food stamps

Thursday afternoon, all but 15 Republicans voted to take $40 billion out of the food stamps program. It will never pass the Senate or be signed by the President, but it was a way for Republicans to reassure their crazy Tea Party base that they're as greedy, selfish and filled with hatred as the people who vote for them are. Progressive Caucus co-chairs Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) and Keith Ellison (D-MN) and CPC Whip Barbara Lee (D-CA), like every Democrat in the House, voted NO.

I'm not a big fan of obsessive focus on deficit reduction. I'd rather see the government investing in the country's future-- our people and our infrastructure. But the Obama Administration has successfully fought to cut the deficit at a faster rate than any other Administration since World War II. I don't blame just Obama. The Republicans have made a really bad situation much, much worse.

You probably don't remember the Roaring Twenties. Conservative Republicans, corruption beyond anything ever seen in America and a haughty empowered plutocracy ruled America with an iron first. And brought on the Great Depression. FDR helped rebalance the American equation. A series of corporate-oriented presidents-- surrounded by a corporate-sponsored ruling elite-- has chipped away at almost everything FDR accomplished-- and they're working full speed to get whatever is left. Reagan, the Bushs, Clinton, Obama have all been dreadful presidents, among the worst in history.

Republican in-fighting between conservatives and the neo-fascist radicals that have been challenging them, derailed the Farm Bill in 2012. This year Boehner, Cantor and McCarthy agreed to slash food stamps really badly and figured they would pass the bloated bill subsidizing wealthy farming operations (and scammers on the Upper East Side of Manhattan).

During the Vietnam War I never thought I'd actually return to the U.S. I was so ashamed of what my country was doing to the people of Southeast Asia. But one morning I woke up in Amsterdam and realized I had been dreaming in Dutch. I decided to go home and I was back in America within 2 weeks. I had been away for nearly seven years and I had a real period of readjustment, especially when I washed up in San Francisco, a city I had never lived in.

Stephen Lee Fincher (R-TN), one of the most dishonest crooks in CongressThursday, Dick Durbin's amendment to the Farm Bill passed, rather miraculously, 59-33.

Last year, the Blue Dogs only managed to elect one mangy freshman, homophobic conservative Texas state Rep. Pete Gallego. Obama beat McCain in his district (TX-23) 50-49% in 2008 and Romney beat Obama this last time, 51-48%.