Hillbilly Report - Republicans

The Republican Abandonment of Duty

RDemocrat — Sun, 26 May 2013 02:51:36 GMT

It was far past time somebody said it. It is sad that it takes a potential disastrous event for someone to stand up and do it. However, it nice that someone is finally telling the truth. The truth about the fact that a Republican led House of Representatives have been dodging their Constitutional duties to the American people. They are withholding much needed funding that even if it were not needed to create jobs, is desperately needed to upgrade America's ailing infrastructure. Their only motivation? To make a centrist President that has "reached out" to them look bad.
We heard it from Mitch McConnell long ago. They meant to make Obama a one-term President as their ultimate goal for America. Now they seek to punish the American people for reelecting him and hope Democrats get the blame in 2014 and 2016. The only problem with this is besides being idiotic and selfish this strategy by Republicans borders on treasonous.

That is because not only does our country desperately need infrastructure upgrades, but our people need to be put to work doing it. There simply is not any excuse not to anymore as yet another example of how dangerous this is for our country has happened:

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Which prompted Congressman Jim McDermott to finally call House Republicans out on the fact that they simply do not give a damn about their country or anyone within as long as they can score cheap political points on President Obama and Democrats:

The portion of Interstate 5 in Washington that runs over the Skagit River collapsed on Thursday after a truck hit an overhead support structure, but Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) cited the incident in an interview as proof Republicans were blocking infrastructure investment to hurt President Obama politically.
"Well, they have clearly spent the whole last five years trying to tear the president down, but they have done it by throwing the American infrastructure and the society under the bus," McDermott said in an interview with MSNBC host Al Sharpton.
"We have the most long-term unemployed that we have had since the 1930s and there's no excuse for that," McDermott continued. "There is plenty of work in this society that needs to be done and all it means is that the Congress has to step up, put the money up, and we can have it."

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/trans...
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And of course he is right. We had this argument in the 2008 elections and Americans voted resoundingly on it. Our infrastructure needed repair and we needed to put Americans to work doing it. You remember, the whole investing in our own country thing? So what happened?

You had a Republican House so obsessed with giving themselves tax breaks and making working Americans pay for them, a couple of wars and an earlier round of tax breaks for them that they simply didn't care about America. Their obsession with tearing down Obama continued after he attempted compromise with them time and time again. Obama for his part was too busy "reaching out" to fight for infrastructure, jobs or much else.

And so the American people allowed them themselves to be ignored. They failed to demand that Washington invest in them, their homes and their families. They let all this get lost in the shuffle of healthcare, debts and deficits and "fiscal cliffs".

Can we now admit that things like this are more important than tax cuts for Mitch McConnell and John Boehner?

On "Made Up Tales"

RDemocrat — Sun, 19 May 2013 18:06:45 GMT

The Republican Party knows no shame or humility. In their witch hunt to capitalize politically on an American tragedy they seem to have forgotten one thing. While four Americans tragically lost their lives in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012 while Barack Obama was President, nearly three thousand lost their lives on American soil under a Republican President who had warning on Sept. 11, 2001.
Of course you never heard one Republican questioning the failures of George W. Bush on that one. In fact, you saw them rubber-stamp every failed solution from an incompetent administration to that attack, costing thousands of lives and over a trillion dollars of American treasure.

Now the House is on a witch hunt, desperately trying to avoid discussion on an agenda that will help all Americans recover and to create jobs. They want to investigate and scandalize the rest of Obama's administration and hope some of it sticks to Hillary Clinton instead of doing their jobs, helping America recover from the Great Recession their trickle-down policies caused.

So now today you have the master of shunning his responsibility and causing the American people to suffer, Mitch McConnell on the news calling for more Benghazi investigations. Of course this is the Mitch McConnell who publicly stated the goal of the Republican Party should be to defeat Obama, not create jobs for Americans.

Indeed, McConnell was whining today about "made up tales":

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Sunday said the Obama administration had spun a "tale" about the terrorist attacks in Benghazi that helped them politically before the 2012 election.
"We know the administration kind of made up a tale here in order to make it seem like it wasn't a terrorist attack," said McConnell on NBC's "Meet the Press."
"It's very clear that it was inconvenient within six weeks of the election for the administration to, in effect, announce that it was a terrorist attack. I think that's worth examining. It is going to be examined," he vowed.
"The talking points clearly were not accurate and I think getting to the bottom of that is an important investigation," said McConnell in response to the question from the show's host David Gregory.

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But wait just a minute. While McConnell is talking about "made up tales" why does he not speak upon the "tales" Republicans made up to keep this idiotic witch hunt going? You see, in order to spur their endless investigations, create a scandal and ignore the real problems that face real Americans McConnell's Republican Party have done what they do best. Made up their own version of events to validate their dis-proven version of the world and events within it:

CNN has obtained an e-mail sent by a top aide to President Barack Obama about White House reaction to the deadly attack last September 11 on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, that apparently differs from how sources characterized it to two different media organizations.
The actual e-mail from then-Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes appears to show that whomever leaked it did so in a way that made it appear that the White House was primarily concerned with the State Department's desire to remove references and warnings about specific terrorist groups so as to not bring criticism to the department.
Whoever provided those accounts seemingly invented the notion that Rhodes wanted the concerns of the State Department specifically addressed. While Nuland, particularly, had expressed a desire to remove mentions of specific terrorist groups and CIA warnings about the increasingly dangerous assignment, Rhodes put no emphasis at all in his e-mail on the State Department's concerns.
So whoever leaked the inaccurate information earlier this month did so in a way that made it appear that the White House - specifically Rhodes - was more interested in the State Department's concerns, and more focused on the talking points, than the e-mail actually stated.

http://thelead.blogs.cnn.com/2...

So the question is while we are doing all this investigating why are we not investigating who falsified emails to leak to the press to somehow validate this witch hunt? While mistakes were surely made do they really have to be criminal in nature? Was not one of those mistakes the Republican House insisting on slashing $300 million from the budget for protecting such embassies as the one in Benghazi?

Better yet, why does McConnell and the Republican Party he "leads" do this. Quit being bitter about losing elections and do their jobs. The American people elect all their leaders to do one thing. Solve problems. In case McConnell and the Republicans haven't noticed there are plenty of problems to solve.

But you see, their sorry asses are covered. They have won a reprieve from themselves and their ilk having to sacrifice anything to the economy they crashed and are balancing the budget on the backs of the poor, the most vulnerable and the working-class.

Now they are getting what they really want. A circus freak sideshow to try and make America forget that they are paying so folks like Mitch McConnell, John Boehner and the rest of the Republican Party and the selfish oligarchs they truly represent don't have too.

Indeed it all comes down to that. Not that Republicans care at all what happened in Benghazi. They just desperately hope that it will distract you as they continue to rape the working-class and the American economy and will somehow stick to Hillary Clinton and keep her out of the White House.

Republicans Seek to Avoid Sacrifice Again

RDemocrat — Sat, 18 May 2013 15:50:33 GMT

Republicans are determined to "fix" everything except what is really wrong with America. While trying yet again to repeal Obamacare and obsessing over every imagined scandal in the book they are refusing to pass a jobs bill to provide relief to working Americans. Worse yet is their obsession with the deficit and making anyone but themselves pay for it. Now, yet again they are chasing imagined problems and punishing the working class.
I guess they cannot stand to lose their talking point over there in Conservative fantasy land. However, sadly for Republicans the "crisis" is over:

The budget deals of the past two years and a recovering economy are rapidly mopping up the tide of red ink that swept over Washington after the 2007 recession.
After four years of budget deficits in excess of $1 trillion, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office forecast Tuesday that this year's deficit will plummet to $642 billion, or 4 percent of the nation's total economic output.
That's $200 billion lower than the CBO forecast in February. Analysts attributed the sunnier outlook to higher-than-expected tax revenue and about $95 billion in higher payments from mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which are profiting from a recovering housing market.
The forecast puts the nation on track for its smallest deficit since 2008, before the recession hit in full force. And the CBO predicts that the gap between revenue and spending will continue to shrink through 2015, when it will fall to just over 2 percent of the economy - well within the bounds of what economists consider to be economically sustainable.

http://articles.washingtonpost...

This should make the Republicans happy should it not? Our deficit is shrinking as Americans have sacrificed and Republicans and their ilk have been able to dodge giving anything up themselves. How do they celebrate? Led by Kentuckian Hal Rogers they are socking it to working America yet again:

House Republicans late Thursday began circulating new spending targets for appropriations bills for the coming year with Labor, Education and Health and Human Services facing a nearly 20 percent reduction on top of the cuts already made in the March 1 sequestration order.
Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) appears to be backloading the larger reductions in order to salvage a few of the 12 annual bills this summer.
Discretionary spending for the departments of Labor, Education and Health and Human Services would be capped at $121.8 billion - or about $28 billion below the best available estimates for post-sequestration appropriations.

Of course, as always with Republicans some people are getting even more money:

Pentagon spending would rise to $512.5 billion, a roughly 6 percent increase over the reduced levels allowed under sequestration. But elsewhere, the landscape is bleak for most core domestic priorities for Democrats and the president.

And of course as always with Republicans what you will not hear one bit from them is how they plan on sacrificing themselves to the problems they caused. You will not hear one word about cutting corporate welfare or raising taxes on the wealthy. You will not see a jobs bill or minimum wage increase to help working Americans now that the debt crisis has abated.

In fact it is business as usual for Rogers and the Republicans. Punish those of us who work for a living, gut programs that help the most vulnerable in society and cut taxes further on themselves.

Is this the America we really want to pass on to our children? This Republican America only cares about one thing. Greed, and passing off the problems it causes to all those who never benefited from it.

The 2.2 Million Republican Jobs Gap

RDemocrat — Tue, 07 May 2013 02:13:39 GMT

It has been no secret that the Republican Party led by Mitch McConnell has been trying their best to slow the recovery from the Great Recession and keep America from being able to get back to work. At first they were hoping this effort would limit President Obama to one term. Of course when Americans saw through this ruse and reelected the President Republicans were in no mood to work to get our country back on track. They have sought instead to punish Americans for giving President Obama a second term. Now, not only have they refused to pass a Jobs Bill, but have insisted on Austerity an idea that not only seeks to balance the budget on the backs of the very Americans who have given all the sacrifice but is costing our country over two million jobs in a time when Americans desperately need jobs.
In fact, with the Republican War on public workers and their war on everyone else with Austerity and sequestration the modern Republican Party is punishing America and keeping recovery from the recession they caused from ever really happening:

These numbers continue a pattern of steady growth in the labor market, but they also confirm that America's recovery from the Great Recession is still very much a work in progress. The public sector, especially, has been a drag on the economy in recent months. While the private sector has added roughly 2.2 million jobs over the past year, employment in state, local, and federal governments has declined by 89,000, including significant losses to teachers and emergency responders. In this challenging economic climate, there is growing concern about how sequestration-the across-the-board budget cuts to discretionary spending that took effect on March 1-may negatively impact the recovery even more. Indeed, forecasters at the Congressional Budget Office project that the sequestration could reduce overall GDP growth in the United States by 0.6 percentage point and cost the economy 750,000 jobs by the end of 2013.
The downward trend in public-sector employment, described in a Hamilton Project report last summer, has continued into the opening months of 2013. While the private sector has added jobs to the economy in every month since March 2010, a total increase of approximately 6.8 million jobs, the public sector has contracted. To put this in perspective, federal, state, and local governments added jobs in only twelve of the thirty-eight months since March 2010 and have lost more than 625,000 jobs over this period.

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs...

