The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    Sherrod Brown: Republicans are Liars Owned by the Rich

    By NCD on Fri, 11/17/2017 - 6:25pm |

     

     

    Sherrod Brown gets it. He is the Democratic Senator from Ohio.

    The late Steve Gilliard on why we must support Democrats (from 2006), also posted at Driftglass.  Some words changed (---) to update context:

    You know, if you have a good job and a nice house, you can think (voting doesn't matter to you).
     
    If you're making minimum wage, you need a Democratic Congress, if you want to be treated with stem cells, if you want to get an abortion.
     
    It's easy to sit back and say nothing will happen...., because nothing will happen to you. But if you're fighting with the VA, it fucking matters. If your kid is in Iraq, it fucking matters. Fuck the shit which comes with (Republican control), there are people who need the help, even minimal help, a Democratic Congress can provide.
     
    A lot of nice, middle class progressives forget that the fight isn't for them. You think for one second I believe (every Democrat candidate) know what it's like to be working class, much less working class and black, living in a...housing project?
     
    What I know is that (the Republican Party) has turned its back on those people and put (a) foot on their necks in so many ways I've lost count. It's their kids dying in Iraq, coming home to a fucked up VA, not getting their benefits.
     
    At least (the Democratic Party) wants to listen, (Republicans) stopped long ago.
     
    You better remember that if you see a vast sea, there are some folks drowning and the question is whether you save them or leave them to their fate.
     
    When those Coast Guard pilots and rescue swimmers flew over New Orleans, they could have said, shit, too many wires, too many unknowns, let's get some boats for them. Instead, they jumped in the water and started saving people.
     
    Which is what we are tasked to do. We don't have time to worry...., there are people who need a government not at their throats. They don't need it in theory, they don't need it in some undefined future, they need it today, and if not today, tomorrow. ...Workers need real health insurance, and the GOP isn't going to give it to them.
     
    There are real people who need what a Democratic Congress can provide and who need it as soon as they can get it.

    Comments

    Barack Obama was able to take questions from Republicans without getting angry. Hillary sat for hours answering the questions from a Congressional committee without getting angry, The faux outrage we see from Jeff Sessions and Orrin Hatch is one of the signs of a liar. The outrage is an attempt to divert. The liar whines about his honor being under attack. It is an old ploy. Neither Sessions or Hatch is trustworthy.


    by rmrd0000 on Fri, 11/17/2017 - 8:29pm

    Excellent points. Hatch is reportedly worth $4.97 million, with big investments in Wall Street banks. His lineage is of no relevance, he's a Koch puppet.


    by NCD on Fri, 11/17/2017 - 11:10pm

    NCD, why not run him.

    Hell Brown is Ohio incarnate.

    DAMN!

    I like this guy, I always liked this guy.

    HE AINT AFRAID.

    We need somebody who aint afraid.

    hhahahahahah

    If we cannot find a guy like an Ohioan Brown, we are screwed.

    Can you imagine him debating the orange buffooon?

    It's a hard rain gonna fall if we cannot find a guy like Brown.


    by Richard Day on Fri, 11/17/2017 - 8:46pm

    Brown certainly looks good if he keeps callng out what how Republicans are really screwing the poor and middle class.


    by NCD on Fri, 11/17/2017 - 11:05pm

    Oh hell Dick . . .

    The only truthful part in that blowhard ol' patriarchal Hatch's diatribe was, "...my whole stinking career..."

    Stinking is right... I agree with that 100%...

    ======
    ~OGD~


    by oldenGoldenDecoy on Sat, 11/18/2017 - 1:12pm

    Yes BUT what I think is important for all to clearly see the new wrench that has been thrown into this classic situation: that they've got stuck with this fake populism thing and don't know what to do about that:

    Flake on hot mic: GOP 'toast' if we become the party of Trump, Moore

    By John Bowden @ The Hill.com, Nov. 18

    [...] At a tax-reform event in Arizona on Saturday, Flake was caught on a live microphone by ABC affiliate KNXV bashing the president in a conversation with Mesa Mayor John Giles, a friend of Flake's.

