Category: Republican

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Barack Obama Medicare Paul Ryan Politics Republican The Budget United States weekly address

President Obama Slams Ryan’s Budget… Again!

After President Obama presented his speech on reducing the federal debt, Republicans went on a crying spree, accusing the President of not playing fair, and “making a partisan speech.” All of a sudden, the very same Republicans who have stood in the way of every single piece of legislation the Obama administration has put forth, are now questioning why, as they see it, President Obama is not working with them and agreeing on the Paul Ryan budget.

So to make sure Republicans heard him the first time around, President Obama used his weekly address to put emphasis on his original points – that all, including the rich, must contribute their share to America’s future, and that Paul Ryan’s plan is not worth the paper it is written on.

The President:

Now, one plan put forward by some Republicans in the House of Representatives aims to reduce our deficit by $4 trillion over the next ten years. But while I think their goal is worthy, I believe their vision is wrong for America. It’s a vision that says, at a time when other nations are hustling to out-compete us for the jobs and businesses of tomorrow, we have to make drastic cuts in education, infrastructure, and clean energy – the very investments we need to win that competition and get those jobs.

It’s a vision that says that in order to reduce the deficit, we have to end Medicare as we know it, and make cuts to Medicaid that would leave millions of seniors, poor children, and Americans with disabilities without the care they need.

But even as this plan proposes these drastic cuts, it would also give $1 trillion in tax breaks to the wealthiest 2% of Americans–an extra $200,000 for every millionaire and billionaire in the country.

I don’t think that’s right. I don’t think it’s right to ask seniors to pay thousands more for health care, or ask students to postpone college, just so we don’t have to ask those who have prospered so much in this land of opportunity to give back a little more.

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Barack Obama Featured Politics Racism Republican White House

Racist Republican Email Depicts Obama As An Ape

You will have to check a calendar to believe the year is 2011, because if you simply rely on the stink that’s emitting from the Republican party today, you will swear that we’ve traveled back in time to the 1800’s.

Orange County in California is slowly becoming the epicenter of the racist element of the Republican party. Back in 2009, when the rest of America and the world for that matter, celebrated the inauguration of the first black president, Orange County was busy preparing an email showing the lawn of the White House covered in watermelons.

And now Marilyn Davenport, a Southern California Tea Party activist and member of the Central Committee of the Orange County Republican Party, has decided it was time to show her true nature, or rather, the nature she associates with the President. She forwarded an email depicting President Obama as the son of an apparent ape family, with the title of the email saying, “Now you know why theres no birth certificate.”

Equally despicable, is Ms. Davenport’s refusal to see any harm in her racist attempt at humor as witnessed by her unapologetic response to the incident. And oh yea, the “I have friends who are black” statement was included in her response. That alone, made everything all right! Ms. Davenport goes on to say;

“Oh, come on! Everybody who knows me knows that I am not a racist. It was a joke. I have friends who are black. Besides, I only sent it to a few people–mostly people I didn’t think would be upset by it.”

Calling the person who reported the email to The Weekly a “coward”,  Davenport is also blaming the media for making a “big deal” out of the incident.

I just checked. It is 2011, but evidently some people wish for the “good ole days…!”

More on this story here.

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Barack Obama failed Republican Sarah Palin Sarah Palin United States Wisconsin

The Wheels Fell Off The Sarah Palin Bus In Madison Wisconsin

Sarah Palin, in a weak attempt to get back into the spotlight again, rushed into Madison Wisconsin to deliver a “unions-bad-people-bad-corporations-good” message. But according to Wisconsin police and those in the audience, the message fell on deaf ears as a majority of the 6500 in attendance were there to protest the once beloved Sarah.

Sarah Palin rolled into Madison, Wisconsin today using a Tea Party rally as an excuse to attack union members, but the wheels promptly fell off of her bandwagon as only 6,500 people showed up for the rally, and reports on the scene say that many of those in attendance were there to protest Palin. Not even the Koch Brothers and their magic buses could draw a crowd for Palin.

The Koch Brothers threw their front group Americans For Prosperity into the effort to hold an anti-union rally in Madison headlined by Sarah Palin. All the resources were deployed, Palin fans were begged to attend, Americans For Prosperity had no less than 13 buses lined up, and despite all of this, the crowd never came.

Some people just don’t know when to give it up! Palin has been losing support from the most ardent Teaparty Republicans, but she still tries to capture the limelight with her folksy and meaningless slangs. Someone should tell The Palin that her message is no longer relevant.

Maybe she should take a page from The Donald’s play-book, and pander to the Birthers.

