These are the scripts and recorded segments that I use to get information to the people on my weekly radio show.
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| Washington state representative Jay Rodne, a republican legislator representing the town of Snoqualmie, has revealed his bigotry by releasing the following statement on social media. quote "Islam is incompatible with western civilization! How anyone people need to die? In the interim, Americans arm yourselves! unquote. In addition to showing us his poor sentence construction, he's also broadcast his ignorance and bigotry for all to see. America is already the most heavily armed country in the world, and he wants us to launch a war on Muslims in America, many of which are actually citizens of this country. Religious hatred has no place in America, and our elected leaders shouldn't be encouraging violence against any minority, religious or otherwise. |
| Governors across the country are quivering in their boots, loudly stating that they will not allow Syrian refugees to be settled in their states. Of course this fear is unfounded, as it is based upon fear and superstition regarding the recent terrorist attacks in Paris. The persons involved in those attacks were in fact citizens of France and Belgium, and could have gotten into this country with nothing more than a tourist visa, while the people seeking to escape from the regional war in the Middle East are heavily vetted to prevent undesirable criminals from entering this country. Three quarters of these refugees are women and children. |
| After the terrorist attacks in Paris, a great fear took hold of the easily frightened. Among those are the nearly thirty state governors, almost all Republican, who are so swept up in the fear that they're probably wearing adult diapers. These governors and the Republican House of Representatives have voted to not allow refugees fleeing the regional war in the middle east for fear that they might be terrorists come to kill us in our beds. I'm personally more afraid of the right wing gun nuts than I am the women and children seeking a better life for themselves. And since governors have no say in where anybody chooses to live, it's largely a symbolic vote, showing the world how afraid we can get when we don't think things through. |
| America was founded as a refuge, a safe place for those seeking escape from persecution in the land where they're from. Each new wave of immigrants has been belittled and marginalized in the process, from the blacks brought here as slaves, or the Irish fleeing famine, or the Italians, the Poles, the Slavs, and more, each coming to this country, seeking a better life for themselves and their families, eventually making it a better place. But now the easily scared want to raise walls to keep out those whose desperation cause them to flee their home countries. Most likely you are a descendant of immigrants. And immigrants have made this country great |
| At a recent debate, Republican candidates tripped over themselves telling us all of the governmental departments that they would shut down, all in the name of keeping taxes lower. They would eliminate the Department of Education, Department of Energy, Department of Commerce, Department of Community Affairs, and the Internal Revenue Service. Almost all that would be left of the federal budget is the Department of Defense, which gives us a larger military than the next ten militaries combined. If we really want to save money to keep taxes low, how about shaving a bit off of our ability to make war on any body at any time. |
| Listening to a Republican presidential debate is like traveling to an alternate universe, one with its own history and facts and arithmetic. For example, it continues to be a place where you can drastically lower taxes, spend more money on the military, not cut any spending that people will notice or miss, and still balance the budget. Similar policies may have led to the greatest economic disaster since the Great Depression, but the Bush administration was a long time ago and no one remembers it any more. |
| Republicans love the fetus, but abandon the child. They love business, but hate workers. They support the soldier, but abandon the veteran. They love America, but hate Americans. They hate democracy, but want to live in a theocracy. |
| Whenever somebody demands new laws in response to a mass shooting, the right wing seeks to dismiss their activism by telling them that it's too soon to politicize the tragedy. Yet less than twenty four hours after the terrorist attacks in Paris, you had former speaker of the house Newt Gingrich tweeting that the terrorists could have been stopped if only Parisians had been as well armed as Americans. As if people with concealed pistols could have stopped determined people armed with automatic weapons and suicide belts. |
| After an attack such as the recent one that happened in Paris, the right wing offers seductively simple answers. If only we were more belligerent towards Muslims. If only we dropped more bombs, and if only we kept out the hoard of refugees. But the solution to our security issues won't be found in aerial bombings or drone strikes. I don't know what the answer is, but if somebody is selling you a simple solution, then somebody is trying to sell you snake oil. |
| President Obama took office during an epic recession, the worst in eighty years. It was so bad that Obama's entire presidential term has been spent crawling out of it with zero help from Republicans. In fact, the republicans did everything they could to hinder Obama's economic initiatives, obstructing every attempt to enact policies that could have helped the country recover. They spent the entire time throwing Obama's promise to unite the country back in his face, blaming him for failing to magically fix everything. That he has done so well in the face of such opposition says a lot for the democratic party's economic policies, compared to their republican counterparts. |
| The office of the Presidency of the United States is a position that requires diplomacy and finesse as well as determination. Now Republicans told us in 2008 that Barack Obama was untested, and unknowing, therefore unqualified to be president, as he had too little experience in political office. Fast forward a few years, and now the Republican front runners are all bereft of actual political experience, and all of the republican candidates are severely lacking in diplomacy. Each and every one of them is long on aggrieved petulance and short on measured strategy and nuance. |
| The new speaker of the House of Representatives is former Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan, known as the Zombie Eyed Granny Starver. Speaker Ryan has dedicated his political life to punishing the poor for their failure to become rich, including attempts to cut Social Security benefits for widows, the elderly, and the disabled, even though he received those same benefits when his own father died. His proposed budget would have doubled the interest on student loans and slashed grant money for students. And he wants to eliminate food stamps. Zombie Eyed Granny Starver indeed. |
| This week Republicans in the Senate passed a resolution that would roll back safeguards that protect the drinking water of one hundred seventeen million Americans. Bowing to the desires of large industrial farms and other big business groups, up to sixty percent of the nation's streams and millions of acres of wetlands would now be open to waste dumping and pollution by those same business interests. Senate Republicans would rather allow the poisoning of water for one third of the country than prohibit big business from contaminating that same water. Remember that come election day. |
| Your new speaker of the House of Representatives is Paul Ryan, former vice presidential candidate. He said that he would take the job of speaker only if he were allowed to continue his life work balance, seeking to even out the time that he spent in the third most powerful elected position in U.S. government with his family time. This week he showed us exactly what he meant by dismissing calls for paid family leave for other people wanting to spend time with their new families. If you want something for yourself while denying it for others, you are in fact a hypocrite. And a republican. |
| In the last presidential election, Mitt Romney all but sabotaged his candidacy when he told a private group that forty seven percent of Americans are takers, looking for free stuff from the government. Well his number might be right, but those so called Takers are, in order, Retired, in school, homemakers, disabled, and not employed. These are the people who worked all their lives already, or are too young to work, or can't work for whatever reason, including the terrible economy. So sure, forty seven percent is a number, but there is no Randian demarcation between makers and takers. |
| A poll released by the Associated press indicates that a majority of republican voters think that Donald Trump is the most electable Republican candidate. Saying Donald Trump is the most electable candidate is like saying that glazed is the healthiest kind of doughnut. |
| Donald Trump said in an interview that Iraq is the Harvard of Terrorism, which might be true. The only reason that George W. Bush got into Iraq is because his dad went there. |
| When Republicans talk about spending cuts, they're talking about cutting federal spending on social welfare programs. When they talk about tax cuts, they're talking about lowering taxes on the already wealthy. They claim that the combination of tax cuts and spending cuts will reinvigorate the economy, creating a rising tide that will lift all yachts. But because this hasn't worked for any government that has tried it over the last thirty plus years, it seems more likely that it's a scam to further the agenda of the already super rich. Remember that come election time. |
| The GOP’s increasing preference for callow, reckless candidates represents a culmination of the anti-government, anti-politics, anti-intellectual direction of the conservative movement. Although it overlaps with the parties rightward shift, it presents a unique threat to American democracy because it espouses not mere preference for smaller government, but a visceral hatred of functioning government and the practice of politics. This mindset abhors concessions to objective reality, expertise, or political adversaries, both domestic and foreign. |
| We think that we elect people to congress to pass laws and institute policies that will make this country better, but if that's the standard, then the current crop of congress critters has failed to live up to our expectations. The current congress has passed only seventy one laws, fourteen of which have given names to designated federal buildings, post offices and highways. This congress has the lowest number of bills passed than any congress in history by far. Is it any surprise that both houses of congress have been controlled by the party that says that government can't work? |
