I have asked this question before and I will ask it again. Why do Republican voters, whose financial net worth is far less than one million dollars, continue to routinely vote for politicians that have nothing but unbridled contempt for those who fall far short of millionaire incomes?
Since January, 2011 the Republican Party has embarked on a radical mission to dismantle the social programs that were passed into law in the 20th Century. The GOP extremists want to return to the heyday of the reckless and irresponsible economic policies of the 1920s that led to the worst depression in U.S. history.
The social programs that were implemented in the 20th Century passed during a time in which there was a Democratic ethos of caring capitalism. By making investments in programs and initiatives for working Americans, tens of thousands of boats were lifted. Hard working folks had the opportunity to move up the ladders of education and attendant higher incomes. These investments ensured a secure future for a solid and thriving middle class America.
But today's radicals on the right want nothing to do with the caring part of capitalism or with floating any boat, for that matter. In fact, the extremists have no clue what the definition of care is.
On Friday the Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives voted to gut Medicare. It did so while giving yet more tax cuts to millionaires and by making the Bush tax cuts permanent.
Just one day after Congress concluded its fight over this year's spending, the House voted 235 to 193 to approve the fiscal blueprint for 2012 drafted by Representative Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin and chairman of the Budget Committee. Besides reconfiguring the Medicare program that now serves those 65 and older, the proposal would cut the top corporate and personal income tax rates while also overhauling the Medicaid health program for the poor.
President Reagan's former Office of Management and Budget Director, David Stockman, recently wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times. Mr. Stockman chastises his party for its irresponsible and reckless fiscal policies.
Four Deformations of the Apocalypse
Not only does Mr. Stockman pin the blame for today's economic hardships squarely on Republican policies and ideologies but he also revealed the Republican Party has absolutely no intention of deviating from its present addiction to serial financial bubbles and Wall St. made havoc that have driven us into the present chasm. The Wall St. gambling casino practices, by the way, resulted in the biggest looting of the public purse in U.S. history. Do Republicans embrace the endless looting of U.S. taxpayers to bail out Wall St.?
IF there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing. The nation's public debt - if honestly reckoned to include municipal bonds and the $7 trillion of new deficits baked into the cake through 2015 - will soon reach $18 trillion. That's a Greece-scale 120 percent of gross domestic product, and fairly screams out for austerity and sacrifice. It is therefore unseemly for the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, to insist that the nation's wealthiest taxpayers be spared even a three-percentage-point rate increase.
More fundamentally, Mr. McConnell's stand puts the lie to the Republican pretense that its new monetarist and supply-side doctrines are rooted in its traditional financial philosophy. Republicans used to believe that prosperity depended upon the regular balancing of accounts - in government, in international trade, on the ledgers of central banks and in the financial affairs of private households and businesses, too. But the new catechism, as practiced by Republican policymakers for decades now, has amounted to little more than money printing and deficit finance - vulgar Keynesianism robed in the ideological vestments of the prosperous classes.
An article in the Houston Chronicle reveals that Rick Perry did not use federal stimulus money targeted to schools to augment their budgets, as required.
The federal dollars were intended specially for schools. The funding was to have given Texas a means by which it could enhance and strengthen the educational outcomes for students. The federal government did not hand out the people's money to Texas for the governor to do whatever he wants with it. Of all people the governor should know that federal funding always includes specific requirements and guidelines, compliance is mandatory as is accountability. In this case the federal government made it clear that states could not replace what they normally distribute to schools with federal money.
Rick Perry must think the rules do not apply to him especially when they are made by a big bad federal government that will actually hold him accountable for how the governor spends the people's money.
As we can imagine, the ever arrogant Rick Perry thumbed his nose at Texas school children, their teachers and the U.S. taxpayers while stuffing the U.S. people's money into his state coffer. The Governor of a state in which the schools rank second to the bottom of the pile nationwide cut back on what Texas normally gives to its schools. Instead of receiving extra resources and educational opportunities Texas schools got the same stingy state funding.
Democrats charge that while Perry officially accepted the money from Washington, he simultaneously slashed the state's contributions to the education budget, allowing the state to essentially pocket the federal dollars without increasing school aid.
"Instead of a historic boost in local school support, our schoolchildren were left no better off," Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin, said. "Three billion dollars (in federal money) made no difference to our local schools."
Rick Perry has stooped to such a low level that he will actually steal from Texas school children.
The loony fringe of the Texas GOP continues to fall all over itself standing by their big sugar daddy, BP. Louie Gohmert took extremism to a new level when he compared President Obama's demand to BP for $20 billion to who else but Hitler.
Is there a head doctor in the house? President Obama's demands for accountability and responsibility from BP seems to have driven the Texas GOP stark raving mad.
There they go outing themselves again. Republicans are the ones that are easily led idiots who will believe anything a demagogue says. Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck are perfect examples. And as I recall, W. whined about how much easier it would have been to rule as a dictator instead of a democratically elected President.
The Texas GOP held its convention in Dallas on Friday and as we suspected, the Party continues to be pathetically bereft of fresh ideas and viable and concrete solutions for the challenges that face the state. Rick Perry beat on the same tiresome, unproductive and worn out drums of anti-Washington everything, anti-tax, anti-immigration and pro-states rights rhetoric. The tea party secessionist faction continued to call for secession. It seems that states rights and secession are the only concepts that Republicans are for. The tea party wing of the GOP showed up in full force with all of its John Birch paraphernalia, too. Lovely. What viable solutions do Birchers have to offer other than burning everyone who does not agree with them at the stake?
