Quit Picking on the Republicans
- Thread starter Kreskin
- Start date
Reminds me of what Dennis Miller said back in the day. . .
"The government has announced that it will require new television sets to be equipped with the V-chip, which will prevent children from watching violent shows. The new technology will cost about $300 per TV set, and replaces the old technology, the "off" switch, which was free."
They don't speak English. They live in a desert and they are coming to Minnesota in the middle of winter.........doesn't make a lot of sense. Said Mike Huckabee today when talking about the Bamsters refugee policy. I'd say he has a point.
It's hard to imagine a valid reason why Republican Mitch McConnell would block legislation whose purpose is to help the first responders and other victims of the 9/11 terror attacks, but he's doing it anyway. Supporters of the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Reauthorization Act were hopeful that the act would have been permanently reauthorized in the highway bill that is expected to pass with bipartisan support.
But the Senate majority leader didn't do the right thing, and the program will run out of money early next year if Congress doesn't act.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka blasted McConnell:
Sen. McConnell recently said, “In Congress we have a responsibility to advocate for our service members and veterans and to ensure that they get the treatment they deserve during and after their service.” Yet in an opportunity to act on those words, Sen. McConnell didn’t. He is utterly failing the first responders of September 11—the first veterans of America’s current wars.
It is despicable and negligent for Sen. McConnell to play politics with the lives and health of some of America’s bravest men and women. Sen. McConnell should not stand in the way of a permanent and fully funded James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Reauthorization Act.
McConnell Blocks Health Care for 9/11 First Responders
But the Senate majority leader didn't do the right thing, and the program will run out of money early next year if Congress doesn't act.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka blasted McConnell:
Sen. McConnell recently said, “In Congress we have a responsibility to advocate for our service members and veterans and to ensure that they get the treatment they deserve during and after their service.” Yet in an opportunity to act on those words, Sen. McConnell didn’t. He is utterly failing the first responders of September 11—the first veterans of America’s current wars.
It is despicable and negligent for Sen. McConnell to play politics with the lives and health of some of America’s bravest men and women. Sen. McConnell should not stand in the way of a permanent and fully funded James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Reauthorization Act.
McConnell Blocks Health Care for 9/11 First Responders
Ah, Wally, it is so hard on your ego when your silly ignorance is exposed before your peers.
Are Republicans any worse than Democrats or Vice Versa? To me they are all the same...................a drag on the tax payer! 
I'm sure that was true a few decades ago until the religious right teabaggers took over what was once a nobler kind of ruling elite puppets. Just look at the clown bus full of morons that are vying for leadership of the Repubs.Are Republicans any worse than Democrats or Vice Versa? To me they are all the same...................a drag on the tax payer!
cue another Wally red....
B. You were down on republicans long before there was anything called the tea party .
So? What is your point? How many times do I have to say, "Politics is a movie they play to entertain us while the ruling elite go about doing whatever the hell they want." American politics has become a reality side show at a carnival. At least in Canada we only have to put up with that nonsense for a couple of months every few years. Down there it is a never ending story of bewildering insanity.
Not surprising, Walter thinks one political party is more noble than another.................huge mistake!
You can't get much worse than corrupt.Not surprising, Walter thinks one political party is more noble than another.................huge mistake!
Come on Walter, I think you've made it abundantly clear (and you may well be correct) that you think Conservatives/Republicans are head and shoulders over the Democrats/Liberals. I'd say they are running neck and neck. (At the bottom of the trough)
This coming from the guy who gets his info from FOX! You should do standup comedy. You'ld knock em dead in the aisles.
Republicans to insure more welfare for the rich
CLIMATE CHANGE No Science Here: Big Oil Has Turned The House Into Their Private Lobbying Agency
No Science Here: Big Oil Has Turned The House Into Their Private Lobbying Agency | Occupy Democrats
In an astounding demonstration of the power of corporate influence coupled with ignorance to overpower logic, common sense, and the public good, the Republican-dominated House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology has been bought out by the oil and gas industry and their stooge, Representative Lamar S. Smith (R-TX), who was appointed head of the committee in 2013.
Smith has led a crusade against “rampant environmentalism” that has seen the House science committee, once a venerable and intellectual body, degenerate into a farcical circus run by science-denying Republicans who are perfectly willing to ignore facts and behave like absolute imbeciles in order to keep the money from the oil and gas industry flowing.
