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POPSCrazed Oklahoma Republican lies to constituents, later admits lying "conceded that President Obama requested more military spending" Arguably the greatest embarrassment to U.S. politics - Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe. Cry baby. Pet project removed from increased defense budget under President Obama. Resorts to lying for payback. Another typical rebubbacan
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POPSCompetition lacking among private health insurers Congressional investigators this year looked at insurers catering to small employers around the country. The Government Accountability Office found that the median _or midpoint — market share of largest carrier increased to 47 percent in 2008 from 33 percent in 2002.
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POPSTerror Alerts used in 2004 to help Bush win reelection More: Dave Weigel, writing for the Washington Independent, notes that in the past, Ridge has denied manipulating security information for political reasons. In 2004, for example, he said, "We don't do politics in the Department of Homeland Security." The Bush administration was forced to admit in the days after the 2004 alert that it was based on intelligence three or four years old. Officials then claimed there was a previously unmentioned "separate stream of intelligence" that justified the warning -- but offered little tangible information to support their new story.. Ridge's book, "The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege...and How We Can Be Safe Again," comes out September 1. Ridge reveals that he considered resigning because he was urged to issue a politically-motivated security alert on the eve of Bush’s re-election:
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POPSRepublicans see themselves in the backseat for YEARS to come. More: Recently named counselor to the Senate Republican leader, Martinez has been a factor in GOP leadership meetings. As the lone Hispanic among Senate Republicans and, briefly, as chair of the Republican National Committee, he tried to move his party toward adopting a policy of comprehensive immigration reform, without success. On Thursday, he was one of only nine Republicans to vote to confirm Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, the first Hispanic to serve on the high court.
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POPSBuenos Aires is for Lovers and Republican Family Values Governors It won't be easy, you'll think it strange When I try to explain how I feel That I still need your love after all that I've done You won't believe me All you will see is a girl you once knew Although she's dressed up to the nines At sixes and sevens with you I had to let it happen, I had to change Couldn't stay all my life down at heel Looking out of the window, staying out of the sun So I chose freedom Running around, trying everything new But nothing impressed me at all I never expected it to Don't cry for me Argentina The truth is I never left you All through my wild days My mad existence I kept my promise Don't keep your distance
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POPSRepublican Rep. Pete Hoekstra mercilessly heckled by Twitter users.
Hoekstra compared the mass uprising of Iranians – utilizing Twitter as an organizing tool -- to the GOP's attempt to express dissatisfaction over Nancy Pelosi's decision to adjourn Congress before an energy vote last August. More Twitter responses: Rode a packed metro into work this morning. Now know what it's like to be in a concentration camp. I burned my finger this morning on a hot plate, now I know how Joan of Arc felt. I spilled some lukewarm coffee on myself just now, which is somewhat analogous to being boiled in oil. I splashed my face with cold water this morning after shaving, which is similar to having been waterboarded. I got a splinter in my hand today. Felt just like Jesus getting nailed to the cross. Someone walked in on me while I was in the bathroom. Reminded me of Pearl Harbor. Had to move all my stuff to a new office w/o a corner view. Now I know what the Trail of Tears was like. Ate leftover for lunch today. Just like the Donner par
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POPSWhy it pays to be a Moderate Republican. Collins fights oil speculators. Collins was also one of only three Republicans voting in favor of Obama's economic stimulus bill, and that only after getting a promise of spending cuts and more school construction. Obama may need a handful of Republicans to revamp of financial regulation, including the oil markets. Will Collins demand something again from the president in exchange for crossing party lines? Offering a coy smile, Collins answered, "I do think the president has been receptive when I make suggestions."
