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President Jeb Bush Will Kill Food Stamps And Welfare, Substitute Them With Man-Woman Marriage

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“Marriage matters when it comes to reducing poverty and increasing opportunity,” Jeb Bush says.

Jeb Bush has unveiled a new policy statement that would kill the top federal programs that provide food and financial support for some of the most-needy families – including children – in America. The Republican former Florida governor announced Friday that as president, he would eliminate the federal food stamps program known as SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) and the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program.

Combined, these programs serve an estimated 50 million Americans with about $90 billion in support annually and are credited with literally helping to keep Americans alive, housed, clothed, and fed. If anything, we should be investing more dollars, not less, into these vital programs.

In 2015 overall, SNAP provided about 46 million people an average of $126.83 per month (yes, per month, not week).

In March of 2015, about three million children were the beneficiaries of TANF.

In short, Bush would literally take food out of children’s mouths, and substitute those federal programs with ones that promote heterosexual marriage.

“Marriage matters when it comes to reducing poverty and increasing opportunity,” Bush’s new policy states. “Children raised in married, intact families do better than children raised in single parent families on a whole host of measures, including graduation rates, criminal justice involvement and earnings as adults. But too often in discussions of poverty, this vital issue is left out of the discussion. It won’t be in my administration.”

An intact family is defined as “a nuclear family in which membership has remained constant, in the absence of divorce or other divisive factors,” generally referring to biological, i.e., male and female parents who marry and raise children. Bush didn’t need to include the “intact” distinction, but chose to.

“As president, I will join with other political leaders, educators and civic leaders to promote marriage as the most reliable route to family stability and resources,” Bush continues. 

Despite Jeb Bush’s repeated claims that he is his own man and would not be the same president that his brother was, this new policy of promoting (heterosexual) marriage is exactly what President George W. Bush did, to the tune of $500 million, at minimum. And it failed.

WATCH: Jeb Bush Says ‘There Are No Radical Christians’

A 2007 study concluded:

Government marriage promotion efforts emerged from and reinforce the work of rightist fatherhood groups and Christian Right organizations.

The arguments in favor of marriage and fatherhood promotion as a cure for poverty are ultimately ideological in nature. There is no solid evidence from the social sciences that marriage results in a higher income for poor women.

Government marriage promotion experiments are funded at the expense of proven poverty relief programs.

Government marriage promotion initiatives are intertwined with the dramatic erosion of Church/State separation under the Bush Administration’s faith-based initiatives.

The arguments for government marriage promotion programs often reflect racial, ethnic, and gender stereotypes, and the programs themselves disproportionately target communities of color – especially African Americans.

Bush also claims, wrongly, that the federal welfare system he would kill, “penalizes work, hurts families and creates countless opportunities for graft and abuse,” and “trap families in perpetual poverty.”

“In the place of these failed programs, states will be given Right to Rise Grants. These grants will allow states to meet the needs of poor families, in the way that makes most sense in each state.”

Jon Green at AmericaBlog rightly notes that states would have the option to not set up these grant programs at all.

With SNAP and TANF dead, tens of millions of Americans, including children, would literally be left starving to death.

Green adds, “the poor won’t starve Bush argues, if only they get their sexual houses in order and shack up with the right people.”

“Gutting one of the most successful anti-poverty programs we currently have and replacing it with Catholic social teaching is a nice effort, but it’s likely too little, too late to put him back in contention,” Green concludes.

Bush, it should be noted, is the son and great-grandson U.S. presidents, comes from tremendous wealth, and has never displayed any understanding of what eliminating these programs would do.

A few months ago, his campaign flailing, Jeb! announced a rebranding and retooling initiative known as “Jeb Can Fix It.” It failed.

For the sake of the lives and well-being of tens of millions of Americans, so should Jeb Bush’s campaign for president.

 

EARLIER:

Watch: Colbert Mocks The End Of Jeb’s ‘Jeb!’

Democrats Run New Attack Ad Against GOP Presidential Candidates – Featuring W (Video)

Jeb Bush: If ‘You’re A Christian You Can Prove You’re A Christian’

 

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‘Crazy’: RFK Jr. Is a Top Global Public Health ‘Expert’ Claims Miller, Sparking Mockery

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Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — an environmental lawyer, former leader of a children’s anti-vaccine organization, and a promoter of conspiracy theories — is being praised by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller as a “foremost” global health expert and a “crown jewel” of the Trump administration.

