Friday, August 2, 2013

August 2

Texas Republicans are squarely to blame for the cost of each of the special sessions they have called, and yet they are trying to charge Wendy Davis $2.4 million for a special session.

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Republicans keep blaming President Obama for higher beef prices, but what are the real issues behind why your burger's gotten so expensive? Read more ›

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Mad props to Tim Egan in the NYTimes:

Just now, a cell of several hundred people has been dispatched into the American summer, to picnics, town halls, radio stations, hospitals and Little League playing fields, with a mission to derail the economic recovery and drum up support for sabotaging federal law. They're not terrorists, nor are they agents of a foreign government. This is your United States Congress, the Republican House, on recess for the next five weeks.

They even have a master plan, a 31-page kit put together by the House Republican Conference, for every member to follow while back home with the folks. It's called "Fighting Washington for all Americans," and includes a prototype op-ed piece, with a political version of the line usually reserved for dumping lovers: "This isn't about me. It's about you."…

And what if I have a child with cancer, and the insurance company plans to dump him if Republicans stop Obamacare in its tracks? Can I attend? Or what if I'm counting on buying into the new health care exchanges in my state, saving hundreds of dollars on my insurance bill?

The kit has an answer: planting supporters, with prescreened softball questions, will ensure that such things never get asked. More important, this tactic will assure that any meeting with the dreaded public will go "in the direction that is most beneficial to the member," as the blueprint states.

I thought this wasn't about you.

Oh, and Republicans should be sure to "engage with all demographics," the memo insists. It's very specific about what that means: Asians, Latinos and women. Blacks aren't mentioned. Lost cause. But millennials are included, because nothing works with young people like inauthenticity….

Also worth reading, Jonathan Cohn in TNR with "Six Reasons Hipsters Will Bite on Obamacare".

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Just now, a cell of several hundred people has been dispatched into the American summer, to picnics, town halls, radio stations, hospitals and Little League playing fields, with a mission to derail the economic recovery and drum up support for sabotaging federal law. They're not terrorists, nor are they agents of a foreign government. This is your United States Congress, the Republican House, on recess for the next five weeks.

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Why we can't have nice things.

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Big win for pro-lifers, cutting off access to medical care in Texas:

The number of claims filed for medical and family planning services in the new state-run Texas Women's Health Program has dropped since the state ousted Planned Parenthood from it and set up its own program without federal financing, according to figures from the Health and Human Services Commission.
Stephanie Goodman, a spokeswoman for the commission, wrote in an email that the program is "running at about 77 percent of the number of claims this year compared to last year." She added that the agency expects to "see a similar trend with the number of women served," though those numbers are more difficult to calculate.
"We expected to see a drop-off in the number of claims when we moved to the state program because we knew some women wouldn't want to change doctors," Goodman said. "We've been able to find new doctors for women who call us, and we've got the capacity to increase the number of women we're serving in the state program."
In 2011, Texas lawmakers demanded that the state enforce a rule prohibiting women's health care providers affiliated with abortion facilities, such as Planned Parenthood, from participating in the Medicaid Women's Health Program. At the time, Planned Parenthood clinics — which could not perform abortions at facilities accepting state and federal funding through the program — served 40 percent of women enrolled in it, according to the health commission.

I didn't think access to health care for poor people could get much worse in Texas, but I forgot about the morality factor.

Hopefully they can get that unplanned and teen pregnancy number up, also.

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Betty Bowers Explains Abortion to Everyone Else (hint: the bible loves it)

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'Pastafarian' Man Wins Religious Liberty Battle To Wear A Pasta Strainer On His Government ID Card


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YALE GETS MEDIEVAL ON RAPISTS WITH WRITTEN REPRIMANDS AND SOMETIMES EVEN SUSPENSION

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Really, Wonkette's headline says it all12-Year-Old Robs Lemonade Stand At BB Gunpoint; NRA Silent So We'll Assume He Is White

Too bad Pennsylvania doesn't have a (Lemondade) Stand Your Ground law. That 10 year-old vendor could have shot the other kid on the spot.

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Congressional GOP Pull One Bill, Filibuster the Other, Go On Vacation

House Republican leadership pulled the THUD bill, an appropriations bill for the departments of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development, from the floor of the House yesterday because it didn't have enough support to pass from either party.

Today, Senate Republicans filibustered the Senate version of the bill because it may have had enough support to pass. And while Republicans sometimes claim they're against sequestration, the bill they filibustered today would have partially ended it.

The vote was 54 in favor, 43 against, falling short of the 60 votes needed to move forward. The only member to cross party lines was Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), who helped write the bill and urged colleagues not to block it — to no avail. [...]

The crux of the disagreement is that Republican leaders insist on setting domestic spending at levels ordered by sequestration. Democrats, by contrast, want to replace the automatic, across the board cuts and instead set spending at levels agreed to in the 2011 Budget Control Act before sequestration slashes them further.

Here's where it becomes really confusing.

House Republicans couldn't pass their THUD bill because it perpetuates sequestration and goes further by adhering to the framework of the Paul Ryan budget. Senate Republicans filibustered the Senate THUD bill today because it ends sequestration and does not adhere to the framework Paul Ryan budget.

Still with me?

Senate and House Republicans are pulling in two different directions but, at the same time, there is a rift in the House where some Republicans want to end sequestration while others believe any bill that funds the departments of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development is a boondoggle. Because those socialist departments should be defunded!

Meanwhile, Republicans are also deeply-divided on whether or not we should fund the federal government beyond the month of September unless Obamacare is dismantled.

To use a technical term: it's a clusterfuck.

The good news is passage of the Don't Cast Aspersions On My Asparagus Act should proceed as planned either today or tomorrow morning before Congress leaves town for the Summer recess. And Americans can eat cake.


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