This is what "Let him die" looks like

This needs no further comment from me:



(via)

And just when you thought Mitt Romney was the only Republican presidential candidate who isn't batshit crazy

I guess he just looked sane when compared to Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry. Because what else other than batshittery explains this:

Mitt Romney yesterday praised former Vice President Dick Cheney, saying he would seek a running mate who shared many traits of longtime, and often controversial, political figure.

At a town hall meeting in a retirement community in Arizona, Romney was asked whether he would name a Tea Party person as his vice presidential nominee. He didn’t answer directly, instead saying that his “overwhelming critera” was that they be ready to become president.

“I think it was last weekend I was watching C-SPAN, and I saw Vice President Dick Cheney and he was being asked questions about a whole host of issues -- following 9/11, the affairs in various countries in the world,” Romney said, according to MSNBC . “And I listened to him speak and said whether you agree or disagree with him, this is a man of wisdom and judgment, and he could have been president of the United States.”

“That’s the kind of persona I’d like to have – a person of wisdom and judgment,” he added.

It's all so disheartening...

Let's face it. We all know just as sure as we're sitting here that Barack Obama's "jobs bill" is going to be gutted by the house so that it includes nothing but tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, the Senate will mewl ineffectually, and it will go to Obama's desk as a tax cut bill, where he will sign it and tell us that it's a bipartisan triumph. We've read this script so many times before it's a wonder that they don't just skip the kabuki theatre and go right to the mass execution of everyone who isn't a CEO.

So it's not like many of us see voting Democratic as any kind of an alternative or brake on the sheer meanness that is today's Republican Party.

But some of the reactions of the teabagger audience at last night's Clown Car Debate O'Hate makes us fearful for what a nation under someone like Rick Perry is going to look like.

Here the audience applauds the idea that if someone doesn't, or can't afford to, buy health insurance, we should just let them die if they get sick (and remember...these people also tend to regard themselves as "pro-life" where feti are concerned):



I only wish Blitzer had then asked the question again with the person in need of emergency care being a child.


I don't want to hear anyone complaining about when Alan Grayson said the Republican health care plan was "Don't get sick, and if you get sick, die quickly." There's nothing he said that wasn't true.

And this crowd is ready to string Ben Bernanke up from a tree:



And here's the debate in only 100 seconds of your time, for those of us who felt that the remaining time in our lives is too valuable to spend listening to the ravings of the insane. Note the opening montage, in which CNN treats the campaign for leader of the free world as if it were WWF wrestling:



And one of these people will in all likelihood be the next president.

Gee, thanks, Mr. Obama. Thanks for nothing.

(TPM liveblogged the whole thing, intrepid souls that they are.)

All you need to know about the Republican candidates

This is all they've got:

Best. Freudian. Slip. Ever.

Give a Republican enough of an opportunity, and he'll reveal himself every time. Listen carefully to what Rick Perry says 16 seconds into this video:

Around the Blogroll and Elsewhere: Special Republican Clown Car edition

Before I proceed to the linkitude, I want to congratulate my and longtime friends Gabriel (my original blogbrother) and Dennis on 19 years of showing those irresponsible, hedonistic red staters what love and commitment look like.



Now, our shirts are clean and pressed and our haircuts are precise, so let's start the show:



Tom Degan, who can always be relied on for some damn fine rantin', makes me want to go downstairs and dig out Mr. Brilliant's copy of "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail" for some summer reading now that I have a brief breather of living like a normal person.



Addicting Info has the Bachmann/corn dog photo you've all been waiting for. And Down With Tyranny has even more fun photos from Crazytown, Iowa.



More hilarious Iowa Straw Poll photographs at Princess Sparkle Pony's photo blog. Nothing like people with a million dollar line of credit at Tiffany's pretending to be Just Like Iowa Farm Folks.



Batocchio: Thou Shalt Not Question Supply-Side Jesus.



Beeryblog identifies America's dummy belt.



At Driftglass, a Photoshop job that should give you nightmares. Especially since the homonculus you're looking at is going to be the next president.

Well, Mr. Bolling, that's because you are an idiot.

