Anthony Weiner lets loose on a bunch of cowardly republicans, as if there are any other type:

Verbal Paintball

From Huffington Post, regarding Obama’s mortgage modification plan:

In testimony to be delivered Tuesday afternoon, David Lowman, chief executive officer for home lending at the “Too Big To Fail” behemoth, will fight back against the program which calls for lenders and investors to decrease the outstanding debt owed on a home mortgage.

“Like all loans, mortgage contracts are based on a promise to repay money borrowed,” Lowman’s prepared remarks read. “Importantly, there is no provision in the mortgage contract, express or implied, that the lender will restore equity or reduce the repayment amount if the value of the collateral — be it a home, a car or a stock market investment — depreciates.

“If we re-write the mortgage contract retroactively to restore equity to any mortgage borrower because the value of his or her home declined, what responsible lender will take the equity risk of financing mortgages in the future? What responsible regulator would want lenders to take such risk?”

While I’m all about making sure every American has access to affordable healthcare, this is an issue that divides me.

Do we need to help those who’s mortgages are beyond their means due to loss of a job? Sure. But the issue is more then that and delves into the last 30 years of those in the middle class trying to emulate those in the upper class through credit and a sense of entitlement.

I grew up middle class. Folks bought their house from savings, a little luck in the stock market and taking over an existing mortgage. It was a nice house in a nice neighborhood.

My dad worked like a maniac to keep a roof over our heads, even in tough times. What my parents never did was live beyond their means.

When I watch shows like “House Hunters” where couples have NOTHING to put down on a house - and are buying these huge 3,800 square foot monsters with the hope that they will get enough of a raise in the future to continue to afford it, I shake my head. When anyone with questionable credit gets a mortgage with a 15% interest rate that, after five years, increases, I see someone who is not thinking straight.

We live in an optimistic society. People want to believe that their next step will always be a better one, a more lucrative one. This is not always the case.

I bought a house in 2003 with the mindset that if my wife and I both lose our jobs and had to work at MacDonalds, we would still be able to scrape together enough to live there. I could have bought a more expensive house. I was approved for more money. I just remember my parents having those tough months where my dad (a freelancer) wasn’t making as much as the previous and there was worry there. I decided I didn’t want that kind of stress in my life when it came to my home.

And my house if fine for us. Modest. Four bedrooms. A nice yard. Still, as I knew would happen, my taxes increased - from $3,800 to $7,400. And I can still afford it. I factored that in.

So, do I agree with JP Morgan Chase on this issue? I do and I don’t. The last thing we want in this country is another string of foreclosures, so we have to do something. But when I see someone with a mcmansion in a similar neighborhood to mine, someone who 30 years ago wouldn’t even be close to being approved for a mortgage to buy such a house, someone who accepted the floating rate mortgage because, hey, that’s five years away - this steams me. Unlike that person, I actually weighted the negatives - the possibility of losing a job, getting older and not getting paid as much, the continuous rise of my taxes. I was responsible. They were not. Yet, they may get a huge amount of help to stay in their home while I continue to pay more with no help.

This is not a case of jealousy or fairness. My life is far too busy to spend any time but this post to ponder the inequities of the world. It’s about responsibility. A friend of mine once said, “I’ve got no issue with buying a house too expensive for me because it will force me to work harder to keep it.” Very optimistic. Then we hit the end result of the Bush years which, despite the willful blindness of some, was actually pretty predictable.

Current News housing bust, lenders, mortgage rates

From Salon:

When does scoring by the Congressional Budget Office count, and when should we just ignore those annoying numbers? If you’re John Boehner, the answer is simple: CBO data only matters when it agrees with Republican dogma, and otherwise its nonpartisan analysis cannot possibly be correct.

While there are partisans on both sides who tend to admire or despise the CBO based on its positions of the moment (and feel differently about legislative rules depending on whether they’re in the majority), the House minority leader has compiled a particularly blatant record of flip-flopping lately.

