Boehner’s mama would be so proud…

At last night’s State of the Union address, one of the unquestionable stars of the evening was Desiline Victor, a 102-year old Haitian-born American who waited for hours to vote in November 2012 thanks to the voter-suppression efforts of Florida Republicans. As the President told her story, Ms. Victor tried briefly to stand but it just wasn’t happening. Everyone else, however, did stand and gave her a thunderous standing ovation.

Everyone else except one person, that is: Republican House Speaker John Boehner.

Details after the jump.

Aye, aye, aye…

By now, most my readers know that the Republicans in Michigan have carved roughly $1 billion out of our state education budget and are ready to reduce the per-pupil funding by another $150/student this year. But what you probably don’t know that things have gotten so bad in our state’s schools that some of them don’t even have toilet paper for our kids to use when they go to school.

I’m not kidding. Follow me over the jump.

Sometimes it’s hard to believe it’s 2013…

The button shown above is the actual one that was worn by my mother when she marched, with me at her side, with 85,000 others in Chicago, during a rally for the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in 1980. 59¢ was how much women in 1980 earned for every dollar a man made for the same job.

Today that number is 77¢. In 33 years, women have only gained 18¢ in their struggle for paycheck fairness. At that rate, to paraphrase Laurie Anderson, it will be the year 2055 before they make a buck. That is, unless Maryland Senator Barbara Mikulski and Connecticut Congresswoman Rose DeLauro have anything to say about it.

Much, much more after the jump.

They just didn’t Twitter those jpegs to your Pinterest blogs with good enough email Facebooks

Republicans have thought long and hard and have figured out why they lost the election in 2012. Although you dumb bunnies may think that it was because of their desire to benefit the very rich at the expense of our nation’s most vulnerable or because of their egregious War on Women and War on Minorities, you would, of course, be wrong. The reason they lost, according the Republicans, is because you people just didn’t understand their message well enough.

See just how dumb you are after the jump.

Go outside and play, children. Grown-ups are trying to govern.

There was a time when a handful of legislators could cast a political protest vote against raising the debt ceiling in this country and it didn’t make a bit of difference because, at the end of the day, everybody knew that the majority of lawmakers, including Republicans, would vote to raise it. They have to. They are paying for things they have already spent money on. Barack Obama did this as a Senator in 2006 and admits now that it “was just an example of a new senator making what is a political vote as opposed to doing what was important for the country”.

But what’s happening now is completely different. Republicans and conservatives are actually contemplating defaulting on the bills we owe. And that changes everything.

Much more analysis after the jump.

Why would you support a political party that calls you a liar?

A study by the Pew Research Center revealed that only 6% of the country’s scientists now consider themselves to be Republican vs. 55% that call themselves Democrats. In a piece at Salon, Amanda Marcotte makes the case that this is for a very good reason.

After seeing the film Chasing Ice last night, I am certain Marcotte is 100% correct.

Much, much more after the jump.

Pure Audacity

If you go to the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) website right now, at the very top is the Pure Michigan Logo. On another page called “Right to Work”, this bold graphic dominates the page:

The “Right to Work” page is shown at the top as being part of the “Grow Your Business” section of the website yet the page itself isn’t linked from the “Grow Your Business” page or any other page that I could find on the site.

Note that it directly references our state’s new status as a “Right to Work” state, basically a message to prospective companies that Michigan workers are primed and ready to be exploited by corporations looking for a place to pay rock-bottom wages.

The MEDC is a private-public entity, designed to foster economic growth in Michigan and their tourism campaign, “Pure Michigan”, is known nationally as one of the most recognizable and successful efforts in the country. So, it was shocking to see our governor, Rick Snyder, take out a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal with essentially the same message as the MEDC website.

Much more after the jump.

I’m not sure if I should laugh or cry…

Joshua Green at Bloomberg Businessweek has a hilarious piece about the utter fail whale that is the Tea Party caucus in Congress at the moment. In it, he details how utterly “hapless” (to use his word) the anti-Boehner contingent was when it came to their failed attempt to replace him as Speaker of the House.

He lays it out in three steps (which you can cackle at after the jump.)

Oh, the humanity (unless it’s not in my district) Yesterday, Representative Peter King from New York took to the House floor to lambast Speaker John Boehner and others who are holding up disaster relief to victims of Hurricane Sandy. “I can’t imagine that type of indifference, that type of disregard, that cavalier attitude being shown to any other part of […]

They didn’t beat Obama or save tax breaks for the rich but they’re still planning mandatory Reagan tattoos Here’s the good news: The Bush tax cuts, which we designed to give 15% of their benefit to the richest 2%, have now been extended for everyone but the richest, creating the most progressive tax code in generations. President Obama used the […]

Inflamed duck, indeed I knew that Republicans had passed a lot of bills through the Michigan legislature during the lame inflamed duck session but I had absolutely no idea just completely batshit nuts they had gone until this morning. That’s when I read this headline at Michigan Radio: MICHIGAN GOVERNOR MAKING HIS WAY THROUGH 282 BILLS Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder […]