The irony is – if Republicans went back to the days of Eisenhower (the last Republican president to balance the budget) – these same folks would freak out at the tax rates.
IMHO – There are three things the Republicans really want to go back to:
1) Keeping women ‘in their place’ – silent, barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen.
2) Keeping gays ‘in their place’ – in their closet.
3) Keeping blacks ‘in their place’ – at the back of the bus.
The Republican Party was harpooned by one of its idols – St. Ronald Reagan – when he allowed Jerry Falwell and his Immorality Boys to take over the Grand Old Party.
Since that time – these social issues is what these Republicans have been pushing in every election. This is done to keep the sheeple riled up so they will turn out to vote in the millions – and it works.
While the Fundy Christian sheeple do their thing – the Establishment Republicans have done their best to raid every government trough there is – and they have just about succeeded to drain the country dry.
BUT – it always starts with the agenda of trying to control people through these social issues.
How true it that! If the phone rings during the day it is either a telemarketer or some right wing extremist! LOL both tend to hang up on me… I do not have enough jeans to be changing them every time someone is peeing on my leg!
I only read the local newspaper and occasionally comments to an interesting story so I avoid most of the “wailing and gnashing of teeth,” but I like your description and can imagine just enough of their stupidity to want to avoid it! 🙂
I expect republican politicians to continue to promise their constituents they will repeal Obamacare and for their constituents to be stupid enough to believe them. Hell, republicans are STILL trying to repeal both Social Security and Medicare.
I’m so happy for this SCOTUS decision! I’m also very very anxious about the same-sex marriage case! In my mind there is no reason to not rule in favor of all people having the exact same rights and protections under the law so I will tell you I won’t understand anything less than equality for all!
Well, it’s a great day, for sure. History will never remember how much was sacrificed by so many to get to this day. Amazing that SCOTUS had the courage to do the right thing on two important decisions this term.
Of course, I still think they’ll have to send federal troops to Kansas to rescue the gays. After all, Kansas still proudly carried the sodomy laws on the books and refuses to remove them over ten years since SCOTUS declared them to be unconstitutional.
I look to Brownbackistan to still fight name changes, joint tax returns, etc. We’ll still have to fight them in court to enforce the SCOTUS ruling. This could go on for decades.
Meanwhile, onward and forward on employment and housing protection and equality and total equality for the transgendered. The work goes on.
Congratulations to all Americans — all of us are finally considered equals under the law! Whoopee! It’s about damn time! And, yes, PP, Brownback and the republicans will fight tooth and nail and be carried dragging and screaming into treating all people with the dignity and humanity deserved. The worst offenders will be those who are being hateful in the name of their gawd. But we won’t go back on sanity. We can point and laugh at Brownback and the neanderthals while they throw their hissy fits which will get them nowhere!
Brownback has already begun with the “tyranny of unelected judges overruling the will of the people” crap. For those of us of appropriate age, this sounds very familiar.
Everyone should read this! That includes each of us who have more understanding than most and would never pass judgment. We all need reminders of what is at stake for too many!
I see people fighting for a living wage – BUT I don’t see anyone fighting for a family wage.
My DIL is the best example of what I mean. She works at a job she hates in an office environment that is full of these Tea Party and Fundy Christians that are basically older women who are working for their ‘mad money’.
My DIL is working there – not just for the paycheck – but also for the health insurance. She would love to be able to stay at home with the kids – but they cannot afford it. Their health care costs alone (and they have health insurance) is too much for them to live on one paycheck – and keep the house and food on the table.
My DIL feels trapped in her job and she hates it when her supervisor who proudly states that she hates kids – especially her husband’s kids by his first wife.
So – you can imagine when my DIL has to call off work due to the kids being sick – she is subjected to a sermon given by this kid-hating supervisor.
She could complain about it – but who would even give a fat rat’s ass in that environment where nothing else matters but M-O-N-E-Y.
I remember growing up when the majority of households was able to live comfortably – not wealthy, but not poor – on one paycheck – usually the husband’s.
So – for al the blabbering and yammering these CONservative Christians do about their traditional marriage and how our kids are not being taught morals – why don’t these folks ever push for those policies and laws that would help families to survive on one paycheck?
I never see this issue brought up – not on any blog or any presidential candidate.
Maybe this issue has been raised and I missed the memo that day?