| The Republicans who participated in the debate this last week are rising as one to decry the mean moderators with their gotcha questions, and the supposedly shoddy way that they were treated during the debate. The chairman of the Republican National Committee has vowed that NBC will not be allowed to host further debates because they were such meanies. The questions asked didn't seem far removed from those asked at the Democratic debate the week before, but the Republican candidates are throwing a tantrum, claiming that they weren't treated fairly. Well boo frickin hoo. If you take unpopular stands, or if your economic proposals simply don't add up, you should expect some push-back on those policies. If they sound mean to you, then maybe you're in the wrong line of work. |
| Let's talk about real issues for a moment. If you listen to the red side, you'd think that Planned Parenthood is kidnapping children off the streets in order to dismember them and sell they parts on the black market, that business can't operate under the onerous level of governmental regulation, that welfare is sapping the will of poor people to do actual work, and that there's a coming invasion of brown people from Mexico. The blue side wants to talk about real issues, like racism, gun violence, climate change, student debt, and the domination of our political processes by the super rich. One side wants to scare low information voters into their agenda, while the other side is trying to debate actual policies. |
| The democratic debates have been thoughtful and civil, if a bit wonky. Issues are discussed, positions are declared, and the next question comes up. In contrast, the republican debates are a reality show where the weakest is picked on and voted off the island, where insults are cast about, and then the discussion becomes about whose insult went over the line. What issues are discussed are of a trivial nature, reflecting the trivial nature of republican politics. I think that it's quite clear who should be in charge of government. |
| The democratic candidates for president had a debate this week, and it was amazing for what was not said. Nobody said anything racist, or lied about abortions, or insulted Rosie O'Donnell, or other significant parts of the American population. They did talk about issues that affect the American people, like guns and college debt, Syria and Social Security. In contrast, Mike Huckabee, who is definitely not a democratic candidate for president, attempted to steal the thunder of the debate by tweeting something racist about how Asian people eat dogs. Other than that, it was all grown up and reasonable. It was the exact opposite of the republican reality show that is playing on the other channel. |
| Again, the contrasts couldn't be clearer. Republicans think that America is a dystopian hell scape in which evil, violent foreigners are trying to kill us in our beds while jackbooted governmental thugs come to our homes to wrestle our guns from our cold dead fingers, with Planned Parenthood kidnapping children off the streets to dismember them and sell off the body parts. The Democrats see America as a powerful nation struggling with economic security and equality of its citizens, and seek to solve the very real problems of climate change and military crises around the world without plunging the world into global armed conflict. That, and they have to somehow have to work with an opposition party that would rather hasten in the end times than govern effectively. |
| Republicans seem to exist in a state of alternate reality. In a poll of registered Republican voters, eighty percent said that they approved of the job that George Bush did as president, and forty three percent said that they would vote for him for president if he were eligible to run in 2016. Now for me, George Bush has my coveted number one spot for worst president ever, narrowly edging out another noted war criminal Richard Nixon. Now this may be a reflection on the sorry state of candidates running on the Republican ticket for 2016, but I think that it's a knee jerk reaction to anything that smells of democratic policy. They'd even vote for the guy who plunged the country into two bloody and costly wars, destabilized the middle east, presided over the Katrina debacle, and looked the other way while his cronies looted, pillaged, and then destroyed the world's economies. Vote him for president? I think that George Bush should be tried for war crimes. |
| The Republican led shutdown of the federal government in 2013 cost the country an estimated twenty four billion dollars and stalled the creation of over one hundred thousand private sector jobs. These same republicans want to shut down the government again over the principle of funding health care for poor women. And because no member of the minority party will help elect any speaker of the house, the next speaker will be dependent on those same truly crazy congressmen in order to get elected to this office. That means that we should bet on the crazies shutting down the government again. You know, because it worked so well last time. |
| We must never forget the darkness that enveloped this country under the George Bush administration. We must never forget the callousness of Cheney, the anger of Ashcroft, the recklessness of Rice, the wantonness of Wolfowitz, the prevarications of Powell, the rapaciousness of Rumsfeld. We must never forget being told that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, or “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.” We must never the gay-bashing or the Swift-Boating. We must never forget Samuel Alito, John Roberts and the ideologues appointed to the federal district and appellate courts. We must never forget the abandoning of the Kyoto Protocol and the censoring of climate science. We must never forget how EPA Administrator Christine Whitman and Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill were chased out of the Bush administration for failing ideological purity tests. We must never forget Karl Rove. We must never forget the years of fear and smear. |
| You'd think that a pediatric brain surgeon would be a little more familiar with modern scientific concepts, but Doctor Ben Carson is out of touch with reality, let alone science. Doctor Carson has expressed doubts about the Big Bang origin of the universe, vaccine science, the biological roots of sexuality, and evolution, which he claims is a disinformation campaign perpetrated by the devil. He also confuses climate change with the weather. And he recently said, quote "Gravity, where did it come from? I mean, there are so many things" unquote. I sure wouldn't want this man operating on my kid's brain, let alone be president of my country, yet he is the front runner for that office in several polls conducted in early primary states. |
| Democratic senators have introduced a sweeping legislative package aimed at preventing guns from ending up in the hands of people who shouldn't have them. The proposed bill includes provisions to close loopholes in gun purchases, toughen up background checks in general, and provisions to try to shut down illegal gun sales. A similar legislative package was introduced in 2013 after the massacre of twenty school children and six adults at Sandy Hook elementary, but the attempt failed due to republican blockage. This most recent attempt at common sense gun control also has almost no chance of getting past current republican obstruction, but it will put Republican senators on record as opposing even the most trivial of gun control legislation. |
| This week's hypocrite of the week comes from Indianna, where Republican state representative Judson McMillin has resigned from office after a video of him having sex with someone other than his wife was sent from his stolen phone to persons on his contact list. Representative McMillin was a family values tea party republican, and had sponsored anti-gay bills under the guise of religious freedom. He wanted to drug test welfare recipients, and has voted to strip funding from Planned Parenthood. He was also responsible for blocking a bill that would have made distributing revenge porn illegal, a law that might have spared him the embarrassment of the leaked video. Congratulations former Representative McMillin. You are a hypocrite. |
| Donald Trump says that he gets by on less than four hours of sleep at night. I know that I stay up late at night worrying and unable to sleep whenever I think of the possibility of Donald Trump becoming president. |
| Another Republican debate this week, and another display of full on crazy. Republicans want to change the constitution to abolish the fourteenth amendment, and to make abortion illegal. They want to deport people born in this country because their parents weren't. They want to make the personal beliefs of low level government employees the supreme law of the land. They want weaponized drones to patrol the borders of Mexico and Canada. They want to deport millions of people without paying for it. They want to wage war against Syria, Iran, and probably San Francisco. They want to cut taxes on the already obscenely wealthy. What they don't want to talk about is anything remotely considered serious policy. Not climate change, not income inequality, not gun control, not the militarization of the police, nothing in the way of solutions for the very real problems that face this country. And these were the grown up candidates. The really crazy ones were on an earlier debate stage. One can only be thankful that they are polling lower than the merely sort of crazy ones. |
| Lately, FOX news has been playing up the idea of a war on cops. They've declared that the Black Lives Matter movement is a terrorist organization that is targeting police officers for assassination. But like anything broadcast on FOX news, one has to ask, what's the truth here? 2015 is on pace to see thirty five felonious killings of police officers. That would make it the second lowest number of murdered cops in decades. Or you could look at the number of cops killed per number of cops total, and guess what? The number is low and getting lower. You can look at the number of cops killed as a fraction of the population. Low, and getting lower. So not only is there no war on cops, but President Obama's remarks about how Travon Martin could have been his son is not inflaming black people to begin murdering cops. Remember, if you see it on Fox, it's bound to be a lie. |
