Politics Plus

It’s been a busy day, pushing myself to learn new physical skills, while choking back the pain that accompanies the effort,  and doing the prep work for three articles.

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: House Speaker Paul Ryan managed to get a long-term transportation funding bill out of the House last week. While that first long-term funding bill in a decade was a pretty significant accomplishment, his conference is warning that they won’t let him do anything else without a fight. That fight: Noxious policy riders attached to spending bills that have to pass by December 11 to avert a government shutdown.

Asked early in the week whether he would press so-called “policy riders” to the spending bill that would condition the money—perhaps to defund Planned Parenthood or rein in the EPA—Ryan suggested he wouldn’t back down from the fight, noting Congress is the institution that holds the power of the purse and “we fully expect that we are going to exercise that power.”

Because the spending fight is a tough line to walk due to the warring factions inside the GOP conference demanding different things, Ryan put together an advisory group of key leaders representing the different ideological viewpoints. Representatives of the House Freedom Caucus, a group of roughly 40 members on the right who were Boehner’s toughest critics, will join members of the moderate Tuesday Group, and the Republican Study Committee, another large group of conservatives for weekly sessions to discuss policy ideas. […]

“I’m not going to pre-determine the outcome of negotiations that have not even taken place yet,” Ryan said. He also pointed out that Congress was separately moving a budget process — known as “reconciliation”—that stripped federal money for the group, and that path was a better bet to get a bill to the President’s desk.

But as Ryan tries to avoid saying specifically what House Republicans will do on the spending bill, Senate Democrats are insisting that the appropriations bills all be lumped together in a massive omnibus measure. That means party leaders like Ryan will have to get personally involved to hash out a compromise behind the scenes and push it through both chambers. That tactic could infuriate the right of Ryan’s conference, but Democrats say it’s the only way to go.

At the moment, Ryan is trying to take a hands-off approach, leaving it up to the appropriations committee to do the negotiating with various factions. That’s not going to fly. And it’s not going to be enough for the Freedom Caucus, the group of maniacs that seems to claim the largest membership. “We think he is going to want input from members of the Freedom Caucus as well as input from everyone else in the conference,” said Rep. Jim Jordan, chairman of the Freedom Caucus, when asked about the budget fight. “That’s how it’s supposed to work, he’s committed to do that.” Jordan and his members are already pushing hard to include those noxious policy riders—that Senate Democrats will not allow to pass.

Lyin’ Ryan is learning that dealing with Republican wackydoodles, bent on committing TEAbuggery, is just as impossible for him as it was for his predecessor, who has been demoted. Agent Orange was the Soused Speaker. Now, he’s just a Limp Boehner.

From The New Yorker: Arguing that the voters have tired of “gotcha questions,” the Republican Presidential candidate Ben Carson said that he hoped Tuesday night’s debate would “focus on the real issues facing this country, like finding the lost city of Atlantis.”

“The American people don’t want to hear personal attacks,” Carson told reporters. “They want to know which candidate has the best plan for locating Atlantis and recovering its storied treasures.”

Carson said that finding Atlantis was central to his plan for reviving the U.S. economy. “We could start paying down the national debt with one jewel-encrusted trident,” he said.

Andy should have added that many Americans can help search for Atlantis, from an underwater perspective, if Uncle Token wins the White House and implements his environmental policies.

From Upworthy:

You’ve probably never hung out on the moon.

But if you were to, that aerial view of Earth would surely get you thinking. It puts everything into perspective.

You’d probably be thinking: Huh, the Earth kind of looks like a little marble from here. Or, whoa, that little blue marble is home to everyone I’ve ever known — and everyone I haven’t.

When you take time to zoom out to see the bigger picture of the world, you realize that we all have one important thing in common: our home.

It’s that thinking that has some of the world’s most popular musicians coming together to sing about the home we all share and one major problem it’s facing: climate change.

If that doesn’t turn a few heads, nothing will!

Cartoon:

I was able to get back to sleep, after they woke me up last night, but I still feel very tired.  They put a goopy cream on my donor site to soften the thick scab so it will flake off.  It also increased the pain level.

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: Presidential candidate Ben Carson has issued a dire warning that President Obama’s cancellation of the Keystone Pipeline has left the United States with “virtually no place to store grain.”

Without the massive pipeline, Carson told Fox News, the nation’s network of silos is woefully inadequate “to store the bounty of grain that we soweth.”

Andy might as well be quoting Uncle Token, because the statement fits his stupidity level.

From Daily Kos: Why any ostensibly rational person living in Kentucky, Tennessee, the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, or Louisiana who saw this map, and still would think their states’ Republican leaders’ policies were delivering the economic growth their region so sorely needs is beyond comprehension.

Where Are the Hardest Places to Live in the U.S.? 

The toughest places to live in America

Almost every county in the U.S. has its share of haves and have-nots. But there are some regions where it’s just plain harder for Americans to thrive, places where the poor far outnumber those living in middle-class comfort.

Ten counties in America stand out as the most challenging places to live, based on a survey of six criteria including median household income, disability rate and life expectancy, according to an analysis by The New York Times.

The county with the dubious distinction of being the worst of all is Clay County, Kentucky, where residents can expect to die six years earlier than the average American.

The other four counties ranked at the bottom of the survey include four counties in the rural south: Humphreys County, Mississippi; East Carroll Parish, Louisiana; Jefferson County, Georgia; and Lee County, Arkansas.

The findings highlight an often overlooked issue in the debate about income inequality — the stubbornness of rural poverty. In the U.S., the number of poor rural residents outnumber those in the cities, with 14 percent of rural Americans living below the poverty line, compared with 12 percent in urban areas, according to the International Fund for Agricultural Development’s Rural Poverty Portal.

Of course you’d never get an inkling of any of this from watching Fox Noise.

There is a way to improve these areas. Forget the hate and fear that the Republican Reich peddles on Faux Noise, and elect lefties in all levels of government. Every Republican in office is one republican too many!

From Think Progress: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) vetoed legislation Monday that would have added 1.6 million new voters to the state’s rolls and made New Jersey the third state in the country to adopt automatic voter registration.

After sitting on the “Democracy Act” for almost five months, the governor and Republican presidential candidate vetoed his second voting rights-related bill in three years, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. Christie has previously said that he does not support making it easier for residents of his state to vote.

Now that residents of NJ have experienced what PIGnocchio is really like, he knows that his only good shot at keeping his job is to disenfranchise voters. Republicans like nothing better than separating YOU from your Constitutional and human rights.