Tag Archives: Republicans

March 24, 2013 · 11:06 pm

Stupid, Happy People

When I was young, more than once I said:  ” I wish I was stupid; life would be so much easier.”

I vividly remember saying that to my friend, Bob, one night during a low period of my life in college at Washington and Lee University.

Of course, knowing how I always applied my vision of life as seen by F. Scott Fitzgerald to my life at W&L,  I was probably only being melodramatic and paraphrasing Daisy Buchanan in “The Great Gatsby” when she says she hopes her daughter will be a “pretty little fool.”

Now, I just have a paranoid suspicion that the Republicans just may be putting this mythical drug in the drinking water in the South….

Still, this video offers a modern solution- and outlines the possible outcomes of what life might be if you could lower your IQ to better deal with modern life….

Hat Tip to John Aravosis at Americablog.com, where I first saw this….

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March 22, 2013 · 8:50 pm

Republicans Consider Closing UNC Campuses

The new- I refuse to say “our”- Governor of NC, Pat McCrory, is shaping up to be the most anti-education Governor North Carolina has ever seen.

One of the things North Carolina is known for is its excellent, affordable public Universities.  McCrory and his GOP friends in the Legislature seem intent on destroying this…

Of course, Republicans barely try to hide how anti-education their programs are….They value ignorance much more highly as educated voters don’t vote Republican.  In fact, they count on ignorance….

And they seem determined to both show it and drive it in North Carolina….

And the NC Democrats can’t seem to run a campaign or get their acts together to oppose them….

Scary times in my adopted home State….

Jesse Helms would be proud of them….

From WRAL Raleigh:

 

Lawmakers are considering the possibility of eliminating one or two campuses in the University of North Carolina system, a top Senate budget-writer said Thursday.

Gov. Pat McCrory called for a $135 million cut in funding for the UNC system in the 2013-14 budget proposal he rolled out on Wednesday.

As lawmakers began reviewing the spending plan Thursday, Sen. Pete Brunstetter, R-Forsyth, co-chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said he and his colleagues are more concerned about how money for higher education is spent than the actual size of the appropriation.

Lawmakers want to trim duplicative programs across UNC campuses, which Brunstetter said could reduce the overall system’s footprint.

“I think our members definitely envision that there could be some consolidation between campuses, and we might need to go from 16 down to 15, 14, something like that,” he said.

The university campuses in the system include UNC-Chapel Hill, North Carolina State University, North Carolina Central University, Fayetteville State University, East Carolina University, UNC-Greensboro, North Carolina A&T State University, Winston-Salem State University, the UNC School of the Arts, UNC-Charlotte, UNC-Wilmington, UNC-Pembroke, Elizabeth City State University, Appalachian State University, UNC-Asheville and Western Carolina University.

Brunstetter didn’t elaborate on which campuses might close.

via UNC system could lose campuses :: WRAL.com.

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March 22, 2013 · 12:05 pm

Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum Nearly Agreed To Form 2012 ‘Unity Ticket:’

Oh, this would have been fun!

Only the GOP could view this as a “Unity Ticket”….

It would have unified the country alright- against their ticket and given President Obama a real landslide….

From Bloomberg BusinessWeek via Huffington Post:

Pegged as an early frontrunner for the GOP’s 2012 presidential nomination, the Republican primary results were showing a different picture. Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) claimed the Iowa caucus and a clean sweep of three Feb. 7 contests. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) snagged the conservative foothold of South Carolina on Jan. 21, sparking questions of whether Romney was capable of inspiring the party to victory against President Barack Obama.

A Friday Bloomberg Businessweek report reveals that things could have been worse. Santorum and Gingrich were close to forming a “Unity Ticket,” aimed at knocking Romney out.

Santorum’s stock surged after that February 2012 rally, to a point where there was talk he could capture Romney’s home state of Michigan. According to the Businessweek report, that’s when the “Unity Ticket” discussion reached its peak. But negotiations collapsed just before Michigan’s Feb. 28 primary.

