Tag: 2022
Endorse This! Kimmel Reveals The Stupidest Thing About MAGA Republicans

Endorse This! Kimmel Reveals The Stupidest Thing About MAGA Republicans

If the Trump presidency (and post-presidency) has taught us anything, it's that there is no shortage of stupidity in the Republican Party, which now revolves around debunked insane conspiracies and denying the 2020 election rather than actual policy issues.

Perhaps that explains why Jimmy Kimmel was aghast over a new report that shows election-denying pro-Trump Republicans will be on the ballot in half the nation during the midterm elections

.“How is this a thing?” Kimmel asked on Wednesday night's episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live. “There is literally no evidence of any kind of fraud, certainly not fraud that could’ve come anywhere close to changing the outcome of the election...And yet these lowlifes continue with this lie,” he said.

“It’s the dumbest thing. Imagine if half the Republican nominees believed that chicken is a vegetable, and just said, ‘That’s it.’ This is exactly as dumb as that.”

Watch the entire segment below:

Sen. Ron Johnson's Solution For Child Care Crisis Is Predictably Awful

Sen. Ron Johnson's Solution For Child Care Crisis Is Predictably Awful

Sen. Ron Johnson thinks he has a solution to the labor crisis in child care. Typically of Johnson, his proposed solution craps in equal measure on child care workers, women receiving public assistance, and Wisconsin state law.

“When you have mothers on different kinds of public assistance, to me, an elegant solution would be, why don’t we have them help staff child care for other mothers?” Johnson asked on a recent telephone town hall. “I think there’s an imaginative solution here.”

It’s not that imaginative. Women taking care of other people’s children, formally or informally, as a way to earn a little income while caring for their own children at the same time, is not a new idea or practice, and Wisconsin banned state subsidy payments from going to child care providers where employees’ children received care in 2009, because it’s not always a good idea. (Though it can be! It’s just complicated and there need to be guardrails.) Johnson even acknowledged some of the possible problems, saying, “I understand, you know, having a mother in charge of a bunch of kids plus her own kids, she may not provide the care to the other kids.” But he still wanted to be “imaginative” about a thing that’s been done basically every way you could imagine.

Beyond Johnson’s lack of imagination, there are big problems on both sides of the equation here. Children in daycare deserve better than people who have been forced into the job without training or motivation. Early childhood education is a job that involves knowledge and training and skill, and being a mother does not automatically equip a person to care for multiple children who are not your own. Unless Johnson is envisioning a major early childhood education training system to equip women on welfare to be skilled, high-quality caregivers for young children (he’s not), he’s suggesting the creation of really inadequate care environments.

On the other side, women on welfare deserve better than to be shoved into a demanding, low-paid profession simply because they are in need of that type of service for their own kids. Many are unemployed for very good reasons beyond having children. Work requirements more generally have been shown not to reduce poverty. And giving employers essentially a pool of semi-forced labor is going to make jobs worse for everyone.

A Johnson spokesperson insisted that he was just suggesting something that already kinda-sorta happens. “His suggestion was to look at Wisconsin’s law that prevents a child care provider from receiving funds if an employee’s child receives care,” Alexa Hennings said. “He said he understood why that law is in place but suggested we reevaluate it to see if there’s some way to create a win for children and parents. Why should child care centers be different than schools that allow teachers to teach at government-funded schools where their children attend?”

So many reasons. Most child care centers are much smaller than most K-12 schools, increasing the likelihood that a child will be cared for by its own mother. He is not talking about pushing anyone into K-12 teaching for the purposes of getting schooling for their children. Kids attend schools where their parents teach usually when their parents teach in the local school, rather than there being a system set up to put parents and children into the same schools or even classrooms. It’s a blisteringly stupid comparison.

Two of Johnson’s Democratic Senate challengers responded sharply to his idea. “We have a full-blown child care crisis and a record number of moms getting knocked out of the workforce,” said state Treasurer Sarah Godlewski. “There are common-sense solutions to these problems, but Ron Johnson’s ‘imaginative’ idea would punish moms and drag us back to the 1950s. I have news for this guy: We’re not going back.”

Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes said, “The pandemic has effectively set women’s participation in the workforce back a generation, and Ron Johnson’s solution to the child care crisis—on Equal Pay Day no less—is to add to their burden.”

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos

Republicans face midterms problem

GOP Suffers Major Setback In Quest To Control House

Between President Joe Biden’s weak approval ratings, gerrymandering, and voter suppression, many pundits have been predicting that Republicans will retake the U.S. House of Representatives in November. But that remains to be seen, and Republican gerrymandering was dealt a blow in the Midwest this week when the Ohio Supreme Court — including Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor — struck down the congressional map that Ohio Republicans had in mind for the Buckeye State.

On top of that, Rep. John Katko of upstate New York has announced that he won’t be seeking reelection — which is more bad news for the GOP. Katko is one of the Republicans who is moderate enough to fare well among centrist Democrats and swing voters in his state. Neither of these problems is necessarily decisive for control of the House, but if 2022 ends up being close, a few seats on the margin could make all the difference.

The Ohio Supreme Court ruled, 4-3, that the map violated the state’s constitution by drawing the districts to unfairly favor one party over another. Columbus Dispatch reporters Jessie Balmert and Laura A. Bischoff note that the map “could have given Republicans as much as a 12-3 advantage in a state that voted for President Barack Obama and President Donald Trump twice.”

Ohio Supreme Court Justice Michael Donnelly, who was part of the majority opinion, argued, “When the dealer stacks the deck in advance, the house usually wins.”

Article reprinted with permission from Alternet

New Poll Has Republicans Losing Ground Ahead Of Midterms

New Poll Has Republicans Losing Ground Ahead Of Midterms

For months, Republicans have been saying they expect to win back control of Congress in the November midterm elections and plan to obstruct President Joe Biden's agenda if they do. But American voters may not agree with that plan, according to new polling released Tuesday.

A November USA Today/Suffolk University poll found that in the next congressional election, registered voters preferred a generic Republican candidate over a generic Democratic candidate 46 percent to 38 percent. But when the same outlet posed the same question in December, the generic Democratic candidate led 39 percent to 37 percent — a 10-point swing to the left from the previous month.

Other polling seems to confirm this shift in public opinion. A recent Economist/YouGov poll found Democratic candidates led by 43 percent -- 36 percent on a generic congressional ballot question. A December Reuters/Ipsos survey found Democrats leading by a similar margin, 40 percent -- 33 percent.

Nonetheless, Republicans in Congress have continued to talk up their chances of winning back control of the House and Senate in November. "We're going to have a hell of a year," Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), who chairs the National Republic Senatorial Committee, told the Associated Press on Friday. "Every state that Biden won by less than 10 is now a battleground state."

In a 2022 kick-off letter to his GOP House caucus, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy wrote that he hopes to "earn the majority" this year to "define what our country will be for the next decade."

If Republicans do regain control of Congress, they would work to obstruct the agenda on which Biden was elected by more than seven million votes. Since Biden's inauguration last January, Republicans in Congress have stalled votes on his nominees, unanimously opposed most of his major investment plans, and have tried to run out the clock on COVID safety measures.

Republican leaders have promised that if they regain the majority, they will seek to retaliate against Democratic lawmakers for governing by majority rule and holding GOP members accountable for violent extremism. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said in June that a GOP majority would likely block Biden from filling Supreme Court vacancies, as it did with President Barack Obama in 2016.

McCarthy vowed in November that he would restore the committee seats of Reps. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), both of whom lost their assignments in this Congress due to their extreme rhetoric, and said they may even "have better committee assignments" in the future.

Last week, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said he was 90 percent confident in a GOP House majority and 50/50 on a GOP Senate as well. He suggested on his podcast that if Republicans regained control of the House in November, they would likely move to impeach Biden as retribution for House Democrats impeaching former President Donald Trump.

"What is good for the goose is good for the gander," Cruz said. "I think there are potentially multiple grounds to consider for impeachment."

Article reprinted with permission from The American Independent