Of course, all of this flies in the face of conventional wisdom. If Americans want to know why recovery is so slow they need only look at Republican policies which are idiocy in the current economic climate:

The ongoing recovery, which began when the Great Recession ended in June 2009, dramatically deviates from the usual pattern. In the forty-six months following the end of the five other recent recessions, government employment increased by an average of 1.7 million. During the current recovery, however, government employment has decreased by more than 500,000. Put together, the policy differences have led to 2.2 million fewer jobs today. Such a large contraction of the public-sector during a recovery is unprecedented in recent American economic history.

Now with sequestration they should be tipping their hand. They do not want Americans being put back to work. Their reasoning is simple. With three decades of trickle-down economics that have enriched themselves and their ilk quite simply their sorry asses are covered. They feel no pain whatsoever. What they hope is to make you feel so much pain that you will put them back in power and allow them to continue raping the working-class. That is why America is missing 2.2 million jobs:

Policymakers are currently faced with the unenviable task of simultaneously increasing employment and addressing America's long-term budget deficits, but-at a time when the rate of government employment is at a historic low-sequestration threatens to further slow the growth of the public sector and lengthen the time it will take to close America's jobs gap. Even when ignoring any indirect impacts, a typical policy response to the Great Recession would have led to a jobs gap that is 2.2 million jobs smaller than current gap of about 10.0 million and commensurately reduced the amount of time until the economy returns to full employment.

Which really brings about only one conclusion. The modern Republican Party simply hates their country and anyone within it that disagrees with their idiotic and narrow view of the world. They will continue to punish Americans until they get their way and if they do and are back in power do you know what will happen? They will re-institute trickle-down on a massive scale and punish America even more.

That is why it is the duty as Americans of every Democrat elected in Congress or the White House right now to do one thing. Do not compromise with the Mitch McConnells and John Boehners of the world but fight them tooth and nail for every policy and every inch of ground. Let the American people see you fighting against this greed and austerity and if nothing gets done let them decide who was to blame in 2014.

I believe America is ready to place the blame where it belongs. On the greed and uncaring idiocy of the modern Republican Party.

Flexibility the Latest Ploy Against Workers by Republicans

RDemocrat — Mon, 06 May 2013 22:23:31 GMT

The modern Republican Party just never knows when to quit. They have already outsourced our middle-class. They have already depressed our wages. They have shamelessly redistributed our nation's wealth to the very top. Even more shamelessly they have forced working Americans to pay for the debt their policies of trickle-down has created. Through it all they have blocked anything that would help create jobs and put suffering Americans back to work.
Indeed, you would think they would know when enough is enough. However, this is the modern Republican Party we are talking about here. Their whole existence is based upon making the working-class pay, and suffer. The most disgraceful part of it is that they seem to always wrap it up in the message that they are doing all of this for our own good.

So now they are once again they are introducing legislation to try and rip off working Americans and put them once again at the mercy of their employers. But as always, they are wrapping it in a shiny bag and calling it something it is not. The Working Families Flexibility Act. They make it sound all warm and fuzzy for workers, especially women:

A bill Republicans hope will grow their party's appeal to working families comes up for a vote in the House this week, posing the possibility that employees who work more than 40 hours a week will soon have a choice between receiving overtime wages or taking paid time off for personal reasons like attending a child's soccer game or tending to home repairs.
The bill marks the latest leg in the GOP's newfound effort, steered by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., to rebrand itself as worker-friendly and conscious of the balancing act many women, in particular, face. In a memo to his caucus last month, Cantor lamented: "Too many parents have to weigh whether they can afford to miss work even for half a day to see their child off on the first day of school or attend a parent-teacher conference."

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-25...

And of course Republicans hope to continue doing something they have been quite successful at with this bill. Turning worker against worker to achieve their ends and continuing their war on unionized public workers:

Rep. Martha Roby, R-Ala., the bill's chief sponsor, pointed out that the option she's proposing already exists for state and federal workers in the public sector: "For some people," she told the Associated Press, "time is more valuable than the cash that would be accrued in overtime. Why should public-sector employees be given a benefit and the private sector be left out?

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-25...
However, this is where the warm and fuzzy part ends. The truth of the matter is that like everything the modern Republican Party proposes this bill has nothing to do with helping workers of any stripe. Why has the private sector been "left out" of this benefit? The answer is simple:

The program was created in the public sector in 1985 to save federal, state and local governments money, not to give workers greater flexibility, Lichtman said. Many workers in federal and state government are unionized or have civil service protections that give them more leverage in dealing with supervisors, she added. Those safeguards don't always exist in the private sector, where only about 6.6 percent of employees are union members.

http://news.yahoo.com/gop-seek...

Yes, it appears as if this "benefit" for workers was dreamed up in the public sector for one thing. To save state, federal and local governments money not as a "benefit" for their workers. That explains the Republican support for it. They are trying to give private business owners, not workers the same scheme that saves the public sector money.

Worse yet, as opponents are pointing out this bill would give few protections to workers. They would be pressured into taking "leave time" in lieu of the overtime pay they have earned. In essence since employers would control when they could take their earned leave time they would be giving interest free loans to their employers:

The White House on Monday issued a veto threat, saying the bill undermines the right to overtime pay and doesn't offer enough protection for workers who may not want to receive compensatory time off in lieu of overtime pay.
"This is nothing more than an effort to turn a sow's ear into a silk purse," said Judith Lichtman, senior adviser to the National Partnership for Women and Families. She contends the measure would open the door for employers to pressure workers into taking compensatory time off instead of overtime pay.
"Any time there's a law that will keep extra money in an employer's bank account, they will try to push employees to make that choice," said Jones, who regularly earns overtime pay. "I know how we get taken advantage of and I think this bill will just let employers take even more advantage of us."
Democrats say the bill provides no guarantee that workers would be able to take the time off when they want. The bill gives employers discretion over whether to grant a specific request to use comp time. Opponents also complain that banking leave time essentially gives employers an interest free loan from workers.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

In other words this bill is just like everything else Republicans have tried to do to "reach out" to working Americans. It is an attempt to brainwash you into giving more of your rights to business ownership and surrender more of your pay to the greediest and least patriotic among us. As soon as you surrender your overtime in lieu of this "flexibility" you will be told by your employer you cannot have either.

So before being drawn into this scheme to take more money from your pocket and give it to your employer ask yourself one simple question. When has anything any Republican ever proposed ever done one bit of good for any working American?

Enough Already!!

RDemocrat — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 22:17:29 GMT

With all the problems that have beset working Americans that the Republicans in Congress simply refuse to address there is one thing I am pretty certain Americans are getting tired of hearing about from the Republicans in the House. The attack on the American embassy in Benghazi that tragically claimed four American lives. Not that those lives weren't important, but now they are simply being used as pawns in a political game to deflect attention from the fact that Republicans simply do not care to allow an American recovery and to score cheap political points against President Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Although this attack has been studied and the American people have decided that it was a tragedy that for the most part could not be avoided, Conservative groups and Republicans in the House have refused to let it die:

Conservative groups argue the probes by standing committees have been unfocused and are pressuring Boehner to launch the select committee. The special panel's defenders say it would have extraordinary powers to pry information out of the White House and the State Department, which they accuse of stonewalling.
"It is incumbent upon Speaker John Boehner to take the Benghazi select committee resolution to the House floor now that it has the support of the majority of the majority with 117 co-sponsors that run the ideological spectrum," said David Bossie, the president of Citizens United, whose campaign has netted more than 5,000 letters to Congress.
"Four Americans were murdered by terrorists over seven months ago and we still do not have any accountability because the various investigations by standing committees have been incomplete and unfocused," he said.

http://thehill.com/blogs/globa...

In fact, the American people have responded with a collective yawn and even the Price of Orange John Boehner has conceded that it would be a waste of time and money to form a "select committee" to study the attacks:

Boehner and the leaders of the five committees - Oversight, Foreign Affairs, Armed Services, Intelligence and Judiciary - say the formation of a select committee would be a waste of time and money.

And we all know if he knew there was something to gain from studying this attack he would be all over it.

Still, Republicans in the House refuse to let this die. Darrell Issa is pressing on with even more investigations and testimony:

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is pushing ahead with his investigation of the terrorist assault, and has asked for legal protections for lower-level employees who might be called to testify.

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The State Department has fired back stating the obvious. It has already been investigated and it is time for the folks at the State Department to do something Republicans in the House refuse to do. Their jobs:

"We think that we've done an independent investigation, that it's been transparent, thorough, credible, and detailed, and that we've shared those findings with the U.S. Congress," State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said. "And that should be enough."
Ventrell said the employees who were present during the attack or were otherwise involved have already provided "extensive testimony" to the FBI and the State Department's independent review board, which issued a scathing report last year. He said they're back on duty and at their posts around the world.

But of course Issa is determined to keep this going and simply refuses to let it die:

"The Department is interfering with its employees' right to communicate with Congress," Issa wrote to Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday. "To date, the State Department has not even taken [the] modest step to assure whistleblowers that they will not face retaliation from the department."

It is time for America to tell Issa, these Conservative groups and the Republican House one thing. Enough already. You and your shills at Fox News have worn this out and the fact of the matter now just as when you started? America simply is not buying it. We know that elected officials simply cannot stop every thing from happening. They did their best in Benghazi and a tragedy occurred. Move on.

In fact the burning question is this. While Issa and Republicans are so up in arms about this attack that killed four Americans where in the hell were they after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001? There we had an attack that could have been prevented on American soil that killed 3000 Americans. It was allowed due to the incompetence of a Republican President that received plenty of forewarning.

Instead of investigating his incompetence what did Republicans do? Gave him everything he asked for in the run up to a failed "War on Terror" that wasted tens of thousands of lives and over a trillion dollars in American treasure.

So until these Republicans can tell us why they responded so idiotically to an attack that killed 280 times the Americans that Benghazi did will they all just do us a favor? Sit down and shut the hell up about Benghazi and do what the folks at the State Department have moved on to do. Their damn jobs.

The Modern Republican Party: A Coalition of Gangs

RDemocrat — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 03:23:19 GMT

Sometimes it is hard to sum up the modern Republican Party. I mean, we all know they care little about their country and nothing about almost all of the folks that live within it. Of course, they are always talking some kind of garbage about the Constitution, "Conservative values" and "American exceptionalism" but one thing that has been increasingly apparent over the last few decades. They care nothing about any of these things. All they care about is keeping power so that they can continue to keep the good times rolling for themselves and the increasingly slim piece of America they do represent.
I came across a story today that I think pretty well sums up the modern Republican Party. Far from representing any "values" or offering anything positive to our country they were summed up quite nicely.

David Stockman, a former Congressman from Michigan and a Reagan era budget director summed the modern Republican Party up as a "coalition of gangs":

"The Republican Party is not really a party. It doesn't stand for anything except re-electing itself," Stockman, who directed the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan, tells Newsmax. "The neocons are only oriented to an aggressive, imperialistic foreign policy of big defense establishment and suppression of our civil liberties. That's bad.
The Republican Party is merely "a coalition of gangs," David Stockman, the former congressman and Reagan-era budget director, tells Newsmax TV in an exclusive interview.
"The Republican Party is not really a party. It doesn't stand for anything except re-electing itself," Stockman, who directed the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan, tells Newsmax. "The neocons are only oriented to an aggressive, imperialistic foreign policy of big defense establishment and suppression of our civil liberties. That's bad.
"The tax cons want to just cut taxes - any time, any day - regardless of the fiscal situation," Stockman adds. "That has gone to an absurd length. The social cons, social policy people - the right-to-life issue and gay marriage and all of that - that's irrelevant to governing a democracy in a free society.
"That's basically the heart of the Republican Party," Stockman concludes. "In that mix, how can you find anything that's going to stand for conservative economics, fiscal rectitude, free markets, sound money? It's not there.
"The Republican Party is basically irrelevant to the economic crisis that faces the country."

Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com http://www.newsmax.com/Politic...

Of course, many of us who have been trying to fight against the Republicans know the truth of these statements. We remember well the "Pearl Harbor event" the neo-cons in the Progress for a New American Century salivated over and received on Sept 11, 2001. They then preceded to use that event to force their disgraced worldview off on not only America, but the world as a whole. We are still living with the cost of their failure in not only treasure, but human lives.

And of course at the same time we had the tax cons doing their devilish work that they continue to this day. No matter what the situation or how bad our economy gets their only solution is to give more American treasure upwards. Their trickle-down idiocy has bankrupted this country and their only solution? Cut their own taxes further all the while stagnating wages for working Americans and slashing any program that helps the most vulnerable in our society. Unfortunately far too many so called "Democrats" have followed right along with them.

And of course they have been aided all along by the "social cons". Those who would fire up the weak minded into believing that hatred of anyone that does not live like them or believe the same things they do is somehow a "Christian value". They have beat the drum of intolerance and ignorance to win just enough votes to keep just enough Republicans in power along with like-minded Democrats to impede progress for our country as a whole.

In the end as Stockman concludes these three gangs offer nothing whatsoever to help fix the economic crises the policies they have enacted has unleashed upon America. In fact, they only want to make things worse for everyone else because that makes things better for them.

In conclusion I would just like to say to any true Democratic leader and to our grassroots base as a whole. We cannot compromise with these people. We cannot give them anything they want because it is all bad for our country as a whole. We must fight them and everything they represent with every fiber of our being and if nothing gets done and things get worse in the short term than so be it. In the long term we will save our country much more damage if we refuse to be an accessory to the further destruction these folks would cause.

Progressive Vision Over Austerity Is The Only Hope For America

RDemocrat — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 05:32:07 GMT

It is no secret to millions of Americans that career politicians in Washington D.C. simply do not seem to care one bit about the real problems Americans face today. That is evident with their refusal to concentrate on the real crises in America right now namely a jobs crises and an income crises. Instead they are drumming up the "debt crises" as the main problem we face and are telling all of us that we are the ones who caused it. Worse yet, even when it comes to the debt these politicians have it all wrong.
To address our debt crises they themselves have drummed up all of them seem to be determined to push their ideal of austerity off on all of us. Despite the fact that working Americans are making less and seeing more of our nation's treasure horded beyond our reach their solution is to draw more blood from the turnip that has become the American working-class. The only problem with that is that we need recovery, not more sacrifice.

Now even President Obama has disappointed millions of us by joining the ranks of those who are calling for austerity and sacrifice from the wrong people. Those with nothing to give. He chimed into the deficit frenzy with his "chained CPI" scheme, designed to cut Social Security benefits for millions of Americans to achieve $340 billion in savings over ten years from those who do not have it:

Specifically, CBO and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation estimate that switching to the chained CPI-U on a governmentwide basis starting in calendar year 2014 would reduce the deficit by a total of $340 billion over the next 10 years. Such a change would decrease federal spending on mandatory programs (direct spending) by $216 billion and increase federal revenues by $124 billion over the fiscal year 2014-2023 period. (This estimate was first published by CBO on March 1. It is not an estimate of the proposal in the President's budget for fiscal year 2014, which would use the chained CPI for a more limited set of programs. CBO is currently reviewing that and other proposals in the President's budget.)
Switching to the chained CPI-U governmentwide would also lower benefits in other programs that apply automatic COLAs, including civil service and military retirement, Supplemental Security Income, and veterans' programs. In addition, the change would reduce federal spending for Medicaid, Medicare, higher education assistance, and nutrition programs, among other mandatory programs. In the case of certain means-tested programs, such as Medicaid and nutrition assistance, those reductions would occur in part because using the chained CPI U to make annual adjustments to the federal poverty guidelines would decrease eligibility for those programs.

http://www.cbo.gov/publication...

But as bad as that is worse yet is the Republican wet dream to address our fiscal problems. A plan introduced by Paul Ryan which would include massive sacrifice from everyone but the wealthy and would create a $6 trillion hole off the top by refusing to ask the top 2% to contribute anything towards deficit reduction. This dishonest and selfish scheme would only raise $900 billion and would slam those with the least even harder than President Obama's "chained CPI" could ever dream of:

Even if their tax plan wasn't entirely dependent on $6 trillion worth of unspecified tax expenditure savings, the House Republican budget would still not balance within 10 years-unless they somehow manage to convince future Congresses to adhere to an unprecedentedly low level of spending in a category known as "nondefense discretionary." This category of spending has already been the focus of more than $1.1 trillion in cuts, but the Ryan budget calls for an additional $900 billion in reductions. To be clear, these would come on top of, not instead of, sequestration.
If these cuts were actually imposed, the result would be that nondefense discretionary spending would total just 2.1 percent of GDP by 2023. Since 1962, the first year for which we have comprehensive data, nondefense discretionary spending has never totaled less than 3.2 percent of GDP. In other words, Rep. Ryan's budget numbers depend on cuts that would bring this category of spending down to a level one-third lower than its previous lowest point in modern history. That is unrealistic, to say the least.
This category of spending includes most of the federal government's investments in economic growth; all of veterans' health care; food, drug, and consumer product safety; federal law enforcement; and many other vital public services. Of course, you might never know that by reading the documentation accompanying the Ryan budget. That's because it is far easier to "cut" the nebulous category called "nondefense discretionary" than it is to cut actual programs, benefits, and protections that the public knows and likes. But in fact, for these kinds of cuts to actually come to pass, Congress-now and in the future-will have to get specific. And if they decide that they can't, in reality, reduce these things to levels unheard of in generations, then Rep. Ryan's claim to a balanced budget falls apart.

http://www.americanprogress.or...

So President Obama is calling for $340 billion in deficit reduction in the next ten years on the backs of Americans who cannot afford it and Paul Ryan is calling for $900 billion in the same time from virtually everyone and everything but the very few people he and his ilk truly represent but the one thing both seem to be ignoring? The very thing that the country needs and the one thing that is never attempted. True, Progressive reforms.

You see, it was not the senior citizen and working American that hopes to retire one day that President Obama's "chained CPI" is calling for sacrifice from that caused our nation's ills and ran up our debt. It was not everyone but the multimillionaire that Paul Ryan and his Republicans call for sacrifice from that did it either. The real culprit of our problems is the failed trickle-down economic vision and the greed of those who introduced it. It is far past time they sacrificed for their failure. They have enjoyed the only gains ever made by their greed and now it is their turn to solve the problems they caused.

A new report by the Economic Policy Institute shows just how that could happen if politicians in Washington simply cared about smart solutions for American problems. Instead of obsessing on ways to make average Americans foot the bill they could address the jobs crises and help the economy recover in the short term and enact Progressive ideals to raise substantial revenues to solve our debt for the long run. The federal budget policy analyst for EPI Rebecca Thiess explains:

"Addressing the nation's jobs crisis should be policymakers' chief priority, but unfortunately too much of our attention remains on deficit reduction," said Thiess. "However, if political constraints demand deficit reduction must occur, reductions achieved through revenue increases-specifically progressive revenue increases-are far less damaging to economic recovery than spending cuts. And there are numerous sound revenue policies that exist and should be considered in this debate."

http://www.epi.org/press/enact...

As you can see, just a few of these options would not only raise much more revenue than the Obama and Ryan ideas but would not demand sacrifice from those who have already sacrificed and did not share in the prosperity that came crashing down. It would instead call for sacrifice from those who benefited from the artificial boom that crashed. They have long walked between the raindrops and it is their turn to get wet:

Reforming current income tax rates, creating additional brackets for top earners, and taxing capital gains as ordinary income, which would raise over $1.6 trillion in revenue over 10 years. These reforms would raise substantial sums of revenue and make the tax code fairer and more progressive, without unduly restraining economic growth.
Capping the marginal tax rate on itemized deductions ($513 billion). Limiting the rate at which itemized deductions reduce filers' tax liability would raise revenue, increase fairness and progressivity in the tax code, help mitigate income inequality, and improve efficiency.
Pursuing international corporate income tax reform, including repealing deferral of foreign profits ($606 billion). This change would target U.S. multinational corporations that engage in convoluted transactions to avoid paying the full corporate income tax. Such reforms would raise revenue as well as reduce incentives for firms to move and keep operations and profits offshore.

Just those three options would raise more than three times the amount of Obama's chained CPI and the draconian Republican vision of raping the American worker yet again. In fact, an even bolder dose of Progressive vision could result in a staggering $5.1 trillion in deficit reduction over the same ten year period:

The report also recommends taxing carried interest as ordinary income, eliminating the loophole allowing the wealthy to not pay taxes on inherited stocks and bonds, enacting a progressive estate tax, and enacting a financial transactions tax. Taken together, the policies could result in raising over $5.1 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 years (not including interaction effects among the eight policies).

Not only that but it would do something that desperately needs to be done for our country to truly recover from the blight of trickle-down idiocy. It would invest in our country and people, ALL OF THEM and ensure that more than just a few recover.

Politicians both Democrat and Republican can make all the excuses and come up with all the schemes they want but the fact of the matter is this. Our country has once again reached the point where the only thing that will ever solve our problems and bring our country back to greatness is true, Progressive vision and policy. Giving in or trying to compromise with the modern Republican Party as they attempt to return to their trickle-down idiocy will only make our problems worse because the simple fact is that too few people have too little to offer the economy for it to ever truly recover.

I know he truly means well but I sincerely wish President Obama would give up all this "compromise" and the hope to achieve some "grand bargain" with the devil that is the Republican Party. The only way for him to save his legacy is to stand up and fight for the Progressive vision that our country desperately needs. I for one would stand behind him in that noble crusade to the bitter end.

Washington Finally Gets Bi-Partisanship

RDemocrat — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 14:53:50 GMT

A funny thing is happening. While not being able to reach a bi-partisan consensus on just about anything like a jobs bill, immigration reform, or fair deficit reduction that would help the American people as a whole and after being in gridlock for so long on so many things Congress and the President finally achieved bi-partisanship. What they agreed on unfortunately should not surprise anyone.
Politicians in Washington never can seem to agree on anything that will help Americans as a whole but one thing they can agree on and one thing that can get passed and signed into law in the blink of an eye? A law making it a hell of a lot easier for members of Congress to engage in insider trading:

While almost no one was looking, a law making it easier for congressional and top executive branch staffers to engage in corrupt trading was signed into law Monday.
The law is a modification of the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act. The modification was passed by unanimous consent by the House and the Senate last week with no debate or even discussion.
The STOCK Act, which became law just a year ago, was designed to discourage insider trading by members of Congress and top government officials. In addition to outlawing trading based on non-public information gleaned by government officials during the course of their public duties, the law required extensive disclosure of financial holdings by Congressional staffers and 28,000 senior executive branch employees.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/...

Indeed while they cannot agree on anything to help any of us one thing they all agree on is that they should be able to do whatever the hell they want when they want to and that we should not have the right as Americans who elected them to know anything about it:

The public disclosure requirement was arguably too lax to begin with. There's good reason to prohibit trading by senior government officials altogether. Many lawyers, journalists and Wall Streeters who come into possession of sensitive, confidential information as part of their professional lives are barred from any short term trading. Some are barred from owning individual securities at all, allowed to own nothing but index and mutual funds.
The provision of the Stock Act was a compromise in which government officials were required to disclose trades to the public in exchange for being able to trade in the first place. If disclosure proved too burdensome, government officials could simply adopt personal no-trading policies and avoid the cost of disclosing trades altogether.