Over the course of his three years as chairman of the Science committee, Smith has fought what he calls the “climate-change religion” of the Obama administration, by which he apparently means facts. He’s launched a legal battle against administration over new air-pollution regulations that he claims are “not backed up by science,” despite the fact that they’ve been upheld by federal appeals courts, they’d save tens of thousands of American lives and produce more than $40 billion in health care savings, and, of course, they are in fact backed up by essentially universal consensus in the actual scientific community.
When the Supreme Court eventually overturned the EPA’s curbs on toxic emissions, a major part of Obama’s environmental plan, in June, the decision was not the result of any scientific misgivings but rather because the EPA had “failed to take into account the costs [of the regulations] to utilities and others in the power sector.” In other words, regulations that would make help to stop the poisoning of the planet and its inhabitants were overturned because they would cost the people poisoning the planet some money. Smith and his band of oil industry-financed lawyers and lobbyists were of course influential in lobbying the court to overturn the obviously beneficial legislation.
From that inauspicious beginning, Smith moved on to slash NASA’s budget for earth sciences and subject grant reviews at the National Science Foundation to extra scrutiny. He ostensibly supported these moves out of concerns for the budget, which has become a boogeyman nearly as powerful as Islamic terrorism that conservatives can use to eliminate anything they don’t like. However, given his support for increasing our already enormous military budget, anyone with common sense can see that such moves are merely meant to stifle the voices of those scientists who disagree with the delusional brand of climate-denial that the oil industry bosses in Houston tell him to peddle. And, given the general tendency of scientists to have brains and common sense, that has essentially meant that the House science committee is battling to keep scientists from publishing the truth, which, as former committee member and physicist Rush Holt (D-NJ) notes wryly, is “an interesting way to raise the profile of a science committee,” but not surprising given the “substituting of politics for evidence.”
Most recently, he has accused scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of manipulating data and rushing publication of a major study that refuted claims that global temperatures were stabilizing, all in order to “advance Obama’s extreme climate-change agenda,” extreme apparently meaning, in Smith’s mind, anything to the left of his own brand of lunatic conservative rejectionism. He eventually subpoenaed NOAA administrator Kathryn Sullivan and – surprise! – nothing amiss was found. That setback, however, hasn’t stopped him from issuing a subpoena to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy seeking her personal phone and text records that he somehow believes will reveal a malicious plot in the EPA’s new regulations on ozone emissions.
With such blatant idiocy and obstructionism coming from the head of the science committee, and with its meetings regularly descending into such kindergarten-level stupidity as claiming that snowballs disprove climate change and that melting ice caps aren’t a concern because melting ice cubes don’t cause a drink to overflow, one has to wonder whether these lawmakers are really this stupid or are simply acting on behalf of their donors, and willing to sacrifice their dignity and the good of humanity for a little extra cash. The answer, of course, is the latter, as the energy industry – or, non-euphemistically, the oil and gas industry – spends millions of dollars to put lawmakers in their pocket to protect their interests and bottom lines at the expense of tens of thousands of Americans and tens of millions of humans who will die from climate-change related causes in the coming decades.
Smith, whose home district in West Texas depends heavily on the oil and gas industry, is a prime case and point. Over the course of his career in Congress, Smith has received almost $650,000 from big oil and gas companies, making the industry his biggest financier and making him one of the largest recipients of oil industry buyouts in Congress. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), the notorious snowball Senator, has received almost $500,000 from the energy industry, twice as much as any other group, and Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX), of ice-melt-doesn’t-raise-water-levels fame, has received some $120,000 from the energy industry. It is an absolute travesty that such idiots have been allowed to take over a government committee overseeing what is perhaps the most dangerous issue of our time and run it like a joke, and yet that is exactly what a dangerous combination of unfettered corporate purchasing of lawmakers and delusional conservative anti-intellectualism have produced, and it is truly a tragedy for our country and for the planet.
CLIMATE CHANGE No Science Here: Big Oil Has Turned The House Into Their Private Lobbying Agency
No Science Here: Big Oil Has Turned The House Into Their Private Lobbying Agency | Occupy Democrats
In an astounding demonstration of the power of corporate influence coupled with ignorance to overpower logic, common sense, and the public good, the Republican-dominated House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology has been bought out by the oil and gas industry and their stooge, Representative Lamar S. Smith (R-TX), who was appointed head of the committee in 2013.
