Cruelty

Political Cartoon is by Joe Heller in the Green Bay Press-Gazette.

Early Presidential Preferences

I know it's way too early (and polls this early are pretty meaningless), but I'm a political junkie and I find things like this extremely interesting. As expected, this Public Policy Polling survey shows that Hillary Clinton is far out in the lead among Democrats -- and if she wants the nomination, I doubt she would even have any serious opponent.

But what made this survey even more interesting is that PPP also asked about preferences if Clinton was to decide not to run -- and about preferences if both Clinton and Biden were to not run for the nomination. It gives us an idea of the popularity of some of the other Democrats. I was gratified to see just how popular Elizabeth Warren has become in the short time she has been in the Senate. A couple of years ago, she was a virtually unknown public official. Now she is the third most popular Democrat nationwide.

Meanwhile, the Republican field is bunched up, with no real favorite yet. The only significant thing is the fall of Chris Christie -- who has gone from leading candidate to back in the pack.

This Public Policy Polling survey was done between January 23rd and 26th of 334 Democratic primary voters and 457 Republican primary voters -- with a 5.4 point margin of error for Democrats and a 4.6 margin of error for Republicans.

Clueless

Political Cartoon is by Pat Bagley in the Salt Lake Tribune.

A Probably Meaningless Statistic

Political parties and candidates are beginning to realize the value of being on the internet. President Obama showed the way -- breaking all kinds of donation records by using the internet, both e-mails and social networks.

Both of the gubernatorial candidates in Texas, Wendy Davis (D) and Greg Abbott (R), are trying to follow that lead. And both of them have created Facebook pages to further their campaigns. But Wendy is either better at using the social network, or her campaign is generating more enthusiasm.

As I write this post, the Wendy Davis page on Facebook has garnered 400,237 likes (followers), while the Greg Abbott page has 267,395 -- a substantial difference. This doesn't necessarily mean Wendy will win in November -- but it is a good early sign.

Neanderthal

Political Cartoon is by Nick Anderson in the Houston Chronicle.

Democratic Women Senators Call For Economic Justice

The Democratic women senators just stood together at an amazing event where we delivered a very important message: No American woman should ever work a full-time job and still raise her children in poverty.

Yet at a time when 400 American families have more wealth than 150 million, an American single mom earning minimum wage at a full-time job takes home just $15,000 a year to support her family -- below the poverty line.

It's just not right, and we've got to do something about it.

That's why the Democratic women of the Senate have joined together to say: It is time to raise the minimum wage!

Raising the minimum wage will help millions of hard-working families -- but it will especially help 15 million American women.

• After all, American women represent two-thirds of all workers earning the minimum wage.
• American women are the main breadwinners, or joint breadwinners, in two-thirds of the families across the country.
• And American women are two-thirds of tipped workers.

Let me be clear: Raising the minimum wage isn't a job killer; it's an economy booster. Economists predict that raising the minimum wage will add $22 billion to America's GDP while creating 84,000 new jobs.

That's because when you raise the minimum wage, you help more families earn more income that they can save and spend. That's good for businesses all across the country that sell more goods and services. And when businesses sell more goods and services, they hire more workers.

It's a virtuous cycle that helps women, that helps families, and that helps our country.

We are so pleased that President Obama made raising the minimum wage a centerpiece of his State of the Union address on Tuesday -- and now it's up to Congress to heed his call.

Please stand with the Democratic women of the Senate now -- and urge Congress to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour!

It's not rocket science: If you work hard and play by the rules, you should be able to provide for your family and have an opportunity to get ahead.

Now let's make that happen.

Barbara Boxer, U.S. Senator

Tammy Baldwin, U.S. Senator
Kirsten Gillibrand, U.S. Senator
Mazie Hirono, U.S. Senator
Patty Murray, U.S. Senator
Elizabeth Warren, U.S. Senator

Messing With Congress

Political Cartoon is by Mike Thompson in the Detroit Free Press.

