Live Blog: SOTU 2011

Posted: January 25, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Barack Obama, Democratic Politics, Surreality, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 106 Comments

Just how bad will it be? Document the atrocities as you watch and/or listen to the State of the Union Address tonight. I don’t know how much of it I can stand to watch–I may check in and out.

The one thing that has me slightly interested is watching Boehner’s reactions. Will he burst into tears? That would be fun. You can watch the live stream of C-span’s coverage of the SOTU here, beginning at 8PM.

At least someone talked some sense into our Reagan-adoring President. He’s decided not to call for cuts in Social Security and Medicare–not that that will stop him from approving them. But it must have dawned on him that he might need at least a few middle class and elderly votes to get reelection next year.

But there is plenty of stupid in the speech according to multiple advance reports. Remember the dopey “nonsecurity” spending freeze Obama proposed awhile back? Well he still wants a freeze, only now he’s going to make it for five years instead of just three. {sigh….}

At Open Left, Paul Rosenberg reacts:

He may not be ready to gut Social Security just yet, but he has definitively jettisoned 70 years of economic history. Government no longer steps in to spend money when consumer demand fails. Instead, government works hard to make matters even worse. With state and local budgets once again being cut across the country, there will clearly be net decreases in government spending as far as the eye can see. Herbert Hoover would be so proud!

[….]

Why has 70 years of macro-economic history and understanding been tossed out the window, in favor of returning to the darkness of pre-macro ignorance? This is a variant of the question that Brad DeLong and Paul Krugman have been asking in anguish for many moons now. Why has a rage to punish the poor, and even the middle class completely taken over and displaced the commonsense interest in preserving the basic stability of the economy through as quick a recovery as possible?

I don’t know….because he’s stupid? Or maybe just evil? Whatever the reason, we’re headed for more hard times.

At FDL, David Dayen writes about The Triumph of Austerity and the Abandoning of the Unemployed

An economy with 9.4% topline unemployment is sick. This is not a time to deal with a sick patient by planning a regimen for diet and exercise five years from now. The patient needs immediate help, and he’s not even going to hear soothing words to that effect from anyone in the political class, let alone get the medicine needed.

In the process, this pre-emptive bow to the austerity hysterics, at least in the short term, may be good for poll numbers but terrible for the long-term economy.

Let’s face it. This man couldn’t care less about Americans being out of work, losing their homes, and falling into poverty.

What can we do to make this bearable? Let’s look for little bits of humor and/or surreality. If you have ideas for drinking games, feel free to propose them (I don’t drink, but don’t mind a contact high).

Once the speech is over, there could be some laughs in the Republican responses. Crazy-ass Ayn Rand fan Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) is giving the official response. MSNBC has a preview. Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel, one of the people to blame for the horrendous Obama presidency, has a few things to say about Ryan.

Ryan is an Ayn Rand-quoting zealot, one of the Republican Party’s self-styled “Young Guns.” He’s spent his adult life inside the Beltway, on the political right, with no experience in the world of business, labor, the executive branch or the private sector. Incubated in a right-wing think tank, writing speeches for Jack Kemp and William Bennett, he was elected to Congress at age 28. Ryan became the most loyal of loyal foot soldiers in the Congress presided over by Tom DeLay and Denny Hastert, a fact Ryan now glosses over as he describes those Congresses as “corrupt.”

Ryan has been dubbed a Republican “thinker” by national reporters desperate to find someone they can praise in a party that was extreme before the Tea Partyers came to town. But, in fact, his rhetoric is a barely varnished echo of the ravings of Glenn Beck. He accuses Obama of a “treacherous plan,” saying that Democrats have a “hardcore-left agenda,” and claims that Democrats are steering the country “very far left, very fast” – a direction he describes as “completely antithetical to what this country is about.”

This sort of rhetoric, once scorned as sophomoric at best, is now common currency on the Republican right. While Ryan will be careful to avoid such language in the GOP response to the State of the Union, he’ll reveal his ideological zealotry in the policies he will propose.

Most of those policies will come from Ryan’s “Roadmap for America’s Future,” a budget manifesto published last year that The Post’s Ezra Klein aptly described as “nothing short of violent.”

Yep, the guy’s a complete wingnut, but van den Heuval is also permanently discredited as a representative of liberal thought.

And that’s not all, CNN will broadcast an alternative Tea Party response to the SOTU by Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-Minnesota).

