Tag Archives: Tea Party

May 24, 2011 · 10:16 pm

Democrat Wins Republican Seat in Special Congressional Election in NY-26

Congratulations to Democratic Congresswoman-Elect Kathy Hochul.

This Congressional district is so Republican it has only elected a Democrat something like 3 times since the Civil War.

The Ryan Republican plan to destroy Medicare handed this race to the Democrats.

I just hope the Democrats take note and stand by their position as protectors of Medicare and Social Security.  And I hope they make damn sure everyone knows the GOP wants to destroy them both.  Now we have them on record.

From The Hill:

The emergence of Medicare reform as an issue in the New York special election “changed the climate,” presenting Democrats with an opportunity to capture the heavily Republican district, according to Rep. Steve Israel (N.Y.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

The House GOP’s budget plan converts Medicare to a type of voucher system for those currently under 55 as a way to rein in costs. Instead of government-run Medicare, seniors would buy private insurance and the government would foot some of the bill.

Only four Republicans voted against the proposal when it came up in the House in April and Jane Corwin, the GOP nominee in the 26th district, embraced the plan.

“Whether the Democrat is elected or not, Medicare changed the climate in that district,” Israel told The Ballot Box.

via Dem campaign chief: Medicare ‘changed the climate’ in NY-26 – The Hill’s Ballot Box.

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May 12, 2011 · 10:00 pm

Rand Paul: ‘Right to Health Care’ is Slavery

I still can’t believe this man is a U.S. Senator….

He’s a pompous, self-important, ignorant jackass- so that may mean he is qualified to be a Senator in today’s Senate…

Still, I somehow don’t find it funny for a rich white man to compare himself to a slave…

A hearing of the Senate HELP Subcommittee on Primary Health and Aging looked at emergency room use and took an odd turn Wednesday when Sen. Rand Paul compared the “right to health care” to slavery.

“With regard to the idea whether or not you have a right to health care you have to realize what that implies. I am a physician. You have a right to come to my house and conscript me. It means you believe in slavery. You are going to enslave not only me but the janitor at my hospital, the person who cleans my office, the assistants, the nurses. … You are basically saying you believe in slavery,” said Paul (R-Ky.), who is an ophthalmologist.

Paul, who is the subcommittee ranking member, said he believed that the notion of expanding federally funded community health centers to ensure that everyone had a “right” to care was not constitutional and would enslave doctors. Doctors, he said, should care for patients because of their own moral code.

“Our founding documents said you have a right to pursue happiness, but there’s no guarantee about physical comfort. When you say you have a ‘right’ to something there is an implication of force. … I will always treat people who come into the ER because that is what we always have done and because I believe in the Hippocratic Oath.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who chairs the subcommittee turned to one of the hearing witnesses, Dr. Dana Kraus and asked her if she believed she was a slave working at a federally qualified health center.

“I love my job. I do not feel like a slave,” Kraus said.

via Rand Paul: ‘Right to health care’ is slavery – Kate Nocera – POLITICO.com.

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April 29, 2011 · 6:47 pm

In U.S., Negative Views of the Tea Party Rise to New High

The party’s over…

About half of Americans, 47%, now have an unfavorable image of the Tea Party movement, the highest since it emerged on the national scene.

Gallup began tracking Americans’ views of the Tea Party in March 2010, when 37% had a favorable and 40% an unfavorable view. Those views stayed roughly the same through January of this year, but have now turned somewhat more negative. The April 20-23 USA Today/Gallup poll finds favorable opinions of the Tea Party movement dropping to 33%, from 39% in January, and unfavorable opinions rising to 47% from 42%. Twenty percent of Americans say they haven’t heard of the Tea Party or have no opinion of it.

via In U.S., Negative Views of the Tea Party Rise to New High.

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April 28, 2011 · 9:19 pm

A Vanity Fair Challenge to Donald Trump to Prove the Authenticity of His Hair | Politics | Vanity Fair

Fair is Fair….

If he’s going to challenge President Obama’s legitimacy as an American Citizen, this seems to be the least he can do….

If Trump intends to declare his candidacy for the presidency, as he has so often threatened, the issue of his comb-over could become a constitutional matter. In the interest of putting this controversy to rest, Vanity Fair demands that Trump release a notarized certificate from a barber proving the veracity of his hair. In the event that significant members of the Balder community question the validity of the notarized certificate, we insist that Trump submit to air, wind, and Dutch rub tests to be administered by an independent board-certified hair-care expert that will debunk, once and for all, these corrosive conspiracy theories.

via A Vanity Fair Challenge to Donald Trump to Prove the Authenticity of His Hair | Politics | Vanity Fair.