Religious Logic

Christians (and those from other religions) like to use their "holy" books to prove the truth of their religion and the existence of their god (or gods). The problem with that is that there's nothing that proves anything in that book (whatever book it may be) is necessarily true. Just because a book says it is the sacred word of some god doesn't mean it's true. It just means some human wrote that in the book.

Krugman

GOP Death Panels Kill Between 7k And 17k Annually

When the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) was being debated, and even after it was passed, the Republicans loved to talk about "death panels" -- claiming that the health care reform law created death panels to determine who would live and who would die. Of course, it was an outrageous lie and was told to scare the public into opposing health care reform. Obamacare does not now (and never did have) any provision creating any kind of "death panel".

However, this does not mean that death panels don't exist. They do exist, and they cause the deaths of between 7,115 and 17,104 people each year. These "death panels" are the Republican-controlled governments of the 25 states that have refused to expand the Medicaid program. The decision to not expand Medicaid in these states is a purely political one, born out of a racist hatred fro the president or the belief that poor people don't have a right to decent medical care (or both).

Those Republican officials claim that no one goes without medical care in the United States, since emergency rooms must accept all who come to them. The problem is that is just not true. Many of those who finally get sick enough wait 12-16 hours in an emergency room find that they have a disease that has progressed to far to be effectively treated -- a disease or illness that could have been treated early if they had access to preventative care (which they could have gotten if covered by Medicaid).

Those same Republicans will also claim their states can't afford to expand Medicaid. That is also not true. The federal government will cover all costs for the first four years, and 90% of the costs after that. These politicians have just decided that tax cuts for the rich and subsidies for the corporations are more important than providing health care, and saving the lives, of their poor citizens (many of whom work hard in full-time, low-wage jobs).

The chart above, made from information at the Health Affairs Blog, shows the state-by-state breakdown of the deaths caused annually by these GOP death panels. Four states stand out as having the most deaths due to this (Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, North Carolina), but there are unnecessary deaths in all of the 25 states refusing to expand Medicaid.

The truly sad fact is that all of these "death panels" were elected by the people of those individual states. But that is also the good part, because it means they can also be eliminated through the electoral process. And we need to start doing that in the November 2014 election. There is no moral justification for denying decent health care to the poor (or anyone else).

Job Benefits ?

Political Cartoon is by Clay Bennett in the Chattanooga Times Free Press.

Public Still Disapproves Of Congressional Republicans

It is becoming blatantly obvious the the Republicans in Congress simply don't care what the American people think of them. Either that, or they think they can lie their way to victory at the polls (by appealing to the fears and hatreds of the voting populace). They have made up their minds that their policies and ideologies are the correct ones, regardless of what the public thinks.

This is shown by poll after poll. Now a new poll, the NBC News / Wall Street Journal Poll, verifies what numerous other polls have shown -- that the Republicans in Congress are not respected. This survey shows the positive opinion (24%) of the Republicans is far below the negative opinion (47%) -- a difference of a whopping 23 points. And they don't seem to be making any progress in lowering that big difference. In fact, it is much larger than it was two years ago -- with the negative being 13 points higher than the positive in January of 2012 (compared to today's 23 points).

Now you may think that the public also disapproves of the Democrats, and that would be true -- but not by anywhere near as big a margin as the Republicans. The positive opinion of Democrats is 37% and the negative opinion is 40% -- only a 3 point difference (20 points lower than the GOP difference).

I think a lot of the negative opinions are due to the desire of the public for Congress to fix the poor economy and create new jobs. They want the two parties to compromise for the good of the country -- and as the chart below shows, they blame the Republicans for not being flexible enough to compromise. More than half of the population says the Republicans are too inflexible.

This should worry Republicans running for re-election -- especially those in the 50 or so competitive districts. If they lose just 17 of those districts, the House would flip to Democratic control.

This NBC News / Wall Street Journal Poll was done between January 22nd and 25th of a random national sample of 800 adults, and has a margin of error of 3.46 points.

Compassion Free

Political Cartoon is by Pat Bagley in the Salt Lake Tribune.

Student Debt / Minimum Wage