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Year: 2010

Who’s Afraid Of Virginia?

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Happy Confederate History Month, everyone!

Poor Virginians. Just 13 weeks into the term of their new governor, Bob McDonnell, Virginia has become the laughing stock of the country. I just want to let everyone know that it wasn’t their fault.

First, a little background. Mr. McDonnell was sworn in as the governor of Virginia on January 16th of this year. During his very short tenure as governor, he has reversed (by executive order) non-discrimination protections for gay state workers that were put in place by former governor Tim Kaine. The next item on his agenda was to proclaim that April would be “Confederate History Month” in Virginia. You can read the proclamation here. Did you happen to notice anything missing from his “celebration” of the confederacy? Whoopsie, he forgot all about that whole slavery misunderstanding. He finally apologized for his little memory lapse yesterday.

So far, Bob McDonnell’s thirteen week tenure as governor can best be summed up as an increase of discrimination and celebration of bigotry. Such a proud moment for Virginia!

As I said earlier, this situation isn’t the fault of Virginians. They didn’t vote for this. Bob McDonnell ran as a moderate whose primary focus for Virginia would be job creation. Here’s a Time Magazine article on McDonnell’s campaign from last November. Here’s another one from The Washington Post. He didn’t run as a far right winger whose focus was going to be to stir up hate and bigotry, which tells me that he knows that he couldn’t get elected to the position of dog catcher if he ran under his real agenda. He pulled a complete bait and switch on Virginians because he knew that they wouldn’t have him if they knew who he really was. In my opinion, he’s shown nothing but contempt for Virginians by playing them for fools.

If you really believe that what you’re doing is good for the people in your state, you would run on that platform. Lying about who and what you are says two things to me;

1) You don’t believe your own bullshit on any sort of intellectual level.

2) You know that you can’t get elected by the people because your views are not widely shared.

In short, Bob McDonnell is a viscerally hate fueled coward. You’re a coward, Bob McDonnell because you were too chicken shit to show the voters who you are so that they could make an informed decision about whether or not to vote for you. And your hatred is so viscerally entrenched in who you are, that it’s completely suppressed any rational thought that you may ever have.

I say that because Bob McDonnell gave the rebuttal to President Obama’s state of the union earlier this year, which is a very clear sign that he and republican leaders had national aspirations. Those aspirations have evaporated in the twelve weeks since he made that rebuttal. There’s NO WAY to get elected to national office on an anti-gay, pro-confederacy record. Buh bye, Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Any rational person regardless of ideology can tell you that you can’t win a national election with a record like the one Bob McDonnell is creating. His hate for blacks and gays has blinded him so completely that what was a bright political future a few weeks ago, is now a distant memory.

Bob McDonnell fucked himself and he fucked Virginia.

But don’t go hating Virginians for this. They didn’t know although admittedly, he had a pretty questionable background going into the election. Unfortunately, his opponent was a terrible campaigner and the Obama administration were too cowardly to support him. Thanks for that, Rahm I really appreciate it!

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Fun Facts

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I’ve been listening to republicans try and diminish the 162,000 jobs that were created last month all weekend. I find it ludicrous on it’s face, that they’re complaining that this administration hasn’t managed to clean up after their unmitigated disaster fast enough! Here’s a newsflash for John Boehner; if your party hadn’t made such a huge mess of the economy, monthly job creation numbers wouldn’t even make headline news!

But beyond the obvious absurdity of the republican reaction to the job creation numbers, there’s a history of fun facts that I thought everyone would find interesting.

Let’s start with this – George W Bush didn’t create his first job until the beginning of his second term. That’s right, not one single fucking job for 4 years. And you wanna know who he put the onus on for that? You guessed it, it was Clinton’s fault. I have audio of Bush, Cheney, Rove, and Fleischer, and McClellan all blaming Clinton for the lack of job growth. Given how they handled Bush’s poor performance, republicans naturally feel that it’s unfair for Obama to ever so much as hint at the fact that the mess we’re in now is Bush’s fault.

