Get these f*ckers out of office!

I'm not sure I'm even going to be able to comment on this one: Florida GOP Rejects Money to Fight Child Abuse and Neglect.

In a partisan stand against the Affordable Care Act, Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL) and GOP lawmakers are turning away much-needed federal funds aimed at preventing child abuse and neglect. According to Linda Merrell of the Florida Child Healthcare Coalition, the state has missed out on up to $52 million in federal funding — $3.4 million of which Scott turned down this year and millions more in grants available under Section 2951 of the Affordable Care Act for home health visits.

The money is sorely needed. In 2010, the state legislature cut a staggering 43 percent of the budget for its Healthy Families Florida program, which provides home visitation services to both expecting parents and parents with newborn children in order to prevent future instances of abuse. As a result, Healthy Families was forced to scale back, dropping services for 5,800 children in 3,500 high-risk families.

But according to the annual study by the State Committee Child Abuse Death Review Committee, Florida should be beefing up its support of Healthy Families Florida to save its children, not cut its funding. After reviewing the deaths of 197 children statewide due to abuse and neglect, the committee offered its recommendations to Scott and the state legislature:

“#2 Fully Fund Healthy Families Florida - Support the Department of Children and Families 2011-12 Legislative Budget Request to restore Healthy Families Florida funding to the 2009-10 funding level…

With scarce resources, it is even more critical that the Governor and Legislature prioritize funding for programs and services that show consistent positive results and yield the greatest possible return for the recovery and future economic prosperity of Florida and its citizens. Healthy Families Florida, the state’s only nationally accredited, community-based home visiting program is one of these programs. [...]

Florida’s taxpayers pay an estimated $64,377 a year to care for an abused or neglected child, while Healthy Families Florida prevents the costs of child abuse and neglect for only $1,671 a year per child, saving taxpayers millions of dollars.

A rigorous five-year independent study and follow up study shows that Healthy Families prevents child abuse and neglect, keeping families together and children out of the child welfare system — 98 percent of the children served by Healthy Families are abuse free.”

Even though this report landed on the desks of Walker, Florida House Speaker Dean Cannon (R), and Senate President Mike Haridopolos (R) on Jan. 10, 2011, the legislature voted this year to keep the Healthy Families budget at 2010′s depressed level.

By refusing to provide, pursue, or even accept funding for child-abuse prevention programs, Scott and his GOP allies are sacrificing Florida’s children in order to cling to a partisan talking point.

When the possibility of preventing 197 dead children can't move your soul - you are beyond hope. This - more than anything else - is what gets me to the end of my rope with these motherf*ckers.

(Sorry for my language, but this kind of thing drives me over the edge.)

How I'm preparing to weather the poutrage storm

Prepare yourselves for a hair-on-fire explosion in the next day or so because I suspect that the New York Times got the story right and we're about to see another "grand bargain" appear.

The Obama administration has informed Democratic Congressional leaders that President Obama and Speaker John A. Boehner were starting to close in on a major budget deal that would enact substantial spending cuts and seek future revenues through a tax overhaul, Congressional officials said Thursday.

You KNOW the poutragers are going to go completely ballistic over this one, don't you? Even I get a little worried. But I've also watched Obama for these last 3 to 4 years and so I tell myself to calm down and try to imagine what he's doing. Its almost always the case that he's playing a better hand than folks assume.

Perhaps we got a hint on that one from Grover Nordquist yesterday.

With a handful of exceptions, every Republican member of Congress has signed a pledge against increasing taxes. Would allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire as scheduled in 2012 violate this vow? We posed this question to Grover Norquist, its author and enforcer, and his answer was both surprising and encouraging: No.

In other words, according to Mr. Norquist’s interpretation of the Americans for Tax Reform pledge, lawmakers have the technical leeway to bring in as much as $4 trillion in new tax revenue — the cost of extending President George W. Bush’s tax cuts for another decade — without being accused of breaking their promise. “Not continuing a tax cut is not technically a tax increase,” Mr. Norquist told us. So it doesn’t violate the pledge? “We wouldn’t hold it that way,” he said.

What if - instead of $1 trillion in additional taxes, President Obama is playing for the whole enchilada of $4 trillion in Bush tax cuts repealed. All that would have to happen to bring that about would be for no legislation to pass extending them beyond the 2012 deadline - or for Obama to veto such legislation.

