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Ever wonder how some people get elected to Congress?
I know I do. The fact that there are Republicans who appear to be uneducated, anti-intellectual and just plain outrageous makes me have a very poor impression of the people who vote for them.
Here are 4 samples of what I’m referring to:
Science and Space Committee? Intelligence Committee? How do these mini-brains get put on committees they don’t seem to have any intellectual connection with?
If statements like these keep them from being re-elected to the House, then I’ll have a much better vision of the voting public. I don’t count on it, however.
Related articles
- When Romney questions Obama’s achievements, remember what the Congress did to most of his proposals. (underthelobsterscope.wordpress.com)
- April Russo: GOP Sen. says he will cut scientific funding because scientists read too much (examiner.com)
Ex-Senator and former Presidential Candidate George McGovern in a South Dakota Hospice.
“He’s coming to the end of his life,” McGovern’s daughter, Ann, stated. She didn’t elaborate but noted that her 90-year-old father has suffered several health problems in the last year.
George McGovern became a leader of the Democrats’ liberal wing during his three decades in Congress but lost his 1972 challenge to Richard Nixon. McGovern turned his focus in recent years to world hunger.
It was after a lecture tour a year ago that he was treated for exhaustion, then two months later, he fell and hit his head.
McGovern spent several days in a Florida hospital in April for tests to determine why he occasionally passed out and had difficulty speaking. His daughter said he has moved in the Dougherty Hospice House in Sioux Falls, SD, where he moved in August to spend more time near his family.
McGovern was a member of the U.S. House from 1957 to 1961 and a U.S. senator from 1963 to 1981.
Related articles
- Ex-presidential nominee George McGovern in hospice (sfgate.com)
- Former presidential nominee George McGovern in hospice (foxnews.com)
Boehner tells the press that he hopes blacks and latinos don’t vote…
The Speaker of the House told a luncheon hosted by the Christian Science Monitor in Tampa Monday that the Republican Party counted on apathy from the Latinos and blacks in choosing Democrats over Republicans… something that has become apparent by record margins in recent polls.
His actual words (in public, no less):
“This election is about economics… These groups have been hit the hardest. They may not show up and vote for our candidate but I’d suggest to you they won’t show up and vote for the president either.”
Combine this with the Republican campaign for voter ID laws, for limiting voting hours and for stalling registrations , and you get the clear fact that these laws were meant to keep blacks from voting.
As Doug Priesse, chair of the Franklin County, Ohio Republican Party, said about restrictive early voting hours and voter ID laws:
“I guess I really actually feel we shouldn’t contort the voting process to accommodate the urban — read African-American — voter-turnout machine… Let’s be fair and reasonable.”
In Pennsylvania House Republican leader Mike Turzai conceeded the point of voter ID is to help Republicans win
“Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done.”
So it looks like Republican leadership from the top to the bottom will do their best to realize a publicly stated hope: Keep minorities away from the voting box… it’s the only way for them to have a 100% white male government.
Related articles
- Stewart Rips Voter ID Laws As ‘The Price You Pay For Something That Doesn’t Happen’ (mediaite.com)
- Why Today’s Voter ID Faceoff in Pennsylvania Is Crucial (colorlines.com)
- EDITORIAL: Voter laws: A partisan jackpot? (nwfdailynews.com)
- Bill Maher Says What the Media Won’t: Voter ID Laws Are Racist (politicususa.com)
- Pennsylvania judge denies challenge to state’s voter ID law (reuters.com)
- Doug Priesse: Ohio Early Voting Process Should Not Accommodate Black Voters (huffingtonpost.com)
- VIDEO: How to Fight Voter Suppressio n! (point4counterpoint.wordpress.com)
- Risk of Voter Suppression Resurfaces: Wisconsin Attorney General Seeks to Reinstate Voter ID Law (commondreams.org)
- Iowa Latinos seen as key to presidential campaigns (thegazette.com)
- Obama Leads Romney By 39 Points Among Latino Voters (outsidethebeltway.com)
Republicans shoot down Equal Pay law in the Senate.
From RTTGlobal Financial News:
Senate Republicans on Tuesday blocked a bill that Democrats say would increase paycheck equity for women. Republican lawmakers argued the bill would put an undue strain on businesses.
Voting 52-47, the Senate fell eight votes short of the 60 necessary to hold an outright vote on the bill. All 47 Republicans in the chamber voted against it, with the exception of Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., who was absent.
The bill, dripping with election-year politics, was intended to close a pay gap between women and men by increasing litigation opportunities for women, closing a variety of legal loopholes, strengthening federal enforcement authority and barring employers from retaliating against employees who share pay information with colleagues.
Even though women make 84¢ an hour for every buck a man makes in the same job (some say 77¢), the attempt today to remedy that situation in the U.S. Senate was pretty much pissed on by 100% of the Senate Republicans.
