GOP

Clinton Stakes Immigration Ground as GOP calls out “Rats and Roaches”

RobotPirateNinja Uncategorized Tags: , , , 1 Comment

She’s married to one of the greatest political minds of the 20th century, so this type (expert level) of triangulation is to be expected. Or maybe he’s the one that is married to one of the greatest political minds of the (young) 21st century .

Regardless, if it runs that way, I think she’ll make a wonderful President to our many new citizens (with whom we’ve been living for a generation).

Clinton’s Bold Immigration Plan Leaves Republicans Nearly Speechless
This week, Hillary Clinton called for a broad path to citizenship for many of the 12 million people in the United States illegally. Doing so opens Clinton up to charges of…
WWW.NPR.ORG

—-

And here you have the GOP’s response….

The mother-in-law of Citizens United president David Bossie compares immigrants to rats and roaches [to wild cheers].

http://www.c-span.org/video/standalone/?c4537174

GOP passes massive tax break for millionaires (well, folks with 10 millions) and billionaires. Does not Pay for It

RobotPirateNinja Uncategorized Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

The final tally was 240 to 179, with nearly every GOP lawmaker voting for it and nearly every Democrat voting against it.

When describing Republican tax proposals, it’s not uncommon to talk about policies that disproportionately benefit the very wealthy. GOP proponents will say a bill benefits all taxpayers, but they’ll brush past the fact that the rich benefit most. This, however, is altogether different – today’s bill, called the “Death Tax Repeal Act,” quite literally benefits multi-millionaires and billionaires exclusively.

It’s not an exaggeration to say House Republicans, en masse, voted for a $269 billion giveaway to the top 0.2%. Under the plan, GOP lawmakers, who occasionally pretend to care about “fiscal responsibility,” would simply add the entire $269 billion cost to the deficit, leaving future generations to pay for a massive tax break for the hyper-wealthy.

Wait, it gets worse.

via GOP passes massive tax break for millionaires, billionaires | MSNBC.

Perhaps the most galling, and blatantly hypocritical, aspect of this situation is how blatant and galling it is.

You have GOP folks out there *campaigning* on the issue of income inequality…but they are saying the exact opposite of what the GOP is actually doing.

I mean…this is such a blatant and obvious payback to the GOP’s (small number of) extremely wealthy (and old) donors.

You have this party funded by like 40 billionaires in their 80’s….OF COURSE THEY ARE GOING TO PUSH THIS CRAP.

What’s really confounding is how anyone who isn’t an 80-year old billionaire supports this crap.

That’s the strange part, to me.

Tom Cotton (R-Of course) Lying About Iran Letter

RobotPirateNinja Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

Why can’t our news media call out a big lie? Check this out…

—
The Cotton letter elevated an already tense atmosphere in the Capitol as the Iranian negotiations entered their final weeks.

Though Cotton has insisted that Democratic senators were approached about the letter, neither Bob Casey of Pennsylvania nor hawks like Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut said they had been approached. POLITICO was unable to locate a Democrat who was aware of the letter before it became public.

“I’d like to know what Democrat he approached,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.).

Read more: http://www.politico.com/…/republicans-surprised-by-iran-let…
—

So this Tea Derping idiot is claiming something that is fairly easy to suss out. If you can’t find anyone he talked to, you start asking why he’s trying to make this a partisan issue, and you don’t let him lie his way out of it.

The fact that these liars can take millions from billionaires and the naive folks of this country continue to ignore this horseshit all comes from the same place is probably the most frustrating aspect of this stuff.

—

Follow-up: Turns out Cotton had a meeting the next day with the representatives of the Military Industrial Complex

Iran letter blowback startles GOP
Some Republican senators admitted Wednesday they were caught off guard by the backlash to a letter warning Iranian leaders against a nuclear agreement with President Barack Obama. And Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Republicans —…

Senate GOP goes with open Sedition, warns Iran against working with Obama

RobotPirateNinja Uncategorized Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

The ABSOLUTE BEST PART of this is the last signature.

http://www.cotton.senate.gov/…/150309%20Cotton%20Open%20Let…

Get a brain, morans!…has never been a more appropriate saying.

BTW…I’m not sure *exactly* how this isn’t treason, per se. It does appear to be trying to give comfort to our enemies, as it were. Assuring them, that Obama will leave office is Constitutionally required.

Not sure if they get that the Constitution *also* has the President as the one *NEGOTIATING TREATIES* and not the Senate.