| Pope Francis visits America this week, and will deliver a speech to a joint session of Congress. Arizona Republican congressman Paul Gosar, who describes himself as a "proud Catholic", says that he will boycott the pope's speech, because the pope's message deviates from conservative talking points on climate change, economic inequality, abortion, homosexuality, and religious freedom. Gosar says that it is his responsibility to call out religious leaders who are wrong about policies that he disagrees with. So who elected this guy pope? |
| One of my simple rules about how I vote on political issues is as follows. If Tim Eyman is for it, I'm against it. It's a rule that has served me well for many years. After all, Eyman makes his living from kickbacks from people paying for initiatives that espouse conservative dream laws. Eyman made over three hundred thousand dollars as personal income in 2012 for his efforts at passing an initiative that year. The initiative passed and was voted into law, but was held unconstitutional the following year. Now him getting money for his efforts is not illegal, but I recognize that he's in the initiative passing business, and as long as somebody will pay, and apparently pay well, for his special brand of huckstering, I for one will always be voting against whatever Tim Eyman is for. |
| One of the oft repeated lies that John Ellis Jeb Bush repeated at the debate this week was that his brother George kept us safe during his tenure as president. This is only true if you ignore that one day in September of 2001 when he was president, or those several days when New Orleans drowned. He most pointedly did not keep us safe. And after we were attacked, George launched two wars, one of which was not only optional, but illegal and unnecessary. Attacking Iran for nine eleven would have been like Franklin Roosevelt attacking Brazil for Pearl Harbor. So no, George didn't keep us safe while he was president, and Jeb can't claim that he'll do the same while he, god forbid, is president. |
| Carly Fiorina, Republican candidate for president, says that even Democrats can't think of anything of substance accomplished by Hillary Clinton, even though she's been in public service for over forty years, but here's a few to remember. She finalized the START treaty reducing nuclear weapons with Russia. She worked with China on climate change. She negotiated treaties for women's rights, procured funding for nine eleven first responders, made adopting easier, and initiated the sanctions on Iran that set the table for negotiations regarding restrictions on its nuclear program. In fact, every accomplishment in foreign policy during Obama's first term is directly attributable to Hillary Clinton. For crying out loud, she was a U.S. senator as well as a Secretary of State. She's got more experience than any of the Republican candidates. Compared to Fiorina's own governmental accomplishments, which are non-existent, this is pretty rich. Even Ms. Clinton's eventual failed effort to implement universal heath care is more substantial than anything Ms. Fiorina has accomplished. |
| Steve Jobs is in the news this week, even though he died four years ago. As the right wing continues to demonize immigrants, both legal and otherwise, it's useful to remember that Steve Jobs represents what this country is supposed to be about. You see, Job's father was a political refugee from Syria, who came to this country to make a better life for himself. That his son was able to co-create the Apple computer company shows how much immigrants and their children can contribute to this country. What we get instead is knee jerk fear mongering about the muslum hordes come to kill us in our beds. |
| Here's something that surprised me. Most of the republican candidates running for president have spoken at about a seventh or eighth grade level during the debates. The two outliers to this measurement? It's no surprise that Donald Trump is one of them, at a fifth grade vocabulary level. What did surprise me was that Ted Cruz is the most sophisticated speaker, speaking at a tenth grade level. Maybe that's why Donald Trump tried to show us his creative use of the dictionary when he used the word Braggadocio at the last debate. |
| By any measure, there were a number of whoppers told by Republican presidential candidates at the last debate. By one person's measure, Trump won with six outright lies. Fiorina, Christie, and Cruz had two or three, with only one lie to count for Paul, Huckabee, and Carson. Bush, Walker, Rubio, and Kasich didn't tell any fibs at all. Maybe it's because they didn't talk as much as the others. |
| A political party's platform is a statement of policies that that party wishes to implement. Democrats are in favor of things like paid family leave, making child care and college more affordable for more people, promoting equal pay for equal work, protecting voting rights, addressing climate change, implementing common sense gun possession laws, instituting Wall Street reform, and ending the war in Iraq. I think that it's fair to say that the Republican party is in favor of none of those things. They are in favor of tax cuts for the rich, implementing trade agreements with other countries that export jobs, denying some couples the right to marry, making certain religious sects the official law of the land, and denying people of color the right to vote. And let's not forget the concept of making abortion, for any reason whatsoever, a crime. I could go on, but really, do I need to? There is not a single republican policy that I agree with. |
| In what perhaps are the scariest eleven words ever spoken in the english language, Sarah Palin wants to be Energy Secretary under President Donald Trump. She claims to have special expertise owing to the two years that she spent as governor of Alaska, a state rather reliant on extraction of natural resources. In typical Palin speak, she said that quote I think a lot about the Department of Energy, because energy is my baby. Oil and gas and minerals, those things that god has dumped on this part of the earth for mankind's use. unquote. She also promised to immediately dissolve the agency, devolving control of natural resource extraction to the individual states. As Energy Secretary, Ms. Palin would be in charge of the safety and security of the country's nuclear weapons. One shudders to think of a nuclear weaponized Sarah Palin. |
| Trump is currently polling at 32% among voters with no college degree, and only 8% among voters with a college degree. That’s quite a split. It’s worth noting that Republicans who consider themselves Tea Party members are more likely to have gone to college than other Republicans. |
| After his racist remarks about Mexicans resulted in Donald Trump being fired from future episodes of the reality show Celebrity Apprentice, the TV network NBC set about looking for a replacement host for the popular program. Almost hired for the position was Hispanic comedian George Lopez. So finally Donald Trump's worst nightmare has come true. A Mexican has come into this country and taken his job. |
| Republicans wrecked the economy, then complain that Obama hasn't fixed it fast enough. They blew a hole in the federal deficit with two unnecessary wars put on the country's credit card, then complain because Obama hasn't balanced the budget yet. They negotiated the exit of troops from these wars and then complain that Obama hasn't left enough soldiers behind. Iran created a nuclear weapons program under their watch, then complain that Obama's nuclear deal isn't good enough. And enough people believe them to encourage them into further histrionics. I'm amazed that republicans aren't laughed out of polite company as they deserve to be, let alone be taken seriously in any political debate. |
| Donald Trump has famously said that quote when I look at myself in the first grade and I look at myself now, I'm basicly the same. The temperament is not a whole lot different. unquote. Now when Trump was in the second grade, he punched his music teacher. I for one can't think of many first graders that I'd like to see as president, can you? |
| John Ellis Bush, more commonly known as Jeb, released his tax proposal in a New York Times op ed, and in it he says that there is no problem bedeviling this country that can't be solved with huge tax cuts for the already obscenely wealthy. High Unemployment? Tax cuts. Low GDP growth? Tax cuts. Cancellation of your favorite TV show? Tax Cuts. Jeb promises to lower tax rates on rich individuals and corporations even more than his brother did, and we all know how that wound up. He has also promised to raise the Social Security retirement age from sixty seven to seventy in order to pay for the cuts. It's son of voodoo economics with a pinch of fairy dust, and hasn't worked any of the other times we've tried it since the Reagan administration. |
| The details of Jeb Bush's tax plan are coming out. It's expected that the loss of federal revenue due to the reduced taxes on mostly wealthy people will cost the government three point four trillion dollars over the next ten years. And that might even be true. But Jeb's expectation is that these tax cuts will supercharge the economy in such a way that federal revenues will actually be greater than those lost over that decade. This hasn't worked any of the other times its been tried, but maybe this time will be different. And if you think that it'll work, then I've got some swampland that I'd like to sell to you as well. |
| The Tax Foundation is a conservative outfit that is predisposed to like Jeb Bush's tax plan. They predict that the tax cuts on the already wealthy would quote greatly increase the U.S. economy's size in the long run, leading to higher incomes for all taxpayers at all income levels unquote. But it turns out that some incomes are preferred to others. Care to guess which ones? The poor and middle class would receive less than three percent tax reductions, while the wealthy would receive almost twelve percent lower taxes. And that's a percentage. The actual dollar figure of tax breaks would be greater still. The rich would make out very well under a Bush tax plan. |
| Twenty eight congressmen, and they're all republican men, have signed a letter pledging to vote against any bill that funds the federal government if there is any money for Planned Parenthood in the bill. They are willing to shut down the federal government if there is any money at all for birth control, cancer screenings, or STD treatment. There is no federal money going towards abortion. None. So how is this fight important enough to shut down the government? Republicans have been trying to defund Planned Parenthood since the Reagan administration. What makes this fight so important now? |
| A new CNN poll shows Donald Trump with over thirty percent support among likely republican voters. Ben Carson comes in second with nineteen percent. Neither has ever held a political position in their lives. |
