New Audio of Joni Ernst Speech in 2013 Outlines Radical Ideology Built on Punishing the Poor

During last night’s debate in Iowa, everyone’s favorite pig-castrating mom, Senate hopeful Joni Ernst, regurgitated two of the right’s key talking-points: a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced federal budget, and a promise not to raise taxes under any circumstances.

We see this psychotic idée fixe in proponents of Neo-Liberalism all the time. We practically expect it; followed through, the implications of Ernst’s constitutional mandates would lead to the dismantling of most of the federal government. Which, as we all know, is the ultimate goal.

I say that with near certainty, by the way. Greg Sargent reported yesterday on a 2013 Ernst speech in which she outlines her “rather stark views about the relationship of Americans with their government.”In it, Ernst claims that we have created “a generation of people that rely on the government to provide absolutely everything for them,” and that wrenching them away from their dependence “is going to be very painful.” […]

In the audio, Ernst came out for a balanced budget amendment, said that would require “severe cuts,” reiterated her desire to eliminate the Department of Education, vowed a “good, hard look at entitlement programs,” and said electing a GOP Senate majority would be a key step towards all of this. She also said we are “encouraging people” to get on food stamps

Robert Reich explains what would happen to the U.S. under a Republican Senate

The answer is in the video above. As Reich explains:

• Unemployment benefits will not be extended to the long-term unemployed
• No minimum wages—no living wages for that matter
• Continuing education cuts
• Continuing decay of our country's infrastructure

New Senate Bill Would Create Special Diplomatic LGBT Envoy, Promote Equality Abroad

A bill introduced to the Senate on Thursday by Massachusetts senator Ed Markey (D, right) aims to create an LGBT envoy to promote equal rights abroad. The bill is backed by over twenty other democrats, and although it faces a difficult approval process, it is an exciting step toward LGBT-related diplomacy, particularly given the recent upswing in anti-gay violence in countries ranging from France to Uganda. The official title of the bill is "The International Human Rights Defense Act."

Buzzfeed reports:

“For the United States to hold true to our commitment to defending the human rights of all people around the world, we must stand with the LGBT community in their struggle for recognition and equality everywhere,” Markey said in a statement to BuzzFeed. “By fostering a coordinated effort across the federal government and relevant agencies, we can meet the enormous challenge before us and work to ensure equality for all people around the globe.” 

In addition to creating the envoy’s office, the bill would direct the State Department to “devise a global strategy” to prevent discrimination and violence against LGBT people and coordinate with LGBT-rights advocates in other countries and in international organizations.

SeaIf the bill were to pass, it would be a firm indication of a shift in American diplomacy, away from the George W. Bush era, when the U.S. blocked prioritization of LGBT rights in the UN. Though President Obama does not have the best track record with the LGBT community, including a continued refusal to sign the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, he could have the chance to create the envoy post without a congressional vote. 

Currently, twelve human rights organizations are endorsing the bill, including the American Jewish World Service and the Council for Global Equality.

GOP State Senate Candidate Pushes for Montana Schools to Teach Creationism

Montana front-runner and Republican senatorial candidate Steven Daines has some very strange ideas about how “education” works. While sitting down for a radio show interview, in 2012 he stated that he supported the teaching of pseudoscientific garbage in schools.

Montana’s GOP senatorial front-runner Steven Daines has some very strange ideas about how ‘education’ works, as he pushes for creationism in schools. Image: cc 2008 by Tkgd2007 and modified by Elisabeth Parker (2012).

According to Mother Jones:

In a little-noticed 2012 interview, Rep. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), the front-runner in Montana’s open 2014 Senate race, expressed support for teaching creationism in public schools.

In an interview that aired on November 2, 2012, Sally Mauk, news director for Montana Public Radio, asked Daines, who was then running for Montana’s lone House seat, whether public schools should teach creationism. Daines responded, “What the schools should teach is, as it relates to biology and science is that they have, um, there’s evolution theory, there’s creation theory, and so forth. I think we should teach students to think critically, and teach students that there are evolutionary theories, there’s intelligent-design theories, and allow the students to make up their minds. But I think those kinds of decisions should be decided at the local school board level.” He added, “Personally I’d like to teach my kids both sides of the equation there and let them come up to their own conclusion on it.”​

He added that he would “teach his kids both sides of the story.” You can listen to that audio below:

This isn’t the first time Daines had dabbled in creationism, either. He has spoken at the Creationist Museum in Kentucky, and has had individuals associated with his campaign who were involved in creationism, such as Greg Gianforte, whose foundation helped to fund a $1.5 million creationist dinosaur museum in Glendive, Montana. This is a “museum” that contends “the wonders of God’s creation are prostituted for evolutionism.”

