The Return of the Thing

Today's Daily Banter column expands on something I've brought up here a couple of times over the past several months: the Republican insistence on never giving up a fight and their refusal to accept that Americans don't like some of their ideas.

Here's the opening shot:

"Here's the beauty of Paul Ryan's new budget, the one saving grace amongst all the horrific awfulness it promises for the country: nobody gives a shit about it.

If you've been plugged into the political wing of the internet at all over the past couple of days, you wouldn't be blamed for thinking it was 2012 -- or even 2011 -- all over again. That's because Paul Ryan has rolled out the new GOP budget for this year and it looks suspiciously like every other budget he's rolled out since the Republicans put him in charge of such things and the beltway media inexplicably decided that he deserves to be taken seriously rather than laughed out of town. At this point, Ryan budgets -- all middle-class-screwing austerity in the name of tax breaks for the rich and attempts to gut America's social safety net -- drop with the regularity of a beloved series of Hollywood epics filmed back-to-back. It's like the GOP is Peter Jackson and the Ryan budget is The Lord of the Rings -- if The Lord of the Rings sucked."

Read the Rest Here

Quote of the Day

"While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks... My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice."

-- Warren Buffett in a New York Times op-ed called "Stop Coddling the Super-Rich"

This is absolutely required reading -- and it should be circulated far and wide. The question is, at what point will the sociopathically obstinate Republicans listen? At last week's Fox News-hosted Clown Car Debate, every single GOP presidential candidate taking part raised his or her hand when asked the following question: "Say you had a deal, a real spending cuts deal, 10-to-1... spending cuts to tax increases... Who on this stage would walk away from that deal? Can you raise your hand if you feel so strongly about not raising taxes, you’d walk away on the 10-to-1 deal?" Once again, all eight candidates raised their hands.

I said it last week but it bears repeating over and over again: These people don't work for you. They're not the least bit interested in representing you. If you're not wealthy, or a major corporation, they couldn't give a crap about you.

And don't even get me started on the audacity of another squinty-eyed, hyper-Christian, pretend cowboy from Texas taking a run at the White House three years after the last one left -- and left the country in financial ruin.