| Dick Cheney was recently called out on his administrations dealing with a nuclear Iran by Fox News of all entities. Chris Wallace of Fox News forced Cheney to admit that the count of centrifuges in Iran used to build nuclear weapons went from zero to five thousand on the Bush Cheney watch. Cheney tried to blame Obama for this predicament, but Wallace continued to insist that it was the previous administration that was responsible. For that matter, North Korea also developed nuclear weapons on Cheney's watch. So why are we even listening to this man today? |
| It's really just too easy to pick on Donald Trump, but the man is the front runner for the republican nomination for president, so I need to take him seriously. However the man is a walking pie hole of spew. He recently said that he always felt like he'd been in the military because of his education at an exclusive military themed prep school. Trump received draft deferments that kept him out of the Vietnam conflict, and has recently made fun of Senator John McCain, who not only served in Vietnam, but was shot down, captured, and tortured while prisoner. That Trump can call into question the service of someone who actually served while saying that his going to high school is just like being in the military is appalling. Mrs McNasty wonders if he had some sort of head trauma at this elite high school that makes him say whatever pops into his mind. |
| In news that can only be described as win win, Texas republican Representative Louie Gohmert has pledged to resign from congress if the treaty limiting Iran's nuclear capabilites is allowed to be implemented. Now this is the best news I heard all week. The treaty exchanges restrictions on Iran's nuclear weapons program for the lifting of crippling economic sanctions on that country. Republicans each and every one are opposed to this deal, and would be much happier to have Iran bombed back into the stone age, but they lack enough votes in congress to block the deal, so they're holding their breath and throwing tantrums trying to get their way. |
| This week the House Judiciary Committee held hearings titled quote Planned Parenthood Exposed - Examining the Horrific Abortion Practices at the Nation's Largest Abortion Provider unquote. Pointedly not invited? Any representatives from Planned Parenthood itself. The people who were invited to testify were a who's who of people who think that abortion is icky if not illegal, immoral, and fattening. Yes, planned parenthood provides abortion services, but they also offer birth control, cancer screenings, STD treatments, and general health care for both men and women. Defunding planned parenthood will result in more abortions, more cancer deaths, and higher STD rates. Maybe it's time for Republicans in congress to leave gynecology to real doctors, and social planning to people who actually care about society, and not just scoring cheap political points. |
| The federal Department of Education was famously one of the two Federal Departments that Rick Perry could remember during his famous oops moment at a debate in 2012. In fact, almost all of the republican presidential candidates would eliminate the Department of Education, likening it unfavorably to a Federal School Board. Marco Rubio, also republican for president, said that, because the game Minecraft was teaching kids to code, they should play Minecraft in order to learn cutting edge modern computer skills. Marco Rubio also likes hip-hop, and knows what Netflix is. At age 44, Rubio is the second youngest candidate for president, with Deez Nuts being the youngest. |
| So yes, Donald Trump is a fascist, calling for a wall, a moat, and probably alligators to protect us from the hoard of rapist Mezcans. But here are some policies of Trump's that I actually agree with. I know, shocking, right? Trump has called for an increase in Social Security payments. He has called for campaign finance reform, pointing out the toxic effects of money in politics. Trump thinks that the rich should pay more taxes to support the country, and has supported universal health care. Trump has also worked with unions in his casino properties. I still wouldn't want to see him become president, since he's still a racist thug, but I can see why the Republican elite is pulling out all the stops to derail his candidacy. |
| One of the issues that unites almost all Republicans is the hatred of the concept of political correctness. Somehow the idea that you would choose your words carefully in order to not offend is somehow a stifling of their free speech. But what really puts their underoos in a bunch is not being able to call black people what they used to call them, or Hispanics, or gays. The right wing wants their hate speech back, and will hold their breath until they turn redder if they can't use the disparaging language your racist uncle isn't afraid to use. Political correctness isn't the thought police coming in to tell you what you can or can't believe. You're free to be politically incorrect and to say what you want about whomever you want, but we're also free to think you a bigot, and to call you out on your bigotry. |
| Donald Trump wants to build a wall along the border between the U.S. and Mexico, and Scott Walker asks why not build another wall between the U.S. and Canada? Now I think that it's funny that the political party that won't raise taxes to pay for critical infrastructure like roads and bridges in this country wants to build seven thousand miles of walls along our borders. At least you can drive on a road, and bridges help you cross water. All a wall will do is help republicans run for office. |
| Current governor of New Jersey and republican candidate for president Chris Christie has proposed using the same technology that FedEx uses to track packages in its care to track the location of foreigners in this country. He's gone so far as to say that he would ask the CEO of FedEx to join his cabinet as some sort of Secretary of Foreigner Tracking to devise the system. Now I imagine that his system would be like the one used by FedEx to track packages, in that he would tattoo bar codes on people visiting this country, or maybe he would install chips into their bodies, you know, like we do for dogs. Then he would install scanners at every major intersection so that the location of all non-citizens, and maybe someday just everybody, could be tracked by the government at all times. If only we had an ready and handy example of a government that tattooed identification numbers on people to keep track of them. Perhaps then we could see how stupid this idea truly is. |
| The Koch brothers walk into a bar with Ayn Rand and Rand Paul. The bartender gets them their drinks, but because there were no government regulations anymore, the alcohol was unsafe to drink. And they died. |
| Citing its commitment to sustainability as well as the significant environmental impact of disposable plastic water bottles, the national parks service has banned such bottles from park environs. Before the ban, plastic bottles made up a fifth of the solid waste generated in national parks. Yet this week Representative Keith Rothfus, a Republican from Pennsylvania, snuck in a last minute amendment to an appropriations bill that forbids the park service from banning such plastic bottles. Rothfus claims that banning plastic bottles full of pricey purchased water puts park visitors at risk of dehydration, but it's also possible that campaign contributions from bottled water manufacturers had a say in his legislative action. |
| Donald Trump is the collective voice of every ill-informed wingnut CSPAN caller combined with your grandfather’s email forwards. |
| Former secretary of state and democratic candidate for president Hillary Clinton compared republicans to terrorists this week, pointing out that republicans have extreme views about women, similar to the views of some terrorist groups. She criticized Marco Rubio for bragging about being against abortion even in cases of rape or incest. She blasted John Kasich for withholding funds for rape crisis centers that referred victims to abortion providers, and she noted that all of the republican candidates sought to defund Planned Parenthood. Now Fox news is demanding that she apologize, and called her a sociopath. Considering that the republican front runner is Donald Trump, it seems that the criticism from Missus Clinton is kind of weak tea. After all, republicans are in fact religious extremists who pride themselves on making women's lives miserable and less safe. Clinton's words only call attention to the importance of protecting institutions that support women's health. |
| The more time that Donald Trump spends in the public eye, the less amusing his candidacy becomes. Yet he leads the polls and is currently the front runner for the Republican nomination for president. As vile as the things he says are, he is currently drawing perhaps a third of the electorate who say that they will vote for him. Two men in Boston beat a Hispanic man near to death, and told police that Donald Trump was right about illegal immigrants. All the Donald would say is that the people who are following him are very passionate, that they love this country and they want this country to be great again. It turns out that Donald Trump is a fascist, plain and simple. |
| If you believe the republicans running for president, you'd think that we live in a blighted hell scape filled with Mexican rapists and Muslim terrorists trying to kill us while flying in to drop anchor babies, where Hillary Clinton helps reload their assault rifles while the traitor Barack Obama secretly takes away our own guns so as to leave our wives and daughters helpless against the hordes of the darker hued. But the truth is uglier than that. You are much more likely to be killed by polluted air and water, by the militarization of the police, by the gun culture that kills dozens of people a day. But saying that won't get you face time on Fox news. Saying that won't win you a republican primary. And speaking out on the things that will kill you will cause the campaign contributions from the corporations that don't want you to hear the truth to dry up like a California drought. If only we could work on the real problems in this country, and not the made up ones that are intended to scare you into voting for republicans. |
| Some lawmakers in Ohio are pushing for a law in that state that would ban abortion if the operation were to be performed in order to avoid having a baby who would have Down Syndrome. Persons with the syndrome, which is caused by an additional twenty first chromosome, typically suffer from mental impairment and stunted growth. The legislation is expected to pass, and would almost certainly be signed into law by Governor John Kasich, a republican who just so happens to be running for president. Over the past four decades since the Supreme Court made abortion legal, dozens of states have erected barriers to abortion, such as waiting periods, vaginal probe ultrasounds, or mandating stern lectures by doctors. However, laws banning the procedure based on motivation are far less common, and would certainly run afoul of the Supreme Court ruling in Roe V Wade. |
