Category Archives: Politics

Mothers Saying the Dumbest Things

Politics, , ,

1) The mother of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev going all Cleopatra (Queen of D’Nile) on the interviewers, claiming her sons are innocent of the Marathon Bombing. Yes, she knows everything. She goes over to Dagestan while her son is in college back in the USA and she knows what’s going on in his life. Ya sure.

2) Barbara Bush when asked if Jeb should run for Pres. Although you need to give her credit for not wanting another Shrub in the White House, one of the things she says in her justification of Jeb not running is “…there are a lot of great families…” implying, there are other great families from which to cull the future president of our country.

A lot of great families? What about a lot of great PEOPLE?

This just smacks of the old money, old family mentality. None of that new money (Clintons) or new family (Obamas) riff raff. Keep the well-heeled and manor-borne in office. But Let’s give someone else a chance besides Jeb. There are plenty of good families. Old families. Yes. More old money in power. Gaah.

More About the Paul Ryan Post Below

Politics,

I have been away from WiFi for over a month…long story, my dad died and I was tied up dealing with a very difficult situation which I will write more about later….maybe.

I received a comment to the previous post by supposedly a young, very young, woman that she thinks Ryan is hot as a vampire and that “he’s got her vote.” Because I was not able to approve it or reply to it in a timely manner due to the above, I will simply state that I sure hope her raging hormones means she is a minor and too young to vote.

You do not vote for a political ticket because you think the candidates are HOT. To what I hope would be most of us, this is obvious. Unfortunately, I fear this attitude is more prevalent than it should be. Need I state that this is not a beauty pageant. Too many people, I am afraid, are going to be voting against their best interests because they think this liar is handsome.

Oh, and as far as a vampire? He has the widow’s peak, but he doesn’t even rate. He’s what we would call a “who bit that one?” type. To Stan and I, Paul Ryan looks more like a Chicago gangster from the 1930s. (Welcome Dustbowl 2012) We nickname him “Mugsy.” I actually felt a bit guilty vamping him up here because it’s an insult to vampire-type guys. But I thought the suck metaphor was appropriate.

Sick of the Tea Bully Bullshit

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First of all, I’m monitoring the High Park Fire on Twitter. I know people DIRECTLY impacted by it. First of all, there’s our dear friend Bill who lives on Horsetooth Mountain near Lory State Park. We called him Sunday and he evacuated, packing as much stuff as he could into his truck and his sister’s vehicle. I cannot tell from maps whether his house is ok or not. It is breaking my heart to think something would happen to it. He just put a new addition onto it recently.

Second there’s my mom who lives in Fort Collins. Since she is elderly, I worry about all that smoke impacting the city. I’m not so worried about my dad who is in a nursing home.

And I just found out that our next door neighbor’s son works at a ranch just 5 miles south of the fire border. Wow. That’s a coincidence.

But there’s all these assholes on Twitter that have a cussing hissy fit anytime anyone mentions anything political, telling people to take their political bullshit elsewhere, and that #highparkfire is for INFORMATION about the fire. Oh, really? Since when is Twitter a public service? As far as I know, Twitter is a private company, and although they have rules about abuse, there is nothing saying anything about using hashtags relating to disasters to discuss politics. Nothing. You should appreciate that, teabillies, with your free enterprise libertarian no regulations. From what I have seen in my sporadic and sometimes obsessive twitter monitoring over the last few days is people being attacked by these self-appointed right wing twitter cops for posting anything from sarcastic comments about Romney wanting fewer firefighters to people simply posting a link to what a Colorado congressperson says about pine beetles. If anyone is abusive, it is the the bullies cussing at the people posting with political views. One thing those who have been scolded have in common is they all seem to be from the center or left politically. I’m sure if someone posted a right wing view point with the high park fire hashtag, their political post would not be attacked and they would not be told to go elsewhere. And funny how so much “God” and “Pray” tweets there are, and no one from the left is screaming “Take your religious post bullshit elsewhere…*highparkfire is for information only!” Maybe because although atheists have no need for “Pray for the victims” or “God please make it rain” tweets, they realize that people have a right to say what they want on Twitter. This concept unfortunately seems to be lost on the fascists.