“Everybody thought there was an opportunity,” John Brabender, Santorum’s chief strategist, told Businessweek. “It would have sent shock waves through the establishment and the Romney campaign.”

At the heart of the Gingrich-Santorum breakdown was a battle over who would be the eventual presidential candidate. Based on what Gingrich told Businessweek, it appeared to be a deal-breaking factor.

“In the end, it was just too hard to negotiate,” Gingrich said.

MORE:  Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum Nearly Agreed To Form 2012 ‘Unity Ticket:’ Bloomberg Businessweek.

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March 2, 2013 · 2:02 pm

State by State Impacts of Sequestration: Or How Bad GOP Policy Will Hurt You and Your Friends

There is a great page at the Washington Post showing the real, state by state, impacts of the Sequester that kicked in yesterday.

The Sequester  which no one seems to be paying much attention to yet.

This is another one of those unnecessary crises that Washington Republicans specialize in creating.

And, of course, they don’t care in the least about the impacts on people or government services that help and protect us all.  All they care about is choking off as many of these government services as possible to align with their doctrinaire, Conservative ideologue, Washington-bubble induced vision that all government is bad….

Maybe it will take the people feeling the impacts of these arbitrary cuts to realize how important government programs are for all of us….

It’s a shame when people only realize the importance of what they have when they lose it…

But that may just be human nature…..

Maybe it has to be personal…

The impacts to the Economy from the resulting job and income loses don’t mean much to most people unless it hits them directly….

Maybe this is what it will take for  people to put some pressure on the GOP to stop acting like selfish, spoiled children and vote them out of office in the House and Senate in 2014.

Here is a link to the information at the Washington Post:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/sequestration-state-impact/

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February 27, 2013 · 9:15 pm

Fight the Good Fight: A Message from Robert Reich

Great message today on Facebook from former Labor Secretary and all around brilliant man Robert Reich…

Sometimes politics and politicians just seem too ridiculous to take seriously.  That’s one of the reasons I slowed down on blogging for a few months.  I had to take a break from the foolishness.

But I realized we all have to stay engaged and stay in the game.  The Conservatives, the Rich, the 1% , the crazy Evangelical fringe, the haters, the Gun Nuts and the neanderthal’s certainly will.  They aren’t going away- well, at least until they die out….

With the Supreme Court on the verge of throwing out section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, the Republicans are going to do even more to gerrymander their way into keeping power and finding ways to suppress the vote.

I hope all my Progressive friends and readers will read this message from Secretary Reich and keep it in mind:

In light of the standoff in Washington — and the continuing dysfunction in our nation’s capital — many of you are angry and frustrated. Some of you say you’ve had it with politics. Others feel powerless and hopeless. A number blame both parties, seeing Democrats as no different from Republicans.

All these reactions are exactly what the regressives want. This is the heart of their strategy. They want you to see all of politics and all politicians as crooks and con-artists, fools or knaves. They want you to give up. That way, they can have it all. They can turn the clock back on America. They can shred every safety net, eviscerate every regulation, prevent any investment in the health and education of future generations. They can hammer the poor and middle class with lower wages, fewer jobs, and less security, and create a plutocracy of the privileged and powerful. Get it? They want you out of the way so they have America to themselves. The showdowns and standoffs and gridlock in Washington are part of their plot.

We must not let them. The progressive forces in this country are stronger than the regressive ones, but only if we are united and determined. Don’t stop making a ruckus. Don’t stop writing and calling your representatives. Don’t stop mobilizing others, and organizing at the grass roots. 2014 will be a key election year. We must take our democracy back.

via Robert Reich.

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February 26, 2013 · 11:13 pm

What Researchers Learned About Gun Violence Before Congress Killed Funding

Facts are so inconvenient for some folks….