John Boehner is such a lying, scumbag asshole I don’t even know where to start. First of all, his own aid leaked a bullshit “memo” trying to claim the dems have talking points to lie about the healthcare debate:

From HP:

Democrats are charging that the GOP made up a fake messaging memo that purports to be from Democrats as a way to undermine the party’s message at the last minute. The memo was circulated to reporters — including this one — by a spokesman to House Minority Leader John Boehner. Politico reported on the memo and posted a story which the Drudge Report featured prominently.

“The memo is a fake,” said Kristie Greco, a spokesman for Majority Leader James Clyburn (D-S.C.). “It’s an under-handed and unethical attempt to distract from the health care debate. If opponents of health insurance reform had a credible policy alternative they wouldn’t have to resort to nefarious games.”

Beyond that, they guy is the worst kind of criminal politician this country has ever had. I remember him well during the lagging days of Clinton and the early days of Bush, always on Nightline being a prick.

Fuck you, Mr. Boehner. This healthcare proposal will make it through and you will be a dingleberry on the ass of history.

Politics john boehner

From CNN:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is trailing one potential Republican challenger by 10 points in a hypothetical 2010 matchup, a new poll suggests, and he’s not faring much better against another possible opponent.

Reid trails Nevada GOP chairwoman Sue Lowden, 49 percent to 39 percent, according to a Mason-Dixon poll commissioned by the Las Vegas Review-Journal and released Sunday. Reid is also losing by a 48-43 margin in a hypothetical race against another leading candidate for the Republican Senate nomination, businessman Danny Tarkanian.

Although Reid is likely to raise millions and get a helping hand from national Democrats, Nevadans appear to have an overall negative opinion of their senior senator, who doesn’t have much wiggle room to improve his image. Nearly 100 percent of Nevada voters know who Reid is, and 50 percent of them hold an unfavorable view of the Democrat. Just 38 percent have a favorable opinion.

I am a life-long democrat. I want nothing more than for our agenda to be realized in Obama’s administration. Keeping a majority in the Senate is of utmost importance and Mr. Reid is the Majority leader.

Still in all, I would like nothing more than to see this useless loser ejected from his post, embarrassed in the polls and have difficulty getting a job scooping ice cream cones at the Dairy Queen.

Harry Reid, in my opinion, is the main reason we’re having difficulty getting anything passed or, for that matter, winning the arguments we should be winning. He is the weakest Majority Leader we’ve ever had, and my memory goes way back.

He’s sabotaged every proposal, made hollow threats (when he had the vote majority!) and caved in again and again to the Bush administration. Now, with a Democratic President, he’s continued to obstruct.

Fuck this asshole. I would rather lose a seat in the senate than give him anymore chance to screw us over after 2010. If Obama’s Presidency is deemed a failure, it will be on his head.

Sure, I know. The Senate is a tough place to get bills passed. There’s alot of politics you don’t find in Congress, but the question is, at what point, do you expect SOMETHING from those in leadership positions. Bill Frist did a heck of a lot more during his term than this milktoast weakling has done.

It’s tough love, but we democrats have to know when to strong arm. Getting him out is key. Keeping him is suicide for the party. What we need is someone like Alan Grayson to take his spot. Sad that he’s in the wrong house for that.

Democrats have to learn how to be bullies. It’s the only way to fight an opposing party that’s nothing but.

Current News bill frist, harry reid, relection

Here is a letter on HP from a European gentleman that, I believe, frames the Obama Presidency and the hope of this country well:

Mr. Obama has already earned the prize in my books here in Europe. I am not sure about how you sensed the fear we had here in Europe under the previous generation. Not so much about Bush and Rummy and Cheney but about our own country’s. We saw, under Bush’s administration the rise of Neo-nazism, about the Black Prisons oland and Latvia. The erection of nuclear missiles on European soil. The separation of the New Europe from the Old.

We were scared of ourselves and we had no way to end the fear and the things that rot and grow from fear. Only America could have ended it. And despite your taboos and your history of civil war and segregation and jim crow and the backlash against affirmative action, you went to the polls and elected an african american who held out a hope for peace. And you brought us peace. I fear war less now.

