Category Archives: Politics

What’s Pissing Me Off Now?

It’s time once again to play everyone’s favorite game: What’s pissing me off now?

This time, it’s the House of Representatives that is pissing me off.  Specifically and not surprisingly, the Republicans in the House of Representatives.  Even more specifically, Eric Cantor (R-VAginas don’t matter).

The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) expires at the end of this year and the Senate passed an updated version of the act that also protects immigrants, LBGTs, and Native Americans.  Sounds completely uncontroversial, right?

Not to Eric Cantor!  You see, right now, if a Native American woman is raped by a non-Native on Native soil, the Natives have no jurisdiction to prosecute the non-Native.  The jurisdiction falls to the Federal Government.  The Federal Government has close to zero capacity to prosecute such crimes.  The result being that rapists can basically rape with impunity.  The VAWA was updated to give tribal courts the power to prosecute rapes that happen on tribal lands.

Eric Cantor seems to think that if we give tribal courts the ability to protect Native American women from being raped by white men it could open the flood gates of letting Native Americans prosecute white boys for other crimes that they commit on Native lands.  Because of that hypothetical problem, Eric Cantor is perfectly fine with Native American women being raped and their rapists getting away with it.

And that’s what’s pissing me off now.

This is Republican Leadership

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) tried to force a vote yesterday on a bill that would give the President the ability to raise the debt limit.  He thought that Democrats would balk at this and they would look stupid, as they often do.  Majority Leader Harry Reid (R-NV), though, didn’t cooperate with McConnell’s plans and quickly agreed to a vote on the bill.  This put McConnell in the strange position of having to filibuster the vote on a bill that he recommended the Senate vote on.

This is how screwed up the Republicans have made the Senate in the last few years. Even when the Republican leader calls for a vote and everyone agrees to vote, the vote gets filibustered.  This is why the filibuster needs to be fixed and I hope the Democrats have the guts to follow through with fixing it at the beginning of the year.

This is also more proof that Republican threats of brinkmanship if the Democrats do pass filibuster reform are a joke.  Yes, please, threaten to do exactly what you have been doing for four years now.  We’re really scared.

A Momentous Occasion

It is looking likely that there will soon be a black man in the U.S. Senate once again!  And he’s a Republican!  *gasp*

Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC), one of the most obstructive senators in an incredibly obstructive body, announced that he is retiring as of the beginning of the year.  This allows Governor Nikki Haley (R) to replace him.  DeMint has suggested Representative Tim Scott to replace him and the South Carolina Republican party has indicated that they would approve of the choice.

If this comes true, Tim Scott will be only the seventh black man to attain the office of U.S Senator.  He will also be the first black Senator from the post-reconstruction South.  This is a pretty big deal.  I hope Govenor Haley picks him.

That’s really all the good news about DeMint retiring, though.  Tim Scott has all the traits that makes Republicans pretty darned unlikable.  He’s anti-immigrant, pro-business to the point that he’s actually anti-worker, opposes earmarks except if they are for his district, and wants to repeal Obamacare.  I haven’t seen any terribly anti-science stances from him, but I don’t hold out much hope on that front, given his party and his state.

But still, progress!

Shared Sacrifice

You hear a lot these days about the concept of shared sacrifice from Republicans.  Judging from the ideas they present, they have absolutely no idea what shared sacrifice actually means.  In order to sacrifice something, you actually have to feel the sacrifice.

Raising the eligibility age of Social Security or Medicare is not shared sacrifice.  It would affect me not at all.  It would affect almost everybody who makes more money than me not at all.  We all have jobs that we can work at until we die or go senile.  Working an extra year or two is not a sacrifice.  People who perform manual labor, for a living, though, are hugely impacted by raising the eligibility age.  Despite the fact that the average lifespan in America has slowly raised, most of the gains have been in lowered infant mortality rates and upper income individuals.  Blue collar workers’ lifespans have barely increased at all.  Adding a year or two is basically telling blue collar workers that they have to work until they die.

Same thing applies for taxes.  It would take increases of a few percentage points for people like me to even begin to feel the effects of higher taxes.  No sacrifice there.  Whereas the 20% of the population who live at or below the poverty line would significantly feel the sting of even a slight raise in taxes.  Huge sacrifice there.  People who are making millions of dollars a year would need their taxes raised enormously in order to feel any type of sacrifice.  And no one is asking to raise their taxes enormously.  They are not being asked to sacrifice anything and screaming about the need to share the sacrifice.

Look at it this way.  Poor families have an ice cream cone and have to split it among the whole family.  Middle class families have five ice cream cones, one for each person with a little left over to share.  Upper class families have thousands of ice cream cones.  Republicans are basically asking the country to give up just one ice cream cone.  Poor families will be devastated by this.  Middle class families will have to make adjustments, but they’ll pull through.  Upper class families won’t even know they lost an ice cream cone.  But that is the Republican idea of shared sacrifice.

