If you are old enough to remember the 1990s when the Republican party did everything in their power to destroy President Bill Clinton and his wife, you know what’s going to happen if the Democrats lose control of Congress in this year’s election. It’s going to be all-out war against President Obama. The government will cease to function. We might actually see another Newt Gingrich-esque shut down of the federal government entirely. There will be one investigation after another and the White House will be unable to govern, and that’s the point.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is correct, it’s going to be a witch hunt.

The last time a Democrat sat in the White House, he faced a nonstop witch hunt by his political opponents. Prominent figures on the right accused Bill and Hillary Clinton of everything from drug smuggling to murder. And once Republicans took control of Congress, they subjected the Clinton administration to unrelenting harassment — at one point taking 140 hours of sworn testimony over accusations that the White House had misused its Christmas card list.

Now it’s happening again — except that this time it’s even worse. Let’s turn the floor over to Rush Limbaugh: “Imam Hussein Obama,” he recently declared, is “probably the best anti-American president we’ve ever had.”

To get a sense of how much it matters when people like Mr. Limbaugh talk like this, bear in mind that he’s an utterly mainstream figure within the Republican Party; bear in mind, too, that unless something changes the political dynamics, Republicans will soon control at least one house of Congress. This is going to be very, very ugly.

Read Krugman’s column.

I know Sarah Palin’s supporters don’t give a rip about facts, details or being right, but Palin sure is wrong a lot.

The former half-term governor of Alaska has put her proverbial foot in her mouth again. PolitiFact.com fact-checked her recent statement that “Democrats are poised now to cause this largest tax increase in US history.” They gave her a “Pants on Fire” rating – meaning liar liar pants on fire.

Obviously Palin lashed out at being called a liar. On her Facebook page she said, “Yesterday, PolitiFact.com fact-checked my statement about the coming $3.8 trillion Obama tax hike – the largest tax increase in history. They did such a bad job of it, however, that I feel compelled to fact-check the fact-checkers.”

Go on Mrs. Palin, fact-check your little heart out.

According to her “analysis,” Democrats have failed to put forward any plan to deal with Bush’s tax cuts, which are set to expire if Congress doesn’t renew them. Tax cuts? Tax hikes? You say potato – I say po-tah-toe. She’s correct that if Congress doesn’t do anything, the tax cuts will expire, but she’s wrong that Democrats don’t have a plan to do with them – she either doesn’t like it, or she doesn’t know about it.

“In fact,” PolitiFact responded, “Democrats have repeatedly stated they only intend to let lower tax rates expire for individuals making more than $200,000 or couples making more than $250,000. And that’s nowhere near the largest tax increase in history, as we noted in our rating.”

That’s not how Palin sees it.

“Unfortunately for PolitiFact, no such proposal exists. … Plan? What plan?,” Palin moans. “There is no plan. All we have is smoke and mirrors based on an old Obama campaign pledge that if elected, he would exempt families making less than $250,000 a year from ‘any form of tax increases.’ …

“To prevent PolitiFact from making similar mistakes in future, it would be helpful if the White House and the Democratic Congressional leadership finally mustered the courage to table their plans to let the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts expire. Mr. President, publish your proposals, and we’ll duke it out. You can argue in favor of a multi-trillion dollar tax hike in an age of economic uncertainty and mass unemployment, and we’ll argue for fiscal sanity combined with serious spending cuts. I for one look forward to such a debate.”

But PolitiFact says that Obama has indeed put forth a rather detailed plan on how to deal with the expiring Bush tax cuts. The president has addressed the issue at least twice in the annual budget documents that the White House releases.

PolitiFact can take it from here, but the bottom-line is that Palin needs to do her homework before she shoots her mouth off, this isn’t high school debate class, she needs to actually do some research or she’s going to keep looking like a fool.

The president’s 2011 budget, for example, says on page 39, “Allow the Bush Tax Cuts for Households Earning More Than $250,000 to Expire.”

“In the last Administration, those at the very top enjoyed large tax breaks and income gains while almost everyone else struggled and real income for the middle class declined. Our Nation cannot afford to continue these tax cuts, which is why the President supports allowing those tax cuts that affect families earning more than $250,000 a year to expire and committing these resources to reducing the deficit instead. This step will have no effect on the 98 percent of all households who make less than $250,000.”

Lest you think that’s too general and vague, there are detailed estimates in the budget summary tables, starting on page 164, for provisions such as, “Upper-income tax provisions devoted to deficit reduction: Expand the 28-percent rate and reinstate the 36-percent and 39.6-percent rates for those taxpayers with income over $250,000 (married) and $200,000 (single) … Reinstate the personal exemption phaseout and limitation on itemized deductions for those taxpayers with income over $250,000 (married) and $200,000 (single) … Impose 20-percent tax rate on capital gains and dividends for those taxpayers with income over $250,000 (married) and $200,000 (single).”