As these idiots note, it is the Senate’s job to confirm them…not negotiate them. Step off idiots, your allegiance to and subsequent subservience to Netanyahu has been noted.

Senator Inhofe Lies to the World, Takes Over Senate Environmental Committee

RobotPirateNinja Uncategorized Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

The U.S. Senate on Wednesday voted 98-1 to approve a resolution stating that “it is the sense of the Senate that climate change is real and not a hoax.” Then, about 15 minutes later, the Senate rejected a second resolution that said climate change is real and caused by humans.

The first resolution was approved — and co-sponsored — by one of the most outspoken climate deniers in the Senate, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), a man who literally wrote a book about how climate change is the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated.” The only Senator to vote against the resolution was Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS).

Sounds too good to be true, right? That’s because it is. At the last minute, right before a vote was taken, Inhofe took the floor to state that he would be co-sponsoring and approving the amendment on the grounds that yes, climate change is real, but human-caused climate change is not. “Man cannot change climate,” Inhofe said. “The hoax is that there are some people that are so arrogant to think that they are so powerful that they can change climate.”

“Gaawwwwhd has deeclared he is the OOOOONNNLY ONE who may destroy the Earth,” continued the animated corpse from Oklahoma.

I’m actually not joking…this is why many in this country don’t think it is *possible* for humans to do something as big and powerful and “godlike” as changing our own climate.

As I’ve done before, I’d advise anyone who thinks this way to try this little experiment. Instead of billions of people and hundreds of millions of cars, and thousands of cubic miles of atmosphere, take one person, one car, and one garage. Put the person in the car, put the car in the garage, and start the car and close the garage.

Come back in a day and tell me again how humans can’t use our technology to change our atmosphere (and we already know that changing the atmosphere can change the climate).

This is the stuff of Idiocracy, I shit you not.

Senate Votes 98-1 That ‘Climate Change Is Real And Not A Hoax’
Sounds too good to be true, right? That’s because it is.
THINKPROGRESS.ORG

Both Sides are Same (Idiot Ignorant Edition)

RobotPirateNinja Uncategorized Tags: , , , Leave a comment

Obama wants Net Neutrality, the GOP tries to pass legislation to forbid it.

Obama thinks local municipalities should be able to build their own broadband, Big Telecom disagrees, so does the GOP, so the GOP drafts legislation to make it illegal.

Anyone who claims both sides are the same is just ignorant or an idiot.

Republican net neutrality bill would gut FCC’s authority over broadband
Bill takes away FCC powers on the books since 1934 and 1996.
ARSTECHNICA.COM|BY JON BRODKIN

The GOP Takes Over the Jim Crow Congress, Immediately Rewrites History, and some 2015 Predictions

RobotPirateNinja Uncategorized Tags: , , Leave a comment

So…if you, like I….were wondering how the Jim Crow Congress was going to acknowledge how the quarter before they took over showed the highest GDP growth in over a decade (despite their constant assertions it was about to end in disaster), here’s your answer…

In a speech announcing the new Senate, which is now controlled by Republicans, [Turtle Man] said, “After so many years of sluggish growth, we’re finally starting to see some economic data that can provide a glimmer of hope; the uptick appears to coincide with the biggest political change of the Obama Administration’s long tenure in Washington: the expectation of a new Republican Congress.”

I haven’t given my year predictions yet, so today is the day.  Have to look up last year, but I was pretty dang close in the economic arena. I’m not sure yet exactly how much the GOP is going to try and screw over the economy any more, now that they can’t hide behind the slim D Senate majority, which makes the prospects really good for nothing happening in Washington.  Growth could push 4%, if we’re lucky and the crazies don’t do their thing.

However, the idiots are likely to try and extort the President for the money they have ordered him to spend (i.e. the “debt ceiling”) and the strategy they take in that arena will have impacts in the 1-1.5% area like they did in 2013.   So that 4% is pretty sloppy until I see some strategy discussion.

Oil is the big thing now. Texas is going to get crushed, as are folks who overspent. From what I’ve read, there’s about 1-2,000,000 extra barrels of oil on the world market. Until people “burn that up” as they say, prices will stay low, which (as noted and noted again) is good for most folks and bad for others.

Prices aren’t going to go up soon, so enjoy. Pleas don’t be stupid and buy a big car though, because a few years down the road, things might change. If we had sane leaders, we’d use the savings from gas/oil and invest even more in the solar/wind arena. Energy is life for an economy, and lower gas prices make for easier to move goods, which is cheaper good in today’s global economy, Buy those airline stocks with that oil stock money.

