Reading the online Houston Chronicle recently and came across this charming note from "PDiddie" in response to a story about Eric Cantor lying about how many Americans want to repeal the Affordable Health Care Act, found here.
PDiddie sums up the Republicans pretty well. What has been confounding to me is how many people call themselves Republicans who seem to be voting against their own self-interest. However, I have come to the realization that many of these Republicans are indeed arrogant, selfish, racist assholes.
Dear Americans Who Are Not Rich,
Can't afford health care? Screw you.
Want the food you eat to be safe? How quaint.
Deficit reduction? Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!!!
Want Social Security to be preserved? You're an idiot.
In foreclosure hell? La la la we can't hear you!
Concerned about the environment? Treehugger. Eco-terrorist.
You want stronger unions? Good luck with that, commie.
Unemployment benefits running out? Quit whining and get a job, you lazy bum.
Muslim? Latino? Gay? You nasty un-American, you.
Looking for fresh new government ideas to solve problems? Move to Scandinavia.
Think you can count on us to stimulate job growth? Hell no you can't!
Reproductive freedom? We own your private parts, little lady.
Don’t want the government to default on its debts? Too bad!
Want the rich to be taxed more? In a pig's eye.
Wish we'd put America's interests above our own? Keep dreaming.
Love and Freedom Fries,
The New Republican House Majority
P.S. Like cake? Eat all you want.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Political Animal
HOUSE GOP REDISCOVERS ITS LOVE OF HEAVY-HANDED TACTICS.... When the House Republican plan to repeal the entirety of the Affordable Care Act comes to the floor next week, Democrats know precisely what they want to do. The plan is to introduce amendments forcing Republicans to vote to scrap specific provisions in the law, all of which happen to be quite popular.
The strategy not only puts GOP repealers in a tough spot, but it also helps highlight some of the law's benefits. If Republicans are so gung-ho about gutting the law, they should have no qualms about endorsing the consequences of repeal -- forcing vulnerable seniors to pay thousands of additional out-of-pocket dollars for their medication, allowing insurers to discriminate against children with pre-existing conditions, etc.
Republicans, not surprisingly, aren't anxious to play along, and it looks like they'll block efforts to have any amendments.
Incoming House Majority Leader Eric Cantor ... was asked whether there would be an open rule on the short repeal bill, the text of which Republicans made public last night. Under an open rule, Democrats would be allowed to propose amendments. Cantor strongly implied that this wouldn't happen. "It's a straightforward document," he said. "It reflect what most people inside the beltway and outside the beltway want."
When it comes to what "most people ... want," Cantor really doesn't know what he's talking about.
But procedurally, this is patently ridiculous: "Republicans demanded again and again that they be allowed to introduce amendments and generally enjoy an open process while health reform was being debated."
Notice the pattern? For two years, Republicans said all legislation had to be paid for ... but when it comes time to repeal health care reform, Republicans no longer care about their alleged principles.
For two years, Republicans said all legislation needed scores from the Congressional Budget Office ... but when it comes time to repeal health care reform, Republicans no longer care about their alleged principles.
For two years, Republicans said it was imperative for the minority to be allowed to offer amendments to legislation ... but when it comes time to repeal health care reform, Republicans no longer care about their alleged principles.
For two years, Republicans said self-executing rules and bypassing committees were outrageous abuses ... but when it comes time to repeal health care reform, Republicans no longer care about their alleged principles.
Jason Linkins had this item today:
Back when he was the leader of the House minority, John Boehner's salty tears were shed over the many indignities he had to suffer, just because his party was oriented toward pointless obstruction, which forces the Democrats to use every procedural weapon in their arsenal to simply pass the legislation they were elected to deliver. Boehner took his case to the American Enterprise Institute, where he promised to reform the "cycle of gridlock" and restore 'a functioning civil society in the House" by "focusing on our collective responsibility to govern."
"Let's let legislators legislate again," Boehner said, summarizing a year's worth of complaints over the Democrats' use of procedural maneuvers like the so-called "Demon Pass."
