I’d just like to know when Cassidy’s gonna man up and tell Henry Rollins, that he’s his Dad?
Only when jamming on “Crossroads.”
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Cassidy said the priority for the Republican Party should be defeating President Joe Biden in 2024
Looks like Dr Cassidy forgot the physicians’ creed of “First do no harm”. The priority of the Republican Party needs to be preservation of democracy. If they can’t agree to that then they are the enemy.
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Oh, the grift involved much more than tax cuts.
Years before George W. Bush was sworn in as our 43rd president, Iraq was in the sights of the neoconservatives behind the Project for a New American Century. Before the smoke from the World Trade Center towers even cleared up, a ginned-up case for war against Iraq was being made to the American people.
But for starters, they enacted a huge tax cut, both to reward their donors and also to erode the projected trillion-dollar budget surplus they inherited from the Clinton administration in order to obtain political cover to cut domestic spending and other Democratic priorities under the banner of practicing “fiscal conservatism.”
Oil interests, here and in oil-rich petrostates such as Saudi Arabia and Russia, made fabulous profits, as the removal of Iraqi oil from the world markets sent prices soaring from about $30 to over $100 a barrel.
And military expenditures skyrocketed, and so did no-bid contracts to politically connected firms such as Cheney’s Halliburton.
But that was not all our homegrown oligarchs were after.
The Republicans in power parleyed the burst dot.com bubble to foment what they cynically called a “jobless recovery” fueled by real estate speculation, deregulation of Wall Street and investment banks, manipulation of energy markets epitomized by the Enron debacle, and profiteering in the healthcare sector.
And then another huge tax cut, like the previous one also weighed toward favoring the super-rich
They enacted an unfunded Medicare Part D prescription drug program without any cost controls whatsoever that locked Americans into paying up to five times more for the same medication as in the rest of the world.
They got private Medicare Advantage HMOs, which, instead of costing less than traditional Medicare, as they had promised, were paid up to 15 percent more to do nothing more than to act as middlemen, and if not fixed under the Affordable Care Act the situation was projected to bankrupt Medicare by 2017.
And then, after President Bush was re-elected, they unveiled a surprise plan to privatize Social Security, which, if this multi-trillion dollar cash grab had succeeded, would have caused untold misery and impoverishment because of the events that unfolded just a few years later.
They continued their outsourcing and their assault on labor unions, signing free trade agreements with no conditions whatsoever on labor rights, human rights, or environmental protections as 60,000 factories closed and half of high-tech jobs were outsourced, all on the myth of the infallibility of free markets.
Those reckless policies and looting sprees plunged the nation, and the world, into the worst economic and financial collapse since the Great Depression.
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What, me worry?
By law, the starting amount of a Member’s retirement annuity may not exceed 80% of his or her final salary. There were 611 retired Members of Congress receiving federal pensions based fully or in part on their congressional service as of October 1, 2016. Of this number, 335 had retired under CSRS and were receiving an average annual pension of $74,028
Free Healthcare for me, not for thee.
The same people you want to take away S.S. from, are paying for your damn pension.
Substantial government pension for me, no Social Security for thee…
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The psyche of every so-called “conservative” is nothing but projection. They’re weak, frightened, cruel, dimwitted criminal assholes. Whatever invective they hurl at you should be worn with honor, since they’re admitting what they are deep down.
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I’m well aware of all of it. It’s not just the crime of the century. Under Republican rule it’s been a century of crime ever since Reagan.
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And this century’s first presidency started out with a crime.
In the aftermath of the 2000 U.S. presidential election, the vote count in Miami, Florida was stopped, and Republican apologists and operatives hailed the infamous Brooks Brothers Riot as a spontaneous and principled gathering of patriotic Miamians determined to prevent Al Gore from stealing Florida’s electoral votes for president.
That is, until their flight expenses showed up on George Bush’s campaign expense report.
The Bush supporters, with the help of the U.S. Supreme Court, managed to stop the vote count and usher in the Bush presidency with what amounted to a coup.
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Members of Congress—retired or not—do not get free healthcare.
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No, since Nixon. Remember the millions of deaths in SE Asia?
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Too true.
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Also worth mentioning that Cassidy is full of shit. Biden does have a plan, but it’s unlikely to pass until we get the trifecta again.
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What’s that saying about a stopped clock?
Yeah, I would venture to say that Impeachment I should have been enough of a political slam dunk for the castrati of the GOP to jettison this piece of filth and salvage what they could with Chief Eunuch Mike Pence as president but nooooo.
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Funny how the Senator doesn’t realize that Trump is not a Republican, and therefore not subjected to the desires of the other members of the GOP. When you make a deal with the Devil the odds are in the Devil’s favor. That is unless your name is Johnny and you’re a fiddler in GA.
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Nice Try, Senator, but even the “responsible” and “sane” Republicans among you always stop at “he’s gonna lose.” The game is given away at the end when he essentially tells us that, if it comes down to it, he’ll vote for Trump.
His concern comes down not to, “I can’t support somebody who’s been indicted for 91 felonies and should end up convicted–he’s immoral and criminal and shouldn’t be president,” but rather, “Unfortunately, many other Americans won’t vote for a criminal so, sigh…we have to nominate somebody who isn’t a criminal. But if, in your wisdom, cult members, you see fit to pick him again, you bet I’ll jump in line! What’s the fate of a republic when you could end up with four more years of Sleepy Joe and the Biden Crime Family?”
Unfit for a senator. Unfit for a citizen.
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Show a spine and get the 14th Amendment process started instead of beating your gums about it.
And if he doesn’t drop out, I’ll vote for him anyway. Earthworms have more backbone.
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