This has been a rightful topic of discussion many times in the conservative press and on right-wing blogs. However, most concentrate on the inability to so do as a failing of the individual, who is obviously not working hard enough and most definitely not bright enough/well educated enough to warrant such compensation. Or, the individual and family are spendthrifts and, if they only were disciplined in their spending, they would do just fine.
It has become axiomatic that there is no way a family can make it on only one pay check in today’s world. While I think this is mostly true, and it’s not going to change, increasing the minimum wage to $19.50/hour would go a long way towards achieving this goal. I seriously doubt anyone will suggest this in campaigning for office.
It is unfortunate that President Obama has had the opportunity to give so many eulogies in his time in office. His speech yesterday will be well remembered, hopefully as a turning point against hate. The reaction of the people of South Carolina has been tremendously inspiring. We can’t let that kind of hate win — but the important lesson they’ve taught us is that you can’t fight hate with more hate.
Excerpt from Eulogy: For too long, we’ve been blind to the unique mayhem that gun violence inflicts upon this nation.
Sporadically, our eyes are open when eight of our brothers and sisters are cut down in a church basement, 12 in a movie theater, 26 in an elementary school. But I hope we also see the 30 precious lives cut short by gun violence in this country every single day… the countless more whose lives are forever changed, the survivors crippled, the children traumatized and fearful every day as they walk to school, the husband who will never feel his wife’s warm touch, the entire communities whose grief overflows every time they have to watch what happened to them happening to some other place.
The vast majority of Americans, the majority of gun owners want to do something about this. We see that now. And I’m convinced that by acknowledging the pain and loss of others, even as we respect the traditions, ways of life that make up this beloved country, by making the moral choice to change, we express God’s grace. We don’t earn grace. We’re all sinners. We don’t deserve it. But God gives it to us anyway. And we choose how to receive it. It’s our decision how to honor it.
None of us can or should expect a transformation in race relations overnight. Every time something like this happens, somebody says, “We have to have a conversation about race.” We talk a lot about race.
There’s no shortcut. We don’t need more talk.
None of us should believe that a handful of gun safety measures will prevent every tragedy. It will not. People of good will will continue to debate the merits of various policies as our democracy requires — the big, raucous place, America is. And there are good people on both sides of these debates. Whatever solutions we find will necessarily be incomplete. But it would be a betrayal of everything Reverend Pinckney stood for, I believe, if we allow ourselves to slip into a comfortable silence again.
Once the eulogies have been delivered, once the TV cameras move on, to go back to business as usual. That’s what we so often do to avoid uncomfortable truths about the prejudice that still infects our society.
To settle for symbolic gestures without following up with the hard work of more lasting change, that’s how we lose our way again. It would be a refutation of the forgiveness expressed by those families if we merely slipped into old habits whereby those who disagree with us are not merely wrong, but bad; where we shout instead of listen; where we barricade ourselves behind preconceived notions or well-practiced cynicism.
Reverend Pinckney once said, “Across the south, we have a deep appreciation of history. We haven’t always had a deep appreciation of each other’s history.”
What is true in the south is true for America. Clem understood that justice grows out of recognition of ourselves in each other; that my liberty depends on you being free, too.
That — that history can’t be a sword to justify injustice or a shield against progress. It must be a manual for how to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, how to break the cycle, a roadway toward a better world. He knew that the path of grace involves an open mind. But more importantly, an open heart.
That’s what I felt this week — an open heart. That more than any particular policy or analysis is what’s called upon right now, I think. It’s what a friend of mine, the writer Marilyn Robinson, calls “that reservoir of goodness beyond and of another kind, that we are able to do each other in the ordinary cause of things.”
That reservoir of goodness. If we can find that grace, anything is possible.
If we can tap that grace, everything can change. Amazing grace, amazing grace.
Amazing grace…
… through the example of their lives. They’ve now passed it onto us. May we find ourselves worthy of that precious and extraordinary gift as long as our lives endure.
PrairiePopulistsAndProgressives.net 
The irony is – if Republicans went back to the days of Eisenhower (the last Republican president to balance the budget) – these same folks would freak out at the tax rates.
IMHO – There are three things the Republicans really want to go back to:
1) Keeping women ‘in their place’ – silent, barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen.
2) Keeping gays ‘in their place’ – in their closet.
3) Keeping blacks ‘in their place’ – at the back of the bus.
The Republican Party was harpooned by one of its idols – St. Ronald Reagan – when he allowed Jerry Falwell and his Immorality Boys to take over the Grand Old Party.
