Meep Meep, Muthahfuckah

Wile E Coyote's cousin Bibi addresses the UN.

Sen Jim Webb, (D-VA)

Those young Marines that I led have grown older now. They’ve lived lives of courage, both in combat and after their return, where many of them were derided by their own peers for having served. That was a long time ago. They are not bitter. They know what they did. But in receiving veterans’ benefits, they are not takers. They were givers, in the ultimate sense of that word. There is a saying among war veterans: “All gave some, some gave all.” This is not a culture of dependency. It is a part of a long tradition that gave this country its freedom and independence. They paid, some with their lives, some through wounds and disabilities, some through their emotional scars, some through the lost opportunities and delayed entry into civilian careers which had already begun for many of their peers who did not serve.

And not only did they pay. They will not say this, so I will say it for them. They are owed, if nothing else, at least a mention, some word of thanks and respect, when a presidential candidate who is their generational peer makes a speech accepting his party’s nomination to be commander-in-chief. And they are owed much more than that — a guarantee that we will never betray the commitment that we made to them and to their loved ones.

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Today's Cartoon

GOTV

Goofy as all hell, and the numbers are quite a bit different now, but it's still all about moving a few people off the fuckin' dime and out to the polls.

On average, over the last several cycles, national elections are decided be fewer than a dozen votes per precinct.  Make a few calls and see what happens.

The War Goes On

In this particular case, I refer to The War On Women.

via Addicting Info:

On Friday, the Illinois court of appeals upheld a decision that allows pharmacists and medical dispensaries to refuse to give out emergency contraceptives on the grounds of religion.

So here's a thought; maybe I could go to Pharmacy Tech school, wait around for that job at CVS to open up, and then after I'm kinda established, I could convert to the Christian Science brand of religion.  At that point, it seems like I'd be in the perfect position.  I could simply refuse to fill or dispense any prescriptions because my religion forbids it, which means I wouldn't be required to do any actual work.  And they couldn't pressure me or fire me because I could sue their asses off for Religious Discrimination in the workplace.

Gettin' It Done - 39

Because you can't concentrate well enough to learn everything you need to learn when food is competing for the top spot on your brain's list of priorities.

39. Improved School Nutrition: In coordination with Michelle Obama, signed Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act in 2010 mandating $4.5 billion spending boost and higher nutritional and health standards for school lunches. New rules based on the law, released in January, double the amount of fruits and vegetables and require only whole grains in food served to students.

And btw -  
It has given us the iced doughnut, the burger and the fattest people on Earth.

But now America is outdoing even itself when it comes to unhealthy food, by trying to claim pizza is a vegetable.

A school lunches Bill going before Congress aims to reclassify the junk food due to the tomato paste on the dough.

Read more: The Daily Mail

God Love Daily Caller

A facebook friend posted a bit from The Daily Caller about the evil Obama spending way too much of our tax money on "official travel" blah blah blah.

And guess what popped up in the comments?

It was up for a good 15 minutes before somebody probably flagged it and it got taken down; and I don't presume to know that it wasn't conveniently "planted" by some dirty rotten Democrat just to make the noble TeaBaggers look bad.  And I suppose the 14 'Likes' could've been the result of an email tree (or whatever) so a bunch of other dirty rotten Dems could rush over and hit the 'Like' button to make it seem like there's a lot of racist assholes posting comments at The Daily Caller.  Yeah, OK.  But y'know, sometimes it is what it looks like.

Today's Pix

Dear facebook friends...

Grandma doesn't get lei'd much anymore

The Vote

From Kevin Drum at Mother Jones, about the myth of voter fraud:

At this point, you may be wondering if there's really anything wrong with all this. What's the problem with cracking down on voter fraud? And why shouldn't voters be required to show photo ID? If you need ID to cash a check or buy a six-pack, why not to vote?

The answer—surprising to many—is straightforward: Not everyone has, or can easily get, a photo ID. If you don't drive, you don't have a driver's license. If you're poor, you probably don't have a credit card. And if you're unbanked and don't need ID to buy liquor, you probably don't have much need for photo ID at all.

Once that sinks in, the electoral significance becomes obvious. In 2007, shortly before the Crawford decision was handed down, the Washington Institute for the Study of Ethnicity and Race released a study of Indiana voters showing that among whites, the middle-aged, and the middle class, about 90 percent possessed photo ID. Among blacks, the young, and the poor—all of whom vote for Democrats at high rates—the rate was about 80 percent. Overall, 91 percent of registered Republicans had some form of photo ID, compared to only 83 percent of registered Democrats.

--and--

Still, Republicans argue, anyone can obtain a photo ID with a modest amount of effort if they really want to vote. And isn't this small amount of inconvenience worth it in order to crack down on fraud?

Sure—but first there needs to be some actual fraud to crack down on. And that turns out to be remarkably elusive.

 --and--

Statistics tell part of this story: According to a survey by the Brennan Center, 8 percent of voting-age whites lack a photo ID, compared to 25 percent of blacks. Getting an ID card from the state usually requires you to produce a birth certificate, and Barbara Zia of the South Carolina League of Women Voters recently explained what this means in her state: "Many South Carolinians, especially citizens of color, were born at home and lack birth certificates, and so to obtain those birth certificates is a very costly endeavor and also an administrative nightmare."

In St. Louis, where our story opened, Kit Bond's outrage about dogs and dead people has a long pedigree. It is, a local official told the American Prospect's Art Levine, "code for black people." This kind of racial dog whistling, which relentlessly paints ethnic minorities as corrupt and dishonest, is corrosive not just to our political discourse, but to democracy itself.

--and--

The scandal of the photo ID laws, then, isn't so much that they give one party an advantage, or even that they affect minorities disproportionately. The scandal is that they knowingly target minorities. So even if the real-life effects of these laws are small, they're impairing civil rights that African Americans and others have spent decades fighting, and sometimes dying, for. This in turn means that something most of us thought was finally taboo—active suppression of minority votes—isn't really taboo after all.