TIME Watches So We Don’t Have to

Time’s Michael Scherer writes up the GOP debate, and it’s a hoot.   A sample:

 

–2 minutes. The debate hasn’t started yet, but the crowd is already restless. A mutiny is afoot. CNN may host this thing, but can CNN’s John King control it? “Let’s do the pledge,” shouts out someone in the audience, and then it happens, a spontaneous eruption of patriotism. The candidates hold their hearts onstage. This bodes well for America but poorly for the debate’s orchestrators. Note to cable producers: If you want to calm the GOP rabble in the future, plan for pre-broadcast patriotic odes.

And,

8 minutes. Pawlenty says President Obama is a “declinist,” which interestingly enough became a word in 1988, according to Merriam-Webster, right before a few years of U.S. decline. But Pawlenty is an optimist. “This idea that we can’t have 5% growth in America is hogwash. It’s a defeatist attitude,” he says. In other words, he calls out anyone who calls his hogwash “hogwash” for being full of “hogwash,” which is a strategy familiar to those who remember saying, “I know you are, but what am I?,” on the playground.

 

Sounds like Scherer nicely judged the participants’ tone and maturity levels.  But read it for yourself and laugh out loud (which is more than you did if you watched the actual debate).

 

 

h/t: Jonathan Chait, TNR

 

The Sarah Palin He Knows

Documentarian John Ziegler writes about his experiences with the Palin campaign here.  Incredibly, after listing all the horrible and embarrassing confusions that befell him during his time defending Palin, Ziegler comes to this conclusion:

 

After all, contrary to popular belief, she is incredibly smart. Maybe she’s just getting bad advice from within her increasingly tiny and dysfunctional circle. Or perhaps she thinks it’s all good for her brand—which it probably is.

John: that’s why it’s called judgment.  Hers is poor.  It’s that simple.

Brilliant Post of the Day

The Bitch shares with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg a love of the looniness created when nutty ideologues are allowed access to pen and ink.  To wit, a story in Sunday’s Washington Times by paranoid Israeli PR flack Eliani Benador (of the Shomron Council in the occupied West Bank) posits that Huma Abedin, Weiner’s Arab wife and cradle Clintonista, has been groomed by the Clinton-Soros Global Conspiracy to, in her words, “advance the cause of Islam in America, including a politically positioned marriage to Congressman Anthony Weiner.”  [Emphasis added.]

Because Anthony Weiner is such an influential Jew in America.  He’s so influential that, according to media outlets too numerous to link to, members of his own party can’t stand him, refuse to defend him, and even line up to call for his resignation.  Now that’s influence!

In fact, the more the Bitch thinks about it, the more she thinks Eliani Benador is really a nom de plume of Trey Parker, Matt Stone and Pam Brady, the people who brought us “Team America World Police.”  Because, really, doesn’t Ms. Benador’s rant sound like the ravings of the puppet Kim Jong Il?

 

UPDATE

Benjy Sarlin at TPMDC reports that the entire story has been taken down.  Read about it here.  Hee Hee!

Gingrich is Dead Man Walking

Newt’s top aides quit, including his Iowa staff.  How do you define “dead man walking”?

Dear Rep. Weiner,

Resign.

Kabuki America

Peeps, the Bitch was on the road over the holiday weekend, and you can read about it here, and check out our sister blog, A Bitchy Traveler, up top in the header for further Bitchy adventures.

Speaking of kabuki, let your attention wander over to this excellent piece by Dan Balz of the Washington Post, where he sums up the Palin Family Vacation so far, pointing out the challenges the matriarch faces, should she decide to do something of true substance and run.  At this point, let us banish the Palin sideshow to the wings (Lord, Lord, let it stay there) and get on with other important concerns.

The Prez and the GOP chatted this morning about the debt ceiling limit proposals, which the House GOP voted down yesterday.  This is more kabuki, allowing the GOP (and far too many Dems — shame on you, you spineless cretins) to say they voted against raising the debt limit, before they raised it…at some point before, on or immediately after August 2, the date the government runs out of money.  More kabuki, and on our tax dollars.  Look: we are going to have to raise the debt ceiling one way or another.  Call your Rep. and tell him/her to grow a pair and make the hard vote.  That’s what we pay them approximately $176,000 for.  Do you make that much?  Didn’t think so.  Nor does the B.  Yes, Dem members do need to worry, as Minority Leader Steny Hoyer said, “about 30-second political ads and attacks,” but what the heck happened to going out to the districts and educating people about why the debt ceiling needs to be raised, and what happens if it isn’t?

Thank God for Charlie Cook, truth-teller to the Suits of all political stripes:

But you don’t have to look far to sense that congressional Republicans have stepped in a deep pile of manure with their embrace of House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan’s proposal to convert Medicare into a voucher program. Yet they seem to want to avoid looking at their shoes.

***

But tossing the [Ryan] plan on the table with little groundwork, with the public not prepped for the fight, amounted to a political self-indulgence that the GOP could not afford, exposing GOP members to attack and handing Democrats an issue when they really didn’t have one before.

Charlie goes on to point out that, après NY-26, the Dem and the Green candidates together polled only 48%, with the GOP and Tea Party candidates taking 52%.  That may have reflected a refutation of Ryancare, but it ain’t no ringing endorsement of the Democrats, much as it pains the Bitch to admit it, and why it is always unwise to read too much into special elections.