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April 28, 2011 · 8:34 pm

For Birthers, Obama’s Not Black Enough | The Nation

Fascinating article about President Obama and Racism in “The Nation”.

Here is a brief excerpt and a link to the full story:

Remember when the media regularly asked if Barack Obama was “black enough” to get the support of African-Americans? In 2007 pundits wondered if a black-identified but technically biracial candidate who came of age in the post–civil rights era, was raised far from traditional African-American communities, was educated in the Ivy League and boasted a foreign name might be more palatable to white voters than black ones. Today this query seems hopelessly naïve and endearingly optimistic about the fluidity of American racial identities. After the secret-Muslim accusations, the witch doctor posters, the “You lie!” shout-down and the chimpanzee e-mails—it is clear that President Obama is certainly “black enough” to experience both racially motivated public attacks and exceptional support among racial minorities.

But the tenacity of the birther movement has revived the issue of Obama’s blackness for me. Nearly a quarter of Americans, most of them white, believe President Obama was not born in the United States. The resilience of the birther myth—lately given air by Donald Trump—has even forced the White House to post a copy of Obama’s birth certificate online in hopes of settling the matter once and for all. Good luck—this controversy isn’t about documentation; it’s about deeply held beliefs, even faith claims, about who is and is not a legitimate citizen.

Many on the left say that birtherism is just racism, but there’s more than simple racial animus behind it. I suspect that part of the problem is that Obama is indeed not black enough; specifically, the president is not sufficiently Negro—the historical variation of blackness that is uniquely and indisputably American.

via For Birthers, Obama’s Not Black Enough | The Nation.

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April 27, 2011 · 8:12 pm

Debt proposals: The Courageous Progressive Caucus Budget | The Economist

I’m glad to see this proposal finally getting some attention….

This is the one that makes real sense and has the right priorities….

And this is from “The Economist” which is not exactly a left-wing publication…

Mr Miller’s column notes that “the  Congressional Progressive Caucus plan wins the fiscal responsibility derby thus far; it reaches balance by 2021 largely through assorted tax hikes and defense cuts.” Which is pretty interesting. Have you ever heard of the Congressional Progressive Caucus budget plan? Neither had I. The caucus’s co-chairs, Raul Grijalva of Arizona and Keith Ellison of Minnesota, released it on April 6th. The budget savings come from defence cuts, including immediately withdrawing from Afghanistan and Iraq, which saves $1.6 trillion over the CBO baseline from 2012-2021. The tax hikes include restoring the estate tax, ending the Bush tax cuts, and adding new tax brackets for the extremely rich, running from 45% on income over a million a year to 49% on income over a billion a year.

Mr Ryan’s plan adds (by its own claims) $6 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, but promises to balance the budget by sometime in the 2030s by cutting programmes for the poor and the elderly. The Progressive Caucus’s plan would (by its own claims) balance the budget by 2021 by cutting defence spending and raising taxes, mainly on rich people. Mr Ryan has been fulsomely praised for his courage. The Progressive Caucus has not.

I’m not really sure what “courage” is supposed to mean here, but this seems precisely backwards. For 30 years, certainly since Walter Mondale got creamed by Ronald Reagan, the most dangerous thing a politician can do has been to call for tax hikes. Politicians who call for higher taxes are punished, which is why they don’t do it. I’m curious to see what adjectives people would apply to the Progressive Congressional Caucus’s budget proposal. But it’s hard for me to imagine the media calling a proposal to raise taxes “courageous” and “honest”. And my sense is that the disparate treatment here is a structural bias rooted in class.

via Debt proposals: The courageous Progressive Caucus budget | The Economist.

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April 26, 2011 · 10:12 pm

Levi Johnston’s New Book: Deer in the Headlights: My Life in Sarah Palin’s Crosshairs

You know this had to have been ghost-written….

There’s no way he can read and write….

But it’s still going to piss off Sarah Palin big-time…

Not to mention Bristol Palin, his ex….

And what is it with 20 year-olds writing memoirs?????

They haven’t done enough to even justify an essay, much less a book….

This guy has really stretched his 15 minutes of fame…

From VanityFair.com:

One by one, every single citizen of Alaska is publishing a memoir. (Is this some lingering consequence of the Alaska Purchase? Let’s call the phenomenon “Sarah’s Folly.”) Next up is Levi Johnston, high-school athlete, former Bristol Palin paramour, and Vanity Fair essayist. “I want to tell the truth about my close relationship with the Palins,” he said in a statement. “I’m doing this for me, for my boy Tripp and for the country.”

