January 19-20, 2016::End of the day round-up

As I read this, I am reminded of this meme:

Asking you to give me equal rights implies that they are yours to give. Instead I must demand that you stop trying to deny me the rights all people deserve. (Attributed to Greg Bulmash)

Ben Carson: 'Abnormal' LGBT People Shouldn't Get 'Extra Rights'

“It’s beyond ridiculous that you take the most abnormal situation and then you make everyone else conform to it. That doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. That’s one of the very reasons that I have been an outspoken opponent of things like gay marriage. I don’t have any problem with gay people doing anything they want to do. You know, it’s a free country, there’s freedom of association. However, when you now impose your value system on everybody else and change fundamental definitions and principles of society, I have a big problem with that. Everybody is equal, everybody has equal rights, but nobody gets extra rights. And when we start trying to impose the extra rights based on a few people who perhaps are abnormal, where does that lead?”

"Revenant" gun made by local gunsmith WJAC https://t.co/RZNdu6fKT2 Bill's work is beautiful,,, love to see locals getting recognition!!

This is just nuts!!  If I read this correctly, these bills are just from this year (2016) - HB 1794, HB 1953, SB 644, HB1714, HB1815, SB802, HB 1370, HB 1433, SB 801, HB 1755.

Missouri Republicans to Push Anti-Choice ‘All Lives Matter’ Bill

HB 1794, sponsored by Rep. Mike Moon (R-Ash Grove), would establish the All Lives Matter Act, an example of what activists view as anti-choice legislators using the Black Lives Matter movement for their own restrictive agenda. It would amend state law to define a fertilized egg as “a person” and life as beginning at conception. So-called personhood laws have been an unmitigated failure. Voters in state after state have rejected by wide margins personhood ballot initiatives, and personhood bills have failed to gain any traction in legislatures.
,,,
The push for personhood legislation is far from the only anti-choice measure to be considered in the upcoming session. The past five years have seen the Republican-dominated Missouri state legislature propose more anti-choice bills than any other state.

Lawmakers introduced dozens of anti-choice bills during the 2014 legislative session, and introduced dozens more during the 2015 legislative session. Few anti-choice bills have been passed with a Democratic governor in Missouri, proving an obstacle for GOP-led attempts to end legal abortion. However, the vast number of anti-choice bills introduced for 2016 has caused concern for many advocates.

The state legislature convened Wednesday, and lawmakers have already filed an assortment of anti-choice bills that restrict reproductive health care, including prohibiting physicians from using specific abortion procedures, restricting minors’ access to abortion care, and appropriating the rhetoric of racial justice activists in the so-called All Lives Matter bill.
,,,
Lawmakers introduced dozens of anti-choice bills during the 2014 legislative session, and introduced dozens more during the 2015 legislative session. Few anti-choice bills have been passed with a Democratic governor in Missouri, proving an obstacle for GOP-led attempts to end legal abortion. However, the vast number of anti-choice bills introduced for 2016 has caused concern for many advocates. 

The state legislature convened Wednesday, and lawmakers have already filed an assortment of anti-choice bills that restrict reproductive health care, including prohibiting physicians from using specific abortion procedures, restricting minors’ access to abortion care, and appropriating the rhetoric of racial justice activists in the so-called All Lives Matter bill. 
,,,
Despite a state investigation that cleared Planned Parenthood of any wrongdoing, lawmakers have introduced a pair of bills that would change state law governing the donation of fetal tissue. These bills include several other targeted regulations of abortion providers (TRAP) laws, including the creation of reporting requirements and admitting privilege requirements for abortion providers, along with ambulatory surgical center (ASC) licensing and inspections.

CBS host challenges Paul Ryan on Obamacare repeal attempt ‘How is that an alternative'

Paul Ryan called out for his act of appeasing Right Wing ideologues in yet another irresponsible bill to repeal Obamacare.

Moderator John Dickerson noted that Paul Ryan said he wanted the Republicans to offer an alternative to the president. Yet one of the first things he did this year, was to offer a repeal of Obamacare. "How is that an alternative?" Dickerson asked.