{hysterical laughter}

Paul Ryan may be a wingnut, but Bachmann is truly insane. Surely her speech will be good for a few laughs even in these dark times. According to CNN’s Political Ticker,

Her themes tonight will be “making sure Congress is not spending more than its taking in,” “no tax increases” and the importance of “acting within the bounds of the Constitution.”

Hmmm…I never knew that Congress actually handled money.

Greg Sargent provides CNN’s rationalizations for airing Bachmann’s speech.

CNN, which is taking some criticism from both sides for agreeing to air Michele Bachmann’s response to Obama’s speech tonight, sends over a statement justifying the move:

“The Tea Party has become a major force in American politics and within the Republican Party. Hearing the Tea Party’s perspective on the State of the Union is something we believe CNN’s viewers will be interested in hearing and we are happy to include this perspective as one of many in tonight’s coverage.”

Hmmm…I was going to suggest that maybe CNN’s decision to air her speech just might be driven by a desire to curry favor with the Tea Party. This statement doesn’t do much to suggest otherwise.

The Tea Party is now one of two major opposition parties in our three-party system. Who knew?

If only we had smarter politicians and a less embarrassing media! Oh well…let’s make the most of it. I look forward to reading your reactions.

Thursday Reads

Posted: December 23, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Barack Obama, legalizaton of drugs, morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 96 Comments

Happy Festivus Everyone!!!

A little more about the Festivus tradition from Wikipedia:

Festivus is a secular holiday celebrated on December 23 as “another way” to celebrate the holiday season without participating in its pressures and commercialism[1]. It was created by writer Dan O’Keefe and introduced into popular culture by his son Daniel, a screenwriter for the TV show Seinfeld,[2][1] as part of a comical storyline on the show. The holiday’s celebration, as shown on Seinfeld, includes an unadorned aluminum “Festivus pole,” practices such as the “Airing of Grievances” and “Feats of Strength,” and the labelling of easily explainable events as “Festivus miracles”.

Celebrants of the holiday sometimes refer to it as “Festivus for the rest of us,” a saying taken from the O’Keefe family traditions and popularized in the Seinfeld episode to describe Festivus’ non-commerical aspect.

[….]

The holiday, as portrayed in the Seinfeld episode and now celebrated by many,[1][5] includes practices such as the “Airing of Grievances,” which occurs during the Festivus meal and in which each person tells everyone else all the ways they have disappointed him or her over the past year. After the meal the “Feats of Strength” are performed, involving wrestling the head of the household to the floor, with the holiday ending only if the head of the household is actually pinned.

The original holiday featured more peculiar practices, as detailed in the younger Daniel O’Keefe’s book The Real Festivus. The book provides a first-person account of an early version of the Festivus holiday as celebrated by the O’Keefe family, and how O’Keefe amended or replaced details of his father’s invention to create the Seinfeld episode.

We’re getting really close to that other holiday, Christmas. Through most of my adult years, I found the Christmas season extremely stressful. Frankly some of my happiest Christmases have been years when I spent the day alone. In recent years, I’ve gotten quite a bit closer to my siblings and I’ve enjoyed some family Christmases; but when all of us get together it can still be pretty crazymaking.

This year I’ll be going to my sister’s house with my mom. I’m hoping it will be quiet and peaceful, and I’m hoping the snowstorm we’re expecting won’t be too bad. We lost my dad in March, so this will be the family’s first Christmas without him. I know that will be really hard for all of us, especially my mom.

I’m not going to go through all the legislation that passed yesterday or write about President Obama’s self-congratulatory press conference. I think we should keep it light today. I’m just going to throw out a few links that I found interesting and let you all do the same in the comments.

I really got a kick out this article at Buzzflash by Peter Michaelson, a psychotherapist from Ann Arbor, MI: The Tracks of John Boehner’s Tears.

According to Michaelson, Boehner’s frequent “crying jags” stem from his troubled childhood.

Boehner cries a lot in public, even when debating bills in the House. He cries when he talks about his humble past. Son of a bar owner, he grew up with 11 siblings in a two-bedroom house with a single bathroom. He said recently on “60 Minutes” that he no longer visits schools or even looks at kids playing outside because he immediately starts crying.

[….]

