The Cost of Stupidity

Posted by TomCat at 12:28 am Politics

Sep 162014

I heard an interesting argument lately. No matter how much we work to get out the vote, it won’t matter, because Republicans will win anyway, due to rigged voting machines. Therefore, why should we even bother to vote. It is true that in areas when Republicans control vote counting or voting machines with no paper trail, we can expect a discrepancy between raw exit data and official vote counts of 3% to 5%, always favoring Republican candidates. No such discrepancy exists in areas that Democrats control. This is probably because Democrats believe in the integrity of the electoral process, while Republicans do not. We should never stop fighting to ensure an honest vote count, but the notion that we should disenfranchise ourselves because of Republican election crime is pure stupidity. Here is the cost of stupidity.

Staying home on Election Day carries a heavy cost.

In Ferguson, Mo., where only 12 percent of voters showed up in the last city election, the cost of nonparticipation was a City Council wholly unrepresentative of the town’s population. On the national level, Democrats and independents — most of whom did not vote in the 2010 midterm Congressional elections — were swamped by Republicans who voted in much larger proportions. The result was a Republican House dominated by the hard right, which over four years became the largest impediment to economic growth and equality. The same thing has happened in many statewide elections.

It’s now seven weeks from the midterms. Will voters realize that decisions made on Nov. 4 will reverberate in laws not passed, roads not built and jobs not created?

The biggest prize at stake in November is the Senate, where Democrats are in serious danger of losing control to a Republican Party determined to roll back much of the social progress of the last six years, and to block as many of President Obama’s judicial appointments as possible. There is little chance that Democrats will win back the House this year, in part because of Republican redistricting, but many statehouses and governorships that control districting and voting regulations are also in the balance.

All of that makes it imperative that the demographic groups that turned out in relatively large numbers during the last two presidential elections show up at the polls this year. According to Catalist, a data analysis company, the groups with the biggest declines in turnout between 2008 and 2010 were voters younger than 30, down nearly 35 percentage points; black and Hispanic voters, down 27 points each; and single women, down 26 points. Those groups have historically been the most resistant to the right’s message of lower taxes, sharply reduced spending on social programs and job creation, and tighter restrictions on women’s reproductive rights… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <NY Times>

Click through for much more detail on the cost of stupidity.

Give up? NEVER! The more criminal practices Republicans use to steal elections, the harder we must work to overcome it.

Get out the VOTE!!

Poll Results–9/16/2014

Posted by TomCat at 12:27 am Blog News, Politics

Sep 162014

Here are the results of our What Republican Candidates Suck poll. Politics Plus Polls are not scientific, because those who respond are not balanced according to demographic categories. Therefore, we do not accurately reflect the makeup of the US population. Nevertheless, our polls are often both accurate and indicative of the nation’s view.

0916Poll

And here are your comments:

Showing comments 1–9 of 9.

Posted by Lynn Squance September 12, 2014 at 2:57 pm.

I went with "Never mind" because IMO that encompasses all the rest. Those behind "Never mind", the Kochs, have a handle on doling out the money in copious amounts to the point of obscenity, and taking in methane through Koch Industries and farting out the excess as their infectious brand of insaniTEA.

True the Kochs are not the only ones doling out the doe, but they are certainly prolific.

Posted by mamabear September 7, 2014 at 8:05 am.

Well all the above is almost all they have been doing for yrs. But one seems to be on top of the list since 2008 and that would be InsaniTEA. I must say doing a wonderful job. After all it is the only thing they are good at. "Draining the country".:(

Posted by Patty September 7, 2014 at 1:58 am.

I had to vote money because that is the equivalent of Koch-sucking.

Posted by Phil-p September 2, 2014 at 2:36 am.

"All of thew above" merely is a reflection of the attitudes of most Republican and many Democratic politicians who rush suck up the leavings and hand outs of banks, corporations and special interests in exchange for their legislative influence and votes. The old motto: ‘What’s good for GM is good for America" is so true for the politicians of today and ever so disastrously wrong for the environment and citizens of this earth.

Posted by Yvonne White September 1, 2014 at 10:08 am.

RepubliCON’s new meme: You can never be too rich or too apathetic towards the 98%! ;

Posted by Joanne D September 1, 2014 at 4:57 am.