One more thing. This dream seemed like some kind of premonition of what was about to take place a few days later.

My Wisconsin Recall Election Vote Rigging Conspiracy

Politics, ,

Me? I don’t cry right away. It takes me a couple days. Like today. Wednesday was just surreal, emotionless, flat, shadowless. It was literally like the world had no shadows or shape. It was two dimensional, like the media I was immersed in.

I read this on Democratic Underground:

I’ll bet Walker actually lost yesterday, but the Democrats were too clueless to catch him stuffing ballot boxes. At least some Wisconsin counties vote on DeBold machines. It would be no trick at all to invent 50,000 votes spread through fifteen friendly counties, and steal the election.

What I thought was odd was the day of the election, TV clips showed “PerpWalker” voting, seeming unusually unconfident, stating he was “cautiously optimistic.” This was not his normal, cocky, confident self. It appeared there was something going on beneath the surface. There are only two explanations I can come up with:

1) He really was being cautious about his confidence. He understood the great grassroots groundswell against him, of the roughly one million people who signed the petition for his recall. He really was afraid of being recalled, and being “cautiously optimistic” was a way of him not getting his hopes too high. He could have been authentically scared, and even though Koch & Co. had it all planned out, they let him believe it was going to be very, very close.

2) It was all an act. He knew the fix was in, the paper trail-less touch-screen Diebold machines hacked in his favor. (I’d like to see a breakdown of which counties used the above mentioned voting method and which used the optical scanners which leave a paper trail. My county, Dane, uses the latter, and it was deep, deep blue.) In this scenario, Koch & Pals let him in on it, and Koached him to act straight-faced for the obligatory “candidate goes to the polls” media shot.

This is why I suspect the person who wrote the snippet from the Democratic Underground post may be right. Tea Party Repubs did not want a repeat of the Kloppenburg/Prosser fiasco “oh look, Kathy Nichlaus just found 14,000 ballots!” of last year. They wanted a fast, decisive win that didn’t look suspicious. Instead, they rigged it so it was so decisive it could only have been faked. Not even Republican voters believed it would be that much of a margin. After all, exit polling showed Obama leading Romney 51 to 44, a difference of 13 points. That’s just too much of a disconnect to jive with Walker’s 6 point win over Barrett.

One thing that really pisses me off is not enough was brought up before the recall by either Barrett, the TV Media, or even the Twitterverse about the Deer Czar. This totally screws Wisconsin hunters who currently pay $24 a year license to hunt. Under this regime, that would be raised to $750-$1000 or more. This will directly affect many Wisconsinites, probably a majority of whom voted for Walker. Did they even realize this is happening?

I’m not a hunter, but when the choice is keeping a $24/a year Wisconsin tradition alive, thinning the deer herd to prevent them from painful starvation and car collisions vs. hunting them behind fences on private land at prices reserved only for the wealthy, the choice is pretty simple.

To paraphrase the old statement:

First they came for the Unions,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t in a union.

Then they came for Badger Care,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t on Badger Care.

Then they came for the Equal Pay Law,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Woman.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Verify the Verify

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Wisconsin’s “Verify the Recall,” a far-right wing group created for the sole purpose of trying to disprove the million signatures to recall Gov. Scott Walker and to mock the supposed fictitious signatures (Bart Simpson, Mickey Mouse et al) has instead made a mockery of themselves.