In their very first week as the new House majority, the Republican leadership has decided to abandon all of the legislative principles they claimed to support up until very recently.
Let's all say it together: it's going to be a long two years.
Original.GOP re-run
About my only hope for the next two years (politically speaking, that is) is that the Republicans will revert to their normal lying, thieving, hypocritical ways and the American people will realize (once again) that they've been hoodwinked and are getting shafted by the Republicans. And it will be another, "Oh, no!" moment.
You just can’t close the door on this crowd. The party that brought us the worst economy since the Great Depression, that led us into Iraq and the worst foreign policy disaster in American history, that would like to take a hammer to Social Security and a chisel to Medicare, is back in control of the House of Representatives with the expressed mission of undermining all things Obama.
(Mr. Gramm was some piece of work. A champion of deregulation, he was disdainful of ordinary people. “We’re the only nation in the world,” he once said, “where all of our poor people are fat.”)
Maybe the voters missed the entertainment value of the hard-hearted, compulsively destructive G.O.P. headliners. Maybe they viewed them the way audiences saw the larger-than-life villains in old-time melodramas. It must be something like that because it’s awfully hard to miss the actual policies of a gang that almost wrecked the country.
In any event, the G.O.P. has taken its place once again as the House majority and is vowing to do what it does best, which is make somebody miserable — in this case, President Obama. Representative Darrell Issa, the California Republican who is now chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said recently on the Rush Limbaugh program that Mr. Obama was “one of the most corrupt presidents in modern times.” He backed off a little on Sunday, saying that what he really thinks is that Mr. Obama is presiding over “one of the most corrupt administrations.”
This is the attitude of a man who has the power of subpoena and plans to conduct hundreds of hearings into the administration’s activities.
It was ever thus. The fundamental mission of the G.O.P. is to shovel ever more money to those who are already rich. That’s why you got all that disgracefully phony rhetoric from Republicans about attacking budget deficits and embracing austerity while at the same time they were fighting like mad people to pile up the better part of a trillion dollars in new debt by extending the Bush tax cuts.
This is a party that has mastered the art of taking from the poor and the middle class and giving to the rich. We should at least be clear about this and stop being repeatedly hoodwinked — like Charlie Brown trying to kick Lucy’s football — by G.O.P. claims of fiscal responsibility.
There’s a reason the G.O.P. reveres Ronald Reagan and it’s not because of his fiscal probity. As Garry Wills wrote in “Reagan’s America”:
“Reagan nearly tripled the deficit in his eight years, and never made a realistic proposal for cutting it. As the biographer Lou Cannon noted, it was unfair for critics to say that Reagan was trying to balance the budget on the backs of the poor, since ‘he never seriously attempted to balance the budget at all.’ ”
We’ll see and hear a lot of populist foolishness from the Republicans as 2011 and 2012 unfold, but their underlying motivation is always the same. They are about making the rich richer. Thus it was not at all surprising to read on Politico that the new head of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Fred Upton of Michigan, had hired a former big-time lobbyist for the hospital and pharmaceuticals industries to oversee health care issues.
I remember President Bush going on television in September 2008, looking almost dazed as he said to the American people, “Our entire economy is in danger.”
Have we forgotten already who put us in such grave peril? (REPUBLICANS!) Republicans benefit from the fact that memories are short and statutes of limitations shorter. It was the Republican leader in the House, Tom DeLay, who insisted against all reason and all the evidence of history that “nothing is more important in the face of war than cutting taxes.”
But that’s all water under the bridge. The Republicans are back in control of the House, ready to run interference for the rich as recklessly and belligerently as ever.
In this last election, it wasn't so much that the Republicans were so motivated to vote as it was that Democrats were rather depressed and didn't vote. I hold President Obama responsible for that. He turned his back on his base right out of the gate and frustrated the left time after time after time.
If Obama and the Democratic Congress had actually FOUGHT for Democratic ideals instead of kowtowing to the Republicans (and corporate donors) every inch of the way, the Democratic base would have been energized and not depressed.
