There is a special place reserved for Governor Scott of Florida

from ThinkProgress:

Today, Rick Scott Will Lay Out Cuts For Developmentally Disabled And Then Attend A Special Olympics Photo-Op
Today, Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) will announce deep cuts to programs that help the developmentally disabled in his state. Scott will invoke his “emergency powers” to impose a 15 percent cut to the rates charged by group home workers and case workers that help the 30,000 Floridians with cerebral palsy, autism, and Down Syndrome.

Those who provide services to the developmentally disabled are already decrying the cuts. “This would be a catastrophe,” one advocate told the Miami Herald. “The system can’t take this. Eventually, we will have to cut jobs and reduce services.”

Scott says the cuts are necessary to address a $170 million deficit in the Agency for Persons with Disabilities — but at the same time, he is also proposing $1.5 billion in corporate tax cuts and $1.4 billion more in property tax cuts.

Even more galling, today — the same day his cuts are announced — Scott is scheduled to appear at a Special Olympics Torch Run with his wife and other state officials. The run is designed to promote the upcoming Special Olympics in Florida, and raise money for developmentally disabled athletes along the way:

Some people.......should just burn in hell.

In "They Are Who We Thought They Were" News, GOP Congressman says he's STRUGGLING on salary of 174k

You know, certain things just write themselves.

from TPM.com

GOP Rep: I'm 'Struggling' On My $174K Salary (VIDEO)
At a town hall meeting in Polk County, Wisconsin earlier this year, Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI) was asked whether he'd vote to cut his $174,000 annual salary. Duffy sort of hedged, and went on to talk about how $174,000 really isn't that much for his family of seven to live on. Then he went on to say he supports cutting compensation for all public employees, along the lines of what Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) has proposed for the Badger State.

The whole thing was caught on tape, and it was posted to the Polk County GOP's blog, along with several other clips from the town hall. Then just that clip where Duffy talks about his salary was taken down and removed from the internet by the county party because, an official said, the YouTube clip "was being republished without our consent."

Here's the clip, obtained by TPM:



Awe, poor baby. He's barely scraping by on 174k a year. He and his brood of SIX have GOVERNMENT FUNDED HEALTHCARE, and he has a home, and someone's supposed to have sympathy for this clown? Nobody told him to have 6 kids....you can't afford them, don't have them...isn't that what they always tell poor folk?

He's paying off student loans....he's probably voted to cut education, so that other folks won't even have the choice to GET a student loan, or he's probably one of those who wants to turn BACK the student loan business BACK to the banks, something the President has stopped.

They continue to be who we thought they were. They could care less and continue to vote time and time again against anything that would help the working man or woman, and he's making almost 4x the average in his district and thinks someone's supposed to actually have sympathy for him.

The GOP is Planning to Shut Down the Government

There's been a lot of ink written on the probable GOP shutdown, but I like this from BooMan Tribune the best:

The Crazy People Will Shut the Guvmint
by BooMan
Tue Mar 29th, 2011 at 10:02:08 AM EST

I've said this once before, but I think it is worth reiterating. I can't imagine that most people can look at the landscape of turmoil in the Arab world and an ongoing nuclear and humanitarian crisis in Japan, and have much patience for another demonstration that our government here at home cannot function at the most basic level. Any government shutdown, for any reason, is going to really anger our citizens. And, obviously, the more petty the reasoning looks the worse it is going to be. Sen. Chuck Schumer is leading the messaging war for the Democrats and it comes down to labeling the Tea Party (freshman Republican class) as a bunch of extremists who Speaker Boehner is afraid to confront.

The message has the advantage of being true, for whatever that is worth these days. Brian Beutler reports that the House Republicans are making two rigid and unreasonable demands. The first is that the HR1 bill serve as the basis for any budget bill. The second is that all the cost savings in the budget come from non-defense discretionary funding. Ezra Klein expresses some puzzlement at the latter requirement:


Funny. I thought this debate had always been about the deficit, or at least cutting spending. Guess not. Rather, the Republican position appears to be: “How do we preserve current tax rates and most current spending while getting Democrats to accept deep cuts to the small fraction of the budget called non-defense discretionary spending?” It's a weird position, but it looks to be what we’re dealing with.

