Republicans continue to fall all over themselves defending BP. All are likely up to their eyeballs in donations from the oil and gas industry.
God forbid should BP be expected to pay every claim proposed by those whose loved ones have been killed and those whose businesses and careers have been destroyed by BP's reckless, irresponsible and apparently unstoppable oil volcano and gas leak in the Gulf of Mexico.
Meanwhile here in Texas our Attorney General is doing the same thing. According to a press release issued by Democratic candidate Barbara Radnofsky today Abbott seriously underestimated the devastating long term impact of the Gulf oil leak.
The BOR community will recall that I was fortunate to spend this spring semester in Washington DC serving as a Bill Archer Fellow representing the University of Texas at Arlington. As part of my service in this University of Texas Fellowship I served as an intern at probably the most influential financial industry trade association and lobby firms in our nation's capitol. As part of my duties I became a subject matter expert on Regulatory Reform legislation currently coming to a crescendo in the Senate. I wanted to take this opportunity to talk about, and educate, the BOR community on what this legislation means for the U.S. regulatory and financial system (in two parts), the strategy of Democrats and Republicans on this legislation, and the politics behind the debate, it's likelihood to pass, and its eventual implementation and general impact on the upcoming mid-term elections. In short, you will read a four part series beginning with part one today entitled, "Regulatory Reform Legislation and the Concept of Too Big to Fail."
Cornyn and McConnell's trip was easy to criticize. In reality, it appeared to be much more a fundraising expedition than a policy discussion.
Over the weekend, President Obama weighed in on the two senators' pow-wow with Wall Street.
"The Senate Republican Leader, he paid a visit to Wall Street a week or two ago. He took the chairman of their campaign committee. He met with some of the movers and shakers up there. I don't know exactly what was discussed. All I can tell you is when he came back, he promptly announced he would opposed the financial regulatory reform."
"The president, frankly, was demeaning himself and his office by making political attacks against Sen. McConnell and me when what we were trying to do was learn more about a complex topic from people who actually know something about it."
Cornyn has consistently put his job as NRSC chair above his duties as a senator. His trip with McConnell to Wall Street is not anything new; it is just another instance in which Cornyn has put partisan politics above actually getting something done.
Obama is right to criticize him. For John Cornyn, one of Washington's most hyper-partisan Republican, to criticize anyone about politicizing anything is a great hypocrisy. That's exactly how he has risen within the Senate Republican leadership.
Cornyn, McConnell and the Republican Party continues to serve Wall St. breakfast in bed.
Anyone who does not get the fact that the Republican Party works 24/7/365 on behalf of fat cat especially the greed infested oinkers on Wall St., is delusional or lives in some kind of alternative universe.
Where delusion and alternative realities are concerned Teabaggers come to mind. Now that we know the teabagger movement is fueled by a bunch of rich older white guys like Dick Armey and Turd Blossom Rove well, hell. What else is new about teabaggers and right wing Republicans? So much for ginned up fake grassroots movements.
About 25 Wall Street executives, many of them hedge fund managers, sat down for a private meeting Thursday afternoon with two of the most powerful Republican lawmakers in Congress: Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, and John Cornyn, the senior senator from Texas who runs the National Republican Senatorial Committee, one of the primary fundraising arms of the Republican Party.
It was so very naive and silly of me to suggest that the GOP should step up and take responsibility, as any adult would do, by calling a halt to the brown shirt shout downs at town hall meetings on healthcare reform.
Silly, silly me. That won't happen. Never. Ever. Even if hell freezes over and the entire country is in the throes of death, the answer remains to be no, never, in your dreams, not even if hell freezes over.
Despite GOP cries for freedom, its flag waving, its prominence of lapel wearing flag pins, its highly orchestrated scenarios of patriotism and noble words about freedom, the GOP's behavior has nothing to do with any of the principles mentioned above.
Actions speak louder than words. Shouting down and shutting out the questions and opinions that fellow Americans want to ask and share with their elected representative is:
anti-democratic,
anti-patriotic and
anti-American.
When political rhetoric goes over the top, inaction by a party's leadership is the same as blind acquiescence.
According to former right wing Republican and evangelical Christian leader, Frank Schaeffer, the GOP, its conservative pundits and the self-serving corporate sharks in the healthcare industry know no bounds in pulling off what is best for them.
For right wing Republicans, conservative pundits, the corporate sharks and their now enabled fruit loop nut jobs, it is a fight to the death.