There are two problems here… problems which won’t go away while we still have the same Democratic-to-Republican ratio:
– The need to have 60 votes, and not a simple majority, to pass an item. This is what is called a
“filibuster” and used to be pulled out only rarely, on extremely important bills that had strong disagreements. And it used to require all Senators to be present and those filibustering had to keep speaking on the floor or give up (remember Jimmy Stewart in “Mr. Smith Goes To Washington“?). This all changed when Republicans decided when Obama was elected to make ALL votes filibusters… and no one has to speak. They just declare it and it automatically goes to the 60 vote requirement. As Mitch McConnell told us in 2008, he’s not going to let any legislation brought in by Obama pass.
– A significant realization that Senators (both parties) can be influenced (read “instructed”) to vote as requested by their major funders. Corporations and Chambers of Commerce did NOT want to equalize the pay of women to that of men. Why? It would cost them more. So this is why 100% of Republicans…even women… sat on their hands on this one.
Obama was a major supporter of this bill. Romney never said a word about it, even though many expected he would show his relationship to his party by expressing his support for their action.
In his statement on the Republican negative vote, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid asked Romney why he had not at least called some of the Republican Senators to say he supported this bill (one of his assistants had e-mailed a response to the net that Romney had always supported equal pay.)
“This is a common-sense measure with broad public support. Nine out of 10 Americans – including 81 percent of men and 77 percent of Republicans – support this legislation. But once again, the only Republicans who are left opposing a common-sense measure to improve our economy and help middle-class families are the ones here in Washington.”
What do you women readers think of this? Does it affect you? Are you paid less than men where you work for similar occupations?
I’m starting to get form letters back from my representatives in the Senate and Congress…
… all glad to see my concern and all saying they’ll keep me in mind as legislation comes up.
However, not one of them, whether Democrat or Republican, got elected without financial support from the coal companies that are destroying West Virginia with mountain top removal to get coal. If you think that means they are going to regulate the coal companies who are destroying our state… ruining homes, water supplies and the tourist industry… then you have got to be kidding yourself.
Here’s a piece by Michael Jonathon:
So… of you’re anywhere in the states that have Appalachian coal mining, keep this in mind next Fall when the politicians are campaigning in your neck of the woods.
Related articles
- Jeff Biggers: Dear Soledad: Appalachian Leaders Respond to CNN’s Blair Mountain Special on Mountaintop Removal (huffingtonpost.com)
- Removing mountaintops yields coal, controversy (cnn.com)
- Lethal Fallout from Mining Spurs a Mountaintop Removal Moratorium Campaign to End to the Humanitarian Crisis in Appalachia (alternet.org)
- Extra 60,000 Cancer Cases from Mountaintop Removal (gcvconservation.wordpress.com)
- Sen. Manchin Maintains Lucrative Ties to Family-Owned Coal Company (nytimes.com)
- Poll: Majority oppose controversial coal mining practice (cnn.com)
- The new battle for Blair Mountain (cnn.com)
- WATCH: Soledad O’Brien Takes On Hugely Controversial Environmental Issue (huffingtonpost.com)
Quote of the Day – from someone who was there when we got it right
“What the GOP seeks is a banana republic: a toxic blend of right-wing populism, anti-intellectualism, debt defaults, and an end to the ladder of economic opportunity.”
This is from Begala’s article in the Daily Beast entitled “How Republicans Screwed the Pooch“… this, of course, is from the point-of-view of a member of the Clinton administration who was there when the same kinds of problems were solved two administrations ago.
Whenever you hear the Republicans (and especially the tea partiers) say that the Democrats never learn from their mistakes, point them to the balanced budgets with surpluses extending out into the foreseeable future that Clinton handed Bush and his Band of Scary Men, who got us into debt andunfunded war within a year. And remember what they left Obama with.
Begala’s article should be read by everyone.
Related articles
- How Republicans Screwed the Pooch (thedailybeast.com)
- Clock Ticking on Debt Ceiling Limit Compromise: But Can There Be One? (UPDATED) (themoderatevoice.com)
- Yep, I caught that too Smitty (thedaleygator.wordpress.com)
- Paul Begala: Newt Saying GOP Plan Is ‘Too Radical’ Is Like Paris Hilton Disliking Someone ‘Too Slutty’ (mediaite.com)
Quote of the Day – Republicans fit to govern?
Conservative N.Y. Times Columnist David Brooks:
“If the debt ceiling talks fail, independents voters will see that Democrats were willing to compromise but Republicans were not. If responsible Republicans don’t take control, independents will conclude that Republican fanaticism caused this default. They will conclude that Republicans are not fit to govern. And they will be right…”
So let’s see… is the Republican press support starting to give way? It’s been a long time since I agreed with David Brooks.
