With Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl of Arizona blocking the extension of unemployment benefits, you have to wonder how the Republicans expect to sell the idea that there are populists who are looking out for the little guy. It just seems stupid to me, especially because the GOP will eventually cave and give the extension anyway. It depresses me that the Republicans get any traction at all with ordinary working (or not-working, at this point) Americans.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
I wrote Reid today and basically asked him why 1 senator can hold this up for 15 million Americans.
I also mentioned I would be homeless next month when my benefits run out.
There’s some serious procedural problems in the Senate to have this happen.
I doubt if I will get an answer. I wish all of the unemloyed were engaged enough to write Reid. Most don’t even know what the hell is going on.
Send me your email and I’ll forward it to Reid as though it were me. I am actually one of his constituents in Nevada. We don’t have a huge population and we tend to get real responses when we write his office. email to randyholm (at) gmail.com.
But it’s true that one senator can hold up anything. You might do better to have Arizona residents SCREAM at Senator Kyl for being such an asshole to the unemployed (not by choice.) But he just won re-election and is not up for re-election for a while. Maybe it’s best also have those Arizona residents SCREAM at Sen. Mc Cain (who IS up for re-election in 2010) to have him talk some sense to his fellow Arizona senator.
Since there are more people working than not, that is to say unemployment is less than 50%, there is mileage to be gained in portraying the unemployed as lazy loafers that are eating YOUR tax money. Sometimes, the racial angle is not so subtly thrown in. Many white blue collar workers and some black and Latino bite on this bait.
In other words there are American’s that are stupider than a bag of hammers.
nalbar
Yes. The level of support for Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and Fox News among my fellow workers is astounding to me. They swallow all that garbage and blame their plight on those in even worse circumstance. They truly believe that American Health Care is the best in the world and that Canadians are begging to get into the USA to get treatment denied them in Canada. This despite several of them having had to declare bankruptcy because of medical costs. The worst are the peacetime veterans who are unbelievably bellicose, calling for jihad (in essence) against the whole Muslim world (and France) because of 9-11. Some even still believe that Saddam Hussein had WMD. The Vietnam veterans, several of whom fought in Tet, are much more anti-war.
At the core, even Democrats with Liberal beliefs, don’t trust the government. Thirty years of Republican propaganda and Chicago Machine corruption have corroded their faith. One reason, besides morality, that I advocate Progressives severing ties to these corrupt city machines.
I figure the percentage stupider than a bag of hammers is around 35-45 percent, depending on the season (too cold or too hot= more stupid).
nalbar
Yeah. Limbaugh has his listeners convinced that the stimulus bill, which did give increases to food stamps recipients, was just a campaign promise to the poor and the illegal aliens who voted him in – giving them more money to spend on liquor, cigarettes and porn mag’s (all of which are forbidden under the food stamps program.) But facts don’t matter to this crowd. They believe what El Rushbo tells them.
…Stupider than two bags of broken hammers.
Why isn’t this more known? You think Huffington Post would make a major stink about this but no it always about Obama or the Dems being sell outs.
So let’s see, in the last 3 days the Republicans voted against allowing a gang rape victim from having her day in court, oppose funding the troops because the bill contains legislation that offers protection to gays and lesbians and now today block the extension of unemployment benefits. How any sane person can have anything to do with today’s Republican Party is just beyond me.
And you’re right about Huffington Post. Every day the headline is about how Obama and the Democrats are evil and the world is going to end as a result.
In the last couple of days there was actually some decent news. Our trade deficit actuallly narrowed for the first time in nearly half a year, and retail sales went up last month. Nothing spectacular, but still no mention.
And then Republicans block unemployment benefits, and no screaming headline about it. Weird.
As bad as Democrats can be at times, Republicans just warrant a whole othr level of contempt
All I keep saying over and over and over is
DIDN’T WE WIN??? AREN’T WE IN THE MAJORITY???
I don’t know what’s up with Huff Post. They’ve had the same headline up all day. Not a mention about this and I haven’t seen it on any other blogs either.
Oh wait- I know- we unemployed are a bunch of slackers who enjoy being broke, on the dole, credit ruined, living on the streets and not eating.
That has to be it.
I was unemployed for nearly two years. I feel your pain, brother.
The salient fact in American politics is that there are always enough people, even in a recession, who would volunteer to live with their family in a cardboard box under a railroad bridge, and toast sparrows on an old curtain rod over an open fire, if you would only guarantee them that the people in the next box over don’t even get the sparrow.
You get to be the people in the next box over.
I would expect any vote on extending unemployment benefits to be a close one — it’s hard to bet against the fundamental depravity of mankind.
Especially if the people in the next box, the one without the sparrows, have a darker hue.
“archetypal” robber baron jay gould purportedly once boasted:
nothing says more about the republicans’ attitude towards ordinary working americans.
The GOP has been doing this forever. And yes, the question is why does anyone who works for a living vote for these miserable fucks?
We live up in the mountains nearly 3 hrs away from Denver, and it was sunny, relatively warm and only a bit breezy today. Actually, from what I understand, the mts interrupt the flow of arctic air that has no impediments along the Front Range. So, even though we more than 2k ft higher than Denver, we often have milder weather. Strange, isn’t it?
Oops. Guess I responded to the wrong post. No harm done.
Cold as banker’s heart here in Chicago. Had to chip ice off the windows to drive to work.
It was beautiful in SoCal today. This is always our best time of year. People think summer time is, but we get on shore clouds then. It’s always Oct through Dec.
I did have to turn the heater in my reef tank back on though.
nalbar
Ahhh! I’ve always wished that I had enough money to afford a house in SoCal.
Where you can go 2 years with only a 5-6 inches of rain? And no rain at all for 9 months at a crack?
As for the “June gloom” mentioned above, unless one is a beachophile, it was a welcome respite before the scorchers (literally) of August through September.
No thanks. We bailed after 30 years
Thirty years of Chicago snow and sleet have me California Dreaming.
KYL is who we thought the GOP is. come on…this is what they do