The Stupid Coming From the Right Wing and Republican Party -- Still

In two headlines today:

Gohmert Calls Boehner A Dictator While Claiming Republicans Have Been The Only Party Willing To Compromise

House Votes To Keep EPA From Considering Costs Of Climate Change

It hurts.

The stupid. It hurts.

Jobs Bills From This Congress?

Bueller? Bueller?

Senator Roy Blunt?

Here's hoping.

We all know Americans need the jobs. And our infrastructure needs the updating and improving. And the economy needs the boost, all three, sure.

But these people don't want America to do well unless or until one of their own is back in the White House. Until then, screw you, America. You have to wait.

The Republican Party comes before the nation to Republicans, let there be no doubt. There is no better proof than this.

On That Stopgap, One Week Measure Congress Passed Late Last Night

For a while there last night, it looked as though the Republicans were going to shut down the government again--a part of it, anyway. Anyone who's been watching this knows they want to do something, anything, about President Obama's attempt to finally, finally, after all these long years, do something about our immigration laws. So, brilliant, generous people they are, these same Congressional Republicans have been trying to come up with a way to not fund the Department of Homeland Security so they can punish the President.

Forget that just a few short days ago some ISIS idiots threatened to blow up the Mall of America and/or some malls in this country. Sure, forget that. All that's important is their political goals for their political party. But we've known that for along time. We've seen and known that since 2008 when our current president got elected. They are committed to putting their political party and their goals for it first, nation be damned. They want to make sure America is no way thriving while they're not in the White House.

Which brings us to today, and last evening's actions in Congress. Economist Robert Reich so rightly penned this today:

Congress passed a one-week extension of funding for the Department of Homeland Security just hours before the deadline on Friday night, but the right-wing Republicans in the House (some of whom were swept in after the 2014 midterms) are determined the next extension will include a ban on the President’s immigration enforcement priorities. And if Boehner doesn’t play along, they’re threatening to oust him as Speaker.

America has a long tradition of white mostly-southern radicals who’d stop at nothing to get their way – seceding from the Union in 1861, repudiating federal laws during Reconstruction, enacting Jim Crow laws, resisting desegregation orders in the 1950s, refusing to obey civil rights legislation in the 1960s. Fast forward to Newt Gingrich's takeover of the House in 1995, and the Gingrich-led government shutdown at the end of 1995. And then the 2011 showdown over raising the debt ceiling. On top of this, Republican-controlled states gerrymandered their districts and repressed the votes of minorities -- giving electoral advantage to the most radical right-wingers they could recruit. And now we're suffering the logical culmination of all this: the largest group of government-hating, racist, homophobic, misogynistic know-nothing, climate-change denying, evolution-denying, science-denying, anti-immigrant House Republicans in history, bent on taking America back to the 19th century.

What's more than a bit bizarre but wonderful and ironic and even hypocritical about all this is the fact, of course, that this very department,  of "Homeland Security" is a whole creation of these same "small government" Republicans through their own "conservative", Right Wing George W "I'm a rocket scientist" Bush. We had the CIA, we had the FBI, of course. Could not a small expansion of one of those handle the issues of "homeland security"? The agency is a well-known, big cash boondoggle. And here they are now, trying to shut it down. If that's not out-sized, delicious , fantastic irony and hypocrisy of the first order, I don't know what is.

And meantime, more of the same, just more of the same from these people.

They won't learn, it seems clear.

God help us. Heaven help us, America. These are our leaders.

What Should be the Republican Congress' Number One Priority in the New Year

We'll have a new Congress in the new year, of course and unequivocally, the number one priority of the new Republican Congress in the new year, in 2015, this January should be

...........DRUM ROLL.........

A JOBS/INFRASTRUCTURE BILL.

And for three excellent reasons:

---Americans need the jobs

---The nation's infrastructure needs the updating and improving and this is widely known and accepted and finally

----The economy needs the boost

It's self-evident. This should be easy. If this were golf, it would be a "gimme." (Google it).

But it won't happen because, America be damned, the Republicans don't want success on this President's watch, during his term.

So screw you, America.

The Republican Party and their own needs are far more important than you.

Try to have happy holidays.

Rep. John Boehner, hypocrite extraordinaire

Channel surfing a few days ago, I saw where Representative John Boehner gave a speech to the National Association of Manufacturers on the economy.  Here's a link to the original:

“We Are A Nation of Builders”: Congressman Boehner Delivers

Her's video for it (if you can stomach it):

Speaker Boehner Remarks on Manufacturing

In it, he complains, at length, repeatedly, in different ways, on how slow and weak our economy is.

Seriously.  He actually does.

When I heard it, when I heard him whining about how poor our economy is, part of me wanted to laugh, sure, but far more of me wanted to scream.

For Rep. Boehner or ANY Republican to complain about a weak US economy and not enough growth or jobs would, in fact, be laughable, if it weren't so tragic and, in the case of the Republicans, hypocritical.