As June ends we see the economy getting worse…
Unemployment looks like it’s starting to go up again, even here in Shepherdstown where we were doing pretty well – something which I think is pretty common in small University towns not based on industry or international trade – and I’m getting more and more pissed off at our Congressfolk who would rather battle for control of the government than the salvation of the citizenry.
Take, for instance, the walkout of Cantor and Kyl from the deficit talks – blaming it n the Democrats seeking tax increases for the rich (after they had already given up three trillion dollars in concessions according to the news on television). Now it seems the walkout was pre-planned and this was a strategy to throw the Republican position into Boehner‘s lap, keeping the House from any kind of agreement on returning the upper 1% of rich folks from going back to the tax levels that Bush had brought them “temporarily” down to. As they pulled this off, the ability to fund the basics of Medicare and Medicaid seem strained and folks like Max Baucus, one of the few Democrats that I have the least trust in, announced he was ready to look at more cuts in the health care agenda.
If the deficit ceiling is not raised by the end of the next three or four weeks we will have plenty of opportunity to hear both parties blaming the other… both of them claiming that the majority of Americans agree with them. But since the rest of us are all part of that majority of Americans it seems strange that no one really feels the politicians are really speaking for us.
Perhaps it is time for us all to find ways to show that we could work together to solve problems, and send the politicians, lobbyists, Koch Brothers, Fox Newscasters, and all the rest who are making their big bucks on this conflict out into the night.
Related articles
- Top Republican Cantor exits budget talks (ctv.ca)
- Republican claim that Cantor’s walkout was planned doesn’t add up (dailykos.com)
- We Are One Demonstration Tonite In Shepherdstown… (underthelobsterscope.wordpress.com)
- We Are In Deep Trouble With Our Economy and the Libs Just Want to Keep it Up (rantsandrage.com)
No Budget – No Museums!
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My son Will works part-time at the Smithsonian (on their web stuff) while he goes to grad school in DC… I imagine he is not looking forward to this one.
Related Articles
- Government shutdown would be bad for Smithsonian – Washington Post (blog) (news.google.com)
- Tourist Troubles: Potential Government Shutdown Could Stifle Museums, Parks (newsfeed.time.com)
- So, I Guess The Government Might Shutdown? (radio923fm.radio.com)
- How a government shutdown will affect you (capitolhillblue.com)
- US government shutdown looms amid budget brinkmanship (guardian.co.uk)
- Surviving the government shutdown (sfgate.com)
Why are we being taken over by utter stupidity?
I start the morning with a guy ringing the front doorbell and, rather than run downstairs holding the dogs so they don’t run out the door, I open the window and say “Yes?” He asks me if I want information on the celebration of the death of Jesus Christ.
Perhaps I should put an “atheist lives here” sign on the door… that might keep these folks from coming around (and there are more and more of them lately.) Or perhaps I should go door to door asking if people want information on pure logic as it relates to religious myth. Probably not.
Then I get back to the computer and I’m reading Taegan Goddard‘s morning posts and find this:
House Denies Global Warming is Real
The House of Representatives defeated an amendment to a bill that “would have put the chamber on record backing the widely held scientific view that global warming is occurring and humans are a major cause,” reports The Hill.
The amendment, which stated that “Congress accepts the scientific findings of the Environmental Protection Agency that climate changes is occurring, is caused
largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for public health and welfare,” failed by a near party-line vote of 184 to 240. The only Republican to vote for the amendment is Rep. Dave Reichert (R-WA), while three Democrats voted against it.
These are people who have control over money given to scientific research (which they are now probably going to try and eliminate) and who represent any possibility of protecting ourselves in the future from destroying our world.
Of course, the Congressfolk are now working as hard as it can to shut down the government without making their own parties seem responsible. Each side claims to not want the shutdown. At least one group (read “Tea Party”) has taken a stand against ANY compromise, and that will keep Republicans in a muddle.
We are being governed by the brain dead… led by people walking backwards into an existential hole.
Another C-SPAN Morning, and a very unhappy vote…
I’m watching the vote as the Republican majority votes on debate rules to defund National Public Radio. So far all Republicans are voting to cut the funds and all Democrats are voting to save the funding. If it keeps up like this, NPR has no chance.
C-SPAN is taking in phone calls during the vote, alternating between Democrats and Republicans, and the trend among callers of both parties is that NPR should keep its funding. Oh, there are a few who are supporting it because they claim it’s the government telling people what to watch (where they get that from, I don’t know.)
There us a predominance of callers from small towns and farm areas who realize that NPR and PBS allow broadcasts of unbiased news that they certainly don’t get from commercial stations. They are not looking forward to the cuts… however, the funding from the government is very small and NPR will work very hard in their other fundraising channels (like you and me).
I don’t know when they are having the final debate (they are apparently going to debate troops in Afghanistan next.) But I don’t hold out a lot of hope.
