Paul Ryan and the House Republicans kick off the New Year by attempting to defund Planned Parenthood for the eighth time. So predictable.

Courtesy of HuffPo:

The 114th Congress will kick off the new year on Wednesday by voting an eighth time to strip federal funds from Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest family planning provider, because its health services include abortion. 

 The House of Representatives is expected to pass a budget reconciliation bill that guts the Affordable Care Act, pulls roughly $450 million in federal assistance from Planned Parenthood and prevents Medicaid recipients from getting reimbursed for their visits at Planned Parenthood clinics. There is already a federal law preventing taxpayer dollars from being used toward abortion -- Planned Parenthood's patients have to pay for that service separately out of pocket -- but Republicans have long despised the family planning provider for ideological reasons. 

"It's up to the president to decide if he wants to side with the people whose health care costs have skyrocketed out of control, or the abortion industrial complex whose profits have skyrocketed out of control," Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) told reporters Wednesday. "Congress is holding President Obama accountable."

Of course we know that Speaker Ryan is desperate to do something, even something he knows has no chance of getting past the President's veto pen, in an attempt to get the conservatives off his back for allowing that Omnibus bill to through the House. Since then he has been under attack, and the Teabaggers have been calling for his head.

So for anybody who thought that Ryan would be a more effective House Speaker than John Boehner, well I guess you know better now.

He is still held captive by a rabid Right Wing which simply cannot tolerate the idea of compromise, and who views a government that solves problems and makes things happen as an abject failure.

Welcome to 2016.

You know I don't usually believe in Karma, but.....

The locals are saying that they have never seen anything like this in South Carolina, and many of the residents do not have flood insurance.

Which means they are going to rely almost exclusively on Federal funds to help them recover.

You know, the same Federal funds that their own lawmakers voted against giving to those hit by Hurricane Sandy.

Hoboken Mayor claims that Chris Christie held Sandy relief funds hostage to pressure her to sign on to a development deal. And the hits keep on coming!

Chris Christie with Mayor Zimmer in the background.

Courtesy of Mediaite: 

Last weekend, Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer (D-NJ) told WNYC that the unfolding Bridgegate scandal made her wonder if Governor Chris Christie’s administration had denied her city Hurricane Sandy relief funds as payback for her refusal to endorse Christie’s reelection. On Saturday morning’s Up with Steve Kornacki, Mayor Zimmer revealed that Christie Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno explicitly connected Hoboken’s Sandy relief to a different motive. 

In the days following Hurricane Sandy, Hoboken was one of those places that made it into every network’s video package of hard-hit areas, as thousands of people remained trapped by flood waters for days. Since then, Governor Christie waged, and won, a hard-fought battle to secure federal relief for the state, but in light of the Bridgegate revelations, Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer wondered if her city was shortchanged when it came time to dole out those dollars simply because she wished to remain neutral in the gubernatorial election. Now, she says the motive was a redevelopment deal, and the payback scheme was much more explicit. 

In his opening segment, Kornacki ran down a complicated history of area politics, but the nuts of the story are that the Christie administration was pushing hard for a development project that Mayor Zimmer and the Hoboken planning board had slowed down, and after almost all of the city’s Hurricane Sandy relief requests were denied, Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno told Mayor Zimmer that in order to get the Sandy relief funds flowing, she needed to move the development project along. 

According to an entry in Zimmer’s personal diary, Guadagno pulled her aside after a political event in Hoboken, “and says I need to move ahead with the Rockefeller project. The word is you’re against it and you need to move it forward or we’re not going to be able to help you. I know it’s not right. These things should not be connected but they are. If you tell anyone I said that, I will deny it.”

It should be noted that Mayor Zimmer was considered a "Christie Democrat." In other words she was a political ally, and one who could be relied on to work in a non-partisan manner with him in the past.

So for her to WRITE IN HER DIARY that she was troubled and upset about what was taking place, is huge.

Because unless the Christie camp really wants to suggest that this former friend of the administration foresaw this crisis and made a diary entry so as to help with the piling on, it would seem to indicate a truthful account of an administration that bullied those who interfered with their agenda, and even withheld humanitarian aide from its constituents, as a form of punishment.

You know I think it took fewer hits to bring down Godzilla than Christie is getting nailed with right about now.

Rand Paul upset that people are prioritizing receiving help after the devastating Hurricane Sandy, over buying bullets to kill more people overseas. Yeah, what's WITH those people?

Courtesy of Slate:  

Over the weekend I tried to ask and answer a few questions about the debate Chris Christie started with libertarians. By attacking that "strain" in the GOP, and by challenging anyone who disagrees with current American foreign policy to come and meet a 9/11 widow. After I wrote it, Sen. Rand Paul punched back with proud disdain for Christie. 

