Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz call for more prisons and less gruel...

[Snarkoleptic]

http://www.salon.com/2015/03/21/victorian_romance_the_gops_oliver_twist_budget_and_the_comeback_of_class_warfare/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

...They represent the revolutionary resurgence of Big Capital as a class — enlightened, self-aware and devoted to its own interests. If that terminology sounds impossibly old-fashioned, their impossible dream to undo a century and more of welfare-state policies is a throwback as well. When you hear Cotton call for the building of more and more prisons – by far the most expensive and least effective means of addressing poverty — or declare that food stamps (which feed roughly one in six of his fellow Arkansans) nurture a slothful underclass of criminals and drug addicts, something deeper is at work than the obvious level of dog-whistle racist pandering.

and

By paralyzing the political process, manipulating the Democrats’ institutional spinelessness and driving public discourse ever further to the right, the warriors of Capital have shrunk the electorate to historic lows and drained Congressional elections of any evident drama or meaning. As I have already argued, Democratic loyalists who blame widespread voter apathy for their 2014 midterm defeat have it backwards. That election’s staggering 36-percent turnout — the lowest since World War II — was the real victory of the Koch forces, and much more important than the gerrymandered Congressional majority that came along as a bonus.

another choice nugget

Big Capital’s mission to remake America through renewed class war is far from complete, and there is no near-term version of reality in which Cotton and Cruz live out their wild fantasies of repealing Obamacare, killing food stamps, privatizing Medicare and Social Security, and all the rest of it. But if I had told you a few years ago that public-sector unions would be eviscerated across a wide swath of the labor-friendly Midwest, that would have sounded outrageous too. Inch by inch, the stealth strategy of the Koch brothers is winning a war that most Americans don’t even recognize as a war, between classes we no longer see as classes.

[Thinkingabout]

1. I am wondering, did the voters know and understand the hate these two people

have for others? I live in Texas and voted against Cruz but I don't remember the hate speeches before the election. I knew h.e had some associations I do not like but the TP hate has escalated

[Snarkoleptic]

2. Lots of these clowns get into office with the usual RW rhetoric.

Right after taking office, they unpack the true agenda, so hopefully there will be some 'buyers remorse' from those who voted for them as well as those who chose not to vote.

Scott Walker ran for a 2nd term as Governor in Wisconsin and had distanced himself from the "Right to work" efforts. Naturally, he signed it as soon as it was dropped on his desk, which is no surprise to those who have been watching him enact the Koch brothers' agenda.

[ananda]

3. Please Mr. Bumble...

... I want some more.

[Snarkoleptic]

5. Darn kid should pull himself up by the bootstraps!

[hifiguy]

4. Most of the rich have always seen feudalism

as the most perfect of all possible systems. In a modern world, Dickens' London is about as close to that as you can get.

[Thor_MN]

6. Just when I though it was not possible for there to be anyone as stupid as Michele Bachmann

Along comes Cotton. Can we be far from the right flinging poo on the House and Senate floors?


at least my state didn't elect him, very small consolation.

[Snarkoleptic]

7. He's full of ambition (in a scary way) and loaded up with cash from the far right.

He and Ted Cruz are crazy-as-a-fox libertarian bookends. IMHO

He's got great academic credentials-

After graduating from Dardanelle High School in June 1995,[3] he attended Harvard College, where he wrote for the Harvard Crimson,[4] and was a member of the Harvard Republican Club. After graduating from Harvard magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Government,[5] he completed the Publius Fellowship[6] at the Claremont Institute and attended the Claremont Graduate University before moving on to Harvard Law School, where he was taught by Elizabeth Warren.[7] He received his J.D. degree in June 2002.

Then there's his military career.

On January 11, 2005, Cotton joined the United States Army and entered Officer Candidate School in March 2005. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army on June 30, 2005. Cotton later attended both the U.S. Army Airborne School and Ranger School.[3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Cotton

[Thor_MN]

8. That Cotton was in command of dozens of soldiers is terrifying...

[Snarkoleptic]

9. Veddy much so.

Here's a fun Danziger cartoon about his military service and recent "look at me" political stunt.

[LuvNewcastle]

10. Oh, that's a good one!