An Attempt to Distract from GOP Hypocrisy

I don't know about the rest of you, but I am grateful to live in a technological age where we have video proof when people are *lying* through their teeth and misrepresenting other's words.

Case in point. The conservative media's new bone that Obama is "breaking a campaign promise to ban all earmarks".

If fact, Obama *never* promised to ban earmarks.

Take a look for yourself:



McCain repeated the no-earmark mantra for months during the campaign.

Honestly, I am not a math whiz, but eliminating one half of one percent of the Federal Budget does very little to balance that sheet in any way.

If the GOP is so against earmarks, why did so many GOP senators request money? [Click on 'version' 5 to see Excel spreadsheet.]

GOP Top Ten in the *solo and with other senators category* of earmark requests:

Number one: Thad Cochran (R-Mississippi): 472 million and change

Number two: Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi): 396 million and change.

Number five: David Vitter (R-Louisiana): over 249 million and change

Number six: Kit Bond (R- Missouri): 248 million and change

Number nine: Dick Shelby (R-Alabama): 219 million and change

Number ten: Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa): 199 million and change

Six out of 10 favoring the fiscally responsible GOP.

Dollar totals in top ten (rounded down to the nearest million):
GOP= 1.78 billion
Democrat= 1.08 billion

It's bad on both sides of the aisle-- but one party claims fiscal conservatism and "no-earmarks" as part of it's ideology.

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Tennessee Republican: Healthcare is a Privilege

Here it is, straight from the horse's mouth (or perhaps the other end in this case):

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Apparently, being healthy and having access to healthcare isn't part of being an American.

You have to be of a certain class to get it.

And once again, progressives are the ones who are starting class warfare?

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Sick Day

I'm taking a sick day (or two) for the next couple of days. So my posts might be a little lazy (i.e., I might just post goofy youtube videos or dirty jokes from the web).

I caught the nasty stomach flu that I affectionately refer to as the plague.

Yuck.

I hope all are well.

Thanks for the visits and the comments on yesterday's rant.

I'll be checking in as I can.

In the mean time, I didn't see this live, but boy it's a good one.



Dan Akroyd and some regulars as GOP nincompoops.

Priceless.

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Lies, lies, lies

The GOP is lying about everything from:

• The final size of ARRA. It started at 736 pages--- it's now up to 759 pages--- which means 23* WHOLE pages of amendments have been added. John Boehner just claimed on the floor of the House that the bill is over 1,100 pages long. This cements further that this man has not even looked at the bill, much less read it.
• How much time reps and senators have had to read it (um, like two weeks now?)
• The crap about the health care records director being a new position (George Bush created the position FIVE years ago; here's a link to the fella's bio)
• The purpose of the health care record system that Limberger LIED about yesterday, as did Fox without even bothering to verify facts and sources
• The provision that will STOP people like Flush from getting the same prescription from multiple doctors. A doctor, in reality as put forth in the bill, will be able to access a list of prescriptions any patient is currently filling at any pharmacy.
  

There's more, but my complexion is finally starting to clear and Valentine's Day is tomorrow. I want to be in a good mood for my husband's sake and mine, too.

Frankly, I am sick of this whole bipartisan bullshit.

The GOP ideas are the ones that got us here, today, having to spend our way out of this mess in a terrible economy where unemployment is nearing 8%, housing foreclosures are affecting the secondary market now (not just the bad loans), and small businesses are shutting door, after door, after door.

Obama tried, they've all said no, and acted like tools. That's it. They had their shot.

It's time to move on and move upward.

Be part of the solution or get the hell out of the way.

Check out this video of Dave Obey making the closing case against the GOP's lies this afternoon on the House Floor:



PS: We must stand up against the lies. The Bush Administration lied time after time after time. Here's the link to a petition to urge an investigation of these criminals:
http://ga3.org/campaign/btcpetition?qp_source=btc_hp

* Funny thing to prove my well-placed fear of numbers. I had to change this number 3 times today.

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Clusterf*ck to the Poor House: Daily Show

I have not had time to look at the 14 page pdf that shows cuts and revisions to ARRA, so I won't be posting on them.

If you have been directed to this site looking for information on ARRA, click here.

Frankly, I am utterly drained by the whole thing.

And I am despondent by the fact I found out yesterday that Bill O' and I went to the same undergraduate institution of higher learning. Even though I attended many years after he departed, it still makes me feel dirty and contaminated somehow knowing that man got his journalism degree from an excellent communications program and he's starting to run his show like his former glory days as an Inside Edition correspondent. If you had any doubt as to Bill's professionalism, please watch the following short clip.



