——————————WHAT THE REPUBLICAN PARTY STANDS FOR TODAY

BIPARTISANSHIP WAS NEVER AN OPTION: GOP’s Anti-Obama Campaign Started Night Of Inauguration – As President Barack Obama was celebrating his inauguration at various balls, top Republican lawmakers and strategists were conjuring up ways to submarine his presidency at a private dinner in Washington. [...] The dinner lasted nearly four hours. They parted company almost giddily… Sam Stein

THE LATEST REPUBLICAN PLAN to reconcile the budget and preserve defense spending extracts even deeper cuts from programs to help the poor and Americans still reeling from the recession. Although spending levels for the budget were set in the Budget Control Act passed last summer in the deal to raise the nation’s debt limit, Republicans are pushing ahead with another plan that cuts more while trying to prevent the beginning of $600 billion in cuts over 10 years to the growth of the defense budget. – Food Stamps In Crosshairs Of Republicans’ Plan To Save Military

HOUSE REPUBLICANS this week said they would agree to keep student loan interest rates at their current level, but only if they’re allowed to gut spending on preventive health care to finance the costs. The White House balked, but the GOP didn’t care — today, the Republican bill passed, 215 to 195, largely along party lines. Several Democratic lawmakers noted the impact the GOP health care cuts would have on women’s health, and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), who’s apparently grown a little sensitive to talk about the Republican “war on women,” threw a bit of a tantrum on the House floor during the legislative debate.  I can appreciate why Boehner doesn’t want to talk about the negative impact Republican policies are having on women, but I’d remind the Speaker that the quickest way to change the conversation is for Republicans to stop pursuing policies that have a negative impact on women. In this case, rather than simply helping students because it would be good for them and the economy, Boehner’s caucus decided to play a cheap little game — they’ll keep interest rates low only if they take funding from the Prevention and Public Health Fund, which has nothing to do with student loans. — Maddow Blog

BUT RAISING TAXES ON, SAY, THE OIL AND GAS INDUSTRIES or closing loopholes or subsidies would never be a Republican option to pay for anything – According to the White House: Eliminating the Prevention and Public Health Fund would have a devastating effect on women’s health and our work to prevent disease and illness. Eliminating the Prevention and Public Health Fund would mean:

• Hundreds of thousands of women could lose access to vital cancer screenings. Prevention Fund resources are expected to help more than 300,000 women be screened for breast cancer in 2013 and more than 280,000 be screened for cervical cancer.
• Programs that help to prevent congenital heart defects, prevent fetal alcohol syndrome, and promote early identification and intervention efforts for children with developmental delays and disabilities could be eliminated.
• Tens of thousands children could lose access to immunizations.

MITT ROMNEY’S NEW “I’m rubber, you’re glue” campaign – “We will stop the unfairness of government workers getting better pay and benefits than the very taxpayers they serve,” the former Massachusetts governor said. “And we will stop the unfairness of one generation passing larger and larger debts on to the next.”  I doubt this will convince anyone other than true believers, but that’s not the point; the idea is to muddy the waters when it comes to coverage of Romney’s message. By attacking Obama on “fairness,” Romney can force the press to bring a horse race dynamic to the opposing claims—“Mr. Obama says that it’s unfair for multi-millionaires to pay a lower tax rate than middle-class families, but Mr. Romney says that what’s really unfair is the burden of debt.” The issues aren’t actually sorted out, and Romney walks away with minimal scrutiny. As an aside, I will say that there is some truth to Romney’s claim. Tax cuts for the wealthy are a major driver of short-term debt, and if we keep rates low on high-income earners—as Romney proposes—we will pass a tremendous amount of debt to future taxpayers. Rather than use federal dollars for education, infrastructure, or research, we will give it to the wealthiest Americans, and leave the next generation to deal with the consequences of high debt and a deteriorating society. That’s unfair. — American Prospect

THE M-I-DOUBLE TIZZLE is still complaining about the president “slow jamming” the news with Jimmy Fallon. — CBS News

PRESIDENT OBAMA / DEMOCRATS————————————————————

REAL TIME WITH BILL MAHER New Rules: April 27, 2012  – Maher’s final ‘new rule’ starts out with discussing what the media chooses to report about such things as the Secret Service scandal (as opposed to why Obama was in Columbia), or John Edwards and why he has a favorability rating of just 3% — and it’s NOT because he’s been accused of a campaign finance violation (it’s because of the sex scandal). Maher says, “Thanks to the Supreme Court, last week Mitt Romney’s super PAC was able to get a $10 million anonymous donation. For all we know, it came from Vladmir Putin, or Mel Gibson, or Kim dot com. The Supreme Court did a lot more to corrupt campaign finance than John Edwards. Why do we punish sex so much more than everything else? Clinton lied about a blow job, got impeached. Bush lied about a war, didn’t…” Watch the rest:

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YES WE CAN laugh at ourselves…   President Obama at the 2012 White House Correspondents’ Dinner 4.28.2012:
 
 
 
Source: sandandglass

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA told a group of women on Friday that he has been their fiercest advocate and warned that Mitt Romney’s positions on women’s issues represent a step back in time. “The choice between going backward or moving forward has never been so clear,” Obama told several hundred women at the National Issues Conference, a big-ticket annual fundraiser that’s been hosted by the Democratic National Committee for nearly two decades. And as long as I’m president, we are going to keep moving forward. You can count on that. You don’t have to take my word on it – you’ve got my signature on it,” he said, referring to the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, before adding a jab at the Romney campaign, which expressed uncertainty recently about whether the candidate supported the law. “Because something like standing up for the principle of equal pay for equal work isn’t something I’ve got to ‘get back to you on’ – it’s the first law I signed.” – POLITICO

• AND A TYPICALLY ILLITERATE RESPONSE from the world’s dumbest wingnut blogger: The Gateway Pundit: Race war, war on the rich, war on women, now this…Barack Obama Declared War on the Catholic Church and US Christians today. In Obama’s world, free birth control is a natural human right and should be supplied by the state. But he’s not a socialist? — LGF