Classiest Politicians in America - Installment No. 9 - Randy Hopper

Randy Hopper is running the following ad against Jessica King ahead of the August 9, 2011 recall election:



Politifacts rates Hopper's ad an unmitigated lie, a mendacious concoction, a "liar, liar, pants on fire" utter prevarication.   For his dishonest ad, Randy Hopper is this month's Exit 142A Classiest Politician in America. 

Since he has already spent good money for the ad, don't expect to see it taken down.  (Unless Hopper decides he doesn't need to be completely desperate.)

The Grapes of Wrath Revisited? Inhofe Says Don't Worry, Stay Cool!

 Senator James Inhofe, (R-Oklahoma)





Oklahoma is suffering through the worst drought since the dust-bowl era, with no relief in sight.  The state meteorologist has told NPR, no joke, that the only possible relief will be if a hurricane hits the Gulf Coast this hurricane season and sweeps torrential rain over Oklahoma. A little parochial in outlook, but who can blame them.  No one wants to have to pack up with Ma and Pa Joad and chase the top soil to California again.

There is a little irony in the predicament that our fellow citizens are suffering in Oklahoma.  Its senior U.S. senator, James Inhofe, is the Republican top-dog in terms of denying that there is a climate change crisis being experienced on what is currently our only feasible home.  Before the Democrats retook the Senate after the 2006 election, he was the chairman of the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works.  That committee was responsible for studying and considering legislation to address climate change issues.  Senator Inhofe is the chief climate change denier in the U.S. Senate. Only the Republican party would think to put someone like him in such a position.

Here is how a Roll Call magazine article on Inhofe describes him:

Even so, Inhofe has often found himself on the outside without many allies, and sometimes his position is of his own making. In 2003, for instance, Inhofe accused Sen. John McCain of trying to perpetrate "the biggest hoax" in the history of the Senate by insisting that global warming existed.

Inhofe, ranking member on the Environment and Public Works Committee, acknowledged that the two men have had intense disagreements over climate change and earmarks, a practice the Arizona Republican has long been opposed to. "I've disagreed with him on a lot of things in the Armed Services Committee," Inhofe said.

While most Members look to avoid intraparty confrontation, Inhofe appears to welcome it, taking pride in often being the most hated man in the room.

He boasted of his role at international climate change talks last year in Copenhagen, in which he was vilified by virtually the entire world. "It was really quite enjoyable," Inhofe said, recalling when he caused a commotion by announcing to attendees that the United States would never ratify a climate change deal.

"I always remember with all those people in the room, hundreds of them, and all the cameras. And they all had one thing in common: They all hated me. It's kind of like the thing I've just gone through" with earmarks, Inhofe said.

Here is another fun anecdote about the Senator.  I would guess that now that Jim Bunning is out of the Senate, Jim Inhofe is the dimmest bulb there.

 Too many Republicans have precious little patience for facts and science where they cut against ideology. While you ponder what kind of leader Senator Inhofe has been on the Senate committee that should be addressing climate issues, here is a map to study from the National Center for Environmental Prediction of the NWS showing heat indices across the nation today.  Anything yellow and up in warm colors is 100 degrees  farhenheit and above.  New York City had its hottest July 22 on record, beating the old record by three degrees.  Today's temperature in NYC was just two degrees shy of the hottest day in the city's history. Con Edison set a new record today for power consumption.  Stay cool, Mr. Inhofe! And don't buy any ocean front property along the Gulf!

Click to enlarge:

The Bailout: Chrysler buys out U.S. Taxpayers on their 6% stake.

Ford Model T Assembly Line - 1913
(Picture from Detroit Public Library)





One of the issues that Tea Partiers love to hammer away at is the bail-out of private business by the Government since 2008.  (When your only tool is a hammer, all policy issues begin to look like nails.)

Yesterday I posted about the status of the TARP recoveries from the U.S. Banks, and how the U.S. taxpayers had actually turned a profit on the bailout of banks. I mentioned that the total TARP bailout package authorized at $700 Billion dollars might lead to a total loss in the range of $15-20 Billion dollars, primarily from the bailout of GM, Chrysler and AIG Insurance.  At $25 Billion dollars in cost to the taxpayers, the cost of the "fix" to America's economy resulting from the bursting of the housing bubble will be substantially less than the cost to taxpayers of "fixing" the Savings and Loan crisis resulting, in part, from financial deregulation under President Reagan.  The final costs to the US taxpayers from the Savings and Loan Crisis was over $125 Billion.

Yesterday's Washington Post reports on the close-out of the rescue of Chrysler:

In all, the government has recovered $11.2 billion of the $12.5 billion it committed to the Chrysler rescue, the Treasury said, or about 90 percent of the money.  . . .

The company repaid the U.S. loans in May. In the sale on Thursday, Fiat, the Italian automaker, paid $500 million for the government’s six percent stake in the company. Details of the agreement had been released last month, but Thursday marked the government’s official exit.

