This is job No. 1, let's focus on what needs to be done.... Let's take care of business first."

What do you call it when someone accidentally says what they mean?

* H.R. 836: To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to reduce the tax on beer to its pre-1991 level, and for other purposes.

My god the man's a hero --- a hero! -- and here you are picking on him! Outrageous! I say outrageous!

It's not hypocrisy, it's racism. Everyone knows white people are smart enough to hold two ideas in their head at the same time.

It's kind of ironic to hear this talking point from the crowd that voted no on the stimulus bill.

The current meme the right-wingers are trying to spread is that Obama ought to be spending his time on the economy, that he ran on the economy and any action by his administration on anything else, is basically illegitimate.

This is the rubbish that Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council told Gwen Ifill yesterday on the NewsHour:

And I think, you know, when the Americans look at this and this whole issue [i.e. stem cell research], I think this president had a mandate from the voters to address the economic issues. And as he gets off into more controversial social issues and controversial science such as embryonic stem cell research, I think he loses the mandate of the public.

So it was okay for President Bush to put in the restrictions but it's not okay -- 'he loses the mandate of the public' -- if President Obama takes them away.

Raivo Pommer
raimo1@hot.ee

Rumenien ja Lettlands geld

Die Reaktion fiel gelassen aus. Obgleich nach Ungarn und Lettland mit Rumänien nun der dritte osteuropäische EU-Mitgliedstaat die Europäische Kommission in Zahlungsschwierigkeiten geraten ist und um Hilfe gebeten hat, zeigen die Finanzmärkte nur verhaltene Reaktionen.

Die Landeswährung Leu wertet zwar um 0,8 Prozent auf 4,3077 Leu je Euro ab, doch ist sie damit immer noch unter dem Tief von Anfang Februar bei 4,3614 Leu. Die Kurse der rumänischen Staatsanleihen gaben immerhin leicht nach.

This is just part of a concerted effort to blame the economy on Obama and deflect blame from Republican economic policies. When things get worse, they can say, "See, this is all because he wasn't focused on the economy, he was focused on distractions like socialized health care."

The president cannot be distracted, he must stick to the task at hand and continue to propose legislation to end this economic crisis so that we Republicans in congress can continue to vote against it!

Didn't the House Minority spend all of last year forcing votes in the House to replace every bill with some unrelated pet bill? They essentially forced twice as many votes on ever bill. Will they continue doing that this year?

But over the weekend, Obama was busy enough that he missed most of Kennedy's tribute, even though the First Lady was their by herself. While he was working, most of the rest of the Washington establishment was taking a break.

Danp wins the internet. The rest of you get the home game as a consolation prize.

* H.R. 997: To declare English as the official language of the United States.

...

The truth is, there's nothing wrong with Cantor sponsoring these measures,

Nothing?
I think I know Republicans better than you.

It's not hypocrisy, so much as it is disingenuous. Cantor is looking to create a distraction. The GOP is in utter disarray. He and other repubs know this and would love nothing more than than to distract public attention away from that. I expect we'll hear quite a bit of this meme until the Limbaugh/Gingrich cage match is settled.

'tooweary' nails it, and I am surprised you let that one slip -- unless it was deliberate. These are mostly ceremonial matters that some people protest about, but which I've always considered charming. And you knew the beer tax reduction would get cheers here. (I'll join them, but I still wish someone would Amend the bill and add legalization and taxation of another substance.)

But the 'official language' bill is an innocuous-sounding time bomb -- like the Parental Responsibility Amendment -- that could have many ugly consequences.

(Or was that your point, that Cantor the Ranter could work on bills of varying importance while the stimulus battle was going on -- without commenting about the nature of the bills. If so, it was weakly phrased -- something you are rarely guilty of.)

Can't the dems response be something like:

We love our job; we're just harder workers than you're used to. If you can't keep up, find another line of work.

Eric Cantor may be a "rising star" in the GOP, but he is proving himself just another disingenuous, cranky old political hack. When I see his face on TV, prepare myself to hear the mud to fly. Seems like Cantor can't even keep a straight face while he's dishing out lies. The smirk shows that he's really not that good an actor. Every day must be pure hell for the ashes of Republican leadership. Pity.

"Speaking of distractions" is either misleading or unintelligent.

Sponsoring a resolution to honor paul newman probably chewed up a minimal amount of Cantor's time. One of his aides spent a few hours drafting it, then Cantor quite likely spent 2 minutes reading it.

In contrast, the Obama administration is (a) clearly running fast to try to keep up with events -- especially given problems they've had with nominations and (b) proposing multiple complicated initiatives that take huge amounts of senior time.

You could well argue that health care or climate change are so important that they have to be addressed now. You could have a debate on that.

However, to suggest that either is no more complex and a resolution honoring paul newman is absurd.

And they say the right is dishonest!

I'm surprised he honored Paul Newman, whose views were pretty much the opposite of Cantor's.

Seriously, Republicans, Eric Cantor is your great hope for the future? Really? This isn't some elaborate joke you're playing on us? He's really your future leader?

Because I have news for you: Eric Cantor is a colossal f___ing idiot.

JK: What the hell are you babbling about? Tell you what, slowboy. You and your little pals in the Restupid caucus go ahead and have your little "debate" about whether or not "we" should actually, you know, DO something about the Bush/Repuke FUBAR Obama and the Dems have to fix. And when y'all figure out which large-print version of already finished and enacted policy you want to read next, let us know. Keep you company while the world leaves you in the dust of irrelevance.

James Kaplan:

Your concern that our nation's Littlest President is working to hard is quite touching.

I'm not saying anything about Eric Cantor. I don't have much of point on him. Though it would seem to me, noting Franklin's point, that sponsoring a resolution for a man of such different point of view implies a certain largeness of spirit.

All I'm saying is that
1. Honoring Paul Newman is trivial time commitment from a policy development standpoint. Probably a fine thing to do, but doesn't require much effort.
2. Addressing climate change or universal health care are far more complex. Might be the right priority or the wrong priority but would certainly require a lot of attention.
3. Therefore Cantor -- whatever his other strengths or weaknesses -- is not a hypocrite for criticizing Obama for getting distracted from the economy. You might coherently believe Cantor to be mistaken (if for example, you believed universal health care was so important that it warranted reducing attention on the economy), but you could not coherently call Cantor a hypocrite.

Personally (a) i hate sloppy thinking and (b) worry that Obama is scaring the daylights out of equity markets talk of large new entitlements and taxes, which drives down equity values, which creates a negative "wealth" effect, which would make less money available to invest in infrastructure, health care, what-have-you, but that's a different discussion.

It would appear that Mr. Kaplan has after enduring the last 8 years of incompetency, forgotten that electing a competent person with above average intelligence results in a president that can actually multi-task ,work on more than one project at a time, and walk and chew gum at the same time

JK, did you miss the part where Republicans have criticized President Obama for "getting distracted" by overriding Bush era executive orders on family planning and stem-cell research? And the arguement that fixing health care and addressing energy policy are essential parts of addressing the medium to long-term needs of the economy?