In Congress, key Democratic leaders have indicated they are using the plan outlined in the federal budget as the framework for their legislation. The Senate Finance Committee held a hearing on dealing with the expiring tax cuts. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., the committee’s chair, said in a July 14, 2010, statement, “I support extending the middle-class tax cuts permanently, as soon as possible, so working families can keep more of their hard-earned money.”

The committee released a budget analysis from the Joint Committee on Taxation, “Estimated Effects on Economic Growth and Distribution.” That document showed estimates for the cost to make the Bush tax cuts permanent for those who are now taxed at rates of 10 percent, 25 percent, 28 percent, “and part of the 33%.” That 33 percent tax bracket, by the way, includes taxpayers who make slightly below and slightly above the benchmarks Obama described.

And then there’s also the U.S. Treasury Department’s “General Explanations of the Administration’s Fiscal Year 2011 Revenue Proposals,” known by policy wonks as “the green book.” It outlines in even more detail how the Obama administration plans to increase taxes for high-earners and keep the current rates for everyone else.

“It is very much an official statement of policy. It’s what they propose to do,” said Roberton Williams, a senior fellow with the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. “Obviously, Congress will do or won’t do what it will. But I have heard no one on the Hill saying we should let everything expire.”

News coverage from other publications from The Wall Street Journal to our fellow fact-checkers at Factcheck.org have also noted the Democratic proposals and ideas on these issues.

“The Democrats’ plan seems to me to be quite explicit: keep the tax cuts for those under $250,000 and let those for the rich expire,” said Norman Ornstein, resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, and a longtime watcher of Congress. “Does that mean never, ever taxing the under-$250 (thousand) populace? No. But it is a straightforward policy plan.”

The PolitiFact story can be found here.
Palin’s Facebook post can be found here.

On Sunday, Senator John Kerry (D-MA) wrote in the Washington Post about the prospects of getting the climate bill passed this year – an election year.

“Conventional wisdom says that Congress ducks tough choices in election years,” Kerry said, “predicting at best a watered-down energy bill. The same doubters said health reform was dead until we passed it. They forget that Congress passed the Clean Air Act in an election year.”

Read this entire story on Examiner.com

On Wednesday, Fox News’ Neil Cavuto interviewed Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) about the congressional investigation into the British Petroleum oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, but Pence was more concerned with the alleged slowness of the Obama administration’s response to the disaster.

Pence said the people “want to get to the bottom of what happened on April 20.”

Evidently, what Pence meant was that he wants to use a congressional investigation to attack what he says was Obama’s lackadaisical response to the crisis.

Read this story in its entirety on Examiner.com

When I hear Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) speak I want choke him. I’m not necessarily a violent person, but when I see McConnell’s greasy white face on TV I want to punch him in the throat.

The Senate minority leader is the current GOP hitman. It’s his job to lead the attack to kill every bill the Democrats bring to the Senate floor with lies, lies and more lies – three in the back of the head.

Now he’s making the utterly mind boggling claim that regulating Wall Street will hurt Americans on Main Street.

McConnell said that the current financial regulation bills winding their way through Congress “actually guarantees future bailouts of Wall Street banks … endless taxpayer bailouts of Wall Street banks.”

I know, it makes no sense. How can we prevent another economic collapse if we don’t regulate the banks that created it? And yes, the problem was created by Wall Street.

But according to Frank Luntz, the GOP word guy, the financial collapse wasn’t caused by Wall Street but rather by Washington, DC.

In his document titled “Language of Financial Reform,” Luntz told Republican lawmakers and spindoctors that “Words that Work” sound like this.

“If there is one thing we can all agree on, it’s that the bad decisions and harmful policies by Washington bureaucrats that in many ways led to the economic crash must never be repeated.”

See? We can’t regulate Wall Street because regulators are part of the government and the government is always bad, wrong and evil.

Luntz wrote that this is “your critical advantage.”

“Washington’s incompetence is the common ground on which you can build support.”

Of course, McConnell is a US Senator, he voted for the Big Bank bailouts, and he’s very much a part of the “Washington” that Luntz is saying should be blamed for the financial crisis so …

Luntz claims that Americans aren’t just saying “no” to financial regulation, they’re saying “hell no.” He wrote this in January, so this should sound familiar to you by now. But it’s not the “American people” who are saying “hell no,” but rather McConnell, Congressman John Boehner (R-OH) and Sarah Palin who are saying it.