"It's not," Paul Ryan admitted. "That's why we have to come up with an alternative. So, you're right about that."
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The President has been asking all of those who are opposed to Obamacare to come up with ideas to make it better for over 5 years. Republicans have never committed to providing a practical alternative or any modifications of consequence. The reason why of course is that Obamacare actually follows conservative principles articulated by the conservative think tank the Heritage foundation. Otherwise America would have had the more sensible solution, Medicare for all / Single Payer health care.

As I have mentioned before, I am following the Oregon Bundy debacle from afar.  One of my comrades, regarding the SovCit Movement in regards to Kent Hovind, has been following it much closer; offering some interesting commentary.  For those interested, he can be found here:  Kent Hovind and Jo Hovind v USA - IRS https://t.co/lUIAo0M6Cz

Explainer: The Bundy Militia’s Particular Brand Of Mormonism

“I’m Captain Moroni, from Utah.”

That’s how one militiaman at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge responded to OPB’s Amanda Peacher when she asked for his name.

That name is not a silly response to deflect responsibility: In many ways, it encapsulates a deeply intertwined anti-federal sentiment mixed with Mormon symbolism. Captain Moroni is a crucial figure in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He’s also a heroic figure for anti-federalist extremists.

In the modern day west, Captain Moroni has become one of several powerful symbols for the Bundy militia’s anti-governmental extremism.

,,,

Ultimately, the small town Abraham Bundy founded would be abandoned, after the Bundy family could not secure water and grazing rights from the federal government.

Bundy has previously said in interviews that relocation played a significant role in shaping his family’s outlook toward the federal government.

,,,

“The main reason we’re here is because we need a place to stand,” Bundy said. “We stand in defense, and when the time is right we will begin to defend the people of Harney County in using the land and the resources.”

One of many ponderings

https://www.facebook.com/RepublicanFamilyValues/photos/a.145210952205452.28751.145209655538915/737849236274951/?type=1

Pondering,,,

The National Institutes of Health was one of those agencies. It was forced to slash an estimated $1.55 billion from its programs. Among those was the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. In Fiscal Year 2013, the NINDS budget was $1.53 billion, a $92 million decrease from FY 2012. For ALS-specific research, funding went from $44 million to $39 million.

Some of this was restored by a budget deal negotiated and signed into law in 2014. NINDS funding went up to $1.587 billion, roughly $35 million short of where it stood prior to sequestration. ALS-specific research, meanwhile, went up $1 million, leaving it $4 million short of pre-sequestration levels.

The ice bucket challenge will more than fill that hole. As of Wednesday, it had raised more than $31 million. That money, however, goes to the ALS Association for patient care and global research for cures and treatments. It does not go through the NIH, which still grapples with funding levels that science research advocates say is woefully short.

Lawmakers Who Cut Funds For ALS Research Take Ice Bucket Challenge For ALS Research

Party of ideas?

As I was piecing information together about Paul Ryan's foray into plagiarism, I realized that I am always a day late and a dollar short. I work a mid-shift so by the time I read the initial postings, the updates are already out on the inter-web. But that doesn't take away the fun of discovery and putting a bit of "personal" spin on the story. I'm just glad that others have jumped on this and publicizing it.

Both Raw Story and HUffPo have updated this incident and there is an interesting back story to all this.

Maurice and Schroff subsequently began meeting for lunch every Monday, developing a family-like relationship, which they discussed on Fox News host Mike Huckabee’s show in January 2013.

“Here I was, and this 11-year-old kid was teaching me things,” Schroff told Huckabee. “He taught me the definition of lunch in a paper bag. The bag is only brown paper. But what you put into it is something we all call love.”

[,,,]
At the time of their appearance on Huckabee’s show, Schrock and Maurice promoted the Share Our Strength No Kid Hungry campaign. Two months later, the campaign released a statement opposing Ryan’s House budget proposal, which included cutting the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance (SNAP) Program by $125 million.

