Is Our Voters Learnin'?

hat tip = FB buddy DCR

Today's Pix

Today's Connection

Like the man said - follow the money.

I wonder if nice fat campaign contributions from the Healthcare Sector to (largely) Repub politicians...

...together with this little info-nugget...

...might have anything at all to do with the drive to kill Planned Parenthood.

And like Molly said - ya gotta have the balls to drink their liquor and bed their women and take their money, and then vote against them anyway.

Here ya go guys - take two of these and call your pollsters in the morning.

Today's FB Looney

I could be reading this wrong (yeah, that happens), but this looks a whole lot like "We need to create a society of superior victimizers instead."(?)

"An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind." - Mahatma Gandhi

But leaving the jaw-dropping defeatism aside for just a moment, maybe they're onto something - just not something they're aware of - maybe what we need to do is teach kids how to resist buying into this kinda bullshit, peddled by jagoffs who think in terms of, "Fuck your hippy Jesus - peacemakers are fags."

The Real News

The best TV is not on TV.

Today's Larry

Gotta work pretty hard to find the funny sometimes, and sometimes, it's just not there to be found.

A Few Late Friday Tunes

Richland Woman Blues --Maria Muldaur

What The Rain Will Bring --Pokey Lafarge

You Don't Know Me (cover) --Michael Grimm

Brain Damage --Roger Waters

Jesus Wept

There's always a dark and ugly side to Populism, and here's a perfect example:

hat tip = Little Green Footballs

Gotta give Trump some props though. He's doing one thing really well - he's using a sales tactic called "Isolate And Bypass".  He knows this questioner is a complete fucking moron, but Trump also knows he currently has that guy's vote and he's not gonna get anywhere without it, but he can't afford not to widen out beyond his looney-tunes base if he expects to have any chance at all once he gets past the first coupla Primaries.  So he has to deflect - "we're looking into it".  He doesn't embrace this nutball, but he doesn't alienate him either.

And he uses the Sales-y language that makes it easier for his Spinmeisters to twist it all into whatever shape is needed to continue the illusion that Trump is never ever ever wrong about anything.

Like this (via Crooks & Liars):

You may have noticed Wednesday nite, when Trump and Jeb got into it over the Florida casino thing - Jeb saying he torpedoed Trump, and Trump coming back with the standard blustery blowhard-ery, "If I'd wanted it, I woulda got it, believe me."

So what I think the Press Poodles should ask at the next "debate" is this: 

• "In your career, what have you gotten wrong - what mistakes have you made?" 

--and/or-- 

• "What 2 decisions in your professional life would you like to revisit now, and what would you do differently to improve the outcome?"

(Of course, while the Poodles may actually ask the questions, I'm betting they wouldn't think to follow up and demand a real answer after each candidate tried to make a funny out of it.) 

Anybody willing to spin some kind of Infallibility Bullshit about themselves or any of their mentors, role models or idols should never get anybody's vote for anything.

Fact Checking

FactCheck.org

The Republican presidential candidates met for their second debate on Sept. 16, this one hosted by CNN at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in California. We found they strayed from the facts on numerous issues, including:

--Donald Trump told a story linking vaccination to autism, but there’s no evidence that recommended vaccines cause autism. 

--And Sen. Rand Paul suggested that it would be safer to spread out recommended vaccines, but there’s no evidence of that, either.

--Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said Trump donated to his gubernatorial campaign to get him to change his mind on casino gambling in Florida. But Trump denied he ever wanted to bring casino gambling to the state. A former lobbyist says he did.

--Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said that Hillary Clinton was “under investigation by the FBI” because she “destroyed government records.” Not true. She had the authority to delete personal emails.

--Trump said that “illegal immigration” cost “more than $200 billion a year.” We couldn’t find any support for that. Actually, it could cost taxpayers $137 billion or more to deport the 11 million immigrants in the country illegally, as Trump proposes.

--Trump again wrongly said that Mexico doesn’t have a birthright citizenship policy like the United States. It does.

--Carly Fiorina said that the Planned Parenthood videos released by an anti-abortion group showed “a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.” But that scene isn’t in any of the videos.

--Fiorina repeated familiar boasts about her time at Hewlett-Packard, saying the size of the company “doubled,” without mentioning that was due to a merger with Compaq, and she cherry-picked other statistics.

--Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said that U.S. policies to combat climate change would “do absolutely nothing.” The U.S. acting alone would have a small effect on rising temperatures and sea levels, and experts say U.S. leadership on the issue would prompt other nations to act.

--In the “happy hour” debate, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham glossed over the accompanying tax increases when he said only that Ronald Reagan and then-House Speaker Tip O’Neill “found a way to save Social Security from bankruptcy by adjusting the age of retirement from 65 to 67.”

Today's Tweet

If you melted a thousand selfie sticks into the shape of a short fat penis it would be Donald trump

— Jessi Klein (@jessirklein) September 17, 2015