"So how do you deal with someone who comes to stop government? … Grover wandering the earth in his white robe saying he wants to drown government in the bathtub. I hope he slips in there with it."
Alan Simpson, expressing some less than kind feelings about Grover Norquist. Matthews was left speechless by Simpson's comment.
"Now, Moody’s credit rating agency has come out and said neither the Republican nor the Democrat plans, if enacted, would do enough to save America’s AAA credit rating.
"If neither plan will save our credit rating, then to hell with both of them.
Phillips also adds that President Obama is "un-American." Phillips is a diehard birther. Chris Matthews took Phillips to task for his birther nonsense. Phillips couragiously backed away from his previous birther stance.
Jeff Greene Can't Remember His Vote For 1980 Presidential Election
Some people forget where they put their car keys. Others like Jeff Greene, can't remember if they voted for Ronald Reagan or Jimmy Carter in the 2000 presidential election. It might be a sore spot for Greene, considering he is a longtime Republican. Greene became a Democrat to run for the U.S. Senate.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse dares Republicans to run against the signed health care reform bill.
WHITEHOUSE: I think victory looks good to the American people. I also think as they become more accustomed to this bill, as the President said As it's reality, confront some of the rhetoric we have heard about it. They will learn some very important things about what this bill does. I think the Republicans have painted themselves into a corner. If they want to run against us in November on opposing closing the donut hole on seniors, protecting children with preexisting conditions against the insurance companies denying them coverage. Opposing $1.3 trillion in deficit reduction. Opposing tax credits for small business. They put themselves in a tough position.
Rep. Alan Grayson goes on Hardball and says Dick Cheney should STFU. Literally. Grayson also talks about the changes in the health care bill. He wants all Americans to have access to the Medicare provider network.
"And if you want an example of bad public policy, just look at the situation with our veterans, when you have a manual out there telling our veterans stuff like, 'are you really of value to your community,' you know, encouraging them to commit suicide. I mean, this is crazy coming from the government, and this is exactly what concerns people and puts them in fear of what the government control of health care will look like."
Steele is refering to the VHA meterial “Your Life, Your Choices. ”The VHA Handbook in is online. Chris Matthews of Fox News ran a graph designed to lead viewers into believing the “Your Life, Your Choices” Handbook was the only material Veterans Administration patients were refered to.
The VHA Handbook clearly states "other published resources" can be given to patients.
a. Content. Designated practitioners need to ensure that the patient understands the meaning of advance care planning and advance directives, including the information listed in subparagraphs 8b to 8f. For patients who already have an advance directive, practitioners also need to cover points in paragraph 8g and 8h. Possible clinical scenarios and treatment options need to be discussed with attention and sensitivity to the patient’s individual circumstances, needs, and culture. Patients may be directed to the exercises in “Your Life, Your Choices” (available on My HealtheVet at the web site http://www.myhealth.va.gov), or other published resources.
Chris Matthews shows Rep. John Campbell Barack Obama's birth certificate and asks him if President is an American citizen. Hilarity ensues. Campbell does his best to avoid the question. Matthews rightfully accuses Campbell of pandering to the "crazies" in the Republican Party. Campbell breaks down and half-heartedly admits he "believes" Obama is an American citizen.
The birther nonsense is an updated version of the Southern Strategy. Republicans attack Obama and Sonia Sotomayor. Do Republicans realize it is no longer 1968?
"You know how absurd that is Congressman. You say that you guys are more emotional about your Americanism and yet you've got a Governor talking about splitting from America. You know how absurd that sounds."
Chris Matthews, to Texas Congressman John Culberson (R).
Gov. Perry has talked about Texas seceding. Apparently, Chuck Norris is Perry's political advisor.
Howard Dean went on Hardball to discuss Barack Obama's health care proposal. There is no official bill. Tom Daschle was to be Obama's health care point man. Daschle's nomination went down in flames. Daschle failed to pay $128,000 in taxes. On Daschle's nomination: Obama admitted, "I screwed up."
Obama's campaign health care proposal lacks specifics. Obama will have the health care industry join the nineties by keeping patient files computerized. Another issue that needs to be addressed is more competition amongst pharmacal companies to lower the price of medicine. Bush promised, in 2004, to end the ban against pharmacal drugs from Canada. Matt Yglesias notes Bush never ended the ban. Wal-Mart lowered prescription drugs prices by buying in bulk. Bush made it law the federal government could not negotiate by buying in bulk.
The Medicare prescription drug law specifically bans the federal government from negotiating bulk discounts on drugs even though the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs saves 50 percent and more off the list price of drugs it purchases for veterans as a result of bulk purchasing. Therefore, a larger share of the $400 million earmarked over the next ten years for the Medicare drug program will pay for overpriced drugs and drug company profits.