Boehner had a scrappy upbringing, running cases of beer and mopping the floor in his father’s bar. He put himself through school, “working every rotten job there was.” The circumstances of his childhood, along with his manner of describing it, strongly suggest that, at times, he felt unappreciated, disrespected, and lacking in value.

Since Boehner rarely does anything to help deprived children, why does he burst into tears when he sees them? Michaelson see this as a form of projection.

When Boehner cries around kids, he’s not necessarily feeling their pain. He’s not seeing the world through their eyes. Rather, he’s imagining that they’re seeing the world through his eyes, through the self-doubt and pain with which he saw the world as a child. Unconsciously, he experiences himself and his political life in ways that are under the influence of these unresolved negative feelings.

He sees the children through what is unresolved in himself, through the pain he has repressed from his childhood. He’s also likely crying with relief because, unconsciously, he believes that, through his elevation to fame and power, he has liberated himself from those haunting feelings.

It’s an interesting hypothesis. We’ll probably learn a lot more about Boehner when he becomes Speaker of the House–probably a lot more than we ever wanted to to know. I wonder if he’ll cry frequently while going about his Speaker duties? I’ll bet he cries during the swearing in anyway.

Last night some moron drove his Plymouth Barracuda onto the North Dallas lawn of Mr. and Mrs. George W. Bush.

A suspect accused of driving a muscle car erratically onto the lawn at former President George W. Bush’s north Dallas home Wednesday night was detained by the Secret Service.

The former president and former first lady Laura Bush were in the Preston Hollow neighborhood home at the time but were unharmed and never in danger, officials told NBC station KXAS.

That must have been exciting.

Have you heard about the new Broadway sensation, “Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark?” There have been so many mishaps with this production that they had to call off Wednesday’s scheduled performances.

The Broadway musical “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” canceled its two Wednesday performances to test a new safety plan for the show’s 38 aerial and stage maneuvers, which involve actors hoisted or tethered in harnesses, including the maneuver that failed at Monday night’s performance when a stunt actor fell more than 20 feet and broke his ribs.

By canceling the performances at a cost of roughly $400,000 in ticket sales, and by adopting safety measures recommended by state and federal officials, the producers of “Spider-Man” sought to project a sense of urgency and understanding that action was needed to make the show safer. While the producers said that Thursday night’s performance would go on, they also committed, according to state safety officials, not to hold performances until the new measures were in place. The state officials said the plan could be tested successfully by Thursday night.

Under the plan, one offstage crew member will attach the harness and related cables, wires or tethers to the actors, and a second stagehand will verify that the attachments are made. That second stagehand will then verbally notify a stage manager that they are safely connected. The actor will also verify that the attachment is made. Previously, there was no second stagehand to verify or communicate with the stage manager, and the actor was not required to check his harness.

Well I sure hope everything works out okay…

Did you know that “Rev.” Pat Robertson supports legalization of marijuana?

“We’re locking up people that have taken a couple puffs of marijuana and next thing you know they’ve got 10 years with mandatory sentences,” Robertson continued. “These judges just say, they throw up their hands and say nothing we can do with these mandatory sentences. We’ve got to take a look at what we’re considering crimes and that’s one of ’em.

“I’m … I’m not exactly for the use of drugs, don’t get me wrong, but I just believe that criminalizing marijuana, criminalizing the possession of a few ounces of pot, that kinda thing it’s just, it’s costing us a fortune and it’s ruining young people. Young people go into prisons, they go in as youths and come out as hardened criminals. That’s not a good thing.”

Hmmm….could this explain where Robertson gets his wacky ideas about the causes of hurricanes and terrorist attacks?

Here’s one more goofy story, and then I’ll let you guys take over. From The Independent UK: North Korea threatens to attack South over Christmas lights

Seasonal goodwill is in short supply on the divided Korean peninsula, where both sides are again at potentially deadly loggerheads – over a Christmas tree.

North Korea’s military is reportedly preparing to shoot down a floodlit tower decorated with Christmas lights which overlooks the border near the South’s capital, Seoul – home to millions of Christians.

The provincial governor, Kim Moon-soo, has warned that firing at the tree would be a reckless and “provocative” act. The South’s Defence Minister was more blunt. “We’ll retaliate decisively to take out the source of any shelling,” Kim Kwan-jin told parliament yesterday. South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said fighter jets were on standby, ready to strike back.

OK, that’s it for me, except for this gratuitous kitty picture.