But as far as Luntz is concerned, the rejection of any government action to prevent another economic collapse is “rooted in the simple belief the government cannot effectively regulate the financial markets at any level.”

So the logic is that because the government, under the control of a Republican White House and a Republican Congress, can’t regulate financial markets at any level, they shouldn’t even try to. Remember, the GOP hates the government, wants it to go away, and so, when they’re in power, they actively work to make sure government doesn’t work for the people.

Of course, if the government isn’t going to regulate Wall Street, that means no one is going to regulate Wall Street – that should work about as well as it did in 2007, or during the hedge fund crisis in the ’90s and the Saving and Loan debacle in the ’80s.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote today, “It’s worth remembering that between the 1930s and the 1980s, there weren’t any really big financial bailouts, because strong regulation kept most banks out of trouble. It was only with Reagan-era deregulation that big bank disasters re-emerged. In fact, relative to the size of the economy, the taxpayer costs of the savings and loan disaster, which unfolded in the Reagan years, were much higher than anything likely to happen under President Obama.”

But that history doesn’t matter to the GOP. Luntz is telling the Republicans to link any attempt to regulate banks with the bank bailout, which everyone hates, and like I said, McConnell voted for.

“Frankly, the single best way to kill any legislation is to link it to the Big Bank Bailout,” Luntz said.

In another “Words that Work” section he wrote, “Taxpayer-funded bailouts reward bad behavior. Taxpayers should not be held responsible for the failure of big business any longer. If a business is going to fail, not matter how big, let it fail.”

It’s all a dog-and-pony show.

“It’s a truly shameless performance,” Krugman said, “McConnell is pretending to stand up for taxpayers against Wall Street while in fact doing just the opposite. In recent weeks, he and other Republican leaders have held meetings with Wall Street executives and lobbyists, in which the GOP and the financial industry have sought to coordinate their political strategy.”

According to Krugman, Wall Street isn’t lobbying to prevent future bailouts. “If anything, it’s trying to ensure that there will be more bailouts.” Wall Street likes the paradigm in which they reap the rewards and the taxpayer covers their losses – that works well for them.

McConnell and his GOP henchmen are firmly on the side of Wall Street and not Main Street. Without effective government regulation, we’ll continue with a boom and bust economy and higher and higher unemployment.

McConnell’s hometown newspaper had this to say, “While the intricacies of financial regulation are complicated, McConnell’s calculus is pretty obvious.”

–
Mitch McConnell’s Homestate Paper Thrashes Him For ‘Unabashedly Courting Wall Street Bankers For Political Money’ Huffington Post

Republicans will blame Democrats. Democrats will point their fingers at Republicans. Whoever is at fault, incumbents are set up to lose big in November’s mid-term elections – maybe.

A new Gallup shows that only 28 percent think members of Congress deserve to be re-elected. Conversely, 65 percent of registered voters want to see current members of Congress back next year.

What most pundits and political wonks see when they read these polls is that Democrats are going to be swept out of power in November, but I’m not so convinced. I actually think that it’s the GOP who will take a beating this mid-term, despite the conventional wisdom that the party in power usually loses in these off-year elections.

For starters, these poll results have never been seen before. Look at 1994 poll results when the GOP took over Congress with its “Contract for America.” The numbers don’t look at all like they do today. Now look at the stats on what Republican voters are saying in 2010.

That’s 83 percent of Republicans who want to send members of Congress home.

The numbers look better for incumbents when voters are asked if they want to see their individual member re-elected. Forty-eight percent of Republican voters want to re-elect their legislator. Fifty-eight percent of Democratic voters say they’ll re-elect their representative.

Gallup said this poll shows that Democrats are going to get beat-up in the voting booth this November, but I read it differently. I see the GOP as a fractured party with moderates unsure what to make of the Tea Partiers, Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann. This confusion, I think, will result in voter turnout among Republicans being down this year, while Democrats will come out strong and re-elect their legislators who delivered on health care reform, and possibly financial regulatory reform. The unknown is how the economy will be doing in November.

Read the Gullup poll results and decide for yourself.

Or check Ezra Klein’s take on a different set of graphs and numbers that will play into this year’s elections.

Regulating the health insurance was a big effing deal, but reigning in the the banks is arguably far more critical to US economic stability. As usual, Economist Paul Krugman is your guide to all things economic, and today he broke down financial reform in simple and easy to understand terms.