What is good enough for Wal-Mart is not good enough for the free market advocate Bush.
The Obama plan sounds a lot like the John Kerry 2004 plan. Kerry pitched lowering health care costs and giving health care recipients a choice of health care provider. The Kerry plan would be similar to health care coverage members of Congress receive.
KERRY: The fact is that my health-care plan, America, is very simple. It gives you the choice. I don't force you to do anything. It's not a government plan. The government doesn't require you to do anything. You choose your doctor. You choose your plan. If you don't want to take the offer of the plan that I want to put forward, you don't have do. You can keep what you have today, keep a high deductible, keep high premiums, keep a high co-pay, keep low benefits. Here's what I do: We take over Medicaid children from the states so that every child in America is covered. And in exchange, if the states want to-they're not forced to, they can choose to-they cover individuals up to 300 percent of poverty. It's their choice.
My problem with Obama is his lack of health care policy details. Obama is urging quick action on health care. With Obama's approval ratings, the time is now. It would help if Obama actually had a health care point man.
Reactions to Bobby Jindal's State of the Union Response
Bobby Jindal gave the worst State of the Union response in recent memory. Jindal's wooden response. Jindal used hurricane Katrina as a reason the government should not get involved in emergency management. Has Jindal remember Michael Brown's and Michael Chertoff's role in Katrina? Jindal is disingenuous about Obama's stimulus bill. As a member of Congress, Jindal voted against moving FEMA out of the Department of Homeland Security.
To solve our current problems, Washington must lead. But the way to lead is not to raise taxes and not to just put more money and power in hands of Washington politicians. The way to lead is by empowering you, the American people. Because we believe that Americans can do anything.
A "making work pay" refundable tax credit championed by Obama of up to $400 per individual and $800 for couples in 2009 and 2010. It is calculated at a rate of 6.2 percent of earned income and is phased out for individuals with adjusted incomes over $75,000 and couples with incomes over $150,000.
* A one-time payment of $250 to Social Security beneficiaries, railroad retirees and veterans receiving benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs. State government retirees not eligible for Social Security would also get the $250 payment.
* Increases the earned income tax credit for low-income workers with three or more children.
* Increases eligibility for the refundable child tax credit to more low-income workers. The bill reduces the income floor to $3,000 in 2009 and 2010 from the current floor of $8,500.
* A new $2,500 tax credit for college education expenses. The credit phases out for individuals earning more than $80,000 and couples with incomes over $160,000.
An $8,000 tax credit for first-time home buyers for homes purchased between Jan. 1 and Dec. 1, 2009. The tax credit phases out for individuals earning more than $75,000 and couples earning more than $150,000.
* Temporary relief from the alternative minimum tax for millions of middle-class taxpayers who otherwise would be ensnared by the tax originally meant for the very wealthy.
FOR BUSINESSES
* Small businesses with gross receipts of up to $15 million can write off 2008 losses against five previous tax years. Current laws allows a two-year carryback of losses.
Businesses will also be allowed to immediately write off more of their investments in computers and other equipment.
* Businesses that repurchase debt at a lower amount than when it was issued will be able to defer taxes on it. Usually reduced or canceled debt is treated as income and taxed. The break applies to debt repurchased adjusted after Dec. 31, 2008, and before Jan. 1, 2011.
* A tax break on capital gains from the sale of stock held in a small business for more than five years.
* The bill raises about $7 billion in revenues by repealing a Treasury Department decision last year to liberalize rules that were intended to prevent companies in a merger from taking huge tax breaks on losses of firms they were acquiring.
Jindal invokes 9-11. That didn't work for Rudy Giuliani. Jindal spoke about cleaning up corruption. He took money from Tom Delay, Roy Blunt, Jerry Lewis, and clints of Jack Abramoff. How can anyone whom took money from indicted men and is married to a lobbyist be a role model for anti-corruption.
The media reactions to Jindal's performance are hysterical. Rachel Maddow is literally speechless.
Conservative columnist David Brooks praised Obama's speech and panned Jindal's rhetoric.
Brooks called Jindal's reponse the worst ever by a Republican. Ouch.
Of course, I'm just in that first flush of puppy love, when a journalist meets a handsome young politician who just might be The One. Soon enough, I'll undoubtedly find things about him to hate. But frankly, it's rare enough to meet one I like. True love may have to wait.
I'm speechless. I wonder if Tas or Litbrit have a response to McArdle. This is too good to pass up.
"Does the governor have a volcano in his backyard?" Royce Pollard, the mayor of Vancouver, Washington, said on Wednesday. "We have one that's very active, and it still rumbles and spits and coughs very frequently."
