Monday, May 04, 2009

National Council for a New America Wants You, Roy Blunt, Louis Gomert, American Energy Alliance, Robert J. Samuelson and the Texas State Board of Ed.


Meet the new Republican party, the new Republican party that now empathizes with those it used to scorn.
The new Republican party is looking forward to taking on new tough challanges. They want to be loved by the GLBT community, they want to be loved by the working class, they want to be loved by someone other than the angry, closed-minded, white folks that have filled their dance cards for the last 100 years.
They are rebranding their image. No longer wanting to be known as the "Party of No", they are now officially the "National Council for a New America" or unofficially "We'll change, we'll do anything if you'll just take us back, just give us one more chance. Please!" council.
Yeah, the GOP knows that it's about as popular as dog vomit right now and they are desperately wanting to convince the American people that their policies really wasn't the reasons that led this nation to near ruin over the 30 years. They want to do this and keep their extreme base happy at the same time. The same extreme base that actually liked those policies and want more of the same.
Prepare to be bamboozled.
Some Republican leaders today launched what they are calling a "conversation with America."
It was the first of several events planned as part of a new movement they're calling The National Council for a New America. The event drew some of the biggest names in the GOP, including former presidential candidate Mitt Romney and former Florida governor Jeb Bush.
Their effort is drawing a lot of attention, the venue was packed.
Audience members packed into a small pizza joint in Arlington to listen and to be heard.
Even with the success of drawing enough semi-openminded supporters and sycophants
...which included reporters, Republican aides and their friends,...
to fill a small pizza place they still have a tiny problem.
But it's a complex task -- going back to roots of fiscal conservatism, without marginalzing a social conservative base -- all the while reaching out to moderates and independents who have left the party in droves.
And just how is all this love working out with that base?
...a group of conservative activists who were protesting in the parking lot complained that they were not allowed through the doors.
“We’re demonstrating against the fact that this organization set up by RINOs [Republicans in Name Only] have taken immigration off the agenda,” said Michael McLaughlin, a member of the American Council for Immigration Reform, a group seeking to stem the flow of immigrants into the country.
The activists grumbled that Republican organizers did not widely advertise the event. Several wearing shirts declaring themselves “Republicans Against Maverick McCain” craned their necks for a glimpse of the senior lawmaker, who did not show up.
Hey, the GOP crawled through the crap on their bellies to court the extremists, they got 'em and now they can't function without them. Cosmic justice? Yeah, if cosmic justice has a sense of humor. I know I'm getting one hell of a kick out of this.
Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO) has kind of an unique take on the situation. It sort of defies logic, but then logic is not really necessary when you have faith in the infallibility of your party's ideology.
“Just because we’re in a situation now where we vote no doesn’t mean we are the ‘party of no’ or have no ideas,” said former House Republican Whip Roy Blunt , who is running for Senate in Missouri and signed the letter. “This adds another way of getting those ideas out there.”
That's right folks, if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it ain't no duck. It's actually a clever plan to make sure that the Republican's fresh new ideas, which they're not talking about because they're the same ideas that got us into this mess in the first place, get out to the American people.
They make this so easy.
Outside of the National Council for a New America, it looks pretty much like the SOS.
MIT economist John Reilly has come out and criticized Republicans for distorting his research on clean energy policy. GOP officials have been repeatedly misusing his work to claim that a cap-and-trade system would cost American families $3,100 in extra energy taxes each year. (In fact, the study actually says that any tax burden would be about one-fortieth of what Republicans claim.) Instead of responding to Reilly with facts, Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-TX) is now bashing the economist with ad hominem attacks in CNS News:
You're gonna love this.
Anyone who thinks you can pay $3,100 to the federal government and thinks you can get that money back completely in services — like I said — he may go to M-I-T but he is an N-U-T.
This has been the Right's strategy for the last 30 years. If you repeat something enough it becomes common knowledge thereby the truth. And it has worked great. It doesn't say much for the intellect of the American people though.
In the American people's defense, the Right has some pretty sophisticated help in perpetuating these myths. Take for instance,
The largest U.S. energy companies increased lobbyist spending by 30% in 2008 to influence energy and climate change legislation. Some of those funds are now going towards the creation of the American Energy Alliance, a new off-shoot of Institute for Energy Research.