Warning: Your cranium may combust at this:

Oh yes he did (1:31 in):

"We can certainly say between 2000 and 2008, I don't remember ANY terrorist attacks on U.S. soil during that period of time."

Mr. Bolling, let me refresh your memory:



Oh yes, I forgot. In Super Magic Fox News Revisionist History Collapse Time, that happened on Clinton's watch. (So did the Iraq War. And I think the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby may have as well. Super Magic Fox News Revisionist History Collapse Time works that way.)

(h/t)

Ohio isn't leaving anything to chance in 2012

Ohio Governor John Kasich and his legislature of Republican goons is doing an even better job than Ken Blackwell did in 2004 to make sure that Ohio goes 100% Republican in 2012:

A sweeping overhaul of Ohio's election laws passed the Senate on a party-line vote yesterday, and a bill requiring Ohio voters to present a photo ID before casting a ballot is now on track to move next week.

After a day filled with heated rhetoric and shifting plans, majority Republicans pushed through House Bill 194, which moves the 2012 presidential primary from March to May.

The bill, which the House is likely to send to Gov. John Kasich next week after approving Senate changes, would let Ohioans register to vote or change their addresses online and reduce early voting from 35 days before an election to 21 days by mail and 17 in person - which eliminates the so-called "golden week" when people could register and vote on the same day.

Bob Fitrakis:

Under the direction of GOP Governor John Kasich---himself the beneficiary of a dubious vote count in 2010---the Ohio Republicans are clearly determined to make it as difficult as possible for traditional Democrats to register, vote or get their votes counted in future elections.

Since 2000, the Republicans have eliminated more than a 1.5 million voters from the Buckeye state voter rolls. The purges have been centered on urban voters. Moreover, in 2004 hundreds of thousands of additional Ohio voters were disenfranchised by orchestrated bottlenecks at polling places that forced people to wait seven hours and more in line. The lines were most evident in the heavily Democratic urban areas of Cincinnati, Columbus and Cleveland.

But in 2008, because the Democrats controlled the legislature and state house, voters were allowed to cast their ballots up to 35 days before election day. The lines disappeared. Polling places were voter-friendly, with election workers giving voters clear directions on how to proceed.

Now the GOP is intent on ending all that. Ohio HB 194 slashes the timeframe for early in-person voting from 35 days to 16. The new law also prohibits Ohio’s 88 counties from mailing absentee ballots to all voters, or to pay the return postage. (In 2004, thousands of absentee ballots never made it to the county boards of elections because they had a pre-printed space for one stamp when they actually required two, and most voters only put on one stamp).

The HB 194 law also prohibits local board of elections officials from designing systems that best meet the needs of their community. For example, it forbids the county boards of elections from setting up off-site early voting locations. Banning voter-friendly practices such as pre-paid postage for absentee ballots and convenient places for citizens to vote, the law mandates practices design to lower turnouts as much as possible.

In perhaps the Bill’s most shocking provision, pollworkers are prohibited from helping voters find the right precinct line at the polling site. They are actually barred from answering questions or providing directions to voters.

In the 2004 election, then-Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, the co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio, directed that any voter in the right polling place but in the wrong precinct, could not have his or her vote counted. Prior to Blackwell, Ohioans would have had all of their votes counted in that case, except for the rare precinct-level vote which would usually be about alcohol sales.

Now the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Ohio has written the legislature to ask: “Why else would we expend scarce taxpayer dollars on training and paying pollworkers? Ohio should not pass legislation that tells pollworkers not to do their job.”

HB 194 also overrides an the existing law---passed after the 2004 debacle---that required pollworkers to direct voters to the correct precinct. As the ACLU puts it: “Pollworkers will not be allowed to direct voters to the correct precinct or help them fill out forms correctly, both of which are required for a ballot to be counted. This will lead to more ballots that are not counted, and likely more lawsuits.”

The ACLU adds that HB 194 “…shifts responsibility for fair elections off of taxpayer-paid election officials whose job it is to administer elections, and on to the voters, who have a constitutional right to vote.”

The intent of Governor Kasich and the Republican-dominated legislature in Ohio is clear. Whatever minor detail they can find will be used to prevent Ohioans from voting. As the ACLU puts it, voters are "guilty until proven innocent, by assuming that all errors are voters' errors.”