Some very interesting information from RawStory.com that shows how the NRA, among other interests groups, tries to stop scientific studies that might go against their interests.

And this shows just how explosive facts might be….

But the Right Wing will do all it can to suppress or ignore the facts….

So, they figure it’s best just not to have any….

Saves them so much time and effort to kill or misrepresent them or convince people to ignore them…

President Obama has directed the Centers for Disease Control to research gun violence as part of his legislative package on gun control. The CDC hasn’t pursued this kind of research since 1996 when the National Rifle Association lobbied Congress to cut funding for it, arguing that the studies were politicized and being used to promote gun control. We’ve interviewed Dr. Mark Rosenberg, who led the agency’s gun violence research in the nineties when he was the director of the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.

_______________________________________________

One of the critical studies that we supported was looking at the question of whether having a firearm in your home protects you or puts you at increased risk. This was a very important question because people who want to sell more guns say that having a gun in your home is the way to protect your family.

What the research showed was not only did having a firearm in your home not protect you, but it hugely increased the risk that someone in your family would die from a firearm homicide. It increased the risk almost 300 percent, almost three times as high.

It also showed that the risk that someone in your home would commit suicide went up. It went up five-fold if you had a gun in the home. These are huge, huge risks, and to just put that in perspective, we look at a risk that someone might get a heart attack or that they might get a certain type of cancer, and if that risk might be 20 percent greater, that may be enough to ban a certain drug or a certain product.

But in this case, we’re talking about a risk not 20 percent, not 100 percent, not 200 percent, but almost 300 percent or 500 percent. These are huge, huge risks.

MORE:   What researchers learned about gun violence before Congress killed funding | The Raw Story.

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February 19, 2013 · 7:30 pm

North Carolina Slashes Jobless Benefits

Amazing….

Amazingly heartless, amazingly stupid and amazingly bad public policy….

I just can’t believe the People of North Carolina really want this…..even most of the ones who voted for these idiots.

But, of course, the GOP only cares about Corporations and Corporate welfare. They are the only “people” who matter to the Republicans.

Laura Clawson at DailyKos.com says it best:

Surprising no one, but brutalizing hundreds of thousands of people, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican, signed major unemployment insurance cuts into law Tuesday. Under the new law, the maximum unemployment benefit is cut from $535 to $350, and the maximum weeks of eligibility are cut from 26 to 20, which cuts jobless North Carolinians off from the federal emergency unemployment compensation program.

The cutoff from federal benefits alone affects 170,000 people; overall, there are 400,000 unemployed North Carolinians.

The kicker is that this was done to protect businesses from having to pay higher unemployment taxes. But a big part of the reason it needed to be done was that North Carolina went into the recession with an underfunded unemployment insurance trust fund because of cuts to employer unemployment taxes. Now, with an unemployment rate of 9.2 percent, the fifth-highest in the country, the state is cutting the benefits that jobless people use to buy groceries and pay the rent and put gas in their cars to go to any job interviews they may be lucky enough to get.

Republican governance, y’all.

via Daily Kos: North Carolina slashes jobless benefits despite 9.2% unemployment.

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February 16, 2013 · 10:00 am

The North Carolina Nipple Police

North Carolina’s new GOP controlled legislature is living up to all my expectations….

With all the important issues like unemployment, education and infrastructure needs being ignored, they are focusing on ….

Nipples….

Maybe, after all,  we are safer if that’s where they keep their focus.  But sadly  they really are making themselves – and by default the state of North Carolina- a laughingstock to the rest of the country.

These Church Ladies seem intent on dragging us back to the days of Jesse Helms and the Andy Griffith Show.

But, I don’t think even Aunt Bea and Thelma would take too kindly to putting duct tape on their nipples…

Well, Aunt Bea might….

From RawStory.com:

North Carolina Republican state Rep. Tim Moore says that women can protect themselves from a new law that makes baring female breasts illegal by simply applying duct tape to their nipples.

