Steve King is a stupid man

By Dan Brooks in Just Sayin' Stuff 5 Comments

Hi, I'm Steve King, and I'm an American just like you. My bathtub is ringed with toasters, and I once spent 13 hours lost in a revolving door. Who else wants pancakes?

Those of us from Iowa used to lament that our Republican senator, Charles Grassley, had become the face of opposition to health care reform. Why did the most recognizable Iowan in national politics have to be a wizened elf who accused every bill of providing free abortions to immigrants and kept assuring us that the Death Panels were in there somewhere? I, for one, wished that someone else—anyone else—could serve as Iowa’s delegate to the national imagination. That, boys and girls, is why you must never wish. Representative Steve King (R–IA) has fulfilled our longings in the most ironically disappointing way possible. Sure, Chuck Grassley is an asshole, a stubborn hick whose Twitter feed read “Barb made oatmeal,” on the day his committee abandoned the attempt to reach bipartisan consensus on health care reform. But yesterday Steve King called for the overthrow of the United States government. Apparently Congressman King has forgotten where he works, along with a bunch of other important information that might otherwise have allowed him to make a useful contribution to the operation of America. In speaking to the Huffington Post, he called for a peaceful takeover of Congress similar to Prague’s Velvet Revolution, and likened the state of our country to that of Czechoslovakia under Soviet communism. “It is very, very close,” he said. “It is the nationalization of our liberty and the federal government taking our liberty over.” Which raises a lot questions, not the least of which is whether Representative King knows what that word means.

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Dems lose Massachusetts Senate seat; health care ruined; sun rises in west; dogs talk backwards and demand driving privileges; mass hysteria

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized 5 Comments


The Kennedy Curse has struck again: a mere forty years into his Senate term, Massachusetts Democrat Ted Kennedy was felled by cancer in August, leaving his seat open to a special election that took place yesterday. In a turn of events that shocked any political strategist who stopped looking at opinion polls two weeks ago, Republican Scott Brown won a decisive victory over Democrat Martha Coakley. Now Washington is scrambling. The vote in Massachusetts has widely been interpreted as a referendum on the Democratic Party, health care reform, President Obama, and the existence of American liberalism in general. It’s a little early to say, but most analysts agree that the whole thing is basically over. “It is a mighty blow for a president,” says CNN political editor Mark Preston, “who just one year ago seemed unbreakable, unstoppable, unbeatable.” By one year ago, Mark Preston, do you mean the day he took office? Yeah, I guess he did look pretty good then. Those days are done, though. That day, I guess.

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A little historical perspective and a resolution for 2010

By Dan Brooks in conservatism, health care, Reactionary Populism, representative democracy 2 Comments

Problem: You wonder what it would be like to touch a black person, but your maid is too skittish. Solution: Internship at the RNC!

The photo at right comes from a whole set of shots of RNC chairman Michael Steele fallin’ out with his interns, at least one of whom appears to be developmentally disabled. Props to everyone’s favorite Meghan Gallagher for the link. 2009 draws rapidly to a close, which means that Combat! blog’s New Year’s resolutions—stop drinking well whiskey, provide a more balanced assessment of both ends of the American political spectrum, and reduce violations of resolution #1 to three per week—will soon be in force. Until then, though, screw those Chicken Little sons of rich bitches. There are two legitimate political parties in the United States right now. One of them is powerful, disorganized, corrupt and cowardly. The other is the GOP, which lacks political power but makes up for it by being well-coordinated and brave. Maybe “brave” isn’t the right word so much as “audacious.” Whether they’re organizing protests against quote-unquote tyrannical taxation three months into the new presidency or blaming the current crisis in health care on people who exercise too much, Republicans proved in 2009 that they know how to play from behind. In the process, they also made this one of the most hysterical, counterproductive years of American political discourse in recent memory. Oops. Then again, a lot of things have slipped from recent memory. As Timothy Egan points out, the GOP’s frothing over health care reform in 2009 is not unlike it’s general flip-out over Bill Clinton’s tax reform in 1993. Check it!

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Lieberman has killed the public option, and Harry Reid should give him what he wants

By Dan Brooks in corporatocracy, health care, representative democracy 8 Comments
Joe Lieberman has proven once again that a man who refuses to sacrifice his principles can achieve anything: invasion of a foreign country on false pretenses, denial of health care to the poor—you name it.

Joe Lieberman proves once again that a man who refuses to sacrifice his principles can achieve anything: invasion of a foreign country on false pretenses, denial of health care to the poor—you name it.

Good news for people who live in Connecticut, already have health insurance and work for Aetna, Cigna or Oxford Health Plans! According to the New York Times, Joe Lierberman (D–CT, net worth $2 million) seems finally to have succeeded in torpedoing the public option. The former Democrat announced Sunday that he would filibuster any Senate bill that included the Medicare buy-in compromise Harry Reid struck with ten liberal and centrist Democrats last week. That’s a slight difference from the position he articulated last Tuesday, when he said he was against the public option but for the expansion of Medicare, and an utter goddamn sea change from the position he articulated in 2000, when he ran for Vice President promising the exact same Medicare expansion he now threatens to filibuster the Senate to stop. How soon we forget, Joe Lieberman. Either that, or how willing we are to do whatever we think might get us elected to public office. “My wife said to me, ‘Why do you always end up being the point person here?’” Lieberman told reporters on Monday. She was probably eating caviar out of an ostrich egg at the time, and considered it rude to add, “Is it because you’re an unprincipled dwarf?” with her mouth full.

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Oh, Yeah Department: Bush tax cuts cost more than twice as much as health care reform

By Dan Brooks in conservatism, conservative liars, glenn beck, health care, Reactionary Populism, representative democracy 7 Comments
The US national debt by year and President, courtesy of crooksandliars.com

The US national debt by year and President, courtesy of crooksandliars.com

The graph at right shows us the US national debt in billions of dollars by year and President, conveniently colored in accordance with political affiliation. Props to Smick, who sent me this wonderful gift and the crooksandliars.com article that accompanies it over the weekend. First of all, don’t let this graph get into a time machine somehow, because it will make George Washington’s head explode. Second of all, the Bush tax cuts are estimated to have added $2.5 trillion to the debt from over the 2001-2010 period. As Susie “The Anagram” Madrak over at C&L points out, that just happens to be two and a half times the cost of the House’s health care bill. Smell that? That’s some sweet, delicious hypocrisy, right there, and arrayed in their Kiss the Cook aprons are several Republican members of Congress, including John Boehner (R–OH, net worth $1.7–$6 million.) He’s just one of the many valiant defenders of fiscal responsibility who oppose health care reform because it will add to our $12 trillion national debt, but voted overwhelmingly to pass the Bush tax cuts.

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