Tag: Republicans

Those Blanket Approvals

A recent survey and the GOP numbers for support for this person is dwindling…..

Less than half of Republicans have confidence in Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to “do the right thing regarding world affairs,” according to a new poll from the Pew Research Center that highlights the growing partisan divide over the war in Ukraine.

Only 44 percent of Republican respondents said they had confidence in Zelensky, while 71 percent of Democrats expressed support for the war-time leader — a 27 percent split between parties. 

The divide held when respondents were asked if they held favorable views of Ukraine in general, with 52 percent of Republicans and 77 percent of Democrats saying they had a positive opinion of the country.

The survey joins a long list of recent polls showing that the Republican base is increasingly skeptical of U.S. policy toward Ukraine. Notably, the growing partisan divide appears to have had little effect on the policy preferences of GOP leaders in Congress. 

While House Speaker Kevin McCarthy had signaled before the midterm elections that he would not support a “blank check” for Ukraine, he rolled back those remarks last week and pledged that the U.S. will continue its military assistance “as long as I am Speaker.”

But GOP presidential candidates have been more willing to express concerns about U.S. support for Kyiv. Former President Donald Trump said in January that the war was a “tragic waste of human life” and claimed that, if he was still in the White House, he would be able to rapidly negotiate an end to the conflict.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — Trump’s leading challenger — has also expressed cautious skepticism about the value of backing Ukraine to the hilt and appeared to call for a ceasefire in April.

Poll: Less than half of Republicans have confidence in Zelensky

But I do not think the Zelensky has much to worry about for the arms industry owns the Congress and while support may be less now the blood letting will continue.

Besides the American people have this lust for blood and guts war (the indoctrination has become complete)…

For various reasons, America’s ruling class has a great love of war, even as America’s non-ruling-classes have a general indifference to it, as long as its destructiveness is kept overseas and out of sight.

It’s strange indeed that we have such faith in war: such faith in destruction as being progressive. Americans are a hyper-aggressive and trigger-happy bunch, quick to anger, slow to think. Fear, anger, and pride make us a menace to various peoples on the receiving end of American firepower, yet somehow we see ourselves as reasonable peacemakers. Such a mass delusion can only be sustained through massive propaganda, a “victory culture” if you will, supported by all those Hollywood war movies, TV shows featuring SEALs and the like, military pageantry at sporting events, and so on.

William Astore on America’s Faith in War

Besides some disinformation will be passed on to help the support grow…..like always it is glowing and bullsh*t.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Advertisement

Reagan’s Assault On Social Security

No news dump for today…Still recovering from the eye injury….Sue has taken my PC and tablet away from me….but she left my phone for me to entertain myself….I hope to be back 100% on Monday….thanx for bearing with me while I get my eye back to normal….I will try to get caught up with my comments then.

As usual the GOP is attacking Social Security every time they have some small amount of power they want to screw the seniors of this country.

But where did all this hatred begin with?

To answer that question easily….it began with Reagan in the 1980s.

In 1983, just before signing legislation that cut Social Security benefits, then-President Ronald Reagan declared that “we’re entering an age when average Americans will live longer and live more productive lives.”

But Reagan’s assumption of ever-rising life expectancy in the U.S. turned out to be false, according to a new analysis, a fact with painful consequences for those who saw their Social Security benefits pared back thanks to the 1983 law’s gradual increase of the full retirement age—the age at which one is eligible for unreduced Social Security payments.

As Conor Smyth wrote Monday for the People’s Policy Project, a left-wing think tank, the Social Security Amendments of 1983 hiked the full retirement age “from 65 in 2000 to 67 at the end of 2022.”

“What this actually meant was not that the age at which people could retire and start drawing Social Security benefits changed—that remained at 62,” Smyth explained. “Instead, by raising what’s called the full retirement age (FRA) by two years, the law effectively cut benefit levels across the board, regardless of the age that any particular individual began claiming Social Security benefits. The result is that those retiring at 62 today face a 50% greater penalty for retiring before the change than they would have before 2000.”