No intelligent politician needs to run away from TARP. 

US Taxpayers in the black on Bank Bailout under TARP

Chrysler 200


While it is likely that the TARP bailout of GM, Chrysler and AIG will ultimately cost U.S. Taxpayers some  $15 - 20 Billion dollars, the Treasury Department announced a few days ago that the bank bailout portion of TARP has seen a net profit to taxpayers of about $10 Billion dollars to date, with more repayments still rolling in.

It is important to remember that the TARP program that likely prevented a  melt-down of the U.S. and global economies was the product of cooperation between President Bush and a Congress controlled by Democrats.  While a majority of Republican senators voted in favor of TARP, the Republicans in the House voted overwhelmingly against the plan.  The unpopular notion of the government stepping in and saving Wall Street and the auto industry was, along with the demonization of the new health care law, a large part of why we are now faced with the current showdown on raising the debt limit.  The votes on TARP were factors in the Tea Party's success in replacing many congressmen, and a few Senators, with anti-government candidates.  So, in a way, a highly successful and reasonably well-thought out rescue of the U.S. and world economies over 2008 and 2009, has put the nation in a place where Tea Party congressmen and Senators like Michele Bachmann, Paul Ryan Sean Duffy, Ron Johnson and Jim DeMint are now in a position to scuttle the recovery that the bi-partisan TARP bailout helped initiate.

I, for one, am glad we still have a home-grown auto industry and didn't shed 500,000 or more jobs at GM, Chrysler and their suppliers around the country.  Plus, without TARP, we wouldn't have had that cool Eminem ad for Chrysler during the Super Bowl.



And here is "Lose Yourself," Eminem's Oscar and Grammy winning rap song from the 8 Mile soundtrack that  provided the theme for the Chrysler ad:

Sign that the Apocalypse is upon Us: Installment 3

CNN's web page has a feature that reports on the most viewed news story on its website at any given time.

Second highest ranking story this morning:  Debt Talks at Impasse After Heated Exchanges

Top ranked news story:  Woman charged with Torture in Penis Attack.

Couple this with new polls showing the majority of the American public oppose raising the debt limit.  Talk about cutting important things off!

Merriam Webster: Grit

Here's the picture you'll find at "grit" in Merriam Webster:




















Next opportunity to see them is this Wednesday, 10:30 AM CDT, ESPN, World Cup Semi-final game against France.

Robo Scott? Pales by Comparison to Robo George and Robo Ed.

No one will ever accuse Scott Walker of an inability to stay on message.  He is a model product of the evolution of America's binary political system.  If you have listened carefully to a few major speeches or national television interviews of the governor, you quickly find yourself in "move along folks, nothing to see here" territory.

But Walker's performances in staying on message pale by comparison with those of British politicians.  After seeing these two recent examples, I have quit thinking of the governor as a Stepford politician.

Here is George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer, back in October talking about the impact of the spending cuts initiated by David Cameron's Conservative government on the recovery of the British economy:



And here, in an effort to be bi-partisan, is the new leader of the British Labour party, Edward Miliband, being interviewed on current pension strikes by public workers in Britain:



I wonder if Rod Serling ever did an episode about aliens sending robots down to earth to take over political movements?

The Grand Finale

At the Shorewood Hills, Wisconsin fireworks each July 4th, the end of the display is signalled by the grand finale. Where the preceding 30 or 40 minutes have seen six or seven rockets sent up each minute, the finale entails shooting off several dozen rockets in a short two minutes of hyper-explosive excitement that turns night into a kind of transitory "day" reminiscent of small town baseball diamonds lighted in the middle of a night game by four creosoted poles with a few lights each.

Here is another take on the grand finale, the destruction of illegal fireworks by the NYPD a few days before this Fourth of July:

What if Scott Walker Took the Veto Pen to the Declaration of Independence?

    
                                                               Declaration of Independence






          Prior to 1990, the governor of Wisconsin wielded one of the mightiest line-item veto pens in the 50 states, being able to strike out individual letters, digits and punctuation marks so as to completely rewrite bills submitted to him by the legislature.  The governor's "Vanna White" veto was outlawed by a constitutional referendum that year.  The so-called "Frankenstein veto" that governors Thompson and Doyle put to extreme use, which permitted combining sentences by striking words at the end and beginning of existing sentences, was overturned by a citizens' referendum in 2008.

          It is traditional for many newspapers, including the New York Times, to print the Declaration of Independence on a full page of the paper on July 4th.  Reading the Declaration of Independence in the Times this morning made me wonder how Governor Walker might like to modify it if he were to take the Vanna White and Frankenstein Veto pen to it.

          Here is one educated guess as to how it might end up:


          When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights , that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit  of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
 
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
 
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
 
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
 
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
 
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
 
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
 
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
 
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
 
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
 
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
 
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
 
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
 
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
 
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
 
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
 
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
 
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
 
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
 
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
 
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
 
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
 
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
 
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
 
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
 
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
 
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.