Day: September 15, 2012

This is a good read, and mimics my own experience…although mine was earned in the pit of the stomach of Corporate America

RobotPirateNinja Uncategorized Leave a comment

Why I left the GOP – Salon.com 

The enormity of the advantages I had always enjoyed started to truly sink in. Everyone begins life thinking that his or her normal is the normal. For the first time, I found myself paying attention to broken eggs rather than making omelets. Up until then, I hadn’t really seen most Americans as living, breathing, thinking, feeling, hoping, loving, dreaming,hurting people.

My values shifted —from an individualistic celebration of success (that involved dividing the world into the morally deserving and the undeserving) to an interest in people as people.

How is this possible? Let’s ask Rick Santorum

RobotPirateNinja government, religion, Republican Assholes, stupid Tags: , , , Leave a comment

How is it possible that almost four years after we elected Obama president, the number of Republicans who think he’s Muslim could double, and that less than half of all registered voters know what religion he professes (in a country where religion matters)?

via When the big lie works – Salon.com.

Here’s how…

WASHINGTON, DC — Former presidential candidate Rick Santorum attacked the media and “smart people” for not being on the side of conservatives in a speech to the Values Voter Summit on Saturday.

“We will never have the media on our side, ever, in this country,” Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator, told the audience at the Omni Shoreham hotel. “We will never have the elite, smart people on our side.”

No smart people…the whole derptastic platform makes more sense now, there’s not a single smart person so say, “this is stupid.”

BTW, I still love how the most popular cable channel and most popular radio shows in the country aren’t part of the media in Santorum’s fantasy version of the U.S.

UPDATE: In case you forgot, this is a good example of the level of intellectual curiosity that gets one a VP nod in the modern GOP.

On the anniversary of the Sept. 11, Sarah Palin took to Facebook to attack President Obama on foreign policy saying “we already know that President Obama likes to ‘speak softly’ to our enemies,” she wrote on Tuesday evening. “If he doesn’t have a ‘big stick’ to carry, maybe it’s time for him to grow one.”

These types of attacks are standard for Mrs. Palin and Conservative Republicans. She went on to say that “apparently President Obama can’t see Egypt and Libya from his house,” in a self-deprecating reference to a criticized moment in her own past, when in 2008 she said she could see Russia from her home state of Alaska.

Read more http://politicalgroove.com/2012/09/sarah-palin-apparently-president-obama-cant-see-egypt-and-libya-from-his-house.html?fb_ref=wp

Even Palin makes fun of the dumb things she’s said in the past…

Tea Party House Republicans Plan Two Month Pre-Election Vacation, Spend That Time Telling Americans Government Doesn’t Work

RobotPirateNinja Uncategorized Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

In case you hadn’t figured it out yet, Eric Cantor is a douchebag.

Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., announced on Friday that, after next week, the House won’t be returning to session until after the Nov. 6 elections.

A planned one-week session in Washington at the start of October has been scrapped. That means when the House adjourns next Friday, the chamber will not be scheduled to cast any votes again until Nov. 13.

Speaking on the House floor, Cantor said that the decision for House members not to return to the Capitol in October has been made given the Senate’s anticipated passage next week of a bill to keep government running beyond the Oct. 1 start of the new fiscal year, a bill already passed on Thursday in the House.

 

Here’s the stuff they left on the table.

1. Violence Against Women Act re-authorization. Though a bipartisan Senate majority passed the a strong re-authorization bill in April, the Republican House leadership refused to allow a vote on the Senate version of the bill. The House passed a watered down version on a mostly-party lines vote, leaving victims to wait for House action.

2. The American Jobs Act. Republicans have been blocking President Obama’sjobs legislation for more than a year. Though House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) promised in 2010 that a GOP Congress would focus on job creation, he has blocked this bill’s immediate infrastructure investments, tax credits for working Americans and employers, and aid to state and local governments to prevent further layoffs of teachers, firefighters, police officers, and other public safety officials.

3. Tax cuts for working families. In July, the Senate passed a bill extending tax-cuts for the first $250,000 in annual income. The Republican House leadership has refused to consider the bill, holding it hostage to their demands for a full extension of Bush-era tax cuts for millionaires.

4. Veterans Job Corps Act. The Senate is currently considering bipartisan legislation to help America’s veterans find jobs. The Air Force Times reports that the Republican House has “shown no interest” in the legislation to support those who served the country.

5. Sequestration. A spokesman for Boehner said earlier this week that stopping budget cuts he voted for last August “topped our July agenda and remains atop our agenda for September.” While House Republicans have complained about the imminent spending reductions and passed a bill that would require President Obama to find offsets for spending cuts they don’t like, Republican Leader Canter could not name a single compromise he was willing to make to get a deal.

6. Farm Bill. Despite strong support for a 5-year farm bill from even conservative groups like the Farm Bureau Association — the House leadershiphas not scheduled a vote on the bill. The current law expires September 30. Without passage, 90 percent of the work of the Department of Agriculture could be defunded.

7. Wind tax credit. The Senate may act next week to renew an expiring wind energy tax credit. Despite bipartisan support — including from original author Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the Examiner notes that the House is unlikely to pass the renewal. Despite GOP calls for energy independence, the expiration has threatened the wind energy industry and already led to job cuts.

 

via House Republicans Plan Two Month Vacation, Leaving Key Bills Awaiting Action | ThinkProgress.

GOP works to gut investments in any energy technology that might be renewable or sustainable and isn’t instantly as profitable as oil or coal

RobotPirateNinja Uncategorized Leave a comment

The Associated Press: House votes to end energy loan guarantee program

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans on Friday pushed a bill through the House shining a campaign-season light on the most conspicuous failure of President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus package. The bill would phase out federal loan guarantees like those that went to the now-bankrupt solar power company Solyndra LLC and left taxpayers on the hook for more than $500 million.

The “No More Solyndras Act,” which passed on a mainly party-line vote, has no chance of advancing in the Democratic-led Senate and was assailed by House Democrats as an election-year stunt. The vote was 245-161.

What is so sad about this idiocy is that the legislation reads like the news ticker on Fox, absurd bias, complete lack of context, and designed to appeal to hardcore partisan asshats.

New GOP hair, same GOP policies

RobotPirateNinja Uncategorized Leave a comment

Romney and the GOP still toe the Bush line – latimes.com 

Meanwhile, it doesn’t take an economist to figure out that waging two wars while doing nothing to raise revenue to pay for them — while, in fact, cutting taxes — will increase the federal deficit. It should surprise no one, then, that the deficit rose by $4 trillion under Bush. That’s not as much as the $5 trillion more it has risen under Obama, but that is in large part because the Bush tax cuts have remained in place and in larger part because of depressed federal revenue caused by the economic downturn (which began under Bush’s watch, as a result of a laissez-faire attitude toward regulating the financial industry) and increased stimulus spending aimed at preventing a second Depression.

Meanwhile, if reducing taxes on the wealthy really spurs them to create jobs — an article of faith among Republicans — one wonders why they have failed so spectacularly to do so.