You have managed to capture the beautiful part of your wonderful country and have made its virtue full again. A Nobel Prize is not enough. This man needs your love. You have a great president and I am filled with envy. I wish we had him as our president. Honest. honest. He has proved more than most. If not to all of the world, then certainly to me here in Switzerland.

This post struck me because it states very clearly the promise that the rest of the world keeps about us. We’ve spent lifetimes ignorant of the impact our country has on the rest of the world - how simply being a place where, seemingly, votes really do count, optimism and freedom are strived for and the best of us is not buried has meaning beyond our borders.

Sure, we’re hardly perfect. Granted, some of our votes haven’t counted and our system is corrupted, but as long as we don’t let assholes like George W. Bush change what we hope to be there’s always a chance to recover. And that’s really it. The Nobel prize is for all of us (well, most of us) recognizing that the hatred, fear and ugliness of the Bush administration and it’s followers is NOT what this country is about. Our voting him out and an unlikely person in says alot about our own hope for the country.

Republicans just don’t get it. Being the nasty bully gets you nowhere. It’s bad foreign policy and a sickness that just grows. As evidence, the bully has become angry, bitter, jealous and is now throwing temper tantrums. It’s unfortunate they do not see how ridiculous and pathetic they look to the rest of us. I’ve never seen the left act in a similar way with the same type of negative energy - ever.

Their loss - and if we’re smart enough to learn from our mistakes this time it will be their loss for a long long time.

Current News, Politics america, Obama novel prize, republican jealously

From CNN:

“What I mean is they have got no plan,” Grayson told Wolf Blitzer. “It’s been 24 hours since I said that. Where is the Republican plan? We’re all waiting to see something that will take care of the pre-existing conditions, to take care of the 40 million Americans who have no coverage at all.

“That’s what I meant when I said that the Republican plan is don’t get sick. And if you do get sick, die quickly.”

That was just the beginning of a bold defense Alan Grayson made on CNN yesterday. Blitzer and the same old tired crew did their best to try and define his words as outrageous, but the American people know better - and this particular Congressman doesn’t mince words.

It’s sad that it had to be refreshing to hear the FIRST PERSON in this debate say what others seem afraid to say - the Republicans priority is not the American people. It will ALWAYS be their business interests - and the insurance companies want this discussion shut down.

Unfortunately, there is one man who’s supposed to be on our side but is helping the other side in every possible way he can.

Harry Reid. I’ll be simple in my rhetoric and make what I feel is a truthful claim here. This man - the inneffectual, weak, sorry excuse for a “leader” - has sunk the public option and in-turn any real reform we might have had in healthcare.

Harry Reid is solely responsible for the failure of the democrats in this debate. No one else. Just him.

Think I’m wrong, Mr. Reid?

Why is it then that you can’t rise to the strength of the position you’ve been given? Ever since the democrats gained the majority several years ago, the democrats in the senate have caved AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN to the wants of the republicans.

We VOTED THE REPUBLICANS OUT! Do you understand this, you stupid, lame fuck? This is the time to push through an agenda the people actually WANT.

Why is it that other senate members are constantly making excuses for your inability to rally your side on any democratically-backed proposition, let alone this one? Why is it you are always blaming the republicans for your inability to get YOUR job done? Bill Frist had no problem doing your job. He got the votes he needed and when he didn’t, he’d ram through legislation and get the President’s signature.

What have you done except complain?

Do you understand that there is no excuse for failure or compromise with this job, in this climate, on this subject - right now? I see you in the news looking the way you’ve always looked - a man who simply wants to hide behind the mechanics of the system, never challenge it, never get angry, never scream. You minimize every discussion with your pathetic, tired demeanor.

If this bill fails to have a public option, THAT will be your legacy. Don’t worry about your next election. You’ll be done - and you’ll bring the party down with you.

There is no excuse for being weak. Just none. What did your dad teach you when you were young, to give in all the time? Take a page from the book of Alan Grayson. That’s what it means to be right and know it. Unfortunately, I doubt you’d recognize that kind of truth even if it shoved a two-by-four up your puny ass.