 

OMG! Todd Akin Was Right!

Trigger warning:  Sarcastic mocking of Republicans and their views on rape ahead.  Also, really bad humor.

While writing my previous post about shutting that whole thing down while dreaming, I got into a bit of a link clicking vortex.  What I found will astound you.

Almost everybody is aware of Todd Akin’s views of rape:

From what I understand from doctors, [pregnancy from rape] is really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.

Poor Todd just got a little confused.  This is just the new Fundamentalist Christian rape test for determining if a woman is a witch.  Because, guess what animal does have a way of shutting that whole thing down during a rape?  Pigs?  No.  Lemmings?  No.  Really small otters?  No.   A duck!  Exactly!  And so logically, if you rape a woman and she doesn’t become pregnant…

Then she’s a witch!  BURN HER!

Good News, Everybody!

File this one under the very worst possible good news imaginable.  Uganda has decided to not make it legal to kill homosexuals.  Instead, they’ll just put them in jail.  Yay?

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins took time out to tweet the group’s support of Uganda:

American Liberals are upset that Ugandan Pres is leading his nation in repentance – afraid of a modern example of a nation prospered by God?

This was interpreted by anyone with a brain as inherent support for the anti-homosexual bill, given that the two pieces of news came so close to each other.  FRC, though, claims that Perkins was just tweeting about the fact that heathen liberals are up in arms because Uganda’s president is dedicating the nation to repentance from god.

This is a pretty laughable claim.  First off, try finding anyone anywhere who is complaining about Uganda’s prayer ceremony.  You’ll just find Perkins complaining about the mystery complainers.  All the outcry has been about the bill.  Plus, it’s still support for a person and a country that would pass such a law.  It’s as if the FRC were to say, “We don’t support Mussolini at all!  We’re just praising him for his efficiency in getting the trains to run on time.”  Or maybe more to the point, “We don’t support apartheid at all!  We’re just praising South Africa for rededicating themselves to god by speaking some gobbledegook.”

And that’s American Christianity in a nutshell these days.  As long as you speak the right words, your deeds don’t matter at all.

There May Be Hope For the Middle East Yet

If you are not aware, Palestine is set to ask the UN to become a “observer-state“.  Basically, this means that the UN will recognize Palestine as a sovereign nation.  This is pretty big news.  What’s even bigger is that it looks like former Israel Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will support the bid.  And that, my friends, is huge!  Here’s Olmert:

 I believe that the Palestinian request from the United Nations is congruent with the basic concept of the two-state solution. Therefore, I see no reason to oppose it. Once the United Nations will lay the foundation for this idea, we in Israel will have to engage in a serious process of negotiations, in order to agree on specific borders based on the 1967 lines, and resolve the other issues. It is time to give a hand to, and encourage, the moderate forces amongst the Palestinians. Abu-Mazen and Salam Fayyad need our help. It’s time to give it.

Israel is, of course, against such a bid.  They say it is because Palestine should negotiate for peace directly with Israel and not use the UN as an intermediary.  Really, though, it’s just because it will help tip the scales closer to balance in this unbelievably disproportionately balanced power struggle.

This bid also has the unconditional backing of many European states.  England also has said that they’d back it after receiving a promise from Palestine that it would not go to the International Criminal Court accusing Israel of war crimes.  Today could be a very important day for peace in the Middle East.

Urge to Kill…Rising

It’s time to play everyone’s favorite game, “What’s pissing me off now?”  It’s the game in which I tell you what’s pissing me off now.  Hours of fun for the entire family!

I am years too late to this tragedy, but it’s worth bringing it to your attention since it was brought to mine.  The book that I’m reading, “Reamde” by Neal Stephenson, had a sentence in it mentioning the killing of American soldiers by electrocution when taking a shower.  I had never heard of such a thing and it stuck with me so to the Interwebs I went.

It turns out that faulty equipment has caused the deaths of eighteen soldiers.  Eighteen!  Who do we have to thank for this completely unnecessary tragedy?  Why, KBR of course!  Don’t remember KBR?  They are a Halliburton spin-off company that is the largest support contractor in Iraq.  You remember Halliburton, right?  That company that was run by vice president Dick Cheney?  It is really amazing that all roads of governmental evil seem to lead back to that man.

And as if KBR killing eighteen soldiers wasn’t enough, they’re also trying to weasel out of paying compensation to the families.  Even in horrible tragedies, you expect a certain amount of deniability from a company even if they are obviously to blame for the tragedy.  KBR, though, takes it to an entirely new level of evil, though.  They are trying to claim that Iraq law should be used to determine the outcome because the killing happened in an Iraqi government building.  Even though the building was under U.S. control at the time.  Why?  Because Iraq law doesn’t allow for punitive damages.  Yes, that’s right, they want to make sure that they pay the grieving families as little as possible for their mistake.

