Who Sucked the Most Nevermind?

 Posted by at 11:10 am  Politics
Apr 212015
 

Few people are sleazier about pandering to billionaires for money than the evil Fartfuhrer of Fitzwalkerstan, formerly Wisconsin, Scott Walker.  Therefore, it should come as no surprise that Charles and David Koch have tapped the Fartfuhrer, as their choice for the presidency in 2016.  Why do you think they did that?

0421david_h_kochHas Scott Walker won the Koch primary?

Charles and David Koch, the billionaire co-owners of Koch Industries, one of the largest privately-held companies in the world and the overseers of one of the biggest private political organizations in the country, told Republican donors in New York on April 19 that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is their man for President.

"We will support whoever the candidate is," David Koch said, "but it should be Scott Walker," according to an account in the New York Times.

Koch, whose political network plans to spend an astonishing $1 billion in the 2016 presidential elections, said "Scott Walker is terrific and I really wish him all the best. He’s a tremendous candidate to be the nominee in my opinion" (although he later said "I am not endorsing or supporting any candidate for president at this point in time.")

The Wisconsin-based Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) has been covering Walker–and his Koch backing–since 2011. CMD has identified at least $11.6 million in support for Walker from the Kochs and their affiliated groups, plus millions more in indirect funding… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <PRWatch>

In case you’ve forgotten the time the BEAST’s Ian Murphy telephoned the Fartfuhrer and posed as David Koch, here it is in two segments.

 

Note how deeply the Fartfuhrer kept pressing his nose between what he thought were Koch’s nether cheeks.  So why do you think the Koch’s tapped Walker?  He sucked the most (lest I be censored again) nevermind!!

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Open Thread–4/21/2015

 Posted by at 11:09 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics, Religion
Apr 212015
 

I’m still quite tired after doing the dreaded task and another noisy night, but I did get some daytime sleep yesterday.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:06 (average 4:58).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: Notoriously addled butt munch Pat Robertson took a question today from a woman worried about her 11-year-old son who "started listening to music that speaks of the ‘beast within’ and the ‘infection in people.’" Consequently, his behavior has this poor woman "to the point of me giving up trying to parent him." Thank goodness she took her concern to that master oracle of parenting advice, good ol’ Pat.

Barf Bag Alert!!

 

Robertson remains the poster boy for Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christianity (the exact opposite of authentic Christianity).

From The New Yorker: Delivering a stirring populist message at a campaign appearance in New Hampshire, Hillary Clinton vowed that as President she would help everyday Americans obtain large cash payments from foreign governments.

“Like a lot of everyday Americans, many of you are struggling to pay your bills,” she told an audience here. “As President, I will work tirelessly to help you make ends meet—by getting foreign governments to pay you.”

“In cold, hard cash,” she added, to a standing ovation.

Growing emotional, the former Secretary of State spoke of the “transformative power of foreign money,” calling it “nothing short of magical.”

Andy is back to satire for a change. The people behind the foreign money meme have a repeatedly demonstrated resume as liars.

From Alternet: Forget the top one percent, the top 0.01 percent of Americans gave nearly 42 percent of all political donation dollars in the 2012 election cycle. Just over 30,000 individuals contributed nearly half of all money. It is no coincidence that this proportion has increased steadily as economic inequality has increased. In 1990 when I was born, the figure was just under 13 percent. If we expanded the scope to the full one percent, you can be damn sure they gave the overwhelming majority of dollars in recent years.

And don’t forget that this does not even include the $billions more in secret donations to bogus Republican 501(c)4 organizations.

Cartoon:

0421Cartoon

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Personal Update–4/20/2014

 Posted by at 12:46 pm  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Apr 202015
 

After another noisy night, I gave up on sleep at about 3:00 AM, and figured, as long as I was hating the night, I might as well do something to really hate it.  As you will see, change my name to Ulysses, so you can call me Useless for short.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 2:45 (average 5:20).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Cartoon:

TCLaundry

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Roberts Lied to Help Republicans Steal Elections

 Posted by at 9:33 am  Politics
Apr 192015
 

Citizens United and Shelby County have one key attribute in common.  Both are unconstitutional, activist decisions by the Fascist Five Injustices of SCROTUS (Republican Constitutional VD) designed to help Republicans steal elections.  The former opened the billionaire floodgates.  The latter helps Republicans decide who is allowed to vote.  When Chief Injustice Roberts claimed that protecting voting rights was no longer necessary, because things have changed so much, I knew he was lying,  However, I could not prove it, until now.