Kennedy has no medical degree or formal training, nor does he hold any degrees in public health.

Secretary Kennedy’s challenges this week include his attempt to fire the newly confirmed Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and announcing that most Americans will not be eligible to receive COVID vaccines without a doctor’s prescription and at least one underlying health condition. (Future CDC advisory panel regulations may alter that landscape.)

Kennedy was assailed by medical experts this week when he declared that, while walking through an airport, he could see the “mitochondrial” illness and inflammation of children, which he claimed he could detect “from their faces, from their body movements and from their lack of social connection.”

READ MORE: ‘Glass Jaws’: Democrats Cast Ernst Exit as Harbinger of Weakening GOP

Miller, who also holds no medical degree, told reporters on Friday (video below) that “the CDC’s credibility was shattered during the COVID era.”

“CDC used to be, of course, seen widely around the world as a premier health agency, and much of the world discovered in the last few years, that CDC was actually staffed by a lot of very partisan, and very political bureaucrats who weren’t at all concerned about public health and weren’t actually very knowledgeable about public health,” he baselessly alleged.

“And we are working hard, and more importantly, Secretary Kennedy — one of the world’s foremost voices, advocates, and experts on public health — is working hard to restore the credibility and the integrity of CDC as a scientific organization committed to the scientific method, and getting to the root causes of the public health epidemic in this country,” Miller continued.

READ MORE: Johnson Pins Gun Violence on ‘Mental Health’ After Trump Slashes $1B in School Counseling

Asked if there are any concerns about Secretary Kennedy’s leadership, and despite the resignations this week of top CDC scientists in response to the President’s firing of the CDC Director, Miller declared, “Secretary Kennedy has been a crown jewel of this administration who’s working tirelessly to improve public health for all Americans.”

Critics blasted Miller.

“Calling RFK Jr. ‘one of the world’s foremost experts on public health’ with a straight face is crazy,” wrote The Lincoln Project.

“I’m a an MD, PhD, physician toxicologist and drug developer. This is the biggest pile of horse-s– I have seen in months of horses–,” declared Peter H Proctor MD, PhD.

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Brutal’: Trump Approval Tanks as Support Plummets Across Key Issues, Poll Shows

 

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‘Glass Jaws’: Democrats Cast Ernst Exit as Harbinger of Weakening GOP

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U.S. Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA), once seen as a possible Republican Secretary of Defense, or vice-presidential or presidential candidate in a more traditionally conservative environment, is expected to announce that she will not seek re-election next year. The news has sent shockwaves through the political system, with some Democrats — especially her challengers — rejoicing, and some critics and political operatives suggesting the move shows the GOP brand is weakening, especially given the number of other prominent Republicans who have already announced their retirement.

“Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa has told confidantes she plans to reveal next week that she won’t seek reelection in 2026, multiple sources familiar with the matter told CBS News,” the media outlet’s Jennifer Jacobs first reported. “Ernst’s announcement is scheduled for Thursday, the sources said. Ernst, 55, has served in the U.S. Senate since 2015.”

Some on the left already saw a weakening Republican brand, and now see Senator Ernst’s exit as further evidence of that volatility.

Ernst joins a slew of prominent Republican Senators bowing out of their re-election races, including Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, who just won re-election in November, is mounting a run for governor.

READ MORE: Johnson Pins Gun Violence on ‘Mental Health’ After Trump Slashes $1B in School Counseling

Former Biden White House official Neera Tanden, the president and CEO of the Center for American Progress, remarked, “GOP senators are cratering in their support. Glass jaws all the way down.”

Author and political commentator Sophia A. Nelson, a Republican turned independent, on Friday predicted embattled U.S. Senators Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Susan Collins of Maine will be the next to announce their retirements.

“Democrats need to get it together,” Nelson added. “They have a real shot at the US Senate and retaking it in 2026. As well as the House of Representatives.”

In a somewhat tongue-in-cheek note, podcaster Chuck Todd responded to the news, writing: “On Earth 2, where the establishment of the GOP in 2016 successfully stopped Trump’s hostile takeover of the party, Ernst is either serving as VP, on a GOP ticket in 2020 or 2024 or had run for top spot herself.”

Back in May, Ernst was highly criticized for remarks she made at a town hall, telling voters (video below) upset over President Donald Trump’s trillion-dollar gutting of Medicaid and Medicare, “Well, we are all going to die.”

