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The GOP: Rich People Arguing Over How Much They Hate The Poor

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Even though it is sort of my job to do so, I have a really hard time sitting through these GOP debates. First of all, there are thousands of them. These people have shared the same stage so often that are now all eligible for Tony awards. After sixteen of these things, what topics could possibly remain unexplored? Their favorite Pizza toppings? Which is their favorite Kardashian sister? With thirteen or so debates left, we may be treated to arm wrestling matches between Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, or a Rick Perry karaoke version of “My Heart Will Go On (Theme from Titanic)” before this is over.

Second, they aren’t “debates” so much as they are contests to see who can best slander Barack Obama. Debating usually involves people having divergent opinions on the issues. As policy nuance isn’t allowed in Republican politics, everything becomes a question of volume. “You hate the Health Care Bill? Well I REALLY hate it. Nobody hates sick people as much as I do.”

This is how you wind up with Newt Gingrich coming out in favor of putting poor children to work cleaning toilets for their institutional betters. To be fair, it’s possible that Newt would have done this anyway. Newt Gingrich is a pretty big asshole, so it’s hard to tell. Think I’m joking? Check it out this quote from the man himself:

It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods, entrapping children in, first of all, child laws, which are truly stupid … You say to somebody, you shouldn’t go to work before you’re what, 14, 16 years of age, fine. You’re totally poor. You’re in a school that is failing with a teacher that is failing. … Most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school. The kids would actually do work, they would have cash, they would have pride in the schools, they’d begin the process of rising.

Delightful. This idea has the virtue of being at the same time insulting, patronizing, and horrible on a level rare for even the likes of Newt Gingrich. The idea of making destitute ten-year old children work as janitors for the amusement of the wealthy is positively Dickensian. This is one of the reasons I look forward to the general election should Newt grab the nomniation. The commercials write themselves.

INT. Classroom – Day

(A young boy in coveralls pushes a broom down a hallway, probably in slow motion, while wealthy children laugh heartily and throw change at him. Audio of Newt’s asinine comments plays in the background.)

V/O (Cont.): Help Barack Obama put a stop to the Gingrich Education Plan. Tell Newt to leave the children alone.

See? It’s that easy.

The other thing about Newt’s idiotic statement is that it shows an almost perfect ignorance regarding how hard janitorial work actually is. That Newt assumes this work can be performed by children is wildly insulting to the many thousands of hard working and chronically underpaid janitorial professionals. His disrespect for working people shows a level of detachment and snobbery sufficient to brand Gingrich as the worst sort of privileged, arrogant aristocrat, oblivious to the lives the non-wealthy live.

 

When did Lyndon Johnson’s war on poverty turn into a Republican war on the poor? $10,000 wagers are about half a step away from paying homeless people to fight each other.

 

Remember, before Newt Gingrich was a big shot political juggernaut, he was but a lowly Geography professor at the University of West Georgia. I expect he ran into a great deal of janitorial staff in his time there, and I can only imagine the condescension they must have endured from Professor Gingrich. The University of West Georgia, as it turns out, is looking for some help in the Custodial Services Department, and they have a very nice description of what janitorial work involves:

This person will work in academic buildings, administrative buildings and residence halls on a daily basis cleaning restrooms, offices, classrooms, gathering and disposing of trash and vacuuming. Duties and responsibilities include: maintaining the appearance of offices, classrooms, hallways, laboratories, lobbies, lounges, elevators, stairways and restrooms by dusting, vacuuming, sweeping and removal of trash; cleaning and polishing light fixtures, marble surfaces and trims; washing walls and woodwork, windows, door panels and sills; sweeping, vacuuming, dust mopping, wet mopping, scrubbing, stripping, restoring, buffing and waxing floors; restocking supply closets and restrooms; setting-up chairs, tables and other equipment in classrooms, meeting rooms, and public areas as required; performing other duties as assigned.

Does that sound like the sort of thing that a ten-year old could do? I’d like to see Newt hustle a few twelve-hour cleaning shifts, and then talk to me about how easy this work is. I know janitors don’t make much money, but it doesn’t make the jobs they do any less valuable or deserving of respect. Custodial staff actually work for a living, and they work extremely hard. Newt so easily demonstrates his contempt for the working class, probably because the last time he was part of it was during the Nixon administration. We can’t all be paid consultants for Freddie Mac, after all.