Not once, since 2008, since Democratic Party President Obama took office have any Republicans introduced even ONE bill in our Congress to create jobs. Not one.

Not one jobs bill, not one construction bill, not one bill proposed to update our infrastructure nationwide which, I think it's safe to say we're finding is taking us down a decidedly bad path both for that lack of jobs but also for the highway maintenance and updating and expanding we need.

I say again, we all know all too well how badly Missouri needs our Interstate 70 improved and updated, and that's from Illinois and St. Louis on the East, all the way to Kansas and Kansas City on the West.

And then, of course, there are the two bridges that collapsed in the last year--the first in Minneapolis and the other in Washington State.

Yet he--Mr. Boehner--has the nerve, the unmitigated gall to lament on and complain of a lack of jobs in the country and the weak economy.

What chutzpah.

The putz.

Republicans and the Tea Party: Love 'em, hate 'em

The latest from the "love 'em" category:

Boehner gets teary amid threat of a government shutdown

                                    

Amid the threat of a looming government shutdown, House Speaker John Boehner is getting emotional again.

Per ABC News's Jon Karl, the Republican leader, who is known for his tears, was updating the House GOP caucus this morning on the ongoing budget stand-off when his emotions got the best of him. As he was thanking fellow Republicans for sticking with him amid the tense negotiations, the GOP lawmakers rose to give him a standing ovation, prompting Boehner to weep.

I mean, come on.  You gotta' love this guy.  What a hoot.  Losing it like this.  

What is it the Republicans themselves would say, time and again recently?  "Man up!"

Look at 'em--they've got John "The Weeper" Boehner, Sarah "The Quitter" Palin, Michelle "There's No Telling What Will Come Out of My Mouth" Bachmann and many more and then, for back up, they've got Glenn "I Also Get Teary and Crazy" Beck and the whole crew over at Faux News.  It's not a short list.  

If they weren't trying to wreck the country, I'd only love 'em.

Have a great day, y'all.

Links:  http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_theticket/20110406/pl_yblog_theticket/boehner-gets-teary-amid-threat-of-a-government-shutdown;_ylt=An2TVRcaTwzvK4oSr59omKhn.3QA;_ylu=X3oDMTRvbzNzYjhqBGFzc2V0A3libG9nX3RoZXRpY2tldC8yMDExMDQwNi9ib2VobmVyLWdldHMtdGVhcnktYW1pZC10aHJlYXQtb2YtYS1nb3Zlcm5tZW50LXNodXRkb3duBGNjb2RlA21wX2VjXzhfMTAEY3BvcwM4BHBvcwM4BHNlYwN5bl90b3Bfc3RvcmllcwRzbGsDYm9laG5lcmdldHN0
http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/bl-michele-bachmann-quotes.htm?PS=203%3A1

The Republican Party today

You know, no one likes angry people.

And angry, old white people are just about the worst.

Note to Republicans: We wanted health care reform. We got it. Get over it and work with the rest of us--Americans, all--to fix more of our problems.

Hateful old goats.

Thanks and a hat tip to The Osterley Times for this "heads up."

Guest post on the Republican Party and health care reform

James Kunstler-- "The Party Of Cruelty"... (as posted on the "Monkeyfister" blog)

There is not much to disagree with here.

via Kunstler.com

It was amusing to see the Republican party inveigh against health insurance reform as if they were a synod of Presbyterian necromancers girding the nation for a takeover by the spawn of hell. This was the same gang, by the way, who championed the Medicare Prescription Drug Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003, then regarded as the most reckless giveaway of public funds in human history. Along the way, they enlisted an army of nay-sayers representing everything dark, disgraceful, and ignorant in the American character. If the Republicans keep going this way, they'll end up with something worse than Naziism: a party that hates everything but believes in absolutely nothing.

The most striking elements of so-called health care in America these days is how cruel and unjust it is, and in taking a stand against reforming it the Republican party appeared to be firmly in support of cruelty and injustice. This would be well within the historical tradition of other religious crusades which turned political --such as the Spanish Inquisition and the seventeenth century war against witchcraft. Whatever else the Democratic party has stood for in recent history, it has tended to oppose institutional cruelty and injustice, and notice that it has also been the party for keeping religion out of government.

Now a health care reform act has passed and there's some reason to hope that insurance companies will be prevented from doing things like canceling the coverage of policy-holders who have the impertinence to actually get sick, which has been their main device for revenue enhancement, and we'll see how they cope with the idea that being alive in a treacherous world is the fundamental pre-existing condition.

I surely don't know if the nation can afford to pay for what this law requires, but then can we really afford to pay for anything? -- including the salaries, retirement benefits, and health insurance of congressmen, not to mention two wars, bailout life support for banks, rising unemployment benefits, shovel-ready stimulus projects, et cetera, blah blah? Probably not.

