You know the NRA has most GOP senators on a short leash. No wonder they won't even take a damn vote.
NRA apparently gets to weigh in on approving the nominee according to Mitch McConnell. link
It boggles my fucking mind how they get away with this shit! I can't even wrap my brain around why he is allowed to make blatant statements like this and be influenced by the NRA.
It's going to get cold again next week, so I'm making 21DF turkey chili (2 dinners' worth) Some kind of chicken coconut curry (2 dinners' worth) Mahi Mahi fish tacos with mango salsa and slaw Beer braised chicken thighs, green beans with almonds, couscous, and homemade challah (Shabbat dinner)
Over the course of 12 debates, the Republican presidential candidates were never asked to address the budget problems in Kansas. That may not sound like an odd omission but it is. To see why, let’s take a quick trip to a parallel political universe:
In Bizarro America, the tea party never happened. Instead, the Great Recession sparked a left-wing populist movement that swept democratic socialists into statehouses all across the country. In Vermont, these Denmark-worshippers took full control of state government and implemented their radical agenda. They raised income taxes to unprecedented heights, upped the minimum wage to $15 an hour, made all state universities tuition-free, and established a single-payer health-care system. As he signed the last of these programs into law, Governor Bernie Sanders declared that Vermont would serve as a blue-state model, one that the Democratic Party’s 2016 ticket could use to say, “See, we’ve got a different way, and it works.”
But by 2016, that model had collapsed. Every warning that conservatives had made about Sanders’s program proved prescient. The tax hikes chased all the job creators out of state. The new minimum wage didn’t raise low-income workers’ living standards; it raised their unemployment rate. The costs of free college and universal health care proved so onerous, the state was forced to raid its rainy-day funds and borrow at high interest rates just to keep the government running. Vermont now faced a billion-dollar deficit. Schools were shuttered. Pensions were cut. The state’s department of social services could no longer afford to investigate child abuse. The legal system could no longer provide indigent defendants with representation. Nonetheless, in the race for the White House, every Democratic candidate ran on some version of Sanders’s economic model.
Wouldn’t it be important for those candidates to explain why their program wouldn’t fail the country in the same way it had failed the Green Mountain State? If you think yes, then you should demand that Donald Trump, John Kasich, and Ted Cruz explain why their tax policies won’t fail America in the same way they’ve failed the people of Kansas.
In 2010, the tea-party wave put Sam Brownback into the Sunflower State’s governor’s mansion and Republican majorities in both houses of its legislature. Together, they implemented the conservative movement’s blueprint for Utopia: They passed massive tax breaks for the wealthy and repealed all income taxes on more than 100,000 businesses. They tightened welfare requirements, privatized the delivery of Medicaid, cut $200 million from the education budget, eliminated four state agencies and 2,000 government employees. In 2012, Brownback helped replace the few remaining moderate Republicans in the legislature with conservative true believers. The following January, after signing the largest tax cut in Kansas history, Brownback told the Wall Street Journal, “My focus is to create a red-state model that allows the Republican ticket to say, 'See, we've got a different way, and it works.' "
As you’ve probably guessed, that model collapsed. Like the budget plans of every Republican presidential candidate, Brownback’s “real live experiment” proceeded from the hypothesis that tax cuts for the wealthy are such a boon to economic growth, they actually end up paying for themselves (so long as you kick the undeserving poor out of their welfare hammocks). The Koch-backed Kansas Policy Institute predicted that Brownback’s 2013 tax plan would generate $323 million in new revenue. During its first full year in operation, the plan produced a $688 million loss. Meanwhile, Kansas’s job growth actually trailed that of its neighboring states. With that nearly $700 million deficit, the state had bought itself a 1.1 percent increase in jobs, just below Missouri’s 1.5 percent and Colorado’s 3.3.
Those numbers have hardly improved in the intervening years. In 2015, job growth in Kansas was a mere 0.1 percent, even as the nation’s economy grew 1.9 percent. Brownback pledged to bring 100,000* new jobs to the state in his second term; as of January, he has brought 700. What’s more, personal income growth slowed dramatically since the tax cuts went into effect. Between 2010 and 2012, Kansas saw income growth of 6.1 percent, good for 12th in the nation; from 2013 to 2015, that rate was 3.6 percent, good for 41st.
Meanwhile, revenue shortfalls have devastated the state’s public sector along with its most vulnerable citizens. Since Brownback’s inauguration, 1,414 Kansans with disabilities have been thrown off Medicaid. In 2015, six school districts in the state were forced to end their years early for lack of funding. Cuts to health and human services are expected to cause 65 preventable deaths this year in Sedgwick County alone. In February, tax receipts came in $53 million below estimates; Brownback immediately cut $17 million from the state’s university system. This data is not lost on the people of Kansas — as of November, Brownback’s approval rating was 26 percent, the lowest of any governor in the United States.