Johnston’s forthcoming book will be called, alarmingly, Deer in the Headlights: My Life in Sarah Palin’s Crosshairs. That Johnston himself is an avid hunter is an irony we can only imagine did not come across the author’s crosshairs.

via Guess the Sentences in Levi Johnston’s New Book, Deer in the Headlights: My Life in Sarah Palin’s Crosshairs | VF Daily | Vanity Fair.

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April 20, 2011 · 7:29 pm

Medicare Cuts Proposed by Republicans Face Broad Opposition in ABC News Poll – ABC News

I have two big concerns:

  1. Republicans don’t care about what most Americans think and will ram their agenda through anyway.
  2. People will forget this by Election Day next year and vote against their interests again

This should just kill the GOP if everyone pays attention, remembers and votes to protect their own interests instead of those of the Rich, Big Corporations and Tea Party fanatics.

Americans strongly reject Medicare cuts and broadly support higher taxes on the wealthy, underscoring the political risks in Republican debt-reduction plans. And on one key factor in the debate — protecting the middle class — President Obama retains the upper hand.

Those and other results from the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll underscore the hazards of the federal spending debate for Republicans as well as for Obama. As poorly as the president is rated for handling the deficit — just 39 percent approve — the Republican leaders in Congress do a bit worse, with just 33 percent approval on the same issue.

Similarly, while just 42 percent approve of Obama’s handling of the economy overall, fewer still, 34 percent, approve of how the Republicans in Congress are dealing with it. And the public by a 12-point margin trusts Obama to protect middle-class Americans, a theme he’s likely to sound loudly and often as the 2012 election campaign warms up.

via Medicare Cuts Proposed by Republicans Face Broad Opposition in ABC News Poll – ABC News.

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April 20, 2011 · 7:16 pm

Republicans: Let’s Cut Social Security, Too

God, I hope people are paying attention to what these fools want to do…

They will not rest until they totally destroy the social safety net in America..

Do we really want Senior Citizens to end up sleeping and dying in the streets?

These guys are providing a lot of support for D.H. Lawrence’s observation:

“The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.”

I hope we yet prove him wrong by voting these people out of office….

From MotherJones.com:

For all the drastic spending cuts in GOP Rep. Paul Ryan’s proposed 2012 budget, there’s one major government program that it barely touches: Social Security. Now Republicans in both houses of Congress are preparing to dig into that sacrosanct entitlement as well.

On Wednesday morning, shortly before Obama’s big deficit speech, three Republican senators unveiled a plan to cut $6.2 trillion by paring back Social Security over the next two decades. Under a proposal unveiled by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), and Mike Lee (R-Utah), the qualifying age for Social Security would rise from 67 to 70 by 2032, while benefits for everyone earning more than an average of $43,000 over their lifetime would be reduced. Graham took pains to explain that he wasn’t pushing for privatization but also slammed any tax increases to shore up Social Security, saying such a move would “destroy America.” “It’s much better to give up benefits on the end side than pay taxes now,” he explained.

Graham, who’s long led GOP efforts on Social Security, said that he could only find two other senators to join him at the podium on Wednesday, given the political risks involved in tackling the issue. “It shows the real reluctance of the GOP,” he said. And while House Republicans have made privatizing Medicare and cutting Medicaid their top budget priorities, Graham said that Social Security reform needed to be moved to the front of the queue. “It’s the place to start entitlement reform. Once you fix the Social Security problem, move to Medicare,” he told Mother Jones.

via Republicans: Let’s Cut Social Security, Too | Mother Jones.

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April 20, 2011 · 12:16 am

Playgirl Woos Michele Bachmann’s Son; He Says ‘No’

Seems these folks are only so conservative….

Let’s not forget Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown was once a Cosmo centerfold….

From PopEater.com:

You can’t make this stuff up, kids. Following their successful partnership with Levi Johnston, Playgirl magazine informs me they’ve set their sights on another young man with a Republican media star in his life: Lucas Bachmann, son of possible presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann.

“I’m reaching out to Lucas because when I researched him I was struck by how absolutely adorable he is,” Playgirl spokesman Daniel Nardicio tells me. “Plus, I think his political ties make him even sexier. We’ve made initial contact, so let’s see how it goes from there.”

But the skin mag will have to move on to another politician’s son (Mitt Romney has five to choose from!) because Bachmann, 28, has officially quashed the idea.

Reached for comment (over Facebook), Lucas confirmed to PopEater that Playgirl reached out and that he wasn’t the least bit interested. For starters, the politician’s son is currently a resident in psychiatry at the University of Connecticut.

“As you can certainly understand,” Lucas wrote back to Daniel. “One must have a certain degree of anonymity when treating patients in the mental health community.”

More: Playgirl Woos Michele Bachmann’s Son; He Says ‘No’ | PopEater.com.

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