Orrin Hatch - pathetic.

The BBQ Pit
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So I was caught in a place where the only thing playing was Fox Lose and they were interviewing Orrin Hatch.

Orrin, you were a dweeb from the get-go but you got yourself elected to the Senate in a state that is only second to Tennessee for having adults that are mentally damaged due to inbreeding. Yet, at times, you acted with some rationality. You became friends with Ted Kennedy and actually demonstrated some bi-partisanship in getting things done.

Now, you are in the gun-sights of the Tea Party and instead of being a statesman, after all these years, you are a panderer. You actually are a spineless dweeb.

What am I talking about? It’s your resurrection of the Balanced Budget Amendment. You had the audacity to go on Fox and rail against Obama for reckless spending and deficits. You championed yourself as nearly getting a BBA passed in 1997 except for a recalcitrant Republican.

A little short history lesson, Orrin. In 1997 Bill Clinton (D) was President and was moving the country towards a balanced budget which he actually accomplished. In 2001 a Republican President took over with a majority in the House and the Senate. He recklessly cut taxes in a way that provided no stimulus to the economy and ran up the deficits. Where were you then? Where was your cry for a BBA? Why did you just cut, run and act like the dweeb that you are? Where was your statesmanship? By the time the Republican left office the economy was a shambles and the deficit had ballooned. The balanced budget that the Democrat had left was forgotten.

So Obama inherits this train wreck and can’t get it repaired overnight. That doesn’t mean he wrecked the train. Your guys did it. Take some responsibility. You are of the party that champions “personal responsibility”.

Then you go on Fox today, rail (get the pun) on Obama and suggest that a BBA is some kind of solution. Orrin, a Constitutional amendment will take years to pass even if it has a chance. Anyone with an ounce of knowledge knows that such an amendment will be full of holes that it will be meaningless in practice. It’s all BS. A BBA, even if it was passed and fast tracked, will not affect the immediate crisis in the least.

So go to Hell Orrin. I wanted to like you but you have proven to be nothing more than the pathetic dweeb that arrived on the scene years ago. You are no statesman. After all these years you are still a hack politician catering to voters who are among the least intelligent and lowest common denominator in the world. The monkeys at Hogle zoo can understand the issues better than your constituents. FU!

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Moved to The BBQ Pit from Elections.

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Not undeserved perhaps, but this is at least the third Orrin Hatch pitting in the last month or so.

You did?

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No, actually you are wrong there. Clinton’s first act upon taking the Presidency was to attempt to increase the deficit. Fortunately, the GOP was able to defeat this. And Clinton’s proposed budgets had $200 billion deficits essentially forever. It was only after the GOP took over Congress that the budget was balanced, a feat that Clinton tried to stop or delay.

I’m sure it must be comforting for you to believe otherwise, but it would be better if you could actually recite facts when you attempt a “history lesson”.

Regards,
Shodan

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Here are some other facts:

I note upon Googling that a fair number of right-wing blogs (and the Cato Institute) are furiously peddling the story that it was all the Republicans’ doing but other sites are crediting it to higher taxes on upper income earners and a strong economy. No surprises which version of reality you prefer.

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Orrin is probably a half decent guy who became a politician in Utah. So even though I regularly say ‘fuck you’ to every politician, I alternate between some pity and outright disgust for Orrin who has chosen to be a scumbag representing a conniving, bigoted constituency. He is somewhere between Kip on Futurama serving an incompetent version of Satan, or Smithers on the Simpsons serving Satan’s more successful and more evil brother Mr. Burns.

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This is the part I really don’t understand. Why were Republicans in Congress so quiet during the GWB administration, when the deficits were exploding and yet now they’re refusing to raise the debt ceiling because now it’s critical to deal with this matter.

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Because the current deficit is somewhere around $1.6 trillion, about four times larger than the largest deficit under Bush.

Regards,
Shodan

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Fox Lose instead of News! Get it?! Because Fox News sucks! Awesome burn, OP!

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Shodan,

The economy was a wreck when the Bushies left office. The deficit was going to explode no matter who took over. Remember, it was Bush that signed TARP but Republican conveniently forget that.

It’s like blaming the cleanup crew for letting the Deepwater Horizon continue to gush oil after it exploded and burned.

Republicans: Take some responsibility and start acting like adults.

The reason for the rant on Hatch is that in the interview he was just nasty doing nothing but playing on people’s ignorance.

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No one has forgotten that.

Another reason that the GOP did not complain as much about Bush’s deficits as Obama’s - TARP gets repaid; Obama’s stimulus doesn’t.

Regards,
Shodan

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As usual, Ten-Kyu is a pretty good contrarian indicator.

Read what he says. Assume the opposite is true.

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Slight difference. During the Bush years there was relative prosperity, for the well to do anyway, which is the time we should be cutting the deficit. Instead, he started a war which he made no attempt to pay for, and he passed the Medicare Advantage bill he made no attempt to pay for.
Running a deficit to counteract the recession that Bush and his buddies got us into is good fiscal policy, and the stimulus should have been bigger. The best way of reducing the deficit is to grow the economy. Cutting spending and giving more money to those who are already sitting on tons doesn’t help that at all.
We’ve asked time and time again how tax cuts for the rich are going to produce new jobs in a time of reduced demand, and we never get an answer, just canned blather about investing, as if the rich were stupid enough to increase production with no market.

