Molly Ivins: Christmas comes early in Washington

Subtitle: On Capitol Hill the naughtier you've been, the better

Call them -- irresponsible ... Call them -- unreliable ... Throw in -- undependable, too ... Yes, it's undeniably true -- the Congress of the United States makes Bart Simpson look like Averell Harriman.

<snip>

And you may be wondering, given the condemnations of the Medicare "reform" bill from both left and right, which side actually won. It's so fabulous -- they both lost. The Wall Street Journal, which is furious about the bill, is right. So is The Nation, and it's right, too! Hooray! A bill so awful absolutely everyone hates it! Yes, it is a huge new entitlement costing $400 billion over 10 years. No, it will not help many senior citizens. It's the silliest bill you ever saw -- it has a hole in the middle of it just like a doughnut, and it will be used to destroy Medicare. It uses taxpayer money to help drug companies, and insurance companies and HMOs, all the while running up debt, debt, debt.

And boy, did they win ugly. The Medicare bill went down in the House -- it lost. And then the Republicans just held the vote open, for three hours, from 3:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m., until Tom DeLay could bludgeon some sleep-deprived members into changing their votes. These guys think nothing of changing the rules in the middle of the game. For that matter, they think nothing of rules.

The same morons who wrote this bill also passed, again this year, for the third year in a row, MORE tax cuts for corporations, so that regular people will have to pay more and we have even less money with which to do anything useful. Not that they let that stop them -- they were in there just appropriating pork barrel like there's no tomorrow. Whee, what a giveaway -- Santa has nothing on them. All you had to do was be a big special interest donor to the Republican Party, and it was whoopee time at the Capitol. The only bad news for the big corporations is that the Republicans couldn't get the energy bill, the ultimate Christmas gift for the oil, gas, coal and nuclear industries, passed. But wait ‘til next year.

more...

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=16084

Yikes!!
It's titled the Uncompassionate Conservative... and it's dynamite.

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2003/11/ma_559_01.html

It is a very good distillation of her book "Bushwhacked", which I have also read (being the big Molly fan that I am).

snip-
At least we'll never have to listen to Republicans calling Democrats "big-spenders" again. To hell with the gag reflex, the laughter alone will be deafening. What a Never Neverland they live in, just like Michael Jackson's. What's so maddening is that we have nothing to show for all this spending -- our education hasn't been improved, our health care system is still falling apart, the air is getting dirtier, and we're killing the oceans, lakes and rivers. There's no planning, no investment, no thought for the future. They're throwing away the seed corn, and we're sittin' here watching it happen. It's not just the money they're throwing away, it's democratic traditions -- bipartisanship, compromise, sound public policy.

(I think she's taken the bumpers off her spurs)

I love Molly but hate hearing her say (publicly) that she isn't a liberal.... as if it carries a stigma? In my world it's a sign of intellect and soul. I would absolutely love to watch her ratched up the pressure and the prose to a deservedly harsher level.