What are you reading this morning? Feel free to post links to serious stories, if you must.

Cry me a River, John

Posted: December 12, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Surreality | Tags: , , | 39 Comments

Okay, you probably had better things to do on a Sunday night than watch Lesley Stahl interview John Boehner on 60 minutes.   If you can stomach it, that link will take you to Agent Orange’s interview and some of his outrageous statements.  You can also get some short form critique at Politico.

The midterm elections and the prospect of being Speaker of the House have obviously turned this guy into egomaniac of the decade . Yes, that’s even given his stiff competition for the title up the Avenue.  I can only image that it looks like a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade when Boehner and Obama are in the same room.  Just one big Giant Floating Head Fest!

We’re sampling some Boehners tonight. Try not to sniffle.

John Boehner thinks President Barack Obama is engaging, smart and brilliant but also remains smarted by the president accusing him of taking taxpayers hostage to secure a tax break for the rich.

In an interview with Leslie Stahl of “60 Minutes” for broadcast Sunday night on CBS, Boehner said Obama showed him “disrespect” by calling him a hostage-taker.

“Excuse me, Mr. President I thought the election was over,” Boehner said, according to a transcript obtained by POLITICO. “You know, you get a lot of that heated rhetoric during an election. But now it’s time to govern.”

I can’t imagine the Boehner definition of ‘govern’.  Boehner’s pledged to tackle the deficit  is achieved by adding a huge amount of unnecessary tax cuts to billionaires into the equation.  Boehner Economics: 2 – 1 + 4 = 1.  That kind’ve stupidity alone defines Boehner-the-red-nosed Speaker.  I’m sure he and Biden can sit around singing 99-bottles-of-beer-in-my-gut together and always come up a few kegs short of a brewery.

But, back to the interview.

Boehner: I listen. I’ve got thick skin. And a lot of words get said here in Washington. You just have to let ’em run off your back. The president was having a tough day.

Stahl: You’re so understanding.

Boehner: I have a tough day from time to time myself.

But later in the interview, it became clear that the president’s jab about hostage takers had bothered him.

Stahl: There have been moments of disrespect shown to President Obama.

Boehner: Well, there was some disrespect, I would suggest, that was shown to me yesterday by the president.

The most powerful Democrat and the now most powerful Republican are sizing each other up. They may have exchanged more words via television than in person. And most of them have been, shall we say, unfriendly.

Mr. Boehner was the one who urged Republicans in the house to vote as a block against all of Obama’s initiatives: health care, the stimulus and on and on. And he escalated the attacks during the campaign.

His strategy of defiance worked.

And on election night, in his victory speech, the public saw something they probably never expected from Boehner: it was called “the sob heard round the world.”

“I’ve spent my whole life chasing the American Dream,” Boehner said, choking up.

Can you feel the smarm tonight?   Evidently the American Dream includes zygotes but excludes a hell of a lot of living breathing thinking people.  Let’s analyze some Boehners.

It’s easy to kick somebody when they’re down. George W. Bush has dealt with more difficult issues than any president since Franklin Roosevelt. And I’ve told my colleagues it’s time that we go stand up for the president.

Let’s see, Franklin Roosevelt:  Dealt with insolvent Banks by shutting them down. Check.  Ensured no more Stock Market crashes caused by miscreant banks/investment firms by enacting Glass Stegall.  Check. Ended the Great Depression. Check.  Started the New Deal to get people back to work and ended elder poverty by enacting Social Security. Check. Helped farmers and homeowners avoid foreclosure. Check.   Drug into world war 2 by the Japanese , fought on two fronts, and ended world war 2 with a victory. Check.

George Dubya Bush:  Started the the Great Recession. Check.  Started the Bankrupt America tax cut program. Check.  Increased income inequality and deregulated securities so that we now have high long term unemployment, a huge market crash in both equities and homes.  Ushered in record level foreclosures. Check. Brought about  record level Long term unemployment.  Check. Bailed out insolvent banks and brokerage firms. Check.   Basically started World War 3 by declaring war on a Bedouin nation and unnecessarily invading its neighbors.  Passed off said wars, said recessions, said unemployment, and said deficit to the next dude. Check.

Wow, that’s sure sounds likes it’s in the same league of problems and level of problem-solving  to me. (SO NOT!)

