Health-law funding. Voting 56-42, the Senate failed to reach 60 votes for advancing a Democratic-sponsored plan for easing the new health law's Form 1099 filing requirement (HR 5297, above).As noted here, this was sponsored by Dem Bill “Spaceman” Nelson of Florida after another amendment on this from Repug Mike Johanns of Nebraska was pulled; neither reached the magical “60 votes needed for passage” threshold.
This plan would exempt companies with 25 or fewer employees from the requirement, raise the filing threshold from $600 to $5,000 per vendor, and exempt transactions paid by credit and debit cards.
A yes vote backed the Democratic amendment.
Voting yes: Carper, Casey, Kaufman, Lautenberg, Menendez, and Specter.
Now I would ask that we step into the “wayback” machine and set it for, say, 2005. If a similar amendment had first been sponsored by a Dem but then pulled by the Repug House leadership in favor of their own amendment, and if the Repug amendment had been voted down, imagine the outcry about how the Democrats supposedly don’t support small business and are trying to create onerous reporting requirements or whatever.
Instead, what do we hear from the Dems and Harry Reid in response to the Repugs torpedoing them yet again on legislation (with the help of the execrable soon-to-be-former Senator Blanche Lincoln, along with the only-slightly-better Mary Landrieu and Mark Begich, who I thought knew better)?
I think you know the answer at this point as well as I do.
If Ronald Reagan was the Dwight Eisenhower of the “conservative revolution,” then Jack Kemp was the George Patton. The former Congressman, cabinet secretary and vice presidential nominee was the one who translated Reagan’s vision to legislative success by serving as the chief author of the Reagan tax cuts and the leading congressional champion for supply side economic principles.. Kemp knew how to both win with a broad-base of support and govern as a principled conservative.Being a filthy, unkempt liberal blogger, I always thought “principled conservative” was an oxymoron :-).
And as noted here, I also always thought Kemp got more than a little bit of a pass back in the day by tossing the idea out there every so often of a block grant for the poorer communities of this country, never mind the strings that usually came attached to such a proposal (I guess the news flash would be that some conservatives even realized that poor people existed at all).
As I also pointed out on the occasion of Kemp’s passing…
Kemp criticized the Kerry/Edwards presidential campaign in 2004 for trying to roll back those idiotic estate tax cuts (gee, wonder how much better off we would’ve been if more people had listened to the two Dems?). Kemp got a pass from our corporate media cousins because he used to play football, and I think he used his formidable intellect to incorporate his experience with primarily African-American players to learn how to develop a language that “talked the talk” on housing and other “hot button” economic issues impacting the poor, though Kemp never “walked the walk” to back up his rosy rhetoric (being a tried and true Reaganite – and a movement conservative at heart, I would argue – he could never comprehend government by itself as an answer to anything).So sure, conservatives, you go ahead and “channel” Jack Kemp, or whatever (appropriate to profess admiration for one of the authors of what eventually became our current misery).
And if Kemp was bad on domestic policy, he was worse on foreign policy; as Think Progress tells us here, Kemp said Dems Hillary Clinton and John Kerry were “sad, hypocritical and pathetic” for supporting Ned Lamont in his successful Democratic senatorial primary bid in Connecticut in 2006.
So Kemp criticized the Dems for supporting an anti-Iraq war candidate, even though Kemp escaped military service from a “knee problem” which still did not bar him from playing for eight years in the National Football League, as noted here. Is that about right?
Oh, and Kemp (who was called “unmanageable” as a candidate because he ignored timers on his speeches, refused to call contributors, and refused to practice for debates, as noted here) once called for the firing of Reagan Secretary of State George Shultz who didn’t properly support the Strategic Defense Initiative as well as “freedom fighters” in Nicaragua and Afghanistan as far as Kemp was concerned (all of which represented stupendous wastes of resources by this country, to say nothing of sewing the seeds of our present misery, particularly in Afghanistan).
And just for good measure, Kemp claimed here that Hillary Clinton and President Obama wanted to “halt trade with Mexico” (please).
We've been told there are so-called moderate Muslims who deplore terrorism and that Islam has been hijacked by extremists.(And by the way, there’s even an artist’s rendering of what a “mosque mouse” would look like – didn’t they have a hit called “Dashboard” or something? :-).
If there are in fact moderate Muslims, they have been quiet as mosque mice regarding their views.
Meanwhile, in the world of reality, this tells us the following…
LOS ANGELES, Sept. 11 (Xinhua) -- Various government agencies, religious and civilian organizations across Southern California held a number of vigils, prayers and services on Saturday to mark the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.See you later, Ted.
Two vigils were held in Los Angeles, one by the Islamic Center of Southern California, and the other by various groups demanding religious freedom.
At the annual event held at the Islamic Center of Southern California, participants vowed to defend American values of religious freedom and equal rights for all.
The event drew religious leaders from Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist faiths as a reflection of America itself, said Mariam Rasheed, one of the event's organizers.
"I hope we can use the memory of 9/11 and remain steadfast against those who have lost sight of our religious freedoms that were so fundamental to our nation's founders and are core to our nation's future," Rasheed said.
In case you've missed a few issues of the Archie comic book over the years, eternal teens Archie and Reggie and Veronica and Betty apparently have been held back for decades now. Archie still has the red tic-tac-toe hair. Betty's still blond, Veronica brunet and Reggie is still, well, Reggie.A bit of a “spoiler alert” – Archie gets the help of President Obama to run for office, while Reggie counters with a certain half-term, moose-hunting former governor of Alaska.
In the upcoming December issue, Archie and Reggie are locked in a tough class president race.
And as Malcolm communicates this earth-shattering information, he tells us this…
…if you promise not to tell anyone else on the school bus, Veronica, apparently still clueless and unaware of President Barack Obama's failing election endorsement record the last year or so, stages a photograph to make it look like the liberal Democrat is endorsing Archie.Let’s cut to the chase with Malcolm and read the following (here)…
And in a clever Rovian kind of way, Reggie counters by obtaining the grassroots common-sense backing of conservative Sarah Palin, who's done so much better in the real political endorsing game this year.
Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin may still be making news headlines, but the U.S. electorate has news for her. If the 2012 presidential election were held today and she were the Republican candidate, Palin would not defeat President Barack Obama. In fact, the president would win the election by a considerable margin.And if somehow that changes, I’m sure Malcolm will be the first to let us know.
However, he should be congratulated on perhaps finding his true journalistic niche; telling us the details of comic books, I think, meets his approximate level of expertise.
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