Year: 2010

Seniors Take Note: House, Senate GOP Killed Payment to Replace Your Social Security Cost of Living Increase

Jon Ponder

How have Republicans used the “mandate” they received from the tea party and petulant swing voters last month? They have, as the president said, held the middle class hostage in order to extend the tax break for millionaires, despite the fact that the tax cut has not spurred job growth in the ten years it has been around, that it turned the Clinton surplus into deficits in the last decade, and that it will add another $700 billion to the deficit over the 10 years.

Meanwhile, while they have voted down bills that would benefit the middle class because they claim to be worried about, yeah, you guessed it, the deficit. On Friday, Republicans in the House voted against a tax break just for the middle class. Democrats were able to pass the bill in the House without Republican support, but Republicans killed it in the Senate. Yesterday, Republicans in both the Senate and the House voted down a payment to replace the Social Security COLA increase:

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Kansas Hate Group Will Protest at Elizabeth Edwards’ Funeral in Raleigh on Saturday

Jon Ponder
Left: Counter-protesters use American flags to hide hateful signs carried by Westboro cult members. Right: Elizabeth Edwards.
Left: Counter-protesters use American flags to hide hateful signs carried by Westboro cult members at a funeral earlier this year. Right: Elizabeth Edwards.

Raleigh News & Observer:

Westboro Baptist Church, a group with a history of staging protests at funerals and issuing anti-gay statements, is planning to picket the Saturday funeral of Elizabeth Edwards.

The group said it will picket outside Edenton Street United Methodist Church in Raleigh from 12:15 until 1 p.m. when the funeral is scheduled to begin.

The group, based in Topeka, Kan., travels nationally to picket funerals.

The group came into the national spotlight when members picketed the funeral of Matthew Shepard, a young man from Wyoming who was beaten to death by two men because of his homosexuality. Westboro has protested at the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan and well-known people such as Fred Rogers, Coretta Scott King and Jerry Falwell.

Lately, decent Americans have been peacefully counter-protesting this hate group by blocking their signs with large American flags. If you live in the Triangle area and you’re free on Saturday, the church is at 228 West Edenton Street downtown, a few blocks from the state capitol. Flags are optional.

Verbatim

Buck Banks

Tragedy comes in threes. Pearl Harbor, Elizabeth Edwards’s passing and Barack Obama’s announcement of extending the tax cuts, which is good, but also extending the unemployment benefits.

— Christine O’Donnell (R), once again showing her prowess at the What Doesn’t Belong with the Others Game, quoted by The Hill.

Verbatim

Buck Banks

I don’t think there are any sure things in this kind of endeavor. And I wouldn’t be honest with you and with the viewers if I didn’t convey
that.

— Gen. David Petraeus, in an interview with ABC News, saying he’s not sure of victory in Afghanistan by 2014.

Verbatim

Buck Banks

What I got out of the election is not so much that we won but they lost. Now we’ve been given a second chance. But we have to go earn it.

— House Speaker-designate John Boehner (R-OH), quoted by the New Yorker, saying the Republicans’ landslide victory in November was probationary.