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Zorro

(15,760 posts)
Thu Jun 11, 2015, 08:49 PM Jun 2015

House panel OKs bill punishing State over Benghazi response

Source: AP

Over White House objections, a House panel approved a bill Thursday that withholds hundreds of millions of dollars from the State Department until it produces more documents to lawmakers investigating the deadly 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya.

The $47.8 billion bill for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 also restricts funds to set up a diplomatic presence in Cuba — a setback to the Obama administration's effort to thaw relations with the communist state after a half century. The Republican-led Appropriations Committee approved the bill by voice vote.

The provisions are just the latest salvo as newly-empowered Republicans try to use their power over the federal purse to challenge President Barack Obama on the environment, health care, regulation of the Internet, and abortion — just for starters. As the same time a battle is ongoing between the White House, its Democratic allies and Republicans controlling Congress that's about to come to a head next week with a Senate filibuster of a half trillion-plus Pentagon funding bill approved by a Senate panel on Thursday.

Democrats are trying to jump-start a budget summit aimed at swapping longer-term budget cuts and new revenues to provide relief for domestic agencies hit by returning budget cuts known as sequestration. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said he'd welcome a call to start a budget summit — rather than reams of veto threats and position papers — but he's yet to hear directly from Obama about one.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/house-panel-oks-bill-punishing-state-over-benghazi-165435764--politics.html

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House panel OKs bill punishing State over Benghazi response (Original Post) Zorro Jun 2015 OP
Budget Summit = Sellout Can 2016 come soon enough for this country? nt winstars Jun 2015 #1
Didn't Benghazi happen because they cut funds for embassey guards...... Historic NY Jun 2015 #2
A-yep. Gobsmacking, isn't it? nt DRoseDARs Jun 2015 #3
#1 riversedge Jun 2015 #4
Are the people sent by the Devil himself? Something is very wrong here. Elmer S. E. Dump Jun 2015 #5
They are consistent in their strategy to reduce the government so they can 'drown it in a bathtub.' freshwest Jun 2015 #7
It was a rhetorical question, but your answer was first class! Elmer S. E. Dump Jun 2015 #8
Message auto-removed Name removed Jun 2015 #6

freshwest

(53,661 posts)
7. They are consistent in their strategy to reduce the government so they can 'drown it in a bathtub.'
Fri Jun 12, 2015, 01:09 PM
Jun 2015

Those are the words of the one they pledged years ago. Grover Nordquist. In 2012. The GOP took break after break to avoid acting on anything Obama and the American people wanted. I penned this in 2012:

Republicans always let ALEC write their bills and go home early to get more paychecks by selling out the country. They put Romney on the ballot to be Nordquist's Robosigner-in-Chief:

All we have to do is replace Obama... We are not auditioning for fearless leader. We don't need a president to tell us in what direction to go. We know what direction to go. We want the Ryan budget... We just need a president to sign this stuff. We don't need someone to think it up or design it. The leadership now for the modern conservative movement for the next 20 years will be coming out of the House and the Senate.

Pick a Republican with enough working digits to handle a pen to become president of the United States. This is a change for Republicans: the House and Senate doing the work with the president signing bills. His job is to be captain of the team, to sign the legislation that has already been prepared.


~ Grover Nordquist

They've been implementing every item on the Koch brothers bucket list. They have gotten just about every thing they have on their list, playing the CT, Tea, GOP and the public who don't understand what the world the Koch brothers are forcing on us to accept this.

BERNIE SANDERS Uncovers 1980 Koch Agenda- "What Do the Koch Brothers Want?"

What else do the Koch brothers want?

In 1980, David Koch ran as the Libertarian Party's vice-presidential candidate in 1980.

Let's take a look at the 1980 Libertarian Party platform.

Here are just a few excerpts of the Libertarian Party platform that David Koch ran on in 1980:


We urge the repeal of federal campaign finance laws, and the immediate abolition of the despotic Federal Election Commission.

