Jul 30, 2016

Jul 29, 2016

Somebody Please



...this guy is an abscess that's been allowed to fester on the ass of humankind for way too long. Could we just get it drained and disinfected already?

Big Twitter thing today was the Voter ID crap got smooshed in North Carolina.
Federal appellate judges on Friday struck down a 2013 law limiting voting options and requiring voters to show photo ID at the polls, declaring in an unsparing opinion that the restrictions “target African Americans with almost surgical precision.”
The three-judge panel of the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals found that the law was adopted with “discriminatory intent” despite lawmakers’ claims that the ID provision and other changes were designed to prevent voter fraud.
The ruling – which could have implications for voting laws in other states and possibly for the outcome of close races in the swing state of North Carolina – sent the case back to U.S. District Judge Thomas Schroeder, who in April issued a 485-page decision dismissing all claims in the legal challenge.
“In holding that the legislature did not enact the challenged provisions with discriminatory intent, the court seems to have missed the forest in carefully surveying the many trees,” the ruling states. “This failure of perspective led the court to ignore critical facts bearing on legislative intent, including the inextricable link between race and politics in North Carolina.”




Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article92593512.html#storylink=cpy

The God Bidness

Today's Tweet

Bill Maher

Jul 28, 2016

Tempting

The north Carolina GOP decided to pitch a bit of a hissy fit because of what they tho't was a horrible Democrat doing something horrible to "their" America".




That's the story, but it's not really the story.

I think it happens too often for it not to be a Dirty-Tricks thing.  You make a charge about some made-up bullshit, which is intended to reinforce the negative image of the Democrat Libtards because of all the other made-up bullshit that's been installed like firmware in "conservative" brains for 35 years - it's not true, and you know it's not true, and you know it doesn't matter. It only matters that you get it into the consciousness stream.  The rubes are already conditioned to take on whatever negative shit you feed 'em so you put it out there, and if you get slapped down, then you can issue the basic non-corrective corrective or whatever, knowing that the thing has already taken root and has passed into the body of GOP lore about rotten Democrats, and the rubes will never go back and look for any kind of retraction or rebuttal.

And the other point is that you don't see that shit - not anything rising anywhere near that level anyway - coming from the Dems.

Jul 27, 2016

Today's Quote

Vanity Fair Hive
“Democracy is a little bit messy sometimes,” he told reporters at a breakfast convened by Bloomberg News. “You know, I grew up in a family where I got yelled at a whole lot. It doesn’t make me nervous.”
Bernie Sanders is a mensch.

Jul 26, 2016

Today's Tweet

That Thing That Isn't Really

Wikileaks’s tweets conjured dark and menacing conspiracies, but these are not borne out by the emails themselves. Take the group’s claim that the “DNC knew of Hillary paid troll factory attacking Sanders online.” The highlighted email isn’t some secret communication laying out nefarious plots. It’s a summary of a panel discussion on Fox News Sunday.
But forget the emails for a second. The main problem with the notion that the DNC rigged the results for Clinton is that it requires one to assume the improbable. The DNC had no role or authority in primary contests, which are run by state governments. Clinton dominated the primaries. The DNC, through state parties, had a bit more influence over caucuses … where Sanders dominated Clinton.
None of the thousands of leaked emails and documents show the DNC significantly influencing the results of the nomination. Furthermore, if it is true that last fall Clinton campaign chair John Podesta tried but failed to have DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz sacked, the underlying premise of the entire WikiLeaks dump—that Wasserman Schultz machinated to deliver Clinton the nomination—is hard to believe.
So, yeah - bad news for the DNC Truthers, except that truthers usually believe the conspiracy no matter what.  Not that this one's anywhere near the weirdnesses of JFK or 9/11 - there is some little bit of substance to this - but then again, that's always the case, and it's also always the case that once it's in the bloodstream it prob'ly won't be going away any time soon.

The handful of (known) emails so far, indicate to me something along the lines of: tired staffers who hit the hotel a little late, and about halfway thru their 3rd mini-bar scotch are suddenly seized by the revelation that they possess the most amazing political chops, and they're having such a flood of genius ideas they just have to share them ASAP, so they fire off a few brainstorm emails etc etc etc.  You tell them to knock off the shit; you discipline them; you fire them; you force them out - kinda like what happened.

What I'm really not shocked about: Democrats "conspiring" to nominate a Democrat.  C'mon, guys.