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Birthers Canada Donald Trump quotes Republican United States White House

Donald Trump: “I’m A Liberal On This One…!”

Back when all American presidents were automatically considered “American” because… they just were, and no one questioned whether birth certificates were authentic, Donald Trump made his first run for the White House. The year was 1999, and he ran as a Republican. After losing, The Donald saw a way to make some cash and wrote a book called, “The America We Deserve.” In it, The Trump took some very interesting positions. Here’s some of them;

  • “I really believe the Republicans are just too crazy, right?” he told Tim Russert onMeet the Press. “I mean, just what’s going on is just nuts.”
  • “We must have universal healthcare. I’m a conservative on most issues but a liberal on this one. We should not hear so many stories of families ruined by healthcare expenses.”
  • The goal of health care reform… should be a system that looks a lot like Canada. Doctors might be paid less than they are now, as is the case in Canada, but they would be able to treat more patients because of the reduction in their paperwork.
  • The Canadian plan also helps Canadians live longer and healthier than Americans.
  • We need, as a nation, to reexamine the single-payer plan, as many individual states are doing.
  • And on his criticism of George Bush and the Iraqi invasion, The Trump said, “He’d go into a country, attack Iraq, which had nothing to do with the World Trade Center, and just do it because he wanted to do it.”

Back then, those were the more popular positions to have so naturally, the opportunistic Donald took advantage. Today, however, he’s jumped on a different bandwagon that puts him in total opposition to his stance in ’99… one he considers fashionably popular – Birtherism.

Look out for Trump’s next book, coming in 2013!

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Barack Obama Politics Republican Ronald Reagan White House

Republican Presidents Add More To The Debt Than Democratic Presidents Do

Something we already knew, but now the record proves it. Republican presidents run up debts, while Democratic presidents try to reduce it.

This is in stark contrast to the ideology constantly being drilled into our heads by the media and the Republican party, that conservatives are for fiscal discipline. If this is true, the conservatives who become president must leave their ‘discipline’ at the door of the White House.

According to the report,

Economist Mike Kimel notes that the last five Democratic Presidents (Clinton, Carter, LBJ, JFK, and Truman) all reduced public debt as a share of GDP, while the last four Republican Presidents (GW Bush, GHW Bush, Reagan, and Ford) all oversaw an increase in the country’s indebtedness.

Similarly, Republican David Stockman, director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan, as op-ed contributor to the New York Times blamed the “ideological tax-cutters” of the Reagan administration for the increase of national debt during the 1980s.

Looking back, this trend was not always the case. Yesteryear’s Republican Presidents once had focused on bringing down the national debt,  but something changed right around the time Reagan got into office. See the chart below;

So next time these conservatives talk about “deficit reduction” and “cutting the budget,” maybe they should consider whose policies increased the national debt to where it is today. They should also consider educating their next presidential candidate, and beg that candidate to maintain their so-called “conservatism” if they manage to cross the threshold of the White House.

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Democratic democrats Planned Parenthood Politics Republican right winged United States United States Environmental Protection Agency

Republicans Are Masters of The Game

It is an obvious game of chicken and well-played by the Republicans. The object of the game is to establish your position in a metaphoric staring contest, wait to see who blinks first, then take all you can and run!

Think about it. Every single policy that involves negotiations, Republicans take the most extreme right winged position available. They then go on the so-called “main-stream media” and repeat their extreme arguments over and over and over again, in essence brainwashing otherwise rational Americans into thinking these far-fetched positions are normal.

After a constant barrage of talking points from every congressional Republican who gets  in front of a microphone or camera, these extreme positions take on a life of their own, as everyday folks begin to consider the possibilities of enacting these policies. People take up positions, usually along party lines, and the pros and cons are measured.

Democrats too, hear these arguments, for they are repeated by every single congressional Republican verbatim. So when the time comes to negotiate, Democrats, who tend to start in the middle, move more and more to the right, a move seen by Republicans as progress in the negotiations, and the end result is a piece of legislation that is somewhere between center and far right.

Look at the most recent negotiations between Democrats and Republicans – the 2011 budget. Weeks before the deadline arrived, Republicans gathered all their talking points, memorized them and spewed them out on every cable and radio network. The most extreme positions were demanding a $100 billion budget cut, defunding Education, defunding Planned Parenthood and stopping abortions, with no regards to women’s health or how she conceived – whether it be through rape or incest –  and with no regards to the health or survivability of the fetus. They also got bombarded with news from across the nation that Republican governors were enacting some of the most extreme policies this country has seen in decades regarding union collective bargaining capabilities. All this was done in unison, as the full effort to modify America’s thinking had begun.

