A series of weird Presidential coincidences that dont have to do with the JFK and Lincoln murders.....

So if I told you I was writing a blog about a president who is normally thought of being from Illinois, but wasnt born there, who am I talking about?

How about if I tell you he only served 2 years in national office before becoming President of the United States?

Or if he served in the Illinois Statehouse for 7 years before he was elected to national office?

What about if I added he used to be a laywer?

He lost a parent early in life and was raised by his step parent?

Ok what about if I told you his election caused the opposition party, which was focused in the south to go bat shit crazy and talk about secession?

Or that he ended a war that started under his predecessor?

And that his predecessor was of the other party, and had made his party unpopular.

Or that that predecessor was viewed as one of the worst presidents of all times and as a traitor by some of his contemporaries?

What if I tell you his first came to national attention because of his speaking skills?

Or how about that he was considered a dark horse candidate, taking the nomination from a person who everyone insisted was the "sure fire lock" to win it?

What if I tell you he actually named that person he "took" the nomination from as his secretary of state?

And if that person after being secretary of state, returned to New York?

Or how about if I tell you one of this persons biggest election surprise was being able to win Indiana in his first election, a state, that traditionally is solidly behind the other party?

Or that his Vice President was a Senator from a small east coast state?

Or that his Vice President was also a lawyer?

Or that his Vice President remarried after the death of his first wife?

His terms in office were marred by his consistent trampling of American Civil Rights?

Or that he only ever Vetoed two bills that have come to his desk?

And that he passed a series of Tax increases?

Any idea who I'm talking about?

My guess is most of you out there read the first 5 or 6 statements and figured out who I was talking about, and you got the Secretary of State part and became sure. Now granted  you probably dont know half the points but they sound right. And a quick Google check would them all out anyways.

So lets be honest, their is only one choice here I must be talking about this man:

Nope. Wrong. Sorry.

Actually to tell you the truth EVERY single one of those above points is actually true and does apply to President Obama, Former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and Vice President Biden. But they were not the people I was thinking of when I wrote the comments.

See it turns out all of those facts applied just as truthfully to another American President.

This guy:

Lincoln, for those who dont know, was born in Kentucky. His mother died when he was 9, and he was raised by his father and stepmother (the reverse set up from President Obama). He served in the Illinois Statehouse for 7 years, then became a lawyer before serving a single term in the US House of Representatives (the mirror in that respect of President Obama in the Senate),

Lincoln was given his parties nomination instead of presumed nominee William Seward, in part because of his ability to win key [then] Northwestern states, specifically Illinois and Indiana as he did in the General Election (and unlike Obama, as he did twice, Obama lost Indiana the second time).

After he won, Lincoln turned around and made Seward the Secretary of State. When Seward left the office he retired to New York, just like Hilary Clinton....although she may not stay retired so its not a perfect match.

And Lincoln original Vice President was a gentleman named Hannibal Hamlin, who had managed to pass the bar prior to entering politics, just like Vice President Biden. Hamlin spent the majority of his career as a senator from Maine, and early on in his life, lost his first wife to an early death.

And everyone knows the reaction the South had to Lincoln's victory. The Civil War/secession crisis however started during the lame duck session, under Lincoln's predecessor James Buchanan, who did nothing about it. Even before botching the reply to the Civil War, Buchanan, a native northern, was seen by many in the North as a traitor due to his views of slavery and took much of the blame for "bleeding Kansas", while the south hated him for not being pro slavery enough.

Lincoln's reaction to session was very different than Buchanan's, he suspended habus corpus and had dissenters arrested and spyed on for reasons we would now call "national security/ Government spying on its citizens? sound familiar to anyone else?

People love making Civil War comparisons these days. To how these days are the most tumultuous since the Civil War, the continued use of the Confederate Battle flag, to even outright mentions of secession (cough Rick Perry cough) or just general name dropping of that period.

And people love making presidential comparisons and looking for odd connections between them (most notably Lincoln and Kennedy). Well heres a nice way to combine the two, AND educate people at the same time.

That said, I leave you with one final question......do you think we should have seen this coming? After all President Obama was inaugurated with the Lincoln bible AND used the Lincoln Table during the festivities of both his inaugurations.

Just saying, even from day one the comparisons were striking.......

    

GOP Shutdown KO

So the Shutdown appears to be over (or close to it) as pretty much everyone agrees the new senate deal will pass the Senate and that the House will vote on it.

