Republicans have their priorities straight. On day one, they’ve introduced a bill for a national ban on abortion (which will get vetoed) and are also trying to introduce dynamic scoring so they can loot the treasury and pay back their donors, all while holding social security hostage.
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jl
” so they can http ”
Those miserable House GOP loons allowing themselves to http is a damend outrage, IMHO. Or maybe the link needs to be fixed.
As to substance, why didn’t they just pass a law that all clocks and calendars must run backwards and finish the job at one fell swoop? I thought they were a can-do and ‘git ‘er done’ bunch of people.
Violet
How DARE they http:// ! And http://nymag at that. Scandalous!
Lavocat
Should be a fun [loooooong] Congress. Whoa-yeah. Interesting to see where all the vetoes fall.
CONGRATULATIONS!
I’m waiting for a national ban on rational thought. Seems we’re about 90% of the way there.
BGinCHI
Can Obummer veto the Dynamic Shitscoring thing?
Jesus these fuckers are brazen. I would think POTUS ought to be able to nix that so that he/she doesn’t have to do down with that ship.
KG
this dynamic scoring thing is going to be interesting… if only because it’ll be a blast when the CBO uses dynamics the GOP rejects.
Hunter Gathers
This is what happens when you put White people in charge.
BGinCHI
@CONGRATULATIONS!: Fox News is already tooled up for that.
Also TX Education Board.
PurpleGirl
@jl:
pass a law that all clocks and calendars must run backwards and finish the job at one fell swoop?
No, not run backward. Then clocks and calendars would still be moving through the time periods they want to ignore. Clocks can stay where they are but calendars have to be reset to 100 years ago or maybe 150 years ago. Time can be picked up from there. I just wonder if we can avoid the Civil War, World War I and World War II.
NotMax
@jl
heavily toadying to teapartiers
NotMax
Augh. Messed that up. Meant it to be:
heavily toadying tea partiers
jl
@KG:
” it’ll be a blast when the CBO uses dynamics the GOP rejects.”
Sadly, the article explains that some GOPer aide thought that one through. They fixed it so they can game in a dishonest way what must be dynamically scored and what not, and now much difference it would make. So they will never be forced to experience the the sorrow and the pity of getting any news that they don’t want to hear.
Steeplejack
@NotMax:
Coding is hard.
KG
@Hunter Gathers: I thought they put an orange guy in charge?
@jl: oh, they will, it’ll just be later. Ask Sam Brownback how that magical thinking is working out in Kansas.
NotMax
And a big, fat “heh.” The gang who couldn’t count straight.
jl
@KG: Well, they fixed it so they won’t any bad news in their precious chamber and hearing rooms. We can hope they might get it at election time.
Mike in NC
Day Two of GOP Rule: all icky gay people are ordered back into the closet and undergo therapy?
JPL
@KG: They will just change the parameters. That is why dynamic scoring is so much win.
Baud
Senator Udall approves.
Villago Delenda Est
@Hunter Gathers: I’d like to be able to say that all white people are not this stupid, but we know this is true, because some of them post here.
But gosh, it’s getting harder and harder to make the case for that. The percentage of really stupid white people seems to be moving beyond 27%.
JPL
@JPL: jl beat me to it. Dynamic scoring is a ponzi scheme. I’ve been mentioning my own dynamic scoring on how to view my retirement income, but of course, I’m an Obamacrat so wouldn’t be so stupid to try it.
Villago Delenda Est
@PurpleGirl: They’re looking to refight the Civil War (better known among them as “The War of Northern Aggression”) and this time somehow magically win it with a fraction of the Union’s industrial and naval capabilities.
This time, Sherman doesn’t fart around when marching through Georgia.
Mike J
@Baud: You mean Mark Uterus. What a chump, just talking about icky girl things all the time.
Seth Owen
@BGinCHI: No, Obama can’t veto it. It’s an instruction to the CBO, which is part of the legislative branch. As a co-equal branch they get to make their own rules as to how the conduct their business.
KG
@jl: @JPL: Brownback won by 30 points four years ago, last year he won by 4. It still raises the question: WTF is wrong with Kansas? Granted, it’s been a minute or two since I got my degree in polisci, but I think a 26 point swing in the electorate is, um, “big”.
JPL
@Villago Delenda Est: What surprised me is the same folk are for reparations but for Cuban Americans. Hell with the blacks that lost their land.
jl
@JPL: I meant something slightly different, or maybe I misunderstand your comment. The linked article explains how the GOP can avoid dynamic scoring on their pet projects if it will not produce the answer they want, and also control how much difference it makes. They set expenditure limits on what must be dynamically scored, so if they cut up the spending bills in different ways, they will get different answers, because some of the spending will be dynamically scored and some not.