On Wednesday, the state House Judiciary Committee C approved House Bill 34, which makes it a Class H felony to purposefully expose “private parts” for the “purpose of arousing or gratifying sexual desire.”

The bill expands the state’s definition of “private parts” to include a woman’s “nipple, or any portion of the areola.”

Republican state Rep. Rayne Brown told lawmakers that she was co-sponsoring the bill because activists had held a topless women’s rights rally in Asheville last summer, where as many as a dozen women bared their breasts

Although Brown’s district is 100 miles from Asheville, she felt it was important to act before women tried to assert their rights again by going topless at another rally.

“You’ve got local governments passing ordinances to protect themselves from just this thing,” she explained. “These folks don’t need to be doing that, but they do it because they’re not sure about the law.”

Under the proposed law, women could spend up to six months in jail for a first offense. “Incidental” nipple exposure by breastfeeding mothers would be exempt from the law.

Democratic state Rep. Annie Mobley said she worried that women wearing “questionable fashions” could be prosecuted under the new rules.

But Committee Chairwoman Rep. Sarah Steven (R) suggested that women could use pasties or nipple coverings just to be safe.

“They’d be good to go” with nipple coverings, Stevens said.

“You know what they say, duct tape fixes everything,” Republican state Rep. Tim Moore agreed.

via NC lawmaker: Women should ‘duct tape’ nipples to stay out of jail | The Raw Story.

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February 8, 2013 · 2:28 pm

Hacker Reveals George W. Bush’s Naked Self-Portraits

Now, who wants to see this crap?

Although it is interesting that “W” has this “artistic” side….

I just wonder if he was standing naked over the picture of the Church.  That part is not clear….

And who was he sending them to?

The mind reels…

Excerpt from and link to full story on RawStory.com:

Photos included in an information dump turned over to The Smoking Gun include President George H.W. Bush in the hospital, the elder Bush posing with President Bill Clinton, a family photo of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and even President George W. Bush posing with a cardboard cutout of himself wearing a mustache and beret.

Three of the images also show paintings Bush created, including one of himself in the shower, another of himself in a bath, and a third of him crouched over a canvas depicting a church.

A hacker going by the name “Guccifer” claimed the stolen messages include addresses, phone numbers and email addresses that go directly to both former presidents and their families, along with a security code for a gate outside the younger Bush’s home in Dallas.

via Hacker reveals George W. Bush’s naked self-portraits | The Raw Story.

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February 7, 2013 · 9:10 pm

Howard Fineman: Karl Rove Is Done

From Howard’s mouth to God’s ear….

We can only hope his predictions are true.

This is a really fascinating article on the rise and, hopefully, fall of Karl Rove and the current far-right, Tea Party infused Republican Party.  It offers a great historical perspective.

Here is a brief excerpt and a link, which I encourage you to follow, to the full story by Howard Fineman at the Huffington Post:

The party of Paul, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Gov. Rick Scott of Florida and many others is a throwback to the nativism and principled know-nothing-ism of conservatives whom the likes of William F. Buckley and Ronald Reagan purged from the party long ago, making it safe for the Roves of the world to advance.

It took the likes of Buckley and Reagan two decades to rid the GOP and the mainstream conservative movement of the John Birchers, ultra-isolationists and flat-out segregationists and to create a party and a platform that would win a national election.

Now leaders and potential leaders such as Cruz (a rising force to be reckoned with) and Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida need to perform the same cleansing task — and will probably have to take on the Paulites (who are paranoid conspiracy theorists at heart) to do it.

The war for the soul of the Republican Party is real, deep and reminiscent of that earlier conflict. For the GOP it ended well: they harnessed the energy at the grassroots to take over Washington.

This equally bitter GOP civil war may end in the party’s revival, too. But it won’t be Rove, or one of his clients, who is able to end it.

He’s done.

via Howard Fineman: Karl Rove Is Done.

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