When will Congressman Guy Reschenthaler Correct The Record? Will he?

Yesterday the representative from Pennsylvania's 14th Congressional District tweeted a bit of misinformation:

Democrats’ latest power grab:

Biden and @AOC want to control what you eat. pic.twitter.com/CJxfGkaOwn

— Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (@GReschenthaler) April 26, 2021

Note the time stamp: April 26 at 12:26pm

By that point the story had already been debunked by:

•  The Washington Post:
  
  But Biden’s plan doesn’t include any call to limit meat-eating. Instead, conservative ire was sparked by a Daily Mail article that baselessly speculated about measures that could accomplish Biden’s goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030.
  
  
• Snopes:
  
  Biden announced that his administration would seek to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030. The Daily Mail ran a story that asserted, in entirely theoretical terms, that the policy "could" require Americans to reduce their meat consumption by 90%. Politicians like Rep. Lauren Boebert retweeted the Daily Mail's speculation as fact.
  
  
• Newsweek:
  

  Biden has not publicly announced plans to limit the consumption of meat in the U.S., at last week's summit or otherwise. Newsweek has contacted the White House for comment.

  The claims made on Twitter appear to have originated from an article published by right-leaning British newspaper The Daily Mail that presented hypothetical ways that the U.S. could meet Biden's target of cutting emissions by 2030 when compared with 2005 levels.

  Among the hypothetical changes was cutting 90 percent of red meat of our the diet to 4 pounds a year.

All these posted online and still Rep Reschenthaler misinformed his constituency with beef BS.

And now it turns out that Fox News has even corrected the record:

“The data was accurate but a graphic and a script incorrectly implied that it was part of Biden's plan for dealing with climate change,” anchor John Roberts said Monday afternoon of the show's coverage of the fake Biden meat ban. “That is not the case." pic.twitter.com/vCUgW2Obbx

— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) April 26, 2021

So here's my question: When will Guy Reschenthaler?

Today's The Day

From the AP:

Presidential electors are meeting across the United States on Monday to formally choose Joe Biden as the nation’s next president.

Monday is the day set by law for the meeting of the Electoral College. In reality, electors meet in all 50 states and the District of Columbia to cast their ballots. The results will be sent to Washington and tallied in a Jan. 6 joint session of Congress over which Vice President Mike Pence will preside.

The electors’ votes have drawn more attention than usual this year because President Donald Trump has refused to concede the election and continued to make baseless allegations of fraud.

Locally, Representative Mike Kelly and (not-Representative Sean Parnell) have also refused to accept reality:

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Mr. Kelly’s emergency appeal to void the results of the Nov. 3 election in a one-sentence decision with no noted dissents from the court, which holds a 6-3 conservative majority after three justices were appointed by Mr. Trump.

Mr. Kelly’s case argues that an October 2019 state law that allowed “no-excuse” voting by mail, required an amendment to the Pennsylvania Constitution. The suit sought to toss out some 2.6 million ballots cast by Pennsylvanians who requested a ballot without a reason, which would hand Mr. Trump the state’s electors.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court rejected the case, reasoning that the plaintiffs should have challenged the law’s constitutionality long before votes had been cast. 

In the interview, Mr. Kelly insisted that the fight was not over. And on Saturday, he demonstrated that: A news release from his office said he again had gone to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the justices to consider the constitutionality of Pennsylvania’s Act 77 “mail-in voting scheme.”

Good luck with that, Congressman Mike (and Not-Congressman Sean). 

If I may be so bold, it might be better for your future credibility for you to pull up your big boy pants accept your respective defeats as it's simply the honorable thing to do. 

You remember what "honorable" felt like, right?

Anyway, the public can track the votes at:

• The Washington Post

And if you're still among teh crazies who think the whole thing was stolen, you might want to read this. 

Suck it up and face reality. Today's the day the electors fulfill their constitutional duty and vote to make it official: Joe Biden will be the next President of the United States of America.

Wendy Bell, Yesterday. Still Unhinged From Reality

Wendy Bell continued with another ranting living room live broadcasts yesterday, (her living room being her last remaining venue after being fired from both TV and Radio for being, well, Wendy Bell).