It is a sad state of affairs in this country when Congress and the President cannot get together to do anything but tell the American people that they are not beholden to the same rules that we are. Where is all the bickering and fighting when America really needs it?

This is why Americans view Congress, the White House and the government in general as somewhere between dog feces and dirt. They have earned it.

Obama Sales Pitch Falls on Deaf Ears: We Hope

RDemocrat — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 17:30:36 GMT

In his attempt to sway Republicans to reach some "grand bargain" the President has made a few mistakes. First, you cannot compromise with the unwilling and Republicans have shown no matter what the President does to "reach out" to them they are going to hate him nonetheless. Also, no matter what "compromise" is offered one thing Republicans will never do willingly. Allow themselves or those they truly represent to sacrifice one red cent towards the problems they caused with their own idiocy and greed.
That is why Obama has been so disappointing for so many of us. Instead of realizing the truth of the modern Republican Party like so many of us do and fighting them with all his might for every inch of ground he makes another huge mistake. Throws those of us who fought for him along with the most vulnerable in our society under the bus to placate the unmovable greed of the Republicans.

The bottom line? It has not worked in over four years of trying and will never work. Republicans are going to hate Obama and refuse to not only work with him but offer any balance in deficit reduction because they quite simply are not going to allow themselves and their ilk any sacrifice whatsoever.

So instead of fighting like he should and using the bully pulpit to inform the American people and let them decide the right and wrong of it in 2014 the President is not only waving a white flag, he is also sacrificing those who have nothing to sacrifice. Hence the "chained CPI" proposal in his budget. This "proposal" offers up way too much and receives absolutely nothing but a bloody nub in return. It seems the President could learn sooner or later.

Fortunately although the President is all too willing to throw all the wrong people under the bus in an attempt at some "grand bargain" and seems determined to tarnish his legacy as yet another President who simply did not care about the working class some within his party seem determined not to follow him down this path of Republican idiocy. At least we hope so.

That is why today the White House has sent an "expert" to capital hill to try and sway House Democrats to give up the fight and fall in line behind President Obama and the Republicans in once again asking the wrong people for sacrifice:

Senior White House economic adviser Gene Sperling defended the budget eloquently, according to several Democrats in the room, but did little to convince critics of chained CPI of its merits.

Read more: http://thehill.com/homenews/ho...
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However, even as we once again received a stab in the back from the President we fought so hard to reelect it seems hopefully that at least some Democrats may refuse to throw us under the bus, for now:

"For me, there's no question. If this is a negotiation on budget issues, trying to deal with deficits, then Social Security has never added a single penny to the deficits of this country or to the national debt," Rep. Xavier Becerra (Calif.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said immediately after the meeting.
"So if you're talking about making cuts to seniors, to disabled folks, to children, to widows [and] widowers, to help take care of deficits, please don't tell me to consider Social Security. The chained CPI is a cut to benefits - earned benefits - to all those folks who paid into the system.
"I don't see the value of including it in the budget," he added.

And of course he is right. Social Security has never added one penny to the deficit and in fact are earned benefits paid for by the people the President would follow Republicans in stealing from. The very folks who have sacrificed over and over and have nothing left to give. The very folks who hoped Obama would fight for them.

Besides the fact that Obama and the Republicans are determined to squeeze blood from a turnip for Obama one fact remains. A "grand bargain" which includes the "chained CPI" is not going to save his legacy. It will create a legacy in which many folks who admired him initially will see him as weak, uncaring, and idiotic. I mean honestly what President was ever remembered favorably for stealing from hard-working Americans all while being one of the most weak and ineffective negotiators in American history?:

"I'm not interested in negotiating with myself," Becerra said. "So the last thing I'd want to do is be putting on the table for cuts the benefits that my parents earned when they worked all their lives."

President Obama is right in the sense that his legacy is definitely at stake. What he needs to realize and soon is that legacy is never going to be made by Republicans who would hate him no matter what he offered them. That legacy will be made by those of us who really need him to fight for us and while Mitt Romney scared us more many of us are beginning to see that he is just as determined not to fight for us as we were not to elect a man like Mitt Romney to the White House.

Obama should bear in mind that his legacy is quickly becoming the lesser of two evils and that being the lesser of two evils will indeed make many of us see him for what he fought for. Evil.

Rand Paul Begins His "Clean-Up" Tour For 2016

RDemocrat — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 03:42:05 GMT

One thing we can all be certain of. The Mad Doctor with the twisty curls who became the Mad Senator now very much wants to be the Mad President. However, one thing that stands in his way is one simple fact. The American voter sees things a little different and is a little less forgiving than the voters of Kentucky for radical views. So to actually be President Rand Paul is going to have to embark on a "cleaning up" tour of radical statements he made that were forgiven in his Kentucky Senate campaign. Today, that "cleaning up" tour began in Washington D.C. at Howard University.
One problem the Mad Doctor who would be President created for himself a couple of years back? He stated that although he "supports" civil rights he thinks that a private business owner should be able to tell certain races or people that they are not good enough to patronize their businesses. Just listen to the Mad Doctor in his own words:

In other words Rand Paul believes if someone owns a restaurant and just so happens to not like lets say Asian-Americans that when an Asian-American who has not caused any disruption, has not broken any law or done anything whatsoever to deserve to be singled out for any reason that business owner can just say "Hey, your Asian-American. Your money is not as good as other folks money, you can go to hell". No sitting in separate rooms, drinking at separate water fountains or using different bathrooms they can just tell them to go away.

Of course for some groups that have a long history of being discriminated against, this might be a little bit upsetting. That is why the Mad Doctor went to Howard University. He is hoping to "clean up" and defend these comments to a mostly African-American audience, an audience in which discrimination is still fresh on their minds. Of course as this last election has shown with changing demographics anyone who expects to be President is going to need at least some votes from the ever-increasing minority populations in this country. The Mad Doctor was clearly in "damage control" mode:

"I've never wavered in my support for civil rights or the Civil Rights Act," the Kentucky senator said.
"The dispute, if there is one, has always been about how much of the remedy should come under federal or state or private purview. What gets lost is the Republican Party has always been the party of civil rights and voting rights."

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballo...

But of course the Mad Doctor was talking about a totally different Republican Party. The modern Republican Party he belongs to hates their government and if slavery were still alive today would rail against the federal bureaucracy that thought it could tell states they were not allowed to have legal slavery inside American borders. I mean, back then the "free market" dictated that slaves were needed to produce really cheap labor and create profits for those business owners who should have been free to decide whether they wanted to pay someone to work or not didn't it?

He went on to hammer that point home and to stumble upon himself further:

"I don't like the idea of telling private business owners - I abhor racism. I think it's a bad business decision to exclude anybody from your restaurant - but, at the same time, I do believe in private ownership," he said in an interview with the Louisville Courier-Journal at the time.
"But I absolutely think there should be no discrimination in anything that gets any public funding, and that's most of what I think the Civil Rights Act was about in my mind."

But this is a man who believes almost nothing should be publicly owned. He would replace public ownership with the "free market", a market in which the ownership society would be free to discriminate against anyone they saw fit at any time. How is that supporting the rights of anyone? It doesn't even have to be ethnic in nature. Rand Paul believes if a person who owns a business doesn't like women, men, red-headed people or the elderly they should just be able to shun them because they own a business.

In typical Rand Paul fashion while trying to "reach out" to the African-American voters he also managed to insult them in the process:

Paul argued that the reason black voters now overwhelmingly support Democrats is because, following the Great Depression, the Democratic Party became synonymous with entitlements.
"The Democrats promised equalizing outcomes through unlimited federal assistance while Republicans offered something that seemed less tangible -the promise of equalizing opportunity through free markets," he said.
"Our federal mandatory minimum sentences are simply heavy-handed and arbitrary. They can affect anyone at any time, though they disproportionately affect those without the means to fight them," he said.

In other words Rand Paul believes that African-Americans have been voting for Democrats in such huge numbers for decades now for one simple reason. They want a government handout. They are too lazy to get out in the "free market" and find a job and would rather draw a check. It seems also that he believes they are more inclined to commit crimes so the best thing he could do for them is to cut their jail sentences.

And of course the Mad Doctor would not be a true modern Republican if he did not insert a big dose of hypocrisy into his message:

"Barack Obama and George Bush were lucky. The law could have put both of them away for their entire young adulthood. Neither one would have been employable, much less president."

Of course he is talking about the fact that both Presidents Bush and Obama have smoked pot. My question to the Mad Doctor is why did you not insert your name into this statement also? The simple fact of the matter is that Rand Paul himself probably did much worse things in his "entire young adulthood" than the former or current President ever dreamed of:

The strangest episode of Paul's time at Baylor occurred one afternoon in 1983 (although memories about all of these events are understandably a bit hazy, so the date might be slightly off), when he and a NoZe brother paid a visit to a female student who was one of Paul's teammates on the Baylor swim team. According to this woman, who requested anonymity because of her current job as a clinical psychologist, "He and Randy came to my house, they knocked on my door, and then they blindfolded me, tied me up, and put me in their car. They took me to their apartment and tried to force me to take bong hits. They'd been smoking pot." After the woman refused to smoke with them, Paul and his friend put her back in their car and drove to the countryside outside of Waco, where they stopped near a creek. "They told me their god was 'Aqua Buddha' and that I needed to bow down and worship him," the woman recalls. "They blindfolded me and made me bow down to 'Aqua Buddha' in the creek. I had to say, 'I worship you Aqua Buddha, I worship you.' At Baylor, there were people actively going around trying to save you and we had to go to chapel, so worshiping idols was a big no-no."

Maybe the Mad Doctor should look into his own past before being so "bi-partisan" in his criticism of one former Republican President and one present Democratic one.

In the end however, it appears as if the Mad Doctor may have shown his true hand. His complete and total ignorance of the history of those that differ from him came shining through and he did what he usually does. Made fool of himself:

He was met with incredulous shouts of "Yes!" when he asked the crowd if they would have known the NAACP was founded by Republicans. At one point, Paul blanked on the name of the first popularly elected African-American senator, and drew derisive laughter as the crowd helped him with the name: "Edward Brooke!"

While it remains to be seen if Rand Paul will actually accomplish "cleaning up" some of his views and outrageous statements we are hoping around here that in 2016 while they may win a Republican primary the voters of America will see them for what they are. The ramblings of a zealot who hates his government and believes the ownership society in America should be able to do whatever the hell they see fit to the rest of us.

But Rand Paul has always seemed to walk between the raindrops. He is probably the only person to ever be elected Senator after telling his constituents they should work for less and get used to it:

And that it is perfectly okay if a few of them die for someone to make a profit:

So will these "values" be able to be sold to America as a whole? For the sake of our country and everyone that lives, works or just hopes to go somewhere for a bite to eat here I sure as hell hope not.

Beltway Mitch: Wrong for Kentucky

RDemocrat — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 19:18:11 GMT

While Mitch McConnell whines to the FBI today about the tapes that show the inner workings of his campaign the campaign to defeat him is still in high gear. The Senate Majority pack is up with a website showing just why Mitch is so wrong for Kentucky.