The 1983 law was an outgrowth of a special presidential commission headed by Alan Greenspan, a right-wing economist who would go on to serve as chair of the Federal Reserve for nearly two decades.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/reagan-social-security-cuts

This is a perpetual thing….if it is a GOP Congress then seniors benefits are in danger….which is amazing because the GOP’s greatest supporters are those that will suffer the most if they ever fulfill their wish of destroying the Social Security program.

Why is that?

Are these voters uninformed or just ignorant?

Why does anyone vote against their best interests?

Why?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

 

The ‘Parents Rights’ Bill

The GOP is trying an end run on society.

They have introduced a bill in the House to ‘protect’ parent’s rights….a cutesy name that smacks of total control over our educational standards.

House Republicans on Friday narrowly passed legislation that would fulfill a campaign promise to give parents a role in what’s taught in public schools. It has little chance in the Democrat-run Senate, and critics say it will propel a far-right movement that has led to book bans, restrictions aimed at transgender students, and raucous school board meetings across the country, per the AP. GOP Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who made the Parents Bill of Rights Act a priority during the early weeks of his tenure, said Republicans were “keeping our promise, our commitment to America, that parents will have a say in their kids’ education.” “At the end of the day, these are our children, not the government’s,” Republican Rep. Julia Letlow of Louisiana, who wrote the bill, said Thursday, per the Washington Post.

The bill would require schools to publish course studies and a list of books kept in libraries, as well as affirm parents’ ability to meet with educators, speak at school board meetings, and examine school budgets. It would also mandate that administrators at elementary and middle schools get an OK from parents before addressing a child by a different name, pronouns, or gender designation. The bill passed 213-208, with five Republicans—mostly members of the House Freedom Caucus—voting against it. The Hill names those five as Reps. Andy Biggs, Matt Gaetz, Ken Buck, Matt Rosendale, and Mike Lawler. The first four objected on the basis of wanting the federal government to stay out of local schools’ business. Lawler, meanwhile, thought an amendment added by Rep. Lauren Boebert on transgender bathroom usage “went too far” and “unnecessarily targeted certain children.”

Advocates say the bill poses a threat to LGBTQ+ students by potentially forcing them to come out to their families, which can sometimes lead to abuse or abandonment, per the AP. “It’s part of a pattern of attempts we’re seeing where the right wing of the Republican Party is really trying to marginalize LGBTQ people,” says David Stacy, the government affairs director for Human Rights Campaign. Democrats are also opposed to the bill, noting that although they favor nurturing parents’ involvement in their children’s education, this bill has been designed to kowtow to a minority of parents who want to control and politicize classrooms, including via book bans in school libraries. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer vowed that the bill would face a “dead end,” and that it was proof the House GOP has been taken over by “hard-right MAGA ideologues.”

The only good spot in this attempt to control everything is that he will probably stall and possibly die in the US Senate.

This is what we get when idiots vote.

On a side note….an Utah parent is fighting back in the book banning craze…..

Frustrated that titles like The Bluest Eye from Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison have been removed from schools as a result of Utah’s new book-banning law, one parent is pushing to have the Bible banned. “You’ll no doubt find that the Bible … has ‘no serious values for minors’ because it’s pornographic by our new definition,” the parent wrote in a request to the Davis County School District, which was obtained by the Salt Lake Tribune with names redacted. It cites Utah’s book-banning law, passed last year with backing from conservative parents groups, which blocks books containing “explicit sexual arousal, stimulation, masturbation, intercourse, sodomy or fondling” from classrooms and school libraries.

Among the books targeted by the groups is The Bluest Eye, in which a young girl suffers sexual abuse by her father. But “Utah Parents United left off one of the most sex-ridden books around: the Bible,” reads the request, per Fox News. It lists the book’s topics of concern as “incest, onanism, bestiality, prostitution, genital mutilation, fellatio, dildos, rape, and even infanticide.” It also includes several Bible quotes, including one from Genesis 19:8 in which a father asks that men do “as you wish” to his virgin daughters. The request was submitted Dec. 11. A review process usually takes 60 days. However, a district rep tells the Tribune that the case has been delayed due to a backlog.