They don’t even trust their own ponzi scheme (though I think ‘counterfactual BS’ is a better term) to give them whatever they want.
Mart
@Hunter Gathers: This is what happens when you put OLD white FUNDY CHRISTIAN MEN in charge.
JPL
@Mike J: The Senate hasn’t voted on it so relax.
Another Holocene Human
@Hunter Gathers: lol
waiting for somebody to chime in with some ethnic essentialism about violent scots-irish culture and how that’s actually a good thing
note: I easily pass for “scots-irish” (phenotype), at least until I open my mouth … oddly, despite how blood will out my Irish Catholic folks aren’t violent in the least … and apparently before immigrating and becoming farmers they were landless drifters in Ireland … maybe being a violent fuck skips 10 generations every now and then
Villago Delenda Est
@Another Holocene Human: As someone of scots-irish descent, I vigorously resemble your remarks.
Another Holocene Human
@NotMax: Hahahaha, Pelosi vs Boehner couldn’t be a better matchup.
eta: for our side
Villago Delenda Est
@JPL: They’re not in favor of reparations for the descendants of Loyalists booted out of the country in the late 18th century, either.
JPL
@jl: Pretty sure we are on the same page. I linked back to my original comment on changing parameters. I tried to edit that comment but wasn’t allowed to. hmmmph.
Another Holocene Human
@Villago Delenda Est:
The percentage of really stupid white people is well above 27%. They’re carrying the crazification factor for all other races and ethnicities (who might be in 5-10% range, generously).
This is why just about every single white person who posts here has the “crazy uncle at the holidays” war stories (or crazy sister in law, crazy younger brother, etcet, etcet).
raven
Sounds like they got these fuckers.
Villago Delenda Est
@Another Holocene Human: Lord knows I fall into that group. My sister is a huge fan of infowars.com, to my perpetual shame.
Another Holocene Human
Not for nothing, Villago, but white suicide rates far exceed other races and ethnicities in this country. It’s that one weird fact of epidemiology. White males moreso than white females but when you split up whites by sex and compare them to other races/ethnicities the differences are striking.
Of course we’ll have somebody chiming in about Japanese nationals and suicide in a few seconds, that always happens when you talk about white suicide rates in the United States.
JPL
@Villago Delenda Est: They actually forced blacks to leave land in the nineteen forties and fifties. That is close to the same time period that Cubans started immigrating to the US, which is why I used that comparison.
Another Holocene Human
@Villago Delenda Est: I rode a Greyhound bus last year, full of affable working class people, mostly truck drivers! There was a young white couple, barely 20years old a piece, and they were wearing Alex Jones t-shirts. Creepy!
Alex Jones’ disgusting appeal crosses racial lines but seems particularly attractive to whites. It’s not really that complicated, either. Alex Jones is some Lovecraftian shit driven by white supremacist fears under the surface, as opposed to the open anti-semitic/white supremacist
mimeographswebsites on the other hand. Plenty of overlap in that Venn diagram, I’m sure.Another Holocene Human
@JPL: Was that the US gov’t? Just curious. Mobs of violent whites forced blacks to leave land in the ’80s, ’90s, ’00s, 10’s, 20’s, and I guess into the ’30s though the intensity was diminishing. Hm, ’40s, too.
It hasn’t stopped, apparently there are some legal issues that have caused a lot of African American families in the South to lose or be forced to sell land that had been owned collectively by families because US law disfavors these sorts of arrangements.
Another Holocene Human
@Mart: You’re not lying about the old. I thought Jon Stewart was being unfair the other night, then I watched the bit. Damn, Mitch McConnell’s Senate is all about the Silent Generation.
I guess they’re Silent because whenever they open their mouths the foolishness tumbles out.
JPL
@Another Holocene Human: It was the government only because they turned a blind eye, so to speak. Houses were burned down and there was no recourse. It was especially true in GA and FL on fertile farm land.
“devils in the grove” about Thurgood Marshall is an excellent read about forcing the unwanted from their land.
Another Holocene Human
@KG: It means the old-ass reliable voters who march to the polls still lean Republican’t.
Same phenom in Massachusetts except they vote Democratic. Some districts are so close (due to the harvest of the Reaper) that the GOP can just taste it. If Dems aren’t serious about courting and keeping younger voters a lot of those outer burbs will go GOP and they won’t be Nice Polite Republicans, either.
Villago Delenda Est
@JPL: It’s not as if there are no precedents for disposing of unwanted people on land that white men covet in this country.