I think SmotPoker, referring to Ryan's statement about the GOP being the party of ideas:  "The party of ideas eh? Sure, sure, they aren't THEIR ideas, but ideas nonetheless"

HuffPo in their report was able to make contact with An Invisible Thread author Laura Schroff who added her thoughts on the matter,,,

[Jonathan] Chait [of NYMag.com] writes, "It's also interesting that Anderson's conclusion from the...story is that the school lunch program makes parents into lazy slackers, while Ryan's conclusion is that it robs children of their soul." Of course, there's one party whose conclusions haven't been fully explicated within the context of Ryan's appropriation yet -- Laura Schroff,,,

Suffice it to say that Paul Ryan might be better at understanding the plights of poor people if he actually went out and attempted to meet some, instead of roughly trading second-hand accounts.

,,,If there's one ambition Schroff doesn't have, it's getting her work caught up in the Beltway hurlyburly.

"The one thing I'll say about 'An Invisible Thread' is that it's not a political book in any way." Schroff says her intention is to cross across boundaries like race and class. "When I go to public schools to talk about the book, it helps the kids have hope. When I talk to kids at private school, they feel grateful."

In responding to today's news, she was exceedingly charitable to those involved.

[,,,]
"But Maurice describes being hungry as being punched in the stomach," she countered, "And given the choice between a free lunch and not eating at all, he would choose the free lunch."

Schroff very politely rejected Ryan's "full stomachs, empty souls," construction, explaining that her life's work is about showing other people, especially children, that kindness makes a huge difference in the lives of both the giver and the recipient. "When you give a small act of kindness, expecting nothing in return, the rewards are great."

"I want people to think about what they can do to make the world a kinder world," she said. "I don't care about Republicans and Democrats. But we are talking about children that need to be fed. Cutting school lunch programs doesn't accomplish that."

Paul Ryan at CPAC: Free school lunches mean poor parents don’t care about kids | The Raw Story

I know that CPAC will be well covered and not sure what I could possibly add to the conversation. I won't be remaining silent, just focusing more on some of the idiocy coming from our "officials" in the GOP.

Although the target of this article is his comment regarding "brown bagging it" versus the school lunch program, the clip (and I do realize this is just a clip) starts in with his false claim (or interpretation) concerning the recent CBO report.

No, it will not discourage people from working, it will allow people in the same boat as I (working 2 and in some cases 3 jobs) to reduce work hours from 62+/week to 40. What the CBO report actually says according to FactCheck:

The estimated reduction stems almost entirely from a net decline in the amount of labor that workers CHOOSE to supply, rather than from a net drop in businesses’ demand for labor, so it will appear almost entirely as a reduction in labor force participation and in hours worked relative to what would have occurred otherwise RATHER THAN AS AN INCREASE IN UNEMPLOYMENT (that is, more workers seeking but not finding jobs) OR UNDEREMPLOYMENT (such as part-time workers who would prefer to work more hours per week).

But the kicker concerning this clip, besides being totally detached from realty, from the comments section:

“Miss Laura,” he said, “I don’t want your money. I want my lunch in a brown paper bag.”

“Okay, sure. But why do you want it in a bag?”

“Because when I see kids come to school with their lunch in a paper bag, that means someone cares about them. Miss Laura, can I please have my lunch in a paper bag?”

According to commenter "jimmyblair" this is a passage from a book by Laura Schroff, An Invisible Thread: The True Story of an 11-Year-Old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive, and an Unlikely Meeting with Destiny The story summary is generally accepted to be about the unbreakable connection between those destined to meet, regardless of time, place, or circumstances. Ryan seems to have misinterpreted it to give an anti-government slant that isn't at all a part of the original story.

So I did a bit of searching to see if "others" had picked up on this tid-bit and they have - yea rah! Wonkette, in their usual snarky style picked up the story from a different posting and ran with it:

Wonker Tallmutha caught TPM commenter Ottnott sexplaining that the whole story was STOLED from the book An Invisible Thread, which is about … GIVING CHILDREN FREE FOOD AND HOW THAT IS THE BEST!

