All in the (Republican) family

By Capt. Fogg

Remember Richard Nixon? Who? You know, the guy they tried to rehabilitate after he fled the White House ahead of the prosecutors, the guy they built a museum about with fake exhibits showing how he really was a great guy who was victimized by the Liberal Press?

Well as long as we have Dick Nixon's words on tape we don't have to kick him around any more, since his unique talent for kicking himself in the ass with both feet in his mouth relieves us of the burden.

Watching All in the Family and completely failing to get what it was about, all the trickster could get out of it is that it "glorified homosexuality" made a hippie out to be a better man than a "hard-hat" and was likely to destroy America. CNN plans to air this clip and more Nixon outrages tonight. I don't plan to watch it. I don't need to listen to this shitweasel, this piece of snake dung talking about how Rome and Greece were destroyed by "fags." I had enough many years ago when I heard him talking to Billy Graham about how the Jews were destroying America. I've had far more than enough of the party that supported him for decades, that attacked truth and justice to protect this horror, committed crimes to re-elect him and who now thinks he's way too far to the left for the modern tea-stained Republicans.

Watch this (my apologies for the ad) and ask yourself how this piece of human garbage ever got elected, how anyone would debase themselves and their country by supporting him in full knowledge of his words and deeds. Ask yourself how low a person has to be to be a Republican. Listen to his words America, and despair.

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Why poverty happens to good people

By Carl

Lesson to learn -- it’s usually not their fault. Case in point:

Donald Cardin became a firefighter at age 20 in Central Falls, R.I., a town just north of Providence that filed for bankruptcy in 2011. He was making $60,000 a year as a fire chief before retiring at age 42 in 2007 to take care of his wife Lana, diagnosed with thymic carcinoma, a rare cancer with extremely low survival rates.

The couple relied on Cardin’s health insurance, which required no copay, to cover Lana’s $8,000-a-month treatment. Cardin worked a part-time contracting job to make up the difference between his $34,000-a-year pension and his former salary.

But that all changed in 2011 when Cardin, and his fellow firefighters and policemen, were called to a meeting at the local high school, where state-appointed receiver Robert Flanders warned them that the city would not have enough money to survive if pensions were not cut. Weeks later the city would file for bankruptcy.

“After a lifetime of service, with the stroke of a pen, Judge Flanders changes the rest of our lives and doesn’t care,” said Cardin.

So here’s a man who put in a lifetime’s work based partly on the promise that, in exchange for risking his life now, the city would help take care of him in his retirement. Nevermind that he retired at an age young enough to go find another job with a living wage and have a completely new career – which is not an easy proposition living in a small New England town, by the way, and that’s before considering his wife’s medical needs – that was the contract implied at hiring. Then, shortly after retiring, half his pension and half his medical insurance was taken away, leaving him making $17,000 AND paying $48,000 in medical bills, annually.

In a town of 19,000 people, it’s likely many if not most knew Chief Cardin, and other retirees who saw their lives brutalized by unfeeling bean counters, but you’ll notice in reading the article and doing further investigation, the subject of raising taxes never once comes up.

Until they emerged from bankruptcy in record time. They did this by shifting the bankruptcy burden off the town and onto the middle class pensioners, and increasing property taxes 25% over five years. Had it been discussed before the bankruptcy, perhaps those pensions could have been saved or at least, given a shave, not a beheading.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

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Filibuster deal crumbling?

By Frank Moraes

In case you were wondering about that filibuster deal that John McCain made with Harry Reid, well, it looks like it is crumbling. And this is the first vote after the critical seven that Reid said must be approved. Earlier this afternoon, the Senate was anxiously waiting for Senator Heidi Heitkamp to fly back to Washington. The reason? The Democrats are trying to pass a cloture vote on the nomination of Todd Jones to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Thus far they only have 59 votes and they need 60.

There are a couple of things that are worth nothing here. First, this wouldn't even be an issue if the Senate had passed one of the minor filibuster reforms that people like me were calling for earlier this year. The proposal was to put the filibuster onus on the people filibustering, not the majority. So instead of the majority having to get 60 votes, the minority would have to get 41 votes. The way it is today with 59-40, Todd Jones' nomination would already have had a successful cloture vote. The truth is that this is just pathetic. Not a single one of those 40 Republicans who have voted against cloture even need to be in Washington. It is all about the majority having to prove that it has the votes to stop a filibuster; the minority has no obligation to sustain its own filibuster.

The other thing about this is that this is a fucking filibuster! I am so tired of this bullshit. The idea of the so called nuclear option was that it would disallow filibusters on executive branch nominations. The deal was that the Republicans would not filibuster 7 critical nominations. But that's not what happened. Every one of those nominations was filibustered. It is just that enough Republicans voted for cloture that the filibusters were unsuccessful. But they were still filibustered. There was still a whole lot of time wasted. The Democrats still had to make sure that every one of them was present to vote for cloture because most of the time the Republicans didn't even give them a single vote to spare.