Jindal singled out a $140 million appropriation for the U.S. Geological Survey as an example of questionable government spending during the GOP response to President Barack Obama's address to Congress Tuesday night.
The governor, a rising Republican star, questioned why "something called 'volcano monitoring' " was included in the nearly $800 billion economic stimulus bill Obama signed earlier this month.
Perhaps Jindal should find out before mentioning volcano monitoring in his speech.
Update: Fox News pans Jindal's speech.
Update:Paul Krugman perfectly mocks the stupidity of Jindal's speech.
And leaving aside the chutzpah of casting the failure of his own party’s governance as proof that government can’t work, does he really think that the response to natural disasters like Katrina is best undertaken by uncoordinated private action? Hey, why bother having an army? Let’s just rely on self-defense by armed citizens.
The intellectual incoherence is stunning. Basically, the political philosophy of the GOP right now seems to consist of snickering at stuff that they think sounds funny. The party of ideas has become the party of Beavis and Butthead.
"Because [Chris] had a really good friend of his say to him, 'What are you going to do when you get there?' and he couldn't answer the question and he realized that, and that's why he didn't run," says Todd. "It was a childhood dream to be a senator, but he didn't know what he was going to do if he got there."
Chuck Todd, on why Chris Matthews did not run for Arlen Specter's Senate seat.
Christopher Hitchens forms at the mouth with Hillary Clinton hatred. Hardball, The Hitch debated Salon's Joan Walsh about Barack Obama's national security appointment. The Hitch could let go of his Hillary hatred.
HITCHENS: Is it left or right for Hillary Clinton to get her husband, after a huge Pakistani fundraiser-I'm speaking about something very important to us right now-a few years ago-huge Pakistani fund-raiser in New York, organized for her by Lanny Davis-she got him to change his plan to visit India and to build in a visit to Pakistan on the way, in return for a huge campaign donation. Everyone in Pakistan knows she's open for business. This is not a left-right question. It's a matter of integrity.
WALSH: I think this is ridiculous. I think...
HITCHENS: Do we want such a person as secretary of state?
WALSH: Christopher, your views...
MATTHEWS: Joan, your turn.
WALSH: Christopher, your views on the Clintons' integrity are well-known. I consider them eccentric. I believe that you cherry-pick...
(CROSSTALK)
WALSH: I'm not going to say that they are perfect, but I believe you cherry-pick the worst possible interpretation, as well as facts that aren't necessarily facts, and come up with this analysis.
Hitch has Clinton hatred aimed at Eric Holder for the Marc Rich pardon.
HITCHENS: The actual date doesn't matter once you start talking about that. an I just add, though, that I thought Obama's answer just there was incredibly cheap and evasive. I mean, he was right the first time to say this woman doesn't, in fact, have foreign policy experience, and he could have added, which also came up in the campaign, that the experience she has claimed, such as in Bosnia, was fake, was fabricated. And he could also have added that she, like his other nominee, for the attorney generalship, main qualification in politics is being a friend of Marc Rich, which I don't think has changed.
I voiced my own displeasure about the Holder nomination and Hillary's Bosnia comments. Holder was Deputy Attorney General at the Justice Department. Clinton served on the Armed Services Committee and spent debate decades meeting world leaders. They have experience. What Hitchens doesn't understand is he questions their judgement. I never argued that Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld lacked experience. My complaint was their ideas are batshit insane.
Media Matters asked why MSNBC keeps bringing Hitchens back. For the same reason people watch professional wrestling and reality television. It's show business, baby!
McCain economic advisor Douglas Holtz-Eakin defends his campaign calling Obama a socialist. Holtz-Eakin then tells Chris Matthews not to believe the exit polls. The same polls showing McCain losing the election. Notice the bottom of the screen shows Obama's lead in college electoral votes. The McCain camp can't stop lying.
Update: Holtz-Eakin is sounding like Baghdad Bob. Spin has taken over reality for these people.
"And are Republicans in Congress about to become an endangered species? Ted Stevens‘s convictions yesterday was jut the latest in the drip, drip, drip of bad news for Republicans. Just today, our own Charlie Cook moved six more House races from the lean Republican column to the toss-up column. What‘s behind it all? Two words: George W. Bush."
Chris Matthews asked John McCain if Barack Obama is elitist? It is hardly great journalism to ask McCain if his likely opponent is a snob. McCain did deftly handle the question.
McCAIN: No. But I do believe that his statements were elitist. I think the comments about America and small towns in Pennsylvania, which I guess would apply to across America, the values and the faith that they have, I think, is immutable and unshakable. I think that the fact that they like to hunt has nothing to do with their economic conditions. I think that they respect and cherish the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. And I think their faith, as I said, is something that goes on in bad times and good.
