OMG! They Killed Elmo!

John the Ripper Boehner and his radical Right nihilists zeroed out public broadcasting as part of their blood revenge for Juan Williams. But they did keep the Pentagon's sponsorship of a NASCAR racing car.Democratic representative Barbara Lee's amendment to keep the Pentagon's budget at 2008 levels was defeated. Instead,Republicans opted to kill Elmo, Big Bird and the Cookie Monster.

The House budget is as crazy as you could get in a once developed country. Significant cuts in the Social Security Administration will affect several hundred thousand recipients of disability and first-time social security recipients. The GOP zeroed out funding for the Consumer Protection Agency, implementation of health care reform,severely cut SEC funding so more Madoffs can be created,and cut funding for the EPA so they can not monitor the pollution from Koch Industries. There were also deep cuts in all programs aimed at alleviating the situation of the poor. But they kept the $42 billion of tax credits for the oil and gas industries and all the farm subsidies. They did kill the spare jet engine project located in Ricky Cantor and John the Ripper's district.

A first glance at the budget says that the healthcare provsiion alone will deepen the deficit by another $280 million and some 1 million jobs will be lost. Foreign aid was drastically cut, particularly humanitarian aid. The State Department, which was just trying to comeback in foreign affairs, was cut by 19%.

The Planned Parenthood vote was predicated on the idea that PP receives federal funding for abortion--Apparently, none of its $334 million goes to abortions. But the number figure is interesting. I was watching Frontline's "Bush's War", a two-part series on the Iraq War. In it, military officers spoke on camera that the United States paid Muqtada al-Sadr $330 million in cash to get him and his militia to stop fighting.

Maybe our domestic spending should be linked to our foreign policy bribes. Our Highway Fund--which the GOP also zeroed out-- should be at least equal to the amount our military is spending on the Afghanistan infrastructure.Maybe PP's funding should be pegged to the largest bribe to a foreign personality--apparently it tracks pretty closely.

Everyone says that we are heading to a budget standoff and the government will shut down. Government bureaucracies are already preparing for this eventuality. Coupled with the need--almost as immediate to lift the debt ceiling--we are walking into a volatile time. The Beltway wisdom is that Democrats have wiggle room to compromise but the Republicans don't because they are held hostage by the teabaggers. But remember this could all be a charade. Rep. Ryan was given totalitarian control of the House Budget and maybe the sole arbiter of what actually gets proposed in counter to the almost certain Senate rejection of the looney-tune budget.

Just an aside--I would love one of the remaining conservatives in the Republican party to explain to me how a budget that actually increases the national debt and costs 1 million jobs be considered conservative.

BACK IN WISCONSIN. I have been waiting today for the arrival of the teabaggers who are being bussed into the state for free to hold their Stand By Walker Rally. I think they came because they thought it was Stand By Johnnie Walker Rally. Hermain Cain of Godfather Pizza fame is supposed to go,along with Andrew Breibart for more of his pimping videos. Special guest star is Joe the Plumber, who isn't named Joe and is not a Plumber. 1,100 signed up on Facebook and they expect 4,500 to arrive.


All of this is being paid for by the Koch Brothers. What is actually surprising is that not only are the Koch brothers directly the main contributors to Walker's campaign but they actually own most of the state. The Koch brothers own the gas and oil pipelines in the state as well as the paper mills. Last year they reduced their employees in order to increase their profit margin when demand actually had increased. The reason was that the Koch Brothers feared that President Obama would raise the tax on the top income earners and they wanted to suck $11 billion more out their businesses.

One interesting trivia point--The Koch Brothers are one of the few Americans to have financially benefited from the Molotov-Rippentrop pact between Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia. Fred Koch went to both countries after having his patents stolen in the United States and applied his oil technology in both countries, building the first stage of their massive fortune. Koch actually favored Mussolini at the time and grumbled later that Stalin purged all the engineers in Russia. Apologists have said the United States were allies with the Soviets at that time and therefore old man Koch did nothing dubious. False,this was the United States even considered entering WWII.

A Wisconsin judge refused to order the teachers back to work in Wisconsin. Democrats are now targeting 8 of the Republican senators for recall. Walker can be recalled next January. The law says the office holder must have served at least a year before recall. The teabaggers are planing to recall the democrats.

Two polls of Wisconsin reveal the majority of the state oppose the Budget Repair Bill.

Our media basically frames the issue as a budget crisis. Governor Walker even talked about the budget repair bill today without mentioning all its union-busting elements. Leave it to Pat Buchanan to say that the average teacher in Wisconsin earns $100,000. False--it's $42,000. Ed Schultz has done a superb job covering the demonstrations on the ground but I wish he would knock off the anti-Obama rhetoric. John the Ripper has already blasted Obama for sending his Organizing for America out to Wisconsin to help out. Rumors have Bill Clinton going out to speak to the demonstrators.

Fox and others are circulating rumors that the Governor's life is in danger. I notice they never report on the thousands of death threats to President Obama from their viewers. And the right-wing pundits are denouncing "labor goons". I guess they mean the bagpipe playing firefighters marching in their kilts into the capital and the fact that demonstrators unveiled a huge American Flag in the rotunda. Definitely scary people.

Leave it to Fox News,jr.--CNN--to give the teabaggers publicity for their misspelled signs. If the demonstrators are goons, then why can they spell and the teabaggers can't?

Fox news has reported that the White House is behind the demonstrators--meaning having organized the demonstrators. Their are no grass-roots except the astro-turf groups.

Oh, by the way, the AFL-CIO has offered to agree to the benefit cuts and other budget reducing measures but wants all the union busting stuff dropped from the law.