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In the News 3/10: Republicans Are Revolting!

Found on the Internets …



“I’m comin’ to get ya, tea party varmints!!”

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McConnell: We Will ‘Crush’ Tea Party Challengers ‘Everywhere’

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) believes that incumbent Republicans won’t have a problem holding their seats in the 2014 elections.

“I think we are going to crush them everywhere,” McConnell said about Tea Party challengers in a New York Times interview published Saturday. “I don’t think they are going to have a single nominee anywhere in the country.”

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E.J. Dionne: The Right’s New Clothes

Republicans truly are having the internal debate that [Rep. Paul] Ryan called “messy,” “noisy,” and “a little bit uncomfortable.”

But Ryan may have revealed more than he intended when he downplayed conservative divisions. “For the most part,” Ryan insisted, “these disagreements have not been over principles or even policies. They’ve been over tactics.”

In which case, this is not an argument over ideas at all, but a discussion of packaging.[…]

But what’s most troubling here is that it did not occur to Ryan to check the [brown paper bag lunch] story because it apparently didn’t occur to him that most kids on free lunch programs have parents who do care about them. They just can’t afford to put a nutritious lunch in a brown paper bag every day.

Ryan was so eager to make an ideological statement about family structure that he was not bothered by the implicit insult he was issuing to actual families of children on the lunch program. A little more empathy could have saved Ryan a lot of trouble. He apologized for the factual error but not for the insult.

… for now, I am inclined to respect [Sen. Ted] Cruz for giving us his views straight and not pretending he’s manufacturing new ideas. If conservative rethinkers such as Ryan have more than rhetorical and tactical differences with Cruz, they have yet to prove it.

(Bolding mine)

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More …

The Daily F Bomb, Friday 3/7/14

Interrogatories

What is your favorite cereal? Milk or no milk?

What books are you reading right now?

Who is your favorite historic (pre-20th Century) person?

The Twitter Emitter

In the News: CPAC – “Let them eat fact-free ideology!!”

Found on the Internets …



A series of tubes filled with enormous amounts of material

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Fresh from the shores of Nonsensia:

“The left is making a big mistake here. What they’re offering people is a full stomach and an empty soul. The American people want more than that.  This reminds me of a story I heard from Eloise Anderson. She serves in the cabinet of my buddy, Governor Scott Walker. She once met a young boy from a very poor family, and every day at school, he would get a free lunch from a government program. He told Eloise he didn’t want a free lunch. He wanted his own lunch, one in a brown-paper bag just like the other kids. He wanted one, he said, because he knew a kid with a brown-paper bag had someone who cared for him. This is what the left does not understand.”

-Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, March 6, 2014

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Paul Ryan: Free Lunches Make Kids Soulless

Okay, fine. Some kid would rather have his parents pack him a lunch than get it for free at school. Most kids would also rather have their parents drive them to school and drop them off than ride the bus. But just as not every child has a parent who can drive them to school, not every kid has parents who can afford to give them lunches every day. That’s why “the left” supports things like school buses and free and reduced-price school lunches. Because a free bus ride and a free lunch may not be the best possible way to transport and feed children, but it’s better than nothing.

Ryan’s plan is to reduce funding for the school lunch program. So more kids will have empty stomachs, but their souls will be full.

Wait! What’s this?? Not True??!??

The paper-bag lunch story is from a 2011 book about a hungry, panhandling kid in New York City. http://www.aninvisiblethread.c…

And the kid in the book wasn’t turning down gov’t subsidized lunches at school, he was reacting to a private benefactor’s offer to pay for his cafeteria lunches at school.

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Fact Checker: Paul Ryan and the story of the brown paper bag

The Pinocchio Test

Here at The Fact Checker, we often deal with situations in which people misspeak. We certainly don’t try to place gotcha. But this is a different order of magnitude. Anderson, in congressional testimony, represented that she spoke to this child-and then ripped the tale out of its original context. That’s certainly worthy of Four Pinocchios.

But what about Ryan? Should he get a pass because he heard this from a witness before Congress? It really depends on the circumstances. In this case, he referenced the story in a major speech. The burden always falls on the speaker and we believe politicians need to check the facts in any prepared remarks.

In this case, apparently, the story was too good to check. But a simple inquiry would have determined that the person telling the story actually is an advocate for the federal programs that Ryan now claims leaves people with “a full stomach and an empty soul.” So he also earns Four Pinocchios.