And then there is this, Ryan's lame excuse:

Today at CPAC, I shared a story I heard from Eloise Anderson, the secretary for children and families for the state of Wisconsin. She mentioned it in her testimony for a House Budget Committee hearing last year. I have just learned that Secretary Anderson misspoke, and that the story she told was improperly sourced. I regret failing to verify the original source of the story, but I appreciate her taking the time to share her insights.

So what started as a post about how devoid of humanity Paul Ryan is has turned into something much more interesting.

Oh and one final thought, if Eloise used this stolen anecdote in testimony, isn't that perjury?

Paul Ryan at CPAC: Free school lunches mean poor parents don’t care about kids | The Raw Story

What I learned from a week on food stamps: Paul Ryan couldn’t be any more wrong - Salon.com

This statement right here says it all: "Now I should disclose that I have low blood sugar. At the very least this means, I get cranky if I don’t eat, at its worst I get dizzy and pass out. On my food stamp diet, I was getting 300 calories per meal — 200 fewer calories than my body was used to. In order to function I needed to supplement my food stamp purchases with extra snacks."

Guess what, I don't get that luxury and neither does anyone else on SNAP. Try being diabetic, or some one with celiacs, or even having a food allergy.. That aside learning to be frugal with limited funds for food takes time and practice, not something someone is going to learn in a week. For those "new" to being on SNAP, it is a hell of and adjustment.

In my own trial, which would last a week, I decided to split the difference between the $50 weekly allotment that a New Yorker would get through SNAP with the national average of $33. Thus, I would only buy $41 worth of groceries. My plan was to rely solely on these groceries, and to avoid supplementing my SNAP-purchased goods with food already in my pantry. The exceptions would be sauces (like soy sauce, and BBQ) and cooking materials like oil, salt and pepper, which many household kitchens have.

At first, $41 seemed like a lot of money for a week’s worth of food, but this was $41, full stop — not $41 (unless I’m running late for work and need to stop by a coffee shop for a muffin) and not $41 (and then ordering from Seamless because the temperature has dropped and I wanted to cozy up with some hot soup). This was $41 to pay for three meals a day for seven days. This was going to require some planning.

[,,,]
Trying to stretch my meager food budget, I found that while some healthy items were expensive — anything organic or gluten free jumped in price, and meat prices are very high — fruits, veggies and oatmeal were far less expensive than frozen meals or cereal. The most difficult part was preparing and portioning out my meals.

I made the baked pasta dish for my first SNAP dinner with the hope that it would last me at least seven non-breakfast meals. It only lasted me six: three days worth of lunch and dinner. At that point, I started to panic. Would rice, eight mini-chicken tenders, a pepper, and a small bag of Green Giant stir-fry veggies really last me eight more meals? I had no choice but to plan differently. Rather than cook giant batches, which I proved inept at rationing for long periods of time, I’d have to cook in waves of one or two meals at once.

[,,,]
For my first meal post-food stamps I was craving something rice-less, healthy and obtained with efficacy. Living in New York, it was difficult to turn down the splurge-worthy allure of ordering food online. As I hit the purchase button for a kale salad with chicken and a “soup of the day,” I was viscerally shocked at the total. With tax and a decent tip, it came to half of what I’d spent in the previous week for all of my meals. With this awareness, I lost my appetite.

What I learned from a week on food stamps: Paul Ryan couldn’t be any more wrong - Salon.com

Maddow Blog says it so much better than I

Ok so I'm tooling around the vastness of the cyber-world, reading bits and pieces from the right, left, center and a few, well, all I can say are not from this planet (they can't be or at least they are not members of humanity).  It's the totally clueless I want to focus on here, those that don't understand that the government debacle we are currently witnessing was intelligently designed with one goal in mind, and the "needs" of the people, is not it.

• This is not just about Obamacare anymore. ~ Rep. Michael Grimm, R-N.Y. 

Oh, please do enlighten us as to why you have "slimmed down" the government?

• We’re not going to be disrespected. We have to get something out of this. And I don’t know what that even is. ~ Rep. Marlin Stutzman, R-Ind

You don't know what that "even" is??  WTF!  Might want to look into how your party is attempting to dismantle the government.

