That's why we love him. He doesn't care about going along with the leadership, he doesn't care about what the Very Serious People think, he just cares about what happens to people like us. Unfortunately, there aren't many Democrats we can count on who will hold fast and protect the safety net. Instead, they fall for the false binary choice that's presented between OMIGOD SEQUESTER and "a little teeny tweak to the benefit increases."

Grayson's comments came after a meeting between Senate Democrats and President Obama, in which Obama shrugged off concerns about chained CPI and possible cuts as a "moot point," since Republicans weren't offering enough revenue. (See what Obama did there?) This meeting, of course, was held right after what was described as a "productive" meeting between Obama and assorted Republicans, where he continued to offer them entitlement cuts and promised to challenge the Democratic opposition to said cuts.

Seems like our president is playing us. I'm glad we have people like Grayson, who tell us the truth:

Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., joins John Fugelsang on “Viewpoint” to weigh in on news that President Obama told Senate Democrats he was open to considering cuts to such federal programs as Social Security and Medicare. “I take no pleasure in saying this because the president is my president — I voted for him twice and he’s the leader of my party — but on this regard, the president is wrong,” Grayson says.

Grayson also shares his thoughts on the Congressional budget battle. “This terrible preoccupation with austerity, with deficits, with debt is mistaken,” Grayson says. “The government has never been able to borrow at such low rates for my entire lifetime, in fact, going back 100 years, the government’s never been able to borrow at 2 percent before — that’s what the rates are these days — and that just shows you that there is no fiscal crisis. … We’ve simply given in to the Republican mindset of crises.”

It's a few weeks old, but I came across this appearance by Alan Grayson on John Fugelsang's Current TV show, and I thought I'd share, especially because he makes a good point I hadn't heard: Republicans only care about the primaries!

John Fugelsang: It is his "Second Coming," in the halls of Congress that is. But if you expected Democratic firebrand Alan Grayson to tone down his comments now that he's back in DC, you don't know Grayson!

—video of Rep. Grayson's "Don't Get Sick" floor speech—

Congressman Alan Grayson: If you get sick in America, this is what the Republicans want you to do. If you get sick in America, the Republican's Healthcare Plan is this: Die quickly.

—end video—

John: Oh you could sell those signs on E-bay. Come on, admit it! You missed this guy!

—video of Rep. Grayson on MSNBC "He's Baaack!" interview —

Alan: As I pointed out three years ago, their health care plan is: "Don't get sick. And if you do get sick, die quickly." Now we see the same thing is true with guns, in the wake of a terrible national tragedy. [Meaning, "don't get shot."] In fact, in the wake of recurring national tragedies, their answer is, do nothing. They want to instill in us a kind of fatalism and nihilism that means that we can't do anything to solve our problems.

—end video—

John: The pride of Florida's 9th district! The one, the only, ayatollah of rock-and-rollah, Democratic Congressman, Alan "Boom Boom" Grayson joins me now. Good evening distinguished Representative, and thank you for your time.

Alan: (laughter) Good evening.

John: It's great to have you back, sir. I think I speak on behalf of many who were really thrilled to have you back on Capitol Hill. After two years off, sir, how does it feel? Has anything changed?

Alan: Well, a lot has changed. The Democrats no longer have the House and as a result, nobody is doing anything, unless you hold a gun to their heads. Literally. It's remarkable to see the inaction; I just saw that directly in full force. It was 79 days since Hurricane Sandy before the Republican majority in the House was willing to do something to address the problem. 79 days when people can't flush their toilets. 79 days when people are literally living in the dark, with candlelight. And it took that long for the Republicans to do anything to help those people. It's shocking. They just cannot get anything done.

John: Well you have to understand, sir, those people live in the Northeast, not in actual America. I think that's their rationale.

Alan: I think the rationale is what it always is. The Republicans just don't want to do anything for anybody. And there's a mean streak too that I think you only recognize when you're really close up [to them]. These are people who want to kick you when you're down.

John: Like you've so eloquently described, Republicans' go-to plan for any problem facing the country seems to be at this point, do nothing. So when you see your GOP colleagues do do nothing -- now it's on gun control measures -- what do you think the odds are that when the next mass shooting happens, God forbid, will they be blamed? Will the GOP once again bow to the NRA pressure, or is this time going to be slightly different?