In a separate bill---House Bill 159 (see Free Press Article) the Republicans will disenfranchise an estimated 900,000 Ohio voters, primarily Democrats, by requiring a photo ID to vote. Under the bill, an Ohio voter must produce either an Ohio driver's license, or an Ohio state ID card, military ID, or U.S. passport. IDs with photos and address provided by Ohio colleges or universities are prohibited as well as any ID provided by a county board of elections.

In a courageous move, Republican Secretary of State John Husted has come out against HB 159. In a speech to the League of Women Voters of Ohio, Husted said “I believe if you have a government-issued check, a utility bill in your name with your address on it, that no one made that up, they didn’t call AEP and establish utilities in their name to commit voter fraud. Let’s be clear about this. There are some other forms that are legitimate.”

The League of Women Voters, the American Association of Retired People of Ohio (AARP), Project Vote, and the ACLU all join Husted in opposing House Bill 159. But its passage seems all but assured.

And taken in tandem with HB 194 and the rest of the GOP assault on the ability of working Ohioans to vote, the day when Democrats had any chance of carrying any or all of swing state Ohio may be long gone.

It's tempting to think that presentation of a photo ID isn't all that much to ask, except that anyone who has ever spent the better part of the morning at a motor vehicle department knows how much time it can take to deal with officialdom. Students who must attend class and low-income workers who are paid by the hour, punch a time clock, and do not have the luxury of taking time off to stand in line waiting for a photo ID are going to be disproportionately affected by this new law -- and that's precisely the point. The low-income citizens of Ohio who cannot take time off work to get a photo ID, the elderly who are not able to stand for hours on end waiting for the gears of officialdom to grind out a photo ID -- these are voters who tend to vote Democratic. And of course that's precisely the point.

In the face of ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE that there is any kind of systemic problem with people who are ineligible to vote going to the polls, the Republicans are attempting to disenfranchise as many people as possible who might be unlikely to vote in their direction. They're doing it with onerous voting laws, they're doing it with redistricting, they're doing it any way they can. There won't be another Florida 2000 happening, because Republican governors are making damn sure that no vote will ever be close enough to warrant any scrutiny in the future.

Republicans know that they cannot win on ideas, because they have none, other than elminiating Social Security and Medicare, and cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans and corporations. So they're making sure that their policies don't hurt them at the ballot box by keeping away anyone who might dare question them.

What do you expect when you elect a criminal to the governorship?

No, I'm not talking about Chris Christie, who is being nominated for sainthood on Morning Schmoe even as I speak for writing a check to reimburse the state of New Jersey, a state in which everyone is being called upon to sacrifice, for taking a state police chopper to his son's baseball game and then having a limo waiting to drive him 100 yards to his seat.

No, I'm talking about Rick Scott of Florida, for whom questions are finally being raised in the mainstream press (thank you, Rachel Maddow, for embarrassing them into covering this) about his penchant for drug testing the immediate world -- and his own financial interest in such drug testing:

One of the more popular services at Solantic, the urgent care chain co-founded by Florida Gov. Rick Scott, is drug testing, according to Solantic CEO Karen Bowling.

Given Solantic's role in that marketplace, critics are again asking whether Scott's policy initiatives - this time, requiring drug testing of state employees and welfare recipients - are designed to benefit Scott's bottom line.

The Palm Beach Post reported in an exclusive story two weeks ago that while Scott divested his interest in Solantic in January, the controlling shares went to a trust in his wife's name.

This raised a groundswell of concern and questions about his health policy initiatives, especially his push to move Medicaid into private HMOs. Solantic does not take Medicaid but does business with private Medicaid HMOs. The questions are growing louder with Scott's executive order on drug testing.

Gee, ya think?

This is today's Republican governance -- populated by greedy rich bastard/crooks like Rick Scott, and I-Got-Mine-And-Fuck-You grifter/suckers at the public teat like Chris Christie.

And you want to give power back to these people? Are you f***ing kidding me?

