Goldy has the goods on the protest of the budget down in Olympia. This is a fast moving story, so you could do worse than to check out the We Are Washington blog. Their latest piece links to these videos. If anyone has other info, please leave it in the comments.
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GOP Shutdown Looms
A government shutdown, which means among other things that our troops won’t be paid, appears inevitable. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said this morning that GOP and Democratic Senate negotiators have agreed to a dollar amount, but Republicans are holding out for “ideology.” In other words, GOPers are prepared to shut down the federal government in order to cut funding to two agencies they hate, Planned Parenthood and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Republicans have been lying all along about the budget. When they were fighting health care reform, they stirred up senior citizens with false claims about Medicare cuts. But when Rep. Paul Ryan unveiled the GOP’s budget proposal this week, it not only slashes funding for Medicare and Medicaid (which pays for nursing home care), it eliminates the Medicare program for future retirees.
The Republican lying continued in other areas of the budget. You don’t see cuts to weapons procurement, war spending, or other defense spending, for example. The only thing Republicans want to cut is social programs that help the poor, elderly, disabled, unemployed, needy, and other vulnerable citizens — programs they’ve always ideologically opposed, and have hated ever since the New Deal. When it comes to things Republicans want there’s plenty of taxpayer money to throw around as shown by their free-spending ways in the days of earmarks, bridges to nowhere, $110 cases of Coca-Cola, $150,000-a-year mercenaries, no-bid contracts, and so on. Deficits and public debt be damned, the amount of your money Republicans will spend is limitless, when they can get away with taking it for themselves and their cronies.
Democrats are willing to compromise on how much to cut spending, and where to cut it. Republicans are intransigent about using the budget as an excuse to attack social programs they dislike. This is the same game that Wisconsin’s lying Republicans played when they demanded — and got — $137 million of givebacks by public employees, then passed $117 million of new tax breaks to benefit out-of-state businesses, then used the budget as an excuse to strip those cooperative public employees of their collective bargaining rights. Show me a Republican, and I’ll show you a cynical, mean-spirited, immoral liar.
The Senate Democrats have made reasonable offers to Senate and House Republicans. But Democratic electeds have always had a spine problem. It’s time for them to draw the proverbial line in the sand. If Republicans want to throw a toddler tantrum unless they get their way on Planned Parenthood, then I say let them shut down the government — and make sure the public, and our soldiers, know who shut it down and why. Then let the chips fall where they may when voters go to the polls next year.
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com.....-direction
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42.....ite_house/
Another TV preacher — this one a Catholic priest who took celibacy vows — has been caught fucking his cousin.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42.....news-life/
Personally, I think priests who fuck their cousins need to get out of the parsonage more and broaden their circle of acquaintances.
In other news, the state budget proposed by Republicans in Olympia eliminates the Basic Health Plan — why do Republicans hate the working poor so much? — and “The Donald” (as in frequently-bankrupt and wants-to-be-president Donald Trump) has edged his way into the birther camp (while trying not to look crazy by jumping in feet first) by saying he “has doubts” that Obama was born in the U.S.
The stock market is down today on news that Republicans intend to shut down the federal government in order to bully Democrats into eliminating funding for Planned Parenthood. This was to be expected. The shutdown will hurt the economic recovery and create chaos in the administration of government programs vital to the smooth flow of commerce.
Democrats should not give in to the attempts by a minority party that doesn’t control the White House or Senate to impose their ideological agenda on the majority of voters in the country through bullying tactics. The rule is, never pay ransom to hostage-takers, because that merely encourages more hostage-taking. Just look at the situation in Somalia, where misguided governments have paid millions to pirates to get their kidnapped citizens back, and now piracy is skyrocketing.
Democrats should not pay ransom to the GOP pirates. They should sent the Delta Force after them instead. If those Republicans refuse to pass a budget, they should be rounded up and thrown in jail until they do, just like the Republicans in Wisconsin tried to do to that state’s Democratic senators. If Republicans want to conduct government-by-jail, then what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
In any case, Democrats and liberal commentators need to make it clear to voters why the government is going to shut down and why the economic recovery is about to falter: Because Republican schoolyard bullies don’t want teenagers to get birth control or abortion counseling. Then let the voters decide at the polls whether they want those assholes running things in our country.