The U.S. does seem poised to reap continued benefits from China’s pollution and Europe’s…intransigence. Putin is a wild card, as per. Obama’s cool has been great against his (to us) aggression. Cuba is going to be fun to watch. A couple of full tourist seasons and their per capita will triple. How the commies deal with the wealth can be interesting. Trustafarians on a country-wide level.

So let’s get it on, shall we?

Keystone Pipe Lies

RobotPirateNinja Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Wow…Keystone XL…50 permanent jobs and nearly $50,000,000 in “property taxes” **over the next decade** for the country. Meanwhile…

—
“[Keystone XL] would have the capacity to deliver up to 830,000 bpd, of which 730,000 bpd of capacity has been set aside for [tar sands] and the remaining 100,000 bpd of capacity set aside for [Bakken] crude oil,” the report details.
—

Which at current prices…roughly $75/barrel * that’s $62,250,000…per day…not per decade (and nearly $22,721,250,000/year…so a few hundred million for lobbying is barely material).

Anyway, the main reason this is a big deal is because Koch Industries has a big piece of the tar sands oil, but has to pay more to send it anywhere for refining. The problem with the pipeline for most is that it increased risk (i.e. after the Koch Bros assholes die in the next few years and their heirs are even bigger dicks and stop maintaining the pipeline and it pops) for the people where it exists with no actual benefit to those people.

It is a perfect example of the “publicize the risk and privatize the profit” type project that NEARLY EVERYONE claims to hate in reality. While it is true, yes, some Dems have also been bought by the Kochs and support the project, there is NO QUESTION that one the main reasons guys who hate politics just gave hundreds of millions of dollars to politicians is to get their pipeline built.

And now that it worked, it’s going to be the first bill the lame-duck-prelude-to-the-Jim-Crow-Congress** sends to the President’s desk.

One of the things I’m so happy for is that oil and gas prices have PLUMMETED as they so often do in this boom and bust industry. Investments in explorations and infrastructure (yes, including pipelines) has long term effects on market prices. We’ve had a boom in drilling and exploration and infrastructure (extraction/fracking), and so the prices have plummeted.

Had they *not* plummeted previously, the claim that the transportation of the raw materials part of the price of gasoline was *really going to change* because of Keystone XL, might have actually gained some traction. Had we BUILT the pipeline, and prices plummeted as they have, the Kochs would have looked like the Market Gods they think they are.

Instead we saw prices plummet as the President “dawdles” (i.e. stick to what he’s said all along…he’s going to take his time and not force anything though, if it works at at all) and the Kochs go the raw political brute force route for approval.

This takes the wind out of the “it’ll lower the record high gas prices!!” part of the argument for approval, which was the main force pushing the public at large. Because of this, I don’t think it’s going to be approved while Obama is in office…but we’ll see a lot more b.s. about it.

* oil/gas price dynamics are a billion dollar industry unto themselves, so please excuse my massive paraphrasing.

** Yes, I’m going to call the Congress elected by the lowest voter turnout in 70 years (nearly twice my lifespan) the Jim Crow Congress. While the media elites might tell you voting was down because people don’t care (a self-fulfilling prophecy for the powerful), in reality I know lots of folks who were TURNED AWAY AT THE POLLS. Since I don’t know all the folks, I know that a certain percentage of the folks you know, were also TURNED AWAY AT THE POLLS. This means that a certain percentage of all folks were TURNED AWAY AT THE POLLS.

If you don’t think I think this is a big deal, please re-read the bolded statement again, and again, and again. We should *always* be working to EXPAND voting rights, because it is one of our most fundamental ideals. If you want to worry about our Democracy and “The Future of Our Country” , worry about this, because it’s the fundamental way a democracy functions and a populace communicates with itself.

So…for the next two years (and maybe more), it’s the Jim Crow Congress. The GOP doesn’t get to hide behind a slim Senate minority anymore. Own the assholeness, GOP, you’ve earned it.

House Republicans Pass Sweeping Anti-Abortion Bill (this is the “War on Women”)

RobotPirateNinja Uncategorized Tags: , Leave a comment

Earlier this month, Democratic women lawmakers protested the bill in the hallway outside its House Judiciary Committee hearing. They pointed out that it would raise health care costs for women, drive insurance companies to drop a previously noncontroversial medical benefit and financially penalize small businesses. They also took issue with the fact that an all-male group of Republicans was pushing the bill through the legislative process with very little input from women.