Photo: Orlin Wagner/AP Louisiana has replicated these results. When Bobby Jindal moved into the governor’s mansion in 2008, he inherited a $1 billion surplus. When he moved out last year, Louisiana faced a $1.6 billion projected deficit. Part of that budgetary collapse can be put on the past year's plummeting oil prices. The rest should be placed on Jindal passing the largest tax cut in the state's history and then refusing to reverse course when the state's biggest industry started tanking. Jindal's giveaway to the wealthiest citizens in the country's second-poorest state cost Louisiana roughly $800 million every year. To make up that gap, Jindal slashed social services, raided the state’s rainy-day funds, and papered over the rest with reckless borrowing. Today, the state is scrambling to resolve a $940 million budget gap for this fiscal year, with a $2 billion shortfall projected for 2017. Like Bizarro Vermont, Louisiana can no longer afford to provide public defenders for all its criminal defendants. Its Department of Children and Family Services may soon be unable to investigate every reported instance of child abuse. Education funding is down 44 percent since Jindal took office. The state’s hospitals are likely to see at least $64 million in funding cuts this year.
What has happened to these states should be a national story; because we are one election away from it being our national story. Ted Cruz claims his tax plan will cost less than $1 trillion in lost revenue over the next ten years. Leaving aside the low bar the Texas senator sets for himself — my giveaway to the one percent will cost a bit less than the Iraq War! — Cruz only stays beneath $1 trillion when you employ the kind of “dynamic scoring” that has consistently underestimated the costs of tax cuts in Kansas. Under a conventional analysis, the bill runs well over $3 trillion, with 44 percent of that lost money accruing to the one percent. John Kasich’s tax plan includes cutting the top marginal rate by more than ten percent along with a similar cut to the rates on capital gains and business taxes. Even considering Kasich’s appetite for Social Security cuts, his plan must rely on the same supply-side voodoo that Kansas has so thoroughly discredited. As for the most likely GOP nominee, even with dynamic scoring, his tax cuts would cost $10 trillion over the next ten years, with 40 percent of that gargantuan sum filling the pockets of Trump’s economic peers.
If any of these men are elected president, they will almost certainly take office with a House and Senate eager to scale up the “red-state model.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said of Brownback’s Kansas, “This is exactly the sort of thing we (Republicans) want to do here, in Washington, but can’t, at least for now.” Speaker of the House Paul Ryan’s celebrated budgets all depend on the same magical growth that has somehow escaped the Sunflower State.
This campaign cycle has inspired an unusual amount of soul-searching in Republican circles. The rise of Trump has forced many conservatives to reckon with the moral odiousness of Nixon’s Southern Strategy — a blueprint for GOP electoral success that relied on coded appeals to white racial animus. Unfortunately, the fall of Kansas has failed to inspire a similar reckoning with the policies that those ugly advertisements were designed to sell. The GOP front-runner’s praise of mob violence and religious discrimination has spurred much righteous outrage from the National Review. Kansas’s shortened school-years have spurred none.
When Donald Trump makes a gaffe, reporters confront Republican leaders and demand a response. When the GOP's economic platform decimates two U.S. states, a similar confrontation is in order.
*An earlier version of this piece said that Brownback had pledged to bring 25,000 new jobs to Kansas in his second term. The pledge was actually to bring 100,000 new jobs (or 25,000 for each year of the term).
DH is out of town a few days this week and MIL is going to cook a few things, so I shouldn't have to make much. I am going to make two quiches, definitely a ham and swiss, not sure about the other.
noodle - I made that Italian chicken soup last week. It was tasty, but was lacking... depth, I guess. I think cooking up a few slices of bacon and softening the vegetables in bacon fat, plus adding the chopped cooked bacon to the finished soup would make it perfect. It just needed that smokiness, I think. Definitely worth trying. Here's the recipe again: www.carlsbadcravings.com/creamy-basil-parmesan-italian-soup-recipe/
eta: I also made these last week. If anyone is looking for a super easy chicken recipe, I highly recommend it. So good!
The capsule I'm putting together right now looks pretty similar to yours. Jeans, solid and stripes tees, some casual dresses.
There's an army jacket from Madewell that I thought was cute and would be a good staple piece, but I tried it on in the store yesterday and the arms are way tight even when I size up. I was bummed.