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Alan Grayson came out fighting after the electoral losses this week, blaming the Democrats' quest for "bipartisanship" as a "code word for appeasement":

In the wake of the Democrats’ midterm losses, President Obama has said the way forward lies in finding common ground between Democrats and Republicans. But Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson, who lost his seat in Florida’s 8th District, says that the losses suffered by incumbent Democrats are an outcome of the party’s "strategy of appeasement." We talk to Rep. Grayson about the 2010 elections. [includes rush transcript]

JUAN GONZALEZ: On Wednesday, President Obama described the scale of the Democratic defeat in the midterms as, quote, "humbling." But he added that the way forward lies in finding common ground between Democrats and Republicans.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Over the last two years, we’ve made progress. But clearly, too many Americans haven’t felt that progress yet, and they told us that yesterday. And as president, I take responsibility for that. What yesterday also told us is that no one party will be able to dictate where we go from here, that we must find common ground in order to set—in order to make progress on some uncommonly difficult challenges.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, not everyone feels that compromising with Republican demands is the best option for Democrats—among them, Congressman Alan Grayson. He lost his Democratic seat in Florida’s 8th District to Republican Dan Webster this week. Congressman Grayson says that the losses suffered by the Democrats are an outcome of the party’s, quote, "strategy of appeasement." Congressman Grayson joins us on the phone right now from Florida.

Welcome to Democracy Now! Your thoughts on your defeat this week?

REP. ALAN GRAYSON: Well, my defeat was part of a wave across the country that had Republicans winning because Democrats didn’t vote. We have the results from the pre-election turnout; we don’t have the results from the Election Day turnout yet. In my district, when you compare that to 2008, the Republican turnout in the early voting was down by 20 percent, and the Democratic turnout in early voting was down by 60 percent. And that wasn’t true just in my district; that was true all around Florida and pretty much the whole country, except for the West Coast and New England. And as a result of that, virtually every Democrat who won in 2008 by less than ten points loss this year. There was only one exception out of twenty-four. And there were forty-four more Democrats who won by more than ten points in 2008 who managed to lose this year, because their Democratic voters didn’t turn up. It’s not a situation where Democrats—Democratic voters decided to vote Republican; it’s a situation where Democratic voters didn’t vote. And when Democrats don’t vote, Democrats can’t win.

Continue reading »

Way to fight, Mr. Grayson! How refreshing to see a Democrat stand up to the forces of extremism, and use it against them, proving that Democrats in conservative areas don't have to play that Blue Dog game. I wish more Democratic incumbents would follow his example:

Reward good behavior here:

Democrats across the country are pawing around in the dark, searching for any way to flick a switch and end the political nightmare for incumbents that is 2010. A searing ad against Florida Republican Dan Webster has the challenger reeling and local media focusing attention on his extreme political positions, and it may serve to show a path forward for other Democrats facing challengers with views far outside the mainstream.

Republican operatives acknowledge that's the case in Alan Grayson's Orlando district, where the party faithful nominated former state senate majority leader Dan Webster, backed by religious extremists who push the revisionist view that America was founded as a Christian nation.

In an effort to highlight his more extreme views, Grayson, no slave to the concept of subtlety, has dubbed his opponent "Taliban Dan" in a recently released ad. It's not the kind of centrist positioning that a Washington consultant might recommend, but judging by the response from local media, it's working.

A WKMG reporter told Orlando television audiences, in a coup for Grayson: "Yes, Webster is opposed to all abortions, even for victims of rape and incest, an issue he doesn't want to talk about."

The reporter then proved his assertion by showing a damning clip of Webster refusing to answer a question from the reporter on the subject. Watch the clip of Webster stonewalling a reporter:

If you haven't already read Jane Mayer's chilling account of the stealth political dealings of the Koch brothers, do yourself a favor and take some time to do so. It's critical to know exactly how far those tentacles stretch.

The Koch brothers have their conservative little fingers in a lot of pies, from the tea parties to the climate change Prop 23 in California to systematically de-legitimizing the Obama presidency on multiple levels. And yet, their plates are not too full for them to add two more targets to shape the world to their right-wingnut liking: Rep. Alan Grayson and Rep. Suzanne Kosmas, both running for Congress in Florida.:

Orlando TV viewers may have caught new commercials, funded by Americans for Prosperity, and directly targeting the Congressional re-election bids for Alan Grayson and Suzanne Kosmas.

The national advocacy group, founded by billionaire David Koch, has paid for $1.4 million in TV ads in four states, including Florida, where Grayson and Kosmas face a GOP eager to claim their seats. The ads will also run in Arizona, Ohio and Pennsylvania until Sept. 8.

