The poll that's driving the new Democratic message

The bad news was that only 25 percent of those surveyed thought Republicans in Congress would return to the Bush agenda if elected, meaning that as things stand today, Bush-bashing was no magic bullet for Democrats in a toxic political climate.
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You hear that? That's the sound of Fitz & Rob's voice becoming weaker and weaker. People are not buying the blame Bush & Cheney crap anymore after 2 years of the Hope & Change spending spree.

So called "Bush Bashing " may go just so far before it really gets old to the swing voters who will decide many of the elections in the Fall. The Democrats may find out that sooner or later they are going to have to run on their own Records and not be blaming Bush for all the worlds ills. The Democrats have controlled the White House for two years and the Congress for the last four years. It is Obama and the Democrats show now, not George Bush. I believe the majority of the American voters want to see some progress and not hear the same old excuses.

The GOP Generational Theft by Deception post Bush/Cheney/Fielding/ Rice/Addington and the Great Mexican YOU LIE! YOU LIE! "Z" People unattested unto the GOP Alberto Gonzales! Miss me now! Miss us now GOP Two for One Immigrant Super Tuesday. 5.7 Trillion dollars later! 8 million jobs budled up at the "Darken Doors" of 108th Congress White House! It's Comey day! It's Comey day! It was John Yoo day in 2004! It was warrantless NSA wiretapping in October 2001! Look Look up in the sky! It's Osama & Family the other day! Miss us now? Miss me? Miss Dick? Karl's got a "brand new bag" with all that "chicken and change" How that Obama YOU LIE! GETBACK! Obama YOU LIE! PAYBACK! Just keep the GOP "Just do nothing" cars coming! Just keep the GOP TEA PARTY AMERICA coming! It's "heck of job, Brownie" day! It's "Blackwater" day aka "Z" day! Just no 20 million "forced attested" YOU LIE! YOU LIE! Brown skin, brown eyes detained, rendered unto the GOP THEE! It's "threat level" Chertoff! Give me a "C" what's that level? Black Prison "ghost" day! It's the GOP Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act for the Rich and the GOP Horny June 7, 2001! Protect the "surplus" GOP 1.35 Trillion Dollar Theft by Deception Day! It's Condi Rice "Testifries" day! With a scoop of "Scooter Libby" Brylcream Pie! Tax cuts! Tax cuts! It's the GOP "State of Fear" deal or no "Energy" deal day! Hip Hip Hooray! No "Energy" deal! Just cooked intelligence deals or no "reconciliation" KURDS deal! Hmmmm I think the White House could talk about a lot of other things in the GOP "Just Keep It In the Closet" songs of silence! It's Katherine Harris day! Because it doesn't matter who votes! It only matters if the next Secretary of State in Kansas will send you a ballot vote! Blame it on Medicare D day! Medicare Part D D-DAY GOP day to day!

OUTGOING REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMAN TALKS ABOUT GROWING FRINGE RIGHT WING EXTREMISM IN TODAYS REPUBLICAN PARTY

Republican Rep. Bob Inglis (R-SC), who in June lost his renomination bid by massive 38-point margin after criticizing nutbag Glenn Beck, isn't backing down from his condemnation of the growing tide of Teabagger-fueled extremism in todays Republican party. Last month, he excoriated Republicans leaders as demagogues and said that anti-Obama sentiment was being driven in part by right wing racism. Now he's offering more details on how whackjob conspiracy theories have come to dominate the Republican Party, thanks in large part to the GOP's Teabagger fringe. The latest came yesterday:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7cQqLUsv3k

Inglis talks about his rejection of advice from Republican political strategists that he falsely accuse President Obama of socialism. Unfortunately for Inglis, his integrity cost him his seat in Congress, but for the rest of us, it helps expose just how crazy a significant portion of the Republican grassroots has become -- and it demonstrates the cowardice of Republican leaders unwilling to stand up to the rising tide of Beck-fueled extremism, racism and race baiting.

The most remarkable thing about this whole story is that Inglis himself is not a liberal, nor is he even a moderate. He was elected in 1994 as a true conservative, a Republican revolutionary brought to power by running on Newt Gingrich's Contract With America. In 1998, he helped lead the impeachment of President Clinton, supporting every count of impeachment at the committee level before it reached the full House. And yet despite his solid conservative record, in today's GOP, Inglis is not sufficiently fringe right wingy enough. Incredible.

http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/08/bob-inglis-tea-party-casualty?page=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S38VioxnBaI

"The bad news was that only 25 percent of those surveyed thought Republicans in Congress would return to the Bush agenda if elected"
'
This means that 75% have been bamboozled by the lies that the RepubliCANT Party has been pushing for the past 2 years.