Mike J
@Another Holocene Human:
Most people know more than 4 people so it wouldn’t be surprising that everyone would know one of the 27%.
beltane
@Another Holocene Human: The real danger is that younger people are not terribly inclined to be voters at all and so our elections are mostly decided by elderly, drugged-up Foxbots.
Seanly
Ugh, it’s going to be a long, long 2 years, isn’t it?
JPL
@Another Holocene Human: I hope not because I was raised in central MA. Although it was not as liberal, public education was a valued commodity. I can’t imagine that has changed.
Another Holocene Human
@JPL: Trudat, a lot of stories of grandpa with a rifle in the middle of the night shooting at men with torches. Nichelle Nichols also had a story like that, with an Illinois twist.
See, these people double down on white supremacy because they know what it does for them and they know what the fuck they did or what their daddy did. First they got Jackson (their big fucken hero in the South, trust me) to drive Cherokee out so they could steal their land. Then, after Reconstruction, they did everything they could to steal land from Black homesteaders. Florida especially was a haven for free Blacks after the war (some of whom intermarried with Seminoles). Some of the most violent rural (and thus little-known) clashes happened in Florida.
As far as GA goes I thought it was documented that during the Reagan admin the gov’t deliberately withheld farm aid from Black farmers, pushing even more Blacks off their land in agricultural regions. Isn’t that the legacy that Shirley Sherrod was talking about that got her fired?
These people vote GOP because GOP is carrying water for their ugliness.
beltane
@Mike J: Unless I’m in a isolated liberal enclave, it’s guaranteed that the majority of other white people I encounter are going to be hate-filled morons, as ugly on the outside as they are on the inside.
JPL
@Another Holocene Human: But.. Castro stole the land of Cuban Americans and must pay.
Another Holocene Human
@JPL: We used to call central MA except for Worcester redneckville (kidding!) but actually I was talking about Eastern MA exurbs, not that there aren’t Eastern MA assholios who move to Central and even Western MA (yes, you can commute to Boston from West MA daily, no, I wouldn’t recommend that shit!) and of course to Southern NH as well (Massholes!), and yes down the South Shore and down the Cape because some people just love to stew in traffic on a twice daily basis.
495 beltway. Not central. You guys don’t even have the same accent.
BGinCHI
@Seth Owen: Thanks.
I was afraid of that. So it’s two different scoring systems? How the hell can you run a government like that?
I’m so tired of these GOP idiots.
Another Holocene Human
@JPL: Not all Cuban Americans, for example Marco Rubio was caught fibbing about his parentage. His parents were working stiffs who left during the rule of the American puppet. Like so many other working class Cubans.
Mike J
@beltane: Seattle doesn’t seem that isolated, and the majority of people I speak to seem pretty sane. There are a few crazy ones around, but no more than you’d expect.
beltane
@Another Holocene Human: Yes, but if Rubio’s parents had worked hard and inherited a plantation in Batista-era Cuba, Castro would have stolen it from them. For this loss of potential property, he is surely owed something.
JPL
@Another Holocene Human: Many, many decades ago, I taught north of Worcester and the first question I’d ask is how many had been to Boston. It was a foreign country although only an hour away. The town would always support taxes for schools though.
Another Holocene Human
@Seth Owen: Radical GOP since mid 1990s has been fucking with the Congressional budget reporting. It’s all part of the “La La La, I can’t hear you” school of governance.
jl
@Another Holocene Human:
I think that the evidence is that Mitch McConnell is not a religious fundiie or a social conservative, or a radical reactionary. He is an opportunistic hypocrite who likes to wield power.
I heard an interview with the author of a McConnell biography. McConnell started out as a moderate slightly left of center sensible and sane Republican, the kind that is extinct now.
But McConnell’s views ‘evolved’. One cannot prove that his views did not evolve sincerely and honestly. On the other hand, the evolution consisted of a sudden epiphany that occurred shortly after the Reagan landslide.
beltane
@Mike J: I mean outside the large, liberal cities. I live in a rural part of a very blue state and well over half the people are dumb as rocks.
JPL
OT>. The police have in custody two of the murderers of the news office in Paris. The third is dead.
Mike J
@beltane: Ahh. The common clay of the new west.
Another Holocene Human
@JPL: That’s why I was talking about Eastern MA. I grew up in Eastern MA in a town (okay, city) that heavily invested in schools and we still had a large, angry lobby that was looking to curb the school budget and we were swept under the title of Proposition whatever the fuck that limited property tax increases which of course hit the schools right on the chin. My city chose to spend on instructors and not anything else and my high school was threatened with losing its accreditation over pervasive physical plant issues. We also used 1960s textbooks but actually that was a good thing. (Especially in math class. They weighed less without that clay paper, an easily grasped measure of merit, and that was only the beginning.)