Here’s another fun fact; in the last 60 years, the only person that created fewer jobs than a Bush was Eisenhower, in his second term. Poppy and W were the #2 and #3 worst presidents for job creation. Here are some numbers (the numbers represent millions of jobs created):

Truman 1949 -1952 5.2
Eisenhower 1953 – 1956 2.7
Eisenhower 1957 – 1960 0.8
Kennedy/Johnson 1961 – 1964 5.7
Johnson 1965 – 1968 9.8
Nixon 1969 – 1972 6.1
Nixon/Ford 1972 – 1976 5.2
Carter 1977 – 1980 10.4
Reagan 1981 – 1984 5.2
Reagan 1985 – 1988 10.8
Bush 1989 – 1992 2.5
Clinton 1993 – 1996 11.6
Clinton 1997 – 2000 11.5
Bush 2001 – 2004 (0.1)
Bush 2005 – 2008 5.1

It’s interesting that Poppy Bush didn’t blame Reagan for his abysmal performance, isn’t it? Jimmy Carter, by the way, kicked some job creation ass!

Another fun fact; wages went up not at all under the 8 years of George W Bush. So he didn’t create any new jobs, and for those that were employed, he kept your wages stagnant.

Now let’s look at some other fun facts – spending. The numbers on the right represent the change in spending relative to GDP:

Truman 1949 -1952 -23.9
Eisenhower 1953 – 1956 -10.4
Eisenhower 1957 – 1960 -7.9
Kennedy/Johnson 1961 – 1964 -6.7
Johnson 1965 – 1968 -6.8
Nixon 1969 – 1972 -5.4
Nixon/Ford 1972 – 1976 -0.9
Carter 1977 – 1980 -2.8
Reagan 1981 – 1984 +7.3
Reagan 1985 – 1988 +11.2
Bush 1989 – 1992 +12.2
Clinton 1993 – 1996 +3.0
Clinton 1997 – 2000 -9.8
Bush 2001 – 2004 +5.6
Bush 2005 – 2008 +6.3

Can you figure out who the fiscal conservatives are?

When I look at these sets of numbers I have to ask, “Where did the money under republicans go?” We saw less job growth and higher spending under republicans. Their approach is to spend more and tax corporations less. Keep in mind that when republicans talk about cutting taxes, they’re never talking about cutting your taxes. They’re talking about cutting corporate taxes. I hate to break it to you, but you’re not making “game changing” money. Adjusting your  taxes up or down 3% – 6% amounts to your annual latte spending. And as they cut corporate taxes and increase corporate tax loop holes, they accomplish nothing in terms of creating jobs for you.

In Reagan’s case, all of that wild spending went into defense which created a crap load of defense jobs. Ironically, Reagan is the best example of how government can effectively create jobs.

These numbers don’t lie. I’m not an ideologue. I like living in the fact based community.

So next time you’re trapped at Thanksgiving dinner with your republican relatives, show them these numbers and help disabuse them of the mythology that they’ve been spewing for all of these years.

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Code Pink Has Reached Code Red

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They actually reached code red a long time ago.

Here’s some video of code red at a Karl Rove book signing in Los Angeles on Monday:

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Much to my dismay, after watching this I had to side with Rove. It’s hard to throw in with angry, red faced lunatics no matter what they’re saying. It’s hard for me to throw in with them, but I fear that it’s not hard for everyone. You wanna know who posted this video on youtube? Well, several people posted it, but the copy that I embedded was posted by Michael Moore. Given that Michael Moore has been prone to this type of behavior, I took his posting of this video as an implicit endorsement of the behavior contained in this video.