When did Lyndon Johnson’s war on poverty turn into a Republican war on the poor? It’s sort of their theme this cycle. If it wasn’t Herman Cain telling poor people to blame themselves for their lack of employment and failure to be fabulously wealthy, it’s widespread conservative opposition to the Payroll Tax Cut, and cowardly obstruction regarding the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The Republicans have finally found a tax cut they don’t like, and by what I sure is complete coincidence, it happens to favor the working class.

You even have Mitt Romney throwing around ten thousand dollar wagers on stage during presidential debates. I wonder if he is aware that there are millions and millions of people in the country for whom an infusion of ten thousand dollars would save their homes, or get them out of crippling debt, or help resolve the horrific financial straights they’ve found themselves in ever since greedy wall street bankers destroyed the economy. The GOP has a name for these people. They call them, “The Help.”

The concept seems clear: Government should be just big enough to protect “Job Creators,” (i.e. Rich People) but not so big as to allow for the protecting of anyone else. How long do they expect people to fall for this? Do they think they can beat a path all the way to the White House on the “Let Them Eat Cake” platform?

Here is my advice to the GOP: Try to look a little less like those two old guys from Trading Places. It’s hard to work that “Man of the People” angle when you are lighting your cigars with $100 bills. Also, consider cutting back on the $10,000 wagers a little. It’s about half a step away from paying homeless people to fight each other.

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Benjamin Phillips is a Humor Writer, Web Developer, Civics Nerd, and all around crank that spends entirely too much time shouting with deep exasperation at the television, especially whenever cable news is on. He lives in St. Louis, MO and spends most of his time staring at various LCD screens, occasionally taking walks in the park whenever his boyfriend becomes sufficiently convinced that Benjamin is becoming a reclusive hermit person. He is available for children’s parties, provided that those children are entertained by hearing a complete windbag talk for two hours about the importance of science education, or worse yet, poorly researched anecdotes PROVING that James Buchanan was totally gay. If civilization were to collapse due to zombie hoards or nuclear holocaust, Benjamin would be among the first to die as he has no useful skills of any kind. The post-apocalyptic hellscape has no real need for homosexual computer programmers who can name all the presidents in order, as well as the actors who have played all eleven incarnations of Doctor Who.

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OPINION

Noem Defends Shooting Her 14-Month Old Puppy to Death, Brags She Has Media ‘Gasping’

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5 hours ago

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April 26, 2024

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Republican Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota, a top potential Trump vice presidential running mate pick, revealed in a forthcoming book she “hated” her 14-month old puppy and shot it to death. Massive online outrage ensued, including accusations of “animal cruelty” and “cold-blooded murder,” but the pro-life former member of Congress is defending her actions and bragging she had the media “gasping.”

“Cricket was a wirehair pointer, about 14 months old,” Noem writes in her soon-to-be released book, according to The Guardian which reports “the dog, a female, had an ‘aggressive personality’ and needed to be trained to be used for hunting pheasant.”

“By taking Cricket on a pheasant hunt with older dogs, Noem says, she hoped to calm the young dog down and begin to teach her how to behave. Unfortunately, Cricket ruined the hunt, going ‘out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life’.”

“Then, on the way home after the hunt, as Noem stopped to talk to a local family, Cricket escaped Noem’s truck and attacked the family’s chickens, ‘grabb[ing] one chicken at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another’.”

READ MORE: President Hands Howard Stern Live Interview After NY Times Melts Down Over Biden Brush-Off

“Cricket the untrainable dog, Noem writes, behaved like ‘a trained assassin’.”

Except Cricket wasn’t trained. Online several people with experience training dogs have said Noem did everything wrong.

“I hated that dog,” Noem wrote, calling the young girl pup “untrainable,” “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with,” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog.”

“At that moment,” Noem wrote, “I realized I had to put her down.”

“It was not a pleasant job,” she added, “but it had to be done. And after it was over, I realized another unpleasant job needed to be done.”

The Guardian reports Noem went on that day to slaughter a goat that “smelled ‘disgusting, musky, rancid’ and ‘loved to chase’ Noem’s children, knocking them down and ruining their clothes.”

She dragged both animals separately into a gravel pit and shot them one at a time. The puppy died after one shell, but the goat took two.