Another Holocene Human
@JPL: Plodding policework strikes again! No opportunity now for a witch-hunt security state surveillance no-bid, no-oversight contract bonanza! Multinational grifters have a sad. I … I just need a moment.
Peale
I’m actually fine with this. The sooner we collapse, the better. I mean why should all those other countries get the thrill of being run by boobs.
Mike J
@JPL:
Torture works, just not for the purpose its supporters claim.
Another Holocene Human
@jl: Just look at the man’s personal finances and you’ll see who his master is. Opportunistic is definitely the word. The spectacle of him holding a rifle, Charlton Heston style was too rich. His wife happens not to be white but he’ll racial dogwhistle all day long while he and his lobbyist wife laugh all the way to the bank.
Mitch McConnell is a real pigfucker. Stewart’s turtle shtick lets him off real easy.
beltane
One of the Paris attackers was affiliated with a Yemeni terrorist group (there was a big attack in Yemen today) and had a prior conviction for recruiting people to fight for the insurgency in Iraq. This seems like a coordinated attack undertaken by seasoned operatives and not a spontaneous outburst of inchoate Muslim rage. One wonders why someone with this type of criminal history was given such free reign.
Archon
@jl:
I do suspect that because McConnell’s reached his political ceiling he might be amenable to actually governing in the name of establishing a positive legacy instead of obstructing.
Calouste
@Another Holocene Human: Median age of the Senate is 62. By comparison, the average age of the UK House of Commons immediately following the 2010 election was 50.
Another Holocene Human
@Mike J: Why would Seattle be isolated? They have Portland, they have both Vancouvers, Everett, and flights to California.
But Seattle is not Spokane and guess what, Seattle + Tacoma are not big enough to outvote the rest of the state of the rest of the state is dead set against them, as shown by that transit tax stupidity. Seattle I heard finally taxed themselves to cover their transit shortfalls rather than cut all the University of Washington buses, ya, nice plan, which is what they should have done from the beginning, but no, they tried to convince the rest of the state that transit in King County benefited the whole state. Well, it does, but it brought out the tribalistic resentment and, yeah, there you have it. Seattle is likely to get the worst of the worst interstate tunnel built as well because, again, Seattle et environs don’t outnumber or outmuscle the rest of the state.
You don’t have to drive far from a liberal enclave in a purple state to get deep into white derp country. It might be suburbs, exurbs, or rural in character.
Another Holocene Human
@Calouste: Isn’t lower house to lower house and upper house to upper house the proper comparison? Median age in the US House should be a lot lower.
Another Holocene Human
@Archon: I do suspect that because McConnell’s reached his political ceiling he might be amenable to actually governing in the name of
establishing a positive legacyquietly funneling contracts to himself, his friends, and his future employers instead of obstructing.Pogonip
@Violet: I am http!!! It’s an outrage!
jl
@Calouste: I’ve watched question time in the House of Commons. The contrast with the US Congress is jawdropping. Much greater mix of race/ethnicity, gender, income and wealth, occupation, and age in House of Commons. Disgusting contrast, and not favorable to the US at all.
Even among just the white guys, a much greater diversity and background in House of Commons.Especially in age and economic background and profession. Even on the effing Tory side.
Another Holocene Human
@beltane: Gives the lie to the myth of the all knowing French security forces.
Baud
@jl:
Don’t they have more reps representing fewer people? We would probably have a little more diversity if that were the case here.
Citizen_X
@Another Holocene Human: Unfair!
Lovecraft could, at least, channel his creepy xenophobia into making a good story.
Alex Jones, not so much.
raven
@Another Holocene Human: What do the security forces have to do with how long he was in the joint? They seemed to do a pretty good job of tracking them down.
Another Holocene Human
@jl: In the US politician is a profession. Most US congresscritters come up from the state level. The poli-sci and lawyers aren’t 90% there, more like 75%.
In Florida they all go to same school, achieve same majors, join same secretive, creepy political club, and many participate in student government which is run by frat/sorority block vote arrangements (a machine, in other words). They run for office in gerrymandered districts and kiss as much ass as possible on the way up. Some have never had a single real job in their life outside of interning for other pols. Many are just tools to be discarded, others become rising stars.
Fla has term limits (term limits = good for the well heeled corporate lobbyists, bad for the people) but they just bounce to county commission if necessary. County commission shares a pension plan with Florida lege, see how that works? Then bounce back into the Lege.
Another Holocene Human
@raven: The mythological all-knowing French domestic spying apparatus. Apparently they didn’t see this one coming.