In my opinion, condoning this type of behavior, implicitly or otherwise hurts the message. It turns the conversation away from the facts and moves the focus to the tactics. Karl Rove’s response to what code pink did, “…this goes to show the totalitarianism of the left.” was 100% correct. There’s no arguing against the point that he made, given what everyone witnessed. They managed to turn a calculating liar into a victim. Nice job code pink. Not only didn’t anyone hear what you have to say, but you managed to make anyone else that says it into a whacko.

They should have made an attempt at civilized discourse. Ask him a question and then politely wait for him to answer it before asking the next question. I’ve watched Karl Rove twist himself into a pretzel trying to “explain” the enormous amounts of evidence against him and the Bush administration. It’s not pretty, and he’s not very good at it. He does very well when confronted by angry people. As you saw in the video, he had to summarily dismiss the downing street memos. How much more effective would progressives have been if they then followed up by asking him about Lawrence Wilkerson’s account of the Colin Powell speech, making the case for the US to go into Iraq? And then a follow up question about General Eric Shinseki’s dismissal? How many sources do you think Karl Rove would have to dismiss before sounding like a jackass? Don’t you think that would have been a more effective approach? It would have made Karl Rove the subject of the reporting. What we ended up with was yet another story about crazy extremists.

It’s a slippery slope to extremism. People don’t start off as extremists. It’s something that happens slowly over time so that people don’t realize that they’re becoming radicalized. It starts by condoning crap like this.

Don’t let yourself fall into that trap. Republicans have boxed themselves in by doing the very same thing with the tea party racists. It’s not possible to speak out against the tea partiers while remaining silent about code pink without being a hypocrite.

You have to denounce this from the inside if you have any hope of stopping it. You don’t have to support everyone that agrees with you. So go out there and comment and denounce from the rational left! Let the right deal with their own crazy. If they dismantle it on their side, then good for us! If they don’t, we need to trust that cooler heads will prevail.

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BondageGate

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Did you really think I wasn’t going to talk about it? This story is just too much fun not to comment on! My first thought when I heard about the head of the RNC expensing a large tab at a West Hollywood bondage club was, "Is Ken Mehlman back?" Then I realized it was a straight club, so Ken is definitely NOT back. My next thought was, there’s a straight bondage club in West Hollywood? And then my mind had to explore the horror that is wondering what Michael Steele’s safe word is. Is it Reagan? Tax cuts? WMD? After I got my mind out of the gutter (it took a while), I had to wonder what kind of moron would expense something like this? Don’t you know that the FEC looks at this stuff? And then I realized that we’re talking about republicans here. They’re self entitled and hypocritical so it would naturally make sense to engage in this sort of behavior on someone else’s dime while preaching family values to the donors that made it possible. The next thing that occurred to me is that they took what could have been a brilliant and lucrative idea and turned it into a minor scandal. Instead of spending their donors’ money on watching fake bondage, they should have given perspective donors the opportunity to make big contributions in exchange for the opportunity to flog some of their members. Think about the untapped revenue potential! I would pay untold sums of money to put a ball gag on John Boehner and then go to town on his ass with a wooden paddle. I would! And I wouldn’t care that the money will ultimately go to fund Michelle Bachman’s campaign. Four more years of Michelle Bachman, just to be able to shove a butt plug right into John Cornyn? YES, YES, it’s worth it! YES WE CAN! SIGN ME UP! You think I’m kidding, but I’m NOT. The very idea makes me happier than I’ve been in months. Screw long term thinking! I want instant gratification! And I’m pretty sure I can’t be the only one. There must be millions of people out there that would never donate to the RNC under any other circumstances, who would gladly open their wallets for this type of opportunity. They could even do an auction to ensure that they got the maximum contributions from people. And if the bids aren’t high enough, they could sweeten the pot. Think about it, how much MORE would you pay to spank a ball gagged Mitch McConnell if you had the ADDED option of nipple clamps? Don’t pretend like you’re above it all. You know you want to as bad as I do.