A school policy states religious books can’t be banned but may be subject to restrictions, per Fox. However, there’s debate about how this would mesh with the law. “If the books that have been banned so far are any indication for way lesser offenses, this should be a slam dunk,” according to the request, which questions the targeting of texts by and about LGBTQ people and those of color in a school district that’s been “under investigation for being racist.” A 2021 Justice Department report found Davis had intentionally ignored “serious and widespread” racial harassment, per the Tribune. The district also settled a lawsuit with the American Civil Liberties Union in 2012 after removing a book about a child with same-sex parents, KUTV reports.

This is a bit extreme but I also understand why they are doing it.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

When Stupidity Is King

Have you seen the movie “Idiocracy”?

It explains a lot that is happening these days….plus it was released in 2006….very prophetic.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/

When did the GOP lose it’s collective mind?

In 1960, the sociologist Daniel Bell published a book titled The End of Ideology that argued the ideological battles of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries had subsided. A “rough consensus” had emerged, Bell wrote, at least in the West, on the need for a welfare state, a mixed economy, and political pluralism. President John F. Kennedy echoed Bell’s theme in a speech at Yale’s 1962 commencement. “The central domestic issues of our time,” Kennedy said,

relate not to basic clashes of philosophy or ideology but to ways and means of reaching common goals—to research for sophisticated solutions to complex and obstinate issues…. What is at stake in our economic decisions today is not some grand warfare of rival ideologies which will sweep the country with passion, but the practical management of a modern economy.

The moment didn’t last. Ideological warfare resumed in the United States with the rise of the New Left in the late 1960s and with the rise of the New Right in the early 1980s. Today, those ideological storms have subsided. This time, though, ideology is over not because right and left have reached rough consensus; far from it. The contest is done because the Republican Party walked off the field. We have arrived at the end of GOP ideology.

https://newrepublic.com/article/170274/gop-lost-brain

Personally I agree with those people that think this ‘stupidity’ is a threat to our beloved society…..

It may sound like an insensitive statement, but the cold hard truth is that there are a lot of stupid people in the world, and their stupidity presents a constant danger to others. Some of these people are in positions of power, and some of them have been elected to run our country. A far greater number of them do not have positions of power, but they still have the power to vote, and the power to spread their ideas. We may have heard of “collective intelligence,” but there is also “collective stupidity,” and it is a force with equal influence on the world. It would not be a stretch to say that at this point in time, stupidity presents an existential threat to America because, in some circles, it is being celebrated.

Although the term “stupidity” may seem derogatory or insulting, it is actually a scientific concept that refers to a specific type of cognitive failure. It is important to realize that stupidity is not simply a lack of intelligence or knowledge, but rather a failure to use one’s cognitive abilities effectively. This means that you can be “smart” while having a low IQ, or no expertise in anything. It is often said that “you can’t fix stupid,” but that is not exactly true. By becoming aware of the limitations of our natural intelligence or our ignorance, we can adjust our reasoning, behavior, and decision-making to account for our intellectual shortcomings.

https://www.rawstory.com/amp/threat-of-stupidity-2659443906

This stupidity just keeps getting deeper and more dangerous by the year.

Have you noticed that most of the GOP banning around the states are of those things that scare the GOP the most?

“I feel like there is a coddling of the conservative mind,” said Reid. “The conservatives don’t have the confidence that their ideas can be sold on the basis of presenting them as ideas. They have decided that we can’t convince people to do what we want and live by our religion, so we will tell the federal government to enforce it. I don’t like this book or drag shows. The thing that I feel uncomfortable with, I don’t feel confident that I can convince people to come to my side, so I need the power of federal government to ban the things that make me uncomfortable.”

That attitude, Reid said, looks like “an intellectual collapse and sense of defeat.”

https://www.rawstory.com/intellectual-collapse/

Was it Forrest Gump who said ‘stupid is as stupid does’?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

OMG! Do We Agree?

I have said a lot of things about the so-called ‘Freedom Caucus’ and its members….and none has been kind so when I read what a couple of its members are proposing I found myself in agreement….(the horror)

MTG and Gaetz have offered a couple of ideas that I can say that I agree with but mostly in principle.

MTG has introduced a bill that would audit Ukrainian aid…..

