With the midterms behind us and President Obama's next talk on Afghanistan just ahead, Republicans find themselves hamstrung by 48 words. They're found on page 355 of President Bush's new memoir, Decision Points, and they concern a September 2006 conversation he had with Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky).
Mitch has a sharp political nose, and he smelled trouble.
"Mr. President," he said, "your unpopularity is going to cost us control of the Congress."
. . ."Well, Mitch," I said. "What do you want me to do about it?"
"Mr. President," he said, "bring some troops home from Iraq."
We'll have much more about this on the show tonight at 9 Eastern. Help us welcome the new workweek and the lame-duck Congress, too. Fun.
(Photo: Gage Skidmore)
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Like DUH we should NOT been IN IRAQ in the FIRST place. Iraq did NOT attack us. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), is an IDIOT without a brain. He is nothing but a two face LIAR. He is a poor excuse of a HUMAN RACE.
You're right, we had no business in Iraq. But did you expect something different from any republican?
Terrible. It's either he doesn't realize these are people's lives he dealing with or he's a very insensitive person.
McConnell is blatantly in bed with military contractors, as are most republicans:
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/02/mcconnell_raised_big_bucks_from_foreign_defense_co.php
BAE Systems was fined $400 million earlier this year by the Justice Department for bribery to Saudi Arabia.
Thanks W!
Yeah. Thanks for turning the surplus into multi trillion dollar deficit! The tax cuts had to do with it AND the defense spending, borrowing AND the increased costs in Medicare. Should be pretty clear, they want our country on its collective knees.
I believe we're already there. If not, you can be sure they'll finish the job as soon as they're sworn in.
As a somewhat side note did everyone hear Obama's speech that he believes the mid-terms were to tell him he's been too progressive and that he needs to co-operate more with Republicans? Yeesh.
I don't see why a politician playing politics surprisesanyone. Pretty much no one who is in office actually has a spine or is concerned about actually doing what's right for America. Really the guy who has single-handedly lead the shut-down of the US Senate caught you blindsided with the fact that he'd asked the president to send troops home so he could win his next election? Really? (NOT that I'm justifying such action...just think it's odd to act like this is necessarily "breaking" news...so to speak)
This should be something that can be investigated, but I doubt it'll ever happen.
McConnell is so slimey I feel like I need a shower after seeing him on screen. Maybe the TeaBaggers will scrub him up or just trash him.
He makes me want to vomit.
I gotta say, Mitch McConnell is such a "two face"!! He does not care about American citizens, only cares about a republican in the white house! Shame on him,,,I sure hope Kentucky wakes up! (along with the rest of the population).
I wouldn't hold my breath for that one. They just elected Rand Paul to the Senate.
Ever hear about the war between Ohio and Kentucky?
Kentucky was throwing sticks of dynamite across the Ohio River and Ohio was lighting them and throwing them back.
That's an old Ohio/Kentucky joke that still seems to hold true.
Hey.... 45% of us are awake here! It's the other 55% of idiots we can't seem to shake! Typical southern state; the republicans have duped the less intelligent to make them think they actually give a damn about their petty issues.
Unfortunately, myopionion, the entire Republican national party has taken that as their "mission." Meanwhile, the United States of America is a REAL country with REAL problems that trying to remove the President (no matter for what reason) will NOT solve. So yes, I hope the country does wake up and tell these people that their purpose in life is NOT to remove a President, but to work to solve REAL problems. I wouldn't hold my breath, though. Money talks.
Pop quiz: Which of the following will make up a majority of the deficit in the next decade?
A) Social Security
B) Medicare
C) The National Park Service
D) PBS
E) G W Bush's tax cuts
Give up? The answer is E -- George Bush's tax cuts. But this week the co-chairs of the so-called "Deficit Commission" came out wit h their recommendations on how to fix the deficit. Their answer? They wanted to cut A, B, C and D. Thanks to The Shrub for the deficit!
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Mitch McConnell said he is going to repeal the Health Spending Bill. I think he should go ahead with that if he can find a bill by that name. But I am in favor of keeping the Health Care Reform Bill. It would be better if it were stronger, but it is much better than nothing. So, is "Health Spending Bill" one of the new Republican talking points?
The Repubs are going to play hell trying to repeal it when people finally realize it's not Armageddon, and that it actually benefits them. The conversation is going to go something like this:
"I helped repeal Obamacare!!!"
"Oh. Okay. So would you prefer to write the letter to the cancer patient saying that the high risk pool that made it possible for her to get health insurance and keep her house no longer exists, or would you rather have an aid from your office do it? Oh, your office? Okay. And have the Dems somehow take the blame? Okay, sure thing!"