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More …

The Daily F Bomb, Thursday 3/6/14

Interrogatories

What is your favorite kind of cracker? What do you like to have on your cracker?

Who’s your favorite astronaut?

Do you ever eat frozen food (after it’s thawed and prepared, of course)? Examples?

The Twitter Emitter

The Daily F Bomb, Wednesday 3/5/14

Interrogatories

When was the last time you went to the dentist? How was it?

What is your favorite branch of science?

What critically acclaimed movie did you hate?

The Twitter Emitter

The Daily F Bomb, Tuesday 3/4/14

Interrogatories

How far from where you grew up have you ended up? If you still live nearby, did you ever live far away?

Have you ever littered? Have you ever picked up after litterers?

Have you ever gotten revenge on anyone? Can you tell us about it?

The Twitter Emitter

In the News: Texas Tea Wrecks?

Found on the Internets …



A series of tubes filled with enormous amounts of material

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Tea Party Might Just Fizzle In Ted Cruz’s Texas

For Texas tea partiers, Tuesday’s primary might just be a grim day. Tea party candidates running in federal elections this cycle have struggled to get a foothold in the Lone Star state as the movement turns five.

The best example of the fizzle is one-time conservative favorite Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX), who’s run such an incompetent campaign against Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) that even other tea party groups have turned against him.

Maybe arming fetuses is not as popular as Stockman thought it would be?

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Rudderless Tea Party Searches For Meaning Five Years On

WASHINGTON: Several hundred die-hard Tea Party activists Thursday found themselves sandwiched between a much larger convention of chiropractors and the annual fly-in lobbying convention of the National Treasury Employees Union.

Held at a Washington Hyatt, the fifth anniversary event for the Tea Party Patriots was a far cry from the halcyon days of 2009 when tens of thousands of conservatives descended on Washington for a Tea Party rally.

But more than sheer numbers was missing from Thursday’s event: The day lacked either a single leader or issue to rally around. While Obamacare may have birthed the movement, it no longer motivates the Tea Party, if Thursday’s lineup was any evidence.[…]

Bachmann used her off the cuff speech to hit everything from the rise of China to the budget. Bachmann, who will retire at the end of this year, even warned the movement to not “take your marbles and go home” simply because of their 2012 electoral defeat.

Rep. Steve King, one of the early adopters of the Tea Party mantle, took a more philosophical approach, arguing the movement is about securing the fundamentals of Western culture like “liberty” and “free markets.” […]

Indeed, the only thread that ran through the day was the idea that the Tea Party can still wield power in the next election. At one point a Tea Party Patriots official took the stage to announce the group had raised more than $1.1 million over the last 10 days, announcing, “Let’s show those establishment people and the permanent political class we mean business and we don’t need their money, ’cause we gots our own!”

Bachmann’s calls for the gavel of Harry Reid got polite applause, but the biggest cheers – and the fact that Republicans should be most concerned about – came when Rep. Tim Huelskamp called for the forcible end to Speaker John Boehner’s leadership.

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More …

The Daily F Bomb, Monday 3/3/14

Greetings, Bombpersons. The Daily F Bomb is going on hiatus for an indefinite period. This Friday’s will be the last one for a while. I just need some time to be able to do things for myself. I have a full DVR that I need to take care of, and several books waiting for my attention that I haven’t been able to get to, and Lilly the cat says I am neglecting her shamefully because there is always a damned MacBook on her lap. And I need to get out and see my real life friends more often. It’s been fun, and hopefully will continue to be fun in the future.

Interrogatories

What sitcom (or funny film), best represents your sense of humor?

Have you Google-mapped your own place? How does it look?

What can always be counted on to cheer you up?

The Twitter Emitter

The Daily F Bomb, Friday 2/28/14

Interrogatories

If you could devise a Rare Disease for Rare Disease Day that would affect only political figures on the right-wing persuasion, what disease would you give them? (Like foot-in-mouth-itis)

What book signings have you been to?

What is the last thing you rented?

The Twitter Emitter

The Daily F Bomb, Thursday 2/27/14

Interrogatories

What is the first thing you see right now when you look up from your computer?

Do you have any vices you refuse to give up? If so, what?

When was the last time you willingly stayed up all night?

If someone refused to take your wedding pictures because he/she hated something about you and your lifestyle, would you force the issue?

The Twitter Emitter

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