skippy the bush kangaroo: good news, better news, and news of the stupid

Friday, December 04, 2009

good news, better news, and news of the stupid

senate republican whip jon kyl (ariz.) said he expected that all but a few republicans would support the sen. ben nelson’s (d-neb) amendment, which would restrict access to abortions for women who receive federal subsidies.

but the amendment is likely to be subject to the senate’s 60-vote threshold, and kyl does not expect 20 votes on the other side to back the controversial change.

“most republicans will but i don’t think that will be enough to carry it through, it’s a 60-vote margin,” kyl told the hill thursday afternoon.

republicans control only 40 seats, which means nelson would have to pick up the support of at least 19 democrats (or 18 plus one of two independents), an unlikely scenario given strong opposition from the democratic base.

liberal democrats were confident the measure, based on an amendment rep. bart stupak (d-mich.) succeeded in adding to the house bill, would not pass the upper chamber.

some better news:

in the strongest employment report since the recession began nearly two years ago, the government said friday that the nation’s employers had all but stopped shedding jobs in november, taking some of the pressure off of president obama to come up with a wide-ranging jobs creation program.

the labor department reported that the united states economy lost 11,000 jobs in november, and the unemployment rate fell to 10 percent, down from 10.2 percent in october.

the government also significantly revised its september and october job loss estimates. september’s data was adjusted to show a loss of 139,000 jobs instead of 219,000, and in october 111,000 jobs were lost, instead of 190,000.

even allowing for the november loss, the revisions added 148,000 people to the list of those employed in the united states in november.

though the pace of job loss has been declining since a peak in january, the november number was surprising. economists had been expecting a turning point to come in the late spring or summer, with employers finally adding workers as a recovery takes hold. the last time the number was so bright was in december 2007, when the economy added 120,000 jobs.

and finally, some news of the stupid:

speaking to the conservative talker rusty humphries today, sarah palin left the door open to speculation about president obama's birth certificate.

"would you make the birth certificate an issue if you ran?" she was asked (around 9 minutes into the video above).

"i think the public rightfully is still making it an issue. i don't have a problem with that. i don't know if i would have to bother to make it an issue, because i think that members of the electorate still want answers," she replied.

"do you think it's a fair question to be looking at?" humphries persisted.

"i think it's a fair question, just like i think past association and past voting records -- all of that is fair game," palin said. "the mccain-palin campaign didn't do a good enough job in that area."…

palin suggested that the questions were fair play because of "the weird conspiracy theory freaky thing that people talk about that trig isn't my real son -- 'you need to produce his birth certificate, you need to prove that he's your kid,' which we have done."

"maybe we can reverse that," she said, returning to obama's birth certificate, describing the type of thinking involved with a word that isn't clear in the audio.

or in her head.

posted by skippy at 12:42 PM |

1 Comments:

Now I'm a little confused - are these the SAME Republicans who have been literally screaming for years about wefare mothers who keep having children so that they can draw still more welfare, and using this as an example as to why all welfare programs should therefore be abolished?

The same Republicans who decry providing support for what they term "multi-generational welfare families"? You know, those poor people born of other poor people, who were themselves born of still other poor people? Because having no access to abortion for the poor will obviously eliminate THAT!

So just exactly how is it that removing poor people's - because that's the only segment this amendment would affect - access to abortion is supposed to IMPROVE either of these situations?

Genius. The Republican party is rife with it.

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