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POPSSenator to-be Franken picks up 87 votes. Republicans still obstructing Democracy. Democratic Rep. Jim Oberstar, meanwhile, has been one of the most vocal critics of Coleman's legal strategy, saying this past week that the former Senator and national GOP "is playing not just with fire, but with dynamite ... this thing is going to blow up in their face." Former Republican Sen. Dave Durenberger has said that the party leadership in Washington does not have "Coleman's best interests in mind." "If Norm had to finance this recount on his own, he never could have gone through it," he said. "Norm couldn't afford to put a nickel into this thing, but John Cornyn could." GOP = Grand Obstructionists Party
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POPSSarah Palin: More Earmark Hypocrisy The earmarks that Palin apparently will accept could also be ridiculed in a McCain-ish fashion. They include $475,000 to construct a "heritage center" in the Chilkat Indian Village; $150,000 to support private industry participation in two international fishery groups; $200,000 for investigating and prosecuting bootlegging; $200,000 for researching the king crab; and $855,000 for building fairgrounds. The Alaska earmarks also include $1.2 million for construction work on an airport on Akutan, a tiny island that relies on seaplane for contact with the Alaskan mainland. (The Coast Guard handles medical emergencies.) The island has roughly 800 residents. Could this be dubbed the Airport to Nowhere?
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POPSThe Joy of Rebubbacan Hysteria From source: Scenario B -- the far more likely one, in my opinion -- is that dark Republican prayers to the economic gods will go unanswered and the economy indeed will have lifted by late 2010. In this scenario, at the rate they're going and given the spectacled manner in which they're doing it, Republicans will have effectively extinguished themselves as a national party of serious opposition.
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POPSColin Powell endorsing Obama? Tomorrow on Meet The Press "It comes at a time when we need momentum, and it would create momentum against us." The right wing blogosphere will smear Retired General Powell up one side of the street and down the other. Although he's a Republican who has advised three Republican presidents, he's an independent thinker. Can't have that - the lockstep right will skewer Powell for breaking ranks.
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POPSMcCain: Huge drop in popularity, Voters souring on McBush "He kind of scared me," Leesa Zick, 48, an undecided Republican from Edwardsville, Ill., said of McCain's abrupt and short-lived suspension of his campaign last month during Capitol Hill talks on a financial package. "We need a president who can deal with multiple tasks. It seemed like it overwhelmed him."
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POPSWhy CIA Veterans are Scared of McCain McCain is influenced by a circle of hardline Republican legislators and congressional staff as well as disgruntled former Agency officials "who all had these long-standing grudges against people in the Agency," the former senior intelligence officer said. "They think the CIA is a hotbed of liberals. Right-wing, nutty paranoia stuff. They all love the military and hate the CIA. Because the CIA tells them stuff they don't want to hear."
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POPSGreenspan: No McCain tax cuts without reduction McCaskill said eliminating congressional earmark spending — estimated at $17 billion annually — cannot offset McCain's proposed tax cuts. "That's a huge amount of money, but it's not even a drop in the bucket to pay for $3.5 trillion in tax cuts," she said. "So, every time he throws up earmarks and he's asked how he's going to pay for it, he knows he's being disingenuous, he knows he's not being forthcoming." Plus his leading economic adviser is Phil Gramm. Gramm flunked 3 grades in grade school and most recently created economic hardship for the company he works for by investing in subprime loans. McBush is a disaster waiting to happen.
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POPSWorld wants Obama as president: poll Will Americans choose to lead the world, or will they once again squander the goodwill that the world would love to heap on the USA. What will they do? The countries most optimistic that an Obama presidency would improve relations were America's NATO allies, including Australia (62 per cent).
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POPS McCain To Katrina Victims In 2005: You're On Your Own It must be nice to have staffers writing that stuff for you. Too bad he spent the months to follow leading the Republican charge against every Senate bill that would have actually helped Katrina victims or mandated investigations on how the Bush administration could have blown disaster response so thoroughly. Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Joe Biden jumped immediately to the aid of hurricane victims in the week after the 2005 disaster, authoring S.Amdt. 1661 "…to provide emergency funding for victims of Hurricane Katrina." But with John McCain's help, the Republican-led Senate shot down the funding on a 41-56 vote with McCain voting against, while Biden and Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama voted for the funding. the Republicans wanted no part of it and despite his post-Katrina pledge to "do all that is necessary to fund essential relief and recovery efforts and help those in need," John McCain was right there to shoot down every initiative that would have
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POPSJohn Edwards = John McCain Edwards was a typical "guy" in his cheating ways: "But going out and getting stupidly laid and then coming home and reconciling with the wife is not the same as going out, getting stupidly laid, then divorcing the crippled wife and marrying the pretty young thing (and taking out your marriage license before the divorce is final). One is stupid. The other is cruel. Brutal. Heinous. And well within the moral capacities of our Republican presidential candidate." Cenk Uygur, in his regular blog at AOL News, observes, "Now that Edwards has admitted to an extramarital affair, everyone will now condemn him and say he has no political career left. I want to ask all of those people, how is Edwards' affair any different John McCain's? If Edwards is disqualified from running for office because of this, isn't McCain as well?"
