Priorities

Today, the Senate invoked cloture on a jobs bill that provides states with $26 billion in funding for Medicaid and to prevent mass layoffs of teachers. It decreases the deficit by $1.3 billion over ten years through cuts to food stamps and closing corporate tax loopholes. Two Republicans — Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) — voted to invoke cloture and end the ongoing filibuster. The rest of the Republican caucus, however, voted no. That’s 38 Republican senators who voted against a deficit reducing jobs bill.

So basically the entire GOP senate caucus tried to kill a bill that would give desperately needed medicaid money to the states and prevent mass layoffs of teachers, police officers and firefighters, because it paid for itself by closing some tax loopholes for companies that offshore. Even after they demanded the Democrats cut the pittance that was in there for food stamps. Unreal.

Pretty Serious

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, told WHMI, a Michigan radio station, that Pfc. Bradley Manning should be executed if he did, in fact, leak classified documents and video to WikiLeaks. [...]

"If they won't charge him with treason, they ought to charge him with murder," Rogers said yesterday. [...]

"We know for a fact that people will likely be killed because of this information being disclosed," he said. "That's pretty serious."

Cheney First. Valerie Plame ran a decades in the making spy network that tracked nuclear material and technology with the aim of keeping it away from people who would use it to attack the United States. It was one of most important national security assets in the history of this country. The Republicans burned it on purpose. And we could all get vaporized as a result. Somebody should hang for that.

Raped

Ken Buck, who is running in the Colorado Republican Senate primary, has surged in recent polls due in large part to tea party support. In a video obtained by the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent, Buck stakes out a position on abortion that is likely to appeal to his far-right base, saying that even in the cases of rape and incest, abortions should not be allowed:

BUCK: I am pro-life, and I’ll answer the next question. I don’t believe in the exceptions of rape or incest. I believe that the only exception, I guess, is life of the mother. And that is only if it’s truly life of the mother.

So if a girl is raped by her father and gets pregnant, this guy wants to force the girl to have her fathers baby. Sound extreme? It is. It's also a plank in the Republican Party platform.

What They're Thinking

Rand Paul to Details Magazine: “The bottom line is: I’m not an expert, so don’t give me the power in Washington to be making rules,” Paul said at a recent campaign stop in response to questions about April’s deadly mining explosion in West Virginia…“You live here, and you have to work in the mines. You’d try to make good rules to protect your people here. If you don’t, I’m thinking that no one will apply for those jobs.”

Let coal mining companies and other corporations make the rules for themselves because if they don't do it responsibly people wont apply to work there. That's what he's thinking. We're thinking Paul is just espousing standard Republican regulatory philosophy. And we're thinking that philosophy kills people.

Corporate America (R-US)

LA Times: Reporting from Washington — Driven by increasing anger at Democratic policies and by recent Supreme Court decisions unshackling corporate contributions, business and conservative groups are preparing a flood of campaign money to try to wrest control of Congress from the Democrats. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the biggest collection point for corporate contributions, has increased its spending for the congressional election in November from $35 million in 2008 to a projected $75 million this year. Officials say it may go even higher.

Corporate money is flooding into the GOP. Should the GOP take over in November the corporations will get what they paid for. If the American people want government by the corporation they should vote GOP.

Don't Need Facts

This morning on Fox News Sunday, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), claimed he doesn’t need to listen to economists or consider economic data when putting together his policy agenda:

WALLACE: Congressman — a number of top economists say what we need is more economic stimulus.

BOEHNER: Well, I don’t need to see GDP numbers or to listen to economists. All I need to do is listen to the American people, because they’ve been asking the question now for 18 months, “where are the jobs?”

Perhaps their refusal to consider things like data, facts, experts, history, or reality is one reason their public policy always brings such horrible results. And jobs? Why would anybody listen to a Republican about jobs?

Last 34 years of jobs created per month:

Carter 218,000
Reagan 166,000
HW Bush 53,000
Clinton 239,000
GW Bush 37,000

Crib Notes

This morning on Fox News Sunday Chris Wallace asked former half-term governor Sarah Palin about letting the Bush tax cuts expire. He pointed out that “the Republicans keep talking about being deficit hawks. This is $678 billion you are not going to pay for.” Palin responded “no, this is going to result in the largest tax increase in U.S. history. Again, it’s idiotic.” Wallace proceeded to let Palin spend the next minute reading from notes on paper that she had written down. He interrupted her just for a moment to ask if she had anything written down on her hand, to which she responded that she did.

We respectfully suggest Ms Palin might be better suited to a career as a spokesmodel instead of President of the United States. But what does it say about the Republican party that they would vault this woman all the way to the top just because she's a MILF?