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has reintroduced a bill that would force an audit of all military aid the United States has sent Ukraine since the Russian invasion one year ago.

Greene’s legislation comes as the U.S. has committed tens of billions of dollars in military assistance since Russia invaded Ukraine last February. The Georgia Republican introduced the resolution of inquiry in the House on Friday, marking the one-year anniversary of the invasion.

“It’s going to force Congress to give the American people an audit,” Greene told Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Thursday. “And that is exactly what the American people need, an audit of Ukraine, because we have no idea where all this money’s going.”

Greene’s resolution calls on President Joe Biden, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken to hand over all documents or financial statements detailing “purchases, recipients, and government expenditures” that were “directed to the nation of Ukraine — whether in regard to military, civilian, or financial aid,” according to a copy of the resolution obtained by the Washington Examiner. 

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/house/marjorie-taylor-greene-introduces-bill-requesting-audit-ukraine-aid

Then there is Gaetz who has offered up issues that I could support….

First his bill on Ukraine….

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) introduced a resolution on Thursday that calls for an immediate end to US military and financial support for Ukraine and urges the warring sides to negotiate a ceasefire.

The Ukraine Fatigue Resolution was led by Gaetz and received 10 other co-sponsors. If passed, it would express that it is the sense of the House that “the United States must end its military and financial aid to Ukraine” and urges “all combatants to reach a peace agreement.”

Throughout the war, Gaetz has been critical of US support for Ukraine and has previously called for an end to the policy. “President Joe Biden must have forgotten his prediction from March 2022, suggesting that arming Ukraine with military equipment will escalate the conflict to ‘World War III,’” Gaetz said in a statement on his resolution.

“America is in a state of managed decline, and it will exacerbate if we continue to hemorrhage taxpayer dollars toward a foreign war. We must suspend all foreign aid for the War in Ukraine and demand that all combatants in this conflict reach a peace agreement immediately,” he added.

The other co-sponsors for the resolution are Reps. Andy Biggs (AZ), Lauren Boebert (CO), Paul Gosar (AZ), Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA), Anna Paulina Luna (FL), Thomas Massie (KY), Mary Miller (IL), Barry Moore (AL), Ralph Norman (SC), and Matt Rosendale (MT).

Gaetz’s resolution notes that the US has already authorized over $110 billion to spend on the war in less than a year. The introduction comes after a series of escalations of US military aid, including M1 Abrams tanks, and Ukraine is now seeking fighter jets from the US and its allies. Each escalation risks a direct clash between Russia and NATO, which could quickly spiral into nuclear war.

(antiwar.com)

His next idea is another one that I can get behind…..it involves Syria and US troops….

Rep. Matt Gaetz introduced a resolution to force the House to vote on directing President Joe Biden to remove the U.S. military from Syria, where they have been involved since 2014, the Florida Republican congressman’s office announced Wednesday. 

Gaetz, a House Armed Services Committee member, filed the one-page War Powers Resolution on Tuesday after four U.S. servicemembers and a working dog were wounded in a raid that resulted in the death of a senior Islamic State leader.

The House must vote on Gaetz’s proposal within 18 days of its introduction because of the special status granted to war powers resolutions. If the resolution passes, U.S. troops must be removed from Syria within 15 days.

“Congress has never authorized the use of military force in Syria,” Gaetz said. “America First means actually putting the people of our country first — not the interests of the Military Industrial Complex.”

While these are excellent ideas I find it hard to believe that a Repub would go contrary to what the M-IC wants….this smells a lot like political theater and not rational proposals.

These probably will go nowhere basically because the lobbyist control all votes in the Congress….and these will not be popular with those with all the cash.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–24Feb23

These days it seems that these GOPers are shooting off their mouths before their brains are loaded.

We have the infamous MTG, Boefert, Gaetz, etc….they continuously open mouths and insert foot.

But the best(for lack of a better word) was a comment that a GOPer for Alaska has made……

Republican Alaska state Rep. David Eastman this week stunned observers when he asked about the potential economic benefits of abused children dying.

The Anchorage Daily News reports that Eastman spoke up during a House Judiciary Committee hearing that was centered on the deleterious long-term effects that being sexually abused has on children.