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Bitchy’s Strategy For The GOP

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Not surprisingly, my advice centers around health reform. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, this strategy of promising to repeal is going to be a disaster for republicans.

Let me first qualify what I mean by “disaster”. Historically speaking, the party that wins the white house loses 27.8 seats in congress in the following midterm election. Republicans could pick up as many as 50 seats this time around. I believe that they’re going to pick up around 20 seats. While that’s enough seats to declare “victory” and claim a “mandate”, it would in actuality be a disaster because it keeps them well in the minority.

Republicans are fighting a losing battle if their strategy is to run on repealing health reform during this election cycle. During the course of the next seven months, everything that is good about this bill will have kicked in. Closing the medicare prescription donut hole ensures that republicans will have lost the senior vote, which is their largest voting block. Allowing parents to keep their college students on their insurance plans wipes out that voting block. Losing those two demographics leaves the republican party crippled.

There’s not much they can do about the 2010 elections, but they can salvage 2012. By 2012, some of the ugly realities of this “reform” will have surfaced.  Republicans should instead change their tone to promise to fix the problems with the bill, while predicting massive premium increases. We are definitely going to see massive premium increases over the next four years. In the past week, both the CEOs of Aetna and Cigna have already promised that they’re coming. This bill does absolutely nothing to keep premiums down. My guess, based on my experience with corporate premium increases, is that 2012 premiums are going to be 40% – 60% higher than they are today. I’m not trying to be doom and gloom Bitchy, but that’s what I believe is going to happen. If republicans focus in on the problems with the bill, they can clean up in the elections after those problems materialize.

I want to say up front that I don’t believe there’s a snow balls chance in hell that republicans are actually going to fix the cost control problems with this bill. The only means of controlling cost is to force the insurance companies to compete with medicare. Nothing short of that will do anything to chip away at exorbitant premiums. If democrats ran away from a public option with 68% of democrats and 54% of republicans supporting it, there’s zero chance that republicans will make it happen. There is absolutely NO way to bring down costs while still maintaining a for-profit health insurance system. Trust me I’ve looked closely at health insurance systems all around the world. It can’t be done.

I have no idea what republicans can do, within the constraints of what they have become, to fix the problem. But actual solutions are meaningless in terms of winning elections. Republicans haven’t actually solved any problems for our country in decades. This is a fact that inexplicably hasn’t stopped republicans from controlling our government for the majority of the past 100 years.

Getting elected in this country isn’t about what you’ve done. It’s about what you say you’re going to do.  If republicans say they’re going to repeal health reform, they’re done. If they point out real problems with this health reform bill, they have a good shot at gaining power again.

On the other side, democrats have until 2012 to get a public option through. They definitely won’t touch the issue before November. I’m not very optimistic that they’re going to move in the direction of a public option at all, but if they do, it won’t be before the midterm election. They backed themselves into a corner with this bill. While they significantly strengthened their position for the midterm election, they insured that 2012 is going to be an unmitigated disaster unless they can fix this bill.

In the meantime, we need to keep the pressure up to get a public option through. Not because I give a damned if democrats keep control of congress, but because we desperately need meaningful health insurance reform. We haven’t gotten it yet. We need to keep the pressure on democrats because we have no chance of getting it under republican control. Trust me, if I though there was a chance of getting something that would help the average American out of the republican party, I’d be out there campaigning for them day and night. Our only hope is to come out en masse to let the democrats know that they’re in big trouble unless they fix the bill. And because democrats are historically obtuse, we need to spell out what those fixes need to be for them.

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Fear Interrupted

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I’m struck by something as I watch all of these violent teabagger flair ups across the country. I’m struck by the fact that for eight LONG years I was told to remain in a constant state of fear. I was supposed to be afraid that a foreigner was going to walk into Times Square and set off a dirty bomb every day. I was told to be afraid of biological weapons going off on my stoop. I was supposed to be afraid that prosecuting suspected terrorists within the confines of my justice system was going to embolden the dirty bombers that were laying in wait. I was told to duct tape my windows, and to have a gas mask on hand for when the inevitable attack came. For eight years, I was told that I should be crapping my pants with fear so that the terrorists don’t win.