We favor the abolition of Medicare and Medicaid programs.

We oppose any compulsory insurance or tax-supported plan to provide health services, including those which finance abortion services.

We also favor the deregulation of the medical insurance industry.

We favor the repeal of the fraudulent, virtually bankrupt, and increasingly oppressive Social Security system. Pending that repeal, participation in Social Security should be made voluntary.

We propose the abolition of the governmental Postal Service. The present system, in addition to being inefficient, encourages governmental surveillance of private correspondence. Pending abolition, we call for an end to the monopoly system and for allowing free competition in all aspects of postal service.

We oppose all personal and corporate income taxation, including capital gains taxes.

We support the eventual repeal of all taxation.

As an interim measure, all criminal and civil sanctions against tax evasion should be terminated immediately.

We support repeal of all law which impede the ability of any person to find employment, such as minimum wage laws.

We advocate the complete separation of education and State. Government schools lead to the indoctrination of children and interfere with the free choice of individuals. Government ownership, operation, regulation, and subsidy of schools and colleges should be ended.

We condemn compulsory education laws and we call for the immediate repeal of such laws.

We support the repeal of all taxes on the income or property of private schools, whether profit or non-profit.

We support the abolition of the Environmental Protection Agency.

We support abolition of the Department of Energy.

We call for the dissolution of all government agencies concerned with transportation, including the Department of Transportation.

We demand the return of America's railroad system to private ownership. We call for the privatization of the public roads and national highway system.

We specifically oppose laws requiring an individual to buy or use so-called "self-protection" equipment such as safety belts, air bags, or crash helmets.

We advocate the abolition of the Federal Aviation Administration.

We advocate the abolition of the Food and Drug Administration.

We support an end to all subsidies for child-bearing built into our present laws, including all welfare plans and the provision of tax-supported services for children.

We oppose all government welfare, relief projects, and aid to the poorprograms. All these government programs are privacy-invading, paternalistic, demeaning, and inefficient. The proper source of help for such persons is the voluntary efforts of private groups and individuals.

We call for the privatization of the inland waterways, and of the distribution system that brings water to industry, agriculture and households.

We call for the repeal of the Occupational Safety and Health Act.

We call for the abolition of the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

We support the repeal of all state usury laws.

In other words, the agenda of the Koch brothers is not only to defund Obamacare. The agenda of the Koch brothers is to repeal every major piece of legislation that has been signed into law over the past 80 years that has protected the middle class, the elderly, the children, the sick, and the most vulnerable in this country...

Tomorrow it will be Social Security, ending Medicare as we know it, repealing the minimum wage. It seems to me that the Koch brothers will not be content until they get everything they believe they are entitled to.

Our great nation can no longer be hijacked by right-wing billionaires like the Koch brothers.

For the sake of our children and our grandchildren, for the sake of our economy, we have got to let democracy prevail.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024806298

http://www.sanders.senate.gov/koch-brothers

http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a7980koch

to kpete:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024806298

That was just abou the time that Obama poked at the Koches, and Reid declared war on them, and it was beginning to get traction in the mainstream news. Then Reid was attacked with the Bundy fiasco that completely took the nation's mind off the Koch brothers, as always. As soon as the short attention span of the American public had been successfully diverted, they went to something else. They had their marching orders and they followed them. No one thought about this, there was no debate.

Read and think deeply about what that says. What it means in real life terms. Yours, those of your neighbors.

Look at history, particularly that of Europe when a local baron held the power of life and death over those in his fiefdom. Think of the effect of those without the means or money to live as the rich, to keep up and the kinds of pressures that will be applied. A person can generally avoid an involvement with government. With the landlord and the owner of resources, water and farm land and produce, not a chance.

Those who aren't in the club in the countryside will be forced out. Those who aren't the right religion or race or family will be oppressed. Women will bear the brunt, unless their man or family has enough wealth. There is a reason the GOP is big in rural areas and it's the old patrician system and the new corporate farmers. That's a lot of land and resources than can starve the urbanites at will.

