"Tea Party! America Thanks You!" Video

Revenue and the Debt Ceiling

As regards revenue, we don't have it! Via Think Progress:

As of July 13, 29 public companies had more cash on hand than the U.S. Treasury Department, according to the site Zero Hedge based on numbers from Capital IQ. It’s a stark reminder that if Congress refuses to raise the debt ceiling, the government won’t have nearly enough money to continue funding essential services and programs.

Regarding the debt ceiling:

Sabotaging the President By Sabotaging the Economy

Club For Growth To Republicans: Trigger A Default, Or Else!

[sigh]
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New GOP Logo

In light of recent events, we suggest that the Grand Old Party replace their current logo:



with something far more relevant:


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More On Bob Vander Plaatz's Pledge

There's been an update or two to The Iowa Pledge I wrote about on the 8th.

For those who don't know, a conservative group from Iowa called The Family Leader issued this "pledge" for all GOP candidates (and their supporters) to deal with. At the time of my writing that blog post, only Michele Bachmann had signed it.

And now there's two:

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum was initially “taken aback” by a pro-marriage pledge that asks presidential candidates to promise personal fidelity to their spouses, but said he ultimately decided to sign it.

“When I first read it, I was taken aback by it. I can't argue that I wasn't,” the former Pennsylvania senator said in an interview airing Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“But I understand why they're saying it, because it does undermine people's respect for the institution, respect for the people governing this country. If you can't be faithful to the people that you're closest to, then how can we count on you to be faithful to those of us who you represent?”

There was some other stuff in there, too, that Rick's pledged to support:

Other provisions in the pledge include promises to only appoint conservative judges, to remove anti-traditional marriage provisions in the tax code and opposition to any constitutional redefinition of marriage.

And some stuff he doesn't have to.

For instance when he signed the pledge, there was this language in it:

Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an AfricanAmerican baby born after the election of the USA‟s first African-American President.

Wasn't slavery great?? It kept African-American families together!

Until someone was sold, of course. Keeping families together is one thing, but property rights are property rights. And as Ron Paul said (in another context, of course) private business owners have an absolute right to decide what to do with their own property.

But I digress.

Luckily for Rick and Michele, there's been some changes to the pledge:

Responding to a growing controversy, an Iowa-based conservative group has removed a passage in a marriage pact signed by two GOP presidential candidates that suggested black families were in better shape during slavery.

“After careful deliberation and wise insight and input from valued colleagues we deeply respect, we agree that the statement referencing children born into slavery can be misconstrued, and such misconstruction can detract from the core message of the Marriage Vow: that ALL of us must work to strengthen and support families and marriages between one woman and one man," said Bob Vander Plaats, head of The Family Leader.

"We sincerely apologize for any negative feelings this has caused, and have removed the language from the vow, " added Vander Plaats, who is known as a king maker in Iowa.

The campaigns have done the CYA dance:

Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum signed the two-page document entitled "The Marriage Vow - A Declaration of Dependence Upon Marriage and Family," on Thursday, but their campaigns emphasized that the "candidate vow" portion of the pledge that they put their stamps of approval on didn't mention slavery. Instead, it condemned gay marriage, abortion, infidelity and pornography.

Here's some meat from the pledge that's still in force. In that section of the pledge that outlines why marriage is in such deep trouble in Amurika, there's this:

Social protections, especially for women and children, have been evaporating as we have collectively “debased the currency” of marriage. This debasement continues as a function of adultery; “quickie divorce;” physical and verbal spousal abuse; non committal co-habitation; exemplary infidelity and “unwed cheating” among celebrities, sports figures and politicians; anti-scientific bias which holds, in complete absence of empirical proof, that non-heterosexual inclinations are genetically determined, irresistible and akin to innate traits like race, gender and eye color; as well as anti-scientific bias which holds, against all empirical evidence, that homosexual behavior in particular, and sexual promiscuity in general, optimizes individual or public health.

I am not sure about the "absence of all empirical proof" part, but let's for the sake of argument assume it's absolutely 100% correct (which it isn't, but let's just go with this for a second) and being gay is a choice, that it's not (as they say) hardwired into the brain.

What possible difference would that make?

For any given person, their sexuality is either a choice or it isn't. If it isn't, then no civilized society should condemn that person for merely being what they were born to be. If it's a choice then no civilized society should condemn that person for exercising his or her free will.

There's one republican who disagrees with the pledge:

Republican presidential candidate Gary Johnson thinks the pledge that an Iowa Christian conservative group is circulating is offensive because it condemn gays, single parents, divorcees, Muslims, women who choose to have abortions “and everyone else who doesn’t fit in a Norman Rockwell painting.”

And:

This ‘pledge’ is nothing short of a promise to discriminate against everyone who makes a personal choice that doesn’t fit into a particular definition of ‘virtue’.