None of that materialized.

Fast forward to today. Every single day for the past couple of weeks, I see reports like this one and I wonder why the same republicans that demanded that I be afraid aren’t at all concerned. Is it that one big attack every few years is scarier than much smaller daily acts of terrorism? Yes, I said terrorism because terrorism is defined as “the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes”. Is it that they believe that foreigners are scarier than homegrown terrorists? Or would it just inconvenient for republicans if I were afraid of these domestic terrorists because that would take my focus away from being afraid of health reform?

None of these scenarios actually work for me. I find these constant acts of violence to be much more frightening than one big attack. I’m afraid because their frequency is a sign that something ugly is brewing in America. And I’m definitely more afraid of American terrorism than I am of a foreign attack. I don’t fundamentally believe that this country can ever be destroyed by external forces. But I am terrified by my belief that this country can be destroyed from within, which brings me to my third question.

Are republicans ignoring the domestic violence that we’re being subjected to on a daily basis because denouncing it would be inconvenient for them?

John Boehner took his sweet time in denouncing the violence. When he finally did, he spent 1/4 of the length of his press conference denouncing the violence and dedicated the remaining 3/4 of the time reiterating how scary the health reform bill is, and how democrats ignored the wishes of the American people. So he spent more time ginning up the anger than he did reigning it in.

Eric Cantor didn’t denounce it at all. He decided to take the age old tactic of blaming the victim, claiming that reporting on the violence was a means of exploiting what was happening for political gain. He went on to claim that his congressional offices were also subjected to vandalism in order to make the point that democrats are to blame for the reporting the violence AND for creating some of it. His claim was quickly proven to be baseless. It turns out that a stray bullet that was shot in the air landed on the windowsill of his congressional offices. I want to take a moment to tell  Eric Cantor that he is a dickless piece of shit for making up a story and adding an antisemitic twist, just for kicks. Yes, he claimed that this imaginary attack on his office happened because he’s Jewish. Every time you fabricate antisemitism, you create antisemitism. So when I say “fuck you”, I say it as a Jew.

Sorry, I got off track there. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m much more fearful of domestic terrorists than I am of any foreign attack. Domestic terrorists have several advantages that foreigners don’t. The most important one being that foreign terrorists unite us while domestic terrorists divide us. We stood together after 911. The whole world stood with us after 911. The fracture that we’re seeing now didn’t exist because it can’t exist as a result of a foreign attack.

I am frightened and angry now, when I never was before. In addition to Eric Cantor and his fellow republicans that aren’t standing up to this, I’d like to add FOX News to my “fuck you” list. They’re perpetuating something very dangerous here just to prop up a political ideology.

I have a question for everyone that is throwing down with these violent extremists. If you have to align yourself with terrorists to keep your ideology alive, isn’t it time to reassess your beliefs?

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Rage Against The Machine

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I first want to start with a warning; this post isn’t going to be bitchy so much as hippy dippy and full of sunny optimism. I know what you’re thinking, and I’m sorry. I’m not feeling like myself today but I can tell you from past experience that it won’t last. I can assure you that I will be back to my usual bitchy self soon enough so please forgive my temporary bout with optimism.

I, like most of you, have been following the stories of violent teabaggers gone wild over the past week. At first I was scared. Okay, I’m still scared. But something struck me as I was reading through the stories. I’m going to focus on one teabagger in particular because I think he’s emblematic of most of them.