So what did the House Republicans and Ted Cruz, Mike Lee and Rand Paul get for their shutdown?

Well the first offer they made was repeal Obamacare, then the second was delay Obamacare until after the next election.

Both offers were met with the same response by President Obama

And actually to be fair, the Senate backed up the President and passed the clean funding bill, after Senators Rand Paul, Mike Lee and Ted Cruz refused to actually filibuster the bill. (Instead they preferred to fake filibuster the bill by giving a long speech that had a set time limit but calling it a filibuster)

Of course the bill died in the House and the House tried to come up with a new plan to actually get some concessions out of the Democrats. The problem became that the House couldnt actually pass their own plan, in fact they spend most of the last 3 days killing off suggestions for their plan.

So finally Speaker Boehner had enough, and said that basically that the house will pass ANYTHING the senate agrees to....other than the clean bill.

At which point President Obama/Democrats stopped being Willy Wonka, and became Don Corleone:

And the Republicans became the Senator Don Corleone is talking to.

Basically they got the same offer.....BUT now they have to give something akin to the price of a gaming license to Don Corleone/Obama as well.

See heres the agreement as I understand it:

1) Debt limit extended until February 7, subject to vote of Congressional disapproval, which the President can veto.

In English what this means is next time around, unless congress says no, the debt ceiling automatically goes up. But even if congress says no, the President can veto their no. Unless they can override it with 2/3rd of each chamber voting "no", the debt ceiling automatically goes up.

So yea, Republicans just lost their leverage the next time around and ceded power to the President.

2)  A budget conference established to come up with long-term spending plans by December 13

So the reason we keep having these budget fights is because we dont have a budget, and therefore only pass short term continuing resolutions. This would require both chambers to appoint people to a committee to actually work out a budget based on the budgets that actually [separately] passed both chambers months ago.

In short, if a Budget passes it guarantees we wont have another budget fight till the end of the next fiscal year (October 2014, and that being weeks before an election no one is going to want to do anything remotely controversial on the budget).

Now it should be pointed out House and Senate Democrats and House Republicans (to be fair) have actually been asking for that conference committee for months. Senate Republicans have been filibustering the motion to go to committee.

So again this results in a removal of the republican ability to "take a hostage" and stopping republican obstructionism in the Senate.

3) Income verification for recipients of subsidies under Obamacare’s newly-established exchanges.

Now this is the one that republicans are going to claim is their big victory. This is what they fought to do. They actually successfully changed Obamacare.

Now what does this DO exactly? basically if you sign up for Obamacare you have to give your income and prove its low enough to qualify for the subsidy.

Now as its currently set, you get the subsidy right away. At the end of the year (2014 in this case) a "Statistically significant"  portion of people will be tested to make sure they qualify for the subsidies they are receiving. HOWEVER starting 2015, everyone would have to be checked prior to receiving the subsidy, basically the same process that will now go into affect immediately.  

Now I guess you can argue over if it was a good idea to use a different process for the first year or not (and Ive seen arguments both ways that sound good and I dont know enough to know which is right) but it doesnt change one simple immutable fact here.

The Republican party shut down the government to repeal or delay the implementation of Obamacare. They are now claiming a win for basically accelerating the implementation of Obamacare.

Yea thats how badly they got beat up, they are now claiming they won by doing the exact opposite of what their stated goals were.

Now to be fair its not ALL bad news for republicans, they did get one major win. The continuing resolution IS still set at sequester levels, which republicans wanted.

However that was also true of the original clean CR they refused to pass. They could have just taken that and called it a win. Instead they decided to take away a lot of their own power and speed up Obamacare....and call that a win instead.

Man talk about snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory.....

Actually look to be fair, there are 2 republicans who actually DID win in this deal, and another who claims he did.

The two actual winners? Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell. See their is one last piece to this deal, and piece that increases the funding to the Olmsted Locks and Dam in Kentucky. Basically it gives 1.2 BILLION to the state of Kentucky for this project.

According to reports thats actually THE thing Mitch McConnell specifically asked for in order to allow his caucus to vote on the bill, and to get him in as a yes.

Now to be fair to Senator Paul, their is yet to be anyone who has suggested he had anything to do with this provision, but it might explain why he said yesterday that he "never really planned on trying to obstruct any of the process." You know this DESPITE helping Senator Cruz lead the fake filibuster and previously saying not raising the debt ceiling would give us the balanced budget (which is wrong but still) that he favors....or favored maybe.