You can see the Ireland Contracting logo on her BS/bullshit board. It includes their phone number. Do you see it? Wendy put it there. It's 1 800 NEW ROOF. Now, I am sure they do fine roofing work but do they know that they're sponsoring batshit crazy Wendy Bell? I am sure they do so there's no need to call them via the toll free number on Wendy's bullshit board to remind them that Wendy Bell is batshit crazy and they they sponsor her. That they're profiting off of her batshit bullshit. Nope. No need to do that at all.

Anyway. Wendy, after spouting some stats showing Trump's increases in the number of people who voted for him in 2020 compared to 2016 asks, about 9 minutes in:

But we're supposed to "suck it up" and believe that somehow Joe Biden, who couldn't pack his own lunch let alone a high school gymnasium with people, we're told that he, who did not campaign at all, who spent the majority of the summer and the fall in his basement "being safe" [irony airquotes here], we're told that he beat Donald Trump?

Yes, Wendy. You're told that because it's the truth.

Via the AP:

The popular vote

• Biden (the winner) 79,887,852
• Trump (the loser) 73,815,488

That's a difference of 6,072,488 votes, Wendy.

The electoral vote

• Biden (the winner) 306
• Trump (the loser) 232 

That's a difference of 74 electoral votes, Wendy. BTW, this is the exact same spread as last go-round. And of that spread (306-232) Trump said it was a "landslide." So this must be a landslide too, right??

The popular vote in Pennsylvania:

• Biden (the winner) 3,459,246
• Trump (the loser) 3,378,197
  

That's a difference of 81,049

That's a lot of votes Wendy, right? 

There's no evidence of voter fraud, Wendy. If there were then Trump's own lawyers would be presenting it in court. But they're not. So there isn't any.

How can you not see this?

Biden won, Wendy. Trump lost. By a lot.

Suck it up.

Some More Election Result Numbers (PA 2020 vs MI, PA, WI 2016)

In Pennsylvania, according to the AP:

Biden: 3,445,548 votes

Trump: 3,363,951 votes

That's a difference of 81,597 in Pennsylvania.

Last go around (2016) three states from the so-called "blue wall" (Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) voted for Trump over Clinton by these differences:

Michigan: 10,704 more votes for Trump

Pennsylvania: 44,292 more votes for Trump

Wisconsin: 22,748 more votes for Trump

That's a combined tally of 77,744.

So what do we have here?

So far Biden has won more votes in Pennsylvania, a must-get "pivot point" state, than Trump won in those three states combined.

This was not a close election, folks.

And it's time for Trump to concede.

Follow-Up On Those Current Numbers From Last Week (Biden, Lamb, Trump, Parnell)

This is to update the numbers I posted last week. 

Covid deaths US: 244,810 (or about 74.59 per 100,000) 

Covid deaths Canada: 10,953 (or about 29.13 per 100,000)

Had the good ole US of A treated the virus as effectively as Canada, we'd be looking at about 95,604 Covid deaths here in The States instead of 244,810. Had we treated the virus as effectively as Canada, about 149,000 US Citizens would still be alive. We have to assume that all those 149,000 (or so) deaths were therefore preventable were it not for the incompetence and corruption of Donald Trump.

"It is what it is." said Trump.

Fuck Donald Trump. When will he be indicted for mass murder? Negligent homicide?

On to the election results. From the AP:

Current votes for Joe Biden: 77,170,769 

Current votes for Donald Trump:72,057,511

The AP is updating its numbers and they look even worse for Donald Trump. This was not a close election. No amount of stalling, denying or frivolous lawsuiting will change that.

Joe Biden is currently 5,637,779 votes ahead of Donald Trump.  (November 12, it was 5,113,258).

Fuck Donald Trump. It's time for him to concede.

Locally, the numbers are on a similar track in PA. From the AP:

Current votes for Joe Biden in PA: 3,423,976 (Nov 12 it was 3,386,380)

Current votes for Donald Trump in PA: 3,354,836 (Nov 12, it was 3,333,161)

Joe Biden is currently 69,140  votes ahead of Donald Trump (Nov 12, it was 53,219).

Fuck Donald Trump. It's time for him to concede.

And, if there is any justice in the world, Trump should be perp-walked out of DC immediately after Biden's inauguration. Perhaps to NYC to face tax-evasion charges. Perhaps to The Hague to be charged with crimes against humanity.

A side note, GOP candidate for PA-17 has yet to concede the Lamb-Parnell race. Here are the AP's numbers:

Conor Lamb: 221,112 (Nov 12, it was 218,185)

Sean Parnell: 211,256 (Nov 12, it was 208,074)

Conor Lamb is currently 13,038 votes ahead of Sean Parnell (Nov 12, it was 10,011).

