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(h/t Heather)

This clip of Anthony Weiner going ballistic on the House floor is one for the ages -- it should be watched again and again and again, and not only because he was angry and frustrated, but because he spoke a truth that all of us expect from our representatives. It's really quite simple: "If you believe that it's right, you vote yes. You don't hide behind procedure and give cover to your pals."

It's really that simple, but here's the backstory. The House has been trying to re-open the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund through 2031 for 9/11 responders whose health has been affected.

When it became apparent that the Republicans were going to attach "poison pill" amendments to the bill that had nothing to do with 9/11 and everything to do with their political agenda, Democrats shut down the possibility of amending the bill by moving it to the suspension calendar, where a minimum 2/3rds vote is needed for it to pass.

Republicans applied the same old talking points, calling it a "massive new entitlement program". Actually, that's not quite right. They called it a "massive job-killing new entitlement program", because that's the Frank Luntz mantra of the week. (I was monitoring the Senate at the same time, and somehow the Small Business Jobs bill also became another "massive job-killing new entitlement program.") Of course, that's nonsense too, given that it had been structured to be paid for by closing a tax loophole for foreign corporations.

If you believe it's right, you vote yes.

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Another day, another racist headline from somewhere in the wingnutosphere ....

This ran recently at the Daily Caller. Where, evidently, no stereotype is too dessicated to trot out once again, and the phrase "illegals" is still considered just A-OK. (It has been taken down since.)

Did you call yet? Call your senators, call your congress critter, call the White House.

Nobody likes the chained CPI. And yet, the Very Serious People are still Very Serious about it:

On the news that President Obama’s budget indeed contains a highly unpopular proposal for Social Security cuts known as “chained CPI,” a new poll by the American Association of Retired Persons shows us exactly how unpopular it is.

The AARP reveals that 70 percent of voters age 50-plus oppose the use of the chained CPI to cut benefits, and two-thirds of them – including 60 percent of Republicans — say they would be “considerably less likely” to support a congressional candidate if he or she backed a new way of calculating consumer prices. And 84 percent of voters over 50 say Social Security has no place in budget-deficit discussions, since it is self-financed.

On every single question, Republicans lag only a point or two behind Democrats in their opposition to Social Security cuts.

Michael Lind explains why it’s such a bad deal on policy terms here. I’ve written about it many times, including here. The AARP opposes it on policy terms. Now its new survey shows how risky it is politically.

“The chained CPI reduction snowballs over time and would increase taxes for most taxpayers — at the same time that it cuts benefits for children, veterans, widows, retirees, and people with disabilities,” said AARP executive vice president Nancy LeaMond in a statement. “As this survey shows, older Americans oppose the chained CPI and they’ve historically made their opinions known to their elected officials.”

Just remember, a lot of the people who will make angry statements over the next few weeks are the same people who insisted they wouldn't support the affordable care act without a public option. So time will tell who's full of shit.

Let's remember how we got to be debating drones.

After 9/11, Republicans insisted that the United States was "at war" with al Qaeda -- a reversal from the Clinton administration, which prosecuted terrorism as crime. And because of this "War on Terror," they claimed the Constitution endowed W. with vastly expanded executive powers, including the authority to spy on Americans, kidnap people, torture them, hold them indefinitely, set up torture gulags all over the world, launch drone attacks, launch pre-emptive wars, and so on.

All of that authority, Republican partisans eagerly ceded to the President, while smearing civil liberties groups like the ACLU as being terror-loving traitors. But now that there's a Democrat in the White House, Bush/Cheney followers are today celebrating Rand Paul's "greatness" for his stand on civil liberties.

I just have one question for them.

If the president doesn't have the authority to launch a drone strike against an American citizen on US soil, why does he have the right to crush a child's testicles?

Cassel: If the president deems that he's got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person's child, there is no law that can stop him?

Yoo: No treaty...

Cassel: Also no law by Congress -- that is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo...