The American Energy Alliance is headed by an oil industry lobbyist named Thomas J. Pyle. Before joining AEA, Pyle was a policy adviser to former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX). Pyle’s former employer was among the top recipients of oil industry campaign contributions from 1998 to 2004, raking in $498,375 according to the Center for Public Integrity. Pyle then went to work for the oil-giant, Koch Industries.
The American Energy Alliance is airing radio ads in the home districts of moderate Democrats in order to press legislators to vote against the Waxman-Markey clean energy bill.
The ad repeats the debunked $3,100 lie that energy companies and their conservative allies have been pushing for weeks.
And Robert J. Samuelson of The Washington Post is doing his part to help the cause too. According to him, Obama hates the Oil companies to the detriment of all Americans.
Considering the brutal recession, you'd expect the Obama administration to be obsessed with creating jobs. And so it is, say the president and his supporters. The trouble is that there's one glaring exception to their claims: the oil and natural gas industries. The administration is biased against them -- a bias that makes no sense on either economic or energy grounds. Almost everyone loves to hate the world's Exxons, but promoting domestic drilling is simply common sense.
Improved production techniques (example: drilling in deeper waters) have increased America's recoverable oil and natural gas. The resistance to tapping these resources is mostly political. To many environmentalists, expanding fossil fuel production is a cardinal sin. The Obama administration often echoes this reflexive hostility. The resulting policies aim more to satisfy popular prejudice -- through photo ops and sound bites -- than national needs.
I think Samuelson is just a shill for Big Oil.
Here's what other folks had to say about him.
Before we get all warm and fuzzy about real journalists at The Washington Post like Dana Milbank�or whores like Jonathan Weisman who sometimes act like real journalists�it�s important to remember that paper is still firmly captured, ensnared by corporate greed and a nauseating self-righteousness.

Robert J. Samuelson fits that profile perfectly today in his incredibly dishonest and condescending piece The Phony Job Debate. �Electing a president based on job creation makes as much sense as selecting a doctor based on palm reading.�
His Establishment bias goes way beyond health. No agonizing for Samuelson on the growing income gap between the very rich and everybody else – shades of the 1920s! Nor on the export of American jobs or low investment in public goods (like crumbling bridges). He has inveighed against swollen Wall Street salaries, but on the deregulation now jeopardizing us, he’s been confused, as if the problem was bad people on Wall Street rather than the system. Thus, in April, as the subprime scandal unfolded, Samuelson wrote that greed, shortsightedness and herd behavior compromise modern finance. “But regulation cannot cure this dilemma, because regulators can’t anticipate all the problems and hazards, either.”

That’s wrong, mostly. Regulation did deter but corporate America had it removed.
If you have two functioning brain cells to rub together, you know that regulation worked. We can thank Bill Clinton and some of the other Democrats for caving on that one.
But the more the Right feigns change, the more things stay the same.
"In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made school boards."

Mark Twain wrote that in 1897, and Americans still quote it, with feeling. It comes to mind for many observers of a current battle over science education in Texas.

Texas's school board, the State Board of Education (BOE), has been fighting about standards for science textbooks the state buys. Since March, clamorous attention has focused on a proposal to require that texts discuss the "strengths and weaknesses" of evolutionary theory. Everyone knew this was a ploy to get creationist ideas into the classroom. The scientific community was relieved when the BOE finally voted not to include that language – and dismayed when it then voted for amendments that mandate the same thing. The BOE's exuberant chair says he's not afraid to "stand up to the experts."
What's expert opinion worth when compared to a right winger's intuition?
I'll leave you with what passes for humor in Right Wing Fantasy Land. Yeah, another e-mail.
OBAMA TO TAX ASPIRIN.....
I JUST HEARD THAT YOUR PRESIDENT OBAMA IS GOING TO IMPOSE A 40% TAX ON ASPIRIN BECAUSE IT'S WHITE AND IT WORKS.
Sick puppies.
Later.