As our government lurches from crisis to crisis...as our nation approaches the brink of fiscal collapse...as gridlock and dysfunction reach an all-time high...one man has done more than anyone else to stop both parties from fixing the problem: Beltway Mitch.
It was Beltway Mitch whose refusal to compromise resulted in sequestration - and now Kentucky will pay the price
Kentucky will lose $11 million in education funds, and will have to lay off as many as 150 teachers
Kentucky will lose funding for the Justice Assistance Grants that support law enforcement
Kentucky will lose funding to help victims of domestic abuse
Kentucky will lose funding for seniors who rely on meal assistance programs

McConnell Tapes: Beating Hypocrites at Their Own Game

RDemocrat — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 19:07:42 GMT

One thing we have always been sure of around here. Mitch McConnell is a Washington politician that will do anything to keep hold of his power he uses to destroy America and the interests of American workers. One need only look at his record of bailing out the bankers, but refusing to allow any funds to be used to create jobs in our country. Indeed, after obstructing progress for America as a whole and enriching himself in the process McConnell has seen his favorability plummet. Now, it has come to light just how low this piece of garbage would seek to continue shipping jobs overseas and redistributing wealth upwards.
For a while it appeared that McConnell would have a big name challenger in Ashley Judd. It would have set up a match between Beauty and the Beast from Hell. However, Judd decided to pass on the challenge. Now, thanks to Mother Jones information is coming to light that shows exactly why Judd probably passed on such a contest. Audio taken shows the inner workings and thinking of the McConnell mud machine that will do anything to keep power.

Their strategy included attacking the actress over the fact that she had a mental breakdown in the 90s:

But it did not end there. They mocked Judd for her religion. But on deeper reflection it seems as if these "Christians" might know a lot less about "their" religion than Judd did:

Laughter erupted again, with one guy in the meeting exclaiming, "Brother Donkey, Sister Bird!" The group didn't seem to realize that Judd was referring to well-known stories about St. Francis, who once preached a sermon to birds-"my little sisters"-and who referred to his own body as the "Brother Donkey." (In her book, Judd identifies herself as a Christian and often refers to church and prayer.)
With his comrades laughing about Judd's reference to donkeys and birds, the chief presenter remarked, "That's my favorite line so far. Absolute favorite one so far."

Go to Mother Jones to hear all the tapes from the McConnell "warroom":

http://www.motherjones.com/pol...

It seems too that Judd was not the only woman in the McConnell crosshairs. Alison Ludergan Grimes another potentially strong candidate was discussed also:

After running through Judd's liabilities, the group turned to Alison Lundergan Grimes, the 34-year-old Democratic secretary of the state, who was (and remains) a prospective McConnell challenger. The fellow in charge of the meeting referred to a Freedom of Information Act request filed "through a third party" that aimed to uncover damaging information about her actions in government, and he noted, "The best hit we have on her is her blatantly endorsing the 2008 Democratic national platform." He also claimed "she definitely has a very sort of self-centered, sort of egotistical aspect." His evidence? Grimes "frequently" refers to herself in the third person. And to make this point, he played a recording in which Grimes noted she had made the last name of her in-laws "popular" when she married into their family. He seemed to be working with scraps. As of this meeting, the McConnell squad had not dug up much on Grimes.

Now with all this coming to light thanks to the Mother Jones website the McConnell campaign is whining like the crybaby hypocrites they are. The Senator for Communist China is asking the FBI to waste valuable resources to find out who "bugged" his office:

"Senator McConnell's campaign is working with the FBI and has notified the local U.S. Attorney in Louisville, per FBI request, about these recordings," McConnell campaign manager Jesse Benton said in a statement.
"Obviously a recording device of some kind was placed in Senator McConnell's campaign office without consent. By whom and how that was accomplished presumably will be the subject of a criminal investigation."

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-...
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He was joined by the chairman of the NRSC Pat Moran:

"I am glad to read Senator McConnell's campaign is working with the Department of Justice and the FBI to find answers, but as the investigation continues, I am calling upon the Democratic National Committee, the DSCC, Kentucky Democratic State Party and left-leaning 501(C)(3) and (4) organizations like Mother Jones, Think Progress, American Bridge, Organizing For Action, and any other relevant political organizations to state for the record that they had nothing to do with these illegal acts, denounce them, and make clear they have no place in our political debate."

We will allow their very own Tea Baggers to respond to Pat Moran:

Mother Jones responded:

We are still waiting for Sen. Mitch McConnell to comment on the substance of the story. Before posting this article, we contacted his Senate office and his campaign office-in particular, his campaign manager, Jesse Benton-and no one responded. As the story makes clear, we were recently provided the tape by a source who wished to remain anonymous. We were not involved in the making of the tape, but we published a story on the tape due to its obvious newsworthiness. It is our understanding that the tape was not the product of a Watergate-style bugging operation. We cannot comment beyond that.

All we can say here is far from distancing ourselves from these tapes we here at Hillbilly Report think it is more than wonderful that someone managed to beat the Senator for Communist China at his own game. Even more comical is the whining and gnashing of teeth from the hypocrites that work for him. While we did not create these tapes we sure as hell wish we did and commend the source of these recordings.

President Obama: Are You Ready to Fight Yet?

RDemocrat — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 19:28:19 GMT

For a long time we have been telling the President and all Democrats one thing. There is no need to try and compromise or "reach out" to the modern Republican Party led by such "people" as John Boehner and Mitch McConnell. Indeed reaching out to these folks only leads to one thing. Pulling back a bloody nub. And now for a President that seems all to willing to sell his base and his beliefs down the river for some "grand bargain" to create some sort of legacy to be "proud" of we can only ask this. Ready to fight yet?
Indeed, instead of fighting the Republicans in the court of public opinion over policies that have destroyed the middle-class and asking the wealthy to pay more Obama seems determined to do what Republicans do best, call for sacrifice once again from the most vulnerable Americans:

Obama's plan for the budget year that begins Oct. 1 calls for slower growth in government benefits programs for the poor, veterans and the elderly, as well as higher taxes, primarily from the wealthy.
Obama proposes spending cuts and revenue increases that would result in $1.8 trillion in deficit reductions over 10 years, replacing $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts that are otherwise poised to take effect over the next 10 years.
Obama's plan includes $580 billion in new taxes that Republicans oppose. There's also a new inflation formula, rejected by many liberals, that would reduce the annual cost of living adjustments for a range of government programs, including Social Security and benefits for veterans.
Obama made no mention of the effect his budget would have on Social Security and other social safety net programs. That idea drew a hostile reaction from some of his most ardent political backers.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

And indeed as always with Obama it seems as if he is much more willing to alienate his base and those who really need him to fight for them in a failed attempt to reach some "grand bargain" with those who care nothing about anyone but themselves:

The AFL-CIO, the nation's largest coalition of unions and a staunch supporter of President Barack Obama, blasted Obama's budget proposal on Saturday in an email to supporters that urges them to sign a petition opposing cuts to Social Security and Medicare.
Liberals have made known their opposition to Obama's proposal since reports started emerging on Friday. At highest issue is the proposal known as Chained CPI, a means of cutting Social Security and other entitlement programs by using a different inflation measure that won't rise as much. It would have its biggest effect on Social Security.

The AARP also ripped into Obama's Chained CPI and informed it's members exactly what that meant to them:

The acronym is easy: CPI stands for consumer price index, a formula that looks at how the prices of stuff we need (food, for example) change over time. It's used to make cost-of-living adjustments in programs such as Social Security, veterans benefits and food stamps.
How much could payments change? Estimates show that under the chained CPI, your cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) would be about .3 percentage point below the plain old CPI. That works out to $3 less on every $1,000, which doesn't sound like much - except that it keeps compounding over time.
Look at it this way: The COLA for this year was 1.7 percent. If your monthly Social Security check was $1,250 last year, it increased to $1,271.25 this year.
With the chained CPI, you would be getting $1,267.50 - or $3.75 less a month and $45 less a year. Again, that might not seem like a big reduction, but if the COLA is the same next year, the difference increases to $7.61 a month and $91.32 for the year.

http://www.aarp.org/politics-s...

Paul Krugman has explained why this is quite simply a stupid idea:

Does it make sense in policy terms? No. First of all, there is no reason to believe that the chained index is a better measure of inflation facing seniors than the standard CPI. It's true that the standard measure arguably understates inflation for the typical household - but seniors have a different consumption basket from the young, one that includes more medical expenses, and probably face true inflation that's higher, not lower, than the official measure.
Anyway, it's not as if the current level of real benefits has any sacred significance. The truth - although you'll never hear this in Serious circles - is that we really should be increasing SS benefits. Why? Because the shift from defined-benefit pensions to defined contribution, the rise of the 401(k), has been a bust, and many older Americans will soon find themselves in dire straits. SS is the last defined-benefit pension still standing - thank you, Nancy Pelosi, for standing up to Bush - and should be strengthened, not weakened.
So what's this about? The answer, I fear, is that Obama is still trying to win over the Serious People, by showing that he's willing to do what they consider Serious - which just about always means sticking it to the poor and the middle class. The idea is that they will finally drop the false equivalence, and admit that he's reasonable while the GOP is mean-spirited and crazy.
Oh, and wanna bet that Republicans soon start running ads saying that Obama wants to cut your Social Security?

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.c...

Bernie Sanders has long been a fighter for working people and Progressive ideals in the Senate. Needless to say he was less than impressed with the Obama "compromise":

Millions of working people, seniors, disabled veterans, those who have lost a loved one in combat, and women will be extremely disappointed if President Obama caves into the long standing Republican effort to cut Social Security and benefits for disabled veterans and their survivors through a so-called chained CPI. In 2008, candidate Barack Obama told the American people that he would not cut Social Security. Having him go back on his word will only add to the rampant political cynicism that our country is experiencing today.
If Obama is serious about dealing with our deficit he would not cut Social Security - which has not added one penny to the deficit. Instead, he would support legislation that ends the absurdity of one out of four profitable corporations paying nothing in federal income taxes. He would also help us close the offshore tax haven loopholes that enable large corporations and the wealthy to avoid paying $100 billion a year in federal taxes.

http://www.sanders.senate.gov/...

And after all this alienating of his base, after asking seniors, disabled veterans, the poor and their children to sacrifice yet again what did Obama achieve with all this "reaching out"? He is pulling back a bloody nub just as we predicted. The Prince of Orange John Boehner came out with gnashing of teeth:

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Friday that President Obama was holding needed entitlement reforms "hostage" after the White House said that its budget, to be released next week, will propose cuts to Social Security and other programs.
"If the president believes these modest entitlement savings are needed to help shore up these programs, there's no reason they should be held hostage for more tax hikes," Boehner said in a statement. "That's no way to lead and move the country forward."
Boehner said Friday that Obama should not "make savings we agree upon conditional on another round of tax increases."
"At some point we need to solve our spending problem, and what the president has offered would leave us with a budget that never balances," Boehner said. "In reality, he's moved in the wrong direction, routinely taking off the table entitlement reforms he's previously told me he could support."

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-...
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The Prince of Orange is not alone. It does not matter how much sacrifice Obama offers up for the most vulnerable in our society the modern Republican Party is still determined to ensure one thing. They will not sacrifice one penny to the debt they ran up and the economy they crashed. Obama's bloody nub is the fact that Republicans simply insist on the fact that the budget will be balanced on everyone's backs but their own:

On the budget, Mr. Obama has tried both strategies - negotiating personally with Speaker John A. Boehner on a "grand bargain" for taxes and entitlement-program reductions, and when that failed, letting Congress try, which also failed. Now, with the bipartisan effort moribund, the president has decided he has no option but to publicly take the lead to revive negotiations with hopes of drawing some Republican support.
So the budget he is sending to Congress will embody his last compromise offer to Mr. Boehner in December. For the first time, Mr. Obama is formally proposing to reduce future Social Security benefits, if Republicans will agree to higher taxes on the wealthy and some corporations.
Republican leaders already have rejected the overture, based on early reports about it. But Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday that Mr. Obama is "showing some signs of leadership that's been lacking. I'm encouraged."