Yoo: I think it depends on why the president thinks he needs to do that.

Wow. You have to be some kind of "Liberal Statist" to think that way, right?

Who knew that seeming double-centenerian Pete Domenici was such a player? None of us, it turns out, until the former longtime Senator of New Mexico recently admitted to an extra-marital affair with a colleague's [Senator Paul Laxalt of Nevada] daughter, which produced a now-thirty-something son.

Domenici is certainly not the first politician to suffer from Strom Thurmond Disease. You may remember the late Senator Thurmond, he of the presidential campaign in 1948 based on the segregation of the races - something he couldn't personally accomplish with the hired help in his own household (let's call it an Early Schwarzenegger). Just two weeks ago, at the age of 87, Essie Mae Washington-Williams, his bi-racial child who could not acknowledge her father publicly until his death in 2003, passed away herself. Just another sad story of conservative hypocrisy, and in Thurmond's case, one of many dalliances with women not his wife for the "family values"-spouting, Lost-Cause romantic.

This is not to say this kind of thing doesn't happen on the Democratic/liberal side. (I have two words for you. John and Edwards.) Yet, the difference is that like most Republicans, Domenici was all too concerned what was going on in our private lives if we were gay, a woman, or a President being impeached in the 1990s over an affair. He was a moral exemplar, you see, who was so pristine and pure you'd think he brought the Ten Commandments down from the mountain. He could deign to lecture us all, including then President Bill Clinton.

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Right wing forces in this country are obsessed with the size of government, but the fundamental debate we should be having is not about size but what the goal of government should be. What is government’s central mission?

There are four major views on this question in modern American politics, two in each political party.

The first Republican view is boiled down to the central organizing principle that government should be as small as possible. That’s it.

Size (the small variety) not only matters, but is the only thing that matters. Any mission or goal that government has is overridden and overwhelmed by the urgent desire to make it smaller. Whether cuts in the size of government are rationally planned doesn’t matter, as their rhetoric on the sequester makes clear. Whether cuts in the size of government hurt people or hurt the economy as a whole doesn’t matter either. I've heard heart-breaking stories, for example, of parents with disabled kids lobbying against the cuts that will devastate the programs that help their children, with Republican congressmen telling them it doesn’t matter, we just have to cut the size of government. Grover Norquist famously said that he wants to make government so small that he can drown it in a bathtub, and his Tea Party comrades are clearly trying to do exactly that at the cost of everything else.

While all Republicans talk about wanting to make government smaller, the other Republican view on what the mission of government should be is less focused on size, and more focused on this central thing: serving the needs of big business. This idea was most famously (or infamously) articulated by the former Republican chair of the House Committee on Financial Services in 2011 when he said “In Washington, the view is that the banks are to be regulated, and my view is that Washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks.”

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CBS 5 - KPHO

Oooh, look out, people. The United Nations is coming to destroy your freedoms and take away your way of life.

Fortunately, we have the far-right Republicans of the Arizona Legislature out there on the front lines protecting us.

The same woman -- Republican Sen. Judy Burges, R-Hateful Old People (aka Sun City West) -- who sponsored Arizona's notorious birther law is back this session with SB 1403, a bill that would prevent Arizona from participating in any kind of legislation that would support the eeeeevil UN "Agenda 21" plan to destroy America through environmental laws.

As Laurie Roberts at the Arizona Republic reports:

“I appear before you to address a United Nations program that is designed to change our way of life, our heritage and our liberties as outlined and protected by our most precious Constitution,” she announced. “I testify to you against the seductive evils contained in the United Nations’ agenda for the 21st Century and more easily stated, Agenda 21.”

The Sun City West Republican has often been on the front lines during her eight years at the Capitol, battling conspiracies of both a global and national nature. So it is no surprise that she is back again this year with Senate Bill 1403, a proposal that appears to undo decades of environmental protections, limit citizen access to information about hazardous materials and in general leave people – the ones who don’t embrace tin foil for its millinery properties — scratching their heads.