“H.R. 7 is a reflection of a majority that is out of touch with the American people and struggling to understand fundamental truths about reproductive health — and we really mean struggle,” Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) said on the floor of the House. “This extreme legislation was originally sponsored by a man, originated from a subcommittee composed of 13 men, and was passed out of the Judiciary Committee with the votes of 21 Republican men. This has been the problem for a long time — men in blue suits and red ties determining what women can and should do when it comes to their own health.”

via House Republicans Pass Sweeping Anti-Abortion Bill.

This is what the GOP’s “War on Women” is all about.

It’s not, as Randy “Ayn” Paul suggested this women, a flashback to Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.  It’s a consistent and persistent move to use legislation to limit the rights of women.

Unless the GOP can get the honesty and integrity together to address their actual legislative agenda and how it relates to the rights and opportunities for women, they should be laughed out of the room when they make such ridiculous claims.

Voter-Suppression Laws Aim To Disenfranchise Black People

RobotPirateNinja bullshit, Poli-Fi, Republican Assholes, Tea Party, us Tags: , , , Leave a comment

A new research study from University of Massachusetts Boston professors Keith G. Bentele and Erin E. O’Brien confirms what voting rights advocates have been charging for years: Voter-suppression laws are partisan measures that disproportionately target African-Americans.

In the study, titled “Jim Crow 2.0? Why States Consider and Adopt Restrictive Voter Access Policies,” the authors argue that “the Republican Party has engaged in strategic demobilization efforts in response to changing demographics, shifting electoral fortunes, and an internal rightward ideological drift among the party faithful.”

via Study: Voter-Suppression Laws Aim To Disenfranchise Black People | The National Memo.

And now we have the data to back up the pretty obvious assumption.

When there’s a big “solution” (Voter ID) to a problem that doesn’t exist (Voting Fraud), you can figure with a high degree of probability that the actual “problem” (GOP Losing Elections) was something other than originally outlined.

Obamacare gets Cheaper

RobotPirateNinja Uncategorized Tags: , , Leave a comment

Over the next few years, the government is expected to spend billions of dollars less than originally projected on the law, analysts said, with both the Medicaid expansion and the subsidies for private insurance plans ending up less expensive than anticipated.

Economists broadly agree that the sluggish economy remains the main reason that health spending has grown so slowly for the last half-decade. From 2007 to 2010, per-capita health care spending rose just 1.8 percent annually. Since then, the annual increase has slowed even further, to 1.3 percent. A decade ago, spending was growing at roughly 5 percent a year.

But even though the Affordable Care Act might be more a beneficiary of changes in health care spending than the primary driver of them, the law’s provisions to control costs could prove increasingly important as the economy improves, demand for health care increases and spending picks back up.

via Cost of Health Care Law Is Seen as Decreasing – NYTimes.com.

So even as this continues to work, and the magic of the market does its thing….the GOP is going to lie about both working, while encouraging people to not get healthcare, not take responsibility for their own lives, and instead be parasites.

I’m pretty sure their hatred of Obama has killed the notion that the GOP is a national entity and a rational actor.

There’s no Cure for Stupid (re: Right Wings Approach to Obamacare)

RobotPirateNinja Uncategorized Tags: , Leave a comment

The confusion is not necessarily unique to Missouri. Across the country, Obamacare opponents have launched a coordinated misinformation campaign about the health reform law, confusing Americans about what the upcoming changes will mean for them. A survey of health care-related advertising in June found that Obamacare critics have outspent its supporters by a nearly five to one margin. And last month, the Koch Brothers poured millions more into a new Obamacare misinformation campaign. Anti-Obamacare groups are now launching grassroots initiatives to actively dissuade people from enrolling in the new insurance marketplaces — telling young Americans to “burn your Obamacare draft card.”

via In Some Deeply Red States, Figuring Out How To Enroll In Obamacare Is Like Searching For A Unicorn | ThinkProgress.

It just sucks to be stuck in a Red State is all this really boils down to.  The sick thing is that these same idiots then turn around and point to their own incompetence as a reason they are incompetent.

The campaign to print up fake Obamacare “draft” cards and then burn them in protest illustrates the level of idiocy these thirsty horses will display after being led to ample, clean, drinking water.