Speaking of Ted Cruz he is our fake winner tonight. See earlier today Senator Cruz actually claimed he won, saying:

"We have seen a remarkable thing happen. Months ago when the effort to defund Obamacare began, official Washington scoffed. They scoffed that the American people would rise up. They scoffed that the House of Representatives would do anything and they scoffed that the Senate would do anything.We saw first of all, millions of millions of American people rising up across this country, over two million people signing a national petition to defund Obamacare. We saw the House of Representatives take a courageous stand listening to the American people that everyone in official Washington said wouldn’t happen."

Yep, thats how Ted Cruz defines a win....two million people signing a list to defund Obamacare (which you know they just failed to do....). Of course the list Cruz was talking about is on the website of "The Senate Conservative Fund" a political PAC that backs Ted Cruz.

So he did just get two million more people on his donor list, I guess thats a big win for him. In fact thats ALMOST as many people who live in his hometown of Houston, Texas.

In fact given the 16 days the government was shut down he got  125000 people per day! Thats basically the number of people who visit Disney land in a single day. Thats almost 1/3rd as many people per day as changed the television channel at the SECOND this sentence wrapped up:

Yea thats right a wrestling commentator trying to convince people NOT to change the channel accidentally convinced more people to do what he didnt want them to do in a single second, than Ted Cruz was able to convince people to do what he wanted them to do every 3 days

Thats a great win there for ya Ted...two and a half week shut down and only two thousand people to show for it.......

So yea, there it is the losers of the Shutdown, how they are going to sell it as a win, and why they are still losers...... 

This Shutdown in stupid.

So yea in case you have been living under a rock, 1 week ago the US federal government has shut down and ceased many operations. Luckily for all my fans out there this blog isnt federally funded and neither is stupidity. Which means I am able to bring you some of the stupidest things said during the shutdown thus far: 

Now very early on in the shutdown one of the major stories was about a group of WWII vets who came to Washington to see the WWII memorial, which they found closed due to the shutdown. So they kicked the gates in and stormed and took over the memorial. As an accidental side effect they also opened a Pandora's box of stupid.

WWII Memorial.

First up Senator Rand Paul, who when asked about the monument closing said this:

"Some idiot in the government sent goons out there to set up barricades so they couldn't see the monument. People had to spend hours setting up barricades where there are never barricades, to prevent people from seeing the World War II monument, because they're trying to play a charade."

Actually to be honest, Senator Paul is actually 100% correct here. In fact the only reason he made this list is because of a total lack of self awareness.

See the reason the barricades were set up is because the National Park Service doesnt have any money, so has to close, because some people in the government, including Senator Paul voted against funding the government, which includes the National Park Service.

In otherwords to paraphrase Obi Wan Kenobi, Senator Paul "you are the idiot you are looking for".

Following in Senators Pauls footsteps Rep. Steven Palazzo (R of Mississippi), who said this "Regardless of the shutdown, it makes no sense, Why close an open air monument?"

OOO! OOO! PICK ME! PICK ME! I KNOW! I KNOW!.....Maintenance. You dont think the grass cuts itself do you? And I'm pretty sure that fountain cant switch itself on and off or clean itself, And you know, we do have water bills that you made sure the park service couldnt pay. Oh but most importantly of all, someones definitely going to need to clean that place. I mean just imagine what that fountain will look like after weeks of people throwing things (like pennies) in it and they arnt cleaned out, whole damn system will clog. And I mean what if it rains again and people track mud all over the area? or even worse maybe, and litter everywhere?

Yea see thats the thing congressman, just because something is outside doesnt mean its self sustaining.

Next up, Congressmen Doc Hastings (R of Washington) Rob Bishop (R of Utah), and Darrell Issa (R of Cali), Natural Resources Committee Chairman, Public Lands and Environmental Regulation Subcommittee Chairman, and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman respectfully, and who are considering launching a congressional investigation into why the memorials are closed and who sent a letter to the the head of the park service asking him “ to take steps as necessary to keep and not destroy documents related to the decision this week to restrict public access.”
Given that the document that lead to that decision is the vote on a Continuing Resolution made by those 3 gentlemen, youd think they'd already have the information they need.

Or maybe what they are saying is that, despite two of them sitting on the committee that oversees the park service, they are all too damn stupid to realize the park service is part of the federal government.

Or maybe they are just saying they are illiterate. After all, here are shutdown contingency plans released by the park service in the days leading up to the shutdown. In otherwords all these guys had to do was read the briefing they would have been handed at their committee meetings and they would have known in advance what was going to happen.