The ad, which you can see on the group’s YouTube page, prominently feature House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and “her big government policy agenda,” particularly the federal stimulus bill, cap and trade and the government bailouts, said Apryl Marie Fogel, state director for the Florida chapter of Americans for Prosperity. It’s part of a larger campaign that will also include bus tours and grassroots campaigning in these weeks building up to the November election.

Koch, owner of the Koch Industries oil and manufacturing conglomerate, has funded millions of dollars of TV ads that have made the Americans for Prosperity a big player among the many conservative groups trying to influence the midterm elections.

In point of fact, the DCCC and President Obama have both called out AFP/the Koches for their ads and asking for an investigation into their alleged tax violations:

In Austin, Tex. Earlier this month, President Barack Obama criticized Americans for Prosperity by name.

"Right now all around this country there are groups with harmless-sounding names like Americans for Prosperity, who are running millions of dollars of ads against Democratic candidates all across the country," he said. "And they don't have to say who exactly the Americans for Prosperity are. You don't know if it's a foreign-controlled corporation. You don't know if it's a big oil company, or a big bank."

Separately, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee filed a complaint against the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, alleging that the foundation is running attack ads in four congressional races in Michigan, Kansas and Missouri, in violation of tax rules for 501(c)(3) educational and charitable groups.

You can read the DCCC complaint here.

Alan Grayson really lets this Young Americans For Freedom twerp have it on a CNN interview hosted by Rick Sanchez:

SANCHEZ: Well this is what a lot of the Democratic congressmen, folks like Alan Grayson, says proves that the Republican Party is not only in line with the tea party movement but has actually created the heated rhetoric that has caused some of those acts of incivility that we have seen. How would you respond to that?

MARKS: Well, I would hate to believe that Chairman Steele, an African-American, would go and be one of the people to incite these, you know, the responses and really the disgusting behavior of a few individuals. I don't think he --

SANCHEZ: Wait a minute. Are you saying that because Chairman Steele is an African-American he's incapable of using heated rhetoric that may cause someone to become or say something racist?

MARKS: Well, I don't think he was calling for people to have racist response.

SANCHEZ: Well, I'm not talking about Chairman Steele. I'm not talking about Chairman Steele.

MARKS: OK.

SANCHEZ: I am talking about the congressmen who were outside. And I don't know, do we have that picture? We don't have that. All right.

MARKS: I mean, are you going to judge the entire Democratic Party by a few people that hold up Nazi symbols at their rallies? I don't think -- I think this is a double standard that we're seeing here.

(CROSSTALK)

GRAYSON: That's ridiculous. That's absolutely ridiculous.

MARKS: And to say it's because of the ideology to point to the ideology, this is the actual prejudice that conservatives face on college campuses --

GRAYSON: Oh, how sad.

MARKS: -- in the nation to say automatically anything that you say is going to be considered racist.

SANCHEZ: No, no, we weren't saying that. I wasn't. But let me just ask you --

MARKS: Well, I think Congressman Grayson was.

SANCHEZ: What Democratic congressman has held up a swastika?

GRAYSON: It's never happened. He's lying. Stop lying.

MARKS: I never said the congressman held up a swastika. But what Republican congressman did you see holding swastikas. And wasn't it a Democrat Senator Byrd that was a member of the KKK? Are you going to hold the entire party accountable because of that?

SANCHEZ: Senator -- I mean, Congressman Grayson?

GRAYSON: Well, that's premature. But listen, we have now reached the point of absurdity. OK. The right has fomented a national nervous breakdown. They keep pushing the panic button on their followers over and over and over again, trying to get them stoked on hatred and on fear. And they've succeeded. They've succeed in driving these people to the point where they're threatening my 5- year-old son.

Now why don't you just say you're sorry? That's what you ought to be saying, I'm sorry. Don't try to push it off on the Democrats. Say you're sorry. Apologize to my 5-year-old.

MARKS: Tea party should not be accepting responsibility for this. The Republican Party should not be accepting responsibility for this.

GRAYSON: Well, look --

MARKS: The Democratic Party should not be accepting responsibility for this. Individuals need to accept responsibility. When you -- when you --

GRAYSON: You're not accepting responsibility.

MARKS: When you said that the health care bill is similar to a holocaust, they didn't hold the Democratic Party responsible.

GRAYSON: You were in that crowd. You were cheering.