And then there’s these major untruths, oops Boehners:

Make no mistake, a ‘yes’ vote on the Democrats’ health care bill is a vote for taxpayer-funded abortions.

Stem cell research must be carried out in an ethical manner in a way that respects the sanctity of human life.

I think that translates into, if you’re alive, you can just die and go to hell, vs. if you’re a two cell proto-human, we’ll do everything possible to ensure you’re allowed to kill and bankrupt every one in your path!!

The United States and Israel have a unique relationship based on our mutual commitment to democracy, freedom, and peace. Therefore, just as our commitment to these principles must be steadfast, so must our support for Israel.

Should we tell him that Israel’s kind’ve a socialist state and mention the kibbutz thing or just let him blather on?

They have called Operation Iraqi Freedom a war of choice that isn’t part of the real war on terror. Someone should tell that to al Qaeda.

Okay, raise your hand if you knew that there was no al Qaeda in Iraq until we invaded them?  Yes, all of you!!!  Good. You can see who you’re a lot smarter than, can’t you?

So, that explains why he finds the POTUS  “engaging, smart and brilliant”.  Boehner appears dumber than a post. Eggplants appear more “engaging, smart, and brilliant” compared to him.  Tangerines, however, lose the complexion contest.

Okay, so he’s not even Speaker yet and I’m already depressed.  We are sooooooo F’d.

“There is no cause more noble than the defense of human life”

Posted: December 11, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Women's Rights | Tags: , , , , , | 29 Comments

John Boehner cares deeply about human life

That’s a quote from the incoming Speaker of the House, John Boehner. From The New York Times:

In a speech to the Right to Life Committee in June, Mr. Boehner explained the roots of his beliefs.

“I grew up in a small house in Cincinnati with a big family, 11 brothers and sisters,” Mr. Boehner said. “My parents sent all 12 of us to Catholic schools.” At those schools, he said, “we learned about deeper values, and respect for life was at the top of that list.”

Except as far as I can tell, the only form of life that Boeher holds sacred is fetuses. He seemingly has no objection to lives being lost during pointless wars, he voted against stem cell research which would help people with deadly diseases, and I would be very surprised if he doesn’t support capital punishment. Boehner apparently doesn’t value women’s lives very much, since he voted against equal pay for women.

Because of his deep “respect for life,” Boehner strongly supports the goals of the new chairman of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health, Rep. Joe Pitts (R-PA), whose committee “has jurisdiction over private health insurance, Medicaid and much of Medicare, as well as the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health,”

Pitts primary goal is to repeal Obama’s health care reform law.

Short of that goal, Mr. Pitts said he was determined to ban federal subsidy payments to any health insurance plans that include coverage of abortion — a benefit now offered by many private health plans.

Under the new law, the federal government is expected to spend more than $450 billion in subsidies to help low- and middle-income people buy insurance from 2014 to 2019.

When Congress was writing the law, Representative Bart Stupak, Democrat of Michigan, led efforts to restrict the use of federal money for insurance plans covering abortion. Mr. Pitts, though less well known, was the chief Republican co-author of the “Stupak amendment.”

Joe Pitts, another lover of human life

From his powerful new perch, Mr. Pitts said he would try again to impose those restrictions.

“The new health care law is riddled with loopholes that allow taxpayer subsidies for coverage that includes abortion,” Mr. Pitts said.

In its current form, the Obama health care law allows health plans to cover abortions, but no federal money can be used to pay for them. To make sure not a single cent of taxpayer money gets used in that way, patients must write two separate checks–one for health coverage and one completely out-of-pocket for abortion coverage. Furthermore, insurance companies have to keep the money in separate back accounts! In addition President Obama, the great progressive, issued an executive order to make it absolutely clear that no federal funds can be used to pay for abortions.

But none of that was good enough for Joe Pitts. He wants to make sure that no plan that makes abortion coverage available can receive subsidies under the new law. In effect this would ban abortion, since the few doctors who still perform the procedure aren’t likely to keep doing so if they aren’t covered by insurance. Frankly, I think the current rules will probably lead to this result, but Joe Pitts and John Boehner want to make absolutely sure. Because they care so very deeply about human life.

God, I’m so sick of Republicans. If only we could have gotten a Democrat into the White House in 2008, maybe Democrats would still control Congress.