Mike Vanderboegh is a blogger that has stepped up to take credit for the brick throwing through windows of some of our democratic representatives’ offices. He sent out a call to arms last Friday, urging his readers to “Break their windows. Break them NOW”. He did this in protest of health insurance reform. The Washington Post discovered that Mr. Vanderboegh is a 57 year old man from Alabama. He receives $1,300 a month in federal disability checks. He’s on disability because of congestive heart failure, diabetes and hypertension. My immediate reaction to this man focused on the utter hypocrisy of taking an anti-government stance WHILE receiving government hand outs! After I let that stew for a while, it occurred to me that this was a very sad man. His life obviously didn’t turn out the way he had hoped it would and he’s full of rage because of it. I decided to go to his blog. It was full of vitriolic anti-government rantings as I suspected it would. Then I looked at the comments that people posted. There were supportive posts from his batshit crazy supporters and there were posts from “liberals” telling him off. I felt compelled to leave a comment myself, not to tell him off but to tell him that I was sorry that his life turned out in a way that has filled him up with so much rage. I suggested that he take steps to make some positive changes in his life like starting a small business or taking some classes that might qualify him for a desk job. I told him that I really believe that taking some positive steps would make the rage disappear before he even realized it. I clicked the “post comment” button when I was done and, to my surprise, received a message telling me that my comment would appear as soon as the owner of the blog approved it. I was surprised because the comments that told him off led me to believe that he wasn’t moderating comments. I waited a day before I went back to look at his blog again, curious to see if my comments made the cut. They did not! Once I realized what was going on, I was struck by the fact that Mr. Vanderboegh is a person that responds to rage. He’s filled with it, and he feels comfortable being surrounded by it.

I think he represents most teabaggers. From what I’ve seen, these are not wealthy people. They don’t appear to be a crowd of people who have seen their dreams realized in their lifetimes. They all seem to be full of rage. Dick Army did a pretty impressive job of misdirecting their rage and motivating them to go out and protest against their own interest.

We can’t respond to them with rage because doing so amounts to pouring gasoline on a fire. Rage is the only thing they understand. They’re filled with it, and they feed off of it. We can’t educate them. It’s obvious that their anger makes them impervious to facts. They have no use for them. So what do we do?

I feel like we only really have two options.

We can ignore them. I don’t mean ignore them by not reporting on their violent activities. I mean ignore them by not reacting with rage. Berating them publicly only seems to increase their resolve. If we just pass the reporting along to everyone we know without reacting, we ultimately win because the majority of Americans are appalled by what they’re doing. We can let them do what they do and just watch as Americans turn against everything they believe in.

The other option is admittedly a long shot, and it’s where the sunny optimism comes in so bear with me. Maybe we can throw in with them. I don’t mean that we should all go out and fill wheelbarrows full of bricks to hurl through windows. I mean that we should leverage their rage and point it where it belongs. Maybe we can band together with them on things that we all agree on to build a productive coalition. Everyone hates wall street right now. That’s one thing that teabaggers, republicans, and democrats can all agree on. Maybe we can agree that good government isn’t possible as long as our political system is wholly owned by corporations. They surely must agree with that premise so why not work with them to get ballot initiatives in every state across the country to make our elections publicly funded. Clean elections is the only way that we’re actually going to have ideological battles about the direction this country to take. Until that happens, we’re relegated to fighting for corporate America. The only thing that separates democrats from republicans is the pace at which the corporate takeover of America happens.

That second option isn’t likely, but we won’t know that until we give it a shot.

What I am certain of, is that combating teabagger rage with rage isn’t going to work. Let’s give something new a shot.

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Pro Lemming?

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I have been seeing a lot of talk in left wing media suggesting that we should band together to go after every democrat that ever votes with republicans on anything. Really?

Isn’t the problem with the republican party that they vote in lockstep? Can you be angry at them for doing so while demanding that democrats do the same? Do you not see the hypocrisy here?

I have several issues with this stance beyond the obvious hypocrisy.

