(https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/republicans-who-believe-climate-change-seek-antidote-green-new-deal-n973146)
". . . ever since the New York Democrat (Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) began promoting the idea late last year, a growing number of House GOP lawmakers have been increasingly willing to say those four little words: "Climate change is real." And they're warning the rest of their party that Republicans must push for alternative solutions before it's too late. . ."
(from Vox.com)
". . . if you saw a candidate standing on a dais pointing at his pet dog and telling you it was a cat, you’d think something pretty odd was going on. . . both citizens watching the tax reform debate in Washington and reporters covering it ought to ask themselves: Why, if this plan is so good, do its authors keep lying about what the bill does? . . . It’s obvious that if you cut a tax that’s only paid by married couples who’ve amassed at least $11 million that you are helping rich people. It’s obvious that if you enact a special discount tax rate for people who own LLCs then you are helping Donald Trump, who owns a ton of them. And it’s obvious that if part of your plan is permanent and part of it is temporary, and the part you made temporary is the part that helps the middle class, then helping the middle class wasn’t your priority. . . everyone who’s anyone in the Republican Party said they wanted to cut taxes for the middle class, and not for rich people in general or Donald Trump in particular — the Senate’s coalesced around a bill whose long-term distributional impact looks like this. . . this hypothetical family of four that Paul Ryan cooked up and has instructed his caucus to meme about does get a one-year $1,182 tax cut. But under the bill the House passed last week, that tax cut shrinks over time and within a few years turns into a tax increase. . . If that’s such a good idea, why did its proponents invest so much time and energy in pretending they were going to do the opposite?Republicans promised a middle-class tax cut. . . As a candidate for office, Trump ran on promising a middle-class tax cut. At a meeting with business leaders at the beginning of the month, Trump was on the same page, saying, “It's a tax bill for middle class.” . . . But it’s not. Neither the House bill nor the Senate bill are good for the middle class. . . The middle-class provisions are afterthoughts, scrounged together to meet messaging goals. . . Trump frequently likes to make this point is to cast himself as a selfless champion of the people, willing to raise his own taxes for the sake of the country. . . Trump’s team is now engaging in bizarre deflections. . . A telling thing about the cavalcade of lies Republicans are telling about taxes is the party can’t quite get its story straight as to what the policy agenda even is here. They are telling deficit hawks that the bill is fiscally responsible, adding a large but manageable $1.5 trillion to the debt over 10 years but revenue-neutral in the long term. They're telling others that statutory “pay-as-you-go,” or PAYGO, rules will be suspended, and the bill won’t really lead to the automatic cuts in Medicare and other programs that, by law, will result from its passage. They’re telling some people the middle-class tax hikes written into the Senate bill will never be enacted, so there’s no need to worry. That’s the opposite of what they’re telling deficit hawks. So then some Republicans are telling some deficit hawks that the follow-up to the tax bill will be a return to entitlement reform. . . Of course, that’s the opposite of what Trump promised his voters during the campaign . . ."
. . . this from a man with whom I have little in common politically, but who would at the very least, debate issues intelligently, I am certain . . . (had to share the complete article)
"What's the end game for these preening, posturing doofuses who call themselves Republicans, but who can't pass a CNN camera without slamming their party’s president? There is a lot of blue falconry going on in the GOP right now, and while it's pretty clear why, what's not so clear is what these fair weather frauds believe they're accomplishing.
We know why they do it. Some of them are truly shocked and upset by Trump's rough edges. He's not your grandfather’s Republican. He's more like your grandfather's buddy who got Pops drunk and took him to a brothel long before he ever met grandma. Trump’s rude and crude, and that rubs a lot of Republicans the wrong way. His cheerful vulgarity and vindictiveness, which many find his most attractive qualities, offends some people because they're decent people of moral character who just can’t go there. It rubs others the wrong way because they're hopeless wusses who would rather be loved by the WaPo than kick liberals in their Harry Reids.
Others undermine our party’s leader because Trump dropped a deuce in their profitable punch bowl. They used to have power, and now they’re on the sidelines, and it gnaws at them. For so long they had control of the Republican Party, and they could shamelessly lie to our faces at election time back home in the sticks, then return to Washington, D.C., take off their sensible shoes, slip on their Gucci loafers, and proceed to do the bidding of their donor masters. Ka-ching!
Oh yeah, we’ll repeal Obamacare. Oh yeah, we’ll defend the border. Oh yeah, we’ll defund the baby-butchering cartel. Oh yeah, blah blah blah blah blah. All lies, but they didn't care. They had their power and prestige and the promise of a fat paycheck down the road when they moved from Congress to K Street. Actual conservative ideology? Well, that was for the rubes. And we were the rubes. We in the base, who are suffering from the establishment’s incompetent mismanagement of the society it had been foolish to try to micromanage in the first place, tried to warn them. But the Fredocons wouldn't listen, because they're smart, not like everyone says, like dumb…
That warning was called ‘the Tea Party,” and the GOP establishment didn't like it either. Remember how all those activated Republican voters helped recapture Congress, yet most of the establishment types looked at them like they were something nasty that was smeared on their shoes? See, the base isn’t supposed to be activated. It's supposed to be obedient. It's supposed to turn out on election day to do volunteer work and write checks. It's not supposed to try to have input. That's for our betters, not for us.