This may not be as silly as it looks on the surface

After all, Republicans have been able to claim, with some success, that the 9/11 attacks were Bill Clinton's fault, that TARP (instituted in 2008) was Barack Obama's program, that George W. http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifBush'shttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif presidency was a success, and that Bush deserves the credit for capturing Osama Bin Laden.

So with their ability and willingness to rewrite history, why WOULDN'T Newt Gingrich run as a devout, devoted husband to his lovely wife Callista, whom he was fucking on the side while married to his second wife, whom he was fucking while married to his first? http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

Still in her 20s when they met, Ms. Bisek had been raised in a town of 1,500, the only child of a meat packer and a secretary. A churchgoing Roman Catholic, she had attended a Lutheran college where she practiced piano five hours a day. “Is this the wisest course for you to be taking?” Karen Olson, her best friend, recalled asking.

Today, Ms. Bisek is Mrs. Gingrich, married for 11 years, but perhaps best remembered for the six-year affair that contributed to her husband’s political downfall. His critics cast Mr. Gingrich, the former House speaker, as a hypocrite who sought to impeach a president over infidelity while engaging in it himself with Ms. Bisek, who was a Congressional aide.

Yet in a curious tale of Washington reinvention, the onetime congressman from Georgia is counting on the third Mrs. Gingrich for his political redemption.

As he prepares for a Republican presidential primary run — he said Monday that he would formally declare his intentions on Wednesday — Mr. Gingrich is presenting himself as a family man who has embraced Catholicism and found God, with his wife as a kind of character witness. Depending on one’s point of view, she is a reminder of his complicated past, or his secret political weapon.

Barely a sentence goes by without Mr. Gingrich uttering the words “Callista and I.” They are constantly together — at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington, at conservative political conferences, at book signings and screenings of their documentary films. She is the voice on his audio books; her face is all over his 2012 Web site, where visitors can read “A Note from Newt & Callista.”

At Villanova University on a recent Thursday night, Mrs. Gingrich warmed up the audience for a showing of the couple’s movie about Pope John Paul II by signing books and DVDs in her left-handed curlicue. But when asked whether she is ready for the scrutiny a campaign would bring, she smiled tightly and grew silent.

Mr. Gingrich answered for her. “Seems to be,” he said, with uncharacteristic tentativeness. “We’ve talked about it for a year. It’s difficult.”

Mr. Gingrich is well aware that social conservatives are skeptical of him because he did not emphasize their issues in Congress, but also because of his two divorces and admission of infidelity. He has been meeting with religious leaders around the country to address their concerns.

What concerns could they possibly have? After all, didn't Jesus die on the cross so that Newt Gingrich could fuck whoever he wants? Isn't that what Gingrich means when he talks about his belief in a "forgiving God"? That HE's allowed to do whatever he wants to because a Jewish guy some two thousand and some-odd years ago went through unspeakable agony so he could do it?

Anything interesting happen today?

If there is one good thing that can be said about today, it's that thanks to Donald Trump, we're one step closer to what the REAL teabagger objection is to Barack Obama, and it has nothing to do with birth certificates or college transcripts or, as Orly Taitz tried to present tonight before Lawrence O'Donnell went all Howard Beale on her, Social Security numbers:

(You SURE it was such a great idea to shitcan Olbermann, guys?)

Either Trump is the most loathsome kind of narcissistic self-promoter on the planet (worse than we already know), or he's a mad genius. Because once you stop talking about legal birth certificates and open the door that allows known racist Pat Buchanan to start frothing at the mouth again about affirmative action, you're one step closer to talking about what the REAL problem is that the Tea Party has with Barack Obama, and it has nothing to do with policy or ideology.

Someone is setting a trap for Republicans and for the Tea Party. The question is whether Barack Obama is actually playing eleven-dimensional chess for real this time, waiting until the birth certificate nonsense reached Peak Wingnut (® John Cole and became part of accepted Republican doctrine to bring out the long-form certificate; or if Donald Trump is doing the kind of street theatre worthy of the late Andy Kaufman, getting Obama to release the birth certificate, moving on to affirmative action, and getting the racist Teabaggers to shout "Fuck Yeah!"

And I have absolutely no idea what it is. Occam's razor indicates that this was Obama simply once again trying to be the only adult in the room and Donald Trump is the same kind of famewhore that he's always been. But do we know for sure?