I mean damn you chair a committee and have no idea what it does? just saying that takes a special kind of stupid.

And lastly for our World War II memorial section, Congressman Randy Neugebauer (R of Texas), seen here screaming at a Park Ranger and telling her she should be ashamed for turning people away from the National Parks....as in the same national parks that are closed because of the votes Rep Neuegbauer made.

I havent yet decided if your going to win the week in stupid yet congressman, but your a shoo-in for this week in being a massive dick.

Now of course after the republicans finally realized Obamacare was actually IN affect (sometime around day 3 of the shutdown) they realized they no longer had their demand for what they wanted to reopen the government. After all you cant stop something that already happened.

So they tried to come up with a few new demands, and like their original demand, it didnt go so well.

In fact this one quote from Congressman Marlin Stutzman kinda sums it up:

"We're not going to be disrespected, We have to get something out of this. And I don't know what that even is."

So yea I'm not entirely sure what Rep. Stutzman is talking about when he says they were disrespected, but it seems he means the fact they didnt win the last election/no one likes their polices is "disrespect".

Which means his demand is basically "give me something/ANYTHING because everyone hates us"

So yea basically he's claiming the reason the government was shut down is because everyone hates republicans and they are tired of being picked on.

So yea, shutting down the government should really make more people like you *sarcasm*  And of course changing your social policies to be more popular would be unreasonable.

And Tea Party Express chairwoman Amy Kremer also showed the difficulties of the lack of a reason for the Shutdown, when asked why the House wouldnt just pass the clean Continuing Resolution passed by the Senate. She said

"President Obama keeps saying bring a CR — bring a clean CR to the floor let them vote on it,” Kremer said. “Well, my question is, why doesn’t [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid bring the clean defund Obamacare [bill] to the floor and let the Senate vote on it? Why doesn’t he bring the clean delay Obamacare bill to the floor and let them vote on that?”

Yea see heres the thing, you keep saying the word clean and well.....

See "clean" in the sense of a clean bill means a bill that has no amendments attached and is the same as what was originally introduced, which in the case of a CR is just a date the budget is extended too. So yea no matter if you like or hate the houses version of the bill, it is by its very definition NOT clean. A clean bill to repeal Obamacare is possible, in fact House republicans have voted on it 41 times, because all 41 times it was stand alone legislation.

So yea, keep in mind this woman runs the group that financially supports a lot of the tea party congresspeople.....guess we know why they dont know anything, they are just following her lead...

And its not just the republican rank and file who are having problems explaining why the shutdown was needed or the effects from it. The two architects of the shut down, Senators Mike Lee and Ted Cruz have also had some issues.

See many politicians, noting the bad image they are getting for getting paid while the rest of the government employees arnt, have decided to donate their pay for a cause. Some havnt. Only one has lied about it. That would be Senator Mike Lee.

See he had an interview with a Las Vegas radio interview where he appeared to say he was keeping his salary because he was still working.

His office denied it and said the radio station edited his remarks and claimed Lee was really donating his salary to charity. And then the radio station released the full uncut interview:

Reporter: Do you have any plans to do something like that?

Mike Lee: I don’t.

Reporter: So you will continue to be paid, right?

Mike Lee: I’m working, I’ll continue to be paid.

So not only are you stupid enough to think you can get away with lying about something you KNOW is recorded, you lied about giving money to charity. I think your giving Rep Neugebauer a run for his money as Asshole of the week.

Next up, the other leader of the shutdown movement, Senator Ted Cruz, who said this recently on the senate floor in reference to things affect by the government shutdown:

"If the Senate cooperates, we could get this passed by the end of the day. We could respond to the national security threat these two gentlemens [sic] have laid out. The only impediment to doing so is the prospects that Majority Leader Harry Reid would object to doing so. If, God forbid, we see an attack on the United States because the intelligence community was not adequately funded, every member of the committee would be horrified. So I hope issues of partisan politics can be set aside and we can all come together and pass, right now by the end of the day, a continuing resolution to fully fund the Department of Defense and intelligence community."

So yea, like Rand Paul earlier, the problem Cruz is bitching about is his fault. I mean think about it, the guy who pretended to lead a 21 hour filibuster in order to shut the government down is now worried about the impact of the government being shut down.

