Somebody Get The Giant Hook

Past national chairmen of political parties have gone on to be longtime Senators, Governors, even Presidents. This Michael Steele really is single-handedly destroying that legacy.



Steve Inskeep is not exactly the toughest interviewer in the world, and even he bats him around. My favorite part:

INSKEEP: Here's another thing that I'm trying to figure out: Within a couple of paragraphs of writing we need to protect Medicare, you write that you oppose President Obama's, quote, plan for a government-run health care system.

Mr. STEELE: Mm-hmm.

INSKEEP: Now you're a veteran public policy official. You're aware that Medicare is a government-run health care program.

Mr. STEELE: Yeah, look how it's run. And that's my point. Take Medicare and make it writ large across the country, because here we're now - how many times have we been to the precipice of bankruptcy for a government-run health care program?

INSKEEP: It sounds like you don't like Medicare very much at all...

Mr. STEELE: No, I'm not saying that. No, Medicare...

INSKEEP: ...but you write in this op-ed that you want to protect Medicare because it's politically popular. People like Medicare.

Mr. STEELE: No, no, no, no, no. Please, don't...

INSKEEP: That's why you're writing to protect Medicare.

I think the trained dolphins at Sea World could have pulled off those backflips better.

I know I've made this statement before, but in 2005 every news outlet in America told us that Howard Dean was a ticking time bomb, that he had to watch his mouth or it would get the Democratic Party into trouble and he would destroy it utterly.

Consider the alternative.

1/2 Percent Bump in GDP Just Like 2,000 People Dying In A Flood

National Public Radio gets grants from the federal government, so keep in mind that your tax dollars pay the salary of Mara Liasson:

Last night, Fox News aired a clip of a woman at a Philadelphia town hall meeting over the weekend berating Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) about health care reform. “What I see is a bureaucratic nightmare, senator. … And you want us to believe that a government that can’t even run a Cash for Clunkers program is going to run one-seventh of our U.S. economy,” the woman complained. “I think that there is anger out there, real anger,” said NPR’s Mara Liasson, responding to the clip. She then called the woman’s concern “legitimate” and compared the Cash for Clunkers program to Hurricane Katrina:

LIASSON: I thought that woman actually asked a pretty legitimate question — especially Cash for Clunkers is like a mini- Katrina here. I mean it’s not good to start a program and not be able to execute it.

Ahem.

The government did start a program in Cash for Clunkers, and they DID execute it, you magnificent fool. They executed it so well that traffic at dealers shot through the roofs and 250,000 eligible cars were sold in a week. They executed it so well that Congress will appropriate more money for it. They executed it so well that $5 billion dollars got circulated through the economy with a $1 billion dollar investment. They executed it so well that carbuyers saw a 69% increase in their fuel efficiency.

And, as long as you're comparing it to Katrina, they executed it so well that NOBODY DIED.

If Cash for Clunkers is a mini-Katrina, Social Security is a mini-9/11. Why does Mara Liasson hate Social Security and our brave men and women who died in a terrorist attack? Sadly, that logic is better than what Liasson used in her original statement.

Let NPR know what you think about this. Liasson made the comment on Fox News, but NPR is the bigger pressure point.

Name That Lobbyist

This is a heck of an interesting project by NPR - during the markup of the health care reform bill in the Senate on June 17, one of their photographers snapped a picture of everyone in the audience. 99.9% of the time the cameras point in the other direction, at the lawmakers. This one points in arguably the right direction, at the lobbyists and stakeholders who will be just as responsible, if not more so, for the final shape of the bill. And they've asked people to help them identify the faces in the picture. So far there are a number of named lobbyists whose firms have earned millions from health care industry clients over the past year.

If we have any Washingtonian readers, help NPR ferret out these names by emailing to dollarpolitics-at-npr-dot-org or on the ubiquitous Twitter @DollarPolitics. We have an odd system in this country where the people who often write our bills are anonymous while the people who take their orders are well-known. We should maybe reverse that process and add some accountability into the mix at the same time.

The Tom DeLay Media Blitz

Tom DeLay is currently under indictment in Texas. Most people under indictment decline to talk to the media. This one's on a book tour. The question is, why would the media enable it?

