Foxx Gets Obama's Autograph

Let's review, shall we?

When Republican Minority Leader John Boehner announced to his Republican House troops on January 20th that President Barack Obama had accepted an invitation to appear before Republican members of Congress during their Baltimore retreat this past week, Madam Virginia Foxx was nonplussed (that's Latin for "pissed off"):

North Carolina Rep. Virginia Foxx asked Boehner whose idea it was and was told it was "the leadership." When Foxx pressed him on precisely who among the leadership came up with the idea, Boehner demurred.

If you haven't seen the now widely viewed video of President Obama's appearance before the Republican Conference, it's definitely what you should watch (it's available practically everywhere, but here's a quick link). Just how amazing was it? Well, for a true gauge, consider that Fox News, CNN, and MS-NBC all covered it live, but Fox broke away 20 minutes in. Mustn't let Fox viewers see Obama putting one over on the Republican Caucus!)

Watching Obama handle the brat-boys of the Republican caucus made me proud of him again, an emotion I haven't felt in, well, months. Doesn't mean all is forgiven for the way he's mishandled health-insurance reform and a bunch of other stuff. Just means I felt better about him for approximately one hour and 20 minutes. (And, incidentally, we learned that it was that deeply dim Mike Pence of Indiana, chair of the Republican Conference, who was responsible for the Obama invitation, and after what happened on Friday, we suspect Mr. Pence's powers for invitin' might be rescinded.)

Maureen Dowd in today's NYTimes said that the "newly warmblooded Barack Obama" got his groove back in the Republican lion's den: "He may lapse back into his Camus coma at any moment. But on Friday he dropped the diffident debutante act and offered, as he did at the State of the Union, some welcome gumption."

(Dowd has something of "a thing" for Albert Camus, the French philosopher of the absurd. According to Dowd, Camus understood the "eternal frustration of moral order in human affairs." Whatever.)

Anyway, enter Madam Virginia Foxx, who was very much present in that hotel room in Baltimore when the President mowed down every Republican bright-boy who attempted to trip him up or embarrass him. And she tweeted about it:

Pres gave us another lecture. Our guys asked great questions. Need independent fact checker for his comments. Got autograph 11:13 AM Jan 29th from txt

Got autograph?

The man may be a socialist trying to rob Americans of their liberty, but goddamn it, he's a celebrity too, and Madam Foxx turned into a teeny bopper in bobbie sox and a poodle skirt just that rapidly.

Is there any Congressperson more pathetic than this woman?

Virginia Foxx as Cruella de Ville (Again)

The number of people living in poverty has jumped by nearly 2,600,000 to 39,800,000, the highest number since 1960. Check!

The number of children who live in poverty increased by 744,000 to 14,000,000. Check!

According to a resolution passed in the U.S. House on Wednesday of this week, "The next Census report on poverty will likely illustrate higher levels of poverty as the report will reflect data from 2009, a year in which the economy experienced substantial job loss and historic levels of long-term unemployment, leading some experts to project that the overall poverty rate may increase by 1.5 percentage points and the percentage of children living in poverty may increase by 6 percentage points in the next report."

Madam Virginia Foxx was one of only 18 in the U.S. House to vote against the resolution. Why? Take your pick:

a. The resolution was introduced by a Democrat, and she doesn't vote for anything with Democratic cooties

b. She's following Zippy the Pinhead's New Testament, the one that says, "Eff the poor, and do not feed the hungry, because it just encourages them to breed"

c. She despises the poor and the hungry because she's full of self-loathing. Anyone who brags about how poor she was growing up, and votes like this on a harmless resolution, is possessed of something dark and twisted and demon-inspired.

Republicans Choosing Their Favorite Color

Showing that they continue to be in touch with regular working-class Americans, the Republican National Committee is meeting right now on the beautiful sandy beaches of Hawaii and deciding, incidentally, to impose a litmus test (lite) on all their candidates.

The Republican National Committee's resolutions panel "strongly backed a proposal that would require party officials to determine whether GOP candidates 'wholeheartedly' adhere to the party platform before they can win financial support."

This "lite" version of a loyalty test was a substitute for a heavier version "that would have forced GOP candidates to agree to a litmus test of 10 conservative principles before receiving party campaign dollars." Wouldn't you love to see the details in that 10-point list?