But the thing is, now we're woke, and we’ve realized that our establishment sucks, and that we’re tired of being the suckees. They didn't listen to us when we gave them the Tea Party, so now we gave them Trump. And they're very, very upset with us. That's a key reason they want to undercut Trump. Some people are just always going to want to trash the guy getting the attention and wielding the influence they think rightfully belongs to them. That's true whether they are some donkey–looking senator from Arizona or Nebraska pimping a book about his agonizing moral struggles, or some tiresome op-ed scribbler serving as the domesticated house conservative on a failing liberal rag, or the invasion-happy beneficiary of his parents' success who finds he can't fill the cabins on his brochure’s cruises anymore.
But what's the end game? What are they thinking is going to happen? Do they think that one morning Trump is going to wake up and think “Gosh, all these people telling me I'm wrong and mean and crude and tweet too darn much must be right. I'll change, because I always take the advice of people who I've already broken and humiliated.”
Unlikely, because Trump doesn't respect you. And he doesn't respect you because he's already beaten you. He's not a gracious winner, but to be fair, you've hardly been gracious losers. Oh, how it must gall you to be so utterly defeated by someone you consider your moral and intellectual inferior.
So if you're not going to change Trump, what do you think you're going to do? Do you think you're going to somehow drive Trump out of office? Let’s run down that scenario. Now we have President Pence, and about 75% of your party’s base infuriated at your backstabbing betrayal. That seems disastrous even if you buy the idea that President Pence would somehow preside over a return to something like business as usual. He might, at least until the next election. Then you're all toast. Let's just say that in addition to your treachery, your past track record of total failure to achieve the conservative goals you promised won’t particularly inspire Trump supporters to lend you their support.
Or maybe you think our voters would just be so disgusted that they would let the Democrats grab a majority on Capitol Hill and the White House too. Maybe you figure you could live with that. Maybe you think you can wait out the base’s fury by crawling back into the comfortable gimp box of submissive GOP congressional opposition.
Except it won’t work that way. Through all this Tea Partying and Trumping, we normals got a taste for power, and we like it. We're not just going to just shrug our shoulders when the guy we picked gets deposed in a coup. We’re going to get mad. Really mad. And you're going to get primaried. Just ask Jeff Flake (Dork-AZ). Have you seen his approval numbers? There are strains of the herpes virus that poll higher.
No, there's no going back to the old days. This is the new normal, and there are new rules, rules you better learn to play by. The most important of these is, “Take your own voters’ side in a fight.” You should try it, because if you didn't like the Tea Party, and you hate Donald Trump, you are going to be really, really, really unhappy with what we normals will do next."
(from http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/3256248-155/letter-gop-far-right-is-a)
". . . some mainstream Republicans have adopted the idiocy of the following scenarios: President Obama is a Kenyan and wants to seize the weapons of all Americans, Common Core is a secret plot to promote homosexuality and communism, military exercises in Texas were actually the first step to imposing martial law. . . "
My latest solo offering, Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak, featuring original, instrumental piano music is now available at - Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak
(To Access all Ray Jozwiak - Gonzo Piano music you can copy-and-paste this URL directly to
your browser: http://http://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/RayJozwiak)
The Washington Post wrote that an NBC-WSJ showed that seven in
10 people agreed with the statement that Republicans are “putting their
own political agenda ahead of what is good for the country”. At the other end, only
27 percent said that the GOP is “demonstrating strong leadership
and standing up for what they believe in.”
House Republicans repeatedly said that their efforts to derail the Affordable Care Act were in response to the wishes of the American people.
WHAT American People???? I shouted at the radio or television every time I heard it.
Why didn't our dear friends in the press, who daily bring us the mealy-mouths and pasty faces of these cartoonish "public servants", ASK THIS QUESTION???
I think the outcome of this debacle answers MY question.
(from bernie@bernie.org)
It is not acceptable that a handful of right-wing extremists in the House have shut down the government and are now pushing for the United States, for the first time in our history, to not pay its bills -- precipitating a likely international financial crisis. It is widely believed that there now exists in the House a majority of members (virtually all Democrats and some moderate Republicans) who are prepared to vote for a clean continuing budget resolution which would immediately re-open the government. House Speaker Boehner must allow the House to have that vote.