As the deadline to agree on a budget approached, Republicans dug in even further. They were relentless in getting their message out, everyone reciting the same scripts, some even protesting outside of Harry Reid’s office demanding that Planned Parenthood be abolished. Democrats were not immune to the Republican’s efforts, and instead of taking up what many considered to be  traditional liberal positions on the issues, found themselves being more centrist in order to avoid looking as left-winged extremists.

Starting from this centrist position was an automatic win for the Republicans, but they continued digging in until the eleventh hour – literally! Democrats gave a little more, and the total outcome was an agreement to continue funding the government for the remainder of fiscal year 2011, but considerable cuts to programs geared towards saving lives, like the EPA and local police enforcement, as well as some cuts to Education among others. Cuts totaling $38.5 billion.

Republicans are masters of the art of negotiation. Take the most extreme positions, and stay there until the other side flinches.

The same strategy will be seen in the next big fight – raising the debt ceiling. And the Paul Ryan Plan, which will ultimately transfer $4.2 trillion from the middle class to the wealthy, is the extreme right winged position they will be using to get more centrist-right cuts. And their position now is, if Ryan’s plan doesn’t go into effect, then the debt ceiling will not be raised. Turn on your cable news station, and you are almost guaranteed to see  Republicans preaching that “we don’t have a tax problem, we have a spending problem,” and “Ryan’s proposed budget is the only responsible plan to tackle America’s long-term debt,” or that they only “intend to vote for Ryan’s budget cuts.”

They are a well oiled machine. But this game is not solitaire, so  it requires an opponent. Democrats must stand up for the middle class, like they’ve done for decades.

Democrats know the game being played by the Republicans, and they must play accordingly. In the words of GI-Joe, a favorite American hero: “… knowing is half the battle!”

 

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Barack Obama Democratic Politics Republican United States

New Poll Finds Americans Have Soured On The Republicans

Call it buyer’s remorse, a recall on faulty merchandise. Or call it a demand for a refund due to false advertising. Whatever you call it, Americans are beginning to see that this batch of Republicans in Congress are not what they had bargained for.

A new PPP poll finds that just a few months after handing the control of the House of Representatives  over to the Republican party, 43% think John Boehner and company are doing a worse job than Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats did when they were in charge.

The poll finds that even among Independents, Republicans have lost support;

Independents say by a 44-30 margin that Republicans have been doing worse.  Further, 48% trust President Obama more to lead the country in the right direction, while 42% have more faith in the GOP.  The sentiment with independents is 49-37 for Obama.

And when it comes to the question of who is  the most  extreme, Americans point the finger directly to the Republicans as the nut-jobs;

Americans also see the Democratic Party as being more mainstream (46%) than extremist (39%).  Their opinion of the GOP is almost the opposite: 40% see that party as mainstream, and 48% as extremist.  Independents say by a 49-33 margin that the GOP is extremist and by a 49-36 margin that the Democrats are mainstream

Based on these findings, Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy Polling expressed his opinion on the Democrats chances in the next election;

“The conventional wisdom is that Democrats will have a very hard time winning back control of the House next year, but that may be wrong- voters have soured on the new Republican majority in record time.

Soured is not the word. Is there some way we can pack this group of Republicans up and ship them off to a country more suitable for them? Like Somalia?

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Politics Republican Wisconsin

Wisconsin Election Too Close To Call

Who is this Joanne Kloppenburg? Whoever she is, she’s giving the Republican incumbent judge in Wisconsin a run for his money.

As of this moment, the New York Times is reporting that with 99% of the votes counted, “the pair were separated by fewer than 600 votes from among more than 1.4 million cast. The leader had flipped again and again throughout the night.” See the results here.

The election in Wisconsin comes in the middle of a battle between Republican Scott Walker and his recent efforts to take away the collective bargaining rights of public workers. The election, held yesterday, was a sure win for the Republican, David T. Prossner before Governor Walker began to initiate his union busting policies. Prossner is seeking his second 10 year term on the state’s Supreme Court.

But here comes Joanne Kloppenburg, an assistant attorney general – virtually unknown by the state’s voters – giving the Republican judge the hardest fight of his political career.

With various cases filed in Wisconsin against Scott Walker’s bill, many consider this election to be of utmost importance. A win by Prossner will maintain the 4-3 conservative vote in the court, while a win by Kloppenburg could be the deciding vote in many of these cases.

With an election this close, there has to be a recount on the horizon.