Related Articles
- House to vote on cutting off funds for NPR (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
- House to Vote on Cutting off Funds for NPR (abcnews.go.com)
- House Republicans schedule Thursday vote to bar federal money for NPR (politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com)
- House to Vote on Measure to Ax Funding From NPR (politics.blogs.foxnews.com)
- Why House Republicans are rushing to slash NPR funding – Christian Science Monitor (news.google.com)
Today begins a response by workers to the Wisconsin Senate’s surprise move last night…
Today people are returning to the Wisconsin capitol building to protest the act of the Republican Senators and the approval they have received by Scott Walker. The organization of trade unions is becoming intense and recalls of some legislators and a build up to recalling Walker (which cannot happen until next January by Wisconsin law) are in process.
Frank Emspak of the Workers Independent News in Madison stated:
“We’ve had democracy by deception here. You’re talking about disenfranchising millions of people, not only in Wisconsin, but also throughout the Midwest, and basically saying that working people, in an organized fashion, have no right to participate in the electoral process. That is what the Republicans are doing.”
And there was this statement by Gerald McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME):
At a time when we should be pulling together to create jobs, Governor Walker and the legislators who back him are more interested in stripping nurses, teachers, correction officers, bus drivers and EMTs of their rights. This is a question of right and wrong. The governor is tearing Wisconsin apart when voters want real solutions to the problems they face.
This is about more than Scott Walker’s arrogance. He is tossing aside basic American values. Public workers fought long and hard for the right to collective bargaining. Martin Luther King, Jr. died defending that right for AFSCME sanitation workers in Memphis. We are not going to allow a small group of radical politicians in Wisconsin destroy what Americans have fought generations to win.
Only one Republican, Dale Schultz, voted against the bill last night. Schultz is a moderate Republican who previously proposed a compromise. His vote is likely to protect him from a recall effort by unions and Democrats.
Shultz stated:
As someone who as spent the better part of the last four weeks working toward and hoping for a compromise, this is a difficult night.
I’ve had the honor and privilege of representing folks in Southwest and South Central Wisconsin for 28 years, and where I come from ‘compromise’ isn’t a dirty word.
I’ve received tens of thousands of emails, thousands of phone calls and letters, and spent hours meeting with thousands of citizens in my district. I’ve heard personal and heartfelt stories of friends and neighbors, and they ask for just two things.
First, be inclusive by listening and working with your colleagues on both sides of the aisle to reach a compromise which addresses our fiscal crisis. Second, public employees are willing to make sacrifices on things like wages and benefits, but we need to preserve collective bargaining as a tool which has helped keep labor peace in this state for decades.
Ultimately, I voted my conscience which I feel reflects the core beliefs of the majority of voters who sent me here to represent them.
Because of the Wisconsin law that prohibits a recall until an elected official has served one year in office, only eight of the Republican Senators, who violated the open meeting rule and the 24 hour public announcement policy by eliminating collective bargaining last night, may currently be recalled. These are:
* Robert Cowles
* Alberta Darling
* Sheila Harsdorf
* Luther Olsen
* Randy Hopper
* Glenn Grothman
* Mary Lazich
* Dan Kapanke
The protestors will have until January of next year to get the 500,000 signatures needed to recall Scott Walker. Meanwhile, Walker has been a Uniter, not a Divider: he has united the Unions, the Democrats, the people of Wisconsin and voters all across the unites States. Perhaps we could get the Republicans to run him for President.
Related Articles
- Labor Vows To Step Up Recall Effort Against Wisconsin GOP (huffingtonpost.com)
- Wisconsin Passes Anti-Collective Bargaining Bill (outsidethebeltway.com)
- You: Wisconsin Senate Advances Bill Opposed by Unions (nytimes.com)
- Wisconsin Senate GOP bypass Democrats to cut union rights – Seattle Times (news.google.com)
- Union supporters to rally after Wisconsin Senate passes restrictions (cnn.com)
- ‘General Strike!’ Thousands Storm, Reoccupy Wisconsin Capitol in Response to Legislative Votes (redantliberationarmy.wordpress.com)
- Wisconsin Senate Limits Bargaining by Public Workers – New York Times (news.google.com)
- Wisconsin Republicans Sneak Through Union-Busting Bill without Democrats (blogs.forbes.com)
- Labor Lambasts Walker, GOP Senators (thepage.time.com)
- What Happens Next in Wisconsin? (politicalwire.com)
- Wis. GOP Bypasses Democrats On Collective Bargaining (promoteliberty.wordpress.com)
- The name for what Scott Walker, The Wisconsin Republican Senators and David Koch are trying to pull is called “structural adjustment” (iflizwerequeen.com)
- Art Levine: After GOP’s Union-Stripping, Labor Launches 9 A.M. Friday Protests Across Wisconsin. Strikes Next? (huffingtonpost.com)