Quote of the Day

"$60 billion? In this time when we’re trying to solve the deficit problem?"

-- Republican Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, scoffing at the Obama administration's request for $60.4-billion in disaster relief for the states affected by Superstorm Sandy

I love this one simple statement because it perfectly sums up the ridiculousness of the current Republican party and why it doesn't deserve to be taken the least bit seriously. It's got it all: the phony outrage, the logic-defying implication that a future crisis should be dealt with before one that's affecting Americans right now, the shameless partisan obstructionism disguised as a principled stand.

Kyl really has constructed a thing of beauty. Please take a moment out of your day to appreciate it.

Assholes Shrugged

Digby takes a hard look at what Jim Bunning and Jon Kyl's stand in the face of millions of unemployed Americans might reveal about our shifting sense of morality.

"I am getting the same sick feeling in my stomach about this that I got when I watched the torture 'debate' unfold. This is yet another unraveling of certain pieces of the already threadbare social contract --- the reflexive moral consensus on cruelty and selfishness that we all teach our children and at least pay lip service to if not always live up to. Things like whether or not it's ok to torture --- or to let people flounder with no income at all during a serious economic crisis...

Up until now there was no question that it would be political suicide, much less morally wrong, to make massive numbers of unemployed, working and middle class workers, pay in order to make an ideological point. But with these incoherent tea partiers and nihilistic libertarians pulling the same kind of out sized influence the neocons did during the Great GWOT scare, this is what happens. We lose our moral consensus.

This is simple Randism, which is the real basis of Tea Party anti-government faux populism. They may not 'believe in' Wall Street bailouts, but they don't believe in unemployment insurance either.(And in return for no bailouts, they are ready to lift all regulations and constraints on business, while the average Joe gets the 'freedom' to starve.)

The biggest problem is that this foolish tea party ignorance is having the effect of normalizing the adolescent 'individualism' of the Ayn Rand cult beyond the boardrooms and estates of the Master of the Universe. The "parasites" are now anyone who has the misfortune to lose his or her job in the worst recession since the 1930s --- a recession that was caused by millionaire con men who are reaping big bonuses these days."

Digby's Hullabaloo: Teabag Poster Boys/3.2.10

Quote of the Day

"(Extending unemployment benefits) doesn't create new jobs. In fact, if anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work. I'm sure most of them would like work and probably have tried to seek it, but you can't argue that it's a job enhancer. If anything, as I said, it's a disincentive. And the same thing with the COBRA extension and the other extensions here."

-- Republican Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona

You know, I was going to try to put together something funny and clever based around the fact that colossal asshole Jim Bunning was continuing his one-man-stand against extending unemployment benefits to more than a million Americans still out of work and on the verge of losing their weekly check. (For the record, around 14 million are still without a job throughout the United States.) I was giving it serious thought -- and then Jon Kyl opened his mouth and made it abundantly clear that the notion of a highly-paid and federally insured Washington fat-cat having the sociopathic nerve to block aid to people desperate for any dollar they can get to feed their families wasn't strictly the realm of a clearly senile buffoon like Bunning.

And I realized that there's nothing at all funny about any of this.

I mean, Bunning has an excuse: He's insane. Kyl on the other hand, if he truly believes what he said, just tipped his cards to a dirty little secret held deep in the heart of the Republican worldview: The GOP lays at least part of the blame for being unemployed at the feet of those who are unemployed. This is sickening for a whole host of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that eight years of Republican overspending, mismanagement and deregulation went a long way in creating the massive economic clusterfuck we're all now suffering through. Yet not only does the GOP leadership continually refuse to take responsibility for its role in putting millions on the unemployment line; it blames those people for not having the gumption to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get off the unemployment line.

Bunning's argument is that extending unemployment benefits to Americans trying to get by on a mere fraction of their former paychecks will add ten billion dollars to the deficit, and that of course is unacceptable (or at least it is now; it wasn't when that money was going to pay for the war in Iraq). This is classic, almost literal, stepping-over-dollars-to-pick-up-pennies thinking: If the millions who are currently unemployed can't work and can't take care of themselves, they sure as hell can't stimulate the economy to get us out of this recession. As for arguing that we should try to squeeze the money for the extension out of the stimulus bill -- let's just say that it's both unwise and inarguably immoral to make a political stand on the backs of the unemployed, once again, especially when you're a fat old guy with a cushy government job.


But that's really what this comes down to: Immorality.

This is what today's Republican party is content to let itself be about. It spent years fostering an environment where it was never the robber baron's fault; it was always the little guy who took out an easy loan he should've known would be trouble; the pensioner who didn't understand the concept of credit default swaps and had no idea that he or she was being bet against by Wall Street; and now, the poor schmuck who just couldn't figure out a way to hold on to his job when everything went south.

I always thought it was a given that you don't blame the victim in a rape.

I guess I was wrong.