Of greater interest to me is what I heard on Randi Rhodes' show today about what happened to Nicole Sandler yesterday when she attempted to ask a question of her Congressman, Allen West, the psychopath that Teabaggers in Fort Lauderdale elected to Congress last November:

Got that? For the "crime" of daring to question the lies spewing from the mouth of a sadistic war criminal who claims that liberal women are neutering men and who IS SUPPOSED TO BE A PUBLIC SERVANT, an American citizen, Nicole Sandler, was jailed for 17 hours, held in solitary for three, and maced.

From the above link, Sandler spoke with Brad Friedman about what happened:

I just got out of jail. Just had a Five Guys burger and fries, my first meal in the last 24 hours or so. First thing I did, I had CBS meet me as I was leaving. They'll be running a story later today. We're heading home now.

You'll love this. You know that old 'presumed innocent until proven guilty' thing? They don't do that down here in Broward County.

Now I understand what Bradley Manning was going through because I was put in solitary confinement. After bitching about it, I was maced. After being stuck in jail after about 3 hours, it was lunchtime. I said "can I please come out now, I'm really really sorry".

I had been in the women's area, there must have been 25 or 30 women in there. All but 4 of us were eventually called this morning to go before a magistrate.

Even though $25 bond was posted last night at 2am, and it's 8am I'm still not released. They said the bond takes about 6 to 8 hours process.

So then they're coming in to clean the cells. So they stuck all 4 of us in this one cell where they store the mattresses. A 12 by 7 feet. So they put the 4 of us in this cell with the 50 mattresses being stored, no air circulation, for a few minutes while they cleaned. And then they forgot about us.

After a while I see the women sent to the magistrate returned. We're still stuck in there for at least an hour. I said to the guard, "You forgot about us." He said "Oh, well, that happens."

"That happens?!," I said, "I think you owe us an apology. "You want an apology?," he said. "You see that cell up there? #1? You can have all the air you want. There's your apology." And he put me in there for like three hours. Solitary.

After being in there for hours with nothing to do, your mind plays tricks on you. In fact, while in there, they called my name, and I'm screaming "I'm in here! I'm in here!" They didn't let me out. And another hour went by.

Lunch was then served, and I asked "can I come out?" The guard said "NO!" I said, "Well, do I get to eat?" He said yeah, he handed me some food and then the door opened again, and I sat on the top step outside the cell, and he said "GET BACK IN THEL CELL!" ... And before I knew it, they were spraying me with mace. Not just once, but sprayed and sprayed to where I'm like screaming.

I can't believe this happened. I said, "I'm in here because I tried to ask my Congressman a question at a town hall."

Here's the thing, Brad, it wasn't a town hall meeting. He gave a presentation, and then he gave a speech. If I had known that, I wouldn't have gone. But he billed it as a town hall meeting, where there are usually questions back and forth. It's amazing.

And these fuckers DARE to say that it's Barack Obama who's un-American?

Oh, and by the way? While the media were giving Trump more camera time, and O'Donnell made the foolish mistake of thinking a crazy woman was going to admit that she's crazy, the Supreme Court gave corporations another blowjob today.

But on the other hand, there's this.

Thanks to Derek at Cheek and Bluster for the last two links.

And this is the teabaggers' choice for the Republican presidential nomination

Remember that video I posted the other day, in which one vapid, slack-jawed mouthbreathing teabagger after another said that they liked Trump for president? Here's the business genius they're supporting:

Trump has built an American empire from Las Vegas to New York with towering hotels and sparkling casinos. Forbes estimates he's worth $2.7 billion. But not all of Trump's business ventures have been constant money-makers. In 1991, 1992, 2004, and again in 2009, Trump branded companies or properties have sought Chapter 11 protection.

"I've used the laws of this country to pare debt. ... We'll have the company. We'll throw it into a chapter. We'll negotiate with the banks. We'll make a fantastic deal. You know, it's like on 'The Apprentice.' It's not personal. It's just business," Trump told ABC's George Stephanopoulos last Thursday.

