still thought Obama was a better choice than their man.

So what does this say about Michael Steele and his Rush Limbaugh’s party? That they have absolutely nothing to go on. They have no new idea, no new ways of thinking, and now they have no new attacks. Watching the slow death of the GOP is so painful, yet so entertaining.

The AP’s Ron Fournier is at it again, and with the help of the main headline on Drudge. In a piece entitled “Analysis: Teleprompter telegraphs Obama caution”, Fournier makes it sound like Obama relied totally on a teleprompter during last night’s presser:

What kind of politician brings a teleprompter to a news conference?

A careful one.

President Barack Obama took no chances in his second prime-time news conference, reading a prepared statement in which he took both sides of the AIG bonus brouhaha and asked an anxious nation for its patience.

So Fournier leaves you with this feeling that the entire thing was staged, maybe even the actual Q&A section. He does clarify a little bit more later on:

The teleprompter was no help during the question-and-answer session (reporters don't signal their intentions), but Obama was no less careful during that give and take.

Obama’s opening remarks were really short, only taking about 10 minutes out of the hour long event. So Ron Fournier decides to focus only on that first ten minutes, and leave the quick skimming readers with the impression that’s how the whole thing went.

And since Obama had the teleprompter and played it safe, it left the wingnuts with nothing. Here’s how Drudge is pushing this story:

I would much rather have a President play it safe with a teleprompter and be boring, than a dangerous idiot who goes out there and says things like “bring ‘em on” when talking about the Iraq war, and those people listening and doing just that – at the cost of a lot of lives.

The GOP leadership is trying to get Dick Cheney to go back into his hiding hole:

Congressional Republicans are telling Dick Cheney to go back to his undisclosed location and leave them alone to rebuild the Republican Party without his input.

Displeased with the former vice-president's recent media appearances, Republican lawmakers say he's hurting  GOP efforts to reinvent itself after back-to-back electoral drubbings.

The veep, who showed a penchant for secrecy during eight years in the White House,has popped up in media interviews to defend the Bush-Cheney record while suggesting that the country is not as safe under President Obama.

For those who hail in common sense, they might think this is because Cheney just scares the crap out of everyone. His delusional world, where Saddam Hussein magically flew one of the planes into a tower on 9/11, then somehow survived to go back and create a major chemical weapon that would turn us all into a pact of brain eating zombies – well that is just scary.

But if you are a wingnut living in fantasy land, like Ed Morrissey, then this is what you think:

Dick Cheney mostly kept his own counsel while serving as George Bush’s VP, but now he’s free to talk — and to make sure that history gets his role correct.

These are the people that think George Bush was the best President EVER. Just mention of his name, or Cheney’s, sends them into some school girl frenzy. It really is a sad thing to watch, but yet so damn funny.

The Republicans have been going ape shit over a post of Judicial Watch showing that Nancy Pelosi uses military aircraft to fly around the country. Coming to the defense of Pelosi, out of all places, is ABC:

The treasure trove of documents obtained by Judicial Watch from the Department of Defense regarding Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's use of military aircraft doesn't seem to prove the organization's allegation that Pelosi has made "unprecedented demands" for the flights.

In fact, it appears that Pelosi uses military aircraft less often than her predecessor, former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert.

The documents cover the period from January 2007 to November 2008 and show that Pelosi made the equivalent of 20 round-trips between Washington (Andrews Air Force Base) and San Francisco. That's an average of less than one round-trip per month. In contrast, former Speaker Hastert traveled home to his Illinois district virtually every weekend and, his former aides tell ABC News, he would almost always travel on military aircraft. Like Hastert, Pelosi also occasionally leads Congressional delegations on foreign trips (the documents show six foreign trips: one to Asia, three to the Middle East and two to Europe).