On social media Noem expressed no regret, no sadness, no empathy for the animals others say did not need to die, and certainly did not need to die so cruelly.

READ MORE: ‘Assassination of Political Rivals as an Official Act’: AOC Warns Take Trump ‘Seriously’

But she did use the opportunity to promote her book.

Attorney and legal analyst Jeffrey Evan Gold says Governor Noem’s actions might have violated state law.

“You slaughtered a 14-month-old puppy because it wasn’t good at the ‘job’ you chose for it?” he asked. “SD § 40-1-2.3. ‘No person owning or responsible for the care of an animal may neglect, abandon, or mistreat the animal.'”

The Democratic National Committee released a statement saying, “Kristi Noem’s extreme record goes beyond bizarre rants about killing her pets – she also previously said a 10-year-old rape victim should be forced to carry out her pregnancy, does not support exceptions for rape or incest, and has threatened to throw pharmacists in jail for providing medication abortions.”

Former Trump White House Director of Strategic Communications Alyssa Farah Griffin, now a co-host on “The View” wrote, “There are countless organizations that re-home dogs from owners who are incapable of properly training and caring for them.”

The Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson blasted the South Dakota governor.

“Kristi Noem is trash,” he began. “Decades with hunting- and bird-dogs, and the number I’ve killed because they were chicken-sharp or had too much prey drive is ZERO. Puppies need slow exposure to birds, and bird-scent.”

“She killed a puppy because she was lazy at training bird dogs, not because it was a bad dog,” he added. “Not every dog is for the field, but 99.9% of them are trainable or re-homeable. We have one now who was never going in the field, but I didn’t kill her. She’s sleeping on the couch. You down old dogs, hurt dogs, and sick dogs humanely, not by shooting them and tossing them in a gravel pit. Unsporting and deliberately cruel…but she wrote this to prove the cruelty is the point.”

Melissa Jo Peltier, a writer and producer of the “Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan” series, also heaped strong criticism on Noem.

“After 10+ years working with Cesar Millan & other highly specialized trainers, I believe NO dog should be put down just because they can’t or won’t do what we decide WE want them to,” Peltier said in a lengthy statement. “Dogs MUST be who they are. Sadly, that’s often who WE teach them to be. And our species is a hot mess. I would have happily taken Kristi Noem’s puppy & rehomed it. What she did is animal cruelty & cold blooded murder in my book.”

READ MORE: ‘Blood on Your Hands’: Tennessee Republicans OK Arming Teachers After Deadly School Shooting

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OPINION

President Hands Howard Stern Live Interview After NY Times Melts Down Over Biden Brush-Off

Published

9 hours ago

on

April 26, 2024

By

President Joe Biden gave an nearly-unannounced, last-minute, live exclusive interview Friday morning to Howard Stern, the SiriusXM radio host who for decades, from the mid-1990s to about 2015, was a top Trump friend, fan, and aficionado. But the impetus behind the President’s move appears to be a rare and unsigned statement from the The New York Times Company, defending the “paper of record” after months of anger from the public over what some say is its biased negative coverage of the Biden presidency and, especially, a Thursday report by Politico claiming Times Publisher A.G. Sulzberger is furious the President has refused to give the “Grey Lady” an in-person  interview.

“The Times’ desire for a sit-down interview with Biden by the newspaper’s White House team is no secret around the West Wing or within the D.C. bureau,” Politico reported. “Getting the president on the record with the paper of record is a top priority for publisher A.G. Sulzberger. So much so that last May, when Vice President Kamala Harris arrived at the newspaper’s midtown headquarters for an off-the-record meeting with around 40 Times journalists, Sulzberger devoted several minutes to asking her why Biden was still refusing to grant the paper — or any major newspaper — an interview.”

“In Sulzberger’s view,” Politico explained, “only an interview with a paper like the Times can verify that the 81-year-old Biden is still fit to hold the presidency.”

But it was this statement that made Politico’s scoop go viral.

READ MORE: Justices’ Views on Trump Immunity Stun Experts: ‘Watching the Constitution Be Rewritten’

“’All these Biden people think that the problem is Peter Baker or whatever reporter they’re mad at that day,’ one Times journalist said. ‘It’s A.G. He’s the one who is pissed [that] Biden hasn’t done any interviews and quietly encourages all the tough reporting on his age.'”