Burges’ bill, simply put, would bar state or local government from abiding by any of the principles set forth in the United Nations Rio Declaration on Environment and Development.

Agenda 21, as it’s called, is a non binding agreement approved in 1992 during a UN conference in Rio de Janeiro. Basically, it’s a list of principles detailing how communities can better conserve natural resources.

But if you’re Burgess, it’s a plot to destroy America.

“The truth contained within this United Nations program depicts something sinister and dark,” she told her fellow lawmakers. “The plan calls for government to take control of all land use and not leave any decisions in the hands of private property owners. It is assumed by the backers of Agenda 21 that people are not good stewards of the land and the government will do a better job if it’s in control. Individual rights are to be given away to the global community as determined by a global governing body, not by local elected representatives … and folks, not even your state Legislature. Furthermore, the contents of the United Nations program reveal that people should be rounded up off their own land and relocated to human settlements close to employment centers and transportation hubs.”

Burges has trotted out this bill previously. As before, this bill would effectively preempt the state from enforcing any water-quality, air-quality, or other environmental laws. Which is just peachy, as far as today's Republicans are concerned. Even Richard Nixon would be rolling in his grave.

According to The Hill, House Republicans are going to propose a three-month raise to the debt ceiling with some contingencies attached:

House Republican leaders on Friday announced a plan to condition a three-month increase in the debt limit on the Senate committing to pass a budget by the April 15 statutory deadline.

“Before there is any long-term debt limit increase, a budget should be passed that cuts spending,” Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) told the Republican conference in remarks to close the party’s three-day retreat in Williamsburg. “The Democratic-controlled Senate has failed to pass a budget for four years. That is a shameful run that needs to end, this year.”

The House will also seek to prevent members of Congress from being paid if the two chambers do not pass a budget resolution.“We are going to pursue strategies that will obligate the Senate to finally join the House in confronting the government’s spending problem,” Boehner said. “The principle is simple: no budget, no pay.”

The "no budget, no pay" piece of their proposal appears to be unconstitutional, according to ThinkProgress, but that's a small thing compared to the fact that it looks as though they're prepared to release the hostage, and once they do that, there's no turning back.

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Take, for example, the debt ceiling fight unfolding right now. In the world according to Luntz, the debt ceiling battle has been lost already by Republicans because they keep referring to it as a hostage (they don't). Luntz writes:

But they need a new language to communicate their ideas effectively; it starts with abandoning ugly phrases such as “a hostage you might take a chance at shooting” to describe budget negotiations. And Republicans need to stop expressing a willingness to shut down the government if they don’t get their way on the debt ceiling. Americans don’t want a government shutdown — for any reason.

What language does he suggest? When it comes to the debt ceiling, he doesn't suggest anything, which suggests he may be telling Republicans to quit playing that tired game and just pass the clean increase just as previous Congresses have done since there was a debt ceiling to raise.

On other issues, here are his suggestions.

• Instead of smaller government, they should talk about more efficient and effective government. The former is ideological language of the 1980s; the latter is practical language of today.
• Instead of tax reform, talk about making the IRS code simpler, flatter and fairer. Speak to what people really hate about the code: its complexity.
• In addition to cutting spending, they must talk about controlling — not capping — it. What angers Americans more than how much politicians spend today is how much more they know Washington will waste tomorrow. A “cap” can be lifted, but “controls” are constant.
• Instead of entitlement reform or controlling the growth of Medicare and Social Security, talk about how to save and strengthen these programs so they are there when voters need them. After all, they paid for them.
• Better than discussing economic opportunity and growth, Republicans should talk about creating a healthier and more secure economy. Everyone benefits when economic health is restored. And while economic opportunity would be nice, security is a necessity.

In other words, Frank Luntz is instructing Republicans to start agreeing with President Obama, who has used every single one of these phrases in recent speeches. When you read that list, surely you heard the president's campaign speeches about protecting and strengthening Social Security and Medicare, or making the tax code simpler and fairer?