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Because the sheriff is a’ near!

I kid, I kid, but it’s the Pit and I wanted to take the low-hanging (strange) fruit. Of course the opposite party (R/L; D/R) are going to act hypocritical. Not that the pushing to the brink – and possibly over-- isn’t an unconscionable, despicable act, and not it isn’t repugnant to justify it as anything other than a purely political fucking over of the entire populace for shallow, empty points.

15

WTF are you smoking? Do all Republicans have Alzheimer’s? (And Alzheimer’s is not a joke in my family.)

Let’s run this through. Bush gets handed a balanced budged, and with his cronies in Congress for six years shows little economic progress while running the deficit from about zero to about $300 billion a year. He starts two wars “off-budget” and implements a social welfare program (Medicare Drug Benefit) that isn’t funded. (Let the next guy figger that one out.) Did any group of powerful Republicans not see that this was going to be a problem or are they really that stupid?

Meanwhile, due to lack of oversight and regulation the economy begins to unravel in the summer of 2007. A year+ later, right after the election, Bush signs TARP so that people wont wake up in the morning with no banks, no ATM’s and a wad of useless cash in their wallet. The economy was in meltdown. About this time, pond-scum like Limbough are calling it Obama’s recession. He couldn’t even wait for the inauguration.

TARP kept most of the major banks in business so at least business could deal in US currency even though credit lines disappeared. The hard-core Republicans railed against TARP. "Let the Stinkin’ Banks Fail .“T”-Shirts said, “Wall Street got $700 billion and all I got was this T-shirt.” Grass roots and mainstream Republicans were not for TARP. Of course TARP was just the first piece. If the country was going to get going again there had to be expensive government incentives. They yelled the same old shit but this time they could direct it to a known enemy. Total hypocrisy. My guy does something and it had, you guy does the same thing for the same reasons and he is destroying America.

“Cash for Clunkers” - actually a pretty good program that was a good emergency stopgap for the failing auto industry.

The GM and Chrysler bailouts. Both companies are looking profitable and are accelerating their loan payments. When the gov. recoups every last cent is immaterial to the fact that they salvaged a major manufacturing industry and saved untold tens of thousands of jobs. The Republicans hated it only because Obama insisted that it not be used to bust the unions. The 'Pubs were more focused on busting the unions than saving the companies. It seemed the would have been happy if the Chinese came in and bought GM 10 cents on the dollar. That’d teach those unions.

The Republicans opposed the Mexican bailout. That made money. The hard core Republicans opposed the initial Chrysler bailout. That was a windfall for the government.

Now Shodan shows up on the scene with his perfectly clear backwards glasses. The Republicans wreck the economy, throw a stopgap and get out of Dodge. The new guy come in to clean up the mess. The patient (the economy) is hemorrhaging. Shodan says to let him die. It’s a lesson to everyone. Obama says, raise some funds from the rich guys that were living high before and are living a lot higher now. They won’t miss it, it’s just sitting around because no investment is safe in this environment and it could actually do some good. Shodan looks at patient and says we can save him but we’ll let him die as a lesson to others. Shoden then goes on Limbaugh to tell the world how Obama killed the patient (economy).

Fast forward. Now Shodan champions TARP because he “knew” it would get paid back. Yea!? And actually TAPR had nothing to do with the trillions of deficits that had been already run up by the Republicans.

You must be really good at overcooking spaghetti because you can twist and tangle the fact as good as anyone.

From David Brook’s (he’s the conservative) NYT column today:

So back to Orrin. You’re making noise but not saying anything. It’s all smoke and mirrors for your idiot constituency.

Back in their day, Hatch and Lugar were the Tea Party of the time. Stay around long enough, get to hear the other side and pragmatism starts to creep in. It’s ironic that they are now the targets of the ultra-conservatives.

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Dick Cheney tells us that Ronald Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter. Or do I have that wrong?

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You did? What on Earth for?

As a Native of this fair state of Utah (or Otah to outsiders) I take great PRIDE in being able to say I have never voted for him.

Interestingly enough he originally ran on the platform of bringing long term senators home and letting new blood in… He has now been in the senate almost double the length of time that his opponent was in office.

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I only said that because he was elected by rock-ribbed Republicans but in time showed a bit of pragmatism and willingness to work across the aisle. He was a friend of Ted Kennedy’s. In time, it was more about getting things done rather than ideologies. He wasn’t a “I’m gonna take my ball and go home” type of guy like the new brand of nincompoops that are busy shitting on everything and have no solutions to anything.

If I lived in Utah I could probably say I never voted for him. I never realy agreed with him. Still, I recognize that there is room for the opposition, provided they are sane.

It’s just that this latest tirade from him I can only describe as acting like a “scaredy-cat.” He’s pandering and selling snake oil to keep his job. It’s shameful.

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Not disagreeing with you in the least… that how he’s held onto his job for 34 years.

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I recall a political cartoon from not long after the GOP won control of Congress in the 1994 midterms, running on their “Contract With America.” An elephant in a wedding-tux is riding in a carriage with a"Just Married" banner. He is booting out an astonished bride labeled “Term Limits.”

So it goes.