Smith has led a crusade against “rampant environmentalism” that has seen the House science committee, once a venerable and intellectual body, degenerate into a farcical circus run by science-denying Republicans who are perfectly willing to ignore facts and behave like absolute imbeciles in order to keep the money from the oil and gas industry flowing.
Over the course of his three years as chairman of the Science committee, Smith has fought what he calls the “climate-change religion” of the Obama administration, by which he apparently means facts. He’s launched a legal battle against administration over new air-pollution regulations that he claims are “not backed up by science,” despite the fact that they’ve been upheld by federal appeals courts, they’d save tens of thousands of American lives and produce more than $40 billion in health care savings, and, of course, they are in fact backed up by essentially universal consensus in the actual scientific community.
When the Supreme Court eventually overturned the EPA’s curbs on toxic emissions, a major part of Obama’s environmental plan, in June, the decision was not the result of any scientific misgivings but rather because the EPA had “failed to take into account the costs [of the regulations] to utilities and others in the power sector.” In other words, regulations that would make help to stop the poisoning of the planet and its inhabitants were overturned because they would cost the people poisoning the planet some money. Smith and his band of oil industry-financed lawyers and lobbyists were of course influential in lobbying the court to overturn the obviously beneficial legislation.
From that inauspicious beginning, Smith moved on to slash NASA’s budget for earth sciences and subject grant reviews at the National Science Foundation to extra scrutiny. He ostensibly supported these moves out of concerns for the budget, which has become a boogeyman nearly as powerful as Islamic terrorism that conservatives can use to eliminate anything they don’t like. However, given his support for increasing our already enormous military budget, anyone with common sense can see that such moves are merely meant to stifle the voices of those scientists who disagree with the delusional brand of climate-denial that the oil industry bosses in Houston tell him to peddle. And, given the general tendency of scientists to have brains and common sense, that has essentially meant that the House science committee is battling to keep scientists from publishing the truth, which, as former committee member and physicist Rush Holt (D-NJ) notes wryly, is “an interesting way to raise the profile of a science committee,” but not surprising given the “substituting of politics for evidence.”
Most recently, he has accused scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of manipulating data and rushing publication of a major study that refuted claims that global temperatures were stabilizing, all in order to “advance Obama’s extreme climate-change agenda,” extreme apparently meaning, in Smith’s mind, anything to the left of his own brand of lunatic conservative rejectionism. He eventually subpoenaed NOAA administrator Kathryn Sullivan and – surprise! – nothing amiss was found. That setback, however, hasn’t stopped him from issuing a subpoena to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy seeking her personal phone and text records that he somehow believes will reveal a malicious plot in the EPA’s new regulations on ozone emissions.
With such blatant idiocy and obstructionism coming from the head of the science committee, and with its meetings regularly descending into such kindergarten-level stupidity as claiming that snowballs disprove climate change and that melting ice caps aren’t a concern because melting ice cubes don’t cause a drink to overflow, one has to wonder whether these lawmakers are really this stupid or are simply acting on behalf of their donors, and willing to sacrifice their dignity and the good of humanity for a little extra cash. The answer, of course, is the latter, as the energy industry – or, non-euphemistically, the oil and gas industry – spends millions of dollars to put lawmakers in their pocket to protect their interests and bottom lines at the expense of tens of thousands of Americans and tens of millions of humans who will die from climate-change related causes in the coming decades.
Smith, whose home district in West Texas depends heavily on the oil and gas industry, is a prime case and point. Over the course of his career in Congress, Smith has received almost $650,000 from big oil and gas companies, making the industry his biggest financier and making him one of the largest recipients of oil industry buyouts in Congress. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), the notorious snowball Senator, has received almost $500,000 from the energy industry, twice as much as any other group, and Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX), of ice-melt-doesn’t-raise-water-levels fame, has received some $120,000 from the energy industry. It is an absolute travesty that such idiots have been allowed to take over a government committee overseeing what is perhaps the most dangerous issue of our time and run it like a joke, and yet that is exactly what a dangerous combination of unfettered corporate purchasing of lawmakers and delusional conservative anti-intellectualism have produced, and it is truly a tragedy for our country and for the planet.