Some pointed to that gaffe as the impetus for her expected retirement.

READ MORE: ‘Brutal’: Trump Approval Tanks as Support Plummets Across Key Issues, Poll Shows

Responding to the news of Ernst’s exit, journalist Aaron Rupar snarked, “You’re saying that telling your constituents they don’t need healthcare because they’re gonna die anyway isn’t winning politics?”

Iowa Democratic state Senator Zach Wahls, who is running for Ernst’s seat, responded to the news: “Joni Ernst saw the writing on the wall. Iowans are fed up with rising costs and unchecked corruption. And next year, we’re going to flip this seat.”

Newsweek on Wednesday reported that Ernst was narrowly trailing Wahls in an in internal Wahls campaign poll, and only narrowly beating other opponents.

Iowa Democratic state Rep. Josh Turek, also running for Ernst’s seat, weighed in, commenting, “Whether it’s Joni Ernst or someone else, they’ll have to answer for supporting cutting Iowans’ healthcare in favor of a tax break for billionaires. When I’m in the Senate, I’ll never forget about Iowa.”

Meanwhile, Bloomberg News, in its coverage of Ernst’s retirement, pointed to reasons for Democratic optimism.

“One thing the national GOP cannot afford to ignore: Recent generic congressional ballots are giving a consistent edge to Democrats. A CNBC poll showed a 5-point lead for Democrats in August that had only widened since spring, something CNN pollster Harry Enten called a ‘big uh-oh’ for Republicans. In the last three elections with a new president — 2022, 2018 and 2010 — the party out of power gained enough seats in the midterms to control the House.”

The news outlet also reported that “outside of his GOP base, Trump’s legislative agenda is proving widely unpopular on his key issues: tariffs, inflation, the economy and deportation.”

See the video above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Act of Revenge’: Trump Axes Kamala Harris’s Secret Service Protection

 

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Johnson Pins Gun Violence on ‘Mental Health’ After Trump Slashes $1B in School Counseling

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Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is criticizing prominent voices on the left who denounced Republicans for urging prayer but taking no action on gun violence in the wake of the Minneapolis Catholic school mass shooting that left two young children dead and 17 wounded.

The Louisiana lawmaker pinned the blame for gun violence on “mental health” and “the human heart,” while insisting that guns are not the problem.

The House has voted to cut mental health services, including Medicaid, which is the largest payer of behavioral health services. Additionally, President Donald Trump has slashed $1 billion in school mental health programs that Congress approved in response to the 2022 Uvalde, Texas mass school shooting.

READ MORE: ‘Act of Revenge’: Trump Axes Kamala Harris’s Secret Service Protection

“It’s incredible to me that Jen Psaki and Gavin Newsom and others would attack religion, diminish the faith of millions of Americans at a time of such great tragedy,” Speaker Johnson alleged (video below). “There are a lot of commonsense solutions, things that can be done to protect children at schools and in churches that do not involve taking away the constitutional rights of law-abiding American citizens.”

Wednesday morning, Psaki, the former White House press secretary turned MSNBC anchor, lamented, “Prayer is not freaking enough. Prayers [do] not end school shootings. prayers do not make parents feel safe sending their kids to school. Prayer does not bring these kids back. Enough with the thoughts and prayers.”

Speaker Johnson continued, insisting that now is not the time to “politicize these issues.”

“And at the end of the day,” he continued, “the problem is not guns, okay, Jen Psaki? The problem is the human heart. It’s mental health.”

READ MORE: ‘Brutal’: Trump Approval Tanks as Support Plummets Across Key Issues, Poll Shows

In late April, the Trump Department of Education announced that it would stop funding “roughly $1 billion in grants that were meant to boost the ranks and training of mental health professionals who work in schools, saying the grant awards made under the Biden administration now conflict with Trump administration priorities,” Education Week reported. “The funds were authorized by Congress in the 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which passed after 19 students and two teachers lost their lives in a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.

The Trump Education Department alleged the $1 billion in funds might “undermine the well-being of the students these programs are intended to help.”

Critics blasted Johnson’s remarks.

“The GOP refuses to expand Medicaid for psychiatric care, cuts funding for ‘mental health,’ LGBTQ+ hotlines, denies the value of community services, yet feigns interest in ‘underlying causes’ of gun violence,” charged award-winning TV writer and playwright Hal Corley.

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Hard Questions’: VP Echoes False Claim About Antidepressants and Mass Shootings

 

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