| The world has turned its attention to a ten year old girl from Paraguay who became pregnant after being raped by her step father. Now Paraguay has rather strict anti abortion laws, and the young girl was not allowed to terminate the pregnancy. Ten years old, raped by her step father. Why is this of interest today? Because republican presidential candidate and former Fox news contributor Mike Huckabee said that Paraguay has the right idea. He says that it would be a double tragedy to take another life. Huckabee explained that there are two victims here. One was the girl who was raped and the other was the child that she gave birth to. Huckabee seems to care more about the fetus than the girl that carried it, and is more concerned with the guilt that the girl mother would feel in years to come knowing that she killed her child. Now I'm more concerned with the girl right now having to give birth to her rapist father's baby. Maybe you think that abortion is a sin and should be a crime, but look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself if this might be some kind of exception in your eyes. If you don't think so, then the monster is indeed looking back at you. |
| Supporters of Donald Trump flooded Megyn Kelly with death threats after the debate because of course they did. And because Fox News needs the Donald more than the Donald needs Fox News, Roger Ailes, the head of Fox News called Trump to apologize for Kelly's bad behavior. After all, twenty four million people watched Fox for the debates, the largest cable audience ever. There's no way that Fox turns down that kind of money. |
| The fourteenth amendment to the constitution guarantees the right of American citizenship to all persons born in this country. It's only natural that the republican candidates for president would be against it. Donald Trump, the front runner for the republican nomination, wants to repeal the fourteenth amendment, claiming that it allows women to fly into this country on tourist visas, timing the trip so that they give their children American citizenship. Lindsay Graham described the women as droppin' babies unquote, like babies are a litter of puppies or something. Strangely enough, Piyush Bobby Jindal is also in favor of repealing the amendment, even though, as the child of immigrants himself, he would no longer be a citizen and therefore would not be eligible to become president. |
| Ben Carson is yet another republican presidential candidate, but he's just a bit different. For one, he's not a lawyer or professional politician. He is in fact a pediatric neurosurgeon. And while he is just as much in favor of shutting down Planned Parenthood as any other person running for president as a republican, Doctor Carson has himself used human fetal tissue for medical research. That's right. Ben Carson was for fetal tissue research before he was against it. Of course the supposed controversy created by the heavily edited videos of a Planned Parenthood staffer discussing tissue harvesting is less about the use of human fetal tissue for research than it is an attempt to use something that makes people uncomfortable to justify the elimination of an organization that gives medical services, including birth control, to poor women. |
| Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee does not like abortion, not one little bit. The one time fox news analyst says that the U.S. Constitution bans abortion from the moment of conception, and that he would use federal troops and the U.S. military to prevent women from killing their un-born babies. This would put him at odds with the Supreme Court of the United States, which has ruled that women are in charge of their own reproductive choices for the first twenty weeks of the fetus's life, as well as the opinions of a majority of Americans. However, opposition to abortion at any time under any circumstance remains a firm plank in the republican party's platform, as well as all of the republicans running for president. |
| Scott Walker is currently the governor of Wisconsin as well as a leading republican presidential candidate. This week Governor Walker is set to hand up to four hundred fifty million dollars of taxpayer's money to the billionaire owners of the Milwaukee Bucks basketball team, money that will allow them to build a new arena for the team. Governor walker cut almost that same amount of money from the state's education budget, meaning that he is taking money from kids going to school and giving the cash to the billionaires that are funding his presidential campaign. Wisconsin will have a state budget shortfall of some two hundred eighty million dollars this year, or half of what he will be giving to his buddies. |
| Rick Perry, now two time republican candidate for president has seen his fortunes and poll numbers fall after last weeks debate. His campaign seems to be out of money as well, and now news is out that he has stopped paying staffers at his national headquarters as well as staff in early primary states. Perry's campaign manager has told staff that they are free to look for other jobs. So one less republican in the clown car. One might think that a campaign without money is doomed, but this is not the case. Because big money talks loudest in politics, Perry will be able to continue campaigning because his super pack will continue to fund his message if not his campaign, even if by law Perry is not allowed to coordinate this effort. |
| Each and every one of the republican candidates for president are in favor of making abortion illegal, under any circumstance and would be forbidden under all conditions. Not a pregnancy due to rape or incest, and not even if the pregnancy is a threat to the life of the woman. And certainly not because a responsible woman decides that she doesn't wish to be pregnant. You know. Her choice. The idea that a woman should be coerced by the state to carry a pregnancy to term even at the risk of her life is sheer barbarism. |
| While Hillary Clinton, the front runner for the democratic nomination for president spent the week issuing actual statements about policy, including a new plan to make college education more affordable for more people, Donald Trump, the front runner for the republican nomination for president spent his time insulting a female fox news reporter and females in general. This is our modern democracy. On one side a debate of policy, on the other a reality show of contestants trying to out misogenize each other. |
| When republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio doesn't want to talk about climate change, he uses the excuse that he isn't a scientist, and therefore can't make policy or have an opinion on the subject. But when the policy is abortion, all of a sudden he's the second coming of Bill Nye the science guy, claiming that science has all but declared that life begins at conception. This week he offered a petition that you can sign if you agree that human embryos cannot become cats. I know. It doesn't make sense to me either. |
| This week had two debates of republican candidates for president sponsored by their propaganda arm Fox news. If you missed it, just imagine sitting down to two thanksgiving dinners with your racist uncle, then multiply by seventeen. Scott Walker bragged about trying to defund planned parenthood before defunding planned parenthood was cool. Mike Huckabee compared the body parts of a fetus to the body parts of a Buick. Lindsey Graham pledged to invade Iran, Iraq, Columbia, and maybe San Francisco, in no particular order. Carly Fiorina called for Apple and Google to cooperate with government spying. Rick Santorum compared gay marriage to slavery. Bobby Jindal says that immigration without assimilation is invasion. Rick Perry says that Rick Perry is the medicine that the country needs. And Donald Trump threatened the female moderator of the debate, and later implied that she was menstruating. Make no mistake here. These are thoroughly dangerous people that want to lead the country. Back to eighteen fifty from the sound of it. |
| International beer day reminds me that even at my drunkenist I wouldn't say anything that Donald Trump says sober. |
| Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks, hinted that he might run for president. He opened up his first campaign office, and then opened another one right across the street. |
| New Jersey governor and republican candidate for president Chris Christie displayed a rather interesting interpretation of the phrase "bully pulpit" recently. When asked what national organization deserves a punch in the face, he didn't laugh off the stupidity of the question. Instead, his answer was the National Teachers Union. This because the union had the audacity to endorse Hillary Clinton for president in the presidential race. As if a union seeking better pay and working conditions for its workers somehow deserved violence instead of political engagement. |
| Republicans simply don't care about governing. When asked how he would fix the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, Trump says that he'd repeal it and replace it with something terrific. How would Trump deal with people in this country without green cards? He'd just round them up and get rid of them. This is a pattern with republicans. Climate change? Deny it exists. Obama's diplomatic initiatives? Oppose them. Terrorism? Talk tough but avoid specifics. This isn't governance. It's simply contrarianism. They are devoid of ideas except for denial that there are real problems that need addressing. Governance requires leadership and compromise. Modern republicans are incapable of either. |
| Crime has actually decreased since hitting peaks in the eighties and nineties. But Donald Trump, republican front runner for president, thinks that crime is so rampant that we need to give police more power to protect us. And if a few black or poor people are killed as part of the increase of police power, well that's just the price that we as a society pay for law and order. |
| Perhaps you remember Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas as the leader behind the letter that Senate Republicans sent to the government of Iran trying to scuttle the deal to restrict the nuclear program of that country. He claimed this week that he had found a secret side deal with Iran, a deal that would be against the best interests of the United States. White House spokesman Josh Earnest dismissed this idea with a comparison to the Austin Powers movies. As the information that Senator Cotton claims to have discovered is available on the documents published on the government's web site, Josh Earnest dismissed Senator Cotton as an International Man of Mystery who found what was already publicly available. |