Politics, Verbal Paintball Alan Grayson, harry reid, republican losers

– To be a republican politician means you make sexual proposals in men’s bathrooms stalls, then lie about it.

– To be a republican politician is to take lots of money from the health insurance companies and support legislation that limits Americans from having control over healthcare or having any financial access to health insurance at all.

– To be a republican politician is to vote again and again for pre-emptive war and troop increases but when it comes to having your own children fight for the same cause - with the exception of one or two of you - they are conspicuously absent.

– To be a republican politician is to look the other way - or coverup - when one of the your members is sexually harrassing young male interns.

– To be a republican politician is to get in the way of you and your family in issues of euthanasia.

– To be a republican politician is to accuse others of being bad Christians or subversives if they do not agree with the republican platform 100%.

– To be a republican politician is to line your pockets with lobbyist money, add tons of pork to bills you approve unanimously for the entire time you have a majority - then vote against the same exact type of bills once you lose the majority because the money is no longer prominent.

– To be a republican politician is to believe it’s all about survival of the fittest when you had a privileged upbringing, have a $150,000 job, government health insurance and no connection to real people.

– To be a republican politician is to be callously indifferent to the suffering of others unless you can profit from it.

– To be a republican politician is to stand behind people like John Boehner, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Anne Coulter, Alberto Gonzalez, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, and Sarah Palin who either curse, divide, lie or do all three.

– To be a republican politician is to vote against the needs of the individual and always for the needs of the wealthy and corporate.

– To be a republican politician is to look at the world in black and white and think concretely because you’re too dense to accept that most things are gray or abstract - or are just unwilling to accept it.

– To be a republican politician is to hire right wing bloggers to shill for you in an attempt to fool the public and sway opinion on the internet.

– To be a republican politician is to support a party platform that would be find acceptance and unity with people like David Dukes

– To be a republican politician is to blame the people of New Orleans for their own demise during Katrina.

– To be a republican politician is to block proposals for guidelines in the financial industry for 10 years and then feign ignorance that such a lack of oversight would encourage corrupt behavior.

–To be republican politician is to secretly wish that Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid - and, for that matter, any proposal that shows a little mercy on those who have less than you or are older than you - is dismantled.

– To be a republican politician is to lie to the American people about everything because you have no respect for them whatsoever.

– To be a republican politician is to be a narrow minded, ignorant lemming.

– To be a republican politician is to convince the general public that you are none of the things mentioned above, didn’t do any of the things mentioned above, and are quite out for them (mainly because you know deep down how immoral your beliefs truly are and if the stupid public remembered any of these things - or connected the dots - the money would stop coming. So you lie all the time at our expense).

Verbal Paintball Mark Foley, republican losers, republican politicians

From Reuters:

Some of President George Bush’s advisers, notably Vice President Dick Cheney, contended that a sitting president had the power to use the military on U.S. soil to sweep up the men, known as the Lackawanna Six, and brand them as enemy combatants, the newspaper said.

Bush eventually decided against the proposal, which was floated in 2002 without consulting senior military officials, the Times said.

And regarding the CIA and Al Qaeda (New York Times):

Mr. Panetta scuttled the program, which would have relied on paramilitary teams, shortly after the C.I.A.’s counterterrorism center recently informed him of its existence. The next day, June 24, he told Congressional Intelligence Committees that the plan had been hidden from lawmakers, initially at the instruction of former Vice President Dick Cheney.

And, of course, his approach to due process in court:

After 9/11, the Bush regime scrapped due process rights for captured suspects. Cheney said his new legal approach “guarantees that we’ll have the kind of treatment of these individuals that we believe they deserve”—an incredible prejudgment as only a tiny handful of suspects ever saw the inside of a courtroom.

I have one question for you, Mr. Cheney. Why do you HATE America so much? Are our laws not good enough for you to follow? Do you really feel our government is weak and too compliant with the rest of the world and every issue facing us needs to be dealt with in concrete terms?