Since that time – these social issues is what these Republicans have been pushing in every election. This is done to keep the sheeple riled up so they will turn out to vote in the millions – and it works.
While the Fundy Christian sheeple do their thing – the Establishment Republicans have done their best to raid every government trough there is – and they have just about succeeded to drain the country dry.
BUT – it always starts with the agenda of trying to control people through these social issues.
How true it that! If the phone rings during the day it is either a telemarketer or some right wing extremist! LOL both tend to hang up on me… I do not have enough jeans to be changing them every time someone is peeing on my leg!
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/supreme-court-upholds-nationwide-health-care-law-subsidies/ar-AAc77eU
—
Oh the sound of the wailing and gnashing of teeth……
The blogs are blowing up by these GOP-paid trolls spewing their usual talking points.
I only read the local newspaper and occasionally comments to an interesting story so I avoid most of the “wailing and gnashing of teeth,” but I like your description and can imagine just enough of their stupidity to want to avoid it! 🙂
I expect republican politicians to continue to promise their constituents they will repeal Obamacare and for their constituents to be stupid enough to believe them. Hell, republicans are STILL trying to repeal both Social Security and Medicare.
I’m so happy for this SCOTUS decision! I’m also very very anxious about the same-sex marriage case! In my mind there is no reason to not rule in favor of all people having the exact same rights and protections under the law so I will tell you I won’t understand anything less than equality for all!
Just got on (my computer)! What decision? I
l’ll get busy and find-out.
Funny you should mention Republicans to continue to repeal Obamacare – because that is just what I heard on the radio news about 1:00pm today.
Republicans have already wasted how much money on their nonsense?
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/us-supreme-court-rules-in-favor-of-gay-marriage-nationwide/ar-AAcaBM5
—
OMG – there will be more wailing and gnashing of the teeth …
Pass the Popcorn
Well, it’s a great day, for sure. History will never remember how much was sacrificed by so many to get to this day. Amazing that SCOTUS had the courage to do the right thing on two important decisions this term.
Of course, I still think they’ll have to send federal troops to Kansas to rescue the gays. After all, Kansas still proudly carried the sodomy laws on the books and refuses to remove them over ten years since SCOTUS declared them to be unconstitutional.
I look to Brownbackistan to still fight name changes, joint tax returns, etc. We’ll still have to fight them in court to enforce the SCOTUS ruling. This could go on for decades.
Meanwhile, onward and forward on employment and housing protection and equality and total equality for the transgendered. The work goes on.
Congratulations to all Americans — all of us are finally considered equals under the law! Whoopee! It’s about damn time! And, yes, PP, Brownback and the republicans will fight tooth and nail and be carried dragging and screaming into treating all people with the dignity and humanity deserved. The worst offenders will be those who are being hateful in the name of their gawd. But we won’t go back on sanity. We can point and laugh at Brownback and the neanderthals while they throw their hissy fits which will get them nowhere!
Brownback has already begun with the “tyranny of unelected judges overruling the will of the people” crap. For those of us of appropriate age, this sounds very familiar.
Does anyone think Brownback plans to run for president in 2020? Or is he hoping to be picked as V.P. in 2016?
Everyone should read this! That includes each of us who have more understanding than most and would never pass judgment. We all need reminders of what is at stake for too many!
I get food stamps, and I’m not ashamed — I’m angry
http://www.vox.com/2015/6/26/8845881/food-stamps
I see people fighting for a living wage – BUT I don’t see anyone fighting for a family wage.
My DIL is the best example of what I mean. She works at a job she hates in an office environment that is full of these Tea Party and Fundy Christians that are basically older women who are working for their ‘mad money’.
My DIL is working there – not just for the paycheck – but also for the health insurance. She would love to be able to stay at home with the kids – but they cannot afford it. Their health care costs alone (and they have health insurance) is too much for them to live on one paycheck – and keep the house and food on the table.
My DIL feels trapped in her job and she hates it when her supervisor who proudly states that she hates kids – especially her husband’s kids by his first wife.
So – you can imagine when my DIL has to call off work due to the kids being sick – she is subjected to a sermon given by this kid-hating supervisor.
She could complain about it – but who would even give a fat rat’s ass in that environment where nothing else matters but M-O-N-E-Y.
I remember growing up when the majority of households was able to live comfortably – not wealthy, but not poor – on one paycheck – usually the husband’s.
So – for al the blabbering and yammering these CONservative Christians do about their traditional marriage and how our kids are not being taught morals – why don’t these folks ever push for those policies and laws that would help families to survive on one paycheck?