"Never Mind!" is basically the same thing as money, since mucho moolah comes from sucking that. I tried flipping a coin between the two and it stood on edge. InsaniTEA – Republicans don’t need to know what something is to be sucking it. Nor do they need to admit where it comes from, hence also methane. I just went with all.

Posted by Arielle September 1, 2014 at 2:35 am.

I said money, too – I’m curious to see just how much money is ever enough…. Power is in there as well. They are real vampires just sucking the power and money out of everything and anything….

Posted by gene jacobson September 1, 2014 at 12:49 am.

Despite the total for all of the above, with which I almost went, as I thought about it, for at least 7 seconds, I realized Republicans don’t know what Insanitea is, nor Methane (if they do, they deny it) and in that case Never Mind is still Gilda Radner’s province, leaving me with the one thing I do know they care about – Money. Everything else flows from that for them. Money – theirs, ours – which they intend to make theirs and give to the 1%. The ones who will never see the pearly gates because they can’t fit through the eye of a needle. Or understand what lack of money feels like, never having the experience themselves and being completely sociopathic they have no empathy either. So, yes, Money is the root of all Republicans.

Posted by Edie August 31, 2014 at 4:01 pm. From 98.159.143.x Report Abuse

I see I am voting with the majority this time.

For well over a year you’ve been asking for an ‘All of the above” choice, which I generally avoid, because they tend to stimulate knees more than brains. So lets examine the choices.

Republican politicians suck money. That’s a given. They suck InsaniTEA, since nothing they do or say is sane. They suck methane, because their heads are buried so deeply between their nether cheeks that methane is all there is to breathe. They suck Never Mind, because the Never Mind Brothers pay them so well to whore themselves to the 0.1% I rest my case. All of the above!!

The New Poll. is is on a serious subject.

Open Thread–9/16/2014

Posted by TomCat at 12:26 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Sep 162014

I’m writing for tomorrow, day 148. Yesterday’s change in schedule did me in totally. By the time Midnight arrived, my face was hovering over the keyboard. I had a decent night’s sleep, so I’m feeling half-human again. I was most pleased (not to mention relieved) with the Broncos’ win.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:04 (average 5:22). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Liberals Unite: Friday night in a live show, Bill Maher talked about the polarization currently in this country. He said that the main reason for this polarization was Fox News.

Was the Republican fool outmatched or what?

From Upworthy: This video is chock-full-o hilariously absurd questions, right? The questions sound absurd because it’s strange to ask them. Lesbians are asked these questions all the time.

Personally, I have been "guilty" of telling gay and lesbian people that I support their rights. On the other hand, with Republicans trying so hard to take those rights away, perhaps LGBT folks need all the "guilty" supporters they can get.

From Daily Kos Elections Digest: NH-02: Well, the Club for Growth sure drafted quite the piece of work up in New Hampshire. State Rep. Marilinda Garcia, who just won the GOP primary to take on Democratic Rep. Annie Kuster, absolutely loves to holler about how awful Obamacare is, which is exactly what you’d expect from a cookie-cutter tea partier nominated with hefty Club support. Only the local public radio station just managed to get Garcia to choke pretty hard on those cookie crumbs:

But when asked about her own health care coverage, Garcia demurred.

Garcia: "I… that’s my own issue."

NHPR: "So you don’t want to say?"

Garcia: "No that’s fine, I don’t need to share everything."

NHPR: "I bet it will come up again. Probably that’s something the media will want to know, with you making health care an issue in your campaign."

Garcia: "My constituents talk to me so I am not here running on my own issues. I am expressing what they come up with."

NHPR: "Is it fair to say you are not getting your health care through Obamacare, through the (federal) exchange?"

Garcia: "I don’t need to talk about that. Thank you."

Oh! Oh, but you do! You do need to talk about that, Rep. Garcia, because if you’re trashing our current health care system, you need to explain what your alternatives are. And if your personal "alternative" is, in fact, Obamacare, then your would-be constituents deserve to know. Garcia’s campaign claimed after this disastrous interview that no, she’s not covered under the Affordable Care Act, but if that’s the case, why couldn’t she just explain that at the time? And has she provided any proof? No, this one’s not going to go away quite as readily as Garcia wishes.