Sean, it's time for you to concede. Where are you going to find those 13k votes? I'd DM this question to you via twitter but you've blocked me from your twitter feed. Why did you do that, by the way? You blocked me after I tweeted that question when you were "only" about 10,000 votes behind.

It's Friday, So Wendy Bell's Looking To Undermine PA's Election Credibility. (Spoilers: She's Wrong. Again.)

On her Facebook page Wendy Bell posted this:

In a February 2019 audit of Pennsylvania elections boards, Auditor General Eugene DePasquale found officials in 18 of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties reported accepting gifts, meals or trips from firms competing to sell new voting machines to counties ahead of the 2020 election.

 

Later that year in December, DePasquale also released the results of a sweeping audit of Pennsylvania's registry of electors, examining the voter registrations of more than 8 million registered voters in the state.

 

The results were staggering.

 

DePasquale found:

-24,408 cases where the same driver’s license number was listed in more than one voter record

-13,913 potential duplicate birth certificates

-6,876 potential date of birth inaccuracies

-2,230 cases in which voters were born AFTER they registered to vote, and

-2,991 records of potentially deceased voters, including 1800 people over age 110.

Two issues here. The February 2019 reporting on those gifts and then the December 2019 report on the voter records.

Presumably, Wendy wants her audience to infer large-scale voter fraud going on and is using the above to prove it. Guess what? It doesn't.

But let's look at the gifts, first. From the Auditor General's statement:

Auditor General Eugene DePasquale today said officials in 18 of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties reported accepting gifts, meals or trips from firms competing to sell new voting machines to counties ahead of the 2020 election.

So far, so good. But which counties were they? And how did they vote in the 2020 election?

• Berks County - Went to Trump by about 16,000 votes.
  
• Bucks County - Went to Biden by about 16,000 votes.
• Butler County - Went to Trump by about 33,000 votes.
• Cambria County - Went to Trump by about 27,000 votes.
  
• Cameron County - Went to Trump by about 1,100 votes.
• Clearfield County - Went to Trump by about 29,000 votes.
• Clinton County - Went to Trump by about 36,000 votes.
• Delaware County - Went to Biden by about 88,000 votes.
• Elk County - Went to Trump by about 8,000 votes.
  
• Forest County - Went to Trump by about 1,100 votes.
• Lycoming County - Went to Trump by about 25,000 votes.
• Luzerne County - Went to Trump by about 22,000 votes.
• Northumberland County - Went to Trump by about 16,000 votes.
• Potter County - Went to Trump by about 1,500 votes.
• Warren County - Went to Trump by about 8,000 votes.
• Washington County - Went to Trump by about 27,000 votes.
• Westmoreland County - Went to Trump by about 57,000 votes.
• York County - Went to Trump by about 58,000 votes.

So is Wendy Bell really thinking that by pointing out the gifts made to the election officials in the above 18 counties (where 17 of them went overwhelmingly to Trump), she's effectively undermining the credibility of the Biden win?

That's just crazy. Right?

Then there's the December 2019 report.

For all of the details Wendy includes, she leaves one part out. I'll let Todd Defeo of the conservative news source, The Center Square summarize:

An audit of the state’s voter registration system uncovered “potentially bad data and sloppy record-keeping,” but stopped short of saying the results revealed any inappropriate voting. [Emphasis added.]

Huh. So both pieces of info that Wendy Bell supplied as evidence to question the credibility of President-Elect Biden's win over Donald Trump do nothing to actually support her conclusion.

Did she even bother to do the research on this?

Any comments, Wendy?

Wendy Bell's Subtle Cruelty - And More Wingnut Spin.

This morning, Wendy Bell posted this on her Facebook page:

It's linked to this tweet from right-wing commentator Dan Bongino.

The right wing thinks that Biden's just admitted to the existence of an Obama era "Voter Fraud Organization." OMG! Trump should definitely order Special Agents Fox and Mulder to look into that right away! I am sure they'll find that it was (at least partially funded) by George Soros.

I've already complimented Wendy (on her FB page) for mocking Biden's stutter (and by "complimented" I mean "sarcastically criticized").