| Piyush Bobby Jindal, governor of Louisiana and republican candidate for president has suspended his states medicaid services contract with Planned Parenthood of Louisiana in response to a heavily edited video that purports to show an officer of that organization scheming to sell aborted baby parts to medical researchers. This despite the fact that Planned Parenthood doesn't sell baby parts, and that neither of the Planned Parenthood clinics in his state offer abortions. On the other hand, Jindal did expect a big enough bump in the polls from this action to get himself a seat at the big kids table for the top tier presidential candidates debate series. Dropping Planned Parenthood Medicaid might not be the wisest thing that Jindal has ever done. After all, Louisiana ranks first in the country for HIV cases, second in the country for gonorrhea infections and fourth for chlamydia infections, and has the eighth highest teen birth rate in the nation. Maybe Louisiana should be giving more money to groups that try to fight these problems rather than less. |
| As if a Donald Trump presidency wouldn't be bad enough, this week he said that he would definitely ask Sarah Palin for advice, possibly including a cabinet post. He said that everybody loves Palin because she's smart and tough, and that she's a special person. I think that a Trump Palin ticket could be the thing that would bring Jon Stewart out of retirement. Speaking of Palin, this week she claimed that Planned Parenthood is deadlier to Blacks than the confederate flag. The graphic of this assertion has four point four million likes on Facebook. |
| Democratic presidential candidate Martin O'Malley has called for a constitutional amendment to protect every citizen's right to vote. This in response to republican efforts to deny the vote to poor people and people of color across the nation. Pointing out that republicans have introduced eighty bills in twenty nine states in the past year to inhibit voting, O'Malley said what we all think: that it's political gamesmanship, because the poor, the disabled, and minorities predominantly vote democratic. As governor of Maryland, O'Malley oversaw the creation of an on line voter registration system, and signed legislation allowing same day voter registration. |
| In 2013 the republicans in congress threatened to shut down the government over the affordable care acts birth control mandate. This last march they held up a bill that would have stopped human trafficking because it could have allowed private funding for abortions. And now they're promising to shut down the government again if planned parenthood isn't deprived of federal funding. Let's be clear. There is no zero zilch nada federal tax dollars paying for abortion. It's been illegal to dedicate federal tax dollars for abortion funding for over forty years. The latest quasi scandal about the donation of fetal tissue for research is simply theater to further the republicans goal of defunding women's health care. plain and simple. |
| Phil Gramm, a three term republican senator from Texas, recently decried the shabby treatment received by his friend Edward Whitacre, who retired as CEO of AT&T with a retirement package of one hundred and fifty eight million dollars. Gramm said quote It’s the one form of bigotry that is still allowed in America, and that’s bigotry against the successful. My friend Ed Whitacre at AT&T, if there’s ever been an exploited worker, even though they made a big deal about him getting seventy five million dollars when he retired, the man added billions of dollars of value, he was exploited, it was an outrage! |
| The government of the state of Kansas has embraced supply side economics with a fervor. The policy of reducing taxes on the wealthy while cutting services hasn't been implemented to such a degree anywhere else in the country. So how's that working out? School districts in Kansas are seeing a record number of teaching positions going unfilled, and are beginning to hire teachers that are not accredited. The number of openings for teaching positions is double what it was just last year. As teacher pay is low and schools are underfunded, perhaps it's no surprise that people don't want to work for crappy wages in inadequate facilities. Neighboring states are taking out ads, hoping to lure teachers from Kansas to states where their pay would be higher. And while republican governor Sam Brownback refuses to comment on what is expected to be the worst teacher shortage in the nation in just a few years, school districts are forced to hire the people that will work for those wages, as opposed to the best people for the position. Would you want your kids taught by teachers that couldn't a find better position anywhere else? |
| Perhaps you don't remember the comic strip Bloom County. It hasn't been seen in newspapers in twenty five years. However author Berkeley Breathed seems to think that the upcoming presidential election is too tempting a comical target to pass up, and will begin penning the strip this year. Apparently Bloom County has been skewering Donald Trump for too long to resist the opportunity once again. |
| The republican clown car will start rolling down the highway on August sixth, as all seventeen announced candidates for president will participate in one of two different debates, hosted by FOX news. The top ten polling politicians will take the stage in the evening, while those candidates not in the top ten will debate earlier in the day. Donald Trump, the uninhibited id of the republican party, is currently the front runner, and will be on full display during prime time. I'm almost tempted to watch it just to see what the Donald will be peddling, but I'm not sure my television can handle me throwing things at it. |
| Piyush Bobby Jindal, governor of Louisiana and candidate for the republican nomination for president seems to be of two minds when it comes to gun violence and mass shootings. When a white right wing extremist wounded nine people and killed three in a shooting at a theater in Louisiana, he said that quote now is not the time unquote to talk about gun control, and that we should spend our energy praying for the victims. But when a young Americanized Jordanian man killed five service members, he tried to pin the violence on President Obama not telling the truth about our supposed war against Islamic forces coming to kill us in our beds. Apparently lone wolf killers are only evil when they're mentally ill Muslims, and not when they're right wing extremists. The Islamists apparently represent a mortal danger to us all and we must do everything in our power, including go to war, to stop them, while there's nothing we can do about white guys with guns without sacrificing important principles we hold dear. But the victims are just as dead, despite the ideology of the people who killed them. |
| A new poll from the Pew Research center has nothing but bad news for republicans as they head into 2016. Sixty percent of those polled have a negative view of the republican party, and sixty four percent say that they would not under any circumstances vote for current front runner Donald Trump. And while most people surveyed say that the republican party is too extreme, the republican base is unhappy because the party isn't extreme enough. It turns out that Trump's is a voice that speaks to the nativist base republicans who are growing more disenchanted with establishment party members. And that extremity is turning off a huge fraction of the potential electorate. |
| Rick Perry, two time candidate for the republican presidential nomination, says that he has a solution for mass shootings in movie theaters. He says that gun free zones are a bad idea, and that everybody should be packing heat, but only if they're properly trained and vetted by local governments. It's hard to make sense out of the word salad that escaped the lips of the former governor of Texas, but his feelings are clear. If a dozen good guys with guns had drawn on the one bad guy with a gun, then the only dead person would be the bad guy, not the good guys, and certainly not any of the other theater patrons who couldn't possibly be caught in the crossfire. My concern is that when the police do show up, they won't be able to tell the good guys from the bad guys, and everybody's gonna get shot. The solution isn't to have everybody packing heat. The answer is to take the guns away from people who feel like they have to use them to prove something to strangers in the dark, to people on the streets, and to their domestic partners that piss them off just once too many times. After all, if nobody had guns, then nobody could get shot. |
| Donald Trump has finally said something that has upset the republican establishment. Trump, who now leads the polls for the republican presidential nomination, spoke out in an attack against John McCain, Senator from Arizona, saying that McCain was not a war hero, because he allowed himself to be captured by North Vietnamese forces after being shot down during a bombing run in 1967. McCain then spent five years as a prisoner of war. Now Republicans didn't seem to mind attacking war heroes when the person in question was John Kerry when he was running for president in 2004. Many attendees at the Republican National Convention that year wore bandages with glitter hearts painted in purple, making fun of the three Purple Hearts awarded to Kerry for being wounded in service to his nation, as well as the Bronze Star and Silver Star he received for gallantry in action. In fact John Jeb! Bush wrote a letter to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in 2005 thanking them for their smear against Kerry's war record. So apparently it's OK for republicans to attack veterans for their service, as long as those veterans aren't other republicans, because apparently only Republicans can be war heroes. |
| It would help us decide how to vote if the Republican candidates for president would just arrange themselves on the debate stage along a spectrum of calculated stupid to real stupid. |