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04...

Sadly the grand total of one Republican, Lindsey Graham has even said one positive thing about the President's offer. And of course that is all dependent upon the President throwing millions of the most vulnerable Americans under the bus for his "grand bargain".

That is why we are encouraging the President once again to do what he has needed to do all along. Stop trying to compromise with the most selfish, unpatriotic folks in America who care nothing of anyone but themselves. They have shown they will crash our economy with their greed and block recovery in a shameless attempt to win elections. An attempt that by the way failed miserably. They care nothing of anything except padding their pockets at the expense of the rest of us.

If Obama is really concerned about creating a legacy he should give up making it the President who achieved a "grand bargain". Instead he should make his legacy the President who finally stood up the the greediest and least patriotic among us and fought for those who really, desperately needed someone in power on their side for once.

President Obama needs to stand up and fight these Republicans tooth and nail for every inch of America. They have no interest in compromise, they just want to pad their pockets with the destruction of America. The President should use all his power to defend all of us for once, not be complicit in the further destruction of the middle-class and the raping of the poor that Republicans enjoy so much.

So my message to the President is this. Quit "reaching out" and pulling back a bloody nub. A majority of the country voted for you and need you to fight, not compromise. Millions of Americans including your base would stand behind you proudly as you embarked upon a campaign to fight those that destroyed our livelihoods. Our only question to you is, are you ready to fight yet?

Rick Perry: A Fitting Ambassador

RDemocrat — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 03:48:53 GMT

One thing we have sworn to fight against around here.The uncaring idiocy and greed of the leaders of the modern Republican Party and their attempt to leave huge swaths of the American people out of the prosperity that should be shared by all of us. In their selfish vision of our country only they and those at the very top should be able to share in the promise of this great land. That is why they constantly outsource our jobs, depress our wages and allow our infrastructure to rot for a simple reason. So they can pocket all our nation's wealth and leave the rest of us to fight for the scraps from their table. Now the latest example is Rick Perry, disgraced former Presidential candidate and Governor of Texas.
Fresh off entering the Republican primary as a Conservative "savior" and alternative to Mitt Romney and eventually making a total fool of himself he is doing what Republicans do best. Denying hope for the working poor and the elderly all the while calling for those with the least to sacrifice most so they do not have to.

Of course as his Presidential run showed us he is pretty good at making a fool of himself too. Now he is continuing upon that accomplishment in a shameless attempt to certify his credentials with the most zealous folks the right-wing in this country have to offer. Indeed, that means slamming anything that would help anyone but himself and those he truly represents. This time it is those in Texas who could receive healthcare from federal dollars:

At a press conference where he was flanked by other conservatives, Perry argued expanding the health insurance program for the poor would make Texas "hostage" to the federal government.
"It would benefit no one in our state to see their taxes skyrocket and our economy crushed as our budget crumbled under the weight of oppressive Medicaid costs," Perry said at the state capitol.

http://thehill.com/blogs/healt...

Indeed, that dreaded federal government that makes rules and regulations that do not allow folks like Perry to make people work in sweatshops for pennies on the dollar. That federal government that has given us Social Security to retire on and an interstate road system to travel on. The same government that makes sure our food is safe and we can breath our air and fish in our lakes, rivers and streams. Folks like Perry could care less about that.

Of course, it would not benefit Perry and his ilk in Texas if Medicaid was expanded because of the fact that their sorry, greedy asses are covered. They can see a doctor any time they get sick and have insurance whether they have a pre-existing condition or not. Most of them inherited their money and did not work for a cent of it but they constantly begrudge the folks that do the actual work to build the bank accounts of others daily.

So, just who are these who would not benefit from any of this? It turns out they are 1 out of every 3 Texans:

Allowing the expansion, in the case of Texas, would insure 1.5 million low-income Texans and bring $90 billion in federal funding to the state over the first decade, according to estimates.
Texas has the highest share of uninsured residents in the United States - about 29 percent of its adult population - and confronts billions of dollars worth of uncompensated hospital care every year.

But these people mean nothing to Perry. He knows damn good and well his state could use that $90 billion and low-income Texans need health insurance. What is more important to Perry?:

Jay Root, a reporter for the Texas Tribune who wrote a book about Perry's last presidential run, said he could easily return as a presidential contender in coming years.
"The conventional wisdom in Austin is that he's not running for governor," Root said. "If he's going to run for anything, he's going to run for president."

As always with these modern Republicans the only thing that matters is not the betterment of their own state or our country is a whole. It is all about what profits them and what serves their ambitions. Even after making a fool of himself before Perry wants to be President. To the folks he must win over making a fool of yourself matters little. What matters is your "Conservative" bonafides which is actually just a code word for enriching the very few while expecting the rest of America to pay for their lavish lifestyles.

The good news is that I do not believe the majority of Americans are fooled by the greed and uncaring idiocy of folks like Rick Perry anymore. In fact, I hope he runs because he is a fitting ambassador for everything the modern Republican Party stands for.

A Dark Truth Behind the Newest Rand Paul Hypocrisy

RDemocrat — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 19:26:15 GMT

Rand Paul has been making a lot of headlines lately. It appears as if the Mad Doctor with the Twisty Curls has his sights set on one thing. Being President, something his father never even got close to. In that regards it seems as if Rand Paul thinks his brand of anti-government at all costs libertarianism will help Republicans do something they have only done once in twenty years. Win the popular vote in a Presidential election. However, as with his filibuster on drone attacks on American soil one fact continues to ring true. Even when Rand Paul says or does something that seems on the surface to be the right thing, he must lace it with a poisonous dose of hypocrisy because of the underlying dark truth of his true vision for America.
First, for anyone who believes that a libertarian President like Rand Paul would mean the legalization of Marijuana your hopes are unfounded. Rand Paul stands with virtually every other politician on criminalization of Marijuana and in fact believes if you "fire up" you are a lazy slacker leeching off the government that should not exist:

Paul admitted legalization would encourage marijuana use, which he said has negative effects.
"I don't want to encourage people to do it," Paul said. "I think even marijuana is bad to do. I think it takes away your incentive to work and show up and do the things you should be doing. I don't think it is a good idea. I don't want to promote that, but I also don't want to put people in jail who make a mistake. There are a lot of young people who do this and later on in their 20s. They grow up, get married and quit doing things like this, and I don't want to put them in jail and ruin their lives."

In other words, unlike his dad behind the scenes Rand Paul has been converted to a Republican politician the party has given a little rope to hang himself with. Hence he attempts to make headlines working with a real Progressive that really care about the rights of average Americans that just so happen to smoke a little weed:

"The main thing I've said is not to legalize them, but not to incarcerate people for extended periods of times," Paul said. "I'm working with Sen. [Patrick] Leahy - we have a bill on mandatory minimums. There are people in jail for 37, 50, 45 years for nonviolent crimes. That is a huge mistake. Our prisons are full of nonviolent criminals."

But of course that is something that many people of all stripes have long believed should happen. America should only pay to incarcerate violent criminals for long periods of time that pose a real threat to society. While we are glad Rand Paul has come aboard one thing that should bother everyone. Like his "drone filibuster" even this "awakening" for Rand Paul is tainted with hypocrisy. You see, Rand Paul thinks that marijuana use should be decriminalized because George W. Bush and Barack Obama smoked marijuana and it could have destroyed their lives needlessly:

"The last two presidents could conceivably have been put in jail for their drug use, and I really think - look what would have happened," he continued. "It would have ruined their lives. They got lucky but, poor kids - particularly in the inner city - don't get lucky. They don't have good attorneys, and they go to jail for these things. And I think it is a big mistake."

Hence the hypocrisy. In his obsession with being President Rand Paul would attack two Presidents, one Republican and one Democratic for smoking pot. He would point out how they could have been jailed for their "drug use". But what about Rand Paul? If these Presidents could have been jailed for simply smoking pot what would have happened to Rand Paul?:

The strangest episode of Paul's time at Baylor occurred one afternoon in 1983 (although memories about all of these events are understandably a bit hazy, so the date might be slightly off), when he and a NoZe brother paid a visit to a female student who was one of Paul's teammates on the Baylor swim team. According to this woman, who requested anonymity because of her current job as a clinical psychologist, "He and Randy came to my house, they knocked on my door, and then they blindfolded me, tied me up, and put me in their car. They took me to their apartment and tried to force me to take bong hits. They'd been smoking pot." After the woman refused to smoke with them, Paul and his friend put her back in their car and drove to the countryside outside of Waco, where they stopped near a creek. "They told me their god was 'Aqua Buddha' and that I needed to bow down and worship him," the woman recalls. "They blindfolded me and made me bow down to 'Aqua Buddha' in the creek. I had to say, 'I worship you Aqua Buddha, I worship you.' At Baylor, there were people actively going around trying to save you and we had to go to chapel, so worshiping idols was a big no-no."
Nearly 30 years later, the woman is still trying to make sense of that afternoon. "They never hurt me, they never did anything wrong, but the whole thing was kind of sadistic. They were messing with my mind. It was some kind of joke." She hadn't actually realized that Paul wound up leaving Baylor early. "I just know I never saw Randy after that-for understandable reasons, I think."

Indeed while Presidents Bush and Obama may have very well fired up some of the finest green in their youths, I am sure that they never tied up young women, loaded them into a trunk and forced them to pray to a false idol. Such Christian values shown in his youth by the future President Rand Paul!!

This latest hypocrisy by Rand Paul shows him as nothing but a typical Republican. You see, whether it is the deficit, debts, or the stealing of rights from the American people Republicans have long been good at one thing. Saying publicly that Democrats are doing bad things like running up debt, stealing rights, and bankrupting Social Security and Medicare while they themselves are behind the scenes doing the very things they blame on others all in a shameless attempt to redistribute everything in America to the top 2%. Unfortunately for all of us, young and old and in between they have been very successful at it.

In truth a Rand Paul Presidency would offer a few things to the young and everyone else. Your Social Security would be taken away from you and given to Wall St. Your Medicare would be stolen and given to insurance companies. Your rights in the workplace fought and died for by generations of truly brave Americans would be stripped away and you would be forced to work for the robber-barons and Corporate America for any wage they deemed sufficient with any protections and conditions they see fit.

In other words Rand Paul is far from a new breed of Republican. He harkens back to the old days of Republicanism before the Progressive movement of the early 1900s. He might wrap his extreme brand of America in a shiny new package but all his politics would achieve is this. An America where the rich and powerful and the ownership class gets to do whatever the hell they see fit to everyone else. That is why he hates government so much. It has created rules and regulations to keep that from happening.

In truth Rand Paul offers nothing to younger Americans except a return to the America their grandparents and great-grandparents fought so hard to change into something better, a fight very few now scarcely remember. Let us hope Americans of all ages and ethnicities are smart enough to say one thing to Rand Paul and his new generation of old Republicans.

Thanks but no thanks.