Peeps, it’s the first day of Hurricane Season.  Enjoy.

Palin “Reintroduction” Tour

The Bitch is trying to get worked up over Sarah Palin’s new house, national tour and movie, but she just can’t.  It’s not that she thinks Palin won’t run.  It doesn’t matter how prepared — or unprepared — a Palin Presidential is — it’s still Palin, and she is a rotten candidate: wacky conservatism aside, she doesn’t bone up on issues, she isn’t disciplined, she wastes time obsessing over slights real or imagined.  You can put lipstick on the pig, and all that.

Chris Cillizza reports:

“There has been zero outreach, zero effort,” said one senior South Carolina strategist of Palin. “Even when she was here for the [Gov. Nikki] Haley endorsement and the book signing, she swooped in [and] swooped out.”

An Iowa operative closely monitoring the 2012 race in the state although unaligned with any candidate echoed that sentiment. “If [Palin] is doing any outreach at all, it would have to be totally under the radar and not with the traditional activist crowd.”

Cillizza also tells us she hasn’t been in New Hampshire since 2008.

The Bitch suspects Palin, if she’s running at all and not just drumming up publicity for her movie, may be counting on the strength of her reinvigorated grassroots, using the movie as her facilitator and the ‘Net as her organizer.  Kinda breakin’ the mold there, breakin’ new ground.  Kinda rogue-ey.  Kinda not. Iowa and New Hampshire voters, especially, view themselves as entitled to kick the candidates’ tires.  They can’t do that if the candidate doesn’t show up.

“They Are More Afraid of Their Base Than of Their Voters”

Bingo.

More Ezra:

The general electorate might not like Ryan’s budget, but Republican primary voters — or at least the organizations that are assumed to represent Republican primary voters — love it.

The Ultras control the GOP nominating base.  That’s it.  That’s all you need to know about the modern GOP.  Unlike the Democrats during their ’90s DLC-led makeover, the GOP isn’t going to start recruiting more moderate candidates who can win general elections.  They have decided to recruit the most conservative they can find, because ideological purity is a winner for them.  Ideological purity drives moderate Rs and conservative Indies away…and the GOP is betting it won’t drive them into the arms of the Ds, unloved as they are by many mod Rs/Cons Indies.  No, they’re betting their party disaffecteds will either hold their nose and pull the lever for the Ultra; or stay home.    That’s their winning strategy.

More, alarming, Ezra:

Grover Norquist is trying to train 150,000 activists to make the pitch for the plan. “The challenge will be to teach each of our activists to deliver the Ryan speech,” he said. American for Prosperity, the group most associated with the Tea Party successes in the 2010 cycle, whipped yesterday’s Senate vote.  [Emphasis added]

That’s 150,000 people talking up the budget at their neighborhood block parties, at their kids’ birthday parties, at their family reunions, at their church picnics, at the grocery store, to their fellow employees out back on a smoking break…

People, be very afraid.  But more importantly, be involved.  Contact Media Matters/PoliticalCorrection and tell them you want to help push back against the GOP disaster that is the Ryan Plan.  Phone number is: (202) 756-4100.  Do your bit to save your country!

Unbelievable II

Here is what House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (Heartless, Tactless & Stupid-VA) said about potential federal aid to stricken Joplin, MO:

“If there is support for a supplemental [spending bill; extra FEMA $$], it would be accompanied by support for having pay-fors to that supplemental,” Mr. Cantor, Virginia Republican, told reporters at the Capitol. The term “pay-fors” is used by lawmakers to signal cuts or tax increases used to pay for new spending.

In other words, no extra money for Joplin (estimated tornado damage upwards of $3 billion) without program cuts elsewhere in the federal budget.  ‘Cause the deficit is the Most Important Thing in The World, as the traumatized and grieving residents of Joplin ought to recognize.

Contrast this to what (then) House Majority Leader (and former “Dancing with the Stars” loser) Tom DeLay said in 2005, in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina:

It is right to borrow to pay for it,” he [DeLay] said, adding that cuts could “attack the very economy” that Republicans were trying to bolster. [Emphasis added.]

The Washington Times, one of the two conservative dailies in Washington, DC, from which these quotes were taken, notes approvingly that Eric Cantor “learned” from DeLay’s “lesson.”  Conservatives spanked DeLay for daring to admit the obvious, not to mention the humane, and the appropriate, role of government in a national crisis.

Just for grins, Ryan Witt at Examiner.com proposed five ways Cantor could pay for the Joplin aid (but of course, ideology prevents the good Majority Leader from even thinking such apostasy):

1. Nix oil company subsidies – $2.5 billion
2. Allow the Bush tax cuts on the wealthiest 2% of Americans to expire – $700 billion (over 10 years)
3. Accept the Defense Dept.-recommended spending cuts of $78 billion
4. Allow Americans to purchase the dreaded “public option” which would save $110 billion (over 10 years)
5. End ethanol subsidies – $5 billion, and could cost the GOP Iowa in the 2012 Presidential….

Note that defunding NPR and Planned Parenthood, repeat targets for social conservatives, are not on this list….

Dem takes NY-26

The AP calls NY-26 for Kathy Hochul 48% – 43% with 83% vote counted.

(H/T tmpdc.talkingpointsmemo.com)