- Joined
- May 20, 2016
- Messages
- 34,432
- Reaction score
- 15,874
Even when the planets align and a not-insignificant amount of Republicans sign on to discuss a pressing issue in good faith, the shitty, evil head of GOP leadership rears again.
This should end the lingering myth that he was only a half-witted corporate whore who wants to bankrupt his country's future for his benefactors. On top of that, he's also a piece of shit in his actual beliefs.
Paul Ryan deserves....well, we all know what cunts like him deserve.
At a point when the whole world is demanding urgent action to end the Saudi-led bombardment and starvation of Yemen, the Speaker of the House has been scheming to prevent congressional debate on a resolution to get the United States out of a humanitarian crisis.
This is not about partisanship or ideology. As Ryan was blocking action in the House Wednesday, eleven Senate Republicans—including some of the chamber’s most conservative members—voted with Democrats to open the Senate debate on ending US military support for the Saudi Arabia’s assault on Yemen.
The 60-39 vote to advance the bipartisan effort by Senators Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, Chris Murphy, D-Connecticut, and Mike Lee, R-Utah, to invoke the war powers authority of the Congress to constrain military interventions and engagements by the executive branch, represents significant progress for the long struggle by Sanders “to end an unauthorized war.”
Sanders had, for months, urged senators to act on S.J.Res. 54, “A joint resolution to direct the removal of United States Armed Forces from hostilities in the Republic of Yemen that have not been authorized by Congress,” for two reasons. First, he has made a moral argument, telling his colleagues they have a duty to end US support for Saudi abuses that have fostered a “humanitarian and strategic disaster” in Yemen—a crisis so severe that United Nations officials say it could lead to the worst famine in a century. Second, the senator has made a constitutional argument, explaining that, “The Senate must reassert its constitutional authority and end our support of this unauthorized and unconstitutional war.”
Both arguments are sound. And they have gained traction with top Senate Republicans in the aftermath of the Saudi murder of Washington Postcolumnist Jamal Khashoggi.
Unfortunately, Ryan continues to do the bidding of the Trump administration and the Saudi regime with which the president is so closely aligned. Ryan refuses to concern himself with reports on what United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund describes as “a war on children.”
“Yemen has become a hell on earth for millions of children. Today every single boy, every single girl in Yemen is facing extremely dire need,” reports says UNICEF regional director Geert Cappelaere, who reports that, on average, a child is dying every 10 minutes in Yemen—a country where more than 400,000 children are starving and an additional 1.5 million are acutely malnourished.
Ryan’s absolute determination to prevent action to change US policy, which could cause the Saudis to end a brutal assault on Yemen, was on full display Tuesday. The speaker quietly attached a clause to a measure related to the farm bill, which effectively blocked action on a Yemen bill that Congressman Ro Khanna has been advancing in tandem with the Sanders initiative in the Senate.
The measure was approved by a 206-203, with five Democrats—California’s Jim Costa, Florida’s Al Lawson, Minnesota’s Collin Peterson, Maryland’s Dutch Ruppersberger, and Georgia’s David Scott—aiding Ryan’s scheme. These five Democrats cast indefensible votes, and they should be ashamed of themselves. But the greatest shame is on Ryan and his caucus, as they have engaged in a pattern of moves to prevent action on the Yemen crisis.
“For the second time in less than a month, Speaker Paul Ryan and other Republican leaders in the House have opted to undermine our democracy by slipping a rule to block a vote on ending U.S. support for the war in Yemen into an entirely unrelated bill,” explained Paul Kawika Martin, Peace Action’s senior director for policy and political affairs. “They have once again taken the position that ending or even debating the U.S. role in the worst humanitarian crisis on the planet is not worth serious consideration, even as the United Nations warns the war-induced famine in Yemen could soon become the worst famine in 100 years. There’s a grotesque irony in Republican leadership using the farm bill, legislation meant to ensure Americans are fed, to stop debate on ending U.S. support for a war that is starving millions in Yemen.”
Ro Khanna was outraged. “This is why people hate Congress,” declared the congressman. “Speaker Ryan is not allowing a vote on my resolution to stop the war in Yemen because many Republicans will vote with us and he will lose the vote. He is disgracing Article 1 of the Constitution, and as a result, more (Yemeni) children will die.”
The urgency of the circumstance inspired activists to launch a #YemenCantWait campaign. As Khanna explained, “Fourteen million people are on the brink of famine in Yemen. Eighty-five thousand children have already died from cholera and starvation. Our Yemen War Powers Resolution can’t wait until 2019.”
But the resolution will have to wait until Ryan steps down and Democrats take charge of the chamber in January. No speaker of the House have ever ended his tenure on so shameful a note.