Scratch that,,,

Damn, I was off to a good start, when I ran across this gem of insight, How Congress reached this point from Steve Benen of "The Maddow Blog;"  he say it so much better than I possibly could:

This is critically important to understanding what's happening on Capitol Hill right now. If the House and Senate had gone to a conference committee back in the spring to work out their budget differences, Republicans would have been expected to compromise to reach a broader agreement -- but Republicans don't want to compromise.

So they decided to abandon the budget process they themselves had asked for so they could do precisely what they're doing now -- use extortion instead of compromise to try to get what they want.

The government may shut down in 15 hours, but it's not an accident. Indeed, it could have been easily avoided if Congress had just done what Congresses are supposed to do when the House and Senate disagree on the budget. But Republicans insisted on this confrontation, hoping that if they just threatened enough harm, maybe Democrats would put aside the election results and meet some or all of the GOP's demands. 

As Benen points out, this started back in May (I actually believe it started long before that, 40 years ago with Nixon's Southern Strategy among others, but that may be another post) the debacle didn't just appear over night.  By all appearances it's not going to end any time soon, referring to what Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) offered Democrats.  

Collins, along with GOP Sens. Kelly Ayotte (N.H.) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), worked with Democrats to draw up a 23-page draft that would have ended the shutdown and funded federal agencies for six months at current spending levels. It would have left intact the sequestration cuts scheduled to hit Jan. 15 but would have given agency officials flexibility to decide where the reductions should occur.

In addition, the proposal would raise the debt limit through Jan. 31, setting up a path for the two sides to have broad budget talks to try to tackle the issues of taxes and entitlement reform.

In exchange, Republicans sought tweaks to Obama’s Affordable Care Act, including a two-year delay of a 2.3 percent tax on medical devices that is unpopular in both parties.

Ignoring for the moment that it was a one-sided deal, there is another problem (child), even if Senate Democrats took Collins’ deal, it wouldn’t have made a difference since House Republicans said they’d refuse to even bring the bill to the floor. And why’s that? Because House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) is thinking ahead.

The leaders, however, began the meeting trying to prepare their troops for the likelihood that they would have to adopt a deal cut in the Senate. Both leaders explained that the White House is no longer willing to negotiate with the House, that McConnell and Reid were talking, and that a bipartisan agreement is likely to emerge that will need the House’s approval.

But instead of absorbing this painful reality, some rank-and-file Republicans grew visibly excited about the prospect of opposing such a deal, said one person in the room. This defiance was fed by Ryan, who stood up and railed against the Collins proposal, saying the House could not accept either a debt-limit bill or a government-funding measure that would delay the next fight until the new year.

According to two Republicans familiar with the exchange, Ryan argued that the House would need those deadlines as “leverage” for delaying the health-care law’s individual mandate and adding a “conscience clause” — allowing employers and insurers to opt out of birth-control coverage if they find it objectionable on moral or religious grounds — and mentioned tax and entitlement goals Ryan had focused on in a recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.

So let me get this straight.  Paul Ryan, the man who believes rape is a form of conception, is pre-planning another crises at which point he’ll demand restrictions on access to contraception?  Wake up people!!  This is what happens when religious dogma becomes a political ideology:

The willingness of Republicans to take the debt ceiling and the federal budget hostage in order to try to extract concessions from Democrats is probably the most lasting gift that the Tea Party has granted the country. More reasonable Republican politicians fear being primaried by Tea Party candidates. A handful of wide-eyed fanatics in Congress have hijacked the party. The Tea Party base and the hard right politicians driving this entire thing seem oblivious to the consequences. It’s no wonder, since so many of them—particularly those in leadership—are fundamentalist Christians whose religions have distorted their worldview until they cannot actually see what they’re doing and what kind of damage it would cause.

[,,,]
Under the circumstances, it’s no surprise that it’s easy for Christian conservatives to worry more about imaginary threats from Obamacare than it is for them to worry about the very real threat to worldwide economic stability if the go along with their harebrained scheme of forcing the government into default. To make it worse, many have convinced themselves that it’s their opponents who are deluded.