It gets better.  What does our government do to a company whose negligence resulted in the death of eighteen of our soldiers?  Why, give them an $83 million bonus, of course!

Let’s sum up, shall we?  Dick Cheney starts an unnecessary war.  Dick Cheney’s company gets more contractor work than any other company for said unnecessary war.  Dick Cheney’s company does really crappy work and this results in the electrocution deaths of eighteen of our soldiers.  Dick Cheney’s company denies responsibility but is found guilty of negligent homicide.  Dick Cheney’s company tries to have Iraqi law applied to verdict to keep payments to families to a minimum.  Dick Cheney’s company is awarded $83 million in bonuses for said shoddy work that killed people.

Yes, it might be a stretch to call KBR Dick Cheney’s company.  But it is certain that he is a shareholder and the people who run it are his friends and that he has profited massively from the war that he created.

And that’s “What’s pissing me off now?”  Thank you for playing.

More Fun With Tax Policy

Ok, listen up, you masses that worship the job creators.  You know how you think that raising the tax rate on the richest people will doom our economy to another recession?  Would you be surprised if I told you that this is complete toro caca?

Well it is.

How do I know this?  Economic history.  Tax rates on top earners have varied anywhere from 25% to 93%.  There is absolutely zero correlation between low tax rates for top earners and good economic performance.  Zero.  Guess when income and capital gains taxes for the top earners were at their lowest?  Just before the Great Depression!  Guess when they were at their highest?  Between 1940 and 1965, some of the best economic times our country has ever had.

I don’t mean to imply that higher taxes on top earners leads to economic growth in the prior paragraph.  What I mean to imply is that the tax rate on those who make well in excess of what they are required to live has absolutely no bearing on how the economy performs.  We could raise taxes on top earners back to 90% and the economy could either thrive or shrink and it would have nothing to do with the fact that the taxes were raised.

We are still fighting at least one war and will be fighting many shadow wars for years to come.  The social safety net could use some mending.  The country’s infrastructure needs huge improvements.  All these things are known to be true to just about every American.  So why are we even arguing about raising the top rate a few measly percentage points?  That’s a rhetorical question, I know the answer.

Voter ID = Voter Suppression

Ever since voter ID laws became the latest craze with Republican voters, there has been a steady trickle of prominent Republican politicians who have let slip the real (and obvious) reason for voter ID laws: To allow Republicans to win seats that they normally wouldn’t be able to win.

First it was Pennsylvania House Majority Leader Mike Turzai claiming that voter ID laws will provide a path to victory in the state for Mitt Romney.  Now it’s two Florida Republicans.  Former Florida GOP Chairman Jim Greer says that it’s state voter ID law was specifically meant to suppress Black and Latino turnout and former governor Charlie Crist echoed that voter ID only suppresses voter turnout though he doesn’t specify that it is targeted mainly at minorities.

We’ll leave aside the implicit racism of voter ID laws for now because all you get from that is a chorus of “I’m not racist!  Some of my best friends are of an oppressed minority!”  I will say this, though: If you consistently favor laws that happen to disproportionately disfavor minorities, you need to do some deep introspection because you both walk like a duck and talk like a duck so you shouldn’t get upset if people mistake you for a duck.

On the almost certain chance that you don’t think you’re racist and that in-person voter fraud is totally a thing and that it decides elections, I say learn statistics.  It is statistically impossible to win an election by in-person voter fraud.  Please note that “statistically impossible” doesn’t mean impossible, it just means that an improbable series of events would have to occur in order for in-person voter fraud to decide the election.

First, the election would have to be close.  Unless you are off-the-wall crazy and believe that organized in-person voter fraud is capable of producing more than a handful of votes here and a handful of votes there, you have to conclude that, right off the bat, 95-99% of all election decisions in any given year simply cannot be decided by in-person voter fraud.

Second, if the election is close, there is a far greater chance that the election will be decided by a counting error.  Neither machines nor people can count ballots with 100% accuracy.  Statistical models show that final tallies normally have a margin of error of between 1.8% and 2.0%.  That’s right, a close election that, by law, calls for a recount would be much better served by a flip of the coin than by a recount and would also save tax payers tons of money.

Third, “but what about the smaller local elections”, you ask?  Yes, the smaller the election, the greater the chance of fraud, but that fraud isn’t going to come from in-person fraud, it’s going to come from collusion.  You see, the smaller the election, the harder it would be to commit in-person voter fraud because it becomes much more likely you are going to be identified by poll workers as a stranger in a town where everyone knows each other.  So the only way to safely get away with it is to collude with the poll workers and voter ID laws aren’t going to stop that.

Voter ID laws are and always have been about voter suppression.  At best, they solve a non-existent problem.  At worst, they’re reminiscent of the Jim Crow era poll taxes. Please stop supporting them.