Saturday, July 28, 2012

Romeny's "Experience"

Its been interesting to watch Governor Romney head off on his foreign tour.  He didn't start out well, insulting his British hosts before he even got there and then committing two verbal gaffes that had the British press in a feeding frenzy.

What I find interesting in all this is what is says about Governor Romney.

This is a man who has been running for the Presidency for 12 years.  He is a man of wealth and education.  And yet, he starts off on a world tour by insulting his hosts.  This is a man who is running on his experience.  As Governor, as venture capitalist, as CEO of the Utah Olympic games.  He wants you to believe that he had the resume to supplant a sitting president.  And this is how he starts off his first foreign travel of the campaign.

If then Senator Obama had been equally as clumsy when he went on his foreign tour 4 years ago, the Republican noise machine would have had a field day and would still be talking about it.  Instead he gave addresses, especially in Berlin, that were widely praised.

The two gaffes say, I think, something Romney's management ability.  I am fairly well traveled, and I don't know that I would know how to address the leader of the loyal opposition.  But I would have someone on my staff that would know.  Someone who would make sure I knew how to address the opposition leader.  But he didn't.  And then he has a private meeting with the head of the British intelligence service.  This is something you are not supposed to talk about.  Yet he did.  Again, where was his staff.  Romney's campaign has been full of this kind of stupid stuff.  I don't know that it says good things about Romney's so called experience or about his management abilities.  If this is how he runs a campaign, how is he going to run our Government?

Sunday, July 15, 2012

Where are you Liberal Mainstream Media

Liberal Mainstream Media,

I miss you!!!!

Its been so long I don't know if you ever actually existed

I have been told by Conservatives/Republicans that you are in the bag for Obama so often that I almost believed it myself.

Now I want it to be true and I want you back.

I want a LIBERAL MAINSTREAM MEDIA that will ask every Conservative/Republican that talks about Repealing and Replacing Obamacare, what would they replace it with?

     Would it forbid insurance companies from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions?

     Would it forbid insurance companies from canceling your coverage when you actually get sick?

     Would it let us keep our kids on our insurance until they are 26?

     Would it close the Medicaid Part D donut hole left behind by Bush's Prescription Drug Benefit?

     Would it require that insurance companies pay out most of their income in claims instead of in administrative and marketing costs?

     Would it provide coverage (mostly by private insurance companies) to 30 million Americans that previously didn't have Insurance?

I want them to ask all those questions?  Cause nobody in the major networks is asking that now.

I want them to ask for a single example in American history where a massive tax cut that wasn't accompanied by massive spending cuts didn't explode the deficit?

I want them to ask where are the jobs since the Rich are Richer than they have ever been and Corporations are making record profits and are sitting on trillions of dollars in cash reserves?  Where are the jobs?

I want them to ask which program that President Obama initiated has increased the debt or the deficit other than the stimulus bill?

I want them to point out that the economy has consistently performed better under Democratic Presidents than it has under Republican Presidents.

I want them to point out that the stock market has consistently performed better under Democratic Presidents than under Republican Presidents.

When Conservatives/Republicans say that the President's policies on the economy have failed, ask them which of the President's policies that got passed have failed?  Ask them how many jobs bills Congress passed after the Stimulus bill?

And when they try to say that the Stimulus bill failed question their definition of failure since the stimulus created between 2 - 4 million jobs and increased GDP by 1.5 - 2% a year for the 2 years it was pumping out money.

When the Conservative/Republican they tries to claim that the President PROMISED that if the stimulus bill passed that unemployment would not go over 8%, explain to them the difference between a promise and a prediction.  Then point out that since the economy was clearly in worse shape in early 2009 that the President understood at the time, clearly a bigger stimulus bill was needed.  And then ask them why they have opposed every attempt by the president to kick start the economy with any of the jobs bills he has proposed even though he proposed ways to pay for each and every one of them.

Ask them if proudly saying that they would refuse a budget deal that included 10 parts of spending cuts and only 1 part of a tax increase, ask them how realistic that is and then ask them where they are willing to compromise or if they are willing to compromise at all.

That's the Liberal Mainstream Media that I keep hearing Republicans/Conservatives complain about.  The problem is I haven't actually seen many in the main stream media actually ask these questions.  Usually when some Conservative/Republican get on their show and just starts lying, they just nod and accept the lies without comment.

I wish we did have a Mainstream Media that would ask these questions

I would like that.

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Voter Suppression

One of the things Conservatives/Republicans have been doing the past few years that is quietly remaking America and not in a good way is actively working to suppress the votes of Democratic leaning voters.

In state after state, Republican led Legislatures with Republican Governors have passed bills designed to make it harder to vote.  And the way these laws have been structured has been designed to affect groups that usually vote Democratic more than groups that usually vote Republican.