IMHO what people are failing to see is the underlying mechanism that is driving the Reich - control; and control is the mainstay of Dominionism.  Hence the deep seated need and repeated efforts to control women (the consciousness clause and numerous attempts to ban abortion).  Chris Hedges sums it up quite well:

The cult of masculinity, as in all fascist movements, pervades the ideology of the Christian right. The movement uses religion to sanctify military and heroic “virtues,” glorify blind obedience and order over reason and conscience, and pander to the euphoria of collective emotions. Feminism and homosexuality, believers are told, have rendered the American male physically and spiritually impotent,,,

Dominionists believe they are engaged in an epic battle against the forces of Satan. They live in a binary world of black and white. They feel they are victims, surrounded by sinister groups bent on their destruction. They have anointed themselves as agents of God who alone know God’s will. They sanctify their rage. This rage lies at the center of the ideology,,,

Think about it people, this debacle has nothing to do with money.  In the minds of the Reich, it never was about money.  It is about "a world dominated by Christianity. Not just under the control of Christianity but completely and utterly dominated by it. According to Dominionists, every aspect of our lives is subject to the strictures of the Bible. Our personal lives and social lives must be lived in accordance with the word of God. Economics, politics, science, the arts and the law are all to be placed under the auspices of Christianity."

All ideological, theological and political debates with the radical Christian right are useless. It cares nothing for rational thought and discussion. Its adherents are using the space within the open society to destroy the open society itself. Our naive attempts to placate a movement bent on our destruction, to prove to it that we too have “values,” only strengthen its supposed legitimacy and increase our own weakness ~ Chris Hedges

Can a president be a radical socialist and a Wall Street shill? - The Maddow Blog

Quite right. This has come up before, and it's never made any sense -- Republicans can tell Americans that President Obama is a radical socialist who hates free-enterprise capitalism, or they can tell us he's a Wall Street shill, but when they make both arguments at the same time, it's awfully difficult to take them seriously. Indeed, it reinforces the thesis that, even now, the right still doesn't know how it wants to criticize the president.

But I also believe there's another angle to this to keep in mind.

For good or ill, Obama has gone to extraordinary lengths to try to reach compromises with congressional Republicans, frequently offering to accept GOP policy goals that congressional Democrats find abhorrent.

But because so many congressional Republicans have become post-policy nihilists, GOP officials not only reject attempts at compromise, they often announce their opposition to whatever it was they urged Obama to do in the first place.

Can a president be a radical socialist and a Wall Street shill? - The Maddow Blog

Daily Kos: Paul Ryan: 'We're not going to give up on destroying the health care system'

That didn't sound like a Freudian slip to me, it flowed right out of his mouth with no hesitation,,,BUT I would like to see the whole clip as well ,,,

Daily Kos: Paul Ryan: 'We're not going to give up on destroying the health care system'

Paul Ryan Once Again Sponsors the Bill That Would Make It Possible for Women's Rapists to Sue Them

More on Paul Ryan and the personhood bill (HR 212, the Sanctity of Human Life Act),,,

In an unsurprising turn of events, Ryan has signed on as cosponsor to the Sanctity of Human Life Act again. The original bill — which declares that life begins with fertilization, and would give states the right to ban all abortion, even in the cases involving incest, rape, or the life of the mother — thankfully died in Congress in 2011.

But now it's baaaaack, which is scary because not only is the above terrifying, there's all sorts of other creepy shit hidden in this monster. Like, if a woman who was raped in a state that banned abortions went to a state that didn't ban abortions and had an abortion? Her rapist could theoretically sue to stop the abortion from happening, and probably win. And it doesn't stop there with the reproductive weirdness, if passed, it'll probably make many forms of IVF illegal.**

Luckily, it's almost for sure gonna die again, but I wonder if Ryan's career will go the way of the dodo bird soon after? The tide is turning, and a majority of voters don't want politicians making women's health choices for them. For everyone's sake, it would be best for Ryan and politicians like him to see this as the death rattle. Pack up your moral indignation and head home, guys, I'm sure there's a pot roast in your kitchen you can mansplain your garbage feelings on women's reproductive rights to.