0419VotingRightsWhen the Supreme Court struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act in 2013, its main argument was that the law was outdated.

Discrimination against minority voters may have been pervasive in the 1960s when the law was passed, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. wrote, but “nearly 50 years later, things have changed dramatically.” In this simplistic account, the law was still punishing states and local governments for sins they supposedly stopped committing years ago.

The chief justice’s destructive cure for this was to throw out the formula Congress devised in 1965 that required all or parts of 16 states with long histories of overt racial discrimination in voting, most in the South, to get approval from the federal government for any proposed change to their voting laws. This process, known as preclearance, stopped hundreds of discriminatory new laws from taking effect, and deterred lawmakers from introducing countless more.

But Chief Justice Roberts, writing for a 5-4 majority, invalidated the formula because “today’s statistics tell an entirely different story.”

Well, do they? A comprehensive new study by a historian of the Voting Rights Act provides a fresh trove of empirical evidence to refute that assertion. The study by J. Morgan Kousser, a professor of history and social science at the California Institute of Technology, examines more than 4,100 voting-rights cases, Justice Department inquiries, settlements and changes to laws in response to the threat of lawsuits around the country where the final result favored minority voters.

It found that from 1957 until 2013, more than 90 percent of these legal “events” occurred in jurisdictions that were required to preclear their voting changes. The study also provides evidence that the number of successful voting-rights suits has gone down in recent years, not because there is less discrimination, but because several Supreme Court decisions have made them harder to win… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <NY Times>

Chick through for more detail.  In case you are considering not giving your full support in 2016 to the Democratic Presidential Nominee, whoever it is, consider Citizens United and Shelby County.  Also consider that the next two to retire from the Court are two of the four remaining Justices.  Imaging having the Straightjacket Seven Injustices of SCROTUS (Republican Constitutional VD).

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Open Thread–4/19/2015

 Posted by at 9:32 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Apr 192015
 

I had another night with little sleep, due to street noise.  Therefore I want to get my articles written quickly, before I run out of gas.  80° highs are forecast today and tomorrow.  I guess this means I’ll be complaining about freezing weather in June.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 2:06 (average 4:10).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Upworthy: A real-life moment of unequal pay turns into a beautiful discussion of hard work, pressure, appreciating yourself, and … BASKETBALL.

 

Kudos! Why is it that guns and money evoke the most violent responses? The people making them are Republicans. That’s why! Her only mistake is that she should have been petting a CAT!

From Daily Kos: Sen. Ted Cruz goes full LaPierre:

"The 2nd Amendment to the Constitution isn’t for just protecting hunting rights, and it’s not only to safeguard your right to target practice. It is a Constitutional right to protect your children, your family, your home, our lives, and to serve as the ultimate check against governmental tyranny — for the protection of liberty," Cruz wrote to supporters in a fundraising email on Thursday, under the subject line "2nd Amendment against tyranny."

This "insurrectionist" argument, as Second Amendment expert and UCLA law professor Adam Winkler calls it, is popular among passionate gun owners and members of the National Rifle Association.

Second Amendment solutions are being championed by Republican candidates again.

From Alternet: Men’s rights blogger: Women with short hair should be monitored by the authorities.

Men’s rights nutjob Roosh V,  who blogs under the moniker “Pick Up Artist,” always has extremely helpful suggestions for women. He thinks women would take more responsibility for themselves if rape on private property was decriminalized, for starters. Thanks, Roosh! Or should we call you Mr. V? How exactly decriminalizing rape would help women is kind of murky.

This week, the Rooshter made an even more bizarre suggestion for how law enforcement should occupy their time, now that they’ve been freed up from all that pesky rape stuff. The authorities should be alerted when women cut their hair short. This, he says, is an act of self harm. Worse still, it hurts men (the group Roosh actually purports to care about). When women cut their hair short, they are trying to appear less fertile and therefore less attractive to men, he reasons.

Here it is from the horse’s (ass) mouth:

“If a woman cuts her hair to a short length, or shaves it outright in a Skrillex haircut, we can now confidently say that she is making herself appear less fertile, less beautiful, and less healthy. A woman cutting off healthy hair is one step away from literal cutting of her skin with a sharp object, because both behaviors denote a likely mental illness where the woman presents herself to society as more damaged than her genetic condition would indicate, suggesting that she has suffered environmental damage that has reduced her overall fitness. She must be monitored by state authorities so she doesn’t continue to hurt herself.”

Stupefying, no?

This is just the last of five Republican lunacies from last week alone. Click through for the other four.