They did catch the motherfuckers, good on them. I’m just pointing out their fictional media image of having their tentacles into everything. Apparently not.
Mike in NC
@Another Holocene Human: If you have a basement full of guns and ammo, sometimes you just have to use them.
Citizen_X
@jl:
This from the people who complain about “everyone gets a trophy” youth sports.
Cervantes
@Seth Owen:
Not only that, they can shut the CBO down entirely and sell the computers for parts if they feel like it. There’s nothing to stop them. They’ve done it before when it suited them.
piratedan
if only we could apply that dynamic scoring metric to the average cost of GOP policies to the. average american citizen (yes, especially the pasty white male kind) to see how they benefit who really owns the GOP and then have the media spin that as to why it’s a good thing for kids and disabled americans to go hungry as they justify their benefits at the expense of having the ability to write off your yacht.
Davis X. Machina
Wait a second, Obama and the Congressional GOP can’t very well both hold Social Security hostage, now can they?
raven
@Another Holocene Human: Oh, seemed like you were talking about the troops.
BillinGlendaleCA
What happened to Keystone? Wasn’t it the bestest thing in the world. If it passed, they said it’d create like billions of jobs and make gas like $0.10 a gallon. I thought that was priority one..
MomSense
@raven:
Good! Last I heard they had killed one and arrested two.
Another Holocene Human
@raven: Since the gendarmes carry long guns I’ve never been too clear on what the difference was in la France, nevertheless, I wasn’t referring to soldiers.
Another Holocene Human
@BillinGlendaleCA: I wonder if the few remaining old school GOP voting cranks* are at all embarrassed or angered by the parliamentary fuckups of Cruz and Boehner in the last 30 days?
*as opposed to foaming irrational TPing crazies
schrodinger's cat
@Calouste: Shouldn’t you be really comparing it to the House of Lords, though? What is the average age there?
MomSense
@Another Holocene Human:
Let me just say that if you talk to Algerians about the French police you will not hear a description of jovial, wine addled, cheese eating, surrender monkeys. The US did not invent torture and cruelty.
I had a stalker when I was in Paris and the police officers were not helpful at all.
Botsplainer
“The Aristocrats!”
Cervantes
@schrodinger’s cat:
UK Parliament, House of Lords, median age: 69ish.
Calouste
@Another Holocene Human: It’s where most of the power lies in both systems. Comparing to the House of Lords is hard, because most of them have lifetime appointments. The average age of the House of Representatives is about 57 from what I could gleam, so closer to the Senate than to the House of Commons.
Calouste
@jl: On the face of it, the House of Commons has greater diversity, until you find out that a quarter of them have been to either Oxford or Cambridge, and that that percentage goes up significantly the closer to power you get (about 50% of recent cabinet ministers and about 90% of all Prime Ministers).
Mike in NC
@Calouste: One of the most accurate nicknames ever invented: House of Reprehensibles
jl
@Calouste: I was talking about my impressions from watching question time. I can’t find enough info to do a comparison.
Maybe comparing House and Senate to House of Lords would be more appropriate as commenters above suggested. Not sure what that would say about the state of US democracy, though.
rikyrah
they are who we thought they were
Cervantes
@Calouste:
How do you figure that 90%?
By my count, it’s closer to 70% Oxbridge, two thirds of which from Oxford, half of which from Christ Church alone.
jl
@Cervantes: Link at wiki article on JK House of Commons says 20 percent are from Oxbridge in Labor, 30 percent in Lib Dems and just under 40 percent in Conservative.
Cervantes
@jl:
Thanks, but no, I was querying the 90% number, which was meant to apply to Prime Ministers only, I believe.
Not that it matters all that much. The percentage of PMs from just one Oxford college (Christ Church) alone makes a perfectly good point about diversity — which was, I suppose, the intention.
Chris T.
@PurpleGirl:
And the Great Depress… uh oh.
dww44
@JPL: By way of the Senate vote, this DKOS post today is something I hadn’t seen before:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/01/07/1356150/-Senate-Democratic-minority-snagged-20-million-more-votes-than-GOP-majority
Is it any wonder that our Congress critters, bought and owned by their corporate masters, are so often at odds with the majority of Americans. Greatest deliberative body, NOT!
AxelFoley
@Hunter Gathers:
I was gonna say the GOP, but yeah.
Fred
Yeah, Republicans are just the same as Democrats and Obamabots suck…so why bother?*
*If you can’t tell I’m being facetious. We get the government we don’t vote for.
TriassicSands
@Villago Delenda Est:
The percentage of not-really-stupid Americans is probably already less than 27%.