Representative Michele Bachmann noted recently that 47 percent of Americans do not pay federal income tax; all of them, she said, should pay something because they benefit from parks, roads and national security. (Interesting that she acknowledged government has a…
An important read. Click through for the full thing.
You’ve got to go back to the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925 for a precedent to the anti-science mania that is currently sweeping the GOP. Then, the issue was teaching Darwin’s work on evolution in the schools. Today, the issue is global warming. Then, as now, large numbers of politicians tapped into the stratum of popular culture that simply rejects science as the basis for public or personal decisions. The chief prosecutor of high school teacher John Scopes, William Jennings Bryan, gloated that literal interpretation of the Bible trumped scientific knowledge. This resonated with large masses of ordinary folks, the ones H. L. Mencken and the liberal press were calling “yokels” and “morons.”
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Today, Republicans are falling over themselves in a rush to ridicule the science that shows our use of fossil fuels is producing greenhouse gases that are warming the planet to disastrous levels. These findings were confirmed even by the Bush administration before it left office, as well as by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and every other significant scientific academy around the world, not to mention the unpaid global work of hundreds of volunteer scientists for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But anti-scientists are undaunted by facts. More than half of the incoming Republican caucus denies the validity of climate change science. Some 74 percent of Republicans in the U.S. Senate now take that stance, as do 53 percent of GOP in the House.
This is what happens when you’re base has decided that ignorance is a virtue worth touting. You’re entitled to your own opinions, but only the truly stupid believe you’re also entitled to your own facts.
I can’t even. First we have this:
The conscience law allows any health care provider to refuse to provide any type of treatment that violates the provider’s conscience, if it has to do with abortion, emergency contraception, stem-cell research or end-of-life care.
And then this:
Seniors throughout the state and the AARP have raised strong objections to the inclusion of “end of life care” in that bill, saying it interferes with patients’ legal rights to state in a living will what type of care they want to receive, and not receive, as they’re dying.
So, who does the GOP care about? Not women, not gays, not the middle-class, not seniors…I don’t think there’s anyone left, really.
Rep. Judy Biggert (R-IL): “Stop talking about jobs”
One would have to wonder what a certain congresswoman who asked at a hearing — on February 25, 2010 — “Where are the jobs?” would think about Biggert’s statement. That congresswoman was Biggert herself.
Jobs are hard. Social wedge issues are easy. Republicans are pandering hypocrites.
The pro-fetus, anti-woman, anti-child, anti-privacy GOP platform has to change.
This is just staggering. 351, and it’s barely April?
(Source: keepyourbsoutofmyuterus)
Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Cal.) in an email to MoJo’s Kate Sheppard. After attempting to strip all funding from Planned Parenthood (citing, among other things, fiscal discipline), some House Republicans want to pour federal dollars into “crisis pregnancy centers,” which tell women that abortion can cause breast cancer and suicidal tendencies.
To recap: Taxpayer funding for an organization that provides accurate information and valuable resources to women: bad! Taxpayer funding for organizations that provide false and misleading information, to advance an often undisclosed religious agenda, with little regard for actual health issues involved: good!
(via motherjones)
When Republicans profited from the miserable economy to sweep up huge wins in last fall’s election, most political watchers figured they knew what was coming: budget cuts, privatization of more government functions, and tax cuts for the wealthy. The push to dismantle public sector unions has been a bit of a surprise, but not a jarring one.
But what seems to have thrown everyone — save for a handful of embittered and neglected pro-choice activists — for a loop is the way Republican lawmakers at both the national and state levels have focused so intently on the uteruses of America. Republicans appear to believe that the women of America have wildly mismanaged these uteruses in the four decades since the Supreme Court gave them control over them — and now that Republicans have even a little bit of power, they’re going to bring this reign of female tyranny over uteruses to an end.
After all, the Republican House speaker, John Boehner, has identified limiting women’s access to abortion and contraception as a “top priority” — this with the economy is in tatters and the world in turmoil. Boehner’s and the GOP’s abortion fixation raises an obvious question: Why now, when there are so many other pressing issues at stake?
Maine Governor Paul LePage has ordered state workers to remove from the state labor department a 36-foot mural depicting the state’s labor history. Among other things the mural depicts the 1937 shoe mill strike in Auburn and Lewiston. It also features the iconic “Rosie the Riveter,” who in real…
We’re recalling Wisconsin State Senators today, tumblr. I can’t quite explain the atmosphere in Wisconsin today. People are FIRED up. Not only is Wisconsin creating state history, but United States history. This has been and I’m sure will continue to be an interesting process to witness.
I’d appreciate it if anyone who knows individuals in Wisconsin would pass this link on. This is your fight too. We rise and fall in this country as one.
I feel like I should be reading this in a novel, not living through it.
And don’t forget, this is just the tip of the iceberg. There is a lot of other stuff going on right now as well. And that’s just the United States.