“Paul Ryan and others who supported the de-privileging of this Yemen bill, and with it the effective de-privileging of Congress’ authority on war, are condemning more Yemeni civilians to die horrible deaths, and condemning our nation as a democracy in name only,” said Peace Action’s Martin. “History will not look kindly on those who abdicated their constitutional duty to debate and vote our nation’s wars in the name of petty politics and shoring up future campaign contributions from the arms industry and pro-Saudi lobbyists.”
https://www.thenation.com/article/paul-ryan-yemen-saudi-arabia-vote/
Quickly: The Farm Bill was a rare piece of legislation that members of Congress from both parties got behind. A few reasons for this. First and foremost, Congress had negotiated this thing for about two years, the clock was running out on important provisions, and farmers across the country truly needed it. Another reason, elections matter: House Republicans lost leverage after November, so they made compromises that attracted Democratic votes. For instance, as Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) pointed out, Republicans agreed to eliminate a provision that imposed strict work requirements for recipients of SNAP, a program that helps feed millions of poor Americans and their families. Democrats favor the program’s basic humanity, and the GOP largely despises it. So that’s a win for Dems. The bill also allots new tools and funds to the National Forest Service to fight and prevent wildfires, a provision we can all get behind, and which is especially important to Feinstein’s constituency. Another win there.
It also included HR6720, the Dog and Cat Meat Prohibition Act of 2018.
Anyway. The Senate voted 83-17 to pass the bill. The House passed it 369-47.
However, that’s only the final vote count in the House. Before the final vote could proceed, the chamber needed to pass a “rules” vote. That vote was much tighter: 206-203. Why?
Because Paul Ryan, of course.
At the last minute, Ryan tucked in a wack-ass rider that prevented the House from taking up a vote on any legislation curbing Presidential War Powers, specifically as they relate to the War in Yemen. Coincidentally, the Senate was poised to pass War Powers legislation later that day. It would have been Congress’s first substantive action to rein in the Authorization of the Use of Military Force (AUMF), which Congress passed in the wake of September 11 and gives the president sweeping powers to combat the “war on terror.” The new Senate bill would have forced the withdrawal of all U.S. troops in or “affecting” Yemen within 30 days, except those actively fighting al-Qaeda. The Farm Bill effectively killed that resolution, because now it can’t pass in the House, and if you remember your high school civics all bills must pass both chambers before going to the president’s desk.
https://www.pastemagazine.com/artic...y-people-hate-congress-paul-ryan-just-si.html
This should end the lingering myth that he was only a half-witted corporate whore who wants to bankrupt his country's future for his benefactors. On top of that, he's also a piece of shit in his actual beliefs.
Paul Ryan deserves....well, we all know what cunts like him deserve.
At a point when the whole world is demanding urgent action to end the Saudi-led bombardment and starvation of Yemen, the Speaker of the House has been scheming to prevent congressional debate on a resolution to get the United States out of a humanitarian crisis.
This is not about partisanship or ideology. As Ryan was blocking action in the House Wednesday, eleven Senate Republicans—including some of the chamber’s most conservative members—voted with Democrats to open the Senate debate on ending US military support for the Saudi Arabia’s assault on Yemen.
The 60-39 vote to advance the bipartisan effort by Senators Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, Chris Murphy, D-Connecticut, and Mike Lee, R-Utah, to invoke the war powers authority of the Congress to constrain military interventions and engagements by the executive branch, represents significant progress for the long struggle by Sanders “to end an unauthorized war.”
Sanders had, for months, urged senators to act on S.J.Res. 54, “A joint resolution to direct the removal of United States Armed Forces from hostilities in the Republic of Yemen that have not been authorized by Congress,” for two reasons. First, he has made a moral argument, telling his colleagues they have a duty to end US support for Saudi abuses that have fostered a “humanitarian and strategic disaster” in Yemen—a crisis so severe that United Nations officials say it could lead to the worst famine in a century. Second, the senator has made a constitutional argument, explaining that, “The Senate must reassert its constitutional authority and end our support of this unauthorized and unconstitutional war.”
Both arguments are sound. And they have gained traction with top Senate Republicans in the aftermath of the Saudi murder of Washington Postcolumnist Jamal Khashoggi.
Unfortunately, Ryan continues to do the bidding of the Trump administration and the Saudi regime with which the president is so closely aligned. Ryan refuses to concern himself with reports on what United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund describes as “a war on children.”
“Yemen has become a hell on earth for millions of children. Today every single boy, every single girl in Yemen is facing extremely dire need,” reports says UNICEF regional director Geert Cappelaere, who reports that, on average, a child is dying every 10 minutes in Yemen—a country where more than 400,000 children are starving and an additional 1.5 million are acutely malnourished.