Given this bargaining position, both Beutler and Klein agree that a government shutdown on April 8th is almost inevitable. Jonathan Chait has a good explanation for why the Republicans are being so inflexible. A new study of conservatives discovers that Tea Party-identifying conservatives think the president is destroying the country (71%) while non-Tea Party-identifying conservatives do not (6%). It's really just a scientific way of documenting what Steven Thrasher said last September:


About 12:01 on the afternoon of January 20, 2009, the white American mind began to unravel.

It had been a pretty good run up to that point. The brains of white folks had been humming along cogently for near on 400 years on this continent, with little sign that any serious trouble was brewing. White people, after all, had managed to invent a spiffy new form of self-government so that all white men (and, eventually, women) could have a say in how white people were taxed and governed. White minds had also nearly universally occupied just about every branch of that government and, for more than two centuries, had kept sole possession of the leadership of its executive branch (whose parsonage, after all, is called the White House).

But when that streak was broken—and, for the first time, a non-white president accepted the oath of office—white America rapidly began to lose its grip.

Go to the link to read the rest of it, but I think it's on point. I don't want the Guvmint to shut down, but I'm ready for it, because these folks need to be exposed for exactly who they are. Period.

Where Do They Get These Kneegrows?

from Religious Right Watch:

Tea Party Leader: African Americans Can’t Be Christian And Support Obama

Ron Miller is the president of the Tea Party group Regular Folks United, and a former Republican candidate for Congress and the Maryland state senate. Miller, who is a black former staffer with the Bush Administration, adamantly defends Tea Party activists from charges of racism, blaming Obama for his “open display of condescension toward ordinary Americans.” But while Miller deplores charges of racism against members of the Tea Party, he claims that African Americans only support Obama because he is black. He told the American Family Association’s OneNewsNow that anyone who backs Obama cannot be Christian, and black Obama voters “place their blackness ahead of Christ”

Sometimes, you come across these fools, and just have to show them for what they are.

African-Americans only support Obama because he is Black.

Barack Obama got 95% of the Black Vote.

Every Democratic Presidential Candidate from Jimmy Carter on has gotten upper 80th percentile to 90+% of the Black vote.

Yet, they were all WHITE candidates.

So, does Barack Obama getting 95% of the Black vote have to do with him being Black, or him being the Democratic Candidate for President?

So, BIG FAIL on that idiot point.

Now, let's get to "place their blackness ahead of Christ”

What does CHRIST have to do
a) Blackness
b) How I vote

You know, this type of Black person gets on my last nerve. Going before White folk, shinning and grinning. He doesn't have the nerve to go down to Mount Olive Missionary Baptist and tell those parishoners this garbage he's telling those White folk. He wouldn't dare take himself before a bunch of Black folk and utter this garbage to their faces. He doesn't have the nerve.

The President Speaks About Libya

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The Slave Catcher Known as Herman Cain Doesn't Understand the Concept of RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

hat tips-GOVCHRIS1988 and SouthernGirl 2

I have tried to ignore Herman Cain and his ridiculousness, but his foolishness is just getting more and more ridiculousness.

from ThinkProgress:

EXCLUSIVE: Herman Cain Tells ThinkProgress ‘I Would Not’ Appoint A Muslim In My Administration

As the Republican presidential nomination process begins, one GOP candidate is making a name for himself as the Islamophobia candidate: Herman Cain.

Earlier this week, Cain gave an interview to Christianity Today in which he declared that, “based upon the little knowledge that I have of the Muslim religion, you know, they have an objective to convert all infidels or kill them.”

ThinkProgress caught up with the former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza today at the Conservative Principles Conference in Des Moines, Iowa, to discuss his comments further. We asked him, in light of his statements on Islam, would he be comfortable appointing any Muslims in his administration. Rather than skirting the question or hedging his answer, as most presidential aspirants are wont to do, Cain was definitive: “No, I would not”:

KEYES: You came under a bit of controversy this week for some of the comments made about Muslims in general. Would you be comfortable appointing a Muslim, either in your cabinet or as a federal judge?

