Sunday Morning Comin’ Down – Part 1 of 2

In which huge, implacable, glacier-like blocks of frozen wingnut stupid continue to grind and gouge our political landscape.

On “Face the Nation”

McCain: Not gonna support nuffin. We needzes tax cuts. It adds to the deficit. Future generations will pay for this. And that’s bad.

McCain: This is not bipartisan. This is just picking off a coupla Senators.

Funny how it was “ bipartisan” every time McCain used Joe Lieberman as his testicle cozy.

McCain: This is a setback. We were promised change, but this isn’t change.

Let’s take a moment an remind ourselves exactly what that delightful McCain/Republican alternative amounted to.

“How much bipartisan outreach can you have when 36 out of 41 Senators take their marching orders from Rush Limbaugh”

Then I heard Ricky Roma was going to be on next, and I got all excited (Not Work Safe)


Turns out its was actually Christina Romer, head of the Council of Economic Advisers, which was exactly 42% less exciting.


On “Meet the Press”

Mike Pence (silver-plated bullethead , Indiana) explained that the American people aren't really tired of our suck-ass ideology, but Gummint Spending.

Pence: There is a time honored way to save the country. Reagan knew it. Kennedy knew it. After the towers fell (9/119/119/119/119/11) tax-cuts.

Of course, wingnuts say this over and over again: that Kennedy cut taxes so blah blah blah.

What they leave out is stuff like this:

"Yes, I have stated in both debates and state again that I believe in a balanced budget and have supported that concept during my 14 years in the Congress. The only two times when an unbalanced budget is warranted would be during a serious recession and we had that in '58 in an unbalanced budget of $12 billion; or a national emergency where there should be large expenditures for national defense which we had in World War II and during part of the Korean War...

“Third, I think it's possible to gain a $700 million to a billion dollars through tax changes which I believe would close up loopholes on dividend withholding, on expense accounts...

“So in my judgment we would spend more money in this administration on aid to education, we'd spend more money on housing, we'd spend more money and I hope more wisely, on defense than this administration has done, but I believe that the next administration should work for a balanced budget and that would be my intention. Mr. Nixon misstates my figures constantly, which is of course his right, but the fact of the matter is here is where I stand and I just want to have it on the public record."

John F Kennedy, "Face-to-Face, Nixon-Kennedy" Vice President Richard M. Nixon and Senator John F. Kennedy Third Joint Television-Radio Broadcast, Thursday, October 13, 1960.

Kennedy cut the highest tax rate from 90-something percent to 71 percent AND closed a ton of loopholes precisely because the loopholes made the top marginal tax rates irrelevant; it could have been 95%, or 105% or a 1,000%.

The very rich were using the loopholes in the tax code to pay a pittance, and it was Kennedy’s goal to force them to pay more into the federal coffers in order to be able to afford to increase spending on the very social programs Republicans despise.

So, another Republican has lied yet again to advance his discredited, depraved agenda.

Big surprise.

As for Saint Reagan to whom the GOP prays so feverishly, this was the guy who pandered hard to bigots and Fundies to win. Who used his economic swords and hammers to destroy unions, cripple the middle class and engineer the greatest transfer of wealth into the pockets of the super-rich in history. Who left behind the largest deficit in history (at least until his political heir, George W. Bush, took over where Ronnie left off.)

All because Reagan’s goal was to destroy the federal government, root and branch, and turn Western Civilization over to Wall Street and Madison Avenue.

Finally, while repeatedly tying tax cuts to “when the towers fell” may be beneath contempt, you must remember that Mike Pence is a Republican, and the “spindly, ricket-ridden, milky, wizened, dim-eyed, gammy-handed, limpy line of” Bushlings left in that party react to the idea of honor and same way Vampire Dog

reacts to garlic-based chew toys.


On “Fox News Sunday” John Cornyn floats the new GOP phrase-that-pays:

In the New Deal, Henry Morgenthau famously said that spending doesn’t work.

In case you forgot your setup instructions for your brand-new GOP quote-a-rama:

Step 1: Dig up some long-dead person of note associated with a successful Democratic administration.

Step 2: Out of the millions of words they uttered, find one sentence that could support the GOP’s latest cracked-brain fad if it is shorn of all historical and political context (Hint: Massive spending and a jobs program did eventually haul the United States out of the Great Depression. It was called WWII.)

Step 3: Repeat one million times.

End Part 1