Cartoon:

0419Cartoon

Unlike years past, I have not been able to find Republicans celebrating bombing the Murrah building with open-carry demonstrations this year.

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If Idiot Runs the Reich

 Posted by at 1:25 pm  Politics
Apr 172015
 

Young people voted for Barack Obama in overwhelming numbers, but some Republicans think they can make inroads into that demographic, by sounding more progress than they really are.  The prime example of this is Rand Paul, also known as Idiot, Son of Idiot, Named after Idiot.  If you night be tempted you need to learn what could happen to our nation, if Idiot runs the Reich.

0417IdiotMany young people and progressives who are wary of a Clinton presidency are seeking potential alternatives, even outside the Democratic Party. Unfortunately, much of the attention of voters seeking an alternative to mainstream candidates of both parties has focused on Rand Paul. This is no accident: Rand Paul has carefully positioned himself as "the most interesting man in Washington" for supposedly being a different kind of Republican, hip and able to connect with younger voters. Paul has made it his mission to bring more of the increasingly progressive youth vote back to the GOP fold, and polling shows that Paul does have greater support among younger voters than older ones. Paul has also mounted the most aggressive social media campaign of the GOP hopefuls for president, again partly in an effort to reach younger voters.

But Paul’s delicately crafted maverick image is far from the reality. Here are six things younger and more progressive voters need to know about Rand Paul.

1. Rand Paul wants more military spending and more war in the Middle East. Rand Paul has grown a reputation for anti-interventionism over the years partly by association with his stridently anti-interventionist father Ron Paul, and partly on account of statements he made during his early years as a senator. To be fair, he has staked out a slightly less rabid position on Iran than some other GOP presidential hopefuls, though that’s not saying much. As with all politicians, the key is not to watch what they say but what they actually propose and vote for.

On March 25, Rand Paul introduced a budget amendment calling for a whopping $190 billion increase to military spending. The United States already spends more on war and military expenses than almost the entire rest of the world combined. Paul hasn’t yet clarified what he thinks that $190 billion would be spent on, if not to facilitate more wars abroad. To pay for it, he calls for drastic cuts to climate change research, education, housing assistance, and foreign aid.

Rand Paul was even more hawkish than his Republican colleagues on dealing with ISIS, proposing a full-scale military assault that would almost certainly have demanded a resurgence of American troops on the ground in Iraq. No matter what one thinks of Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy, it’s difficult to argue that Rand Paul would be any kind of improvement from an anti-interventionist perspective…

Inserted from <Alternet>

I’ve included only one of the six things you need to about Idiot.  Click through for the other five.

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Open Thread–4/17/2015

 Posted by at 1:24 pm  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Apr 172015
 

It feels like summer here, so my chores have left me feeling somewhat lazy, so you can be sure I’ll take a break later for purring in the sunshine.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 2:15 (average 4:51).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Upworthy: The sad but beautiful story of water, as narrated by Penélope Cruz

 

This cycle is what Republicans are trying to destroy.

From Media Matters: Indianapolis’ WIBC has broadcast Rush Limbaugh’s show for 22 years. Despite this long history, parent company Emmis Communications announced April 13 that they are dropping Limbaugh’s show from WIBC’s lineup.

Charlie Morgan, an executive for Emmis, indicated that the decision to drop Limbaugh was about the "long-term direction of the station," but also acknowledged that there was a "business element to the decision." Underscoring the business considerations, Morgan explained to the Indianapolis Business Journal that the absence of Limbaugh could actually help WIBC’s advertiser prospects:

And the defectors from Limbarf’s former empire keep coming. Every remaining station is one too many.

From The New Yorker: Americans took to the streets in large numbers on Thursday to show their support for a fifteen-dollar-an-hour wage for members of Congress.

In major cities across the nation, fast-food workers and other service employees held signs, shouted chants, and gave impassioned speeches to demonstrate their conviction that Congress deserves a maximum hourly wage of fifteen dollars.

“Members of Congress are people, just like you and me,” Tracy Klugian, a McDonald’s employee who took part in the Washington protest, said. “They should be paid what they deserve.”

Assuming that they continue to take off approximately two hundred and forty days a year, members of Congress earning the proposed maximum would see their average annual income adjusted from a hundred and seventy-four thousand dollars to thirteen thousand five hundred dollars, a salary that many marchers called “fair and equitable.”

Andy is on to something here, but even if paid for only the hours they actually work, they would get far more than they are worth.

Cartoon:

0417Cartoon

Republicans want a rerun.\

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