There are three groups of people involved in this process. There are those that don’t want any regulation of any banks under any circumstances. We’ll call them Republican members of Congress. Then there are two groups that want to regulate banks but differ in how it should be done. One group we’ll call the Volckers and the other we’ll call the Krugmans.

The Volckers, named after former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Paul Volcker, want to regulate the size of banks. For them, the solution to our banking problem will be in eliminating “too big too fail” banks. The theory is that if we just break the banks into smaller pieces, and if some of them fail, the free market will kick in to solve the problem and prevent another taxpayer bailout. Unfortunately history doesn’t support this claim (e.g. The Great Depression).

The Krugmans believe that to fix our banking crisis we need to regulate what banks do – not how big they are.

Opposing the Volckers, Krugman wrote:

Here’s how I see it. Breaking up big banks wouldn’t really solve our problems, because it’s perfectly possible to have a financial crisis that mainly takes the form of a run on smaller institutions. In fact, that’s precisely what happened in the 1930s, when most of the banks that collapsed were relatively small — small enough that the Federal Reserve believed that it was O.K. to let them fail. As it turned out, the Fed was dead wrong: the wave of small-bank failures was a catastrophe for the wider economy.

Paul Krugman economist

According to the Krugmans, the same could happen today, so rather than bailing out a few big banks, the taxpayer would be bailing out lots of smaller banks. The end result would be another taxpayer bailout.

Here‘s the Krugman solution.

After all, the U.S. banking system had a long period of stability after World War II, based on a combination of deposit insurance, which eliminated the threat of bank runs, and strict regulation of bank balance sheets, including both limits on risky lending and limits on leverage, the extent to which banks were allowed to finance investments with borrowed funds. And Canada — whose financial system is dominated by a handful of big banks, but which maintained effective regulation — has weathered the current crisis notably well.

What ended the era of U.S. stability was the rise of “shadow banking”: institutions that carried out banking functions but operated without a safety ne

t and with minimal regulation. In particular, many businesses began parking their cash, not in bank deposits, but in “repo” — overnight loans to the likes of Lehman Brothers. Unfortunately, repo wasn’t protected and regulated like old-fashioned banking, so it was vulnerable to a pre-1930s-type crisis of confidence. And that, in a nutshell, is what went wrong in 2007-2008.

So why not update traditional regulation to encompass the shadow banks? We already have an implicit form of deposit insurance: It’s clear that creditors of shadow banks will be bailed out in time of crisis. What we need now are two things: (a) regulators need the authority to seize failing shadow banks, the way the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation already has the authority to seize failing conventional banks, and (b) there have to be prudential limits on shadow banks, above all limits on their leverage.

From a banker’s perspective, they’d rather have the Volcker regulation than the Krugman one – or even better no regulation at all. Under the Volcker plan, banks merely have to break up into smaller chunks but could still do business as usual. But under Krugman’s plan, banks would have to dramatically adjust how they’ve been doing business, and that they don’t like.

The question is, can Congress fix this problem? If health care reform is any gauge, the answer is maybe.

–
Financial Reform 101 by Paul Krugman

I hate cable news. At least 99 percent of all cable news is a bag of throwaway garbage that serves no purpose other than to confuse, distract, misinform and stink up the room. The same can be said about talk radio. It’s not that broadcasting can’t be used to inform and educate the populous, sometimes it is, but the trend has been to simply chase ratings and fill airtime with whatever is cheap and easy.

And what’s the cheapest and easiest content to produce? Opinion masquerading as news, or as Glenn Beck likes to say ‘Truth.’

Take this story for example. It’s easy for me to sit here and blast out an opinion story bemoaning the horrors of cable news, but if I actually wanted to do an investigative piece about cable news and why it got this way, well, that would take time and money – none of which I have.

But I’m not Rupert Murdoch. He does have money. He could pay people to investigate stories and produce in-depth analysis segments on things like health care reform, the Iraq war or the nation’s struggling education system. So could GE’s MSNBC and CNN, but they don’t do that.

I know, I’m taking a long time getting to my lead, so let’s get down to it.

Today, Eric Boehlert of Media Matters for America, a liberal media watchdog organization, published a story detailing the conservative nervous breakdown we’re watching unravel across this once great nation. The thesis of Boehlert’s story is that conservatives believed their own hype, and now they’re freaking out that they weren’t able to kill health care reform. Now they’re worried about what else they won’t be able to stop the liberals from doing.

What happened was that Fox News, along with other right-wing media, convinced the Tea Partiers that they were winning. They believed Fox News when they said 2 million people rallied in the nation’s capitol last September, even though there might have been 100,000. They believed Fox News and Rush Limbaugh when they were assured that after the gun-touting town hall screamers had shouted down Democratic politicians that health care reform was dead.