I never see this issue brought up – not on any blog or any presidential candidate.
Maybe this issue has been raised and I missed the memo that day?
This has been a rightful topic of discussion many times in the conservative press and on right-wing blogs. However, most concentrate on the inability to so do as a failing of the individual, who is obviously not working hard enough and most definitely not bright enough/well educated enough to warrant such compensation. Or, the individual and family are spendthrifts and, if they only were disciplined in their spending, they would do just fine.
It has become axiomatic that there is no way a family can make it on only one pay check in today’s world. While I think this is mostly true, and it’s not going to change, increasing the minimum wage to $19.50/hour would go a long way towards achieving this goal. I seriously doubt anyone will suggest this in campaigning for office.
And, there is THIS! Good decisions seem to be everywhere I turn today! 🙂
Kansas court says school block grant bill is unconstitutional, both in terms of equity, adequacy
Ruling by three-judge panel released Friday
http://cjonline.com/news/2015-06-26/kansas-court-says-school-block-grant-bill-unconstitutional-both-terms-equity
It is unfortunate that President Obama has had the opportunity to give so many eulogies in his time in office. His speech yesterday will be well remembered, hopefully as a turning point against hate. The reaction of the people of South Carolina has been tremendously inspiring. We can’t let that kind of hate win — but the important lesson they’ve taught us is that you can’t fight hate with more hate.
Excerpt from Eulogy: For too long, we’ve been blind to the unique mayhem that gun violence inflicts upon this nation.
Sporadically, our eyes are open when eight of our brothers and sisters are cut down in a church basement, 12 in a movie theater, 26 in an elementary school. But I hope we also see the 30 precious lives cut short by gun violence in this country every single day… the countless more whose lives are forever changed, the survivors crippled, the children traumatized and fearful every day as they walk to school, the husband who will never feel his wife’s warm touch, the entire communities whose grief overflows every time they have to watch what happened to them happening to some other place.
The vast majority of Americans, the majority of gun owners want to do something about this. We see that now. And I’m convinced that by acknowledging the pain and loss of others, even as we respect the traditions, ways of life that make up this beloved country, by making the moral choice to change, we express God’s grace. We don’t earn grace. We’re all sinners. We don’t deserve it. But God gives it to us anyway. And we choose how to receive it. It’s our decision how to honor it.
None of us can or should expect a transformation in race relations overnight. Every time something like this happens, somebody says, “We have to have a conversation about race.” We talk a lot about race.
There’s no shortcut. We don’t need more talk.
None of us should believe that a handful of gun safety measures will prevent every tragedy. It will not. People of good will will continue to debate the merits of various policies as our democracy requires — the big, raucous place, America is. And there are good people on both sides of these debates. Whatever solutions we find will necessarily be incomplete. But it would be a betrayal of everything Reverend Pinckney stood for, I believe, if we allow ourselves to slip into a comfortable silence again.
Once the eulogies have been delivered, once the TV cameras move on, to go back to business as usual. That’s what we so often do to avoid uncomfortable truths about the prejudice that still infects our society.
To settle for symbolic gestures without following up with the hard work of more lasting change, that’s how we lose our way again. It would be a refutation of the forgiveness expressed by those families if we merely slipped into old habits whereby those who disagree with us are not merely wrong, but bad; where we shout instead of listen; where we barricade ourselves behind preconceived notions or well-practiced cynicism.
Reverend Pinckney once said, “Across the south, we have a deep appreciation of history. We haven’t always had a deep appreciation of each other’s history.”
What is true in the south is true for America. Clem understood that justice grows out of recognition of ourselves in each other; that my liberty depends on you being free, too.
That — that history can’t be a sword to justify injustice or a shield against progress. It must be a manual for how to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, how to break the cycle, a roadway toward a better world. He knew that the path of grace involves an open mind. But more importantly, an open heart.
That’s what I felt this week — an open heart. That more than any particular policy or analysis is what’s called upon right now, I think. It’s what a friend of mine, the writer Marilyn Robinson, calls “that reservoir of goodness beyond and of another kind, that we are able to do each other in the ordinary cause of things.”
That reservoir of goodness. If we can find that grace, anything is possible.
If we can tap that grace, everything can change. Amazing grace, amazing grace.
Amazing grace…
… through the example of their lives. They’ve now passed it onto us. May we find ourselves worthy of that precious and extraordinary gift as long as our lives endure.