"The people who want to criticize me and call me names, they are precisely the same people who are unwilling to cut the spending. They are "Gimme, gimme, gimme all my Sandy money now." Those are the people who are bankrupting the government and not allowing enough money be left over for national defense."

Seriously this guy, THIS guy is going to "save" the Republican party?

Yeah well he just lost the vote of EVERY citizen who watched Sandy destroy New Jersey and the tornadoes devastate Oklahoma on television.

This is exactly the kind of opponent that the Democrats want the Republicans to send up against Hillary in 2016.

What an asshole!

The Republicans in the House waste NO time in attempting to defund Planned Parenthood and granting legal rights to a cluster of cells. Wait, haven't we seen this movie before?

Courtesy of HuffPo:

House Republicans are so eager to strip federal family planning funds from Planned Parenthood that two of them have introduced identical bills to do so in the first days of the new Congress. 

Tennessee Reps. Marsha Blackburn (R) and Diane Black (R) separately reintroduced a bill during the first two days of the 2013 legislative session that would prohibit Title X family planning grants from being awarded to any organization that performs abortions. The bill, first introduced by former Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) in the 112th Congress, primarily targets Planned Parenthood, which receives about $340 million a year in Title X funds for non-abortion health and family planning services. Both bills amend Pence's original bill to include exceptions for rape, incest and to protect the life of the mother. 

Blackburn is Vice Chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the committee with jurisdiction over the issue. Since she filed and circulated her bill on Thursday, the first day of the legislative session, more than a half-dozen Republicans have signed on as cosponsors and numerous anti-abortion groups have endorsed it. 

Blackburn declared the bill a priority for her committee and vowed to carry on Pence's agenda. “Congressman Pence has been a champion in the fight to protect innocent human life and I hope to continue his leadership in the House,” she said in a statement. "As a woman, I believe America deserves better than abortion."

You mean like access to a better sexual education or access to preventative care such as that provided by Planned Parenthood? It is worth noting of course that the federal funds that Planned Parenthood receives ARE NOT used to perform any abortions.

And don't think this kind of draconian approach to women's health issues is only coming from Tennessee either, losing VP candidate Paul Ryan is also jumping back on to the anti-choice bandwagon.

Also from HuffPo:

Despite the deep unpopularity of fetal personhood bills in 2012, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has again decided to cosponsor the Sanctity of Human Life Act, a bill that gives full legal rights to human zygotes from the moment of fertilization. 

Ryan, who reportedly has 2016 presidential ambitions, had to de-emphasize his opposition to abortion without exceptions during the 2012 election to align his position with presidential candidate Mitt Romney. But this year, Ryan has been tapped as a keynote speaker for the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List's sixth annual Campaign for Life Gala, and he is re-upping his support for the most extreme anti-abortion legislation in the country. 

The personhood bill, first introduced in 2011 by Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) and reintroduced by Broun last week, specifies that a "one-celled human embryo," even before it implants in the uterus to create a pregnancy, should be granted "all the legal and constitutional attributes and privileges of personhood."

Jesus the next thing you know they'll be granting full legal rights to the sperm soaked tissues under a teenager's bed.

You would think that after this last election these idiots would recognize the changing mood in this country, but it is like they only see that they are losing the mass majority of the American electorate and are choosing to double down on social issues in order to hang on to their dwindling number of conservative supporters.

Well good luck with that.

I doubt these bills will be anymore successful than they were the last time.  Though they DO serve the purpose of helping to identify to the more progressive voters who should NEVER receive their votes in upcoming elections.

Ya hear that Paul Ryan?

Yo! I can't talk right now I'm trying to make a muscle.

Early morning hypocrisy alert!

Stop trying to give us money, until I tell you to give us money!

Courtesy of Bloomberg News: 

 Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, who has criticized Barack Obama for excessive federal spending, said the president isn’t providing enough funding to cover the costs of Hurricane Isaac. 

Jindal, a 41-year-old Republican, said in a Baton Rouge news briefing today that he sent a letter of complaint to the Democratic president. 

“You can’t wait, you have to push the federal bureaucracy,” he said. 

Jindal wrote yesterday evening that Isaac requires “extraordinary emergency protective measures” and “full federal assistance for the state.” The president’s emergency declaration doesn’t provide for reimbursement of state expenses, only for “direct federal assistance,” Jindal wrote. 

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said the goal of the initial declaration was to get federal aid out immediately. “We’ll continue to work with state officials to provide any unmet needs,” he told reporters today. “There will be time to explore if additional declarations are necessary.”

Bobby Jindal when weather is calm in Louisiana, "We don't need any Federal dollars!"

Bobby Jindal when hurricane approaches Louisiana, "Where the hell are those Federal dollars?"