MSNBC's Keith Olbermann smacks down the obstructionist Republicans and Blue Dogs who are getting major contributions from the health care industry.
PBS pointed out that the health and insurance industries are spending more than a million, 400 thousand dollars a day, just to destroy the "public option" - the truly non-profit, wieldy, round-up and not round-down, government, from helping you pay your medical bills with about a billionth of the recklessness with which it is still paying Halliburton and its spinoffs to kill your kids.
And much of this money is going to, and through, Republicans.
But that's the real point tonight.
Not all of it is going through Republicans...
According to an article written in the Houston Chronicle this morning, John Cornyn, John McCain and Mitch McConnell met with a group of doctors at the Texas Medical Center in Houston. John Cornyn is apparently on a mission to destroy health care reform by misleading and scaring doctors and patients, alike.
According to Cornyn, the evil doer is a non-existent single payer option.
"This is where the government option is a competitor but the government's not exactly a fair competitor," said Cornyn, of Texas, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, which is considering health care reform proposals. "It's an 800-pound gorilla that has the capacity to undermine other competitors. We want to make sure we don't do anything to crush the kind of innovation that has led to cures and happier and healthier lives in Texas and around the world."
Dude, the only thing destroying innovation and cures are the crippling costs imposed by for-profit driven health care insurance companies.
The federal government agencies (i.e. the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Health etc.) and private foundations provide grants that fuel much of the innovation and cures. Is John Cornyn suggesting the public option will automatically become single-payer and federal grants will no longer be awarded to research faculty and doctors? The public option means no more federal funding for research?
If he is suggesting this he is both a fool and a liar.
According to the some of the renowned Viet Nam War draft evaders and right wing war hawks
Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, George W. Bush, Karl Rove, Pat Buchanan, Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity, Bill Kristol, Bill Blunt, Tom Delay, Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, Phil Gramm, John Cornyn, Trent Lott, Mitch McConnell, Paul Wolfowitz, Bill O'Reilly, Michael Savage
Nancy Pelosi personally ordered the CIA to find a link between Iraq and Al-Qaida. The GOP sissy boys also insist that when no links between the two evil doers could be found, Nancy the D Girl unilaterally ordered heinous torture to bring about the results the sissy boy cowards needed to gin up their war on Iraq.
Hats off to Ed Shultz of MSNBC for calling the Sissy Boys out on their psycho babble.
Before you or someone you know gives their hard earned dollars to former Senator Coleman, you need to know why his "campaign" needs the money. It's not about partisan control like Senator Richard Burr or others would like you to believe.
Former Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) - who continues to contest election results that appear to have Democrat Al Franken winning the Senate seat by a whisker - is asking the Federal Election Commission for permission to use campaign funds for legal fees related to allegations that a supporter funneled payoffs through Coleman's wife.
Coleman's year-end campaign filings showed he had already spent close to $300,000 in legal fees, and his legal team has since expanded to include several of the Gopher State's best-known criminal defense attorneys.
Just prior to last year's election, Paul McKim alleged that longtime Coleman friend and supporter Nasser Kazeminy funneled a $75,000 payment to Coleman through Deep Marine Technology, a company primarily owned by Kazeminy. McKim is the former CEO of the company.
McKim alleged that at Kazeminy's direction, the company made payments to an insurance broker in Minneapolis that employed Coleman's wife, Laurie, despite the fact that the insurance company never provided any services to Deep Marine. McKim alleged that the only purpose of the payment was to provide cash assistance to the Colemans.
A second suit among shareholders in Delaware contains essentially the same allegations.
The Roll Call article highlight's the continued ridiculousness of the Republican brand. This isn't a total surprise. It's not completely uncommon for a formerly elected Senator facing legal question to ask others to help pay for his court fight. What is truly odd about this situation is 11 Republican leaders are joining Coleman's campaign to encourage American's to donate to Coleman's failed U.S. Senate campaign in order to assist a legal fight.
The list of advocates includes Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, House Republican John Boehner, RNC Chairman Michael Steele, and our very own Junior Senator John Cornyn as head of the NRSC.
As the Washington Independent points out, "if your donating to Norm Coleman, you might see your dollars sucked into a defense fund for a lawsuit that has a bit less to do with control of the Senate than the former senator's challenges of the results of the 2008 election."
Best case scenario, these 11 Republicans are being hypocrites by asking every vote to be counted in Minnesota while we inch closer to voter suppression legislation in Texas. Worst case scenario, they are misrepresenting the fact and helping raise money for Coleman to pay legal bills unrelated to the November election.