Republicans figure that they deserve the benefits, but YOU don’t.

Cartoon:

0916Cartoon

Because the Republican Party was not in charge, the crew and passengers did not starve to death on the way.

Last Week’s Republican Doozies

Posted by TomCat at 12:00 am Politics

Sep 152014

Every week, Republicans join a competition to see who can say the most outlandish things, and in the process, every week they push the envelope on just how extreme InsaniTEA can become. I trust that you will believe it, when I tell you that last week was no exception.

Rush Limbaugh learned some things while trying to watch football. It was horrible.

Rush Limbaugh had a perfectly miserable time watching football on Thursday night, poor guy. He made the mistake of tuning in early for the pregame show before the Baltimore Ravens/Pittsburgh Steelers matchup, and instead of hearing some good football commentary, or perhaps some patriotic claptrap on the anniversary of 9/11, what did he get? An earful about how terrible domestic abuse is—not what he signed up for, at all.

“I learned that I’m not doing enough to stop wife-beating,” he said, his voice dripping with mockery, disgust and indignation. “I learned that I am not aware enough. That my conscious (sic) is not being raised enough. I learned that it’s an epidemic. It’s happening all the time. I learned that 600 women have supposedly died from wife abuse since Ray Rice cold-cocked his wife in that elevator.”

He learned all of this at the hands of James Brown, who gave an impassioned, principled, and very brief speech about how it is time for men to step up and take responsibility for the problem of domestic abuse. Rush Limbaugh does not like learning things. It makes him very, very ornery. But at least he could brag about one thing. He saw this coming. “As I predicted,” he said. “Football is politics. It has jumped the shark and become politics.”

Football has become, in Rush’s immortal words, “chickified.”

There go those feminazis again, ruining everything…

Inserted from <AlterNet>

If Limbarf has an excuse, it is that all the women he has experienced have been masochists, since becoming involved with him is one of the most self-demeaning things any wo0man could do. This is jizst one of five Republican doozies from last week alone. Click through for the other four.

Open Thread–9/15/2014

Posted by TomCat at 12:00 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Sep 152014

I’m writing for tomorrow, day 147. It’s been a long, busy day. The friend that I pay to help me with the heavy cleaning contacted me last night and asked if she could come a day early. She actually showed up on time, something she has never done before, and that caught me by surprise. I missed my morning sleep. I had a brief cat nap after watching the Broncos, but I’m still very tired.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:30 (average 4:46). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Religious Ecstasy:

09014-Broncos24-Chiefs17

What a magnificent Orb it is!

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: President Obama has had two sleepless nights since learning that Rush Limbaugh praised his speech about Iraq and Syria this week, a White House source confirmed on Saturday.

According to the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, the President has been unable to sleep since Limbaugh complimented him on the air and has been seen pacing back and forth in the Oval Office in a way that aides described as “worrisome.”

“When he heard that [House Speaker John] Boehner and [Senate Minority Leader Mitch] McConnell liked his speech, he seemed to take that in stride,” the source said. “But this Limbaugh thing has pushed him over the edge.”

Dang Andy!! We better keep an eye on him. Approval from Limbarf is ample justification for suicide!

From Daily Kos: This week House Republicans are messing around with yet another bill that would do something to damage Obamacare. This time, they want to allow insurers to keep selling shitty policies that don’t cover all of the stuff that the law requires until 2019. Because what’s another five years of people being underinsured and going into bankruptcy because of it? While they’re dithering around with it, their most serious thinker on healthcare policy has been working on an actual plan that would replace Obamacare, in the event that Republicans could actually get their act together and achieve consensus on a plan.

But what Avik Roy, a writer at Forbes and the conservative Manhattan Institute and Mitt Romney’s healthcare advisor, has come up with looks an awful lot like Obamacare. Except for the part where it forces people off of Medicare and Medicaid and into the private market. And the part where it would no longer be the Affordable Care Act. So says the Los Angeles Times’ Michael Hiltzik.

Click through for a more complete description. RepubliCare is a plan to die for.

From NY Times: Democrats have reversed the partisan imbalance on the federal appeals courts that long favored conservatives, a little-noticed shift with far-reaching consequences for the law and President Obama’s legacy.