The documents obtained by Judicial Watch also disprove another frequently repeated rumor about Pelosi's travel: that she regularly flies home to San Francisco in an Air Force C-40, the military equivalent of a Boeing 737. According to the documents, Pelosi did not make any domestic trips on a C-40 during the 23-month period from January 2007 to November 2008. Her trips to San Francisco have all been on smaller executive aircraft, usually an Air Force C-20 (the equivalent of a Gulfstream G-3) or a more plush C-37 (a Gulfstream G-5).

So the Republicans have been out there blowing this whole story up, and even lying about it. Remember, Pelosi is right behind Biden when it comes to being inline for the Presidency. The use of military jets for the Speaker was put in place right after 9/11 by none other than George Bush.

It’s really nice to see the media finally look at the facts on these stories instead of relying on right-wing lies, but I am sure the wingnuts will start bitching about the “liberal media” any minute now.

Or something the Republicans never do:

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough conducted a phone interview on Thursday morning with former white House press secretary Ari Fleischer, who heads a group that is running an ad campaign to convince Congress to continue funding President Bush's Iraq War.

"When we see all the missteps [in Iraq] ... it makes it harder, does it not, for the American people to trust this administration moving forward?" Scarborough asked Fleischer.

"Look at the other side," Fleischer answered. "I could blame Jimmy Carter for creating the mullahs and the ayatollahs in Iran."

"But Jimmy Carter's not president right now," said Scarborough. "Jimmy Carter's not saying 'Trust me.' George Bush is."

Get that? It's Carter's fault that we have problems with Iran. Nothing about Bush's "axis of evil" comment or anything. Just like the Republicans blaming Clinton for al Qaeda and 9/11, even though whenever he tried to take action against them the Republicans screamed "wagging the dog". Perhaps if the Republicans would have worried less about blow jobs in the 90's, September 11th would have never happened. Why don't people ever ask that?

Perhaps that should become a campaign slogan. When the Republicans try this change of blame game, come out and say "The Republicans infatuation with Bill Clinton's cock caused 9/11 and the loss of 3,000 lives". In this world of blame games, that holds more water than blaming Jimmy Carter for something 30 years ago. Hell if that is the case then why didn't Reagan do something? He was supposed to be this ultimate President. He had more time in office than Carter did.

I posted earlier today on Don Young (R-AK) using this bogus quote, which he attributed to Lincoln,  on the House floor:

Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hanged

As I said - that quote was not from Lincoln, but instead a right-wing fabrication. Young's office said he would not rescind the comments since the Washington Time has used it. Well the Washington Times has now retracted the statement, but will Young? Nope - instead he still wants to keep it:

Young's spokeswoman, Meredith Kenny, said the congressman took the quote directly from The Washington Times column. "Now that he's been informed these are not the actual words of Lincoln, he will discontinue attributing the words to Lincoln. However, he continues to totally agree with the message of the statement," Kenny told The Washington Post.

This actually puts Young in a worse off position. He is now saying members of Congress should be "hanged" for doing their constitutional duty of oversight. This is almost criminal and the media is not picking up on it? Why hasn't the Republican leadership come out in opposition to one of their members calling for the murder of member of Congress?

I believe we need to push more Don Young quotes out there. Since he feels it is alright to use faux quotes, then we should follow by his example. Atrios has posted one here and I got another one:

"Allah is great and death will come to the infidels of the west!" - Congressman Don Young (R-AK)

Perhaps we can get a whole campaign of these going. Let's see how quickly they try to step in and stop it once it hits the mainstream.

They keep attributing a quote to Lincoln that was not even his- "Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hanged.". Here is Rep. Don Young (R-AK) using it on the House floor yesterday.

The problem is Lincoln never said that. Glenn Greenwald explains how this quote came to being:

But this quote is completely invented. Lincoln never said it. This "quote" was first attributed to Lincoln by J. Michael Waller in Insight Magazine, in a 2003 article revealingly entitled: Democrats Usher in an Age of Treason. But as Waller himself now admits, the quote attributed to Lincoln is completely fraudulent. Waller wrote in an e-mail to FactCheck.org (h/t William Wolfrum):