An Unserious Man, Todd Akin and the GOP’s problem with women, the War on Voting opens up a new front, the Bizzaro Tea Party attack on Obamacare, the Income Gap, Unemployment, and Tax Rates, and 14 wacky “facts” from Louisiana’s voucher schools.
Welcome to the Daily Sausage.
First up, Paul Krugman eviscerates Paul Ryan in his newest article, “An Unserious Man”.
Ryanomics is and always has been a con game, although to be fair, it has become even more of a con since Mr. Ryan joined the ticket.
Krugman goes on to crush Ryan’s budget, but really what it all boils down to is this: Paul Ryan cannot broaden the tax base or cut enough out of the rest of the Federal budget to make his utterly irresponsible giveaway to the wealthiest Americans and Corporations deficit neutral. At BEST, he’s expanding the deficit at the rate of $2 trillion a year while gutting social services for the most vulnerable elements of society.
Paul Ryan is a fraud and a charlatan, and the only reason he’s considered anything other than that is because the media has come to fetishize “fairness” and “balance”, and in the process confusing giving good ideas from both sides equal time with just giving ideas from both sides equal time, and refusing to criticize bad ones.
In case your weekend place is under a rock in the middle of nowhere, Missouri Republican Senate Candidate Todd Akin justified his opposition to abortion rights with the claim that victims of “legitimate rape” have a biological defense that prevents pregnancy.
Hoo boy.
First off, this isn’t a new theory in the GOP. This goes back at least as far as 1988, when Delaware State Representative Stephen Freind expressed a similar sentiment.
Of course, any time a public figure fucks up on a level as colossal as this, there will be calls for them to step down or step aside. Unfortunately, unless Akin steps aside by tomorrow, the GOP is stuck with him. For the record, Missouri is where Mel Carnahan died while campaigning against John Ashcroft and still won.
Nate Silver’s Five Thirty Eight blog has indicated that Akin’s comments could cost him ten points in the polls, which would wipe out his previously significant lead and swing the election to his Democratic opponent, Claire McCaskill.
This is exactly how the GOP is going to blow a potential Senate takeover. In 2010, the GOP had the Democrats dead to rights pretty much everywhere, and yet they couldn’t take the Senate. Instead of nominating candidates like Chris Coons in Delaware, they nominated Christine O’Donnell. Past, as they say, is prologue. Candidates like Akin in Missouri, Mourdock in Indiana, etc. are going to sink the GOP’s chances of taking over the Senate.
And now, it’s time for our report from the front lines of the War On Voting.
Four of Ohio’s largest counties, all heavily Democratic and containing the cities of Columbus, Cleveland, Toledo, and Akron, are deadlocked along party lines by GOP electors who refuse to allow early or weekend voting in heavily Democratic counties, while other GOP electors are allowing it in Republican counties.
Fifty years ago, this country decided that we weren’t going to allow American citizens to be discriminated against at the voting booth. Back then, it was over the color of their skin. Now, it’s over the way they vote.
The GOP hasn’t been able to show a single instance of in-person voter fraud that voting ID laws are “supposed” to prevent. Multiple individuals have said, in no uncertain terms, the purpose of these laws is to disenfranchise Democrats, specifically African Americans and Hispanics, and deliver the election to Mitt Romney.
We’ve all heard the famous “First they came…” speech.
First they came for the gays, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t gay.
Then they came for the blacks and hispanics, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t black or hispanic.
Then they came for the unions, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a part of a union.
Then they came for the women, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a woman.
Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak.
When conservative Tea Party groups started protesting Obamacare, they did it on the grounds that it was an unconscionable invasion of personal privacy. Now, apparently, their complaint is that the law doesn’t go far enough to cover every uninsured person in the country.
Basically, their complaint is that Obamacare is not True Universal Healthcare.
This is really one of those articles that makes me wonder if I’m taking crazy pills.
The CBO report the Tea Party Patriots cite discusses the impact of the Supreme Court ruling striking down the penalties on Republican states that refuse to enact insurance exchanges and refuse Medicare funds, as directed to do so by Republican governors.
The Tea Party Patriots are angry at President Obama for not insuring more people because Republicans in the Supreme Court allowed Republicans in the state’s Governor’s Mansions permission to refuse to implement Obamacare in their states.
If that doesn’t give you a nosebleed as a precursor to a brain tumor, I don’t know what will.
Speaking of which, let’s talk about the income gap, unemployment, and tax rates.
The Rich have always been rich, but circa 1980 or so they got a whole lot richer, right around the time Ol’ St. Ronnie dumped tax rates in the toilet and double flushed. The rest of us got screwed.
And finally, MotherJones has a great roundup of 14 “facts” children that attend some of Louisiana’s voucher schools will learn.
Here’s a rundown:
- Dinosaurs and people lived together.
- Dragons are real.
- God used the Trail of Tears to bring Native Americans to Christ.
- Africa needs religion.
- Slave masters: not all bad.
- The KKK: not all bad.
- The Great Depression: not that bad.
- The SCOTUS enslaved fetuses.
- Communism: still a thing.
- Mark Twain and Emily Dickinson were hacks.
- Abstract algebra is too hard.
- Gay people have no more claim to special rights than child molesters or rapists.
- Environmentalists are out to destroy the world’s most prosperous economies.
- Globalization leads to the Rapture.
They’re going to teach this crap to children at taxpayer expense.
When I was out of work several years ago, at the height of the Great Recession, I would frequently see the following on applications:
“If you have a degree from the University of Phoenix, DeVry University, or any other non-accredited academic institution, please do not apply for this position, as you will not be considered.”
That may not be the exact language, but it’s not far off either.
How far away are states like Louisiana and Kentucky from being blacklisted by colleges, universities, and employers on the grounds that their local populace is too stupid to be anywhere that’s not Louisiana and Kentucky?