For the first time in more than a decade, judges appointed by Democratic presidents considerably outnumber judges appointed by Republican presidents. The Democrats’ advantage has only grown since late last year when they stripped Republicans of their ability to filibuster the president’s nominees.

Democratic appointees who hear cases full time now hold a majority of seats on nine of the 13 United States Courts of Appeals. When Mr. Obama took office, only one of those courts had more full-time judges nominated by a Democrat.

That’s great news. Now if only the Fascist Five Injustices of SCROTUS, Republican Constitutional VD, would take a junket tour of Liberia!

Cartoon:

0915Cartoon

Will Republicans Steal the Vote?

Posted by TomCat at 12:01 am Politics

Sep 142014

The Republican Party is facing an ever increasing problem. They can count up all the millionaires and billionaires with no sense of their civic responsibility. They can add in all the racists, homophobes, misogynists, polluters, militias, warmongers, hatemongers, pseudo-Christians, etc., for whose support the Republican party has sold their soul. They can add to that all the fools stupid enough to watch and believe the Republican Reichsministry of Propaganda, Faux Noise. They still won’t have enough to hold power. That leaves just one last thing. If they can disenfranchise enough of the majority, they may be able to steal the vote.

In the summer of 2012, Pennsylvania House Majority Leader Mike Turzai (R) bragged that the voter ID law he’d helped pass was “gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.” That law was short-lived: a federal judge issued a ruling that, as the New York Times reported, the law “hampered the ability of hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians to cast their ballots, with the burden falling most heavily on elderly, disabled and low-income residents, and that the state’s reason for the law — that it was needed to combat voter fraud — was not supported by the facts.”

This summer, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp was caught in a moment of candor when he warned a crowd of fellow Republicans: “The Democrats are working hard… registering all these minority voters that are out there and others that are sitting on the sidelines, [and] if they can do that, they can win these elections in November.”

When the Supreme Court struck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act last June, it was an open invitation to states with a history of voting discrimination – previously required to clear voting restrictions with the Department of Justice – to enact laws that made it harder for traditionally Democratic-leaning groups to cast a ballot. The demographic headwinds facing the GOP, rather than the mythical specter of voter fraud, motivated those legislatures to do so with gusto. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, 22 states have enacted new voting restrictions since the Republican “wave” election in 2010. For 15 of them, this November will be the first test.

But the fight for voting rights continues in the courts. On Thursday, Richard Wolf reported for USA Today that a series of challenges to various states’ restrictive voting laws may ultimately send the Voting Rights Act back to the Supreme Court… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Bill Moyers>

Click through for more,

This situation has me nervous as a hooker getting a VD test after a pseudo-Christian convention! Under Roberts, the Fascist Five Injustices of SCROTUS has shown that they like to dismantle out rights incrementally. As they showed in the follow on cases to Hobby Lobby, with each new case they take more. They will say, of course, that Congress has the power to change it, knowing full well that Congress will do no such thing, as long as a minority can stay in charge of the House. Therefore we must

Get Out The Vote!!

Open Thread–9/14/2014

Posted by TomCat at 12:00 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Sep 142014

I’m writing for tomorrow, day 146. My day was thoroughly screwed up by another fire in the building at 4 AM. An idiot left his apartment with food cooking on the stove and it caught fire. It was actually on my floor, but I was never in any danger. A firefighter was about to carry my walker down the stars for me, while I walked, when another came up and and told us it was already out. I tried to go back to sleep, but could not, and I’ve been behind the eight ball all day. Tomorrow is a Holy day in the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb. My Broncos are worshiping with the Chiefs and the service will be televised here, so I’ll be spending much of tomorrow in Holy meditation.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 2:42 (average 4:47). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: Tired of seeing disgraced and discredited war hawks like John McCain and Dick Cheney dominate media coverage of the crisis in the Middle East? Then you’ve got to see Stephen’s segment last night.

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,The Colbert Report on Facebook,Video Archive

Nostradumbass!! Perfect!! Let us remember that the agreement to withdraw US forces from Iraq, when we did, was negotiated by Bush, not by Obama.