Without estate taxes, which seem to be going away, their wealth above their fellows cannot be challenged. If they pay no taxes, they have little roadways and huge tracts of land that are closed off as surely as gated communities. They are now privatizing highways, and charging tolls that go into private hands for uncertain maintenance and higher prices. We are being denied freedom of association and movement by stealth, also jobs when those roadways and mass transportation is defunded. There is a reason for all they do. they have a goal they work on.

We've heard these memes for years, Americans have come to believe this is how it has to be or that it's new. It's not new, even though from those of us who grew up post FDR, it's a terrible social divider.

The plan is to 'starve the beast' as Libertarians say, and neuter the government until it is a tool they own. They want a government small enough to act to enforce their neo-feudal theocracy. Why this isn't clear to everyone, IDK. Look at it in that lens and they never, ever fail. We are feeble in the face of capital united with entitlement promoted by media.

We mock and laugh while they are changing the landscape around us, literally. History is on their side:

It's called feudalism. Where you must pay the baron to use his road and you will bow to your betters or else be killed by those who directly benefit from strong man rule.

Oh, it won't be by men on horseback in chain mail with colorful banners and clothes. More like Rand Paul bragging about his private security that makes him feel safe, while he's surrounded by 2A Solution riflemen who want to 'restore' the USA to its rightful rulers.

Open carry is one of the steps to acclimatize the American people to this. Get used to it, just keep quiet and hope that stranger doesn't shoot you. After all, you're just a peon and he's a knight of the new order. Better stand aside or be trampled (shot).

Same thing as the CSA wanted, only rich white men will rule, but it'll be global and not so much race based, but by wealth.




Where social mobility is a pipe dream, slavery is what some people are born to be in and deserve it. Historically created by the reduction of government until it is so weak it cannot enforce laws and can no longer arbitrate between social classes. That is what is happening now. When people squeal what a terrible job government is doing and not helping them, they blame them, not the Koches.

Public workers are over worked, short staffed and demoralized by shutdowns. They are losing faith in the Commons they were once proud to maintain. The more idealistic are giving up.

Government was the only force keeping feudalism at bay and everyone wants it gone. They embrace it with fantasies from films and fiction, reveling in the new world being created, and call it independendence, return to nature, etc. A lot of people will be crushed by others in the new order, it's part of the cause of the drive to put women down. They are the last resort in unpaid labor, but the beast won't be satisfied with just their sacrifice.

Grover knew cutting off funds by denying government taxes was the way and enforced the allegiance of the GOP, as the Koch brothers do now. The GOP has inserted itself in foreign policy to the extent that other nations no longer trust us to be reasonable about anything. Of course Bush, Jr. did the greatest disservice to our ideals and reputation of any POTUS in modern times. Whatever befalls the people of the USA will be cheered and then the new order will take its place. The plan is to replace it and all governments with oligarchs who will live exactly as kings of old. They will be permitted anything and rest will have to stay out of their way.

This is part of a cycle. It's also a tipping point, we can go one way or the other. There is no mystery, it's happened many times before and by the same methods employed today. We had better organize and win elections, before it's too late. Bernie has said it almost is too late to fight the billionaire class.

Thom Hartmann did a video reviewing a book by an author who states the case plainly:



This is the era we are living in, it is our choice to let it go on by not sticking together, or just stand aside and let it happen. And then shift and grift like a typical bagger. We are going into something most won't survive with little freedom of the mind allowed.

As far as the debbil, here's an old bit of prose penned by NBachers years ago that really struck my fancy, so I saved it:

Republicans serve The Beast.

From the dawn of mankind they are the regressive element that's been holding back and destroying our civilization. They nourish other-dimensional entities that feed on misery, pain, and chaos.

Republicans are their minions, and hope to share in these entities' power, or be spared the pain.

But The Beast never shares; The Beast never spares.


~NBachers


Just my thoughts this morning.

Response to Zorro (Original post)

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