As ADN notes, part of the presentation included economic data showing that an abused child “could cost the family and broader society $1.5 million in terms of trauma and what the child could potentially have earned over their lifetime.”

It was based on this that Eastman started asking if society might save money if the child were to simply die instead of remaining alive to be a burden on society.

“It can be argued, periodically, that it’s actually a cost savings because that child is not going to need any of those government services that they might otherwise be entitled to receive and need based on growing up in this type of environment,” he said.

Trevor Storrs, president and CEO of the Alaska Children’s Trust, was immediately taken aback by Eastman’s remarks.

“Can you say that again?” he asked. “Did you say, ‘a benefit for society?’”

https://www.rawstory.com/amp/david-eastman-alaska-2659452088

Let me see if I have this…..he wants to force women to have babies and when an unfit mother abuses and kills her child it is a benefit to society?

Seriously?  Is there any logic in that?

Not to worry….this idiot has been censured….

Very few people would try to find some sort of silver lining in cases where a child died from abuse. Rep. David Eastman is apparently one of those people, however, and he’s now taking flak for his comments made earlier this week in that vein. Per the Anchorage Daily News, Alaska’s House Judiciary Committee held a hearing Monday on the topic of how adverse experiences growing up—e.g., living in a home plagued by domestic violence, physical or sexual abuse, etc.—can affect children throughout their lives. One stat cited by Trevor Storrs, CEO of the Alaska Children’s Trust: a cost of $1.5 million to a child’s family and society overall when that child abuse is fatal.

In noting the economic repercussions of abuse, experts who spoke took into account lost future earnings and taxpayer-funded government assistance that victims and family members might tap into to help them deal with the resulting trauma, per the Washington Post. That latter fact is what Eastman latched onto as he questioned Storrs. “How would you respond to the argument that I have heard on occasion where … in the case where child abuse is fatal, obviously it’s not good for the child, but it’s actually a benefit to society because there aren’t needs for government services and whatnot over the whole course of that child’s life?” the Republican state lawmaker said.

Stunned reaction to Eastman’s comments was immediate. “Can you say that again? Did you say ‘a benefit for society?'” an incredulous Storrs replied, per the ADN. Colleagues called Eastman’s remarks “despicable” and “indefensible,” among other descriptors, and on Wednesday, the Alaska House of Representatives voted 35-1 to censure him (Eastman was the lone “no” vote).

Censured?

That is best the legislature can do?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

When Will They Ever Learn?

The question is for those readers that may have voted GOP…why?

When has the party actually improved your life?

If you are no better today than you were 10 years ago….should you not consider a change?

The reason I ask these questions is the track record of the GOP

When will Republican voters figure out how badly they’re getting screwed by Republican politicians?

— Desperate workers struggle with soaring rents (courtesy of Republican-donor hedge funds);
— lack of healthcare (12 GOP-controlled states still refuse to expand Medicaid for under-$15,000/year workers) is literally killing Americans;
— wages have flatlined since Reagan declared war on workers in 1981 while the merely rich have become the morbidly rich;
— Americans pay 10 times as much as Canadians for some drugs because Republicans block any effort to bring competition to that marketplace;
— at the same time Trump and his GOP buddies in the House and Senate borrowed $1.7 trillion to fund a tax giveaway to his billionaire buddies, student debt passed the $1.7 trillion mark…

Yet somehow the “conservative” base voters never seem to figure it out. Why?

Most Republican voters don’t think much about it, but there are two very distinct layers to the GOP. It’s like a pyramid with a capstone at the very top.

The vast base of the pyramid are the white voters who Richard Nixon invited into the party after the Democrats embraced racial equality in 1964/1965 with the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.

They mostly live in all-white neighborhoods, attend all-white churches, and send their kids to all-white schools. While most aren’t the Confederate-flag-toting “out and open” racists like the folks who showed up at the Capitol on January 6th, they’re nonetheless “uncomfortable” with nonwhite people. It’s their “culture,” they’ll tell you.

https://www.rawstory.com/gop-voters-2659070034/

GOP voters are the tool of their own oppression….and they smile about it all the way to the polls.