Or perhaps Obama is working on a deal to extend only the tax cuts to the middle class - which would require legislation and would bring in an additional $700 billion in revenue over 10 years.

Remember what the President said at the press conference when he announced the extension of those tax cuts for 2 years:

Now, I know there are some who would have preferred a protracted political fight, even if it had meant higher taxes for all Americans, even if it had meant an end to unemployment insurance for those who are desperately looking for work.

And I understand the desire for a fight. I’m sympathetic to that. I’m as opposed to the high-end tax cuts today as I’ve been for years. In the long run, we simply can’t afford them. And when they expire in two years, I will fight to end them, just as I suspect the Republican Party may fight to end the middle-class tax cuts that I’ve championed and that they’ve opposed.

We know that Wall Street is pushing for a deal on this debt limit. And yesterday, even Eric Cantor's donors were saying "raise our taxes."

Adding an unusual twist to the political maneuvering, GOP aides say that wealthy donors have approached Cantor to push tax increases...

A few wealthy donors have called Cantor to tell him they wouldn’t mind if their taxes are raised. During two closed meetings this week — one with vote-counting lawmakers, and another with the entire conference — Cantor told colleagues that some well-heeled givers have told them they’re willing to pay more taxes.

The problem for Boehner and Cantor is how to do that without setting off a riot in their Tea Party base. Perhaps that's what the bargaining is about now.

I'll admit, I'm going out on a limb here and could be completely wrong. But I've watched this President long enough now that I'm confident something like this is in the works. Knowing that helps me weather the hair-on-fire explosions.

Joan Walsh embraces strategy to make progressives irrelevant

The other day I wrote about Joan Walsh's advice that progressive Democrats should admire and replicate the Tea Party Republican's lunacy. As a reminder, here's what she said:

Meanwhile, across the aisle, there's a vivid example of how dissenters and unyielding partisans and people unafraid of disappointment can move the country in the direction they want to take it. The debt ceiling crisis is a scandal, but you have to politically admire the 2010 House freshmen who have caused the crisis.

That is scary apocalyptic thinking, to me, but it's also politically effective...

One thing that would strengthen his [Obama's] resolve might be Democrats to his left who won't vote for such a deal even if he says he backs it. Yes, they would be joining the GOP extremists in playing chicken with the debt ceiling, but it's worth playing that out for a while.

May I suggest that Ms. Walsh read the New York Times to learn that not only would her advice ramp up the lunacy that is currently gripping DC, but it actually results in the exact opposite outcome she envisions...it drives leadership to negotiate with the opposition.

At the Capitol, however, the emphasis was on a plan that Mr. McConnell has been putting together with the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, to empower Mr. Obama to raise the borrowing ceiling.

The four House leaders — Mr. Boehner, Mr. Cantor; Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader; and Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 Democrat — met Wednesday and, according to officials, reviewed problems with the McConnell plan.

Such talks between the two parties’ leaders in the House, which are rare given the polarized relations in that chamber, reflect the recognition that the Republican majority cannot pass the increase in the debt limit without a significant number of votes from Democrats.

Yes, the Tea Party lunatics are taking a fiery stand. I'm sure that feels good to their followers. But what is the outcome? Republican leadership is forced to negotiate with the Democrats to get a bill passed. That strategy Ms. Walsh admires so much has made the Tea Partiers irrelevant to the process.

So yes, we should sooooo follow their brilliant strategy...NOT!!!!!

Death of the GOP - or just the Tea Party?

My bias is almost always to look at the big picture rather than get lost in the daily hysteria of politics. Because of this, I'm usually thinking in terms of what the history books will write about current events. As such, the poutragers seem to think that the current narrative is all about protecting the social safety net of entitlement programs. I think they're missing the mark on that analysis because they're focused only on what the battle looks like from the left. When you step back and look at the bigger picture, you see that the Republican Party is in total chaos.

In his column yesterday, EJ Dionne demonstrates that he sees what's happening.

But the news that explains why the nation is caught in this debt-ceiling fiasco is the gang warfare inside the Republican Party. We are witnessing the disintegration of Tea Party Republicanism...

Think about the underlying dynamic here. The evidence suggests that both Boehner and Cantor understand the peril of the game their Republican colleagues are playing. They know we are closer than we think to having the credit rating of the United States downgraded. This may happen before Aug. 2, the date everyone is using as the deadline for action.

Unfortunately, neither of the two House leaders seems in a position to tell the obstreperous right that it is flatly and dangerously wrong when it claims that default is of little consequence. Rarely has a congressional leadership seemed so powerless...