Proof that not all conservatives got teh crazie.

Good to know.

Scenes From The (New) GOP

First there's the House Budget guy:

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), a leading advocate of shrinking entitlement spending and the architect of the plan to privatize Medicare, spent Wednesday evening sipping $350 wine with two like-minded conservative economists at the swanky Capitol Hill eatery Bistro Bis.

More on Ryan from TPM:

Susan Feinberg, an associate business professor at Rutgers, was at Bistro Bis celebrating her birthday with her husband that night. When she saw the label on the bottle of Jayer-Gilles 2004 Echezeaux Grand Cru Ryan's table had ordered, she quickly looked it up on the wine list and saw that it sold for an eye-popping $350, the most expensive wine in the house along with one other with the same pricetag.

Feinberg, an economist by training, was even more appalled when the table ordered a second bottle. She quickly did the math and figured out that the $700 in wine the trio consumed over the course of 90 minutes amounted to more than the entire weekly income of a couple making minimum wage.

"We were just stunned," said Feinberg, who e-mailed TPM about her encounter later the same evening. "I was an economist so I started doing the envelope calculations and quickly figured out that those two bottles of wine was more than two-income working family making minimum wage earned in a week."

The Federal Minimum Wage is $7.25/hour. Assuming a 40-hour workweek and two minimum wage earners, that's $580 before taxes.

But of course the Tea Party wing of the GOP wants to look at eliminating the minimum wage:

Republican Presidential candidate Michele Bachmann has soft-pedaled her opposition to the minimum wage law considerably since 2005, when she was quoted as saying, at a Minnesota State Senate hearing, “Literally, if we took away the minimum wage—if conceivably it was gone—we could potentially virtually wipe out unemployment completely because we would be able to offer jobs at whatever level.” Appearing on CBS’s (CBS) Face the Nation on June 26, Bachmann would say only that eliminating the minimum wage is “something that obviously Congress would have to look at” as a solution to high unemployment.

And then there's Senator Orrin Hatch who thinks the poor aren't doing enough to help out:

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) voted against beginning debate on a measure that would have the Senate declare the rich should share the pain of debt reduction Thursday, a day after arguing that it's the poor and middle class who need to do more.

"I hear how they're so caring for the poor and so forth," Hatch said in remarks on the Senate floor Wednesday, in reference to Democrats. "The poor need jobs! And they also need to share some of the responsibility."

Hatch's comments were aimed at a motion that passed 74 to 22 to start debating a non-binding resolution that says millionaires and billionaires should play a more meaningful role in reducing the nation's debt.

The point of all this?

Just to let you all know that this is the GOP these days. To all my Republican friends (and relatives), I'd like to ask a question: Do you really want to be associated with such mean spirited greed?

And we're not even talking about choice or marriage equality.

On The Iowa Pledge

From yesterday's Daily Santorum:

The 2012 GOP presidential nomination is all about pledges. There's the grandaddy of them all, Grover Norquist's anti-tax pledge; there's the Susan B. Anthony List anti-abortion pledge; Sen. Jim DeMint, Tea Party-S.C., has the "Cut, Cap and Balance" pledge. And now Iowa conservative heavyweaight Bob Vander Plaats (shown above: photo by John Schultz of the Quad City Times) is getting into the act with a marriage pledge.

The Huffingtonpost has more on Plaats' pledge:

The pledge is titled "The Marriage Vow: A Declaration of Dependence upon MARRIAGE and FAMILY" (emphasis in the original), and what follows is pretty standard-issue Christian conservative rhetoric on the definition of marriage and the sanctity of same, but it comes with a fiscal twist that basically makes it clear that Vander Plaats does not cotton to the notion that social issues can be divorced from economic concerns.

Politico has a copy of the pledge.

Remember, this pledge will be something all the GOP candidates will have to address in order to be consecrated, sanctified, or otherwise blessed by Iowa's social conservatives prior to the Iowa caucuses next year. Each candidate must pledge:

--Personal fidelity to my spouse.
--Respect for the marital bonds of others.
--Official fidelity to the U.S. Constitution, supporting the elevation of none but faithful constitutionalists as judges or justices.
--Vigorous opposition to any redefinition of the Institution of Marriage - faithful monogamy between one man and one woman - through statutory-, bureaucratic-, or court-imposed recognition of intimate unions which are bigamous, polygamous, polyandrous, same-sex, etc.
--Recognition of the overwhelming statistical evidence that married people enjoy better health, better sex, longer lives, greater financial stability, and that children raised by a mother and a father together experience better learning, less addiction, less legal trouble, and less extramarital pregnancy.
--Support for prompt reform of uneconomic, anti-marriage aspects of welfare policy, tax policy, and marital/divorce law, and extended "second chance" or "cooling-off" periods for those seeking a "quickie divorce."
--Earnest, bona fide legal advocacy for the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) at the federal and state levels.
--Steadfast embrace of a federal Marriage Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which protects the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman in all of the United States.
--Humane protection of women and the innocent fruit of conjugal intimacy - our next generation of American children - from human trafficking, sexual slavery, seduction into promiscuity, and all forms of pornography and prostitution, infanticide, abortion and other types of coercion or stolen innocence.
--Support for the enactment of safeguards for all married and unmarried U.S. Military and National Guard personnel, especially our combat troops, from inappropriate same-gender or opposite-gender sexual harassment, adultery or intrusively intimate commingling among attracteds (restrooms, showers, barracks, tents, etc.); plus prompt termination of military policymakers who would expose American wives and daughters to rape or sexual harassment, torture, enslavement or sexual leveraging by the enemy in forward combat roles.
--Rejection of Sharia Islam and all other anti-woman, anti-human rights forms of totalitarian control.
--Recognition that robust childbearing and reproduction is beneficial to U.S. demographic, economic, strategic and actuarial health and security.
--Commitment to downsizing government and the enormous burden upon American families of the USA's $14.3 trillion public debt, its $77 trillion in unfunded liabilities, its $1.5 trillion federal deficit, and its $3.5 trillion federal budget.
--Fierce defense of the First Amendment's rights of Religious Liberty and Freedom of Speech, especially against the intolerance of any who would undermine law-abiding American citizens and institutions of faith and conscience for their adherence to, and defense of, faithful heterosexual monogamy.

These are the hoops the GOP candidates will have to jump through.

Michelle Bachmann already has.

But there's something left out of the coverage. The pledge is not only for the GOP candidates. This is tacked onto the bottom of the pledge:

The Vow of Civic, Religious, Lay, Business, and Social Leaders:

We the undersigned do hereby solemnly vow* that no U.S. Presidential primary candidate – nor any primary candidate for the U. S. House, Senate, Governor, state or municipal office – will, in his or her public capacity, benefit from any substantial form of aid, support, endorsement, contribution, independent expenditure, or affirmation from any of us without first affirming this Marriage Vow. Furthermore, to uphold and advance the natural Institution of Marriage, we ourselves also hereby vow* our own fidelity to this Declaration and especially, to our spouses.

Some litmus test.

It should be interesting to see who pledges.

And who doesn't.

Kansas GOP Rep.: Getting pregnant by rape is like getting a flat tire

The point, according to Kansas state Rep. Pete DeGraaf, is that women need to plan ahead.

For getting raped.

And getting pregnant from that rape.

Uh, huh.

This was the discussion during a debate on a bill on a ban on insurance companies offering abortion coverage as part of their general health plans. It passed the Kansas House with an exception only for the life of the woman (not for rape and incest). Via The Pitch:

Rep. Pete DeGraaf, a Mulvane Republican who supports the bill, told her: "We do need to plan ahead, don't we, in life?"

Bollier asked him, "And so women need to plan ahead for issues that they have no control over with pregnancy?"

DeGraaf drew groans of protest from some House members when he responded, "I have a spare tire on my car."

"I also have life insurance," he added. "I have a lot of things that I plan ahead for."

DeGraaf is an ordained minister.

..	If you'd like to contact him (also via the link above): "DeGraaf's Web site lists his office number as 785-296-7693, his home phone as 316-777-0715 - that's at 1545 E. 119th St. Mulvane, KS - and his e-mail as pete.degraaf@house.ks.gov ." You can also send him a spare tire (model) via Kansas NOW.

(h/t to Daily Kos and Mother Jones.)
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It's Not Only In The House

The anti-science, I mean.

Yesterday I blogged on this curious piece of anti-science legislation. In it all the House Republicans and 19 House Democrats (including our own local Jason Altmire) voted in favor of, among other things, voids the EPA finding that:

[G]reenhouse gases in the atmosphere may reasonably be anticipated both to endanger public health and to endanger public welfare.

The EPA administrator based that finding on science. The House of Representatives didn't.

The thing I didn't notice last night was that the legislation has oozed it's way over to the Senate as an amendment from our good friend Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. The amendment, to S.493, is according to Thomas.gov:

SBIR/STTR Reauthorization Act of 2011 - Title I: Reauthorization of the SBIR and STTR Programs - (Sec. 101) Amends the Small Business Act (the Act) to reauthorize through FY2019 the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs of the Small Business Administration (SBA).

The SBIR and STTR programs are meant to spur on scientific and technological innovation. How you get that from voting down a scientific finding is beyond me.

Guess, just guess, who's a cosponsor of this lil bit of anti-science?

Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey.

Looks like more evidence supporting the general idea that the GOP is the anti-science party.