A business declaring bankruptcy is nothing new in corporate America, where bankruptcy is often sugar-coated as "restructuring debt." But it might seem alarming to everyday Americans who can't get a bank to restructure their home loans. If you want to get Donald Trump hot under the collar, accuse him of declaring bankruptcy.

Read the whole sordid story here. It's as much about how the laws are rigged so that people like Donald Trump never have to accept the consequences of their own folly as it is about Trump's own multiple bankruptcies. So here we have a bunch of idiots, many of whom are probably underwater on their own houses if they haven't lost them already, whose own retirement accounts have lost much of their value, supporting a guy who's been able to game the system over and over again for his own advantage.

And they don't even see any irony in this.

Where do you even START trying to counteract this level of Teh Stoopid?

Via Randi:

=sound of forehead hitting desk=

WTF?????

In a country gone completely, utterly, batshit crazy, Arizona is even crazier than the rest of it:

The Arizona Senate formally passed the "Birther Bill" today, but not in its original version.

Apparently, requiring presidential candidates to provide a long-form birth certificate before allowing their names on the ballot in Arizona -- despite it already being a federal requirement to run for president -- was a bit too much for a few GOP lawmakers. So they made some amendments: if you can't find your birth certificate, and you have a penis, a document describing your lack of foreskin will suffice.

A circumcision certificate -- a document given to the parents of a male Jewish child after his foreskin is snipped off during a circumcision ceremony --  is not a legal document (see an example of one here)
but if you have one, under the amended bill, it's apparently enough to prove you're a U.S. citizen and your name can be permitted on the ballot in Arizona.

Pulling out your penis in front of election officials, however, will not prove citizenship -- and, in the worst case scenario, could get you labeled a sex offender.

Some other ways to prove that you're not a Kenyan version of the
Manchurian Candidate, as spelled out in the ridiculous bill, could be to provide a hospital birth record, a postpartum medical record, or an early census record.

The above is NOT from The Onion.

So a state government-issued birth certificate from the state of Hawaii won't suffice, but an easily-forged medical record or certificate from a mohel will? Why don't they don't just come out and pass a bill saying "Black Democrats may not be on the ballot in Arizona"? It would be a lot less complicated and a lot closer to the true spirit of this ridiculous law.

Because all you need to be is a spoiled, whiny five-year-old to be governor of New Jersey

Sometimes the snark just writes itself:

A New Jersey boy who cried on a YouTube clip that he’s too small to be governor was all smiles as Gov. Chris Christie made him honorary chief executive.

Christie signed a proclamation Wednesday making 5-year-old Jesse Koczon, of Old Bridge, honorary governor for the day and his fraternal twin brother, Brandon, honorary lieutenant governor.

The boys, dressed in collared shirt, ties and trousers, appeared at a news conference with their parents, Jon and Dawn Koczon, Christie and Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno.

Christie, who has four children in elementary through high school, said he “related as a father,” when he saw the video clip of the boy crying.

On the video, Jesse’s mother asks him why he’s upset. Jesse replies, “Cause everyone tells me I’m too small to be the governor of New Jersey.”

Christie responded on Twitter: “Don’t worry Jesse, people gave plenty of reasons why I couldn’t be governor, though being too small wasn’t one of them.”

Christie said Jesse may be a natural for the state’s top job.

Especially now that Chris Christie has demonstrated that throwing a tantrum when you don't get your own way is the most important qualification.

The Peter Principle is alive and well in Wisconsin

Meet Brian Deschane:

Just in his mid-20s, Brian Deschane has no college degree, very little management experience and two drunken-driving convictions.

Yet he has landed an $81,500-per-year job in Gov. Scott Walker's administration overseeing environmental and regulatory matters and dozens of employees at the Department of Commerce. Even though Walker says the state is broke and public employees are overpaid, Deschane already has earned a promotion and a 26% pay raise in just two months with the state.

How did Deschane score his plum assignment with the Walker team?

It's all in the family.

His father is Jerry Deschane, executive vice president and longtime lobbyist for the Madison-based Wisconsin Builders Association, which bet big on Walker during last year's governor's race.