These people were the ones that went through the Great Depression and then went to war and made the world safe for democracy and came home and built a better nation than we have today. And I think that it's from the small towns and the large, but from all over America, that people have hope and optimism and faith in this nation and their future, and a real feeling of the unique nature of the United States of America. And we are a unique experiment in history. And the greatest thing about America and these young people out here today is a small -- from the -- people from the small towns in Pennsylvania want to continue to serve a cause greater than their self-interest.
Obama lectured people about how they should feel. He came across as a cranky college professor.Obama's strength has been lifting people up. He talked down to them. That doesn't hide the truth that many Pennsylvania will not vote for him simply because of the color of his skin.
"I have nothing against black people. I'm not prejudiced," says Jones, 64, a retired slaughterhouse owner and grandfather of six. "But here, we haven't had a lot of luck with black people. It's drugs, it's robberies. I hate to say it, we don't have a lot of quality black people ..."
McCain is playing into America's past. Most of the voters today didn't go through the Depression or fight in WWII. That isn't going to stop him from using a great sounding message. McCain's father and grandfather were Navy Admirals. The Maverick went to private schools as a child. The Stright Talker married into Hensley & Co., a distributor for Anheuser-Busch. Wife Cindy McCain's father helped financed McCain's first campaign. That is a fairly elitist resume.
If there is anything white people hat is being called out as racists. They prefer getting praise for a war they did not fight and a Depression they did not endure. They will say they are not racist and then not vote for a candidate because of his race. What are the chances of Chris Matthews bring this up on the so-called Hardball?
Charlie Crist appeared on Hardball to pitch for a national catastrophe fund. My favorite moment was when Chris Matthews asked Crist if Rudy Giuliani was pandering to Florida voter by backing a national cat fund. Crist said he didn't think so. I'm still laughing at Crist's response.
A national cat fund will never get pass the House. States less at risk don't want to pay and there is not enough money in the current budget for funding.
Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council supports Mike Huckabee. Club For Growth's Pat Toomey is backing Rudy Giuliani. They proceed to tell Chris Matthews that the other guy's candidate is a liberal. Hilarity ensues.
Chris Matthews explains why Barack Obama polled better than Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire. New Hampshire voters are racists whom can't be honest to voters.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: What the hell happened in New Hampshire?
CHRIS MATTHEWS: You remember Tonto from the Lone Ranger?
SCARBOROUGH: Yeah.
MATTHEWS: Me think paleface speak with forked tongue. You hear me? Forked tongue....
SCARBOROUGH: Yeah.
MATTHEWS: You hear me? Forked tongue.
Matthews makes his point that voters are racist by using a racist stereotype. Way to go, Chris.
Matthews: Tell the pollster what he wants to hear because the politically correct voice goes, "Excuse me sir or madam." would you have any problem voting for an African-American? (Sarcasticly) Of course not. You get a guy with an Archie Bunker voice, "What do you think of this guy Barack or whatever his name was," and you get an honest answer.
Any pundit that disgracefully uses Indian and Archie Bunker stereotypes should not be lecturing others on racism. It wouldn't surprise me if voters lied to pollsters to be politically correct. The central issue is Matthews is too clueless to realize he is wearing his prejudices on his sleeve.
Chris Matthews fawns over John McCain, after the less-than-straight talker's New Hampshire victory.
MATTHEWS: Good evening. I'm Chris Matthews. Welcome to Hardball, tonight from NBC News headquarters in New York. This is the night, the night that could be the beginning of the end of a front-runner's presidential candidacy, a night that could turn a movement -- or turn a moment, rather, into a movement, a night when a maverick Republican could rise from the ashes to claim victory, a night when conventional wisdom crumbles and change becomes the touchstone for this country. Tonight is the night of the New Hampshire primary.
Matthews is a card carrying member of the liberal media. I'm sure he will lavish greater praise on Hillary Clinton.
Matthews: I think the Hillary appeal has always been somewhat about her mix of toughness ans ympathy for her.
Let's not forget and I'll be brutal. The reason she's a U.S. Senator, the reason she's a candidate for President, the reason she may be a front-runner, is her husband messed around. That's how she got to be Senator from New York. We keep forgetting it. She didn't win it on the merits. She won because everybody felt "My god, this woman stood up under humilation..."
Curse the liberal media for making a Democrat look better!
Cue video.
Update:Matthews fired off this 2005 missive at Hillary. Matthews described Clinton as "witchy" for criticizing President Bush's Homeland Security spending priorities.
MATTHEWS: I hate to say this. I'm not going to hate to say it. It's a fact. You [Clinton] look more witchy when you're doing it like this.