"Mitch has a sharp political nose, and he smelled trouble." That sounds like a line out of a Dick and Jane book, not out of a Presidential memoir. Furthermore, Mitch kind of has a big, pointy nose, period. I think from here on out, we should just refer to him as "The Nose."
And did Bush really need The Nose to warn him about his unpopularity? Really? Pretty much everyone knew that people hated Bush and the Republicans at that point. I know Bush was insulated in his own little word of sycophants and self affirming literature, but is anyone that sheltered? I mean people were throwing things at him during his speeches for God's sake. How much more of a clue does he need?
Okay, petty commentating done with. For now.
On this episode of Venture Brothers:
Brother's G.W. Venture and Mitch Venture invaded the evil compound of the dreaded "Unpopularity Zone." Unfortunately for the Venture Brothers, the Unpopularity Zone was a trap. For you see Saddam Hussein was really Mistress of 1000 Lies- and she had lead them astray with her siren song of WMDs. Left with no other alternative and no escape route, Mitch Venture suggested he, G.W., and the Republican Party give up the war in Iraq. To which G.W. responded a hearty "Hell no we can't!" Unfortunately for the Venture brothers...G.W.'s stubbornness meant they were both eaten by the Debt Zombie.
Will Mitch Venture ever free himself of the Debt Zombie? Will G.W. ever apologize for his impulsive and careless decisions? Tune in next time for Venture Brothers: Decision Points
I agree with "myopinion" in that it's clear that McConnell's goal(s) do not include improving the lives of Americans. He couldn't care less about helping anyone. His main goal(s) are only to wield more power at his job (and that means wanting the Republicans to have control of Congress and to make Obama a "one-term President."
As far as I am concerned, George W. Bush and McConnell are both idiots. Lets move on... Make the Tax cuts permanent for everyone, up to the $250k limit and let the other expire.
Not really a surprise, TurtleMan has always blown with the wind. Look how he just reversed on earmarks.... this guy is the king of earmarks :)
I keep having an irrational, lingering hope that Obama and the Dems actually have a strategy to give the GOP just enough rope to hang themselves by 2012. But that would mean a coherent and unified Dem plan, pardon me if I don't hold my breath :)
Yet I still have hope that we can save this country.....
McConnell is not an idiot (although he looks like one and talks like one). He's a shrewd politician, as two-faced as they come, a whore, a greedy bastard (OK, I made up the "bastard" part 'cause I assumed his parents disowned him), and a liar.
Come on now, that's an insult to honest sex workers everywhere.
Is it just me, or does McConnell look like each and every "before" picture in laxative ads?
I just think now is the time to push something. If the 112th House doesn't want to put a reasonable bill forward, let the Senate mark it up, then block it if there are tax cuts which we cannot afford, then reconciliation for budget. Put in the Middle class cuts, then dicker over the upper income, giving businesses that hire the cuts, but not those that do not hire.
Ok, it's been a strange couple of weeks since the election...Where did the kids go? How many young voters took a pass on the mid-terms? Enough, it seems.
That Wednesday morning I was saddened that the Pres wasn't going to get as much done as hoped, and it was because the country is uninformed and frightened, and unwilling to take chances on the Congress...so they shoot themselves in the foot!
It's the Fox machine doing all the fear stuff that has middle America seeing UFO's and Alliens all around them, that's fogging their minds and imprisoning us all in their nonsense....and they don't care. They know what their doing, and they don't care. They are the the responsible party for most of the fear-mongering, along with Rush..and they all just don't care!
So, how do you run a country like that? Well, you don't, all you can do is guide it...It's too big to turn around!
As far as the funding for our little cosmic carnaval is concerned, we now know China isn't going to put up with our love affair with imaginary dollar bills for much longer, and we still don't have an energy policy. They do. They are beating us in school...they are beating us in the market place. So is India...and Germany.
To allow the wealthiest among us to not pay more than they are now, is simply unfair. Isn't it? We need to find a way to cap the top, and raise the bottom. This should not be a winner take all game that we've stumbled into because of our long love affair with competve sports.
To find the funding necessary to keep peace with our international financeres, we must divide the military budget into two parts. The Defence...and the Offensive side of weapon systems. Surely reason can see that 703 billion dollars every year to maintain a war machine, that itself creats "terrorists", is an un-needed expense we can no-longer afford. No one can. No country can afford war any longer. We've let the repair of the Earth herself to be ignored while we we're playing "football" with each other.
And now we're loosing the Bees....and the chemical companies silently responsible, will fein ignorance, and pay to halt legislation in the Congresses of the world. The industrial power companies will continue to styme progress on Solar and Wind any way they can...They will continue to Polute, and the Congress will not care. And the ground water! And the Gulf!
We've sent half a million troops to war, and half of them have returned with some form of PTSD or worse. What do we do to help them. They should receive assistance from the cuts in the offensive side of the Pentagon budget. But they won't. Because the weapons lobby is too entrenched. They love Fox.