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POPSThe VP Choice that Lost the Presidency for McCain It's also a slap in the face of Democratic women voters. They don't get Hillary but they get Sarah as the first potential woman President? In fact, I can just hear Biden saying, "Sarah Palin, you are NO Hillary Clinton!"
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POPSHow to Honor the U.S. Flag Since republicans have made flag politics a cornerstone of their campaigns (instead of trying to solve problems that face average Americans everyday), you would think the leader of the conservatives and republicans wouldn't keep disrespecting the flag as he does here and on opening night of the olympics. However, I do think this symbolizes something very profound. America has gone backward under Bush and the republican presidency. Sheesh, what a moron. Can we be done with the republicans already?
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POPSParty of McBush getting crushed in polls, key races More: In the polls, they are setting records (and not the good kind). The most recent Gallup Poll has 67 percent of voters disapproving of President Bush; those numbers are worse than Richard Nixon’s on the eve of his resignation. A CBS News poll taken at the end of April found only 33 percent of Americans have a favorable view of the GOP — the lowest since CBS started asking the question more than two decades ago. By comparison, 52 percent of the public has a favorable view of the Democratic Party. The Democratic National Committee polling, according to a memo it provided, has two-thirds of swing voters expecting McCain to pursue policies very similar to Bush’s. The voters’ top three concerns about McCain: his age, his support for the war and his similarities to Bush.
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POPSDemocrat tied to Obama wins special election in Mississippi More: The special election was held to fill the seat of former Rep. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), who was appointed to serve out the remainder of Sen. Trent Lott’s term last December. Wicker had never faced a competitive race since first elected in 1994, and the district gave President Bush 62 percent of the vote in 2004. The results amount to a rebuke of the Republican strategy of trying nationalize the race by tying Childers to Sen. Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Obama held low approval ratings in the district, but the nearly $2 million that GOP groups poured into northern Mississippi failed to make the race a referendum on the national political landscape. A GOP House leadership aide told Politico last week that “if we don’t win in Mississippi, I think you are going to see a lot of people running around here looking for windows to jump out of.”
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POPSGOP Leaders Warn of Election Disaster More: And in a closed-door session at the Capitol, National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.) told members that the NRCC doesn’t have enough cash to “save them” in November if they don’t raise enough money or run strong campaigns themselves. Although a top House Republican brushed aside Gingrich’s broadside as “hype from a has-been who desperately wants to be a player but can’t anymore,” the harsh words from Cole were harder to ignore. National republican Campaign Committee run by an Oklahoman? No wonder they are getting they are getting their b***s kicked. I can think of only one or two states more out of touch with the rest of the country.
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POPSOklahoma Republican wants to replace U.S. made military rifle with German made gun. More: More than $300 million has been spent on 221,000 of the carbines over the past two years alone. And the Defense Department is asking Congress to provide another $230 million for 136,000 more. Lord, if republicans are going to deliver us BS wars couldn't they at least spend our taxpayer dollars on U.S. pork. Here's somemore brilliance from Oklahoma, Tom Coburn's senatorial twin Jim Inhofe, For example my area of expertise is the English language. -- Sen. James Mountain Inhofe (R - OK)
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POPSMcCain's Treasury Sec. pick tied to Subprime Meltdown More: For his work, Gramm and two other lobbyists collected $750,000 in fees from UBS’s American subsidiary. Wall Street firms are increasingly under scrutiny for contributing to the economic downturn by packaging and selling risky mortgage securities. When the home loans tied to the mortgages defaulted, investors and the banks lost billions, contributing to a widespread credit crunch. UBS has written down more then $18 billion in exposure to subprime loans and other risky securities and is considering cutting as many as 8,000 job Now, some housing experts and economists see Gramm’s thinking in the recent housing proposal from McCain, the Republican Party’s presumed presidential nominee. Gramm is often a surrogate for the Arizona senator, particularly in meetings focused on the economy. And McCain has hinted he’d consider the former Texas senator for Treasury secretary in a McCain administration.
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