Of course the money that Jindal is asking for might not have even been available if Paul Ryan had gotten his way:

The confluence of soon-to-be Hurricane Isaac, the anniversary of Katrina, and the Republican National Convention is a big problem for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, not just because of the optics of having a big, lavish red-white-and-blue party while the Gulf Coast gets hammered again. It's also because of the recent history of Republicans to cut the agencies that deal with predicting and responding to natural disasters to the bone. 

But more specifically, vice-president-nominee-to-be Paul Ryan tried to cut a new disaster aid program championed by President Obama that "budgets help for victims of hurricanes, tornadoes and floods before they occur." 

You know it's not so much the humidity caused by the hurricane, it's the irony.

"What? You have two dads? Then no education for you!" Spoke the caring, loving, Christian educator.

This image can be found on the Hope Christian school's website. Ironic isn't it?

Courtesy of ABC in Albuquerque:

A 3-year-old was kept from enrolling at a religious-based school because he has two fathers, according to a letter sent by the school.

Action 7 News got a copy of the letter that Hope Christian School sent to the family. It says in part: “Same gender couples are inconsistent with scriptural lifestyle and biblical teachings,” and "Home life doesn't reflect the school's belief of what a biblical family lifestyle is.”

The letter also says since the school is private, it is free from "excessive government interference in matters of religion." 

The school will receive more than $60,000 in federal tax dollars this school year. That money will be used for educator professional development, according to the state's Public Education Department. The school qualifies for that money under federal guidelines. 

“We don't think agencies that discriminate or use religion to discriminate should be receiving our federal or government funds,” said Peter Simonson with the ACLU. 

It may not be sitting well with the ACLU, but come fall, the private school will get the tax dollars and the 3-year-old will start his first day of prekindergarten somewhere else.

I'm sorry, but if you take federal dollars you simply should NOT get to discriminate! Period!

You know if they are going to discriminate based on the Bible, perhaps they need to also reject children with divorced parents, or children whose parents work on the Sabbath, or children who dare to wear clothing made of two different kinds of materials. I mean unless they're hypocrites of course.

This is a three year year old child, a three year old child, who I assume they want to keep out of their program for fear that his presence will not make it seem that it was okay for gay people to raise a child together. (Heaven forbid!)

So instead they taught this little boy that Christianity is filled with hatred and intolerance.

Good job Hope Christian school!

Wouldn't Jesus be proud?

Mitt Romney has now decided to turn the focus off of his time at Bain Capital to his time "saving" the Olympics. Alrighty then!

You know I NEVER thought I would hear myself saying this, but I think perhaps John McCain DID make the right decision in choosing Sarah Palin over Mitt Romney.

Now if you will excuse me I have to go wash my mouth out with soap.

So WHY are tax payer dollars going to fund "crisis pregnancy centers' staffed ONLY with Christians?

Courtesy of Cagle.com:

Across the country, explicitly religious groups running “crisis pregnancy centers” are receiving taxpayer funding to carry out their fight against abortion. And many, like the Care Net Pregnancy Resource Center in Rapid City, S.D, only hire Christians. 

“Do you consider yourself a Christian?” asks the center’s volunteer application. “If yes, how long have you been a Christian? … As a Christian, what is the basis of your salvation? … Please provide the following information concerning your local church. Church name … Denomination … Pastor’s name.” The application instructs volunteers to certify that they are “in full agreement with the pregnancy center’s Statement of Faith.” 

In 2010, the center was awarded a $33,610 “capacity building” grant as part of President Obama’s stimulus bill. 

Last year, the nonprofit National Fatherhood Initiative, with “support from the US Department of Health and Human Services,” awarded the center $25,000. 

When South Dakota passed a law requiring that women get counseling from a “pregnancy help center” before receiving an abortion, the Rapid City center was quick to sign up — becoming one of three such facilities listed on the state’s official website. (Much of the law is tied up in an ongoing court battle and has yet to take effect.) 

Like other crisis pregnancy centers, the Rapid City Care Net seeks to prevent abortions by offering women a combination of free pregnancy tests and ultrasounds, a “24 hour hotline,” and medically dubious “abortion education” (its website wrongly claims that “a number of reliable studies have demonstrated connection between abortion and later development of breast cancer”). 

The Rapid City center is not alone. The facility says it “submits to the affiliation guidelines” of the national Care Net organization, which supports more than 1,100 Christian crisis pregnancy centers. Care Net requires that at each center, “all board members, staff, and volunteers of the center agree with” its evangelical Statement of Faith.

WTF?  How in the hell can these places receive federal funds, while providing bogus health information, and screening their applicants to keep the  non-Christians from working there?

Perhaps we should stop worrying bout this country becoming a theocracy and simply admit that all intents and purposes we already are!

There's more here.