From American Bridge PAC: American Bridge is releasing a new web ad today highlighting Scott Walker’s failed economic record.

The governor was once considered a frontrunner for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination, and his reelect was supposed to be a walk through the park en route to bigger and better things. Nobody is looking past November now, with Walker locked in the political fight of his life, and desperately trying to create the narrative that he’s led a triumphant comeback in the Badger State.

But that story is undermined by reality. The truth is that Walker rammed through an extreme overhaul of the budget that slashed education funding, attacked public employees, and gave massive tax cuts to the wealthy, all under the promise of job creation and balancing budgets. Well Wisconsin is last in the midwest in job growth and facing a $2 billion budget shortfall.

They certainly have the Fartfuhrer of Fitzwalkerstan perfectly pegged. Click through for more.

From The New Yorker: Amid some confusion as to whether it had, in fact, declared war on ISIS, on Friday afternoon, the White House attempted to clarify matters by vowing to use “every synonym for war at our disposal.”

After the Secretary of State John Kerry asserted that the United States was not at war, only to be contradicted later by the White House’s statement that it was, the White House spokesman Josh Earnest held a press conference to state that “no synonyms for war have been taken off the table.”

“Yes, this is a war,” Earnest said. “But it is also a conflict, a campaign, a struggle, a fracas, and, if you will, a melee.”…

Andy is right. We should call it what it is.

Cartoon:

0914Cartoon

Is ISIS Islamic?

Posted by TomCat at 12:07 am Politics, Religion

Sep 132014

I’ve been hearing a not if noise of late from America’s lunatic fringe, aka the Republican Party that we should be burning the Koran, forbidding the construction of mosques, expelling Muslims from the armed services, etc., because the conflict against ISIS is a conflict against Islam, So let us ask, “Is ISIS Islamic?” The following author says no.

Conservatives reacted harshly to President Obama’s claim on Wednesday night that the Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) “is not Islamic,” accusing the commander-in-chief of naiveté and ignorance. “What kindergartner briefs the President on terrorism?” Ron Christie, a GOP strategist tweeted. “ISIS says it’s Islamic, lots of people say it’s Islamic, only the president won’t,” George Will told Fox News shortly after the speech.

But the full context of Obama’s remark points to an important distinction between Islam and the extremist ideology that’s sweeping parts of Iraq and Syria. “No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL’s victims have been Muslim,” Obama said. “ISIL is a terrorist organization, pure and simple. And it has no vision other than the slaughter of all who stand in its way.”

Indeed, even from the viewpoint of a casual observer, ISIS is an abomination to Islam. Explosions tend to capture the media’s attention more than peaceful coexistence, and a minuscule minority of extremist groups claiming to be Islamic have exploited this fact as a way to reinvent Islam as a “violent” religion. But just because you shout God’s name while committing murder doesn’t make your actions righteous. Islam, as millions of Muslims can attest, is a peaceful religion that calls on its followers to choose community over conflict, or, as it says in Surah al-Hujurat of the Qur’an (49:13): “O mankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that ye may know each other (not that ye may despise [each other]).”

But ISIS clearly has little regard for this or other fundamental tenets of Islam… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Think Progress>

I fully agree. ISIS has nothing in common with authentic Islam. Their behavior is the opposite of Islam’s most basic tenants. If short, they are pseudo-Muslims. Then, to whom can we righty compare them?

Pseudo-Muslims are Dominionist. They believe that a theocracy should rule over the smallest details of people’s personal lives. In that way, they are just like Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christians. Pseudo-Muslims have formed violent militias. In that way they are just like Republican Supply-side pseudo Christians. Note that the Bundy militia shares the above graphic with ISIS. It’s hard to tell them apart. Pseudo-Muslims execute people they consider unclean. In that way they are just like Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christians, who have called for the death penalty for gays, and US Republican Senators and Congressmen actually helped Ugandan pseudo-Christians draft a law to execute gays. Thank God it failed!

A pattern is emerging here. Religion is not the problem. Authentic Muslims and authentic Christians get along just fine. The problems come, when extremists with a political agenda hijack a religion to impose authority over others, usually through violently enforced piety codes.

Be warned. There is one major difference between pseudo-Muslims and pseudo-Christians. The latter are here and have the support of the Republican Party.

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