My guess is that the health care "industry" will unravel in the years ahead under the weight of its own hypercomplexity just as all the other hypercomplex systems of normal American life (such as it is) groan and collapse under their own unworkable immensities -- and I speak here of industrial-style farming, Big Box "consumerism," Happy Motoring, too-big-to-fail finance, centralized public education, and the pension racket. All the activities of daily life in this country have poor prospects for continuing in their current form.

At least this once a workable majority in the government has stood up to the forces of cruelty and injustice, and whatever else happens to us in the course of this long emergency, it will be a good thing if the party of fairness and justice identifies its adversaries for what they are: not "partners in governing," or any such academical-therapeutic bullshit, but enemies of every generous impulse in the national character.

I hope that Mr. Obama's party can carry this message clearly into the electoral battles ahead, painting the Republican opposition for what it is: a gang of hypocritical, pietistic sadists, seeking pleasure in the suffering of others while pretending to be Christians, devoid of sympathy, empathy, or any inclination to simple human kindness, constant breakers of the Golden Rule, enemies of the common good. In fact, the current edition of the Republican party has achieved something really memorable in the annals of collective bad intentions: they have managed to create a sense of the public interest whose main goal is the destruction of the public interest.

This is exactly what the Republican majority on the Supreme Court did earlier this year by deciding that corporations -- which are sociopathic by definition in being answerable only to their shareholders and nothing else -- should enjoy the same full privileges in election campaign contributions as human persons, who are assumed to have obligations, duties, and responsibilities to the common good (and therefore to the public interest). This shameful act by the court majority only underscores the chief defining characteristic of Republicans in their current incarnation: an inability to think. And so, naturally Republicans gravitate toward superstition and the traditional devices of improvident religious authorities -- persecution of the weak, torture, denial of due process, and dogmas designed to spread hatred.

I hope the American public begins to understand this, because they have been manipulated in their own pain and hardship by these dark forces, and their thrall to the likes of John Boehner, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Rush, Hannity, and the rest of these vicious morons could easily increase as their economic hardships deepen. We're facing a comprehensive contraction of wealth and economy that is going to challenge every shared virtue in our national soul, and we're not going to meet these difficulties successfully without a sense of mutual obligation and sympathy for each other. The Republican party is just itching to turn a giant thumbscrew on the US public -- that is, before they try to start burning their enemies at the stake. We understand that the Health Care Reform Act is a first stand against that.


Thank you, James.



And thank you Monkeyfister blog for bringing it to our attention.


Link to original post:
http://monkeyfister.blogspot.com/2010/03/james-kunstler-party-of-cruelty.html

3 involved men

There are 3 men, currently, who are very involved with the current negotiations for the economic stimulus and this administration whose approaches are very different.

Two are very similar while the third is very different in their approaches.

It seems that Senator John Cornyn (R., Tx) and Represetative John Boehner (R., OH) both have a "Jones", so to speak, to grandstand and oppose things from the Democrats.

It's not like it's a surprise it's just frustrating.

Rep. Boehner seems to really enjoy the limelight, as much and frequently as possible. I get the sense he isn't sure what he likes more--his own photo on paper or footage of himself on television.

Both Cornyn and Boehner seem to want to block progress just to be blocking progress.

The thing is, we're in one heck of an ugly financial mess right now and we need to put politics aside, unfortunately for these two men, and work for solutions.

It's very unfortunate for them because in the first place, the Republican leadership in the past 8 years got us to where we are today and, as I said here earlier, if we get the solutions we do need--as we should--now, with this Democratic President, the Republicans run the risk of being out of power for many years to come.

A large legacy of screw-ups from the Bush years, followed by success in Obama years will doom them for a long time to come, certainly. (And here's hoping).

Republicans, right now, keep saying we need to put in more tax cuts into the stimulus package and not just spending.

Well, they handed out their tax cuts during the just-left Bush administration--only it was to the very wealthy of the country. Also, we have debt out the wazoo. How do you lower taxes further when we can't pay for what we already get? (But that's another column: tax cuts vs. insanely large spending--neither of which we can afford).

The fact is, we need to solve these very large problems because so many people's lives and livelihoods are at stake now. People have already lost their life savings or their jobs, due to this banking, economic mess.

It's not a time for stalling and blocking. It's a time for solutions.

The third person I mentioned is one Bill Perkins, from Houston, Texas.

Have you seen the large ads Mr. Perkins has run in newspapers either mocking Washington or just asking where the trillions of dollars in bailouts went in the last few months?

They're huge.

And frequent.

He's paying big money to ask these questions.

And I think they need to be asked.

And answered.

It seeemed, for a while there, that no one in Washington wanted to even ASK where the money for the first 1/2 of the bank's bailout went, let alone give Americans answers.

So here's to Mr. Perkins--thank you from the rest of us.

We'd like to know where this boondoggle has gone, too.

Who knows? We might avoid throwing away many more millions--or even billions--of taxpaid dollars, all in a supposed attempt to "kickstart the economy."