Explain to me why you would put a CIA operative at risk - a woman who has worked for the government for years who’s identity was a well-kept secret - just to exact revenge on a bad article? Is your contempt for freedom of speech in this country that huge that the potential murder of a very vulnerable group of black ops are worth the threat from you?

How about this new revelation about the Buffalo sleeper cell (which has since proven to be false)? Do you really feel that some Americans have less right to privacy than others? How do you define this? Do you feel you’re BETTER than most people and can therefore decide who deserves the rights they are born under and who doesn’t? Hey, If someone wants to hurt this country I have no issue with strong-arming them. But how do you decide this fate? Aren’t there gray areas to consider, or do you just don’t care?

And this constant harping on the pardon for Scooter Libby. Let me remind you, this man LIED while under oath and obstructed an investigation based on a treasonous act. You feel he’s a good soldier for the country and deserves the benefit of the doubt? Well, Benedict Arnold served his country well in the Continental Army. In fact, he was promoted many times and fought in many honored battles along the way. Still, he defected to the British and betrayed his country. Isn’t that what Libby did in no uncertain terms when he lied about committing treason? I guess that’s of no consequence to you because our country’s legal system is simply a tool for you to manipulate.

Really, Mr. Cheney, most of these questions are simple ones, but I don’t expect you to give simple answers to them. Your rhetoric over the last 15 years has been so muddied with lies, large and small, that you wouldn’t know the truth if it shoved it’s fist up your ass, opened its hand and did spirit fingers inside your rectum.

As far as the country is concerned, you owe it an apology. As for me, I don’t want your apology. I don’t even want you to try to answer the questions I asked you because, sir, your actions against this country deserve nothing short of a prison sentence. You probably won’t get that but you will get a few choice words from me right here in this post that sum up my attitude about your attitude:

You’re a piece of shit. You’re a disgrace to your office. You deserve to live the rest of your life as an outcast and an example of the worst kind of scum this country has ever elected into office. And, by the way, your daughter doesn’t seem any better than you. Nice child-rearing, asshole.

Verbal Paintball Dick Cheney, George Bush, panetta

If we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.”

From Huffington Post:

Senator Jim DeMint, R-S.C., who has taken a particular glee in pushing the argument that health care could be Obama’s unraveling, did little to calm the rhetoric between him and the White House on Sunday.

Appearing on “This Week,” the South Carolina Republican said the president was “out of control” and offering false promises and panic in an effort to get health care legislation passed.

Such are the various words of self-centered little prick named Jim DeMint. This is the exact kind of person we want to avoid working for us in public sector - someone who’s need to win an argument or black another party’s bill over doing the work of the people. His statement about “breaking” Obama is both ugly and nakedly political, but beyond that it’s the rallying cry of the republican party. This asshole truly has no feelings for the electorate and his intentions are suspect:

DeMint’s co-panelist, Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D, is not, necessarily, the best defender for the White House, having refused to get on board such items as a public option for insurance coverage. But the North Dakota Democrat offered ample push back, saying that while he agreed that it is “critical” to get health care right - even if it means slowing down the process - DeMint’s objectives were far more sinister.

“Jim has been very clear,” Conrad said. “He wants to kill it. And I think that would be a tragedy because we’ve got a crisis here for the country.”

It’s been half a year since Obama has become the President and the Republican party has offered nothing but immaturity. They’ve consistently slapped away every hand of bipartisanship offered to them. They’ve forced compromise on bills, but when the time came to vote they all backed away. They’ve not offered ONE SINGLE THOUGHTFUL, USEFUL SUGGESTION for the stimulus, the healthcare initiative or anything else that hasn’t reeked of the same lame bullshit we’ve heard from them for 10 years.

Thankfully, Obama has been bold enough to ask them to put up or shut up.

So, Republicians, what do you have to show us other than your indifferent to the lives of every American out there. What great new idea will lift us out of this recession (oh, yeah, by the way we’re technically out of it no thanks to you guys) and solve a healthcare crisis? What pearls of wisdom have you learned form eight years of fleecing the public, licking the rear ends of big business and lining your own pockets? Anything useful? Or are you STILL living with the fantasy that your disaster of a party platform, one that has proven Reaganomics is a complete failure, still has the best ideas when they have NO IDEAS.