Paul Ryan Once Again Sponsors the Bill That Would Make It Possible for Women's Rapists to Sue Them

**In fact, if this bill were passed and the Supreme Court upheld it, I'll bet that a rapist could go to court and sue to prevent his victim from getting an abortion. He'd argue that the fetus was legally a human being, and the court has no power to discriminate between one human being and another. He'd probably win, too.

In other abortion news, Stephanie Mencimer reports that the same bill would likely have the effect of making in-vitro fertilization illegal. My Twitter feed is full of outrage that Stephanie would say this, but what else can you conclude about the law? In IVF, multiple embryos are created, and only a few are used.

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/08/pro-lifers-should-stop-being-so-skittish-about-their-own-beliefs

Paul Ryan signs on as cosponsor of new ‘fetal personhood’ bill | The Raw Story

And this creates jobs how??  Besides that, this leads to a slippery slope in regards to women who miscarry.  And if "sanctity of life" is so important why not a bill banning any and all future wars, or the eradication of the death penalty??

An Oklahoma court struck down that state’s “personhood” law on the grounds that it was plainly unconstitutional and imposed unreasonable restrictions on women’s ability to make their own reproductive choices.

Broun, for his part, disregards these concerns.

“As a physician, I know that human life begins with fertilization, and I remain committed to ending abortion in all stages of pregnancy,” he said in a statement.  I will continue to fight this atrocity on behalf of the unborn, and I hope my colleagues will support me in doing so.”

But yet the Bible clearly states that it wasn't until God "breathed life" into Adam that he became a "living soul."  Guess Mr  Broun didn't get past chapter one of Genesis.

Paul Ryan signs on as cosponsor of new ‘fetal personhood’ bill | The Raw Story

Runner who first questioned Paul Ryan’s marathon time speaks out | The Ticket - Yahoo! News

"I just wanted to know," Walker said in an interview posted Wednesday on LetsRun.com. "If he had really run a marathon in that range, I would be impressed because I know the effort that goes into a sub-three-hour marathon. But, if he was lying or really stretching the truth, I thought that would be significant since he had just been nominated to run for Vice-President on the Republican ticket."

Runner who first questioned Paul Ryan’s marathon time speaks out | The Ticket - Yahoo! News

Obama: Romney strategy is ‘shoot first and aim later’ | The Ticket - Yahoo! News

As one of my friends so aptly stated, ",,, this fuck up was the PR ticket of death,,,this will make a great study in a public affairs/PR class,,,"

As we were talking the subject of the debates came up in how much of a disaster they may be,,,my thought, Romney will look for any excuse to cancel them,,,then this headline popped into my news feed Netanyahu ‘determined to attack Iran’ before US elections, claims Israel’s Channel 10,,,welp there's your excuse if you follow the thinking of Paul Ryan,,,

"In the face of such a tragedy, we are reminded that the world needs American leadership," Ryan said, managing a quick dig at the president. "And the best guarantee of peace is American strength." Obama Says Romney 'Shoots First and Aims Later' in Embassy Attack Comments

My translation,,,war,,,war,,,war,,,yea like that really solved anything,,,I like this line of thinking much better,,,

Obama, read Carney, also told CBS that "the situation in Cairo was one in which an embassy that is being threatened by major protests releases a press release saying that the film that had disturbed so many Muslims around the world wasn't representative of what Americans believe about Islam in an effort to cool the situation down. It didn't come from me. It didn't come from Secretary Clinton. It came from folks on the ground who are potentially in danger.

"And my tendency is to cut those folks a little bit of slack when they're in that circumstance rather than try to question their judgment from the comfort of a campaign office."

That IMHO is diplomacy or part of it,,,

Obama: Romney strategy is ‘shoot first and aim later’ | The Ticket - Yahoo! News

Paul Ryan Cites War Votes as Foreign Policy Experience | Video Cafe

May the stars help us,,,he has spent too much time around Sarah Palin it seems,,,she is wearing off on people,,,

“I voted to send people to war,” he added.

what a dumbass,,,


Paul Ryan Cites War Votes as Foreign Policy Experience | Video Cafe