I believed them too. Not more than a month ago, I was convinced that health care would not happen.

But what everyone forgot is that the people get to speak in the voting booth and that’s pretty much it. Anti-war protesters couldn’t stop the Iraq war no matter how many people rallied against it because George W. Bush was elected, well sort of, in 2000, and Congress was controlled by the GOP. In a republic, the people vote for their representatives in November and it’s up to those elected leaders to lead. And leading doesn’t mean changing your mind every time the New York Times or Fox News publishes a public opinion poll. Depending on your point of view, that’s either the upside or the downside of living in a republic.

And so now that health care reform has passed, conservatives are losing their shit.

Boehlert said:

After all, late last week the nation stood on the precipice, just three “days away from the United States of America being over as we’ve all known it,” according to Rush Limbaugh, who warned that reform would drive every private insurance company out of business. Glenn Beck also went full tilt, warning that the bill represented a “turning point,” like the Civil War and Peal Harbor, while colleague Sean Hannity pinpointed the health care vote as the ‘very hour’ that America turned ‘completely towards socialism.’

The Washington Times likened reform to the “Black Plague,” and the online reaction was somehow even more unhinged. It was “RIP USA,” because with the vote, America would become “occupied by a hostile foreign power.” Indeed, a “socialist putsch” had been sprung and “America’s Day of Wreckoning [sic]” was at hand. Why? Because the Democrats’ health care legislation “will make every American a POW, strip them of their Freedoms and Liberty and shove them in a meat cellar for cold storage.”

Basically what Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and the Tea Partiers want is to run the government regardless of whether or not they win elections. To them, it doesn’t matter who gets elected, what matters is that politicians do what they tell them to do. And because Fox News effectively created the illusion that they were winning the debate, right-wing fringers are now throwing a hissy fit.

When health care reform passed Congress, Boehlert wrote, “It was the sudden and rude realization that, instead, they’d spent the past few months trapped inside an echo chamber, I think, that created the volcanic and unhinged response we’ve seen play out in recent days. It’s the kind of childish and hysterical reaction I didn’t think we’d ever witness from a major political movement.”

So the Tea Partiers and other conservative groups out there need to understand that in order effect change in this country they’re going to have to organize into a political movement. It takes more than a few gun-touting fanatics to pass legislation, and most people would agree, that’s a good thing. So turn off Fox News and actually engage in the process or you’ll be left on the corner shouting to no one.

Read Boelhert’s story.

The consensus among the talking heads, political wonks, hacks and bloviators is that Democrats will lose big in November’s elections.

The logic is that the party in the White House always gets their ass handed to them in the first election after the president takes office. That’s what happened in 1994 after Clinton beat Bush in 1992. It didn’t happen in 2002 following George W. Bush’s controversial election in 2000.

The mainstream media and pundits are also convinced that voters are going bludgeon Democrats over their passage of health care reform. Following passage of Medicare in 1965, Republicans picked up 47 House seats in the 1966 election. Democrats still held a 247 to 187 majority in the House, but it was a good year for Republicans. Besides Medicare and Civil Rights legislation passage, there was also an unpopular Vietnam war raging and race riots sweeping the nation.

However, just like the prospectus for a mutual fund, past performance is not proof of future performance. And if you think that people paid to blather on MSNBC, Fox News and CNN are speaking the truth, or know what they’re talking about, means you haven’t been paying attention – these fools are wrong more than the weather man. Just remember what Bob Dylan said about the weather man.

As far as health care reform is concerned, it’s hard to see how getting beat by the GOP and failing to pass health care reform legislation would have proved a winner for Democrats in November. One things that is a constant in US history is that Americans like it when things get done and they like to vote for winners and not losers.

But if Democrats want to pull out big wins in November there’s a hanging fastball that they just need to swing at – take on the bankers. It’s a guaranteed home run. Everyone from all walks of life, whether Tea Partiers or left-wing anti-war activists, everyone hates bankers. Many Americans reflexively loath bankers and Wall Street big shots.

Senate Democrats and House members need to go back to the drawing board and produce some tough new regulations on bankers and Wall Street fatcats. There needs to be a campaign to rid the nation of banks “too big too fail” and to set up a strong consumer protection agency that’s not part of the Federal Reserve. Democrats need to beef up the Securities and Exchange Commission and other regulatory agencies either with new legislation or with the power of the Executive.

Let the GOP campaign supporting of Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan and Wall Street hucksters.

This the issue an overwhelming majority of Americans care about, and if the Democrats hit it hard – they not only won’t lose in November, they could even have greater majorities in both houses.