On it goes, and day by day all we have is Captian Hindsight to help us out, and he' a basket-case too. And it's a long road out of Eden...
Very well put!!!!
I would agree with you but then we both would be wrong.
Wow, amazing, so much foul hatred, in the above Maddow blogs... seems to me you Dems aren't taking losing the midterm elections with any grace or self proclaimed tolerance at all. Take heart though, if your team doesn't still totally suck in 2012 you may stand a chance . Now go home and beat up your wife or husband to relieve your anxiety instead of hating on the Repubs, and set your sights on your team not sucking so bad next season- Geez!!
And this addresses the issue of McConnell's hypocrisy exactly how?
Beat up on the repubs? Nah, it's against the law to assult the mentally disabled.
Wow, asking for troops to come home so that one can win an election is obscene, but not surprising, just the epitome of self[interest, selfishness and no heart.
To critisize the right for the same things that the left does seems to be a little hypocritical. Both sides of the of the political spectrum say things that are later on changed. That is the essence of politicians. "I voted for it before I voted against it" " My health plan will have no mandatory health insurance as opposed to Hillary's plan" " we will be out of Afghanistan by 2011" Mc Cain voted against the Bush taxes then he support them. To then attack Foxfor being conservative, and they are, you need to be impartial and Rachel is not. People need to read Ted Koppel's article in the Washington Post, he is right on.
Fixed news is conservative alright, complete with mindless hacks who prostitute themselves out to the Grand Obstuctionist Party.
It is an utter hypocracy that McConnell can have any say when it comes to the military. Go to his website; go to his bio's. You won't find the fact that he was 'excused' from the military after an extremely short stint. And you won't find the records anywhere; they have been expunged. No one ever seems to have the guts to ask why or really investigate the issue.
Robert, do you actually watch Rachel? She has stated many times--the last being when Keith O. was suspended, that she is a liberal. She makes no bones about it. Impartiality is not the issue. Rachel presents sound verifiable facts and she often criticizes the white house and the democratic party. Fox on the other hand invents facts to support their agenda. They incite fear and provide so much misinforation to their viewers that it's shameful. Fox makes the claim of being fair and balanced which they most definitely are not. Rachel simply tells it like it is and when she makes a mistake, she corrects it pretty quickly.
As for criticizing the right, don't you think in this case McConnell deserves to be criticized? How many lives were lost while he and Bush were playing political games? McConnell isn't interested in governing, he isn't interested in what's best for America. He's interested in preserving the status quo because for him and many of his cronies, it's working. I for one hope this causes a lot of problems for McConnell but it probably won't.
Ms. Maddow claims that she is different than Fox, she is not. There is only one conservative station on TV: FOX. The rest of the TV media is Liberal. 8 out 10 TV reporters contribute to the Democratic Party. Radio is predominantly conservative and I mean far right. As to politicians that should be critisized they are plenty on both sides, but Rachel seems to only find fault with Republicans much like Hannity does about democrats. She even picks on politicians that did not win. Who cares about politicians that lost? They are yesterdays stories. There are solutions on both sides of the aisle and neither Fox nor MSNBC help in the discourse. Stewart is right.
Mitch likes to be "popular"
If the Democrats can lose the Presidency and get down to 41 Senators in the 2012 election maybe they will finally have enough power to defeat McConnell and the Republican agenda.
As to the mascot, well the mascot did over 400 push-ups even if there was a switch. That's pretty darn good. Why the need to start from 1 each time, anyway?
The coach should be berated for allowing his team to run up the score...
I get the feeling everyone is missing the point, or maybe I am. McConnell knows as well as anyone that we don't like wars that drag on too long, and had to know we couldn't afford to continue with two wars for much longer. Seems to me the Repubs have boxed themselves in, but it doesn't really matter if they can control the narrative. No matter how long we hang on in Afghanistan, no matter how many lives we lose, no matter how much it costs, doing the obvious thing and leaving will be called "Cut and Run" by the the Republicans, because that's what they do.
What McConnell was really doing was just stating a political reality that he knew they were going to have to deal with. I'm pretty sure both he and Bush knew that wasn't going to happen, and the real question was how they could put it all on the Democrats when the inevitable happened. We all know that Iraq will be some sort of authoritarian state by the 2012 elections, and that they aren't going to recompense us one nickel for our 4000 dead.
Afghanistan is likely to end up even worse. The task the Repubs have is figuring out a way to make this all the Democrats fault, just like they somehow managed to do with the deficit. Their political skills are so far superior to the Democrats that I fear for my country. Would Obama please knee somebody in the groin and start acting like a CHICAGO Democrat? Kinder and gentler does not work in American politics, and by not fighting back, the Dems are allowing the whole country go down the drain.