The group's political action committee gave $29,000 to Walker and his running mate, Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, last year, making it one of the top five PAC donors to the governor's successful campaign. Even more impressive, members of the trade group funneled more than $92,000 through its conduit to Walker's campaign over the past two years.

Total donations: $121,652.

That's big-time backing from the homebuilders.

The younger Deschane didn't respond to questions about his job.

(via)

Death Panels are starting to sound awfully good right about now

Think about it: How would you rather check out of this God-forsaken level of reality? Would you rather be in a warm bed somewhere, perhaps lying on sheets nice and warm out of the dryer, with the sun streaming in your window and soft music playing into your room, perhaps with the aroma of peppermint, or fresh bread, or whatever your favorite aroma might be, while a doctor slips a needle into your arm and you wooze into a delightful drowsiness and then unconsciousness, and then another needle containing the drug that stops your heart is administered...or would you prefer to die out in the street, old, sick, and alone, huddling from a bitter wind, because you have no home, no shelter, no food, and no medical care?

I know which one I'd take.

But it's hard to imagine that the GOP will be kind and compassionate enough to offer the elderly the first one, not if the current House majority gets its way:

House Republicans are preparing to introduce a 10-year budget Tuesday that will eliminate Medicare and replace it with a private insurance system that closely resembles the new health care law, and end Medicaid as an entitlement program all together.

This plan, which also will include major restructuring of the tax code and cap discretionary spending, will reduce the deficit by over $4 trillion in 10 years, according to House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan.

Here's what this means if you're elderly, disabled, or poor.

Low-income Medicaid beneficiaries will lose their guaranteed benefits altogether. Currently, Medicaid is jointly financed by the federal government and states, which are required to provide comprehensive health care benefits to people in poverty. Ryan's plan turns the program into block grants for the states -- states get a bunch of cash from the feds and have to make the best of it. For many states, that will mean severe benefit rollbacks.

Seniors, and others on Medicare, would be in a slightly different predicament. Currently seniors 65 and over are guaranteed a defined benefit program: taxpayers finance the system, and the government agrees to pay for seniors' health care services (though seniors have to pitch in too). Ryan's plan would leave that system intact for anybody currently on Medicare, or expecting to be on Medicare within 10 years. For everyone else the program would be radically overhauled. Future beneficiaries would no longer have a single payer system to rely on. Rather, they'd be given a menu of private insurance plans to pick from, and subsidies to help pay their premiums. If those premiums skyrocket, that's on them. If the insurers themselves aren't required to pay for whatever the doctor orders, then the guaranteed benefits will erode.

I'm going to be fifty-six years old this year, so it's possible that I may just sneak in under the wire. But because I'm not a Republican, I don't subscribe to the "I Got Mine And Fuck You" doctrine. I take no comfort or satisfaction in the reality that my friends and colleagues who are in their twenties, thirties, and forties -- or who are fifty-four right now, are going to be consigned to the latter option described above.

It's probably too late to stop this plan -- or something even worse. The executives of major corporations -- the ones whose multimillion dollar annual compensation packages already assure them of that nice warm bed only with no doctor slipping them a needle -- own this country. They own both parties, Democratic and Republican. The Republicans are more expensive whores, because they demand to be paid more to do the billionaires' bidding, whereas the Democrats have long been content to settle for the scraps. But we've already seen what calls for "shared sacrifice" mean -- they mean sacrifice for everyone EXCEPT those who already have more money than they AND their heirs can spend or use in a thousand lifetimes.

I still have a soul. And it grieves me to think of my friends, who simply because of a few short years are going to be left clutching coupons they're supposed to use to buy health insurance that doesn't promise to be there when they need it -- while billionaires continue to rake in ever more cash, because no amount we let them have seems to be enough.

Making Taxpayers for Christ

In the World According to Man-On-Dog, if it weren't for all them dirty sluts not doing their part of the American tax structure, there'd be no problems with Social Security revenues today:

WASHINGTON – Long-shot Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum said Tuesday that America's "abortion culture" is harming Social Security, reviving an ages-old argument largely confined to the fringe.

"The Social Security system, in my opinion, is a flawed design, period," Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator, told the New Hampshire station WEZS Radio. "But having said that, the design would work a lot better if we had stable demographic trends."