RR @ #5: That’s the problem with trying to be the adult in the classroom when the someone is throwing a tantrum until they get what they want. To stand up to them requires you (and others) to suffer significant pain in the short term. Most parents learn this sooner or later, the later they learn that lesson, the harder it gets to reverse the damage caused earlier.
Part of the problem with Democrats is that they really try to govern reasonably. When Republicans try to cut everything but the kitchen sink out of the budget, they try to re-work the budget so it does the least damage possible.
But maybe the solution is exactly the opposite. When the Republicans threaten to shut down the government, the first thing that should happen is that the Social Security adminsitration should furlough the people that process the Social Security checks, and then issue a press release saying that retirees aren’t going to get their checks because the Republicans shut down the government. Visa applications for foreign technology workers should stop dead in their tracks. The government should issue emergency orders for any regulated industry – including oil drilling, pumping, and refining – to cease operations until there is funding for responsible regulatory inspections and oversight. Customs inspectors should hold all shipments of foreign-made goods at the border, until they can be properly inspected when the government resumes business.
In other words, hit them where it hurts. And make sure everyone knows it’s the Republican’s fault.
Sure, it would be painful in the short term. Job losses, economic recovery stifled, etc. But it’s a lot better than the continuous hostage-taking which the Republicans have done over the past several years, as Roger Rabbit described.
@5:
Pretty sure that’s the point of the shutdown . . . things are looking too positive, economically, to allow Republicans to coast to victories in 2012 without offering real ideas or rational proposals.
@7
things are looking pretty economically???
WTF planet are you living on?
@6 Exactly, it’s ENTIRELY disingenuous to say “no one would notice” if the government shut down, but THEN continue to run all of the departments that people WOULD notice (courts, IRS, social security, etc). People only notice the parts they directly interact with.
That’s not saying the rest isn’t important, but 97% of the government (and Boeing, and Microsoft) don’t interact with the public, so you wouldn’t notice if they shut down for a week or two. That doesn’t mean what Boeing or Microsoft does this week isn’t important…just that ANY private company could shut down their backend for several weeks before you notice anything, as long as the “customer” front end (equiv of social security still sending checks) was still running.
Bank of America could shutdown everything but their actual tellers…shutdown all of the business units, analysts, etc, and stop having meetings, doing planning and all office work and the average customer wouldn’t notice for a while. EVENTUALLY loans wouldn’t be approved, business to business issues would crop up, but for a little while, no one would notice.
That’s the same with government. If the State Department shuts down for 2 weeks would YOU notice? Probably not. That’s not to say they aren’t doing incredibly good hard work, but it’s not stuff the average American citizen has direct day to day contact with. Same with Boeing, Microsoft, BofA, Nintendo, etc, etc, etc.
@6 News reports indicate a shutdown will freeze IRS refund checks to tax filers. That should be enough to get a fire going under the Republican shutter-downers.
@2, would that be a form of republican nepotism?
@7 An improving economy would help Obama. Maybe that’s why Republicans are so determined to shut ‘er down.
@8 He didn’t say pretty, he said positively, meaning we’re beginning to dig our way out of the deep, deep hole that Republicans threw us into.
@2 My guess is yes.
LMFAO @ “things are looking positive”…
..actually, things are if you are in the rental market.
@15: The exact quote was:
Unemployment is still high, but moving downwards. We’re picking up jobs, even if it’s slow. Manufacturing is still depressed, but is starting to pick up. The stock market is doing well (though I don’t buy it as an accurate reflection of the economy). Lending is still depressed, but credit is easing a little for small businesses.
Most sectors of our economy are starting to look like they’re moving towards recovery, thus “too positive” for the Republicans who were counting on a smouldering crater to run on. We have a long way to go, but Obama’s policy (or the natural resiliency of the American economy) is starting to take hold after eight years of being run into the ground.
Seriously. Try to actually read the comment, and think about it critically instead of indulging a knee-jerk reaction based on seeing the first word on the first two lines . . .
yep..
low paying jobs are hiring and gas is over $4 a gallon…..
looks fucking positive to me!