Let's see if we can unweave what's going on. The Daily Wire has a transcript of Biden's sentence:

Secondly, we’re in a situation where we have put together, and you guys did it for President Obama’s administration before this, we have put together, I think, the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics.

Secondly? Huh?

Biden was evidently responding to this question from Dan Pfeiffer:

[W]hat’s your message to the folks who have not yet voted or do not yet have a plan to vote?

His "First" part starts this way:

But one of the things that I think is most important is those who haven’t voted yet. First of all, go to iwillvote.com to make a plan exactly how you’re going to vote, where you’re going to vote, when you’re going to vote. Because it can get complicated. Because the Republicans are doing everything they can to make it harder for people to vote—particularly people of color to vote. So go to iwillvote.com.

That's what Biden says immediately prior to the "Secondly" part of his answer. So let's move on. I shifted the punctuation a bit for clarity:

Secondly, we’re in a situation where we have put together (and you guys did it for President Obama’s administration before this) we have put together, I think, the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics.

So he's talking about something in place now and not during the Obama Administration (where he says something similar took place). So what was that?

Of course our friends on the right leave that part out:

This is Biden's next sentence on:

What the president is trying to do is discourage people from voting by implying that their vote won’t be counted. It can’t be counted. We’re gonna challenge it and all these things. If enough people vote, it’s gonna overwhelm the system. You see what’s happening now. You guys know it as well as I do. You see the long, long lines in early voting. You see the millions of people have already cast a ballot. And so, don’t be intimidated. If, in fact, you have any, any problem, go to, and I don’t have the number, but it’s 833-DEM-VOTE. The letters D-E-M-V-O-T-E. Call that number. We have over a thousand lawyers, over a thousand [and they’ll] answer the phone. If you think there’s any challenge to your voting, go to 833-DEM-VOTE. Dial those letters on your phone, that will get you the assistance that we have already put in place.

That's the organization he's describing - an organization they've put together to counter the voter intimidation they're expecting from the MAGA-hatters ("If you think there’s any challenge to your voting, go to 833-DEM-VOTE. Dial those letters on your phone, that will get you the assistance that we have already put in place.").

Now go back and look at how Wendy Bell described it. Look at what she wants you to infer about Biden's health and the existence of "voter fraud" in the US.

For the record:

Politicians at all levels of government have repeatedly, and falsely, claimed the 2016 and 2018 elections were marred by millions of people voting illegally. However, extensive research reveals that fraud is very rare, voter impersonation is virtually nonexistent, and many instances of alleged fraud are, in fact, mistakes by voters or administrators. The same is true for mail ballots, which are secure and essential to holding a safe election amid the coronavirus pandemic.

And of course Not only is Wendy Bell the Angel of Death, but she mocked Biden's stutter.

Congratulations, Wendy! Your friends and family should be so proud of you!

That was one of the best episodes of America I've seen

#DemConvention #DemsInPhilly

Statement from the President on the Senate Passage of the Violence Against Women Act

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

February 12, 2013

Statement from the President on the Senate Passage of the Violence Against Women Act

Today the Senate passed a strong bipartisan bill to reauthorize and strengthen the Violence Against Women Act. This important step shows what we can do when we come together across party lines to take up a just cause. The bill passed by the Senate will help reduce homicides that occur from domestic violence, improve the criminal justice response to rape and sexual assault, address the high rates of dating violence experienced by young women, and provide justice to the most vulnerable among us. I want to thank Senator Leahy and his colleagues from both sides of the aisle for the leadership they have shown on behalf of victims of abuse. It's now time for the House to follow suit and send this bill to my desk so that I can sign it into law.

UPDATE:

Statement by Vice President Biden on the Violence Against Women Act

Today, the Senate passed the Violence Against Women Act with overwhelming bipartisan support. This law has been incredibly effective and I hope the House will vote without delay to renew the law so that we can continue to assist victims of domestic violence and sexual assault and hold offenders accountable for their crimes.

Delay isn’t an option when three women are still killed by their husbands or boyfriends every day. Delay isn’t an option when countless women still live in fear of abuse, and when one in five have been victims of rape. This issue should be beyond debate – the House should follow the Senate’s lead and pass the Violence Against Women Act right away. This is not a Democratic or Republican issue – it’s an issue of justice and compassion. 

From Pennsylvania's 12th congressional district

 

(h/t to The MaddowBlog)

On combat in Afghanistan: "You'd rather Americans be going in doing the job instead of the trainees?"