It is also important that people understand that the real issue here is not just the desire of Republicans to defund Obamacare. At a time when the middle class is collapsing and poverty is increasing, these right-wing ideologues want to repeal virtually every piece of legislation passed in the last 80 years which protects the elderly, the children, the sick, the poor and the environment. The truth is that ending Obamacare is just a small part of the right-wing extremist agenda, which is heavily funded by the Koch brothers and other very wealthy and powerful special interests. Their full agenda includes privatizing Social Security, ending Medicare as we know it, slashing Medicaid funding, eliminating the EPA and the Department of Energy and abolishing the concept of the minimum wage. Needless to say, they also want more tax breaks for the rich and large corporations. It should be clear to everyone that their long-term goal is to move this country into an oligarchic form of society in which billionaires completely control the economic and political life of this nation.
(from wikipedia.com)
Bernard "Bernie" Sanders is an American politician and the junior United States Senator from Vermont. Before serving in the Senate, he represented Vermont's at-large district in the United States House of Representatives and served as Mayor of Burlington.
(Can't help but mention that one of the comments on YouTube about this video, "It's a bad time when satire does a better job of reporting the story than the actual news reporters" hits it right on the head.)
So congressional Republicans claim they will never allow taxes to increase for wealthy Americans. They claim that they will eliminate loopholes and leave tax cuts in place which will provide the additional revenue the country requires.
Conversely, President Barack Obama says that the amount of revenue that elimination of tax loopholes would generate, (while leaving tax cuts for the wealthy in place) is not nearly close to the amount of revenue required to tackle the budget deficit.
It seems to me that the 'leave-cuts-eliminate-loophole' strategy either WILL or WILL NOT generate the amount of revenue required. There is no OPINION involved. This is an empirical issue and can be proved or disproved.
Either Congressional Republicans or the Administration should take it upon themselves to prove or disprove (OBJECTIVELY & AUTHORITATIVELY) the effectiveness of the strategy. Or even better, if you can imagine, the news media could take it upon themselves to prove or disprove it (OBJECTIVELY & AUTHORITATIVELY) and actually provide a service to the general public for a change.
What
do YOU think?
http://www.rayjozwiak.com/guestbook.html
You can NOW download
your
very own copy of Ray Jozwiak's
newest release:
AMBIENCE & WINE
. . . you say? And it's not even Halloween yet (let alone election day). . .
(By Martha C. White, http://bottomline.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/15/14454865-koch-brothers-to-workers-vote-for-romney-or-suffer-the-consequences?lite)
". . . As a contentious election season enters its final weeks, a flurry of communication from corporate leaders to rank-and-file workers strongly implies that voting for Obama could imperil their jobs and their financial stability.
Employees of a paper company owned by the outspoken billionaire Koch brothers received a mailing warning that they could “suffer the consequences, including higher gasoline prices, runaway inflation, and other ills" if they voted for candidates not supported by Koch-owned companies or its political fund-raising arm.
The company also provided workers with a list of those candidates it supports. At the top: Mitt Romney, according to media outlet In These Times, which broke the story. “The packet also included an anti-Obama editorial by Charles Koch and a pro-Romney editorial by David Koch,” it said.
“This is in no way an attempt to ‘intimidate’ employees,” Greg Guest, senior director of corporate communications at Georgia-Pacific, said in a statement on the site kochfacts.com.
"It's free speech. On the other hand, while it's maybe not directly intended to be intimidating, it can be intimidating," said Izzy Kushner, president of consulting firm HR Impact and president of the Human Resources Association of New York.
Although the Koch brothers are known for their outspoken support of the GOP, “Our support is not based on party affiliation, and we support both Republicans and Democrats who support market-based policies and solutions,” Guest’s statement said. . ."
What
do YOU think?
http://www.rayjozwiak.com/guestbook.html
You can NOW download
your
very own copy of Ray Jozwiak's
newest release:
AMBIENCE & WINE
(from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-maher/todd-akin-republicans_b_1826617.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false)
". . . Or as it's known on Capitol Hill, supply-side economics. Remember that
magic beans theory? That you actually bring in more revenue by bringing
in less? Ronald Reagan believed it. But at least back in the '80s it was
new. The thing is, we tried it, and it doesn't work. Yet, Paul Ryan,
who every shit-for-brains pundit in America keeps telling us is a
"serious" guy, still believes in the supply-side theory. All the
Republicans do. They all believe in something that both science and
history have shown to be pure fantasy. The symbol for their party
shouldn't be an elephant -- it should be a unicorn. . . "
". . . The grown-up answer is: identify problems scientifically, prioritize and
solve. The Republican answer is: there isn't a problem. And anyone who
tells you different is a liar who hates America. . . "
". . . Next week in Tampa the Republicans must admit that the difference
between a GOP convention and Comic-Con is that the people at Comic-Con
have a much firmer grasp of reality.. . "
What
do YOU think?
http://www.rayjozwiak.com/guestbook.html
You can NOW download
your
very own copy of Ray Jozwiak's
newest release:
AMBIENCE & WINE
small.jpg)