So has Obama learned his lesson? HA! Now he thinks he has to do even MORE to get Republicans to work with him. What a joke. This is going to be a two-year freak parade. Yet, somehow, the Republicans will probably successfully blame everything on Obama anyway, and the gullible American people will drool and agree.
Get Read For A GOP Rerun
by Bob Herbert
You just can’t close the door on this crowd. The party that brought us the worst economy since the Great Depression, that led us into Iraq and the worst foreign policy disaster in American history, that would like to take a hammer to Social Security and a chisel to Medicare, is back in control of the House of Representatives with the expressed mission of undermining all things Obama. Once we had Dick Cheney telling us that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and belligerently asserting that deficits don’t matter. We had Phil Gramm, Enron’s favorite senator and John McCain’s economic guru, blithely assuring us in 2008 that we were suffering from a “mental recession.”
(Mr. Gramm was some piece of work. A champion of deregulation, he was disdainful of ordinary people. “We’re the only nation in the world,” he once said, “where all of our poor people are fat.”)
Maybe the voters missed the entertainment value of the hard-hearted, compulsively destructive G.O.P. headliners. Maybe they viewed them the way audiences saw the larger-than-life villains in old-time melodramas. It must be something like that because it’s awfully hard to miss the actual policies of a gang that almost wrecked the country.
In any event, the G.O.P. has taken its place once again as the House majority and is vowing to do what it does best, which is make somebody miserable — in this case, President Obama. Representative Darrell Issa, the California Republican who is now chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said recently on the Rush Limbaugh program that Mr. Obama was “one of the most corrupt presidents in modern times.” He backed off a little on Sunday, saying that what he really thinks is that Mr. Obama is presiding over “one of the most corrupt administrations.”
This is the attitude of a man who has the power of subpoena and plans to conduct hundreds of hearings into the administration’s activities.
The mantra for Mr. Issa and the rest of the newly empowered Republicans in the House, including the new Budget Committee chairman, Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, is to cut spending and shrink government. But what’s really coming are patented G.O.P. efforts to spread misery beyond Mr. Obama and the Democrats to ordinary Americans struggling in what are still very difficult times.
It was ever thus. The fundamental mission of the G.O.P. is to shovel ever more money to those who are already rich. That’s why you got all that disgracefully phony rhetoric from Republicans about attacking budget deficits and embracing austerity while at the same time they were fighting like mad people to pile up the better part of a trillion dollars in new debt by extending the Bush tax cuts.
This is a party that has mastered the art of taking from the poor and the middle class and giving to the rich. We should at least be clear about this and stop being repeatedly hoodwinked — like Charlie Brown trying to kick Lucy’s football — by G.O.P. claims of fiscal responsibility.
There’s a reason the G.O.P. reveres Ronald Reagan and it’s not because of his fiscal probity. As Garry Wills wrote in “Reagan’s America”:
“Reagan nearly tripled the deficit in his eight years, and never made a realistic proposal for cutting it. As the biographer Lou Cannon noted, it was unfair for critics to say that Reagan was trying to balance the budget on the backs of the poor, since ‘he never seriously attempted to balance the budget at all.’ ”
We’ll see and hear a lot of populist foolishness from the Republicans as 2011 and 2012 unfold, but their underlying motivation is always the same. They are about making the rich richer. Thus it was not at all surprising to read on Politico that the new head of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Fred Upton of Michigan, had hired a former big-time lobbyist for the hospital and pharmaceuticals industries to oversee health care issues.
I remember President Bush going on television in September 2008, looking almost dazed as he said to the American people, “Our entire economy is in danger.”
Have we forgotten already who put us in such grave peril? (REPUBLICANS!) Republicans benefit from the fact that memories are short and statutes of limitations shorter. It was the Republican leader in the House, Tom DeLay, who insisted against all reason and all the evidence of history that “nothing is more important in the face of war than cutting taxes.”
But that’s all water under the bridge. The Republicans are back in control of the House, ready to run interference for the rich as recklessly and belligerently as ever.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
January Stargazing
May we have lots to laugh about, and much to smile about in 2011.