Joe Biden and the Democrats are desperately trying to salvage the Child Tax Credit expansion, which pulled millions of children out of poverty.

Reducing child poverty is especially beneficial to families in red states, where poverty is most entrenched. Yet opposition to the expansion has come from Republicans and from red-state Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia.

Pundits and Republicans often claim that Democrats are out of touch with the working class and need to cater more to rural red-state voters. Yet it is red state politicians who are working tirelessly to impoverish children in their own states. In this, as in many things, the GOP is not the party fighting for red states. It’s the party fighting to immiserate them.

https://www.alternet.org/how-republicans-immiserate-their-states/

All I can say is…’can’t fix stupid’.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

The ‘Freedom Caucus’

Ever notice that these people give their BS all these patriotic sounding titles….like the ‘Fair Tax Act’, Freedom Caucus and none of them have anything patriotic attached to it in reality.

For this post I want to write about the ultra-conserv caucus within the House of Representatives, the Freedom Caucus……

The group, which includes many veterans of the Tea Party movement, was formed in January with the declared aim of pushing the House GOP leadership rightward on certain fiscal and social issues. More broadly, the caucus wants power shifted away from the leadership to the rank-and-file (by, for instance, giving committees more leeway on which bills to move forward and allowing more amendments to come to floor votes).

Unlike the plethora of caucuses and committees – which range from the Ad Hoc Congressional Committee for Irish Affairs to the House GOP Study Group – the Freedom Caucus does not officially disclose who belongs to it (aside from its nine founding members), though various unofficial lists have circulated. Membership is by invitation only, and meetings are not public.

The caucus originated during the mid-January 2015 Republican congressional retreat in Hershey, Pennsylvania.  According to founding member Mick Mulvaney, “that was the first time we got together and decided we were a group, and not just a bunch of pissed-off guys”.  Nine conservative Republican members of the House began planning a new congressional caucus separate from the Republican Study Committee and apart from the House Republican Conference. The founding members who constituted the first board of directors for the new caucus were Republican representatives Scott Garrett of New Jersey, Jim Jordan of Ohio, John Fleming of Louisiana, Matt Salmon of Arizona, Justin Amash of Michigan, Raúl Labrador of Idaho, Mulvaney of South Carolina, Ron DeSantis of Florida and Mark Meadows of North Carolina.

(wikipedia.org)

Like the forerunner of the group, the Tea Party, the Freedom Caucus never intended to lead only to disrupt.

At the beginning of this month, the House endured the longest contest to elect a speaker in 164 years. Rep. Kevin McCarthy ultimately was elected speaker, but only after he made several concessions to a small but influential faction of dissenting conservative Republicans. Though not every member of the Freedom Caucus — a far-right coalition of Republican lawmakers — voted against McCarthy, nearly every member who did oppose him was a member of the Freedom Caucus.

That commonality has drawn renewed attention to the Freedom Caucus and its role within Congress. Despite being a minority in the House, the Freedom Caucus has repeatedly punched above its weight and effected genuine change in the chamber. Powerful political factions are as old as American politics, and in most ways, the Freedom Caucus is just a continuation of that tradition. But in a few key ways, its members are doing something different: voting as a bloc, willing to go against their own party’s leadership and to gum up the works to make a statement. Those differences have allowed the Freedom Caucus to exercise influence over the better part of the past decade — and are why it’s only just getting started.

Modern congressional caucuses emerged in the last century, though less formal organizations of like-minded members have existed in Congress since the start, according to Ruth Bloch Rubin, a political science professor at the University of Chicago and the author of “Building the Bloc: Intraparty Organization in the U.S. Congress.” During the Progressive Era in the early 20th century, a group of insurgent Republicans worked alongside Democrats to strip away some of the powers that had been consolidated by the speaker. In the 1960s and ’70s, the left-leaning Democratic Study Group worked to push through civil rights legislation (along with, later, the Congressional Black Caucus), against bitter opposition from conservative Southern Democrats.

Typically, such influential intraparty factions emerge only when parties find themselves especially divided, Bloch Rubin said. “It’s usually because there’s enough of a cleavage within the party that these sort of factions have enough members and the distance between one faction and a competitor faction within the same party is enough that it warrants this kind of organizational work,” she said.