| The Obama administration, along with five other military allies including Great Britain and France, has reached an historical deal that promises to delay Iran's nuclear weapons program in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions that had been weighing heavily on that country. This agreement at least postpones Iran's ability to manufacture nuclear weapons into the future. Neocons and right wingers are crying appeasement, but they wouldn't have been happy with any agreement reached by the Obama administration. Indeed, forty seven republican senators wrote a letter to the Iranian government all but telling them that the United States wouldn't be bound by any such agreement in an attempt to scuttle the talks in March. These folks wouldn't be happy unless Iran was bombed into a gentle radioactive glow, and are still calling for military strikes, as if precision bombing with guided munitions would solve any sort of problems in the powder keg that is the middle east. As the deal is a political agreement and not an actual treaty, the next president, presumably if it were a republican, would be free to renege on the agreement. While there are too many republican candidates to quote in full, I'll be concise in saying that the republicans do not like this deal. Keep this in mind when you're asked to vote for president in 2016. |
| The right wing continues to show us what they really think about us. The Republican party in Oklahoma recently put up a Facebook post that compared providing food stamp benefits to people in need, to feeding animals at national parks. The post said that the food stamp program is proud to be distributing this year the greatest amount of free meals and food stamps ever, to 46 million people. Meanwhile the national park service ask us to Please do not feed the animals. Their stated reason for the policy is because the animals will grow dependent on handouts and will not learn to take care of themselves. unquote. Which is funny to me because it's the policies that the republicans follow, that resulted in the crashing of the economy, and denying workers a living wage, a wage that keeps families living in poverty, so much so that yes, a record number of people need help just to find a way to feed their kids. But comparing them to wild animals that can't take care of themselves is an insult, and proof of their hatred of the poor. |
| Look, somebody is going to own your government. It's not going to just sit there unattended. It's either going to be owned by special interests and big money, or it's going to be owned by you. |
| Republicans don't seem to mind when religious leaders propose oppressing homosexuals or not allowing women to choose to control their own sexuality, but apparently believe that Pope Francis has been brainwashed into believing that climate change is an important issue. Apparently listening to scientists about this issue is tantamount to oppressing alternative viewpoints |
| The contrasts between the democratic and republican candidates for president couldn't be more clear. Hillary Clinton has expressed her support for a collection of policies that directly use government policy to raise incomes, regulate financial firms, shape the predistribution of wealth, and secure middle-class families. Among her proposals are tax reform to encourage long-term business investment instead of short-term spending like higher CEO pay, comprehensive immigration reform to bring undocumented workers into the formal economy; new federal investments in renewable energy and medical research; paid family leave, earned sick days, and subsidized child care; higher minimum wages and protection against wage theft; enhancements for Social Security and the Affordable Care Act; middle-class tax relief and greater support for young, contract, and low-income workers; and new measures to strengthen and expand Dodd-Frank financial reform.
Scott Walker is one of the favorites for the republican nomination for president. He's declared that he wants to devolve Medicaid to the states; to repeal the Affordable Care Act in full; drill for oil, including completing the Keystone pipeline; cut taxes on “job creators”; and reduce regulations across the board. He's proud that his state passed lawsuit and regulatory reform. Proud that he defunded Planned Parenthood and enacted pro-life legislation. He passed Castle Doctrine and supports concealed-carry of weaponry. And it's now required to have a photo ID to vote in the state of Wisconsin.” He's blasted public assistance to needy persons as fostering dependency on government largess. And he wants to implement supply side economics, as if the policies of the last thirty five years haven't proven the emptiness of such policies. |
| When New Jersey Governor Chris Christie announced that he was running for president this week, he became the 14th republican to declare his candidacy for that office. However, by another measure he was actually the one hundred and first, or he would be had he submitted the all important Statement of Candidacy form with the Federal Elections commission, a form that must be filled out within fifteen days of a candidate's declaration. So far, 448 people have submitted such a form, up from 417 by the election in 2012. There are 118 independents and 74 democrats to go with the 100 republicans. 33 people have declared none, or no party affiliation, with eleven libertarians and three candidates from the green party in the running. One candidate, running as a demo cat, is actually a five year old neutered feline named Limberbutt McCubbins. The cat has filled the paperwork to run for president, and is running on a platform advocating protection of the environment and the legalization of catnip. |
| Senator James Inhofe, a republican from Oklahoma, famously decried that there could be no global warming in February by bringing a snowball from outside the senate building onto the floor of that august body. Here we are months later, and how is Senator Snowball's demonstration fairing? Seattle had the hottest fourth of July on record, and recently tied the record for most consecutive days with temperature above eighty degrees. Europe is being crushed by a heat wave that has shattered high temperatures in Germany, England, and France, with temperatures exceeding 102 degrees in Paris. More than twelve hundred people have died in Pakistan in the worst heat wave since records began. Yet Senator Inhofe disputes claims that he is less knowledgeable than climate scientists, saying that he'd quote already given five speeches on the science unquote. In 2010 Inhofe claimed that we were in the midst of a cold period that had started in 2001. This despite the claims from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric administration, the government's own climate scientists, that through July 2010 the year had already been the hottest year since records began in 1880. |
| George dubbya Bush, the man who as president lied, misled, blundered, and pushed America into two disastrous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, collected one hundred thousand dollars as a speaking fee for appearing at a charity event for veterans wounded in the two wars he started. He was also provided with a private jet to the function which cost another twenty thousand dollars. His wife collected fifty thousand dollars from the same charity the previous year. To me it's a wonder that he's even allowed outside unsupervised, yet apparently he's still accepted in polite company, despite his conduct while president. He shouldn't be speaking to wounded veterans. He should be serving time for his crimes. |
| John Ellis Bush, a republican candidate for president, told us more of his plan to revitalize the American economy on Wednesday. Apparently his plan to achieve four percent GDP growth requires that quote people need to work longer hours and through their productivity, gain more income for their families unquote. The irony of this message being delivered while Jeb! in on vacation at the family compound in Kennebunkport Maine is not lost on me, but it seems that asking people to work longer hours in order to revive the American economy might not be the best campaign strategy after years of seeing almost all economic growth providing increased wealth the already wealthy in America. The latest Bush trying to be president has also come out as opposed to federal minimum wage standards, believing that wages need to be left to the private sector. Bush also thinks that people need to be seventy years old before receiving social security payments. Yet somehow this Bush is credited with being the Smart one, a serious person seriously addressing the economic concerns of everyday Americans. I for one am not buying it. |
| Donald Trump is running for the republican nomination for president of the united states, and he's currently polling second in a crowded field. There's no way that he can win the nomination, but boy does the republican base love the Donald. He is their unrestrained id that gets to spout off on birtherism, xenophobia, the proper use of America's military, and foreign policy. This week NBC canceled its contracts with Trump, as did Macy's and Univision, the Spanish language television channel. And because sixty three percent of polled republicans believe that immigrants burden the country by taking jobs, housing, and health care, they believe that Donald Trump speaks for them when he claims that immigrants are responsible for drugs, rape, and crime in general. |
| After making insulting remarks about Mexicans, Donald Trump has been kicked off of NBC and Univision. On the bright side, Trump's hair has a new show on Animal Planet. |
| The Presidential contender and senator from South Carolina Lindsey Graham, a republican naturally, has introduced a bill in the senate to severely restrict a woman's autonomy over her own body and reproductive choices. And because of his opposition to the popular Affordable Care Act, including it's mandate for affordable contraception, finds that he is in opposition to abortion as well as contraception that would preclude the need for those same abortions. The modern GOP fights hard to ensure that all pregnancies result in full term babies, whereupon they can be ignored by the federal government, ensuring that, in many cases, unwanted children are brought into economically struggling families that can't afford to take care of them. Republicans have no interest in affordable natal and post-natal health care, no interest in paid maternity leave, no interest in expanding aid to homeless women and children, no interest in equality for girls or women of any age, and definitely no interest in expanding education. Republicans believe that life begins at conception and ends at birth. |
| Wisconsin's Gov. Scott Walker is planning to slash the state's budget for higher education while committing $220 million to help the Milwaukee Bucks build a new arena. It gets worse: Several local officials are also speaking out against the county’s promise to collect $4 million per year in unpaid debts from residents to contribute to the stadium. Milwaukee County Supervisor John Weishan, Jr. called the proposal to go after unpaid ambulance rides, delinquent property taxes and court fees “crony capitalism.” “This plan shifts the cost of the new arena from the state and the Milwaukee Bucks’ new wealthy owners to the poorest in our community,” he said. “I will not foreclose on someone’s home or shake down a senior for unpaid medical bills in order to build an arena for millionaires and billionaires.” |