11 comments:

  1. I know this is off topic, but thought you might like this, especially knowing a bit how I feel about w.
    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30566558/

    Take care!

    ReplyDelete
  2. When dealing with the kind of people who think that racist jokes are funny ... yeah, sometimes you just gotta shake your head and walk away. I just do not want to live in the kind of country they want to create.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Whoa, I'm down with constructive criticism, but I think you bought into the game of pvp (party vs. party). Sure, the so called Republican Party is a mess and has had some stupid ideas. On the other hand, if you can't see the flaws in your own party, you got the wool over your eyes. Maybe I'm a bit cynical when I say politics, in general, is just SSDP.

    And at the end of the day, putting aside the weasel politicians, everyone (in every party) is just doing what they think is best for the country.

    In other words, don't be an asshole.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hey Red,
    Am so happy to meet you and your blog. I am particularly pleased that you consider yourself a "Redneck" , because of the exploitation the residents of the Mid West and South gave experienced under the GOP friendship alliance.

    Permit me to invite you to review my blog: http://oheagleeye.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hey just a comment to HORATIO...

    You have a bleeding heart , you want a friend in the "other" Party to say to you. We are bad too so don't feel so bad, that the GOP drove this Super Power country, financially and socially into the ground.

    All the sins created against Americans by the Republican Party have to be owned by somebody.

    Why won't you , Dick Cheney and the other greedy pack of Republicans just say sorry, repent and let
    honest Americans who wish to serve America with honor and honesty.

    Lets kill the Party if its too corrupted and decadent to represent Red Blooded Americans. What do you think of that HORATIO ??

    ReplyDelete
  6. All politics is cyclical. The GOP has been down and out before, such as in 1964 and in 1976, but in both cases they were back in the White House four years later.

    Look for that course to repeat itself again, whether in four, eight, or sixteen years.

    As far as gay rights go, the GOP will be wise to continue to oppose gay marriage. Gay marriage has never been legalized by a vote of the people. It has gone down in every state where they tried it. It's only out of touch state legislatures and courts that have legalized it.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Amlicar, what the Republican leadership does is up to them. It's not my party, so I have no say or vote. But I think it's the height of hypocrisy to criticize Repubs without recognizing the faults in one's own political affiliations. That's just applying the standard definition of said term. And I think when we realize the faults in American politics in general maybe there can be less hate and vitriol and more constructive criticism.

    Personally, I think both sides are out of touch with reality and the real path to a viable America lies somewhere down the middle.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Politics as usual pal. Every side has its strengths and weaknesses which, depending on the times, are right or wrong for the country. I am a moderate and vote for who I believe is the best person for the job regardless of party.
    Love the pig though.

    ReplyDelete
  9. In spite of all the sarcasm and "cutesie" remarks fron the socialists, the fact of the results of the November 2nd election are just that: Facts.

    The American public does NOT embrace socialism.

    And I thank God for that.

    If ya'll love socialiasm so much, move to Europe. Oh, but wait....they have realized the error of their ways and are turning against it.

    ReplyDelete
  10. And this also needs to be said: It was not only idiots, as you, Lowdown, describe your neighbors here in Oklahoma, it was an earthquake across the entire country.

    We Americans do NOT want socialism. We appreciate our freedom from the social engineering you and your sort seek to impose on us.

    Might I remind you of these simple words: "Inalienable rights given by our Creator."

    ReplyDelete

I did not mean that Conservatives are generally stupid; I meant, that stupid persons are generally Conservative. I believe that to be so obvious and undeniable a fact that I hardly think any hon. Gentleman will question it.

John Stuart Mill (May 20 1806 – May 8 1873)