Archive for April 2nd, 2009
April 2nd, 2009
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 Today’s federal indictments of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and five of his chums is certain to touch off a firestorm of speculation in the right-wing blogosphere that President Obama is somehow culpable in the case against Blago.
 After all, they’re both Illinois Democrats, aren’t they? To the conspiratorialists, that in itself is prima facie evidence of collusion in wrongdoing.
 For at least one example of what I’m talking about, check the comments at the bottom of THIS ARTICLE.
 And then there’s stuff like THIS and THIS and the comments at the end of THIS.
 We’re also bound to see Republicans and their friends in the media exploit the Blago case to make points against the Obama administration by labeling it a den of Chicago-style politics. We got a FORETASTE of that strategy last week.
 Oh, yeah, the Obama haters will have a field day using Blago as a bludgeon. But it’ll all come to naught, just as their other tricks have.
April 2nd, 2009
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 We’re all familiar with Franklin Roosevelt’s comforting reassurance in the early days of the Great Depression that “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”
 Seventy-six years later, another new Democratic administration faces another awesome task of cleaning up the economic mess left by its Republican predecessor.
 This time, however, the warnings against fear don’t always have the ring of FDR’s.
 Consider, for example, THIS COLUMN by U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan (above) of Wisconsin in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal. Trying his best to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, Ryan sang the praises of the Republicans’ alternative to the Obama administration’s proposed budget.
 Toward the end of the piece, Ryan said this on behalf of his GOP congressional colleagues: “We hope the administration and Democratic leaders in Congress do not distort and preach fear about our Republican plan.”
 Indeed, in this time of crisis, there’s no place for cheap political fear-mongering. No, siree.
 But wait. Ryan didn’t heed his own advice. Twelve paragraphs before admonishing Democrats not to “preach fear about our Republican plan,” he said the Obama plan “will ultimately debase our currency and reduce the living standards of the American people.”
 In other words, we have nothing to fear except what Paul Ryan says we should fear, and if anybody says anything different, they’re just preaching fear in defiance of what Paul Ryan warned us against. Or something like that.
April 2nd, 2009
 Here’s a video of the phony rhetoric, and just below it is a link to the truth of the matter:
 The truth is HERE.
UPDATE: Here’s MORE TRUTH on the matter.
April 2nd, 2009
 
 Why is it that George Will, an otherwise reasonably bright guy, is so obtuse when it comes to the issue of global warming?
 You would think that the countless smackdowns of his previous writings about climate change would deter Will from broaching that subject again. But no. He’s AT IT AGAIN.
 This time, Will is silly enough to make a big deal of the fact that “there has not been a warmer year on record than 1998.” His implication is that global warming clearly is on the wane. He seems not to know that climate changes don’t always follow perfectly straight lines.
 The ultimate irony here is that Will credits the World Meteorological Organization for his reference to 1998. That’s the same organization that has criticized his previous writings on this subject — the same organization that tells us that 11 of the past 13 years have been the warmest on record. (See HERE.)  So much for Will’s theory that global warming has been on the wane for the past decade.
 Steve Benen has MORE about Will’s nonsense regarding climate change.
April 2nd, 2009
 
 Conservatives like to pretend that President Obama is a political neophyte — an “empty suit,” as it were – a babe in the woods who doesn’t understand the ways of Washington.
 Well, the babe and his friends have just subjected the Republicans in Congress to painful political embarrassment. Read all about it HERE.
 POSTSCRIPT: Lest we forget that congressional Republicans are perfectly capable of embarrassing themselves without any goading from the Democrats, GOP stalwart Eric Cantor provided AMPLE EVIDENCE this morning.
 Cantor accused Democrats of “overreacting” to America’s economic crisis, as if we’re experiencing a mere bump or two in the road.
 And, of course, he praised his party’s de facto leader, Rush Limbaugh. That’s a requirement for all Republicans these days.
UPDATE: Cantor’s remarks have quickly become a Democratic attack ad:
April 2nd, 2009
David Broder, the aging Dean of American Political Journalists, ain’t what he used to be, but he can still muster a cogent insight or two, as we see HERE.