| There is a striking unanimity among the candidates who are running for the party’s presidential nomination in 2016: Not one supports allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry. And after the Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the Constitution guarantees a right to marriage for all couples, regardless of their sexual orientation, the degree of difference among the candidates was largely a matter of how aggressively they would continue to resist. |
| Supply side economics is built on the idea that income inequality is good, that tax cuts for the rich and less regulation of business supposedly provide incentives for the wealthy to invest their riches, the theory is that enabling the so called job creators to get richer helps us all. This platform has been the hallmark of the Republican party for over 30 years, since Ronald Reagan pushed for it as part of his policies. But America needs the middle class for its economy to survive. The economy has been thrown off balance because the middle class has been weakened and income inequality is so high. For a strong economy with sustainable growth, the economy must work for everyone. Yet median income measured in inflation adjusted dollars was lower in 2013 than it was in 1989. Indeed, the hourly wage earned by a typical male is less now than it was in 1973. Families are only surviving by having both spouses working longer hours than ever before. This is further skewed because the typical worker now is older than the typical worker then. Older workers should be earning more than younger workers. Median incomes for male workers in their thirties are about 12 percent lower than the income for workers in their thirties from their parents generation. This reduction in income contrasts with income for the very rich. Income for the top one tents of one percent, one in ten thousand of us, has increased from 6.4 million dollars per year in 1979 to almost 39 million dollars per year in inflation adjusted dollars. Since the end of the great recession, over 90 percent of the income gains for all Americans have gone to the top one percent of income earners. The net worth of the richest 400 Americans is equivalent to the gross domestic product of Brazil. The decline of the American middle class maps almost exactly with the rise of the theory of supply side economics. so WoMD in Iraq, death panels in Obamacare, widespread voter fraud in America, and tax cuts that generate increased government revenue are all things that Republicans believe in that simply aren't true. |
| Donald trump says that he identifies as a presidential candidate. Donald Trump is now an actual candidate for president on the republican ticket. His entry vindicates the obvious analysis that the republican party, at the presidential level at least, is little more than a shell corporation for opportunists and careerists who aren't interested in governing or even winning. The addition of Trump is the next brick in the effort to turn the GOP nomination into a dysfunctional and menacingly ugly reality show competition in which the contestants scramble to be the most flagrant panderer to the tea party base. Make no mistake: Trump will not be the republican candidate, but that's not his goal, nor is it the goal for most of the others running for the republican nomination. The real race is for celebrity heft.
Trump is polling ahead of Rick Perry, rick Santorum, Carly Fiorina, Lindsey Graham, Bobby Jindal, and Jon Kasich. but Trump is a circus sideshow attraction somehow being regarded as a serious contender. If the debates were held today, trump would make the cut into the top ten of the first debate. This is truly bad news for American politics. This year marks the fifth time since 1988 that Mr. Trump has suggested he would seek the White House, but he has never before formally launched a campaign. (In the past, his political dalliances have coincided with the launch of a new book or television show.) |
| Josh Duggar, the reality TV star and conservative activist, resigned from his position as the Executive Director of the Family Research Council on Thursday after reports surfaced that he had molested as many as 5 underage girls, including at least 4 of his sisters when he was a teenager. The 27-year-old is the oldest son of Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, whose family is the subject of the TLC show “19 Kids and Counting.” Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council confirmed the resignation in a statement: “Josh believes that the situation will make it difficult to be effective in his current work.”
The Family Research Council is a conservative christian lobbying organization that opposes gay rights, abortion, divorce, stem cell research and pornography. The Southern Poverty Law Center has classified the group as an anti-gay hate group. Republican Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has voiced his support for the Duggar family's actions, which did not involve going to the police when they were made aware of the crimes. He's also said that expecting Christians to accept same-sex marriage is "like asking someone who's Jewish to start serving bacon-wrapped shrimp in their deli." He also called homosexuality part of a lifestyle, like drinking and swearing and has compared homosexuality to pedophilia, sadomasochism, and necrophilia. So apparently molesting your sisters is OK, but same sex marriage is an abomination. |
| Michael Morell, a longtime CIA official who eventually became the agency’s deputy director and acting director, Appeared on MSNBC this week. Before the most recent war in Iraq he served as President Bush’s intelligence briefer. In this appearance Morell made it clear: The Bush-Cheney administration publicly misrepresented the intelligence related to Iraq’s supposed WMD program and Saddam’s alleged links to Al Qaeda
The war in Iraq was a war that the White House wanted, and all of the supposed mistakes that “were made” actually flowed from this underlying desire. Did the intelligence agencies wrongly conclude that Iraq had chemical weapons and a nuclear program? That’s because they were under intense pressure to justify the war. Did prewar assessments vastly understate the difficulty and cost of occupation? That’s because the war party didn’t want to hear anything that might raise doubts about the rush to invade. Indeed, the Army’s chief of staff was effectively fired for questioning claims that the occupation phase would be cheap and easy |
| Bill Bryant is one of the members of the Port of Seattle Port commissioners council. The commission is in charge of the port of Seattle (naturally), Sea-Tac airport, as well as the waterways of the Puget Sound in the Seattle area. This year, the commission decided in secret meetings to allow the Shell Oil corporation to park its drilling rigs in the waterways of the sound prior to movement to Alaska to continue exploring for oil in that region. Bill Bryant is one of three on the five member commission to push arctic drilling activities through Seattle. He's also considering a run for governor of Washington. In other news that surprises exactly no one, Bryant has received 2500 $ in campaign donations for his run for governor from the CEO of Foss Maritime, the company leasing Terminal 5 for Shell, and another 1500 $ from the chairman of Saltchuk Resources, the maritime conglomerate that owns Foss. Bryant has also received other shady campaign donations as a reward for doing the bidding of the one percent.
At a recent meeting of the Evergreen Republican Women's Club, Bryant bragged that Seattle's alternative newspaper the Stranger had rated him at five dead polar bears out of a possible five. He was proud of it! And this is why I believe that people should be involved in politics. Because if you don't agree with the policies of people on, say, the port commission, the least, little, tiniest voice that you can have is to vote against the people who pursue those policies. If you really don't approve of their policies, you can become more active, campaigning to unseat an existing port commissioner, or mayor, or governor, in favor of somebody whose policies you support. And if you really really don't approve of a pursued policy, you can in fact run for office yourself. Nobody is going to pursue your policies like you. But the least that you can do is to vote. |
| While Republicans at the state and federal level are trying to make it harder to vote, the government of Oregon has gone in the opposite direction. This week Oregon governor Kate Brown signed a law that automatically registers all eligible citizens of that state onto the voting rolls. If people do not opt out of this system, they will automatically be mailed a ballot twenty days before an election. Oregon was the first state in the country to implement all mail voting in 1998, and in 2014 seventy percent of eligible votes voted in the general election. It's notable that the legislation to allow all Oregonians to be registered to vote passed both chambers in the state legislature without a single republican vote. When asked about why the legislation was needed in Oregon, the governor said quote we have the tools to make voter registration more cost effective, more secure, and more convenient for Oregonians. Why wouldn't we? |
| Since extremists of all types tend to flock together, the Tea Party, well financed by Charles and David Koch and other multimillionaire conservatives, welcomed groups formerly excluded from the political mainstream. These included xenophobes, racists, Neo-Confederates, anti-Semites, gun nuts, secessionists, conspiracy theorists, homophobic bigots, religious kooks, gold bugs and many others. What held this diverse coalition together was hatred of all things vaguely associated with liberalism and the prospect of political power, which was achieved after the Tea Party’s victories in the 2010 election. |
| John Jeb! Bush famously said that Americans should work longer hours in order to meet his goal of a four percent GDP increase, kind of how Americans should be less like Wall-mart workers whose managers keep them from working more than twenty nine hours a week so they don’t get benefits, and more like those eight year-old kids who work in the factories making stuff for Wall-mart, kids whose managers force them to work 16 hour days for 50 cents a day! Just think of it, if you had started working at eight for fifty cents a day and you able to set aside a nickle a day towards your 401-K retirement account, you could have almost ten thousand dollars when you retire! This truly is the American dream. |
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