The Teabaggers (the Republican base) aren't a bunch of doughy white pinched faced racists. I don't know how the NAACP could possibly have come to that conclusion? ;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S38VioxnBaI

The US is in real trouble when the majority party chooses not run a campaign on any of it's own merit(s).

If we are to believe that the nation would have been worse off with the other party just because they are the other party, please tell us where the crystal ball is, for I would like to know the Lottery Numbers for this weekend.

I for one am ENTIRELY fed up with the lack of accountability across the board. If any candidate wants my vote, they better prove to me that they are worth my vote. And a comparison based analysis of themselves vs. the other guy is not quantifiable proof.

Elections are not about specific parties, they are about specific individuals vying for the same job. Stop forcing crass generalizations. the voting public is not that stupid. They were already hoodwinked once.

I wonder if BO will have grow a pair and take responsibility for anything.

Go ahead flatliners, run against Bush economy of 73 straight months of ecoonomic growth and 42 months of unemployment under 5%. Are you going to run against the decreasing deficits after the Bush tax cuts until the recession hit - caused by democratic policies.

Before ConnonSense,

Just what thos lies be? That Obamacare will not add a dime to the deficit? That no one making under $250K will have their taxes raised? Just which lie is it you are referring to?

Timmy the Teabagger awakened early. Timmy pours a strong cup of coffee. Timmy does not consider that the federal government monitors his water supply to ensure a quality standard. Afterward, Timmy enjoys a walk around the block. He is so happy the government paid for and constructed sidewalks. It is much safer.

Timmy sees his youngest daughter off to board the taxpayer- funded school bus, which takes her to the taxpayer-funded, government-run school.

He then takes a shower. Timmy uses the government-subsidized, strictly regulated public water/sewer system. Timmy never complains about this service. Timmy's oldest daughter is on her way to the taxpayer- funded, government-run library, to get information on federal government grants or loans for the state-subsidized university. They chat about their vacation, visiting the federal government-owned and maintained Grand Canyon.

Timmy's mom calls, to tell him how excited she is that she is now able to cut back on her workload, because she will be collecting from the federal government-run Social Security and Medicare programs. Timmy is happy for his hardworking mother.

Timmy gets into his car and pulls out into the taxpayer-funded road. He passes several taxpayer-funded traffic lights and signs. Timmy stops at his FDIC-insured bank. As he approaches, Timmy notices a huge increase in police, fire and emergency medical services, all government-run and paid for by tax-payers.

Timmy pulls into the free parking lot, provided for patrons of the taxpayer-funded, government-run park.

Failing to see the irony, Timmy opens his trunk and removes his "No Socialism!" Teabagger sign. Timmy believes in smaller government and less taxes. Timmy does not consider the number of government-run, socialist services that have enriched his life -- all before 9 a.m.!

http://www.pressherald.com/opinion/letters/tuesday-opinion_2010-08-03.html

A recent poll says 47% of the tea baggers are 55 or older. I wonder what kind of a voting block that is. It's probably at least enough to split a vote. The gopers/baggers won't get very far that way.

Tinkled On Terry, one example is Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin:
'
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/06/opinion/06krugman.html?_r=1&ref=paulkrugman
'
Another example is Eric Cantor FLIP-FLOPPING on the RNC talking point that extending the Shrub tax cuts won't increase the deficit:
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http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/node/38762
'
Or, how about this: "10 Republican Lies about the Bush tax cuts":
'
http://crooksandliars.com/node/38752
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I could Google up thousands more, but you're not worth wasting my time over.

There's no doubt, what so ever, they will govern exactly as the Bush&Cheney. Look at Representative Ryan's,R-WI, economic blueprint, it is classic Republican-Libertarian-T.Bagger, warmed over Ronnie Raygun's gifts to the filthy rich and the greedy Corporations. Don't kid yourselves, America, they are dying to get back into power, so they can squeeze the middle class, even more!! I will not even mention that Casino on Wall Street. it will be back, in full operation, January 21. Oh, by the way, your Social Security Administration will be re-located to Wall Street, at Goldman Sachs. They'll will give you a real bang for your buck !!
SUPPORT OUR TROOPS, BRING THEM HOME, ALIVE AND WHOLE. NOW.

Terry:
Did you notice that GWB split for Crawford, TX the day following the election of Obama, even though his term was not up for another few months?
America was essentially without a president from November until January. Poor littler shrub couldn't have gotten outta Dodge any faster.

Gee, wonder why ?

Before CommonSense,

Paul Ryan couldn't ask for a better endorsement than the disapproval of Paul Krugman.

The Bush Tax Cuts were reducing the deficit, until the recession hit. As the graph shows, the deficits were reducing once the Bush 2003 tax cuts (the bigger of the tax cuts) went into effect and the deficits were getting smaller until the recession hit.