What appears to be running off Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nicholaus’s home computer’s server, an early 90s PC no doubt, the website is slow to load and never produces any worthwhile search results. Not only that, there is no obvious “search” button, which is a bit odd for the claims of it being a “searchable database.” This is more like a “waitable database.” I did try pressing “return” at the end of a word search in the various columns, but wouldn’t you know it, a search on Stan’s last name produced no results, even though he did sign the petition. Why didn’t I search on other things like my last name or my street or my zip code? Well, I did. It’s just that it kept grinding away and never ever produces a result, not even to tell me there are no results. Did I say the server is slow?

Come to think of it, this site is run by tea partiers, and they’re not known for their accurate spelling. Perhaps I should have searched on a misspelled version of Stan’s last name, maybe that would’ve given some results.

Fortunately, the site does have a help page, but it’s a pdf file! And a graphically challenged one at that! It’s right out of the graphic design humorist’s handbook of visual comedy. Aqua-green text bubbles litter the page with instructions pointing this-a-way and that-a-way with blue arrows pointing at various parts of the database, all explained in CENTER JUSTIFIED text!

I guess the good news is that those who wish to use this database for nefarious purposes will be unsuccessful. I have been attempting a Verify search on my computer for what seems like a couple hours now while I am working, however those that must rely on the 15-minute limit computers at the detention center library won’t have that convenience.

I’m not giving a link to the site here, but if you do search on “Verify the Recall” you will find the site, first by finding the main site, which will then direct you to the iverify site, which then makes you read some stuff and then enter the site, and then you have to agree to some more stuff like how you won’t use the search for nefarious purposes which is silly because you can’t use the site for ANYTHING, and then you enter deeper into the site.

Oh, and this is pathetic…Vicki McKenna (google her too, I’m not going to explain) just asked for donations over Twitter because they need a better server. Waaaaaah!

Go ask the Koch brothers, Vicki.

Raising Cain Again

Politics, , ,

On MSNBC this morning, Melissa Harris-Perry said to Herman Cain that Rachel Maddow has suggested his campaign was more parody and performance art than a serious campaign, and Cain’s pairing with Stephen Colbert reinforces that image. Cain goes off on how he doesn’t care whether Rachel Maddow doesn’t understand what he’s about.

But is Cain’s indignation about his being a serious campaigner an Andy Kaufmanesque mask of his own performance art parody? Unfortunately, I’m afraid not. He does not comprehend the levels of satire Colbert is working with. And although Maddow postulated the theory of Cain as performance art and that he could (if it were true) be punking us, the tables have actually turned and Colbert is punking him.

This stuff is hilarious.

Signed The Petitons

Politics

Went out of our way looking for a stand because Stan saw one on the way back from work, but by the time we got there, it was down, probably because it was really cold. Figured we could sign them at the rally on Saturday, and if worse comes to worse we could always print them out and sign them and mail them in. But they were canvassing the neighborhood last night so we got it done.

So I guess there’s going to be a “We Are The 99%” rally @ Ian’s Pizza off the capitol AND a Recall Walker rally on the capitol, both starting @ 11 am.

You Don’t Know Weird

Politics,

In all fairness, I think all this noise about how Mitt Romney is “weird” is really misguided. Slick? Yes. Mannequin stuffed shirt? Definitely. Against the best interest of the country? Absolutely. But weird? If you think Romney is weird, I feel sorry for you. You have led a sheltered life.

I am thinking that the people behind the weird campaign are young, probably Xers, maybe with Boomer parents. What they are perceiving as weird is nothing more than an old fogey’s ill-fated attempt at humor. Stan and I were discussing this today, and we were saying that his various lightheartedness caught on camera, i.e.: “Who Let the Dogs Out,” “Jukebox Butt Pinch,” and “I, Too, am Unemployed,” is just an older generation’s sense of humor. We’ve been around it. A lot. It’s not weird. In fact, it’s so lame and milquetoast it’s totally lacking of any edginess, and I would think “weird” would definitely have a little edge. It’s just dumb, not weird. It’s old fart humor.

Now you want weird? Take a look at the people Rick Perry had at his prayer breakfast. That’s beyond weird. That’s bloody frightening.