It was good to hear VP Joe Biden affirm that we will finally be out of Afghanistan in 2014:

Biden: “The fact is we went there for one reason: to get those people who killed Americans – Al Qaeda, we decimated Al Qaeda central, we have eliminated Osama bin Laden, that was our purpose. And in fact, in the meantime, what I said we would do, we would help train the Afghan military, it’s their responsibility to take over their own security. That’s why with 49 of our allies, in Afghanistan, we’ve agreed on a gradual drawdown so we’re out of there by the year 20 – in the year 2014.

“My friend and the governor say it’s based on conditions, which means it depends. It does not depend for us. It is the responsibility of the Afghans to take care of their own security. We have trained over 315,000 mostly without incident, there have been more than two dozen cases of green on blue where Americans have been killed. If we do not – if the measures the military has taken do not take hold, we will not go on joint patrols, we will not train them in the field, we’ll only train in the Army bases that exist there.

“But we are leaving, we are leaving in 14. Period. And in the – leaving in 2014 period and in the process we’re going to be saving over the next ten years another $800 billion, we’ve been in this war for over a decade. The primary objective is almost completed, now all we’re doing is putting the Kabul government in a position to be able to maintain their own security it’s their responsibility, not America’s.

But, the part that really blew my mind in this debate was the very end of the discussion on Afghanistan. Paul Ryan simply couldn't or wouldn't get that it was desirable to have Afghans fighting in the worst combat zones instead of Americans. He kept repeating that there were less American soldiers fighting as if this were a bad thing. Biden kept explaining that there were less Americans fighting because there were more actual Afghans fighting:

BIDEN: No one got pulled out that didn't get filled in by trained Afghan personnel.

It was simply devastating, in my opinion, that Ryan wanted more Americans in harms way than less. That somehow, that was better:

BIDEN: R.C. East is the most dangerous place in the world.

RYAN: That's right. That's why we don't want to send fewer people to the...

BIDEN: That's -- that's why we should send Americans in to do the job, instead of the -- you'd rather Americans be going in doing the job instead of the trainees?

You'll notice in the video below, that there were no smiles by Biden in that exchange -- just an incredulous look on his face that hopefully was shared by those who watched this.

Here's the transcript of those last couple of minutes on Afghanistan:

RYAN: We're sending fewer people out in all of these hotspots to do the same job that they were supposed to do a month ago.

BIDEN: Because we turned it over...

RYAN: But we took 22,000 people out...

BIDEN: ... we turned it over to the Afghan troops we trained. No one got pulled out that didn't get filled in by trained Afghan personnel. And he's -- he's conflating two issues. The fighting season that Petraeus was talking about and former -- and Admiral Mullen was the fighting season this spring. That's what he was talking about. We did not -- we did not pull them out.

RYAN: The calendar works the same every year.

BIDEN: It does work the same every year. But we're not staying there...

RYAN: Spring, summer, fall. It's warm, or it's not. They're still fighting us. They're still coming over the passes. They're still coming into Zabul, to Kunar, to all of these areas, but we are sending fewer people to the front to fight them. And that's...

(CROSSTALK)

BIDEN: That's right, because that's the Afghan responsibility. We've trained them.

RYAN: Not in the east.

RADDATZ: Let's move -- let's move to another war.

BIDEN: Not in the east?

RYAN: R.C. East -- R.C. East...

BIDEN: R.C. East is the most dangerous place in the world.

RYAN: That's right. That's why we don't want to send fewer people to the...

BIDEN: That's -- that's why we should send Americans in to do the job, instead of the -- you'd rather Americans be going in doing the job instead of the trainees?

RYAN: No. We are already sending Americans to do the job, but fewer of them. That's the whole problem.

BIDEN: That's right. We're sending in more Afghans to do the job, Afghans to do the job.

Here's the video of the entire Afghanistan part of the debate:

On "style"

I wake up this morning to find that VP Joe Biden was a terrible human being at the debates last night for being too aggressive and interrupting -- the exact same thing that Gov. Mitt Romney was praised for doing last week. Once again, IOKIYAR (It's OK If You're A Republican)

Puhleeze!

