Calling Nurse Ratched

My friend and Blast reader Renee has worked with PTSD marine veterans at Camp Pendleton for over 20 years. She's now doing it without pay as of last night. Lots of fine public servants like Renee are going to be feeling the pain because of these childish antics of the GOP. The shutdown has also caused the cessation of the WIN (women, infants and children) program, clinical trials at NIH for children fighting cancer, food safety inspections and so much more of the same. Fox News doesn't want to call it a shutdown, instead it's merely a slim down and Ted Cruz said that it should be viewed sort of like a long weekend. Small government baggers said today that they would be satisfied with merely defunding the FDA and the EPA, at least for starters. Heard that the REP brass is taking its orders straight from the Koch brothers these days. Got into a little heated brouhaha at coffee with the boys. One said that this was our last chance to stop socialized medicine. I pointed out that we had socialism already, you know like when we pay corporate mega farmers not to grow crops or cattlemen to graze on federal lands or when we allow rent control in senior's mobile home parks and he says that we can tackle that stuff next.  Here's an interesting, albeit somewhat dated link; Government Spends More on Corporate Welfare Subsidies than Social Welfare Programs.

About $59 billion is spent on traditional social welfare programs. $92 billion is spent on corporate subsidies. So, the government spent 50% more on corporate welfare than it did on food stamps and housing assistance in 2006.

Another chap showed that he is paying a lot of attention to Fox News, Obama has time to golf and talk to Putin but he can't negotiate, blah, blah, blah. Attempts to rebut a few of what I believe are misconceptions he has failed miserably ,I was told that it just came down to which newspaper you happen to read and I suppose I can't argue with that. Forty attempts to defund the ACA, 17 refusals to go to committee on budget negotiations, seems funny that these folks are now talking about negotiation, Especially since the bloody Obamacare thing is already law, has passed Supreme Court muster and is the one expenditure that isn't even affected by the shutdown, being self funded. Wonder how the repugs would feel if the positions were changed and the minority democrats were demanding to have majority privileges? I can smell their fetid indignant odor oozing already. What a cast of characters leading the GOP hit parade these days - Bachmann, Cruz, Ryan, Boehner, King, sort of like the dysfunctional cast in One flew over the cuckoos nest. Do it our way or we blow the place up. I was thinking about the big applause Paul got when he somewhat facetiously said let them die at the campaign stop when discussing the poor. But I think that it is a pretty accurate statement of the mindset of the typical party member. My sister once wrote a thesis on black vs. hispanic race relations and she pointed out that we never go after the guys at the top of the economic or class pyramid, human nature causes us to attack those immediately below our own stations as to create some distance and reinforce our social position. So maybe that is why red state white trash likes to dish it out on the minorities.  Easier to assume that the poor and uninsured are all shiftless leeches. But the facts are somewhat different.

Almost two-thirds of uninsured Americans have a full-time job, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. A further 16 percent are employed part time.

This week we heard one GOP talking head rapping about Obama shucking and jiving and Bachmann likened his policies to crack cocaine. Dog whistles, anybody? I believe that the bulk of welfare goes to seniors and families with dependent children. Will research it further when I have time. But I did find this:

Among the 254 counties where food stamp recipients doubled between 2007 and 2011, Republican Mitt Romney won 213 of them in last year’s presidential election, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data compiled by Bloomberg. Kentucky’s Owsley County, which backed Romney with 81 percent of its vote, has the largest proportion of food stamp recipients among those that he carried...The Bloomberg review of 2,049 counties where the data was available included the 250 with the highest concentration of food stamp recipients. Among that group, 227 are wholly within one congressional district, with 160 represented by Republicans and 67 by Democrats.

Conservative states also are the biggest welfare recipients. Here is a 2012 graph of the biggest recipients of federal dollars per tax dollar paid. Said it before, we are tired of floating your sorry asses.

1. New Mexico: $2.63
2. West Virginia: $2.57
3. Mississippi: $2.47
4. District of Colombia: $2.41
5. Hawaii: $2.38
6. Alabama: $2.03
7. Alaska: $1.93
8. Montana: $1.92
9. South Carolina: $1.92
10. Maine: $1.78

Poll numbers are out and the GOP isn't doing real well. Must be that nasty old media... Check out the Quinnipiac poll here.

American voters oppose 72 - 22 percent Congress shutting down the federal government to block implementation of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll released today.
Voters also oppose 64 - 27 percent blocking an increase in the nation's debt ceiling as a way to stop Obamacare, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University poll finds.
American voters are divided on Obamacare, with 45 percent in favor and 47 percent opposed, but they are opposed 58 - 34 percent to Congress cutting off funding for the health care law to stop its implementation.
Republicans support the federal government shutdown by a narrow 49 - 44 percent margin, but opposition is 90 - 6 percent among Democrats and 74 - 19 percent among independent voters.
President Barack Obama gets a negative 45 - 49 percent overall job approval rating, compared to his 46 - 48 percent score August 2.
American voters disapprove 74 - 17 percent of the job Republicans in Congress are doing, their lowest score ever, and disapprove 60 - 32 percent of the job Democrats are doing.
"Americans are certainly not in love with Obamacare, but they reject decisively the claim by Congressional Republicans that it is so bad that it's worth closing down the government to stop it," said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.
"President Barack Obama enters this standoff over the budget with an edge over Congressional Republicans in the voters' eyes."
American voters trust President Obama more than Republicans in Congress on a number of issues:
    63 - 26 percent on helping low income families;
    51 - 38 percent on helping the middle class;
    47 - 38 percent on handling health care;
    47 - 42 percent on handling the economy. 

Republicans thought that they could cut some red state dems out of the herd. They were wrong, the Democrats showing remarkable and atypical cohesion. Instead it is the Grand Old Party that is starting to show a fracture between its moderate and radical wing.

"A group of folks thought that they saw the potential to change some Democrats in the Senate. I was gung-ho to try that. We tried that a couple of times," said Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.). "I wish it had worked. That unfortunately was not the case. So now we need to take a step back and figure out how we move forward."

Tetons look real nice right now...