Month: September 2013

Tea Party Cruz-missile crashes and burns

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Ass-hatTo paraphrase Shakespeare, Ted "Calgary" Cruz "struts and frets his hours upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." – Macbeth Act 5, scene 5, 19–28. After 21 hours, Sen. Cruz ends anti-Obamacare speech.

Calgary accomplished nothing but his own self-aggrandizement among the GOP crazy base, and complicating matters for the GOP House leadership, whom he will set up to blame for his own hair-brained scheme.

The Tea Party Cruz-missile crashed and burned today, failing to stop the U.S. Senate from moving forward on a Continuing Resolution to keep the government open and funding "ObamaCare." Senate votes to proceed with spending bill:

The Senate moved Wednesday to take up a House-passed temporary
spending bill that defunds President Obama’s health-care law, despite
Sen. Ted Cruz’s more than 21-hour attempt to delay the legislation.

Shortly after 1 p.m., the funding bill passed its first
procedural hurdle in the Senate, which voted unanimously to invoke
cloture on a motion to proceed on the House’s continuing resolution. The
Senate now is scheduled to hold up to 30 hours of debate on the funding
bill.

[Update: The vote was 100 to 0. Calgary voted
for cloture after saying he'd vote against cloture and urging his
colleagues to do the same. What a fraud!]

* * *

The Senate then essentially choked off the first filibuster hurdle on
its own version of the funding bill, marking the first step toward
allowing Democrats to include funding for the health-care law that had
previously been stripped out by the House.

Phoenix CD 8: Diaz Bails From Stewart Sleaze

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Posted by Bob Lord

[UPDATE: Late yesterday, the Stewart campaign blasted an email denouncing as "despicable" the recent mailer as likening Kate Gallego to Paula Deen. I only learned of that email after this post went up earlier today. Had I been aware of the email at the time of posting, it certainly would have been taken into account. In any event, Stewart's denouncement of the recent mailer is commendable. It represents the way a candidate should respond in this situation. In the email, Pastor Stewart also seemed to walk back the allegations that Gallego was using her husband's last name to fool the voters. although the email was a bit cryptic on that point. Should the Stewart campaign speak more directly on this last point, I will report further. Obviously, a direct apology would do a lot for Pastor Stewart's image, at least in my view.]

When Warren Stewart's supporters launched unethical attacks against his opponents during the primary campaign, I expected him to distance himself from those attacks and keep his supporters in line. After all, he's a member of the clergy. Moral character is supposed to be what he's all about. When Stewart failed to speak up, I called him out for his failure, but I still assumed it was more likely that it was his general consultant, Mario Diaz, not Stewart himself, who was masterminding the attacks and advising Stewart not to condemn them.

Given that Diaz stated repeatedly that he "stood by" Mary Rose Wilcox and Stewart, it was not an unfair assumption to make. Nonetheless, it now appears the attacks were more Stewart's idea than Diaz's. 

Shortly after the Phoenix City Council election a month ago, Diaz announced that he and Stewart had parted ways and he would not be running the show for Stewart in the November runoff. In a tweet, Diaz stated:

 I and my firm were honored to have represented @Stewart4phx for the primary election. Others are in charge now. Good luck to both candidates. 

Good luck to both candidates? Wow. Those are code words for "I don't have a dog in this fight. Whichever candidate wins, I'm okay with it." And when the guy saying them ran Warren Stewart's campaign through the primary, he's hinting that he's rooting for Kate Gallego. 

And good for Diaz. Very shortly after Diaz bailed, an independent expenditure group supporting Stewart sent an absolutely despicable mailer to CD8 residents asking "What do Paula Deen and Kate Gallego have in common?" The answer: "They both want to make money off minorities."

Apparently, the person behind the sleaze was not Diaz. 

Steve Farley Tele-Town Hall tonight on the Health Insurance Marketplace

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Facebook message from Senator Steve Farley (D-LD9):

On October 1, the new healthcare exchanges will arrive. If you are currently buying your health insurance on the open market, or are a current HealthCare Group member, or would like to get insured but previously was not able to find an affordable plan due to your self-employed status or your employer not offering benefits, the exchanges will help you find a good plan at reasonable cost, and likely save you real money as it increases your peace of mind.

State Senator Steve Farley is convening a Tele-Town Hall [Wednesday night] for all of you to get your health insurance questions answered. His special guests will be Herb Schultz, the Region IX Director for the Federal Department of Health and Human Services, who will tell you all you need to know about how the exchanges work and how you can put them to work for you, and Jennifer Carusetta who works at AHCCCS and she is helping with the transition from HCG to the exchanges, so she can help HCG members and also give information on where Medicaid-eligible people fit in and what happens if their income bounces them out from time to time.

Tea-Publicans reject the fundamental norms of democracy

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Steve Benen had an excellent post last week on the norms of American governance, and how the economic terrorists in the Tea-Publican Party have rejected these fundamental norms. Elections used to have consequences:

It may seem like ages ago, but about 10 months ago, the United States
held national elections. One party, the Republican Party, ran on a
fairly specific platform, near the top of which was a promise to destroy
the Affordable Care Act in its entirety. Their rivals, the Democratic
Party, also had a platform, which included preservation of the
Affordable Care Act.

The "American people" were asked to make a choice. And they did.

At the presidential level, the Democratic candidate won with relative ease, and became only the sixth
presidential candidate in American history to win 51% of the popular
vote twice. In the U.S. Senate, Democrats not only held their majority
for the fourth consecutive election cycle, they also unexpectedly added
seats. In the U.S. House, Democratic candidates collectively won 1.4 million more votes than Republican candidates.

These
are not minor details. We have a constitutional system of government
and free national elections in which we, the people, help set a course
for our country. GOP candidate made their case, lost, and forfeited
their claims to a popular mandate.

Sen. Jeff Flake issues a ransom note in the The Arizona Republic(an)

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

A new New York Times/CBS News poll today finds that:

* Eighty percent of Americans, including 83 percent of independents and 75 percent of Republicans, say threatening a government shutdown is not an acceptable way to negotiate.

* Americans say overwhelmingly that Republicans are not trying to work with Obama by 70-23. By contrast, 51 percent say Obama is trying to work with Republicans.

Which is to say that the Tea-Publican economic terrorism act of taking America hostage to extort concessions from the Democrats to defund "ObamaCare" and to give them a grab bag of their wish list items in exchange for not destroying the American economy is opposed by 80 percent of Americans, who don’t see this as a fundamentally acceptable way of governing.

And yet . . . this morning Sen. Jeff Flake issued a ransom note to the American people in the The Arizona Republic(an). Delay 'Obamacare' to kill it:

[This] is why we have introduced legislation that would delay all
Obamacare provisions and taxes for one year. H.R. 2809 and S. 1490 seek
to postpone all provisions of the Affordable Care Act taking effect on
Jan. 1, 2014 or later by one year from the date of enactment.

Delaying Obamacare is a necessary step in our efforts to get this law
off the books and replace it with real health-care solutions that work
for American families and businesses. It builds on efforts already taken
by the House and Senate to delay both the individual and employer
mandates. In fairness to American taxpayers, the best thing we can do
right now is to implement a one-year delay so we can continue to chip
away at this disastrous law.