DeLay wrote a book (OK, his ghostwriter wrote a book for him), "No Retreat, No Surrender" (is Bruce Springsteen looking to sue?), that will personally enrich him as he pays mounting legal bills to try and keep himself out of jail. In the past two days, DeLay has appeared on Meet The Press, NPR's Morning Edition, and the Today Show, commenting on the issues of the day like the US Attorney scandal, Iraq, and more, all the while promoting his book. In fact, at the end of Sunday's show, Tim Russert HELD UP HIS BOOK and mentioned it by name, will a little back and forth. It's not unusual to have authors on the Sunday shows promoting their product, but is it all that normal for Tim Russert, at the end of a policy discussion with four people, to completely switch gears and start promoting a book? Did Tom Andrews get a chance to promote his upcoming projects? Joe Sestak? Richard Perle? It was highly unusual to me.

The book is certainly controversial and provocative, with DeLay stepping on everyone in government who ever come in contact with him.

[Gingrich was an] ineffective Speaker. He knew nothing about running meetings and nothing about driving an agenda.

Nearly every other day he had a new agenda, a new direction he wanted us to take. It was impossible to follow him.

[The Republican] leadership was in no moral shape to press [for Clinton’s impeachment].

It is now public knowledge that Newt Gingrich was having an affair with a staffer during the entire impeachment crisis. Clearly, men with such secrets are not likely to sound a high moral tone at a moment of national crisis.

Incidentally, those quotes come from the book, out of a Robert Novak column in yet another example of book promotion for DeLay.

Why are all of these supposedly respectable outlets giving valuable air time to Tom DeLay while he is under indictment? Why are they indirectly funding his legal defense? And who put out the book in the first place?

Sentinel HC is the publisher of "No Retreat, No Surrender." They are a right-wing publishing house who, two years ago, put out the factually challenged "The Truth About Hillary" by Edward Klein, a book rife with inaccuracies and lies. Here are some of their other titles. It's a hit list of maybe the biggest dolts in the wingnut-welfare chain:

A Matter of Character : Inside the White House of George W. Bush
Ronald Kessler: Hardcover: Sentinel HC
George W. Bush is a direct and decisive man who is much nicer to his Secret Service agents than Bill Clinton was, according to author Ronald Kessler...

America's Victories: Why the U.S. Wins Wars and Will Win the War on Terror
Larry Schweikart: Hardcover: Sentinel HC
From the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror, the American military has consistently beaten the odds. It's not luck.

Bringing the Jobs Home : How the Left Created the Outsourcing Crisis--and How We CanFix It
Todd G. Buchholz: Hardcover: Sentinel HC

Do-Gooders: How Liberals Hurt Those They Claim to Help (and the Rest of Us)
Mona Charen: Hardcover: Sentinel HC
Charen focuses on the facts to reveal exactly why liberals are wrong-and how their proposals hurt the very people they claim to be fighting for...

Leaving the Left: Moments in the News That Made Me Ashamed to Be a Liberal
Keith Thompson: Hardcover: Sentinel HC
One man's personal story of his conversion from lockstep liberal to free-thinking conservative

New Glory : Expanding America's Global Supremacy
Ralph Peters: Hardcover: Sentinel HC
Since World War II, Americans have been the world’s true revolutionaries, expanding the frontiers of human liberty by fighting and winning ...

The Arrogance of the French : Why They Can't Stand Us--and Why the Feeling Is Mutual
Richard Chesnoff: Hardcover: Sentinel HC
Imagine the fun Mark Twain would have had with France’s undeclared war on America...

The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought
John Gibson: Hardcover: Sentinel HC
Yes, Virginia, there is a war on Christmas...

Women Who Make the World Worse: and How Their Radical Feminist Assault Is Ruining Our Schools, Families, Military, and Sports
Kate O'Beirne: Hardcover: Sentinel HC
A top conservative writer explores the feminist assault on our families, schools, workplaces, and military

Now, only a publishing house who prints this kind of piffle would then let Tom DeLay's ghostwriter pen a book. And they have every right to do so.

I'm just wondering why NBC and NPR feel the need to turn over their shows to what amounts to a fundraiser for a court case. And I hope Ronnie Earle and prosecutors in Texas have their TiVos handy, as anything he says can and ought to be used against him.