The Freedom Caucus Was Designed To Disrupt

This caucus was designed to be a distraction from the silliness of the GOP….they are there to disrupt and play political games not to govern.

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Poverty–Oh SNAP!

There are a few programs that try to help the poor with their struggle with hunger….one of those programs is the SNAP.

SNAP provides nutrition benefits to supplement the food budget of needy families so they can purchase healthy food and move towards self-sufficiency.

Now that the Repubs are in control of most state houses there is a movement to end this program….

Republicans in the Iowa House introduced legislation this month that would impose a slew of fresh restrictions on the kinds of food people can purchase using SNAP benefits, sparking outrage among local groups who say the measure would exacerbate hunger in the GOP-dominated state.

The Des Moines Area Religious Council (DMARC), an interfaith group that operates the largest food pantry network in Iowa, noted in a statement earlier this week that if the bill passes, “Iowans could no longer use their SNAP benefits to purchase meat, nuts, and seeds; flour, butter, cooking oil, soup, canned fruits, and vegetables; frozen prepared foods, snack foods, herbs, spices—not even salt or pepper.”

“This is a punitive policy that will do nothing to improve the health and nutrition of Iowans, but rather be a detriment,” the group said.

The Iowa Hunger Coalition (IHC) also condemned the bill, voicing opposition to its proposed food restrictions as well as new asset limits that would make it more difficult for families to qualify for SNAP, a program funded by the federal government and administered by states.

According to Feeding America, the largest hunger-relief organization in the U.S., roughly 229,500 people—including 80,160 children—are facing food insecurity in Iowa.

The details of the new legislation—which is sponsored by 39 Iowa House Republicans, including Speaker Pat Grassley—were met with national anger.

“This is so profoundly cruel and petty,” said Leah Greenberg, co-executive director of the progressive advocacy group Indivisible.

Sarah Bowen, a sociologist who studies food and inequality, noted in a tweet on Thursday that “Republicans have tried to destroy SNAP for years,” animated by the lie that “SNAP recipients are all stocking up on lobster and steak.”

“This is the most ridiculous proposal I’ve seen though,” Bowen added. “No chicken or ground beef. No chili beans. No American cheese?!”

SNAP recipients are already limited in what they can purchase at the grocery store using their benefits, but Iowa Republicans are seeking to dramatically expand those restrictions.

As Todd Dorman of the Iowa Gazetteexplained in a column on Thursday, the legislation “would require the Department of Health and Human Services to seek a federal waiver allowing Iowa to scrap an already restrictive federal list of approved foods and replace it with a list of food available to recipients of aid to Women, Infants, and Children, or WIC.”

“The bill would also, for the first time, create an asset test, limiting household assets to $2,750 or $4,250 if one member of the household is over 60. It exempts just one vehicle, potentially making households with two cars ineligible,” Dorman wrote. “Beyond all of that draconian wisdom, the bill would force recipients to jump through far more regulatory hoops to become eligible and stay on SNAP, wrapping recipients tightly in red tape and likely costing the state millions more to administer the program.”

“Only two groups support the bill,” Dorman added. “One is the Florida-based Opportunity Solutions Project, which sends its minions across the country to cut holes in the social safety net and oppose policies such as Medicaid expansion. The group is part of a web of conservative think tanks and bill mills bankrolled by rich donors who think if you just make poor people hungry and sick enough, they’ll utilize their bootstraps.”

(commondreams.org.

Read on….https://www.businessinsider.com/iowa-republicans-bill-ban-snap-recipients-meat-sliced-cheese-2023-1

How long will it be before this kind of cruelty expands into other red controlled Houses?

And yet they get votes from the very people they are screwing….where’s the logic in that?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Repubs Show Their True Colors

You heard and even may have voted for the GOP because of those lame promises and now there are a few incidents in state legislatures that show the true colors of the policies of the Republicans.

Take Missouri for an example.

Legislators in the Missouri House of Representatives sparred on Wednesday over a Republican amendment to regulate what types of clothing women lawmakers should be permitted to wear while at work.