Mr. Biden, your rude behaviour leaves me with no choice but to ask you to leave Downton Abbey immediately!
— Seth Meyers (@sethmeyers21) October 12, 2012

Sums it up for me

I didn't get home from work until close to 11:00 PM and then had some more work to do when I got home, so just finished watching the debate about a half hour ago, so no long recap tonight. But this pretty much sums it up for me for now:

Hello 9 1 1? There s an old man beating a child on my tv
— Bill Maher (@billmaher) October 12, 2012

I'm sure I'll have more to add after some sleep.

Debate Questions We'd Like to Hear Tonight

Just in case that the moderator for tonight's presidential debate, Jim Lehrer, is reading this blog, here are some questions we'd love you to ask. (Trust me, it would be awesome if you did!)

For Mitt Romney:

1. Do you agree with your wife Ann, that your "mental well-being" would be your biggest challenge if you were elected President or is there something else even worse that we need to worry about?

2. Are you “the one Mighty and Strong”?

3. Many have criticized your commercials for containing untruths. Is this just a misunderstanding in that you're simply practicing your religion and "Lying for the Lord"?

4. So how big a douche is Paul Ryan, really and have you ever seen him shirtless?

5. Can you please make the same face that John McCain did at a presidential debate four years ago?

C'mon, c'mom. It'd be cool! Do it. Do it! DO IT! DO IT!!!

For Barack Obama:

1. Really? Joe Biden? What were you thinking? And how often do you just want the Secret Service to hold him down so you can tape over his mouth?

2. Did you do an actual happy dance when you saw Romney's 47% video?

3. What adjective best describes your immense dislike for your opponent? "Immense." That's a good one. You want to go with that?

4. But seriously, all kidding aside, what will the First Lady be planting in the White House garden this spring?

Hardly Surprising, Isn't It?

From Talkingpointsmemo, yesterday:

One reason you can expect unanimous Republican opposition to Senate Democrats' latest jobs bill Friday is because it includes a tax -- a 0.5 percent surtax on income above $1 million starting in January 2013.

That would raise enough money over the next 10 years to cover the $35 billion cost of hiring and retaining about 400,000 teachers and emergency responders next year -- but for Republicans, it's not worth it.

But what does this "0.5 percent surtax on income above $1 million" mean, exactly?

The Vice President explains it so that even Pat Toomey can understand:

You have a one-half of one-percent surtax on the 1,000,0001th dollar -- in other words it doesn't affect anybody who makes $999,000, it doesn't affect anybody making $999,999 -- and if you want to find the guy who make $1,000,0001, it only affects that $1. That's the only thing the rate goes up on.

And:

If you make $1.1 million, and god-willing this passes, you would pay next year, $500 more in taxes.

So of course, it was blocked:

Senate Republicans, joined by three conservative members of the Democratic caucus, blocked a floor debate on a key portion of President Obama's jobs bill, which would have provided states $35 billion to hire or retain teachers and emergency responders.

The final tally on the late Thursday vote was 50-50, with Sens. Mark Pryor (D-AR), Joe Lieberman (I-CT), and Ben Nelson (D-NE) voting with the entire Republican caucus to support the filibuster.

Here's the roll call.

Here's the text of the legislation.

Perhaps the next time Senator Toomey's Pittsburgh office is filled with constituents seeking information on his voting plans, they'll ask him (paraphrasing the Vice President):

Why didn't you vote to put 400,000 school teachers back in classrooms; 18,000 cops back on the street, and 7,000 firefighters back into firehouses? Why did you, instead vote to save people with average income over $1 million a one-half of one-percent increase in tax on every dollar they make over a million?

But we already know the answer to that.

Mike Doyle, Joe Biden, and Political Frustration

The fallout from the debt-ceiling vote continues to be felt.

From Politico, today:

Vice President Joe Biden joined House Democrats in lashing tea party Republicans Monday, accusing them of having “acted like terrorists” in the fight over raising the nation’s debt limit, according to several sources in the room.

Biden was agreeing with a line of argument made by Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) at a two-hour, closed-door Democratic Caucus meeting.

“We have negotiated with terrorists,” an angry Doyle said, according to sources in the room. “This small group of terrorists have made it impossible to spend any money.”

Some clarification from The Trib, later today:

If only he'd said "hostage-takers" instead of "terrorists."

U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Forest Hills, said he wasn't comparing Tea Party members with terrorists when he used the word during a closed-door caucus meeting Monday, but was expressing frustration at President Obama's negotiating tactics, which he said gave in too quickly to GOP demands in the debt ceiling debate.