MARKS: You went ahead and apologized for your individual remarks. Am I wrong? Did you apologize for saying that this health care bill is going to cause, if it's not passed it's going to cause a holocaust? And you apologized for it, is that right?

(CROSSTALK)

GRAYSON: You know, listen, people like you -- people like you -- and it's very apt that your name is Marks -- people like you, your dreams turn into other people's nightmares. And it's time you owned up to it.

MARKS: We as conservatives believe we have winning principles and we stick by these principles. Small government.

GRAYSON: Your principles are violence.

MARKS: I don't think anyone and my principles are --

GRAYSON: Anger, hatred and violence.

Continue reading »

Rep. Alan Grayson appeared on Democracy Now! to discuss his bill, “The Public Option Act,” which allows people under sixty-five to buy into Medicare. The bill has attracted fifty co-sponsors:

REP. ALAN GRAYSON: I’ve introduced a simple three-and-a-half-page bill that opens up Medicare to anybody who wants it. If you want it and you pay for it, it’s yours. It’s that simple. It’s open to everybody under the age of sixty-five, whether or not you’re handicapped. And you pay the same amount as other people your age would pay.

And the reason to do this is because we need a public option. We need an option that doesn’t involve putting us at the tender mercies of insurance companies, particularly if there’s a mandate to do so. A lot of people feel that there is a fundamental conflict of interest between themselves and private insurance companies. The private insurance companies make money by denying you the care that you need to be healthy, and sometimes to stay alive. And a lot of people are just sick of it.

So the way to get beyond that is to open up Medicare, which is now available to only one-eighth of the population, to anybody who’s willing to pay for it. And it makes perfect sense when you think about it. I mean, we don’t say the federal highways are only open to senior citizens. And the Medicare provider network is an enormously valuable, expensive thing that we’ve created with federal tax dollars that ought to be open to everyone, not just seniors.

AMY GOODMAN: And how does this fit into the major piece of legislation that will or—I don’t know would even pass—won’t be voted on by the House?

REP. ALAN GRAYSON: My hope was that we would vote not only on the Senate bill, which doesn’t have a public option, not only on the reconciliation amendment, which probably will not have a public option, but that we’d also vote on this, that there’d be three votes instead of two votes. And if we voted on this and we passed it, then it would be presented to the Senate and subject to reconciliation in the Senate, so that we could end up with a public option.

AMY GOODMAN: Now?

REP. ALAN GRAYSON: Now.

AMY GOODMAN: Right, but now?

REP. ALAN GRAYSON: And if not, then it’s something to build for in the future.

ANJALI KAMAT: And would you support the bill even if your bill doesn’t go through?

REP. ALAN GRAYSON: Well, if you’re talking about the Senate bill combined with the reconciliation fix, the answer is yes, because that’s a bill that saves lives and saves money. And I feel that to do that, to deny 30 million Americans the insurance that they would have under that bill, the Senate bill with the reconciliation fix, would be cutting your nose to spite my face. So I would be very reluctant to vote against a bill that will end up doing so much good for the Americans who don’t have insurance and also help to restrain the growth, the large growth, of premiums for those who do, and make insurance manageable for people and establish certain minimum standards. Those are all good things to do.

But I think it’s a better thing to do to combine all of those things with the public option. We’ve heard all year long from the Democratic leadership and from the President that we need a public option to provide competition to insurance companies where there is no competition. All over the country, including many places in Florida, we have markets where insurance companies have 80 percent of the market, if there’s only one or two of them. So it’s a monopoly or it’s an oligopoly for 80 percent of the market or more. And those insurance companies charge you whatever they want, and they give you whatever little care they can get away with. And that’s true all over the country. If Medicare was available to anybody who was willing to pay for it, then in a place where there was an insurance company monopoly there’d be two choices. In a place where there are two choices already, there’d be three choices. And that’s going to be a dramatic improvement .

UPDATE: John Amato

Alan Grayson is a Blue America 2010 candidate and we're very pleased about his proposal. Don't forget to throw a few bucks his way because he's got a huge target on his back.

I just love Alan Grayson - and I especially love the names for his proposed bills, and I can't wait to hear why the Republicans won't support them:

Anticipating a Supreme Court decision that could free corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money on political campaigns, Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) introduced five bills on Wednesday to choke off the expected flood of corporate cash.

"We are facing a potential threat to our democracy," Grayson said in an interview with HuffPost. "Unlimited corporate spending on campaigns means the government is up for sale and that the law itself will be bought and sold. It would be political bribery on the largest scale imaginable."