Let’s start with the inexplicable blind faith that you would have to have in the democratic party for this ideology to work for you. You would have to believe that democrats are a sage and wise group that never make mistakes in judgment. You would also have to believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, that democratic representatives are always working to represent your best interest. If you really believe those things, I suggest that you take a hard look at how NAFTA has affected America’s financial interests in the world. Nobody is right all the time, and anyone that believes otherwise is a lemming.

Our founding fathers were quite brilliant when they wrote the constitution. Article one enumerates the powers of congress, which means that they intended for a body of representatives to have more of the power. Article two enumerates the powers of the president. They clearly intended to create a government in which a chorus of opinions come together so that they are forced to form a consensus. When was the last time you wrote out a to-do list and put the most important thing second on that list? They weren’t interested in having one voice rule. They fled from a king, and were obviously determined to prevent that from happening here.

I like the idea of having 535 people with different points of view debating issues and fighting for their position. I inherently believe that the best chance we have of getting a good result is to have a system where the best argument rises to the top. It would be fantastic if these opinions weren’t corporate owned, but that’s a topic for a whole other post. If I had it my way, John Cornyn and Russ Feingold would be in a boxing ring shouting at each other until they reach a compromise on every issue. I believe that the right answer is usually in the middle.

Please liberals, don’t fall into the pro lemming position that you despise. Promoting a sophomoric group think mentality is not the answer here, it’s the problem.

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Tilting At Windmills

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I don’t know why I’m shocked by this, but the GOP is inexplicably trying to double down on health insurance reform by promising to repeal it. They have become Don Quixote.

There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that they’re going to be able to touch this bill for a myriad of different reasons.

First off, they’re going to get hammered if they try to run against this in November. By then, all of those elderly, overweight protesters that demanded that the government “keeps their hands off my medicare” will have evaporated. Why? Because all of those people will have avoided the medicare prescription donut hole that they’ve been grappling with for several years now. Every senior in America will be opposed to any candidate that runs on repealing this bill. Parents of college students are also off the table since their kids will have been on their insurance plan for several months by the time November comes around. If losing all of those votes isn’t bad enough, republicans are going to have some issues with their pharmaceutical and insurance company contributors. Those industries will never allow the huge gift that is this bill to disappear. If you think that United Health Care is going to walk away from 32 million new customers, you’re out of your fucking mind. They’re really going to have to make some appalling deals with these companies that will undoubtedly screw Americans more than the current bill does.

Republicans will be getting it from all sides if they keep going down this road. They lost and they have nothing to gain by revisiting this loss in perpetuity over the next seven months.

And then there’s the ridiculous state attorneys general that are trying to sue, claiming this bill is unconstitutional. They may not be aware of this, but our current president is a former constitutional law professor. I can understand how they may have gotten used to having a dumb president that doesn’t know anything, but that’s not what they’re dealing with anymore. Thirteen states have already filed suits claiming this bill is unconstitutional. See the story here. Let’s examine this list closely.

Florida   $1.02
South Carolina   $1.38
Nebraska   $1.07
Utah   $1.14
Louisiana   $1.45
Alabama   $1.71
Pennsylvania   $1.06
Idaho   $1.28
South Dakota   $1.49
Colorado   $0.79
Michigan   $0.85
Texas   $0.94
Washington   $0.88

Those numbers I have next to each state represents how much money those states get back from the federal government for every dollar they contribute. Only four out of the thirteen are known as “donor states”, meaning that they pay more in federal taxes than they receive. The other nine states receive more federal funding than they contribute. Not coincidentally, the states that receive more federal dollars than they contribute are very poor states that will benefit most from the medicaid expansion in this bill. These attorneys general are willing to screw their own constituents for what they perceive to be political gain. These guys are going to get SLAUGHTERED in the next election if their democratic opponent spells out what they’re doing.

This strategy is a total disaster for the GOP. More importantly, it’s a disaster for the American people since republicans are obviously going to continue to play politics rather than to govern.

PLEASE, GOP stop tilting at windmills and start getting involved in the legislative process! America can’t be ruled by one party!

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