And this is why Republicans are going to have to shake themselves loose from the Tea Party. Quite simply, the Tea Party’s legions are not interested in governing, at least as governing is normally understood in a democracy with separated powers. They believe that because the Republicans won one house of Congress in one election, they have a mandate to do whatever the right wing wants. A Democratic president and Senate are dismissed as irrelevant nuisances, although they were elected, too...

Republicans need to decide whether they want to be responsible conservatives or whether they will let the Tea Party destroy the House That Lincoln Built in a glorious explosion. Such pyrotechnics may look great to some people on the pages of a novel or in a movie, but they’re rather unpleasant when experienced in real life.

I couldn't have said it better myself. Do the Republicans want to kill the Tea Party - or are they willing to let the Tea Party take down the whole Republican Party with them? That's the question that Misters Boehner, Cantor and Ryan need to ask themselves. Of course, that would require them to care about something other than how all of this affects their own imminent political careers, which is the catch. They seem more interested in playing their little power games with each other than looking up to see that the whole house is on fire.

Stephen Colbert - It Gets Better

We don't often see Colbert out of character. But here he is being his own heartfelt self.

And in the process, he shows us that the world is full of people who have found creative ways of dealing with bullies.

"Thank God Almighty WE are free at last."

A speaker I heard today told this story and I immediately needed to look and see if it was recorded anywhere on the internet so I could share it here. This is where I found it.

During the week before the Obama inauguration, I had the opportunity, while in Chicago, to hear from another of the heroes of America’s long slow journey towards the dream of racial justice, the Reverend Joseph Lowery. Lowery, along with Ralph Abernathy and Martin Luther King Jr., co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. They marched together many times. Many Americans knew Lowery as the Black elder statesman of civil rights who delivered the benediction at Barack Obama’s inauguration.

He told those of gathered in Chicago the following story.

He had just been hired for a new administrative position within the Methodist church. Down the street from his new office was a small segregated restaurant. As Reverend Lowery tells it, “I decided to integrate that lunch counter.”

He went there for lunch, sat down on the counter and ordered for himself a hamburger and a “cokey cola.”

The waitress, who apparently knew who he was, looked at him across the counter and said, “I’m sorry, Reverend, I can’t serve you. “ After a while Lowery left. He came back again the next day and as he tells it, “That little white waitress said she couldn’t serve me.”

He took out his sandwich and his thermos of milk and had his lunch. He came back again the next day and the next and next, week after week.

Lowery was called away on church business for few weeks. While he was gone, legislation was enacted that desegregated all public accommodations. When he returned, Lowery enthusiastically headed out to have lunch at that lunch counter.

When the waitress took his order for a hamburger and a “cokey cola,” she asked him, “Reverend, could I buy your lunch for you?”

“Now that’s kind of you, but why would you want to do that?” he said.

The waitress explained that she was a widow, with young children, who really needed her job. So, when she was directed to not serve Black people, she felt she had to refuse to serve him. It was against her beliefs as to what was right, but it was something she felt compelled to do.

“Now Reverend,” she said, “I can do what I know, in my heart, is right.”

Lowery looked at her smiled and called out, “Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty WE are free at last.”

Need I remind you that this story comes from the other reverend too many forget about who gave this wonderful benediction at President Obama's inauguration.

Did Obama effectively kill the Gang of Six proposal? (updated)

Just a thought...

We know that the Republican mantra since 2009 has been to be the "party of no" to anything President Obama proposes - even if what he is proposing was initially their idea.

So when Obama praised the Gang of Six proposal yesterday because of it's "balanced approach," how do you suppose Republicans are going to react - especially the Tea Party branch? Do you think it would have been any different if he'd just stayed silent about it? His remarks yesterday were a bit premature since - as he said - he didn't know the specifics. But he sure wanted to get the word out about it being in the same "playing field" as his proposal.

Perhaps that's too cute by half. But regardless of whether that was his intention or not, I suspect we know what the outcome will be.

UPDATE: Apparently someone agrees with me - LOL.

A Senate Republican leadership aide emails with subject line “Gang of Six”: “Background guidance: The President killed any chance of its success by 1) Embracing it. 2) Hailing the fact that it increases taxes. 3) Saying it mirrors his own plan.”

This stuff isn't so "eleven-dimensional chessy" when it gets so easy to predict.