The most widespread of these efforts are laws passed in many states requiring that people present a government issued photo ID.  They claim that all they want to do is protect the integrity of the voting booth by ensuring that you really are who you say you are when you show up to vote.  That almost sounds reasonable.  But consider who this law has the affect of targeting.  People in urban areas who don't own a car and therefore don't have a drivers license.  Poorer people who, again, don't have cars and therefore don't have drivers licenses.  Both groups of people who tend to vote Democratic.

And the types of ID's they will accept even has a bias.  In Texas, you can present a state issued concealed gun carry permit, but not a Student ID issued by any University, even state universities.  Now lets see, students and carriers of concealed weapons.  Who do you think is more likely to vote Democratic.

A significantly higher percentage of minority voters vote early or vote absentee.  You see its easier to vote on Saturday than on a day you are have to be at work.  One state eliminated voting the Sunday before election day.  Its must be a coincidence that many black churches load up the buses after Sunday Worship and head on down to the County Courthouse the Sunday before Election Day so they can vote early as a group.

Poor and minority voters are far more likely to be registered to vote in Voter Registration drives, so states are making it harder to run Voter Registration Drives.  In Florida, a High School Teacher was literally charged with a crime because she didn't turn in the voter registration cards for her Senior Students in the 48 hours allowed by law.  That bastion of Liberalism and even Anarchy, the League of Women Voters, is largely giving up on Voter Registration Drives in Florida because the law is so restrictive and the penalties so severs.

And then there is voter purging.  Republican Governors seemingly want to ensure that only people legally allowed to register are registered, so they hire company to search the voter rolls for people who have the same name as a convicted felon.  They then send the now suspect voter a letter demanding proof that they are legally eligible to vote and if the letter isn't returned quick enough, the voter is purged from the rolls.  They did this in Florida and ILLEGALLY disenfranchised around 8000 voters.  And guess what, most of those voters were poor and minorities.  Can you just imagine how the Florida vote might have turned out if those 8000 voters had been allowed to vote.
And, no surprise here, Florida is at it again.  The Florida Secretary of States office sent out voter purge lists so worthless that many county election supervisors simply refused to act on them.
Each of these laws, deliberately or not, makes it harder to vote and the burdens imposed by this law fall most heavily on those who would mostly vote Democratic.  I personally don't think that is a surprise.  Its got to be a good electoral strategy to suppress the turnout of your opponents voters.
Somehow Republicans/Conservatives want you to believe that they JUST HAVE TO TO THIS to protect the integrity of the voting process itself.

But when asked how many cases they know of people actually showing up at a polling place and trying to vote using someone else's name, they don't know.  The Bush II administration Justice Department made finding and prosecuting voter fraud a priority.  And yet, the best the Department of Justice could do in 8 years of trying was a couple of dozen convictions for voter fraud, and very few of those were for the kind of fraud that these voter suppression laws would prevent.

Here in South Bend Indiana, there was a real case of voter fraud.  But like most voter fraud this was wholesale.  The local supervisor of elections, and one of his minions conspired to rig the vote for their candidates in some local primaries.  And they did it the old fashioned way, they doctored the voting documents.  They didn't have to send 10's or 100's of fraudulent voters to the polls to vote as someone else, they simply made up the votes they needed and submitted the made up numbers as if they were real.  That the kind of voter fraud that actually happens.  That the kind of voter fraud that can really swing or steal an election.  But that is not what all the Republican Governors are attacking.

They are attacking the 80 year old Nun who had voted in every election since Truman.  But she didn't have a government issued ID.  She was a Nun.  But she wasn't allowed to vote.

And then about a week ago we get a bit of utter honesty from a Republican official in Pennsylvania.  he told a friendly audience that the new Voter ID laws were going to win the state for Romney.
The supposedly liberal main stream media isn't making any noise about this, and I don't know why.

Voter suppression is a crime, but they are getting away with it.

If you talk to a Conservative about this, ask them how much individual voter fraud, you know the kind these bills will prevent, how much of that fraud is actually happening.  They will dodge the question and make nice sounding statements about protecting the integrity of the voting booth and then probably ask you if you want illegal immigrants to be voting or some other such BS, but they won't actually answer the question.  Because there is no rash of voter fraud that would justify all of these new laws.  It isn't there.  But they can't admit that because then the only reason left to them is the real reason, the reason admitted to by the hapless Republican official in Pennsylvania.  These laws aren't about protecting anything honest and good.  These laws are about suppressing the vote of those they disagree with.

If you aren't outraged, you should be.

Sunday, July 8, 2012

Unpolitically Correct

I just found the funniest Facebook Page called Unpolitically Correct

This is their favorite quote.

The Democrat Party's entire game plan can be summed up as follows:

1) reward those who are failures in life

2) punish those who are successes in life

And this is their profile picture



Wanna bet the only watch Fox News and read NewsMax and PajamaTV for their news.
This desire to remain blissfully ignorant, to not even hear a competing argument just astounds me.

Don't confuse this Conservative with the facts, their mind is made up!!