So I just want to know Senator Cruz, were you too stupid to know what happened in a government shutdown and pushing for one anyways? or were you just lying and trying to get attention by calling for a government shutdown and never really wanted one but cant admit you conned people? which is it?

After all of those comments (and others) kept floating around, the Republicans desperately needed a new reason to have actually shut the government down, so they settled on the Debt Ceiling. Now the Debt Ceiling hasnt happened yet, we will hit it approximately October 17th. But see they shut down the government in advance so as to force Obama to negotiate on the Debt Ceiling even though Speaker Boehner already admitted he wont allow a default. Or something, I honestly dont understand the republican strategy here myself.

Which is kinda ironic, because it turns out, many republicans dont understand the debt ceiling.

Leading off this segment once again is Rand Paul (and we can add this to the list of things he doesnt understand):

"If you don't raise the debt ceiling, what that means is you have a balanced budget. It doesn't mean you wouldn't pay your bills. We should pay the interest and we should never scare the markets. So, if I were in-charge, I would say, absolutely, we will never default. I would pass a law saying that the first revenue every month, the first revenue, has to go to pay interest."

Ok 2 things
1) Im not sure Senator Paul actually understands what a balanced budget is either, cause its not the opposite of a debt ceiling. A debt ceiling is an artificial cap on how much money we are allowed to borrow to help pay down out debts. A balanced budget means what we take in in revenue is the same as what we spend.
Its entirely possible that if we dont raise the debt ceiling we could be taking in more money in a month than we spend, or less money than we spend. Neither scenario is actually a balanced budget.....

2)You know why we are hitting the Debt Ceiling on October 17th and not October 1st? turns out not all of our bills are due the same day nor are they due the 1st of the month. Which we better hope Rand Paul is never in charge, because I guess if we have interest on the debt that wont appear until the 17th of the month Rand Paul is just not going to pay it. Oh one other thing, we dont take in all our revenue for the month on the first of the month either. So we are only going to be saving a small fraction of our revenue to pay off some interest on the debt weeks late if Rand Paul is in charge (so lets hope he never is)

Next up on not understanding the Debt Ceiling Representative Joe Barton of Texas who said this:

"We have in my household budget some bills that have to be paid and some bills that are only paid partially. I think paying interest on the debt has to be paid. I think paying Social Security payments have to be paid. I don't think paying the secretary of energy's travel expenses have to be paid 100 cents on the dollar."

Yea um, I have to ask, if we dont pay the Secretary of Energy's Travel Expenses who is? I mean we either pay them directly out of our tax dollars or we take them out of his salary......which comes directly out of our tax dollars. So yea, either way we kinda have to pay them.....unless you think we shouldnt pay for it AT ALL, at which point I suppose instead of pulling it from the Energy department budget we would just pay it straight from the federal governments budget....which comes out of our tax dollars.

You know, I kinda get the impression this idiot might actually think money grows on trees cause he doesnt seem to know where it comes from or how it works.

Next up Representative Justin Amash of Michigan:

"There's always revenue coming into the Treasury, certainly enough revenue to pay interest. Democrats have a different definition of 'default' than what we understand it to be. What I hear from them is, 'If you're not paying everything on time that's a default.' And that's not the traditionally understood definition."

You know what you find if you look up the definition of default in the dictionary?
"a failure to act, esp a failure to meet a financial obligation or to appear in a court of law at a time specified"

Yea turns out the "traditional" (read correct) definition of default is EXACTLY almost word for word what Rep Amash claimed it wasnt. Although I would also like to know what Rep Amash actually THINKS the traditional definition of default is...

Ok so, I thought long and hard about this, and I think this week, with so many candidates I have to declare a three way tie.

So sharing this weeks crown are Senator Rand Paul, for in the course of a single week adding "what the government does", "how the government works" "what the debt ceiling is" and "what a balanced budget" is to the ever growing list of things he doesnt understand, Representative Justin Amash for managing to be precisely 100% wrong, that takes skill, and our first ever two time winner Representative Ted Yoho, who said this in regards to the debt ceiling:

"I think we need to have that moment where we realize [we're] going broke. I think, personally, it would bring stability to the world markets."

Yea I got nothing. Like seriously, your stupidity has actually exceeded my considerable abilities at snark, smartassery and mocking. I mean hell its not even worth asking you how exactly a world in which out currency is the standard reserve currency would feel BETTER if we announced basically our currency isnt worth shit.

So yea, way to go Rep Yoho. You actually rendered me speachless en route to your second time being [one of the] stupidest people of the week......