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Politics Republican United States Wisconsin

Are You On The G.O.P’s Hitlist?

I know it may be quicker to list the groups the GOP are for, but I have some time and some blog space, so here goes…

Are you on GOP’s hit-list? Well you are if you’re one of these;

  1. Latinos
  2. Blacks
  3. Muslims
  4. The Middle Class
  5. The Poor
  6. Gays
  7. Democrats
  8. Independents
  9. Women
  10. The Educated
  11. Seniors
  12. All Union Members
  13. Teachers
  14. Children who were born
  15. Anyone who believes in saving the planet
  16. Public Workers

If you belong to any of the group or groups mentioned above, then watch out. There is a constant effort on the part of the Republican party to dis-empower you in the name of “Balancing the Budget” or”‘Big Government intruding on our Constitutional rights as American citizens”–take your pick.  But don’t be disheartened, there is a way you can get on the Republican’s good side. Any one of the groups listed below should be your goal if Republican Love is what you crave;

  1. The Ultra Rich
  2. A Fetus

Keep pushing America, you too can be ultra rich or a fetus someday!

Thanks to my twitter friends who contributed to this list; @MWJ1231, @Fairly_Balanced, @Lawsonbulk @chansa2

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Barack Obama Politics Republican

Shutting Down The Government For Teaparty Bragging Rights

John Boehner, the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives had this to say at a news conference last week;

“Let’s all be honest, if you shut the government down, it’ll end up costing more than you save because you interrupt contracts. There are a lot of problems with the idea of shutting the government down. It is not the goal. The goal is to cut spending.”

His Democratic counterpart in the Senate, Leader Harry Reid chimed in with this;

“I’m happy to say that negotiations toward a compromise are moving forward. Not as fast as I would like, but they are moving forward.”

And even the President himself, Barack Obama made his opinion known, when he said;

“We know that a compromise is within reach. And we also know that if these budget negotiations break down, it could shut down the government and jeopardize our economic recovery.”

So if everyone is saying the same thing and the need to continue funding the government is evident, why are we facing a potential government shutdown on Friday of this week? The answer is simple… The Teaparty.

One of the self-appointed leaders of the Teaparty, Congressman Mike Pence had this to say;

“If liberals in the Senate want to play games and shut down government rather than make a down payment on fiscal discipline, I say shut it down.”

The problem is one of compromise, or lack thereof. When campaigning for the 2011 mid-term election, Republicans promised the Teaparty the moon, the stars, and even a small section of the galaxy they can rename Teabaggers-ville. Another promise was to cut the federal budget by $100 billion – another far-fetched promise, but one that fell within the teaparty’s requirement to reign in federal spending at all cost. Given these promises from Congressional Republicans, the teaparty voted in masses, putting the Republicans in charge of the House of Representatives, and gaining seats in the Senate.

Now, four months after Republicans have gained power, the teaparty is looking for Teabaggers-ville. They want what was promised to them and thus far, the Republicans haven’t paid up. Not because they don’t want to, but because they simply can’t.

When President Obama came out with his budget, it included additional spending of $41 billion. John Boehner and his fellow Republicans in congress cried foul, demanding that the president review his proposal. He did, and came back with $33 billion in cuts. But this wasn’t enough for the Boehner and the Teaparty, who voted for, and approved a House budget with at lease $61 billion in cuts.

The adults in the room couldn’t agree on a final budget, so two separate CRs (continued resolutions – temporary spending agreements) were put into place. We are now just five days before the second CR expires, and everyone involved is saying the right thing. Everyone, that is, except the Teaparty.

What happens in the event of a government shutdown? Slate reports;

Certain necessary activities would continue—anything related to defense, inpatient or emergency medical care, air traffic control, securing prisoners, or disaster assistance, for instance. But legally, federal agencies would have to wind down nonessential business. That means hundreds of thousands of employees would go on furloughs, from the Treasury to Health and Human Services to the Department of Education, to be paid whenever a continuing resolution passes. Thousands more contractors would just lose their gigs. Parks would shut down. Offices would clear out. Phones would go unanswered.

Nobody knows exactly how it would shake out, not just yet. The president has broad discretion to decide what counts as necessary and what does not, says Stan Collender, a longtime budget expert and a partner at Qorvis, a D.C. communications firm.

But everyone dreads the prospect. The last time the government shut down was during the Clinton administration. For five days in November 1995 and 21 days between December 1995 and January 1996, the lights went off. In the first shutdown, 800,000 workers stopped heading into the office. In the second, about 284,000 stayed at home, with an additional 475,000 working on “non-pay status.” These were not just pencil-pushers either. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gave up on monitoring the outbreak of diseases. Workers at 609 Superfund toxic-waste sites stopped cleaning up.