I made DH get up and hold him down so I could suction his nose and get some saline in there. He seems to be in better spirits now that he can breathe. This is by far the worst illness Colin has had so far and it is no fun for any of us. I hope J starts feeling better soon.
DH was filling up the humidifier, but when he removed it from the base, it sounded like he was opening the wine fridge. It was 8:30 and I was like, "hmmm, ok!" lol DH said he wouldn't judge me if I started drinking.
Boogie wipes are amazing.
FastHands has said that too. What makes them different than a regular wipe? We use the boogie saline mist, which is great, but he still ends up with crud all over his face, especially after sleeping all night.
Oh, dear God. DS has a really awful cold. I feel bad for the kid. I do. But he has been up for less than an hour and has basically been crying the entire time. I just ignored him for a few minutes and now he's off playing with a remote. He has an awful cough and his face is coated in boogers, which he doesn't want me to remove. I'm already over this day.
This is James today too! I feel bad for him, but I wish he'd just want to cuddle and watch movies and not scream at me for every injustice in his world. His biggest meltdown today was when I wouldn't let him play in the liquor cabinet.
I made DH get up and hold him down so I could suction his nose and get some saline in there. He seems to be in better spirits now that he can breathe. This is by far the worst illness Colin has had so far and it is no fun for any of us. I hope J starts feeling better soon.
DH was filling up the humidifier, but when he removed it from the base, it sounded like he was opening the wine fridge. It was 8:30 and I was like, "hmmm, ok!" lol DH said he wouldn't judge me if I started drinking.
Oh, dear God. DS has a really awful cold. I feel bad for the kid. I do. But he has been up for less than an hour and has basically been crying the entire time. I just ignored him for a few minutes and now he's off playing with a remote. He has an awful cough and his face is coated in boogers, which he doesn't want me to remove. I'm already over this day.
You should read Gray Mountain by John Grisham. While the book is fictional, the story basically mirrors this to a T. It's an interesting read. He apparently did good research because I was struck how similar this news article is to the book.
Are there enough Rs up for reelection to shift the majority? That thought just occurred to me. Honestly though, no, I don't think she'll be any more successful than Obama. The Republicans in Congress are too far gone to give a fucking inch at this point.
I'm so sorry. I'm glad you'll be able to take him home this afternoon. I hope you are able to enjoy the weekend with him. Losing a dog is so fucking hard. All the hugs.
It would really piss me off that they are docking your hours like that. I suppose it depends on the company culture though.
We're very free to do what we will with our "PLT" (paid leave time). People are told up front when they hire on that it is ok to leave a little early or come in a little late on occasion. Longer lunches are also acceptable. The idea being that we all sometimes work more than the standard 40 hour week and it is assumed that we get our work done accordingly even if we need to leave early one day. So, I only use vacation time if I am not going to be working and will be out for more than half the day.
Omg. I'm dying! I just sent that to DH. He's in our room with the door closed on a work call. I told him not to click the link until he's off the phone. He's going to laugh so hard.
The picture with the pig and the bunny is so adorable.
life in Mosul, it’s really, really bad,” Khweis said in the 16-plus minute video in which he described his journey from the U.S. into ISIS-controlled territory, and his decision to flee after approximately one month. “The people who are controlling Mosul don’t represent the religion ... I don’t see them as good Muslims.”
It can't be overstated how much of a fucking imbecile I think this guy is.
I can sympathize on the weather. We had 2 weeks of 60-70 degrees so I put the heavy coats away. Today, 50, tomorrow... snow. Ugh.
I have my anatomy scan today! H and I are accomplishing exactly nothing prior to the appt. I'm hoping baby cooperates and we can find out the sex.
It was 60s and sunny last week. There's 4 inches of snow at my house this morning. I'm working from home today because I don't want to deal with it. Stupid snow.
So exciting about finding out the sex! I cried. lol
DS has a cold and has been coughing all night. My poor little dude. He sounds miserable. I've given him ibuprofen, but there's really not anything else I can do for him. He's got to be exhausted. I hope he sleeps in today.
I worked out pretty hard on Wednesday and did a bunch of rope climbs. Decided not to go to the gym yesterday. I woke up this morning and my left tricep is killing me. Like, couldn't wash my hair because it hurts to reach up. I have no idea why it suddenly feels like this. I would have assumed it would hurt yesterday if I had torn the muscle or something.
This is such a bizarre point to make. Religion does not equal race. His chosen faith, which could be Muslim or Buddhism or Christianity or any number of religions, does not negate the fact that he is white.
And none of that is really relevant to being appointed SCJ. It's interesting to know, but it's his past judgements that you look at to judge his qualifications for the appointment.
Huh. Who knew that would be the measure to determine approval of a Justice?