Last week on Fox News’ “On the Record with Greta Van Susteren,” former half-term Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin is “interviewed” by Van Susteren who clearly has arranged this setup question with Palin so she can use some of her “zingers” against President Obama and health care reform.

Read the entire story on Examiner

Barack Obama has been talking about health care reform since 2007. Back then he talked about single-payer and universal health care – and you elected Obama with a landslide victory. While you didn’t get universal health care or single-payer – you did get health care reform.

Last night’s vote in the House of Representatives to pass health care reform was historic. But what makes it so amazing is that the Democrats didn’t cave – they actually passed a huge piece of important legislation despite the lies and fear mongering spewing from the mouths of Republicans and so-called “conservatives.”

The campaign to misinform you about health care was quite effective. Support for health care reform did fall substantially as more and more Americans started to believe Republican liars. Sarah Palin kicked off the “death panel” lie. And who knows where all the crazy numbers about the cost of the bill came from – yesterday someone said the bill could cost $10 trillion. Abortion, the GOP’s old fallback position, became a central theme for the opposition. Some Republicans even said that this bill will not only fund abortions but it will “promote” them – as if you’re going to see ads on TV for abortions next to ads for Viagra.

The list of outright lies are too many to list but they’re irrelevant now.

What is relevant is that Democrats did what they needed to do and they didn’t cower in the face of the vicious hate-filled opposition to health care reform. They didn’t quit when they were called socialists, communists, niggers, faggots, baby killers and when they were spit on. So if you have a moment, send your member of Congress an e-mail or call them on the phone and say thank you.

And remember that while it’s easy to say that there’s no difference between Democrats and Republicans – there is. Paul Krugman made a great point in his column today by highlighting a fundamental distinction between what Democrats and Republicans believe.

The day before Sunday’s health care vote, President Obama gave an unscripted talk to House Democrats. Near the end, he spoke about why his party should pass reform: “Every once in a while a moment comes where you have a chance to vindicate all those best hopes that you had about yourself, about this country, where you have a chance to make good on those promises that you made … And this is the time to make true on that promise. We are not bound to win, but we are bound to be true. We are not bound to succeed, but we are bound to let whatever light we have shine.”

And on the other side, here’s what Newt Gingrich, the Republican former speaker of the House — a man celebrated by many in his party as an intellectual leader — had to say: If Democrats pass health reform, “They will have destroyed their party much as Lyndon Johnson shattered the Democratic Party for 40 years” by passing civil rights legislation.

The GOP sees the world in purely cynical political terms. They don’t see you. They don’t see your family. They only see the next election and the next tax cut or war profit. And maybe Gingrich is right, maybe passing civil rights legislation was wrong politically, but who, besides racists, can argue that it wasn’t the right thing to do.

Looking back at our nation’s history, how many politically challenging decisions were still clearly the right choice? Civil rights, Medicare, Social Security, and let’s not forget that great Republican President Abraham Lincoln who ended slavery despite a nation that had yet to cleanse itself of overt racism. President Lincoln was murdered for that decision.

No, despite the cynicism of people like Gingrich and Karl Rove, politicians sometimes need to make unpopular decisions, even if that means they will lose their seat in Congress. That’s what a republic is. To paraphrase James Madison, a republic is virtuous men making virtuous decisions in spite of what an excited faction may want.

So please, call your members of Congress and tell them you’ve got their back. Tell them you will vote for them in November. While you’re at it, why not sign up to volunteer for them too?

Watching the conservative echo chamber in action is a frightening experience that most people don’t have to stomach on a daily basis.

The latest misinformation parroted by the rightwing machinery is that President Obama is buying votes on health care with judicial nominations.

As usual, it all starts with just a simple question. This time the ultra-conservative Weekly Standard got the ball rolling.

Read the entire story on Examiner.com

Almost all politicians stretch the truth, or outright lie, to convince people that what they’re doing is for their benefit. But what’s happening right now regarding a possible parliamentary move by Senate Democrats to use reconciliation to pass health care reform is just too much.

There are so many Republican lies whizzing across the media landscape about reconciliation it’s hard to keep up. The two biggest whoppers that GOP Senators and Fox News are disseminating are that Republicans would never dream of using reconciliation to thwart a filibuster, and that the use of the existing reconciliation rule (created in 1974) is the so-called “nuclear option.”

Republicans and Fox News are counting on no one looking at the public record and uncovering their blatant fabrications. If you look, you’ll see that Republicans have used reconciliation way more often than Democrats have. In fact, in the more than 20 times it’s been used, Republicans are on record with using reconciliation 17 times.