I'm not worth wasting time over? Than why do you respond?

Tawanda,

Are you telling us that from the dAy Bo was elected in early November 2008 until January 20, 2009. President Bush was in Crawford. Do you have some facts to support that statement?

If I were President Obama, I would have washed my hand, immediately after shaking ex-President Bush's hand. You never know, in whose pocket, that hand was in !!
SUPPORT OUR TROOPS, BRING THEM HOME, ALIVE AND WHOLE. NOW.

Terry:
GWB was missing in action following the November elections and Obama was making policy even before he was sworn in and thats a fact:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=George_W._Bush:_The_War_President_is_Missing_in_Action

Wether he was in Texas or Kennybunkport, GWB abdicated and Obama immediately began policy making.

Ginko Biloba is good for memory enhancement. I suggest you take it.

Oink, Oink, A Parable for Our Times

This is an oldie but a goodie. It’s a little parable on the inherent dangers of dependence on government largesse which in itself is a contradiction since governments really have no money to dispense, throw away, or use to buy votes. All funds that governments possess come from the people they govern or mis-govern:

HOW TO CATCH WILD PIGS

"You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come every day to eat the free corn. When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming.

When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence. They get used to that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate on the last side.

The pigs, which are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat that free corn again.

You then slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd. Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught.

Soon they go back to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity."

I was wearing a T-shirt one day that read in part, “Freedom Isn’t Free” and my 10 year old grandaughter sassily said, “That doesn’t make any sense!” . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1832)

Tawanda,

In the link you provided, I do not see any reference for November, 2008 thru January, 2009.

Even when President Bush was at Crawford or BO is in Hyde Park, they are not out of touch.

Rob, try again. Timmy is so much smarter than you.

Socialism refers to the government taking control of the economy.

so·cial·ism (ssh-lzm)
n.
1. Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy.

Also Rob, as you sometimes note, the government did NOT pay for the sidewalks the streets, the sewer system, the school buses WE did. Taxpayers paid for them. Their are cost all along the way from the government collecting taxes from you (well not you, you don't pay taxes.)

Those funds are then redistributed in the most wasteful, corrupt, and inefficient way known to mankind: Through the government.

Please note, this article is NOT from the Daily Kos.

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2309

The Leaky Bucket
September 5, 2008
Edgar K. Browning

It is commonplace among economists to emphasize that helping the poor with government welfare programs involves a trade-off: we get greater equality (or equity), but we sacrifice some economic efficiency. How to quantify this trade-off in a way meaningful for non-economists has always been a challenge, but the late economist Arthur Okun introduced a popular metaphor that helps clarify the role of efficiency in evaluating welfare programs.

When income is redistributed from rich to poor, Okun suggested imagining that “. . . the money must be carried from the rich to the poor in a leaky bucket. Some of it will simply disappear in transit, so the poor will not receive all the money that is taken from the rich.” Money does not literally disappear, of course, but inefficiencies produce results that can often be accurately characterized in this way. When there is no inefficiency, there is no leak in the bucket, and a dollar less for the rich means a dollar more for the poor. With inefficient policies, the bucket leaks, and the size of the leakage measures the magnitude of the inefficiency.

So, exactly how porous is the leaky bucket? When Okun wrote (1975), he thought the leakages were small, but today economists believe they are significantly larger than he supposed. Although there are too many variables to give a precise figure, we can get a rough idea that is consistent with the research literature by following a dollar on its journey from taxpayers to low-income recipients.

When the government acquires a dollar from taxpayers, it imposes a cost of greater than a dollar on them due to the inefficiencies produced by the tax policy. According to the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, taxpayers bear a cost of approximately $1.50 when the government collects a dollar in tax revenue. Of this fifty cent additional cost, ten cents is due to taxpayer compliance costs (record keeping, time spent filling out tax forms, etc.) and the remainder is attributable to distortions in economic behavior (effects on work, saving, and spending).

Armed with a dollar from taxpayers, the government spends it on a welfare program. The administrative cost of welfare programs absorbs part of this dollar, probably about ten cents on average. Thus, ninety cents worth of resources actually goes to recipients.

But recipients of welfare do not receive benefits they value at ninety cents because of the inefficiencies produced by welfare programs. Welfare programs undermine work incentives, affect living arrangements, and distort consumption decisions. The overall size of this leakage is less well established in the research literature than on the tax side of the transaction, but I estimate that a ninety-cent welfare benefit is worth only about sixty cents to recipients—a leakage of thirty cents.