At issue in the Supreme Court case is whether the government can limit corporate spending during presidential and congressional campaigns. The case is pitting Citizens United, a conservative group, against the Federal Election Commission. The FEC banned ads for Citizens United's film bashing Hillary Clinton during the 2008 election season.

Grayson introduced a handful of bills on Wednesday -- the Business Should Mind Its Own Business Act, the Corporate Propaganda Sunshine Act, the End Political Kickbacks Act, and two other measures.

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Hey, good luck with that! I'm sure the shy and uncertain Rep. Grayson will fold quickly under all the Republican wonderfulness:

Republicans eager to unseat a brash Orlando Democrat who said their party's health care plan amounts to hoping people "die quickly" have so far been unsuccessful in finding a candidate.

But now comes a willing Republican -- all the way from South Florida.

Armando Gutierrez Jr., son of one of Miami's best-known political consultants and a member of local civic boards, voted in the city of Coral Gables as recently as April.

But he says he's the right person to take on Rep. Alan Grayson, who likes to call Republicans "knuckle-dragging Neanderthals" and has become one of the party's top targets in 2010.

Gutierrez, a 28-year-old real estate developer and Republican Party fundraiser, said he has already lined up endorsements from three Central Florida Republicans: U.S. Rep. Gus Bilirakis and state Reps. Chris Dorworth and Bryan Nelson.

At least three Orlando Republicans have declined to run against Grayson, who has millions of dollars of his own to spend on the race and is emerging as a rock star in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. Even some Republican strategists say Gutierrez is a long shot.

"The fact that Republicans have to import their candidate from 300 miles away shows how strong Congressman Grayson is," said Eric Jotkoff, a spokesman for the Florida Democratic Party.

Gutierrez says he has been doing business in Central Florida for six years and started renting in downtown Orlando earlier this year. State law does not require congressional candidates to live in the district. He registered to vote in Orange County on Sept. 11, his birthday.

Turns out Matt Taibbi is already acquainted with Rep. Alan Grayson. Here's his backstory ((and remember, reward good behavior):

Alan Grayson, Bernie Sanders, Ron Paul and others keep hammering away at this whole Fed-secrecy issue, and every now and then we get some pretty interesting exchanges. Zero Hedge relates this one between Grayson and Fed counsel Scott Alvarez. It’s becoming abundantly clear that at some point we’re going to start to hear details about monstrous front-running operations involving the major banks on Wall Street.

I recommend that everyone watch this clip just for the sheer entertainment value. I have personal experience with… well, let’s call it the unique personality of Alan Grayson. In his capacity as an attorney he once basically threatened to have me dismembered and have my body parts dumped in a tin canister and fired into the center of a burning supernova. And that’s actually underselling the real language he used.

We were having a disagreement about the use of information given to me by a certain source in a story about military contracting, and in the middle of what had been a normal contentious argument between two sane adults, dude suddenly assumed this crazy monster-voice and just went medieval on me. He was roaring into the telephone about how he was going to crush me, how I was going to wish I had never messed with him, how I didn’t know who the hell I was dealing with, and so on. One phrase I remember in particular was, “I am going to strip the bark off of you!” It came totally out of the blue and it was like being on the telephone with a metamorphosing werewolf — the whole performance genuinely freaked me out. I may even have peed a little, I can’t remember.

When I heard Alan Grayson was running for Congress, I remember thinking to myself, That Alan Grayson? The lunatic? It can’t be, I thought. I kept imagining trails of half-eaten sheep leading to his campaign appearances. But it turned out to be true. And when I checked, his platform turned out to be quite sane and even kind of interesting. Then he got elected and I suddenly started seeing his name attached to all of these calls for transparency, various crusades for FinReg reforms, etc.

And now every time I see Alan Grayson, he’s tearing some freaked-out bureaucrat a new a**hole in the middle of some empty conference room in the Capitol somewhere. I see the looks on the faces of these poor souls and I know exactly what they’re going through. Which is just hilarious, frankly. Especially since these people all tend to deserve it, like this nebbishy little creep Alvarez quite obviously does.

Now for most of last year Grayson’s public appearances didn’t rate any higher than a five or maybe a six on the craziness scale, but he’s a definite seven in this clip, trending toward eight. Watch Alvarez look around nervously, like he’s not sure whether to say something about how out of control Grayson is. He’s looking around like he expects someone to come out with a butterfly net and capture Grayson, so he can get back to lunch. But no help comes. Very entertaining stuff.