Most recently the GOP chose reconciliation to pass the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001, the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003, the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 and the Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act of 2005.

And as far as the so-called “nuclear option” is concerned – that has absolutely nothing to do with reconciliation – nothing, nada, zip, zilch.

It was Republicans who coined the “nuclear option” phrase back in 2003 when they threatened to change Senate rules outlawing the filibuster. They were pissed at Democrats who were trying to filibuster judicial nominees. It had nothing to do with reconciliation.

Watch this video. Stop watching Fox News. Think. Read. Research. Be critical. The information is there. “The truth is out there.” — Fox Mulder

President Obama appears to have finally realized that Republicans will never support any effort to reform health care. On Wed., Obama is expected to release a plan to pass health care reform. According to Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, the president would like Republicans to not filibuster the bill in the Senate and allow a simple up-or-down vote, but that’s not going to happen.

Now Republicans know they have lost this battle and they’re freaking out. One can only hope there’s a special place in hell for these so-called Christians who lie through their teeth.

The filibuster is the issue I’m tracking today. There’s a lot going on with Senators seeking to change rules, Republicans threatening more filibusters and pundits trying to figure it all out.

Here’s what I have so far.

Former Senate parliamentarian: Biden could play big role in reconciliation process Washington Post

Former Senate parliamentarian Robert Dove discussed the history of reconciliation on MSNBC Monday morning. “Reconciliation has been used a lot, and I would never use the term illegitimate with regard to reconciliation,” he said of the Senate maneuver, which was created in 1974 and revised in 1980 to restrict it to purely budgetary matters.

Political systems of nations: Germany Ezra Klein Washington Post

As the dysfunctions of our political system have become a more prevalent theme on this blog, I’ve gotten a large number of requests for a series exploring the political systems of other countries. How England runs its health-care system is a lot better understood than how England passed the law that created its health-care system, even though the latter is arguably more important for our purposes.

Solid Evidence Emerges of Senate Republicans’ Unconstitutional Abuse of Power Alternet

Nearly 300 Bills Have Passed in House Since Current 111th Congress Took Office Nearly 14 Months Ago — Many With Broad Bipartisan Support — Only to be Tied Up by Unprecedented Brick Wall of Republican Filibusters in Senate; Minority Party Has No Constitutional Authority to Hold All Legislation Hostage by forcing 60-Vote ‘Super Majority’ in 100-Member Chamber

Should Democrats Call The GOP Filibuster Threat? Press

Holding up bills in the Senate is the Republican plan to prevent Obama and Democrats from scoring any political points. To accomplish this goal, Republicans are threatening to filibuster more than ever, and some Democrats want Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to call their bluff.

Hypocrisy abounds on filibuster issue Inside Bay Area

“THE RIGHT to extended debate is never more important than when one party controls Congress and the White House, and in these cases the filibuster serves as a check on power and preserves our limited government.”

“Change in the Senate rules — that really, I think, would change the character of the Senate forever (and would be) simply majoritarian absolute power on either side (of Congress), and that’s not what the Founders intended.”

Analysis: Republicans setting filibuster record Associate Press

The filibuster — tool of obstruction in the U.S. Senate — is alternately blamed and praised for wilting President Barack Obama’s ambitious agenda. Some even say it’s made the nation ungovernable.

Hartford Courant Crossing Party Lines

Monday, Republican Sens. Scott Brown of Massachusetts, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, Kit Bond of Missouri and George Voinovich of Ohio broke ranks with their party and voted to cut off debate on the jobs legislation. The vote to end debate was 62-30. The bill passed the Senate and now faces action in the House.

Holding up bills in the Senate is the Republican plan to prevent Obama and Democrats from scoring any political points. To accomplish this goal, Republicans are threatening to filibuster more than ever, and some Democrats want Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to call their bluff.

“It’s not only good policy but good politics to call them out now,” Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) told US News and World Report last month. “The American people need to see who really is the roadblock here.”

Several House Democrats are saying it’s time to stop running away from the Republican filibuster threats.

Up until now, “we’ve been playing into the hands of people who don’t want to get anything done,” Grijalva told US News and World Report’s Anna Mulrine.

But a modern filibuster is likely to be much less satisfying than some House Democrats imagine. “It reflects a common misperception among House members in the U.S. – that somehow you can force Republicans to filibuster in such a way that it will be embarrassing to them,” Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers, told Mulrine.

Baker said that the days when Senators read from the phone book or waxed poetic about old girlfriends are no more. “This isn’t Strom Thurmond’s 1957 filibuster against civil rights,” Baker said.

