Itinerant Air-Cooled

The most entertaining part of the night was the freak out on MSNBC. I was watching when Chris Matthews said this:

There’s so much going on, The Denver Post endorsing Cory Gardner. The Des Moines Register Ernst. There’s something weird going on among – even among the educated crowd.

Reminded me of Ghost Busters; "Human sacrifice, cats and dogs living together....mass hysteria".

In other words, only stupid people would endorse a Republican. I only watch him occasionally, so I've been able to notice the pace of his descent from journalism to angry partisanship and unabashed advocacy.

http://hotair.com/archives/2014/11/05/w ... ve-crests/

A pretty convincing trouncing, but we shouldn't read it as a complete turnaround in the electorate. Mid-term elections tend to exaggerate the mood of the country; pissed off people go out to vote, and the simply grumpy or disillusioned stay home. The fact that most Tea Party challenges to moderate Republicans in the primaries failed meant the Republicans were more electable than last time.

Stonekettle Station
Don't just embrace the crazy, sidle up next to it and lick its ear.

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Jim Wright

"I cry tears of blood. Tears of blood, no really. Bloody tears. For the last best place. For all the little red white and blue warriors." Nov 07, 2012 2:40AM Twitter

"Pimps & whores and welfare brats and their soulless supporters hav a president to destroy America." Nov 07, 2012 1:36AM Twitter

That was Ted Nugent, crying tears of blood no less, November 7th, 2012, the night Barack Obama won reelection in a resounding victory.

Pimps and whores, oh my!

And Obama will destroy America. Oh he’ll do it, he’ll destroy America, he will. He’s the Anti-Christ, you know. The big Black Gay Muslim Devil.

And us, those of us who cheered Obama’s reelection? We’re pimps and whores and soulless fools. Oh yes, yes!

Take a deep breath, Democrats, Liberals, you’re going to be okay.

http://www.stonekettle.com/2014/11/ted- ... e-you.html


Jim Wright is a retired US Navy Chief Warrant Officer and freelance writer. He lives in Alaska where he watches American politics in a perpetual state of amused disgust.

I can't find the part where the McCain voters all run to a cave because the world is going to end, but the South Park episode about the 2008 election was one of their best.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8CjxhWptS4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bbgFO3hyt0

Disappointing. Have the black box issues ever been resolved with the voting machine software? Of course so many districts have been reconfigured to favor republican candidates, toss in all the new voter suppression laws, unlimited corporate cash speaking freely, and sure enough, republicans certainly seem to have a lock on things. Why am I surprised. Must be my progressive optimism. It is fading.

neal

Seems the only voting machine problems favored Democrats. And in Chicago, what a surprise. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... can-candi/

If you recall high school Civics, Senators and governors are elected by total vote count in the entire state, so voting districts had no impact in the pickup of 7 seats and several governorships by the Republicans. House members, maybe. Both parties gerrymander, and the 2012 wins by Republicans gave them the last go in a few places after the 2010 census.

As for "voter suppression", what a crock. If I didn't have an ID on Tuesday, all I had to do was sign an affidavit that I am who I say I am, so it could be checked later, if necessary.

It wasn't cheating, it wasn't being mislead by the Koch brothers, it wasn't gerrymandering. The Democrats got their butts kicked fair and square.

Points taken, but voter suppression is valid. ID was presented with a signature at registration. No doubt you live in a saner state than many. And much of the Koch brothers efforts are indeed misleading to the point of being outright lies. Voting machine irregularities favor Democrats? Not from what I have heard.

neal

ruckman101 wrote:Points taken, but voter suppression is valid. ID was presented with a signature at registration. No doubt you live in a saner state than many. And much of the Koch brothers efforts are indeed misleading to the point of being outright lies. Voting machine irregularities favor Democrats? Not from what I have heard.

neal

Gerrymandering is one of the last tricks of the dying Republican Party.

In 2000, Gore won the popular vote but lost the Presidency.
In 2012, Democrats got more votes but still lost the House.
In 2014, Democrats got 2.674-million votes in Michigan, but Republicans won control due to carefully drawn districts with 2.431-million votes.