House Resolution 11 was cleared by the GOP-dominated Consent and House Procedure Committee. And while it has not yet been submitted to the Missouri State Senate, passionate arguments have burbled from assemblymembers on both sides of the political aisle.

State Representative Raychel Proudie (D-53rd District), for example, lambasted the proposal as inherently absurd, overtly sexist, and unworthy of consideration:

I want you all to pay particular attention, because there’s going to be times on this floor where there are things that should not require debate and comment. I contend that these are one of these things. There are times to have your name said, to be recognized, to be called upon. This is not one of those things. There are some very serious things that are in this rule package that I think we should be debating, but instead, we are fighting again for women’s right to choose something. And this time is how she covers herself and the interpretation of someone who has no background in fashion, because – again, this isn’t a shot – it’s inappropriate to wear sequins before five o’clock telling me that I can’t wear a crispy, good St. John sweater if it has too many buttons. I spend $1200 on a suit, and I can’t wear it in the people’s House because someone who doesn’t have the range tells me that it’s inappropriate.

https://www.alternet.org/you-brought-this-floor-lady/

Typical example of the backwards thinking of the GOP.

Let’s move on to North Carolina….

It’s been almost seven years since North Carolina Republican lawmakers and then-Gov. Pat McCrory hastily concocted and enacted House Bill 2 – the infamous “bathroom bill.” It targeted transgender people for ignorant, mean-spirited and altogether absurd discrimination, while simultaneously making the state the target of numerous boycotts and countless late-night TV one-liners.

The bill was later repealed but its legacy – as an embarrassment to be forgotten as quickly as possible for most people, and as a proud rallying point for the state’s religious right fringe (and reactionary culture warriors everywhere), lingers on. Across the country, efforts to make life harder for transgender people, and even to criminalize efforts to provide them medically necessary healthcare, continue apace. North Carolina state Treasurer Dale Folwell has been an especially avid and energetic devotee of this brand of discrimination.

Now, however, one of the chief architects of the HB 2 disaster, state House Speaker Tim Moore, is back with a new and very different – but equally absurd – kind of bathroom bill, or to be more precise, bathroom rule. And this one too appears to have been fueled by the never-sated demands of right-wing social crusaders.

https://www.rawstory.com/north-carolina-bathroom-bill/

More insanity instead of reality….

Then there is the idiot in New Jersey and his view on books….

A freshman lawmaker from Wyoming has already begun efforts to remove LGBTQ+ books for youth from both school and public libraries in the state.

Republican Rep.-elect Jeanette Ward has introduced House Bill 87, which expands the definition of “child pornography” to mean “any visual depiction, including any photograph, film, video, picture, cartoon, drawing, computer or computer generated image or picture, whether or not made or produced by electronic, mechanical or other means, or any other form of depiction of explicit sexual conduct.”

The bill also repeals a law that gives exemptions for those who “possess or disseminate obscene material” for activities related to schools, universities, colleges, museums, and public libraries.

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2023/01/republican-wants-expand-definition-child-pornography-make-easier-ban-lgbtq-books/

My final report is from Texas (go figure)….

A Texas Republican wants to make foods containing material from aborted human fetuses “clearly and conspicuously labeled” — even though such products do not exist.

The proposed law, authored by state Sen. Bob Hall, says food and medicine would have to be labeled if it contained or was manufactured with human fetal tissue or if it was the product of research that used such tissue. The bill defines human fetal tissue as “tissue, cells, or organs obtained from an aborted unborn child.”

“Unfortunately, many Texans are unknowingly consuming products that either contain human fetal parts or were developed using human fetal parts,” read a statement from Hall’s office. “While some may not be bothered by this, there are many Texans with religious or moral beliefs that would oppose consumption or use of these products.”

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not allow the sale of foods containing human tissue.

“There are no conditions under which the FDA would consider human fetal tissue to be safe or legal for human or animal consumption,” an agency spokesperson wrote in an email to HuffPost.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/texas-republican-wants-food-made-of-aborted-fetuses-labeled_n_63c7232ae4b07c0c7df8904b

Another one of those lame ass conspiracies that only an idiot would embrace….but then this country is full of those types.

As you can see these have nothing to do with the promises made….and yet they are re-electable….what?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”