So here is how it all breaks down. The Republicans apparently are only willing to do the bare minimum necessary to avoid the Nuclear Option. Sure, this one cloture vote is likely to go through, but if we are already having difficulty with the eighth vote, it is hopeless after Congress returns from the break. The Republicans were never willing to stop filibustering. The Republicans have only been willing to give the minimum number of votes. And the onus of stopping a filibuster is still on the majority. This is not a lot of progress.

I know that things are (temporarily anyway) slightly better than they were. But is this really the way the Senate ought to work? The Senate operated a long time without a filibuster; the first one was in 1837. Then, for well over 100 years, the filibuster was rarely used. And as a rarely used tool, it makes quite a nice addition to the Senate where everyone is supposedly on such friendly terms. Now it is not a tool that the minority can use; it is a tool that gives the minority veto power over all legislation and appointments. I want to be as clear as possible about this: the filibuster should go. I don't care that the Republicans will later be in the majority. The Senate ought to be able to run like a normal legislative body. And look: after it goes away, if the Republicans again become a normal (non-revolutionary) party, the filibuster can be brought back. But it needs to go. The sooner the better.

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

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Marriage in Minnesota

By Mustang Bobby

Clad in red and black gowns, Margaret Miles and Cathy ten Broeke stood facing each other, smiling through tears in the white-marbled, Minneapolis City Hall rotunda as the clock ticked toward midnight.

Seconds later, Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak declared: “Margaret and Cathy, by the power now finally vested in me, by the laws of the people of Minnesota, we hereby declare Margaret and Cathy legally married. You may now kiss the bride.”

The two kissed as hundreds of guests erupted in cheers and applause, amid a hall filled with fresh flowers, live music and cases of donated champagne.

From Minneapolis and St. Paul to Duluth and Crookston, dozens of gay and lesbian couples tied the knot in the pre-dawn hours Thursday as Minnesota became the 13th state to legalize same-sex marriage. Couples and guests gathered in city halls, a conservatory, the Mall of America, even a bar to be among the first to usher in a new era of marriage equality in Minnesota.

“We are happy to recommit to one another every day, but the opportunity to be the symbol for the community is unequaled,” a beaming Miles said.

Mazel tov and best wishes to each and every one of them.

Oh, and can’t forget about Rhode Island.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

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America's imaginary lavish social welfare safety net that exists only in Republican minds

By Marc McDonald 

In America, we hate the poor. We really, really hate the poor. We are indoctrinated from birth to hate the poor. Jesus may have said, "Blessed are you who are poor." But America has no time for that Jesus. Our motto is "Screw the poor."

The Century Foundation

As a result, America has never been big on social welfare programs for the poor. Even during the peak years of U.S. social program spending (during LBJ's "Great Society" years), America had a skimpy social safety net, compared to other industrialized nations.

Compared to generous European social safety nets, America these days more closely resembles the likes of Mexico than a modern First World industrialized nation. Jobless benefits, for example, are far more meager and stingy in the U.S. than they are in Europe. In fact, for one reason or another, millions of Americans don't even ever qualify for jobless benefits. (I know: I was one of them. Years ago, I applied for jobless benefits and was turned down.)

The other pillar of the U.S. social safety net, food stamps, is also very meager. I recall recently playing around with the food stamp eligibility program on a Texas state government Web site. I was curious as to exactly how low one's income had to be in order to qualify. I kept plugging in lower and lower income numbers and kept getting a response page that said, "You earn too much to qualify for food stamps." Eventually, I concluded the Web site must be broken. It was only later that I discovered, much to my amazement, that the Web site was in fact working just fine and the Third World-like wages I'd plugged into the search form were indeed considered too high to qualify for aid.

In short, in America these days, if you're poor, you are screwed.

The fact is, many low-income and poor people never even qualify for any type of aid. And the shocking numbers of homeless in the U.S. demonstrates that our social safety net is grotesquely inadequate to meet the needs of the needy. The fact that one in five children lives in poverty is a good indicator of that.

In fact, what meager social safety net programs that are around only exist because corporate America wants them to exist (a good indicator of just how corrupt our government is these days).

Take food stamps, for example. This program simply wouldn't exist were it not for the likes of Walmart. Since Walmart (a vastly profitable mega-billion-dollar corporation) can't be bothered to pay their workers a living wage, we the taxpayer in effect subsidize their wages via food stamps, (as well as other programs like Medicaid).

Give corporate America credit: they do know how to exploit a situation to boost their profits.