The best part of the article about this struggle over conservative purity is the pressure being exerted by a certain unruly insurgent mob: "...a leader of the Tea Party movement called on the RNC to accept [the more rigid litmus test] as a signal that the GOP really is interested in gaining support from the movement's members. Dick Armey, chairman of FreedomWorks and a former House Republican leader from Texas, said the party's failure to establish a standard by which to measure candidate positions would hurt the GOP."

As a notoriously pure airhead from Alaska would say, "You betcha!"

Cold-Blooded Murder

Scott Roeder, the man charged with murder in the shooting of Kansas abortion doctor George R. Tiller, sat in the witness chair yesterday at his trial and said that, yes, he did it. "Yes, he bought a gun. Yes, he took target practice. Yes, he had learned about Dr. Tiller's habits, his home address, his security precautions. And, yes, he shot Dr. Tiller last May 31 as Dr. Tiller stood inside his church. 'That is correct, yes,' Mr. Roeder told the jurors, in a calm, matter-of-fact voice."

His only defense: a higher morality. Believing that any woman shouldn't have any right to any abortion, not no how, Roeder's defense lawyers are arguing that the murder of Dr. Tiller was justified homicide.

In a nation where a Republican Supreme Court can decide that the poor put-upon corporations are not getting all the "free speech" they can buy, we reckon this kind of legal reasoning might have a fair shot of winning the day.

Turd Blossom Does Raleigh

That monument to bad judgment, Karl Rove, was in Raleigh yesterday raising money for Sen. Dick Burr, who apparently needs help in the worst way.

Rove gave an interview to the News&Observer in which he opined that Republicans need "to address the kitchen-table issues that people talk about at home that affect their lives: jobs, the economy, health care, access of their children to college, how to pay for college, quality of life, the environment."

Look at that laundry list closely. When have the Republicans offered any substantive help on any of those topics? Why, Madam Virginia Foxx alone is a study in NOT helping. She votes against the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, she votes against raising the minimum wage, she votes against extending unemployment benefits, she votes against college loans, hell, she votes against the School Lunch program! And "the environment"? Don't make us laugh out loud and choke on our tongues!

So we don't know which Republican Party Karl Rove is talking about, but it isn't the one currently sending Madam Virginia Foxx to Congress.

Oh Shut Up

Democratic Senators are shocked -- shocked! -- that they were misled by Justices Roberts and Alito in their Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

Which tells you everything you need to know for understanding why the Democratic Senate is such a sump of ineptitude.

Oregon Takes a Stand

A state-wide voter referendum in Oregon has passed "handily" a tax increase on the wealthy and on corporations.

Oregon has not raised taxes on corporations since 1929. And this is the "first voter-approved statewide income tax increase since the 1930s."

In other words, in this traditionally anti-tax state, the people decided that the super-rich ought to pay a fair (or at least fairer) share of the burden.

We consider this a first rebellious shot by the squeezed middle class.

Attacking P. McHenry as a Closet ... Lib-rul?

The 10th District website, Republicans Against Patrick McHenry, went live in May 2008. The anonymous writer rehashed several McHenry scandals that month (example: he was "photographed grabbing the breasts of known Lesbian activists whilst drunk" -- love the Victorian whiff of lace and lavender contained in that word "whilst"!).

The thrust seems to be that Patrick McHenry is really a liberal in Republican silk panties.

We do not believe there are enough Republican voters in the 10th District dumb enough to believe that to elect either of McHenry's two primary challengers on May 4th. Though, apparently there are enough of them dumb enough to peddle that particular line on a blog.

The way to defeat McHenry is as a do-nothing incumbent: "A lot of talk, a lot of TV camera time. No action. What has Patrick McHenry done for you?"

South Carolina Republicans: This Is Your Party on Drugs

South Carolina Lieutenant Governor Andre Bauer, who is running for governor in the steps of disgraced Appalachian Trail hiker Mark Sanford, said in public that the school lunch program in his state is just like feeding stray dogs: those kids are just gonna hang around and breed more dogs:

"My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply.

"They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is, you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better....

"I can show you a bar graph where free and reduced lunch has the worst test scores in the state of South Carolina. You show me the school that has the highest free and reduced lunch, and I'll show you the worst test scores, folks. It's there, period."

In South Carolina, 58 percent of students participate in the free and reduced-price lunch program.

While Mr. Bauer is worried about giving curs "ample food supply," we're wondering what cut off the oxygen supply to his brain.