The problem, Santorum explained, is that "we don't have enough workers to support the retirees," because "a third of all the young people in America are not in America today because of abortion."

According to the Guttmacher Institute, 22 percent of all pregnancies in the U.S. end in abortion.

"We have seven children, so we're doing our part to fund the Social Security system," Santourm said.

In the long-run, of course, the boon to Social Security from more young people at any given time will be offset by the benefits they collect upon retirement, so the logic that that abortion is a drag on the program is contentious at best.

Yet the notion isn't new -- it's been around for many years, floated mostly by dogged social conservatives gifted at developing theories to blame abortion for just about every one of the nation's woes.

Perhaps someone should ask Santorum where the jobs are at which all those aborted babies would work to pay into the system, when there are fourteen million unemployed Americans today as it is.

Here's what "shared sacrifice" looks like in New Jersey

Now that New Jersey is becoming a Republican paradise, the rest of the country might want to see what the "shared sacrifice" that Governor Chris Christie promised looks like:

Here are the facts: The 16,000 families in New Jersey earning more than $1 millon will get an average tax break of $40,000 apiece under this budget. At the same time, a single mom working for minimum wage will pay $300 more in state taxes.

The biggest cuts in this budget are painful but unavoidable. That includes the deep cuts in aid to schools and towns, and in property tax rebates. His single biggest move was to short the pension fund by $3 billion. Together, those moves account for the bulk of the governor’s spending reductions.

Did you get that? 16,000 of the wealthiest families -- not business, but FAMILIES -- in the state will have $40,000 more in their pockets, while a minimum wage worker gets a $300 tax INCREASE. I guess this is shared sacrifice because the wealthiest families aren't going to get $100,000 more in their pockets.

And note that Christie is shorting the pension fund again. The state pension fund is the single biggest source of the state's fiscal problems, largely because of policies instituted by that OTHER Christie, Christine Todd Whitman, former darling of the Republican Party.

Bob Herbert, New York Times, February 22, 1995:

Now many of the gains made over a quarter of a century are in danger of slipping away because the current Governor, Christine Todd Whitman, has chosen to finance her political ambitions with a popular buy-now, pay-later economic policy that will place a financial stranglehold on future generations of New Jerseyans.

This is best illustrated by Mrs. Whitman's decision to withhold billions of dollars that should be going into the public employee pension funds over the next few years, and using the bulk of that money to balance the state budget. Then, with an audacity that dazzles her supporters and even draws grudging admiration from opponents, Mrs. Whitman smiles and characterizes the withheld funds as savings.

Of course, they are not "savings" -- not in any sense of the word. The pension obligations at some point will come due and future generations will have to meet them.

Not only will the money have to be made up, but future taxpayers will be deprived of the income that the money -- if properly invested now -- would be expected to generate.

Mrs. Whitman's pension maneuvers have not gotten a lot of publicity -- in part because the eyes of reporters and readers alike tend to glaze over when confronted with complex budget details. The changes that she has made have been drastic. According to the New Jersey Education Association, which has filed suit against the state, the employer contributions to the pension system this year will be as much as 96 percent below the amounts contributed in the early 1990's.

By all accounts, the employer contributions have been reduced by nearly $1 billion a year. The Whitman administration insists that this is not a problem. Needless to say, others disagree.

"There is no question but that this is creating future debt," said Richard C. Leone, a former New Jersey State Treasurer who is now the president of the Twentieth Century Fund. "This is just another way of getting around the balanced-budget requirement, a kind of deficit spending. It is the sort of thing that comes back to haunt you."

Until the changes adopted by Mrs. Whitman, New Jersey had been very conservative in its approach to its pension obligations. For example, the state had started to pre-fund the health care benefits of its retirees, building up reserves against post-retirement liabilities. As one state official said: "That was prudent. Health-care costs are a big problem."

Prudent or not, Mrs. Whitman scrapped the pre-funding. She used the reserves that had already built up to help balance her budget. For Christine Todd Whitman, the pension funds have become a budget-balancing machine.

In other words, Chris Christie is doing exactly what Whitman suggested he do in a recent op-ed in the Hackensack, NJ Record: running the state exactly as she did.