However, polls show that most Americans believe that it’s Democrats who are trying to get something accomplished and Republicans are merely obstructionists.

“The Democrats don’t need the public to be watching the debates with bated breath,” Duke University Political Scientist David Rohde told Mulrine. “What the Democrats need is the public to think that they are trying to act and that the Republicans are trying to stop them.”

Steven Hurst of the Associated Press reported today that based on the number of cloture votes, the GOP’s frequency of filibusters and the threats to use it are record setting.

A cloture vote is a way for the majority to test whether it has the 60 votes needed to end debate.

Last year, the first of the 111th Congress, there were a record 112 cloture votes. In the first two months of 2010, the number already exceeds 40.

That means, with 10 months left to run in the 111th Congress, Republicans have turned to the filibuster or threatened its use at a pace that will more than triple the old record. The 104th Congress in 1995-96 — when Republicans held a 53-47 majority — required 50 cloture votes.

Democratic Senators Tom Harkin and Jeanne Shaheen introduced legislation last month to change Senate rules by lowering the number of votes needed to end a filibuster. But Majority Leader Reid sees this is as nonstarter. It takes 67 votes to change Senate rules.

Here are all of the three documents released on Friday by the House ethics panel admonishing Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) for ethics violations.

All bad news gets released on Fridays.

Republicans are calling for Rangel to step down. The congressman said that he shouldn’t be held responsible for errors by his staff.

The committee found no evidence that Rangel knew about the corporate sponsorship for his trips to the Caribbean. On the other hand, they were his staffers and he’s the boss.

The House ethics panel documents are long and can be found here, here and here.

Read Talking Points Memo breakdown of the ethics investigation.

Today the US House of Representative passed a bill removing the anti-trust exemption from insurance companies.

The legislation passed 406 to 19 after hours of debate over an amendment by Rep. Daniel Lungren (R-TX) that would provide a data-sharing exception to the bill. The amendment was not added to the bill, but Lungren still voted in favor of the final bill.

A Republican filibuster is expected in the Senate to prevent the anti-trust exemption from becoming law.

Here’s the complete transcript and video of President Obama’s remarks before the bipartisan meeting with congressional leaders. The transcript was prepared by the White House and downloaded from WhiteHouse.gov on Feb. 9, 2010 at 10:45 p.m.

10:21 A.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT: Hello, everybody. Well, I want to thank both Democratic and Senate Leaders — Democratic Senate Leaders, Democratic House Leaders, as well as Republican Leaders from the House and Senate for joining us.

As I said in my State of the Union, part of what we’d like to see is the ability of Congress to move forward in a more bipartisan fashion on some of the key challenges that the country is facing right now. I think it’s fair to say that the American people are frustrated with the lack of progress on some key issues. And although the parties are not going to agree on every single item, there should be some areas where we can agree and we can get some things done even as we have vigorous debates on some of those issues that we don’t agree on.

A good place to start, and what I hope to spend a lot of time on in these discussions today, is how we can move forward on a jobs package that encourages small business to hire, that is helping to create the kind of environment where now that we have economic growth people actually are starting to add to their payroll. I think there are some ideas on both the Republican and Democrat side that allow us to potentially, for example, lower rates for small businesses on their taxes, to help spur on some growth. And my hope is is that both in the House and the Senate we’ll see some packages moving over the next several weeks that can provide a jumpstart to hiring and start lowering the unemployment rate.

Another area where I hope we can find some agreement is on the issue of getting our deficits and debt under control. Both parties have stated their concerns about it; I think both parties recognize that it’s going to take a lot of work. I have put forward the idea of a fiscal commission and I’m going to be discussing both with my Democratic and Republican colleagues how we can get that moving as quickly as possible so that we can start taking some concrete action. I think the American people want to see that concrete action.

I’m also going to just be talking about some more mundane matters, things like making sure that we have our government personnel in place on critical positions — in critical positions that involve our basic government function and seeing if we can accelerate that and try to find some agreement in those areas.

And then I’m going to spend some time listening because there may be some priorities that both the Republican and Democratic Leaders have that they want to raise at this meeting.

My hope is this is not going to be a rare situation; we’re going to be doing these on a regular basis. And I’m very thankful that everybody here has taken the time to come. I’m confident that if we move forward in a spirit of keeping in mind what’s best for the American people that we should be able to accomplish a lot.

All right. Thank you very much everybody.

END
10:24 A.M. EST

David Nexon had a big problem. An early version of national health care legislation contained a $40 billion tax aimed squarely at members of the medical device trade association he represents.

Read Chicago Sun story explaining US failing legislative process.