One more leakage borne by low-income recipients of welfare is their compliance costs—providing evidence that they qualify for welfare benefits. I do not know of evidence regarding how large these costs are but will just assume that they are ten cents, the same as for taxpayers.

Thus, a transfer that places a cost of $1.50 on taxpayers provides a benefit worth fifty cents to recipients. In terms of the leaky bucket, two-thirds of the contents have leaked out due to the inefficiencies in the tax and transfer programs. We cannot provide a dollar in benefits to the poor at a cost of a dollar to the well off. Instead, taxpayers bear a three-dollar cost for each dollar of benefit to the poor.

Each year high-income Americans transfer more than a trillion dollars to low-income Americans through a bewildering array of policies. The leaky bucket helps explain why the results have been disappointing. We should consider the possibility that the redistributive bucket is actually a sieve before we embark on a further expansion in welfare state policies.

Under socialism, the government owns the fruits of your labor, not the individual. Therefore, if the government decides that a bank that the government has insured is going to fail and the government decides that that bank is TOO BIG TO FAIL the government can and will confiscate the fruits of your labor to BAIL OUT that big bank.

That is socialism; where the government controls and determines where the money goes (the fruits of labor) and when. And that's how socialism fails. The government is never right when it picks winners and losers. Another example of the government's failure to pick winners and losers: your fine public schools. What a dismal failure they are! They sure failed you.

Again consider the latest socialist disaster, the democrat's plan to encourage people that could not afford them to purchase $500,000 homes with the government buying ALL those bad loans. Sounds like a nice idea to have everyone buy a house, but the government did a TERRIBLE job of picking winners and losers, now didn't it? So, bad that it caused the collapse of our economy and increased the suffering of millions of people around the world. Yes, socialism controlling the economy really enriched our lives.

The government, through a socialist program, warped the housing market and destroyed it.

The government has used our money to enrich failed businesses, and continues to steal money from all the people in the United States to prop up businesses and banks that are failing. The stimulus money was wasted. Where are all those "shovel ready jobs?" Trillions of dollars taken out of the economy by the government kills economic activity. That money could have gone to a new company startup. A new idea that could have been the next Microsoft. But, NO, the government is deciding who will get the money. Guess who got it: GM's unions, Citibank a failure, but a supporter of Obama and his economic team, State governments that could not run their own governments (like California), and of course the main culprits in the whole failure Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. ALL LOSERS

That's socialism, and it WILL fail again.

One more thing, Rob. You can't claim that roads and police, water and sewer, and public land are socialist ideas, because those things have been around for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Socialism has been the scourge of the earth for about 160 years.

They are for the majority a result of capitalism and PAID FOR BY CAPITALISM. Roads for trade, police to protect life and property ownership, cities built in strategic trade routes, like CHICAGO. Yes, the failed ideas of public transportation and schools is supported in the majority by government.

Even Social Security is funded by Capitalism.

Tawanda,
In the link you provided, I do not see any reference for November, 2008 thru January, 2009.
Even when President Bush was at Crawford or BO is in Hyde Park, they are not out of touch.

~~~~
Obama was directly involved with policy-making and high level meetings immediately following the elections, despite the fact that GWB was still " in charge " and the swearing in was a few months away. Why was this ?
Because GWB was missing in action. He, for all practical purposes, abdicated, and you failed to take notice of this ?

Hey Tawanda, I mean HHH, no I mean Doug R., no sorry Donnie from Painfield, no I mean Robbie, no I think its BC. Oh, never mind too many to count.

Tawanda,

President Bush, wisely so, had BO in on the transition plans and had BO's buy-in on the actions that would be taken over next 2 1/2 months until inaguration day. Transition planning is nothing new for someone in the business world. However, it is unusual in the world of politics when one party gives up power to another.

President Bush s/b commended not ridiculed for having BO involved and I'll bet BO would say the same.

BTW, President Bush did not spend those next 2/1 months in Crawford as you stated.

The next morning, he offered BO congratulations from the White House. The following Monday, President Bush met with BO

http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2008/11/bush_to_meet_with_obama_monday.html

But instead, based on what we've heard from candidates and even Obama himself of late, it seems they've decided that to move the needle back in their direction the party needs to make an aggressive push aimed at convincing voters that the current GOP would govern no differently than it did with Bush in the White House. ~ M.M.
--------------------

There is nothing that has happened over the last two years that would indicate that democrats know how to govern. Yes, do continue the “It is George Bush’s fault” strategy. This shows the paucity of ideas and the clear inability to resolve anything that the democrats have as well.

What do democrats know how to do other than tax, regulate into extinction, and destroy job opportunities wherever they can be found? If Americans are dumb enough to believe that George Bush is on the ballot and running for something, then we, the collective we that would be, deserve the incompetent losers that we will surely get.