CAIN: No, I would not. And here’s why. There is this creeping attempt, there is this attempt to gradually ease Sharia law and the Muslim faith into our government. It does not belong in our government. This is what happened in Europe. And little by little, to try and be politically correct, they made this little change, they made this little change. And now they’ve got a social problem that they don’t know what to do with hardly.

The question that was asked that “raised some questions” and, as my grandfather said, “I does not care, I feel the way I feel.” I was asked, “what is the role of Islam in America?” I thought it was an odd question. I said the role of Islam in America is for those that believe in Islam to practice it and leave us alone. Just like Christianity. We have a First Amendment. And I get upset when the Muslims in this country, some of them, try to force their Sharia law onto the rest of us.

WHAT MUSLIMS are trying to force SHARIA LAW onto us.

name me ONE PLACE IN AMERICA.

Hell, they haven't even tried to do it in Dearborn, Michigan, with the largest concentration of Arabs in America.

So, tell me.

ThinkProgress points out the problems with this:

should check his understanding of the U.S. Constitution, which states in Article 4:

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.

No less than the CONSTITUTION says what he is proposing is ILLEGAL.

Cain is a slave catcher, who has been plucking my last Black nerve with his shinning and grinning and buckdance that he's been doing for the right wing.

There shall be NO RELIGIOUS TEST for Office in the United States.

PERIOD.

Whatever their flaws, and they had many, the men who drafted the Constitution knew better. They knew from whence they'd fled, and about RELIGIOUS FREEDOM in this country.

Ignorant folks like Cain spit on the Constitution.

In 'THEY ARE WHO WE THOUGHT THEY WERE' News - Buried Provision In House GOP Bill Would Cut Off Food Stamps To Entire Families If One Member Strikes

from ThinkProgress:

Buried Provision In House GOP Bill Would Cut Off Food Stamps To Entire Families If One Member Strikes

All around the country, right-wing legislators are asking middle class Americans to pay for budget deficits caused mainly by a recession caused by Wall Street; they are attacking workers’ collective bargaining rights, which has provoked a huge Main Street Movement to fight back.

Now, a group of House Republicans is launching a new stealth attack against union workers. GOP Reps. Jim Jordan (OH), Tim Scott (SC), Scott Garrett (NJ), Dan Burton (IN), and Louie Gohmert (TX) have introduced H.R. 1135, which states that it is designed to “provide information on total spending on means-tested welfare programs, to provide additional work requirements, and to provide an overall spending limit on means-tested welfare programs.”

Much of the bill is based upon verifying that those who receive food stamps benefits are meeting the federal requirements for doing so. However, one section buried deep within the bill adds a startling new requirement. The bill, if passed, would actually cut off all food stamp benefits to any family where one adult member is engaging in a strike against an employer:
..............

The bill also includes a provision that would exempt households from losing eligibility, “if the household was eligible immediately prior to such strike, however, such family unit shall not receive an increased allotment as the result of a decrease in the income of the striking member or members of the household.”

Yet removing entire families from eligibility while a single adult family member is striking would have a chilling effect on workers who are considering going on strike for better wages, benefits, or working conditions — something that is especially alarming in light of the fact that unions are one of the fundamental building blocks of the middle class that allow people to earn wages that keep them off food stamps.

This is who they are. Time and time again, they are showing you who they are. They have absolutely nothing but contempt for the working man and woman that doesn't want to spend their lives as serfs to companies, and want to fight for a decent wage. This isn't a shock...because this is just another example of how these lowlifes operate.

The First Family Finishes Up in El Salvador and Returns Home

The First Family cut their visit to El Salvador short, and have returned home.


President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama wave prior to boarding Air Force prior to departing San Salvador, El Salvador, Wednesday, March 23, 2011.
-----AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais

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The First Family - onto El Salvador

The First Family leaves Chile and continues onto El Salvador.


US President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama along with daughters Sasha and Malia, upon arrival on Air Force One in San Salvador, El Salvador, March 22, 2011.
----SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

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