Ryan’s absolute determination to prevent action to change US policy, which could cause the Saudis to end a brutal assault on Yemen, was on full display Tuesday. The speaker quietly attached a clause to a measure related to the farm bill, which effectively blocked action on a Yemen bill that Congressman Ro Khanna has been advancing in tandem with the Sanders initiative in the Senate.
The measure was approved by a 206-203, with five Democrats—California’s Jim Costa, Florida’s Al Lawson, Minnesota’s Collin Peterson, Maryland’s Dutch Ruppersberger, and Georgia’s David Scott—aiding Ryan’s scheme. These five Democrats cast indefensible votes, and they should be ashamed of themselves. But the greatest shame is on Ryan and his caucus, as they have engaged in a pattern of moves to prevent action on the Yemen crisis.
“For the second time in less than a month, Speaker Paul Ryan and other Republican leaders in the House have opted to undermine our democracy by slipping a rule to block a vote on ending U.S. support for the war in Yemen into an entirely unrelated bill,” explained Paul Kawika Martin, Peace Action’s senior director for policy and political affairs. “They have once again taken the position that ending or even debating the U.S. role in the worst humanitarian crisis on the planet is not worth serious consideration, even as the United Nations warns the war-induced famine in Yemen could soon become the worst famine in 100 years. There’s a grotesque irony in Republican leadership using the farm bill, legislation meant to ensure Americans are fed, to stop debate on ending U.S. support for a war that is starving millions in Yemen.”
Ro Khanna was outraged. “This is why people hate Congress,” declared the congressman. “Speaker Ryan is not allowing a vote on my resolution to stop the war in Yemen because many Republicans will vote with us and he will lose the vote. He is disgracing Article 1 of the Constitution, and as a result, more (Yemeni) children will die.”
The urgency of the circumstance inspired activists to launch a #YemenCantWait campaign. As Khanna explained, “Fourteen million people are on the brink of famine in Yemen. Eighty-five thousand children have already died from cholera and starvation. Our Yemen War Powers Resolution can’t wait until 2019.”
But the resolution will have to wait until Ryan steps down and Democrats take charge of the chamber in January. No speaker of the House have ever ended his tenure on so shameful a note.
“Paul Ryan and others who supported the de-privileging of this Yemen bill, and with it the effective de-privileging of Congress’ authority on war, are condemning more Yemeni civilians to die horrible deaths, and condemning our nation as a democracy in name only,” said Peace Action’s Martin. “History will not look kindly on those who abdicated their constitutional duty to debate and vote our nation’s wars in the name of petty politics and shoring up future campaign contributions from the arms industry and pro-Saudi lobbyists.”
https://www.thenation.com/article/paul-ryan-yemen-saudi-arabia-vote/
Quickly: The Farm Bill was a rare piece of legislation that members of Congress from both parties got behind. A few reasons for this. First and foremost, Congress had negotiated this thing for about two years, the clock was running out on important provisions, and farmers across the country truly needed it. Another reason, elections matter: House Republicans lost leverage after November, so they made compromises that attracted Democratic votes. For instance, as Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) pointed out, Republicans agreed to eliminate a provision that imposed strict work requirements for recipients of SNAP, a program that helps feed millions of poor Americans and their families. Democrats favor the program’s basic humanity, and the GOP largely despises it. So that’s a win for Dems. The bill also allots new tools and funds to the National Forest Service to fight and prevent wildfires, a provision we can all get behind, and which is especially important to Feinstein’s constituency. Another win there.
It also included HR6720, the Dog and Cat Meat Prohibition Act of 2018.
Anyway. The Senate voted 83-17 to pass the bill. The House passed it 369-47.
However, that’s only the final vote count in the House. Before the final vote could proceed, the chamber needed to pass a “rules” vote. That vote was much tighter: 206-203. Why?
Because Paul Ryan, of course.
At the last minute, Ryan tucked in a wack-ass rider that prevented the House from taking up a vote on any legislation curbing Presidential War Powers, specifically as they relate to the War in Yemen. Coincidentally, the Senate was poised to pass War Powers legislation later that day. It would have been Congress’s first substantive action to rein in the Authorization of the Use of Military Force (AUMF), which Congress passed in the wake of September 11 and gives the president sweeping powers to combat the “war on terror.” The new Senate bill would have forced the withdrawal of all U.S. troops in or “affecting” Yemen within 30 days, except those actively fighting al-Qaeda. The Farm Bill effectively killed that resolution, because now it can’t pass in the House, and if you remember your high school civics all bills must pass both chambers before going to the president’s desk.
https://www.pastemagazine.com/artic...y-people-hate-congress-paul-ryan-just-si.html