The conservative wing of the GOP demands a new era of fiscal responsibility, according to the attendees. Aside from uttering the words "fiscal" "conservative" and "responsibility" no one said how Rick Perry should make up his $18 billion budget shortfall. How will he do it? Apparently no one brought it up and on one asked. What are Perry's plans to make up the shortfall? Does he have one at all? Maybe he intends to rob a few banks to deal with the issue. Perry would likely rather do that instead of increasing taxes, as long as someone else is doing the actual robbing of course.
Maybe Rick Perry's highly paid PR strategists and spin doctors forgot to include a major talking point in his fired up hate talk rhetoric. Like, people need well paying jobs and benefits.
How will Rick Perry create new jobs in Texas? How will Governor Rick Perry cover his $18 billion budget shortfall?
Why do crickets continue to chirp all of the time in Rick Perry's Texas?
For you have torn off the mask and have unveiled the thinly shrouded southern Republican Party strategy, since the 1950's.
The GOP strategy, of course, includes blatant racism, exclusion, xenophobia, intolerance and hate. The toxic witches brew is mixed with an irrational hatred for big government.
Thank you, Rand, for shining a bright and stark light on your party's deeply racist and crony capitalism ideology.
When Rand and his Republican Party members shriek about how they must
Take our country back
It tells us that Republicans yearn to return to an era before the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Sarah Palin has the same message when she refers to
Real Americans.
GOP scorched earth politics strategist and opportunist, Karl Rove, and his side kick, the hate talker and snake oil multi-millionaire manipulator Rush Limbaugh must be so very proud of Rand Paul.
For those who do not know, Beavis and Butt-Head are fictional cartoon teenagers that are socially incompetent. Both are hopelessly insensitive to the feelings of others. They are obnoxious, misogynistic, and boorish. In the cartoon series, Beavis and Butt-Head usually escape from their irresponsible shenanigans unscathed while those around them do not always fare so well.
Today Rick Perry wins the Beavis and Butt-Head Oscar award for showing, yet again, his heartless contempt for struggling Texans. This is strike three for the Governor who is as laser focused as his big and bad pistol in killing off federal programs that throw financial, educational and literal life lines for the jobless, school children and to those who cannot afford heath insurance.
Does a reckless and heartless cowboy preside over Texas?
My post tonight is written in response to a comment posted below in a previous diary. I had charged (and continue to charge) the nationally syndicated cable TV "news" talk show host, Glenn Beck, with unrestrained and unabashed bigotry.
The video clip that I had posted below drew criticism from one who, like Rick Perry, stands by Glenn Beck.
The Beck supporter demanded that I show proof of Becks' bigotry and unfiltered racism.
At first I thought the Beck supporter was joking because one only has to view the Beck show on FOX cable TV for 10 seconds to understand the obvious. One can also view the you tube clips of Beckian bigotry and racism that pervade the Internet, many of which are uploaded on a vast number of blog sites, including those that shine a bright light on the cable and mainstream media hosts, pundits and their invited guests.
If none of the above could prove my point, I thought, surely Jon Stewart's renditions of the Glenn Beck show should have done the trick.
Wrong.
Jon Stewart cannot help a group that does not do nuance, indirect language or political satire.
Rick Perry sat on a wall. Rick Perry took a big fall. All the king's horses and all the king's men could not put Rick Perry together again. (From an old English nursery rhyme, Humpty Dumpty.)
If Rick Perry had nothing to hide, his hand picked go-to crony would not continue to cover up the Cameron Todd Willingham execution investigation. According to Rick Casey of the Houston Chronicle, Chairman Bradley of the Texas Science Commission has no intention of meeting anytime soon. At least there will no meetings between now, and guess when?
You got it.
Hell has better chances of freezing over between now and November. Hell, Texas has a better chance of freezing over between now and November. It would be easier to envision a July snowstorm in Houston before a meeting of the Texas Forensics Science Commission.
Last fall when Gov. Rick Perry abruptly replaced the chairman of the Texas Forensic Science Commission two days before it was to hear a national arson expert testify that Texas had executed a man for murder by arson based on faulty evidence and profoundly flawed testimony by a fire marshal, I naively wondered whether the commission's findings on the case would be delayed until after the March primary.
I underestimated the skills of Perry's hand-picked new chairman, Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley.
Now I can confidently predict that the matter will not be settled until after the November election, a full 14 months after Bradley took over leadership of the commission.
I think Rick Perry has spent far too much time palling around with the likes of Sarah Palin and the teabagger folks. After spending much of last summer hanging out with right wing fundamentalists and extremists who want to form their own armed militias and who are known for making stuff up and pulling facts out of their butts, Rick Perry has apparently forgotten how to add and subtract.
As Lisa Falkenberg of the Houston Chronicle writes, some whoppers are just too huge to ignore, even during the silly season of campaigning.
After all, similar to drinking while driving, speaking while stumping has been associated with any number of side-effects, from impaired judgment to short-term memory loss to feelings of grandiosity.
Campaign rhetoric is usually judged in this context. But, occasionally, the whopper spewed from the candidate's lips, or those of a spokesman, is so big, it can't be ignored. And it might be dangerous to do so.
Such was the case last week with Gov. Rick Perry and his spokesman, who claimed, despite voluminous evidence to the contrary, that Texas' dropout problem isn't that big of a deal.
Rick Perry claims that our school's drop out is a mere 10%. Oh were it so.