As Mother Jones points out, this “teach the controversy” approach won’t hurt the Republican frontrunner in the polls. A recent Pew research poll showed that 33% of Americans don’t “believe” in evolution, of the roughly 60% that do, about half think that evolution was guided by a supreme being (so we’re not a wolfing species, we’ve got a patron species after all — kudos to anyone who gets that reference, by the way). it just goes to further highlight Asimov’s now-famous quote:

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.

Scott Brown, doing damage from afar

When Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) was actually a senator, he was able to play a direct role in helping his party defeat legislation through filibusters. But Sabrina Siddiqui and Ryan Grim report that Brown apparently doesn’t need to be a lawmaker to undermine legislative progress.

New Hampshire Senate candidate Scott Brown called Senate Republican leadership to urge them to stop a bipartisan energy efficiency bill, so as not to give Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.), the bill’s Democratic sponsor and his Democratic opponent, something to run on.

 

The Huffington Post first reported on Tuesday that Brown, a former senator from Massachusetts, lobbied against the bill as recently as last week. The Shaheen-Portman bill failed to clear a procedural hurdle Monday despite enjoying broad bipartisan support. Although the legislation had 14 co-sponsors – seven from each side of the aisle – just two other Republicans ultimately voted with Portman to end debate on the measure: Sens. Kelly Ayotte (N.H.) and Susan Collins (Maine).

Remember, at issue was the Energy Savings and Industrial Competitiveness Act, which a bipartisan group of lawmakers worked on for a year and a half, nailing down broad bipartisan support. The legislation was so uncontroversial, even the Republican-led House passed a comparable version fairly easily.

 

The whole package was really just “a bundle of small-bore provisions aimed at cutting homeowners’ energy use, utility bills and carbon footprints by, among other measures, making it easier for consumers to buy ‘smart metered’ water heaters and making it cheaper for manufacturers to build energy-efficient cooling and heating systems.”

 

This is what Scott Brown urged Senate Republicans to kill, in part because it was more important to deny a senator a victory than to do something sensible for the country.

 

Worse, his scheme worked – when Democrats refused to meet a series of ridiculous GOP demands, Brown’s former GOP colleagues killed the bipartisan, bicameral, uncontroversial bill with the latest in a series of filibusters.

 

The Brown campaign, now running in a different state, effectively acknowledged his role in lobbying against the bipartisan legislation, saying that the bill deserved to die unless Democrats agreed to add an unrelated amendment, requiring the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.

 

For his part, Sen. Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) told reporters this morning, “[Scott Brown] was here two years and he seems still not to understand the legislative process. By killing the Shaheen bill, he also killed a vote on the pipeline. [Brown] seems to have a pattern of saying one thing publicly and doing something else internally, and it always seems to catch up with him.”

 

Of course, this is hardly the only issue the former senator struggles to understand.

Five Openly Gay Nominees Confirmed By United States Senate On Voice Vote

Times have changed.

In 1993, two of the ugliest confirmation battles ever took place around the nominations by President Clinton of Roberta Achtenberg to be Assistant Secretary in the Department of Housing and Urban Development and James Hormel as Ambassador to Luxembourg. Achtenberg, after a bruising debate, was confirmed by 58 votes in the Senate and Hormel was denied the Senate confirmation and was appointed as an 'recess appointment'. 

Yesterday, the United States Senate confirmed openly gay Ambassadors and an appointment to the Justice Department by voice vote, little debate and no dissent. 

Those confirmed by the United States Senate were: 

John Berry: Ambassador to Australia

Rufus Gifford: Ambassador to Denmark

James Costos: Ambassador to Spain

Daniel Baer: Ambassador to Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe

Stuart Delery: Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division at Department of Justice.

Congressman who used to be a high school English teacher irks GOP by marking their memos with a red pen

Hoping that members of the House of Representatives will start using facts and coherent logic to advance the nation's interest is still a fool's errand, but there's one member of Congress, Rep. Mark Takano (D-CA), who's willing to at least pretend it's possible. Breaking out the teacher's most potent weapon, a red pen, he marked up Republican House members' letter to John Boehner forcing asking him to resist the immigration reform bill that has already passed America's slightly-less-insane upper chamber. Included in his comments are some words we haven't seen on a Congressional document in years, like "evidence," as well as an awesome invitation to "come by my office" if "you don't understand the bill."

Frankly, my favorite part is pointing out that given a proper word count, the bill is only 286 pages long. Why do I like this? Because "it's too long to read" is one of the GOP's new favorite reasons not to support things, which really does not help their anti-intellectual image. Obamacare, hate it or tolerate it, had about as many words as Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, not that Congresspeople read at that grade level. Can we at least agree that Congress shouldn't sound so afraid of reading?

Congress is pretty much the least-popular thing in America, which is impressive in the land of Honey Boo-Boo and Chris Brown. If there's one kind of person who isn't afraid to do their job in the face of massive unpopularity, though, it's a high-school teacher.