A Promise Kept By Mitch McConnell and the Republicans

RDemocrat — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 01:42:07 GMT

Another day another Mitch McConnell hypocrisy or flat-out lie whichever you choose to call it. His obsession to in this case not balance the budget on the backs of working Americans while redistributing our nation's wealth from those who work for it to himself and his ilk knows no limits. Today, he and Charles Grassley offered an amendment to stop the "largest tax increase in American history" but actually it hypocritically promises two things. Not only slashing programs working Americans depend on, but an even larger tax increase because of a huge funding gap. Of course in the world of Mitch McConnell tax increases do not count if you increase them on working Americans. They only count if you increase them on rich Americans like himself.
Indeed, the hypocrisy just continues to spew like poison from the mouth of the favorite "son-in-law" of Communist China:

WASHINGTON, DC - U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell with Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and others introduced an amendment today to prevent the Senate Democrats' trillion-dollar tax increase - the largest tax increase in American history. The amendment, offered as part of the FY 2014 Budget Resolution, also calls for comprehensive tax reform to boost the economy, create jobs and ensure Americans can keep more of their hard-earned money.
"The Senate Democrat budget is nothing more than a rehash of the same tired policies that continue to pummel the middle class," Senator McConnell said. "While the Democrats prefer to increase spending and taxes rather than balance the budget, middle-class families want Congress to focus on growing the economy, not the government. We need to control spending and balance the budget in order to kick-start economic growth and create American jobs."

http://www.mcconnell.senate.go...

But McConnell fails to mention a few things. First, that the "spending on government" he is whining about is actually an investment in America for something that is desperately needed. JOBS. Something he blocked in a shameless attempt to deny President Obama a second term. How did that work out Mitchy-boy?

Indeed, McConnell and the Republicans are the ones who seek to "rehash the same old tired policies that pummel the middle-class". Or at least ship their jobs overseas and redistribute their wealth to the very top. The Paul Ryan budget that Republicans take as gospel does just that. It continues the policies of trickle-down that have been tried over and over again.

However, these policies cannot be called "failures". The truth is these policies have succeeded in doing just what they were meant to do. They redistributed wealth from bottom to top on a huge scale and ran our national debt through the roof giving folks like Ryan and McConnell just what they wanted. A chance to tell the most vulnerable Americans among us that they are the problem and anything that helps them must be gutted.

But before Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan or any of the other greedy, lying reverse Robin Hoods in the Republican Party try to tell you they are cutting taxes and balancing the budget you should consider this. Like everything else that comes out of their poisonous mouths this is a lie. The Republican/Ryan budget does anything but cut taxes and it certainly does not balance the budget.

You see as always there is a problem with "Republican math". That problem? A huge funding gap even with the draconian slashing of social programs. Why? Because as always with Republicans this budget slashes taxes on corporations and the greediest and least patriotic among us. This chart shows the huge funding gap this will create:

In other words even after they gut social programs Americans have earned and depend on they are still looking at a huge shortfall. That is because they greedily insist on giving themselves even more tax cuts. Even more than Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan ran on and lost. Do you want to know the dirty little secret? Just like Mitt Romney Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan have only one choice to balance the budget. They will have to RAISE YOUR TAXES to SLASH THEIRS:

If, on the other hand, policymakers truly sought to offset the full $6 trillion in costs by scaling back tax expenditures, they could only do so by increasing taxes on households with incomes below $200,000. When the TPC analyzed a similar plan from Governor Romney - which would have cut the top income-tax rate from 35 to 28 percent - it found that even after dramatically scaling back tax expenditures for filers with incomes above $200,000, Romney's plan would still have provided large net tax cuts to those households. To pay for these tax cuts without adding to the deficit, TPC estimated that families with children and with incomes below $200,000 would have faced tax increases of about $2,000 per family, on average.
The tax cuts that Chairman Ryan seeks are substantially larger than Governor Romney's, with a goal of cutting the top rate from 39.6 to 25 percent. Without any cuts to tax expenditures, reaching the Ryan budget's goal of a 25 percent top rate while abolishing the AMT and repealing the Affordable Care Act's revenue-raising measures would result in tax cuts worth an average of about $330,000 a year to households with incomes of more than $1 million a year; the tax cuts for high-income filers would necessarily be larger under Ryan's plan than under Romney's.[3] As explained below, even with the same dramatic scaling back of tax expenditures for filers with incomes above $200,000 that TPC examined in its Romney analysis - including entirely wiping out their deductions for mortgage interest and charitable giving - families with children that have incomes below $200,000 would have to face tax increases averaging more than $3,000 a year, if policymakers were to avoid increasing the deficit while reaching Chairman Ryan's 25-percent top-tax-rate goal.

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index....

Get that? Far from being satisfied with the wealth they have already redistributed from you to them Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan and the Republicans expect you to make yet another $3,000 donation to their greed. After three decades of trickle-down economics decimating the middle-class and our economy all they are worried about is how to steal more of your money from you.

Someone needs to ask Mitch McConnell and the Republicans this. Which is it? Does this budget cut taxes or balance the budget? The sad truth is it does neither. It raises taxes on a huge majority of Americans but even still will never come up with enough to fill the huge funding gap.

In fact, the only promises kept in the Republican budget is simple. It slashes taxes for a very few people all while gutting funding for anything that helps anyone left behind by thirty years of Conservative greed and idiocy. In that manner, it is a promise kept by Mitch McConnell and the Republicans.

Mitch McConnell and the Republicans Want You to Pay for Their Habit Once More

RDemocrat — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 23:30:02 GMT

One thing we have gotten quite used to around these parts. If Mitch McConnell opposes something you can be sure that it would help Americans as a whole. Also, if Mitch McConnell supports something you know it will be more of the same failed policies that have destroyed millions of lives and livelihoods in our country. It is no big surprise. After being in Washington to spearhead the redistribution of wealth from the working-class to the very few for decades Mitch McConnell has stood in opposition to anything that helps America as a whole because that would mean sacrifice from himself and the very few of his ilk he truly represents. Now once again in the budget arguments Mitch McConnell is clearly using his familiar hypocrisy in fighting to continue destroying our economy.
Now, before listening to the Senator for Communist China Mitch McConnell say anything about debt, deficits and the economy it is important to do one thing. Think about where Mitch McConnell was when all this was going on. Where was he when this debt was run up by deficits and the deregulation that sank our economy?

Mitch McConnell was not only right there, he was INSTRUMENTAL in passing all the policies that have crippled our country with debt. He was right there spearheading the policies that crashed our economy. He not only championed policies that redistributed wealth upwards but when that system of greed came crashing down he personally ensured that the very folks that crashed our economy got a bailout, essentially making their destructive behavior a no-risk investment.

After decades of fighting to outsource jobs to yes, CHINA and destroy America's working class Mitch McConnell hit working Americans with another double-whammy. A crashed economy and a huge bill for the profits they never shared in.

But that even was not enough. Mitch McConnell had to punish those very working Americans for voting to move America in a new direction. While he and other Republicans rail against the stimulus the truth of the matter is it was too little, not too much. America needed to invest in her land and people and Mitch McConnell made sure that simply was not going to happen.

After bailing out the bankers in the middle of a jobs crises they created Mitch McConnell made sure that one crisis has still not been addressed. That very jobs crises. He blocked the jobs bill introduced by President Obama in a shameless attempt to make Americans suffer enough to vote for Mitt Romney and the Republican vision of further wealth redistribution and pain for the working-class. Even still, he holds our economy hostage to heartlessly force the most vulnerable among us to bail folks like him out once again by balancing the budget on their backs with no sacrifice from he and his ilk.

That is why Americans everywhere should be insulted when they hear Mitch McConnell say anything about budget plans put forth by Democrats:

"Instead of getting Washington spending under control, their proposed budget doubles down on the same wasteful 'stimulus' spending we already know doesn't work. In fact, at a time when Americans believe about half of every dollar they send to Washington is wasted, the Democrat budget would increase spending by nearly 62 percent.

http://www.mcconnell.senate.go...

Indeed, this "stimulus" Mitch McConnell speaks of is investment in our country to solve the real crises that face Americans, a JOBS crises. While Mitch McConnell thinks it is perfectly American to invest in bankers, he does not think average Americans are worth the efforts. The lives and livelihoods of you and your family? They are garbage to Mitch McConnell.

And Americans should be more insulted still by the comments by Mitch McConnell on Medicare and Social Security as well as taxes:

"Their budget will do more to harm the economy than to help it, and it will let Medicare and Social Security drift closer to bankruptcy. And then there's the Democrats' $1.5 trillion tax hike. Trillion with a T.
"Let me just repeat that: any Senator who votes for that budget is voting for a $1.5 trillion tax hike, the largest in the history of our country.

Mitch McConnell thinks taking thousands of dollars in earned benefits from every American's Social Security and Medicare is "saving it". And his complaint about taxes? Consider this. Mitch McConnell goes on to tout the Republican budget as a contrast to the Democratic plan he is so offended by. But whether he is talking about the zealous budget put forth by the Republican Study Committee or the not so zealous but still radical budget put forth by disgraced Vice-Presidential candidate Paul Ryan one thing is clear. They will be raising taxes also. However, Mitch McConnell and the Republicans hope to raise YOUR taxes, not their own or by ballooning the deficit yet again:

House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan's (R-WI) fiscal plan promises to balance the federal budget in 10 years, make major cuts in income tax rates for both individuals and corporations, and raise the same amount of revenue as current law. If House Republicans want to do all three, they will have to eliminate trillions of dollars in popular tax preferences.
The Tax Policy Center estimates that cutting individual rates to 10 percent and 25 percent, repealing the Alternative Minimum Tax and the tax increases included in the Affordable Care Act, and cutting the corporate rate from 35 percent to 25 percent would add $5.7 trillion to the deficit over the next decade. Thus, if House Republicans want to cut these taxes and still collect the revenues they promise, they'd have to raise other taxes by $5.7 trillion.
The tax cuts described in Ryan's budget would generate a huge windfall for high-income taxpayers. On average, households would get a cut of $3,000. But those in the top 0.1 percent of income, who make $3.3 million or more, would get a whopping $1.2 million on average-a 20 percent increase in their after-tax income.

http://taxvox.taxpolicycenter....

Does anyone really believe McConnell and the Republicans are going to ask themselves or the folks they truly represent to make up that $5.7 trillion? Of course not. They are going to tax the middle and lower classes and attempt to slash even more government programs that help veterans, the disabled, seniors, children and the poor. It is just what they do. In their never-ending greed and obsession to steal all our nation's wealth nothing is sacred to them. Much less you, your parents, grandparents or children. Greed is the only policy they know and Mammon is the only God they will ever worship.

But of course McConnell will go one further. In his whole career as a "public servant" he has been best at one thing. Pointing the finger at others and accusing them of doing the very things that he does daily. Hence this statement about the Democrats:

"Democrats like to say budgets aren't just about dollars and cents, they're about values; well, what their budget tells me is that they've completely lost touch with the hopes and concerns of their constituents - that they're serving the needs of government instead of the needs of those who elected them.

http://www.mcconnell.senate.go...

Indeed, budgets are about values. Just one look at any budget offered by Republicans or anything Mitch McConnell supports will show you one thing. They are the ones who have completely lost touch with their constituents. Indeed they do not seek to grow government because government might keep them from preying upon those very constituents. They seek not to do away with our debt and in fact seek balance the budget on our backs.

What they do grow is their own bank accounts as they refuse to sacrifice to the problems their policies caused. In fact, they seek to grow income inequality and grow the amount of wealth they redistribute from your pocket to theirs. They care nothing of their country, their constituents or anyone else but themselves.

In fact in a way I pity them. They live in such a shallow, selfish world that unless they are finding new ways to steal from all of us they are never satisfied. Like a crack addict, they cannot be happy with what they have right now but are always seeking the next hit and the next high. Unfortunately for America just like a crack addict someone else usually has to pay for their most expensive habit.

Sadly America has paid dearly for the Republican obsession with greed, idiocy and insanity.

Whats So "Grand" About This "Bargain"?