Like Peggy Noonan, Luntz is telling Republicans to start acting like Democrats and deal with the very real issues at hand. Like Democrats. I'm not sure Republicans actually get that yet.

If I had a chance to speak to Frank Luntz face to face about this article, I'd tell him it's not merely language, and it's cynical to say it is. Pretty language has to be backed up with some solid policy ideas. Paul Ryan says he wants to strengthen Medicare all the time and preserve it for future generations. Then Paul Ryan puts forward his proposal, which kills Medicare and hands its future off to private insurers, which gives them far more power than they deserve to have while taking it away from the sick, disabled and elderly.

It isn't mere language that is a problem here. I can call that brown thing over there on the grass canine excrement but if anyone goes over and examines it, it's still dog sh*t and if you step in it and get it on your shoes your shoes will stink and no one will let you come inside before you take your shoes off and leave them far away from the back door. Luntz can call Paul Ryan's Medicare-killing proposal "strengthening Medicare", but it still carries the stench of a dog turd attached to his shoe.

When Luntz says Americans are angry about spending, he forgets what spending they're angry about. They're not angry about spending on Americans; they're angry about spending on bank bailouts and wars that no one wanted in the first place. They're not angry about spending on the elderly; they're angry about giving rich people such a huge and loophole-ridden tax code that they pay less than 15 percent while the rest of us pay whatever we owe, which on average is higher than their 14 percent.

If Republicans head out from their retreat with the intention of papering over what they do and have been doing with less incendiary language, they will still be the same monumental failures they've been for the last four years, because people are not that stupid. They know the smell of dog crap on someone's shoes when they smell it.

Nevertheless, there is one suggestion Luntz makes that Republicans should heed.

Beyond fiscal policy, Republicans need to revamp their messaging on other issues. For example, the tragic school shooting in Newtown, Conn., offered Republicans a chance to discuss public safety — a more personal issue than “crime” — on a human level. That hasn’t happened, but it still can. Most people agree that there is a middle ground between gun-control hard-liners, who see every crime as an excuse to enact new laws, and the National Rifle Association, which sees every crime as an excuse to sell more guns. The Second Amendment deserves defending, but do Republicans truly believe that anyone should be able to buy any gun, anywhere, at any time? If yes, they’re on the side of less than 10 percent of America. If not, they need to say so.

Yes, they need to say so and they need to put some action items behind that say-so. No more kowtowing to the lunatic fringe who thinks a war should break out over reasonable gun safety laws. It is high time for Republicans to stop allowing the blood of their fellow Americans to wash over them every time some nut with an assault weapon decides to make some kind of a statement and step up.

On that score, they should listen, and so should any Democrat who still thinks the NRA has any hold over them.

First, there's Jonathan Chait's analysis of the current stonewalling strategy; namely, not one penny more of revenue from anywhere no matter what, but plenty of cut, cut, cut. And absolutely no deal. Here's the paragraph that caught my eye, though:

So, step one: Block any compromise to reduce the deficit. Step two: Blame Obama for failing to reduce the deficit. I actually think this plan can work.

This may sound like a cynical strategy. And it is. But it’s not a purely cynical strategy. It reflects an important intellectual development on the right. Capretta is advocating not just the classic no-taxes-ever approach that has defined the party for years, but also its newer (or newly fervent) belief in privatizing health-care services.

Aha, and that follows what I'm seeing on a state level.

Rick Scott's little song and dance was the first salvo. Scott, as you'll recall, decided he would turn down the Medicaid expansion dollars from the federal government because he's crazy. But after hospitals lobbied him hard, he went to Kathleen Sibelius looking for a deal that went like this: Let me privatize all Medicaid services and I'll take your Medicaid dollars.

What a guy. And that leads me to this article in the New York Times on Wednesday, addressing the differences in care between for-profit providers and not-for-profit providers.

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