    "If we become the party of Roy Moore and Donald Trump, we are toast," Flake is overheard saying.\

    [....]

    In a speech on the Senate floor, he accused his party of abandoning its core principles.

    "It is clear at this moment that a traditional conservative who believes in limited government and free markets, who is devoted to free trade, and who is pro-immigration, has a narrower and narrower path to nomination in the Republican party — the party that for so long has defined itself by belief in those things," Flake said during his speech. 
     
    "It is also clear to me for the moment we have given in or given up on those core principles in favor of the more viscerally satisfying anger and resentment," he added.

    Right now you've got the Flakes winning:

    Senate chooses Wall Street over consumers, seniors, and service members

    By Linda Lipsen, Opinion Contributor @ TheHill.com— 11/17/17 01:25 PM EST

    And I hasten to add this thought provocation: many of the "Wall Street" type crowd, including Goldman Sachs, and even J'vanka, previously donated, registered and voted Democratic, when the candidates were centrist.

    And then there's "Hollywood" wealth. You know bout that...

    The big spending big gummint nanny state vs. free markets is still very much a thing. Hasn't gone away.  And it splits the Dems in two.  Immigration also splits across party lines. Ironically, many of the more educated strongly for it, across the spectrum, conservative to liberal.


    by artappraiser on Sat, 11/18/2017 - 3:42pm

    Nobel laureate Paul Krugman:

    ...How can Republicans like Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House, pretend to be helping the middle class? It depends crucially on a new kind of budget gimmick: Both the House and Senate tax-cut bills do contain some middle-class tax breaks — but only for the first few years. Then they expire.

    Take one of Ryan’s favorite examples, a family with two children and earning $59,000 a year. That family would indeed get a tax break next year. But the break would rapidly dwindle and turn into a tax increase by 2024.

    The Republican response is to claim that these tax breaks wouldn’t really expire, that Congress would eventually renew them. That’s quite doubtful — and even if true, it means that the tax plans would add much more to the national debt than the G.O.P. admits...

    ...So we’re really looking at an unprecedented level of dishonesty here. But what happens when you try to explain what’s going on? When Senator Sherrod Brown tried to point out, correctly, that the Senate G.O.P.’s tax bill heavily favors the rich, Senator Orrin Hatch exploded, calling it “bull crap” and asserting that he grew up poor (which is relevant why, exactly?).

    Sorry, but this isn’t the righteous anger of a man falsely accused of wrongdoing. It’s the rage con men always exhibit when caught out in their con.

    But what’s the con about? The very incoherence of the arguments Republicans are making for their plans shows that it’s not about helping the economy, let alone ordinary families. It really is about making the rich richer, at everyone else’s expense. If this be bull crap, make the most of it.

    The "new fantastic job creating trickle down GOP tax cuts" for the rich create a tax schedule not indexed to inflation like the current one, and personal exemptions indexed to "a new skimpy GOP inflation measure" which is lower than the already too low index of inflation.


    by NCD on Mon, 11/20/2017 - 8:42pm

    Shorter explanation:

    The GOP is pissing on you and your future and telling you to thank them for "trickling down" on you.


    by CVille Dem on Wed, 11/22/2017 - 9:25am

    A democracy can only function with an educated public. Republicans worked to destroy public education. They are now working to destroy access to information via the internet. Trump supporters are unaware of how they will be impacted by these measures. They don’t know how their taxes will be impacted because their news sources are designed to keep them stupid.


    by rmrd0000 on Wed, 11/22/2017 - 9:57am

    "I'll take a hamburger today for a dollar on Tuesday" - after all these years we should understand how Wimpy/the GOP got fat. Tuesday never comes.


    by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 11/24/2017 - 1:43am