Another promise the Congressional Republicans made to Americans was job creation. Based on the information presented above, it seems that shutting down the government is not the best way to create these jobs. If the Teaparty is truly for fiscal responsibility like they would haver us believe, they will ask their congressional representatives to do what’s right for the economic longevity of this nation, not shutting down the government to fulfill some empty campaign promise.

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House of Representatives Politics Republican

Republicans Say Boehner Created 216,000 Jobs In March

The recent employment figures show 216,000 jobs were created in March, allowing the unemployment rate to fall from 8.9% to 8.8%. And according to David Dreier, Republican Chairman of the House Rules Committee, John Boehner is the one responsible for these newly created jobs.

Contain your laughter!!!

Mr. David Dreier praised John Boehner, saying;

Speaker Boehner has consistently been saying not only, “where are the jobs,” and we’re all gratified that the positive signs of getting our fiscal house in order played a big role in creating 216,000 non-farm, payroll jobs last month and brought the unemployment rate from 8.9 down to 8.8%.

So what exactly is Mr. Dreier talking about when he says “getting our fiscal house in order?” Well, to answer that question, we have to look at what House Republicans have concentrated on in the last 2 months since they took control of the House of Representatives.

  1. House Republicans have voted to repeal President Obama’s health care law. According to a report by David M. Cutler, repealing healthcare would “slow job growth by 250,000 to 400,000 annually.” The report also show an increase in medical spending by $125 billion by the end of this decade, and another $2,000 increase in yearly insurance premiums for families.
  2. Republicans in the House have also voted to defund NPR. Exactly how many jobs will this create? Zero. But it will take away $22 million dollars from the organization. Sigh!
  3. Repealing Planned Parenthood…. Jobs created? Another big ZERO, as per The Huffington Post
  4. House Republicans are intent on cutting $61 billion from the budget. This must be where the 216,000 jobs came from! Well, let’s take a look. The Senate hasn’t agreed on this $61 billion cut, so in essence, this budget cut, called H.R 1 is not law. Jobs created? Zero. In fact, many economists agreed, that if the Republican’s budget cuts detailed in H.R. 1 go into effect, hundreds of thousands of jobs will be lost.

And so the confusion continues. If the bills that House Republicans have voted on haven’t created any jobs, then how exactly is Mr. Dreier crediting John Boehner with creating 216,000 of them last month?

Well, Dreier knows he is lying. But its something Republicans have been doing for some time now. It’s called the power of persuasion – you say something often enough, eventually, although it may be a lie, it will be accepted as truth by many.

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Barack Obama Featured Republican United States

Republican’s Next Target – American Association of Retired Persons

Since gaining power in the House of Representatives, Republicans have attacked just about every major group of middle class Americans it could classify. So there should be no surprise that the American Association of Retired Persons also known as the AARP is next in line for the GOP’s crosshairs.

Republicans are now asking the IRS to investigate the AARP, in an effort to cut off funding to the organization. Their reasoning is that because of AARP’s support for President Obama’s Health Care reform, the group is than bound to profit from the reform and thus, should be stripped of its federal funding. The Boston Globe reports;

Three veteran GOP representatives released a report that estimates the seniors lobby could make an additional $1 billion over 10 years on health insurance plans whose sales are expected to pick up under the new law. They also questioned seven-figure compensation for some AARP executives.

“Based on the available evidence, substantial questions remain about whether AARP should maintain its tax-exempt status,” said the report, released by Reps. Wally Herger of California, Charles Boustany of Louisiana and Dave Reichert of Washington.

AARP said profit had nothing to do with its support for President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, which expands coverage to nearly all Americans, a longstanding goal of the organization.

“We are very disappointed in the report and reject its conclusions,” said AARP President Lee Hammond. “AARP is no more an insurance company than we are an online travel company … the royalties we receive allow us to keep member dues low.”

Can we expect to see massive protests from the seniors in the Teaparty? After all, this organization represents them and provides benefits for their well-being in their golden years. When will the first march on Washington take place?

Don’t hold your breath. Defunding AARP, although it will eventually hurt TP seniors currently under the program, has  absolutely no effect on the millionaires and billionaires who fund the Teaparty. In fact, taking away from AARP works in favor of the wealthy. Republicans lackeys will make certain that this money get’s to them in the form of another well deserved tax-cut.

 

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