RDemocrat — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 06:24:29 GMT

President Obama is at it again. In "reaching out" to Republicans he is simply giving them too much power and too much say in deficit negotiations. These are after all the same Republicans who have lost the last two elections on their "ideals" and offer nothing of substance to millions of working Americans. Their only solution is to balance the budget on the backs of seniors, veterans, the working poor, and children. Their goal is to destroy our social safety net and take billions of dollars out of our pockets. Now, not only is President Obama helping them do it he is actually trying to convince Democrats who oppose such measures to back him up.
He was on Capital Hill trying to convince Democrats today to give up their opposition to helping Republicans steal benefits millions of Americans depend on and have earned all in some sickening attempt to come to a "grand bargain" with Republican greed:

"What he basically said was that there's got to be a balanced deal," Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) said just after the meeting. "And that if there's going to be revenues, then obviously there's going to be, in a Republican-controlled House, the need for us to consider some of the things we don't like. That was more or less it."
Wrapping up his congressional outreach tour Thursday, Obama asked House Democrats to consider cuts they oppose for the sake of a bipartisan budget deal. He openly discussed his proposal to adopt a less generous formula for calculating inflation growth for entitlements, known as chained CPI, in exchange for more tax revenue from Republicans.

http://thehill.com/homenews/ho...

Sadly for our party at least some of them are considering it:

"We're open to talking about how we can find other ways to save, whether that's somebody like me paying more for a co-pay or a deductible," Pelosi said after the meeting. "But we have to be careful when we means-test because most of the beneficiaries on Medicare make $40,000 or below."
Pelosi said Obama's proposition to move to the chained CPI is also "something to put on the table."
"The president is very clear about this," Pelosi said. "No revenue, no change in entitlements."

However, the simple fact of the matter is that revenues should be raised without ANY changes to Social Security. Social Security has never added a penny to the national deficit and instead of trying to compromise with the economic terrorists in the Republican Party Democrats should be fighting them tooth and nail to do the right thing.

Nothing is "grand" about a bargain that once again sells the wrong people down the river. If this is the best that the President can come up with we are better with no deal whatsoever. Lets let things continue the way they are now and let the elections in 2014 and 2016 decide things when we may have real leaders with courage stand up and do what has needed to be done in Washington for a long time. Fight the Republican Party and their plans to make everyone sacrifice but themselves.

Fortunately not everyone is Washington is willing to let Republicans balance the budget on the backs of those who can least afford it. Sen. Bernie Sanders recently explained his opposition to the "chained CPI" treachery Obama and some Democrats are floating:

The so-called "chained CPI" is Washington shorthand for one of the most-talked-about cuts favored by Republicans and some Democrats.
Wall Street billionaires and other supporters claim that changing the consumer price index is a "minor tweak." Tell that to the millions of senior citizens trying to survive on just $14,000 a year whose Social Security benefits would be cut overall by $112 billion during the next decade.
Average 65-year-olds would get $650 a year less in benefits when they turn 75 and see a $1,000 a year cut when they turn 85.
Permanently disabled veterans who started receiving disability benefits from the Veterans Administration at age 30 would see their benefits cut by more than $1,400 a year at age 45, $2,300 a year at age 55 and $3,200 a year at age 65.
According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, switching to a chained CPI would increase taxes by more than $59 billion over the next decade.
More than three-quarters of the new revenue raised by the year 2021 would come from Americans making less than $200,000 a year. Those making between $30,000 and $40,000 would be hit the hardest, while those making more than $1 million would see virtually no change. What about President Obama's promise that there would be no income tax increases for people making less than $250,000 a year?

Read more: http://thehill.com/special-rep...
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Sanders goes on to state real ideas on deficit reduction:

Deficit reduction is important, but we must not balance the budget on the backs of the elderly, the veterans, the children, the sick and the most vulnerable people in America. There are fair ways to reduce the deficit. Instead of cutting cost-of-living adjustments for senior citizens and disabled veterans, let's stop offshore tax haven abuses that allow the wealthy and large corporations to avoid paying $100 billion a year in U.S. income taxes. Instead of raising taxes on struggling working families, let's demand that the one 1 of 4 profitable corporations in America that pay nothing in federal income taxes start paying their fair share.

And indeed President Obama and any Democrat who would support him on this should quite simply be ashamed. How many times are they going to concede to the Republicans and let them control the debate? How many times will they allow the most vulnerable in society to be made scapegoats of and be saddled with all the sacrifices for the excesses of the last thirty years, excesses they have not taken part in?

Once again I must say emphatically that no deal is a good deal. President Obama simply does not have the will to fight the Republicans in the public forum and fight for those who desperately need him to. The best thing that can happen for our country now is that this horrible "grand capitulation" falls through.

Mr. President those who you are calling upon to sacrifice simply have nothing left to give and it is quite insulting that the only thing you can come up with is making them do that once again while the Mitch McConnell's and John Boehner's of the world are making all of us, yourself included look like fools.

The New Paul Ryan Budget is a Sorry Reminder of a Sad Fact

RDemocrat — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 04:17:27 GMT

It appears as if the Republican "numbers cruncher" Paul Ryan is at it again. Fresh off an election in which his last budget and the numbers therein were widely vetted and rejected you would think he would have learned his lesson. That Americans simply do not want the kind of Austerity at all costs he and his Republican ilk subscribe to. However, far from learning his lesson Paul Ryan and his fellow Republicans are doubling down with an even more extreme, heartless version of the "Ryan Roadmap"
Because it appears as if the new Ryan map leads down a road straight to hell. Which is exactly where he and the Republicans that subscribe to his ideas are telling millions of Americans they can go. But of course one thing that was left out of the new "roadmap" for our future was any kind of sacrifice from Ryan or any of his ilk.

Ryan and the Republicans hypocritically take the cuts they already "compromised on" with Obama even though Republicans say Obama has cut nothing and takes them to an even more draconian level. He would also repeal the only chance tens of millions of hardworking Americans have to obtain healthcare insurance away:

Ryan has been releasing an annual plan to sledgehammer U.S. spending for years now, but this time, the mighty hammer falls with a bit of a tailwind. Our deficits are already going down, by a lot. First was the Budget Control Act of 2011, which scheduled $900 billion of cuts over the next ten years. Second was the Fiscal Cliff Deal, which raised taxes on family income over $450,000. Third was the sequester, which cuts another $1.2 trillion -- half from defense, half from non-defense -- over the next decade.
Ryan pockets all of those savings. And he goes further. Much further. He repeals Obamacare. He cuts federal support for Medicaid. He cuts another $1 trillion from "mandatory spending", which is a deceptively anodyne catch-all for mostly (a) cash assistance to the unemployed, low-income, and veterans, and (b) retirement programs for vets and federal employees.

http://www.theatlantic.com/bus...

In other words, Ryan is adding cuts Republicans say don't even exist into his framework but does not believe that is hypocritical enough. He is asking for more blood and sacrifice from the working poor, the middle-class, the unemployed, veterans, seniors, children and federal employees. To the Republican Party no amount of sacrifice from these folks is ever going to be enough.

Why? Because quite simply Paul Ryan and the Republicans are never going to ask for sacrifice for themselves or the very few people they truly represent. While this budget is full of sacrifices for me and you Paul Ryan refuses to ask for any sacrifice from the top 2%. In fact, his budget is yet another round of giveaways and tax breaks designed to create even more income inequality in this country:

The tax plan would cut the top rate to 25 percent -- a 15-point reduction for income above $450,00 -- but somehow it would also collect the same amount of revenue as the president's current policy. Quick math: If you cut tax rates for the top 0.1 percent in half, the only way to make the same amount of money is (a) to practically wipe out all of their tax advantages or (b) to raise taxes disproportionately on the bottom 99.9 percent. To be clear: As written, this is almost certainly a plan to raise taxes on the same lower-middle class which is also getting hit with massive spending cuts.

Get that? So not only will the Ryan budget produce more draconian cuts for the very folks that have sacrificed the most, worked the hardest and seen the least income gains in the last thirty years but they will be expected to foot the bill for the huge funding gap Ryan's tax cuts for folks like himself will produce. After bailing the top 2% out once we are expected again to sacrifice for the problems their greed created.

Indeed all the bad ideas Ryan lost on are back only this version makes them seem like they are on steroids, or quite possibly have been smoking crack:

All the tired ideas from 2011 and 2012 are back: eliminating Medicare's guarantee to retirees by turning it into a voucher plan; dispensing with Medicaid and food stamps by turning them into block grants for states to cut freely; repealing most of the reforms to health care and Wall Street; shrinking beyond recognition the federal role in education, job training, transportation and scientific and medical research. The public opinion of these callous proposals was made clear in the fall election, but Mr. Ryan is too ideologically fervid to have learned that lesson.
The 2014 budget is even worse than that of the previous two years because it attempts to balance the budget in 10 years instead of the previous 20 or more. That would take nondefense discretionary spending down to nearly 2 percent of the economy, the lowest in modern history. And in its laziest section, it sets a goal of slashing the top tax rate for the rich to 25 percent from 39.6 percent, though naturally Mr. Ryan doesn't explain how this could happen without raising taxes on middle- and lower-income people. (Sound familiar?)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03...

And once again it boils down to one simple fact. All of us are going to be paying for this Austerity, not folks like Paul Ryan. Worse yet, as the Christian Science Monitor points out these policies are severely misled, have been tried before and simply DO NOT WORK:

Austerity economics - of which Ryan's upcoming budget is the most extreme version - is a cruel hoax. Cruel because it hurts most those who are already hurting; a hoax because it doesn't work.
The entire framework is based on the false analogy that the federal budget is akin to a family's budget.
Families do have to balance their budgets. But that's precisely why the federal government has to be the spender of last resort when consumer spending falls short of boosting the economy toward full employment.
And as long as income and wealth continue to concentrate at the very top, the broad middle class and those aspiring to join it won't have the purchasing power to boost the economy.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Busin...

Why is it so hard for folks to understand? As long as so many people have too little money to be able to contribute to our economy past just paying the bills and sometimes not even that our economy will never recover. If these policies Paul Ryan so desperately wants to enact worked then our economy would not have crashed in the first place. It was greed, not debt that crashed our economy and this budget simply offers more of the same greed while blatantly leaving millions of Americans in the cold.

Of course as with anything that is totally selfish and idiotic, the Senator for Communist China Mitch McConnell is all for it:

"I commend Chairman Ryan for releasing a serious and detailed budget blueprint for getting our nation's fiscal house in order. His budget recognizes the need to grow the economy, not the government. With our country's debt at crisis levels, Congressman Ryan's plan would balance the budget in 10 years, which will foster a healthier economy and help create jobs. By contrast, the budget that Senate Democrats will release this week won't balance - ever. We all know that families must balance their budgets, and Washington should, too. Today's House Republican budget puts our nation firmly on a path to get our spending and debt in order so we can regain control of our economic future."

http://www.mcconnell.senate.go...

Of course he fails to mention the effect he and his policies of greed had in running up that very debt he rails against. He also fails to mention how he has obstructed American recovery over the last five years in a shameless attempt to score cheap political points and get Obama defeated at the polls.

Which is really all you need to know. One thing we have learned around here through bitter experience is this. Any time Mitch McConnell is excited about something and is heaping praise on someone's ideas you can be sure that it is a very bad thing for our country indeed. Mitch McConnell will never endorse anything that would help our country as a whole because he wants us to suffer for shunning the Republicans and their ideas and for electing President Obama twice.

That is why the greatest mistake the President or any Democrat can make is using this budget as some kind of measuring stick or beginning point for any negotiations. Republicans have shown their true goal which is the enrichment of themselves at the expense of everyone else. They will do anything to accomplish that goal and the new Ryan budget is just another sorry reminder of that sad fact.