Popular Information founder Judd Legum in March documented The New York Times’ (and other top papers’) obsession with Biden’s age after the Hur Report.

Thursday evening the Times put out a “scorching” statement, as Politico later reported, not on the newspaper’s website but on the company’s corporate website, not addressing the Politico piece directly but calling it “troubling” that President Biden “has so actively and effectively avoided questions from independent journalists during his term.”

Media watchers and critics pushed back on the Times’ statement.

READ MORE: ‘To Do God Knows What’: Local Elections Official Reads Lara Trump the Riot Act

“NYT issues an unprecedented statement slamming Biden for ‘actively and effectively avoid[ing] questions from independent journalists during his term’ and claiming it’s their ‘independence’ that Biden dislikes, when it’s actually that they’re dying to trip him up,” wrote media critic Dan Froomkin, editor of Press Watch.

Froomkin also pointed to a 2017 report from Poynter, a top journalism site published by The Poynter Institute, that pointed out the poor job the Times did of interviewing then-President Trump.

Others, including former Biden Deputy Secretary of State Brian McKeon, debunked the Times’ claim President Biden hasn’t given interviews to independent journalists by pointing to Biden’s interviews with CBS News’ “60 Minutes” and a 20-minute sit-down interview with veteran journalist John Harwood for ProPublica.

Former Chicago Sun-Times editor Mark Jacob, now a media critic who publishes Stop the Presses, offered a more colorful take of Biden’s decision to go on Howard Stern.

The Times itself just last month reported on a “wide-ranging interview” President Biden gave to The New Yorker.

Watch the video and read the social media posts above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Doesn’t Care if Pregnant Women Live or Die’: Alito Slammed Over Emergency Abortion Remarks

 

 

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CNN Smacks Down Trump Rant Courthouse So ‘Heavily Guarded’ MAGA Cannot Attend His Trial

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11 hours ago

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April 26, 2024

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Donald Trump’s Friday morning claim Manhattan’s Criminal Courts Building is “heavily guarded” so his supporters cannot attend his trial was torched by a top CNN anchor. The ex-president, facing 34 felony charges in New York, had been urging his followers to show up and protest on the courthouse steps, but few have.

“I’m at the heavily guarded Courthouse. Security is that of Fort Knox, all so that MAGA will not be able to attend this trial, presided over by a highly conflicted pawn of the Democrat Party. It is a sight to behold! Getting ready to do my Courthouse presser. Two minutes!” Trump wrote Friday morning on his Truth Social account.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins supplied a different view.

“Again, the courthouse is open the public. The park outside, where a handful of his supporters have gathered on trials days, is easily accessible,” she wrote minutes after his post.

READ MORE: ‘Assassination of Political Rivals as an Official Act’: AOC Warns Take Trump ‘Seriously’

Trump has tried to rile up his followers to come out and make a strong showing.

On Monday Trump urged his supporters to “rally behind MAGA” and “go out and peacefully protest” at courthouses across the country, while complaining that “people who truly LOVE our Country, and want to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, are not allowed to ‘Peacefully Protest,’ and are rudely and systematically shut down and ushered off to far away ‘holding areas,’ essentially denying them their Constitutional Rights.”

On Wednesday Trump claimed, “The Courthouse area in Lower Manhattan is in a COMPLETE LOCKDOWN mode, not for reasons of safety, but because they don’t want any of the thousands of MAGA supporters to be present. If they did the same thing at Columbia, and other locations, there would be no problem with the protesters!”

After detailing several of his false claims about security measures prohibiting his followers from being able to show their support and protest, CNN published a fact-check on Wednesday:

“Trump’s claims are all false. The police have not turned away ‘thousands of people’ from the courthouse during his trial; only a handful of Trump supporters have shown up to demonstrate near the building,” CNN reported.

“And while there are various security measures in place in the area, including some street closures enforced by police officers and barricades, it’s not true that ‘for blocks you can’t get near this courthouse.’ In reality, the designated protest zone for the trial is at a park directly across the street from the courthouse – and, in addition, people are permitted to drive right up to the front of the courthouse and walk into the building, which remains open to the public. If people show up early enough in the morning, they can even get into the trial courtroom itself or the overflow room that shows near-live video of the proceedings.”

READ MORE: Justices’ Views on Trump Immunity Stun Experts: ‘Watching the Constitution Be Rewritten’

 

 

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