Tired Of All The Nuts

That's one of the reasons the chairman of the Colorado Republican Party is walking away from the chairmanship. From The Denver Post:

Dick Wadhams today unexpectedly dropped his bid for a third term as chairman of the Colorado Republican Party, and said he has no idea what he will do next.

Wadhams said he had the votes but in the last few days got to thinking, “What happens after I win?”

“I have loved being chairman, but I’m tired of the nuts who have no grasp of what the state party’s role is,” he said.

From the memo he distributed:

I entered this race a few weeks ago looking forward to discussing what we accomplished in 2010 and to the opportunities we have in 2012 to elect a new Republican president; to increase our state House majority and win a state Senate majority; and to reelect our two new members of Congress.

However, I have tired of those who are obsessed with seeing conspiracies around every corner and who have terribly misguided notions of what the role of the state party is while saying “uniting conservatives” is all that is needed to win competitive races across the state.

And who would these nuts who see conspiracy theories around every corner?

TPM offers a clue:

Wadhams oversaw Republican losses in both the Senate and gubernatorial races in Colorado last fall, races that the party could have conceivably won if the Tea Party-backed nominees in both races hadn't committed some serious errors.

And from Vincent Carroll at the DenverPost:

Ted Harvey is seeking the post of state Republican Party chair because he wants to "return authentic conservative leadership to the party structure," he said in his announcement.

You've got to appreciate the audacity of the word "authentic." The current party chair, Dick Wadhams, who announced Monday that he will not seek re-election, has only spent his entire career working for the likes of Bill Armstrong, Conrad Burns, Bill Owens, Wayne Allard and George Allen — and no, I don't mean the coach — with nary a political moderate in the mix.

So Dick Waldhams, called by Slate as an heir apparent to Karl Rove himself, isn't "authentic" enough a conservative for the Tea Partiers who scuttled those GOP races in Colorado.

Teh Tea Party Crazie has infected the GOP. Should be fun to watch!

House Republicans Vote for the Rape of Little Girls

House Republicans help walk this child down the aisle
Via Talking Points Memo:

On Thursday night, hours before passing the tax cut compromise, House Republicans thwarted a bill that aimed to protect girls around the world from being coerced into child marriage. They opposed it because, they claimed, it might fund abortions.

[snip]

The text of the bill does not mention abortion, contraception or family planning. Instead, it directs the president to make preventing child marriage a priority, especially in countries where more than 40 percent of girls under the age of 18 are married. The ways to do that, according to the bill: support educating communities on the dangers and health effects of child marriage, keep young girls in school, support female mentoring programs and make sure girls have access to health care services.

Apparently, they equate "health care services" with abortion which is why the party of "family values" voted for the rape of little girls. It doesn't matter to them that the countries that are pro child marriage are the same countries where legal abortions are nearly impossible to obtain. The anti abortion lobby must be bowed down to at all costs -- even for imaginary threats of abortion.
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Republicans Wage War On Christmas!

Republicans hate Christmas. They hate it so much that they don't want millions of Americans to be able to celebrate it. No toy train for little Johnny. No pretty dolly for sweet Sue. No Christmas turkey or ham. No Christmas lights. Maybe they think because Santa wears red and has a beard that he's a Communist.

There's no other conclusion to draw.

By voting no to extend emergency unemployment to millions of Americans during the holiday season at the same time that they refuse to extend tax cuts to millions more middle class Americans (unless they can give themselves huge tax breaks) they are saying no to holiday cheer and waging war on Christmas.

Instead of kids writing a letter to Santa this year, they need to write to Congress and ask them why they want St. Nick to skip their house.

[If Democrats can't sell this they don't deserve to be in office.]
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Sage advice that will be ignored

Via Peter Daou last night:


As Joe Sudbay noted:

The President is holding a press conference this afternoon.

[snip]

As anyone who watched cable coverage last night saw, there's a lot of talk from GOPers about spending cuts, but no specifics. They can't deliver.

As I will note, the GOP is trying to play the same old Bush Con: cut taxes for the rich while pretending that has no effect on the deficit.

More importantly, on a larger scale, the GOP's position is:

When the Democrats held the White House, the Senate and the House, they were wrong to hold a "we won" attitude (no matter how much Obama bent over backwards being bipartisan) and that Republican ideas should prevail.

Now that the Republicans only hold the House, again, their cry is our Republican ideas must prevail.

See, Republicans believe that their ideas should always prevail and anything less is not "working together" (and may even call for "Second Amendment remedies").

We need a fighter in the White House.

President Obama needs to have a learning moment like the computer at the end of the movie WarGames. In that movie, the computer finally gets it that nuclear war is not a winning strategy.

Obama needs to learn the opposite lesson -- that he needs to wage war -- that the Party of No will never back down and will never give an inch and that he needs to fight them tooth and nail every step of the way.

Unfortunately, I'm not holding out much hope for that...
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