I think the party functions on something more basic: hatred for the anyone who would spoil their eight year party. They STILL cannot believe that Obama is President and their Sodom and Gamorrha political reign is over. They can’t fathom that the American people are smarter than the sods they had them pegged as, one of the reasons they’re using the same hateful, divisive, ugly rhetoric they’ve been using for decades (the only difference is it’s not working anymore).

Guys like Jim DeMint are nothing more than the head that grew where those of Gingrich, Delay, Bush, Cheney, and others were cut off recently. He’s a nasty little character who offers only obstructionism. If it were a bar fight instead of politics, he’d be on the floor bleeding a long time ago.

Verbal Paintball

From The Hill.com:

Prefacing that she is going to use her right to free speech, Palin told the media to “quit makin’ things up,” and told Hollywood that it “needs to know we eat, therefore we hunt.” Palin attempted to make a stance for the right to bear arms and hunt in Alaska against the “second amendment circuses from Hollywood.”

Excuse me, Sarah Palin, but who in hell told you that you had ANY experience defining what is “made up” and not “made up” in the media? For a woman who spent a few pathetic moments in the spotlight, someone who attended five colleges to graduate and was unable to even simple questions about HERSELF to a softball reporter, you sure have a lot of uninformed opinions about how the “media” that reports on you is getting the story wrong.

Here’s what I think:

You are an ignorant, opportunistic moron who’s not only too dense to know your place in the political process (Siberia, that is) but have decided to scrape up whatever audience you can to further your questionable political career no matter the consequences to this country.

What you SHOULD be doing is attending to the things that actually matter in this life, like the shambles that is your family and the good fight of doing what is morally right for the majority of the people, not just your own selfish interests.

But that doesn’t wash for someone like you, does it? Someone who bases the needs of the world on your own small-minded wants. Someone who can’t seem to see beyond her own navel because of an enormous superiority complex - a complex conservative ignoramuses enabled you to develop from a platform created by a Presidential candidate too old, feeble and politically expedient to understand the insult.

You are a joke - the kind of person we despise and push away because you’re the only one who doesn’t know the curtain has closed. You throw yourself on us, reminding us of your “importance” when we all know better that you are a distraction and poison in our lives and not any kind of help.

Sure. You think this pomp and circumstance around means something. You’ve been brought up over the past few years to believe that you are of greater importance in this world because you were able to fool a small state with large acreage that there was more behind your folksy, simple talk than just “folksy simple talk.” Unfortunately for you, the rest of the country knows an ambitious idiot when they see one and sent you and your campaign packing.

Some advice from me. Reach into your pocket, pull out a twenty and go buy a clue. Get a good one. You’re going to need it.

Getting up in front of the press, spewing hateful, whiny rhetoric and making an ignorant, angry minority even angrier is not the beginning of a movement. It is the end of a large-scale puerility that should have died right after 9-11 but was given a full life by a group of cynical, evil politicians who felt they could benefit, financially and otherwise, by it.

I don’t expect you to understand anything I’m saying. You are so far up your own ass you’ve probably not heard the words of anyone but yourself for a long long time. But mark MY words, Sarah, because I speak as someone who sees the world through a much larger prism than yourself: Your masquerade is over. We know what you’re doing. We don’t like you or it and, if you continue, there will be a day when you’ll reap what you’ve sown. Hopefully, you’ll learn a thing or two before that happens, but given your own self-absorbed nature, I doubt it. Enjoy the fruits of ignorance, you self-centered shrew, because it will be fleeting and afterwards you will be whining about being a victim of the media - again. The difference is, when that happens a second time you won’t even have crickets to accompany you.

Stop being a self-centered, callous idiot and go away. There are real problems in this world that do not have to do with you and your relationship to the media. Furthermore, the smart people of the world want nothing to do with you. The small group of like-minded morons you speak for are political ghosts. Know your place and take an exit - or please just go fuck yourself.

Verbal Paintball ignorant, republican party, Sarah Palin, syfch