Stargazing Summary
As befits a year in which we honor the solar system, four of the five worlds visible to the unaided eye are in view this month. Venus and Mercury adorn the morning sky, Jupiter is in the evening sky, and Saturn lines up between them. Only Mars is missing, lurking in the Sun's brilliant glare. As compensation, one of the fainter planets is also in unusually good view: Uranus lines up quite close to Jupiter, making it easy to locate, although you need binoculars to see it.
More stargazing information: http://stardate.org/nightsky
Radio Program Highlights
Hear StarDate every day on more than 360 radio stations nationwide or subscribe to our podcast: http://stardate.org/feeds/podcast.xml
January 3-9: The camel-leopard. A faint constellation wheels high across the north on winter evenings. Its name combines the camel and the leopard. Yet the constellation itself represents an entirely different creature.
January 10-16: Lunar loopiness. Big swirls decorate the surface of the Moon like ribbons of cream in a cup of hot coffee. And their origin is still a mystery. Join us for lunar swirls, plus the lunar twilight zone and much more.
January 17-23: Counting planets. A mission that's designed to hunt for Earth-like worlds is helping with the census of all planets beyond our own solar system. Join us for details, plus the changing tableau of the night sky.
January 24-30: Ice world. One of the most intriguing worlds in the solar system is Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. It's intriguing because it looks a lot like Earth, but with one big difference: it's hundreds of degrees colder. Join us for details.
January 31: Tick-tock. The Big Dipper wheels around the North Star like the hour-hand of a celestial clock, ticking off the hours of the night. Join us for the Big Dipper, plus many more wonders in the night sky.
January Program Schedule: http://stardate.org/radio/calendars
Find an Affiliate: http://stardate.org/radio/affiliates.php
Stargazing Summary
As befits a year in which we honor the solar system, four of the five worlds visible to the unaided eye are in view this month. Venus and Mercury adorn the morning sky, Jupiter is in the evening sky, and Saturn lines up between them. Only Mars is missing, lurking in the Sun's brilliant glare. As compensation, one of the fainter planets is also in unusually good view: Uranus lines up quite close to Jupiter, making it easy to locate, although you need binoculars to see it.
More stargazing information: http://stardate.org/nightsky
Radio Program Highlights
Hear StarDate every day on more than 360 radio stations nationwide or subscribe to our podcast: http://stardate.org/feeds/podcast.xml
January 3-9: The camel-leopard. A faint constellation wheels high across the north on winter evenings. Its name combines the camel and the leopard. Yet the constellation itself represents an entirely different creature.
January 10-16: Lunar loopiness. Big swirls decorate the surface of the Moon like ribbons of cream in a cup of hot coffee. And their origin is still a mystery. Join us for lunar swirls, plus the lunar twilight zone and much more.
January 17-23: Counting planets. A mission that's designed to hunt for Earth-like worlds is helping with the census of all planets beyond our own solar system. Join us for details, plus the changing tableau of the night sky.
January 24-30: Ice world. One of the most intriguing worlds in the solar system is Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. It's intriguing because it looks a lot like Earth, but with one big difference: it's hundreds of degrees colder. Join us for details.
January 31: Tick-tock. The Big Dipper wheels around the North Star like the hour-hand of a celestial clock, ticking off the hours of the night. Join us for the Big Dipper, plus many more wonders in the night sky.
January Program Schedule: http://stardate.org/radio/calendars
Find an Affiliate: http://stardate.org/radio/affiliates.php
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Friday, December 24, 2010
Gardening Report
Meanwhile, a few pics ...
Mizuna!
Dark Lollo Rosa Lettuce!
Red Sails Lettuce!
Endive!
Swiss Chard!
Collard Greens!
Kale!
Broccoli! Lord, the broccoli!
A side benefit of watering other people's plots is that they
The Garden is going gangbusters. All 25 plots are taken, and most are exploding with vegetables. Very awesome. Happy holidays, everyone. Here's to a prosperous, peaceful and delicious 2011!
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