"Had I simply said hostage-taker, there wouldn't be this reaction. I certainly wasn't out to defame anybody," said Doyle, who couldn't recall the exact statement he made. "I wasn't talking about the Tea Party. I was talking about the tactic (of) telling us if we don't go along with this bad deal, they're going to blow the economy up."

Before we go any further, let's review some of the rhetoric the tea party has used in the not-so-recent past:

• Obama with a bone through his nose.
  
• Obama as Hitler.

Then there's Ann Coulter:

• Anti-war politicians are gutless traitors.
• Liberalism is treason.

So let's not spend too too much time wringing our hands in despair over how uncivil Congressman Doyle may have been. Unless, of course, they have real thin skin.

By the way, why isn't anyone complaining about how Senator Rand Paul called President Obama a hostage taker? He did:

“With the president holding the American economy hostage, I would prefer to think of myself as a Freedom Fighter,” Paul said in a statement.

Hey, don't terrorists take hostages? Will we be seeing Tea Party favorite Rand Paul apologizing any time soon for his inappropriate rhetoric?

Just asking.

But crude political metaphors aside, what was Doyle thinking? In a phone interview on Tuesday evening, he stressed out frustrated he was with the Obama administration. It was that frustration that bubbled over into the "terrorist" metaphor.

He was frustrated at how the Obama Administration's fumbling of these "negotiations" (I mean really, how do you "negotiate" with those who won't compromise?) has left the Democratic party in a bad situation. How can we do any infrastructure now? He asked. How can they work on any of the Administration's policies now? It wasn't a compromise, he said. It was a surrender.

He was frustrated at how the Tea Party is running the GOP. Speaker Boehner has no control over the caucus, he said. Who are we negotiating with? When the Speaker floated his own plan, his own caucus rejected it.

He was frustrated that the Democratic Party doesn't want to defend itself. There are too many timid Democrats. If we're not willing to defend ourselves, he said, we'll loose.

He was frustrated at the surrender. Me, too. Me, too.

It's time to slip on the battle armor, he said, and fight a little bit.

Hear, hear.

Speaking of My Friends at The Trib...

Vice President Joe Biden was in town yesterday.

Something very subtle and interesting happened in the coverage. First the set-up from Early Returns 2.0:

The White House, divvying up the pool duty today, has the Trib's Mike Wereschagin providing color from this evening's reception with Vice President Joe Biden stumping for gubernatorial hopeful Dan Onorato...

Then the P-G quotes the press pool story that Mike wrote.

He also wrote (not surprisingly) the Trib's coverage of the same event.

Reading both, I noticed some differences in the coverage. From the press pool:

On anonymous donors and the post-Citizens United fundraising landscape: “You don’t know where it’s coming from, but you know where it’s coming from. It’s coming from some of the biggest interests – the Mellon Scaife types of the world. Folks, these guys are playing for keeps. These guys are playing for keeps because they know we mean what we say, and we want to put the middle class back in the driver’s seat.” [Emphasis added.]

Try as I might, I just can't seem to find anything even remotely similar in the Trib' coverage.

I guess my good friends at the Trib didn't think that was an important enough detail to include in Richard Mellon Scaife's newspaper.

Talk About A Selective Quotation

From today's Tribune-Review (naturally):

Housing sales have tanked. Unemployment remains stubbornly high. Companies won't hire because they know they're about to be taxed to death. "Consumer confidence" is an oxymoron. And Vice President Joe Biden says the economy's moving in the right direction? These cats couldn't find their own litter boxes if they were tied to them.

Now let's take a look at how the original story. It's from a blog at the Chicago Tribune and Biden's remarks are tucked in at the tail end - last paragraph, by the way:

Biden conceded that the economic recovery was not proceeding as fast as the administration had hoped, but claimed there was "no doubt we're moving in the right direction." [emphasis added.]

See how that changes things? See how the Trib, by a careful selection of the VP's words, makes it seem as if he said something he didn't say? See how dishonest that is?

Naturally, that's what's in the Trib.

Deal me in!

(link)
Rob Roger's great take on the day here.
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PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE

Tell me that when The Powers That Be promised Arlen Specter that they'd clear the way for him to win the Democratic primary in 2010, that they also got some promises from him -- and that they made him sign it in blood -- cause Arlen is real good at pulling that football away at the last moment.
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