Here's John Stewart's reaction last PM to the lack of bipartisanship on the part of the Congressional GOP:

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Clusterf#@k to the Poor House - The Death of Hope

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Funny Political News
Joke of the Day

I am totally embarrassed that I am from Indiana every time I see Mike Pence.

If it's worth anything, he's not my representative.

Hope you all have great Tuesdays.

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Monday, Monday

My posts for the next couple of days will be short.

If you are looking for ARRA information, here's a good place to start. I have embedded links to the Titles I have itemized thus far.

I have a meeting with my chair on Wednesday morning and I want/need to get the chapter finished I am working on.

There's some good stuff online about myths being perpetuated by conservatives regarding the bailout. It's one of two things: they are utter morons who haven't actually read the bill or they are being intentionally obstructive. Either way-- they look like idiots and jerks.

This link in particular is very interesting considering my motivations for listing the expenses in each title.

The congressional GOP is digging themselves a grave with this one. The longer they stall, the deeper they cut spending, the more Americans will be angered as people lose their jobs, their homes, and their sense of confidence in them to be able to do anything other than obstruct.

Scary fact about the economy today:
California is 3.7 billion short for state income tax returns. They're not sending out refund checks because they don't have the money. (The GOP also cut funding for the states. Nice for those of you who live in CA, huh?) If your state is having budget trouble I suggest getting your tax paperwork in sooner than later.

If people think this bill is anything other than absolutely imperative-- they've got their heads up their bums.

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Sunday Constitution

No new ARRA numbers to share today. If you clicked here for that info, here's a link that will point you to the first eight of the sixteen titles (links are below the post title).

Today I present the second in my newest series of Sunday rants.

I need a respite from seeing those wonderfully progressive ideas, ideas that would be meaningful to every last American for generations, thrown away like garbage, or rotten pork--- to borrow the tiresome phrase from those congressional GOP people-like things. I can't call them human beings just yet. I'm related to many, but they don't frequent my blog anyway so no worries about getting hate mail from Aunt Enid or getting stricken from anyone's will. At this point the family fortune has evaporated. Ha-- family fortune.

You know how it makes you feel to keep trying something over and over without achieving a different outcome?

Crazy.

How is it that the congressional GOP has avoided this feeling?

Perhaps they are selfish, greedy, shit-heads who can't think of anyone but themselves?

Or are they all on Oxycontin?

Or they are missing the remembering gene.

Twenty-five years of their tax cutting dogma has landed us squarely where we are (yes, yes, I know Clinton was in office for eight of those years and recall we had a budget surplus that Shrubya quickly blew through and borrowed more for his expensive war games and oil).

They want to blame Obama who has been in office a total of 2 weeks, 5 days.

And they accuse us of thinking he's superhuman.

Kettle, there's a pot on the phone who would like to have a word.

So I intend today to save the final shred of my sanity, squirrel it away like the last seed of fall, and shift momentarily to something a bit lighter. This is a huge undertaking because all I want to do is rant, rant, rant about how unreasonable and inhuman the right side of the country is acting.

I've come to start thinking of them like a relative that you cannot stand--but you are biologically obligated to been seen in public with because you have some genetic material in common.

And you go to their homes decorated with weird, scary ceramic clowns, where they offer you the same, stale ribbon candy that's been sitting in that same candy dish since you were four and they have bequeathed you their extensive taxidermy collection for which you must appear to be grateful.

For the newest of new people here, what follows is not typical (nor really what immediately proceeded), but I am a bit crass--not without self-deprecation at that crassishnessism.

I have posted content suggestions for emails to your congresspeople in the last several days.

Here's a special one for GOP members that neatly sums up how they treat this country and continue to try to treat this country:




The GOP insisted that all education funding get cut out of ARRA, including special education teachers. And we wonder why we have morons who apparently cannot read the bill. Because if they could, they wouldn't be taking their collective dumps on our poor, our disadvantaged, our uneducated, our military, and our unemployed.

I am so grateful to all who have linked to the information on my blog and to all who have stopped by. Really, there's a lot more to this website than ARRA numbers (and tasteless scatological humor), so I hope you peek around in the archives, with the hope you don't click outta here thinking I am a weird, numbers obsessed lunatic.

Numbers actually terrify me. So as you can read, this week has been a successful experiment in confronting my irrational fear of numeric symbols; guess now I need to work on that clown thing.

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