Soylent Orange

Posted: December 2, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Democratic Politics, legislation, Surreality, Team Obama | Tags: , | 34 Comments

The next Speaker of the House appears to be full of himself and ‘it’.   Here’s a sample headline form the column The Capitolist at Politics Daily: John Boehner Calls Vote on Middle-Class-Only Tax Cut ‘Chicken Crap’.  Yup, that’s fairly succinct.

Although no Democrats have agreed with Republicans to make the Bush tax cuts permanent for everyone, 31 moderate House Democrats signed a letter this week calling for a temporary extension of the tax cuts for higher incomes while the country continues to fight its way out of recession.

“I’m tying to catch my breath so I don’t refer to this maneuver that’s going on today as chicken crap. But this is nonsense, right?” Boehner said. “The election was one month ago. We’re 23 months from the next election and the games have already started to set up the next election.”

The source of Boehner’s ire was a House vote earlier Thursday that will prevent Republicans from offering their own bill to make all of the Bush tax cuts permanent for all Americans, including the highest earners, when the full chamber considers the middle-class cuts later in the day. The House voted 213 to 203 to vote only on the middle-class tax proposal, with 32 Democrats voting with the Republicans to keep the process open.

Earlier, Rep. David Drier (R-Calif.), who offered the Republican alternative, called the Democrats’ plans to vote only on their bill “a joke.”

“I think it’s very evident that this House could, with a majority vote, ensure that we don’t increase taxes on any Americans during these very troubling, difficult economic times,” Drier said. “The fact of the matter is that any member of this House that votes in favor of the measure before us is voting for a tax increase. They are voting in favor of increasing taxes on American businesses and investors.”

No Rep. Drier, you’re voting to return tax levels for the extraordinarily rich back to the extraordinarily job-abundant and budget-balanced Clinton years.   There is absolutely no evidence that those tax cuts created jobs and there’s no evidence that not extending them to the richest will harm the economy.  This is especially true since corporate profits are attaining record levels and corporate executives are getting record bonuses while we also maintain an incredibly unacceptable unemployment rate. You’re expanding the deficit for your donor’s interests.  We’re not buying your B.S. for one moment.

So, where is our illustrious POTUS on this?  The ONE every one was waiting for? Try Dana Bash’s CNN Political ticker headline on for size:  Tax deal getting close, Democrats worried Obama may cave. Now, that’ s leadership that can!!!

Multiple congressional Democratic sources tell CNN that a compromise to extend all Bush-era tax cuts temporarily is getting close, and that there is increasing concern among Democratic lawmakers that the White House will not fight hard enough to get Democratic priorities in return.

“The goose is cooked,” said one senior Democratic source, “the question is what the larger deal is going to look like.”

Many Democrats are unhappy at the prospect of giving up on their goal of permanently extending tax cuts only for those making $250,000 and less. Sources in both parties say a deal in the works would extend all expiring Bush era tax cuts for all income levels for two or three years.

In exchange, Democrats are hoping to squeeze out of Republicans a wish list of concessions. Democratic sources say that list generally includes: A lengthy extension of unemployment benefits, without having to find offsets to pay for them; extending college tuition tax credits set to expire at the end of the year; extending the so-called “make work pay” tax credits also expiring December 31st; and the HIRE act, tax credits for businesses that hire unemployed workers.

So, it comes down to Let’s Make a Deal for middle class livelihoods by maintaining the status quo for the aristocracy.  We get the kibble, they get the banquet.

More from Politico on what’s likely to happen come January when Agent Orange actually gets the gavel. Ask not on whom the gavel falls, it falls on you.

House Republicans seem intent on blowing up the staid appropriations process when they take power in January — potentially upending the old bulls in both parties who have spent decades building their power over the federal budget.

The plans include slicing and dicing appropriations bills into dozens of smaller, bite-size pieces — making it easier to kill or slash unpopular agencies. Other proposals include statutory spending caps, weekly votes on spending cuts and other reforms to ensure spending bills aren’t sneakily passed under special rules.
On some level, their plans may create a sense of organized chaos on the House floor — picture dozens of votes on dozens of federal program cuts and likely gridlock on spending bills. And don’t forget that a lot of these efforts will die with a Democratic-led Senate and a Democrat in the White House.

Once again, it’s the worst government that corporate money buys working to make our lives miserable.

Breaking NEWS: The house just passed tax cuts for those families making up to $250,000.  The measure is expected to die in the Senate.


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