Don't think that there is an absence of anger out there at these grasping games. Texas ended up in court because of its naked gerrymandering.

Neal, the demographics are going to swamp the Republicans, but you and I have a job to do for the Democrats regardless. We HAVE to control their idiotic smug self-satisfaction, their self-annointed intellectual superiority, and their even more deeply repugnant hypocrisy as they play the money game alongside the Republicans, but spout progressive rhetoric.
Colin

Which is why Bernie Sanders is my current hero. Hillary is as entrenched as Obama.


neal

Gore's problem wasn't gerrymandering, it was the electoral college, a 200 year old bodge that disenfranchises those of us that live in a solidly blue or red state. It should be replaced with a simple majority vote, including a run-off if nobody wins a majority. That would prevent travesties like Clinton winning the presidency in 1992 with only 43% of the popular vote.

As for gerrymandering, the squealing depends on who owned the last redistricting.

When Ronald Reagan won a landslide victory in 1980 so complete that Democrats lost twelve Senate seats, Republican candidates in races for the House of Representatives won a clear majority of the popular vote, but Democrat gerrymandering had been so effective that Democrats retained a whopping forty-two vote majority in the House of Representatives.

http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/ ... dering.htm

Gore's problem was also Florida's voting machines.

Voter ID laws are but one tactic in efforts to suppress and disenfranchise voters. The rest is just dirty tricks.

http://www.gregpalast.com/its-magic/


neal

hippiewannabe wrote: As for gerrymandering, the squealing depends on who owned the last redistricting.

Not for me. I don't like it either way. As you know, I am not a stupid party parrot with war paint smeared on my face. I don't like any trickery, I don't like being lied-to, and the republican "voter fraud" canard is truly a terribly ingrained lie. Now spineless Democrats are low on my list right now too. They are part of the problem, but they spout soaring Save America From The Capitalist Barons rhetoric, then when the mike is off, they say, "Hey Robber Baron, can I have some money, you know I was just saying that stuff don't you?"

We can do better than that. I dearly would like to see news return to being actual reporting of facts. I cannot believe the utter trivial tripe of reporting personality clashes but not reporting the actual effects of policies on people. . . "we'll be right back after these words."

We will not learn from our mistakes or what actually works if we do not discuss them.

TV news is a joke as everywhere it's the same with "We'll be back after reports from Weather, traffic and weather and traffic..."
The only exception I have seen lately is IBFwax's news show where actual reporting was reported on TV.

CNN, FOXnews etc suck so I check out BBC sometimes.

The Dems ran from their accomplishments over the last 6 years, the chickenshits. No wonder they lost as they just needed to tout those in the face of all the GOP BS that on the TV ads.
Plus some voters have just given up as what's the use to vote and let the GOP have the power to see what they can do, good or bad. Do Something!

Remember, there is no worse action than inaction.

It should be like the Clinton years with all the stupid GOP stuff going on in the House and Senate.

Amskeptic wrote:...the republican "voter fraud" canard is truly a terribly ingrained lie.

I've heard that said by the liberal media. They're certain fraud doesn't exist, but based on what data? If we aren't checking ID's, how do we know?

I was looking for an excuse not to rake the leaves, so let's do a little analysis.

We'll take at face value the NAACP's claims that 25% of voting age blacks don't have a driver's license, and only 8% of whites don't. Blacks are 13% of the population, whites 78%

.13 x .25 = 3% of the population represented by blacks that don't have a license. Let's assume 60% of those won't bother to get an ID: .03 x .6 = .0195. So, a little less than 2% of the population is denied voting this way.

Now for whites:
.78 x .08 = 6% of the population represented by whites that don't have a license. Now let's do the racism by expectations thing, and assume whites are more likely to go to the trouble of getting an ID. Say only 40% of whites won't bother to get an ID: .06 x .4 = .025. So, 2.5% of the total population is denied voting this way.

In other words, voter ID laws will take away slightly more white votes than black.

And remember, this is among voting age population, not likely or even registered voters. I have to believe there is a lot of overlap in the population that doesn't have a license and isn't likely to vote, so the effect will be vanishingly small. Unless we discover there has been voter fraud going on.

A conveniently narrow sampling hippie wannabe.

neal