Despite all this, today's Republican Party is convinced that the reason America is going broke is that we supposedly fund all these lavish, generous social safety net programs. Indeed, the likes of Rush Limbaugh constantly ramble on about "trillions of dollars" that are supposedly spent on welfare. The typical Limbaugh listener these days is convinced that America is going broke because of "excessive welfare spending" and "lavish foreign aid."

It's all a lie, of course.

Welfare programs for the non-working poor are in fact a tiny part of the federal budget (five percent, in fact). And, as a percentage of GDP, America's foreign aid budget is smaller than virtually any other industrialized nation. (In fact, what foreign aid we do spend is often nothing more than backdoor military aid.)

It's one thing for clowns like Limbaugh to lie about welfare. But I also routinely hear other, more mainstream Republicans lie through their teeth about America's "lavish" welfare spending.

The reason is obvious. It's easier to beat up on the poor and the needy and make them a scapegoat for America's economic crisis. The real reason for America's titanic deficits (out-of-control military spending and insane trillion-dollar wars) rarely gets a mention in our mainstream political discourse.

Republicans are happy to shovel trillions of dollars into the wasteful, corrupt monster known as the Military Industrial Complex. And then they have the gall to blame needy children for bankrupting the American nation.

The reason is obvious, of course. The Military Industrial Complex employs thousands of lobbyists who are willing to shower billions of dollars on "our" representatives in Congress.

By contrast, needy children don't have any lobbyists to represent their interests.

America is a nation that has a serious addiction to massive trillion-dollar military budgets. By contrast, programs for the poor are a small slice of the federal budget. To blame the latter for America's fiscal woes is the equivalent of a drug addict who spends $500 a day on crack cocaine and then blames his budget woes on the fact that he spends a quarter a day on a newspaper.

I believe today's Republicans are playing with fire when they continue to attack the poor and continue to work to slash what little remains of the U.S. social safety net.

The poor, the needy, the impoverished have been crapped all over by this government for decades. Their growing ranks (and their growing desperation) is a ticking time bomb that will eventually blow up in the face of our corrupt government and the plutocrats that it serves.

(Cross-posted at Beggars Can Be Choosers.)

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People will notice if the Republicans get any crazier

By Frank Moraes 

The other day, Jonathan Chait wrote a provocative post, "Are House Republicans Voter-Proof?" In it, he argued that the Republicans likely have nothing to worry about in going full-tilt Michele Bachmann. After all, most people don't even know which party is in control of the House of Representatives. Why would they blame the Republicans?

Under normal circumstances, I agree with Chait. If the Republicans keep doing what they have been doing killing the economy inch by inch, the electorate will not notice. As I wrote last week, I fully expect the Republicans to pick up some seats in the House and also likely take control of the Senate. But I do wish people would stop talking about the Sixth-Year Curse. This is the belief of political observers that the president's party loses big the sixth year of his presidency. Sean Trende has debunked this idea. What actually happens is that the president's party loses big in one of the midterm elections. That already happened to Obama in 2010. Although it is likely that 2014 won't be a good year for the Democrats, they are already doing about as badly as they can. There aren't many seats (in the House at least) that they can gain.

Chait mentions five factors that work in the Republicans' favor. The first is the silly Sixth-Year Curse. The second is that Democrats tend to do badly in midterm elections. That's true, but that's already figured into the calculation. The third is that there aren't many swing voters anymore. I'm not sure how this gives the Republicans an advantage when most of those swing voters are just Democrats now. The fourth is the observation that Democratic voters are concentrated and thus their votes don't count as much. That's true in the Senate races, but not in the House. So I don't get his point given that the big issue is the House. And the fifth is that the 2010 redistricting favors the Republicans. That's true, but again, already figured into the calculation.

All he is saying is that the Republicans can continue to misbehave and get nothing done without a voter backlash. And that's true! But no one is suggesting that the Republicans are idiots. They respond to incentives and they see that in 2014 they are not going to harmed if they vote yet again to defund Obamacare. What people like me have been talking about is the longer term. Over the next six to eight years, if the Republicans don't start to change, they will be overwhelmed by the demographic change. And no amount of redistricting and voter suppression is going to save them.

But this isn't even about the long term. If the Republicans refuse to raise the debt ceiling or if they simply shutdown the government, people will notice. The TV news will be all about this. Even Fox News will have a hard time blaming it on the Democrats. And people won't have to know who their legislators are or who controls the House of Representatives. They will just freak out about the crazy party that hates the government.

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

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A.M. Headlines

(Politico): "Why Rand Paul and Chris Christie went to war"

(TPM): "GOP's long-predicted comeuppance has arrived"

(Detroit News): "Snyder's approval rating gets boost from bankruptcy, Medicaid decisions"

(The Hill): "Dems urge national discussion on racial justice following Trayvon Martin case"

(USA Today): "MLB prepared to ban A-Rod for life, suspend eight others"

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