This pretty much seems on purpose.
We report, you decide “ehhh, close the hell enough.”
Open thread.
Zandar wrote at Balloon Juice from 2011-16. (1975-2023)
RIP Zandar, We are still here fighting the stupid, now in your honor.
blog Zandar Versus The Stupid.
Twitter: @ZandarVTS
by Zandar| 80 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads, Blatant Liars and the Lies They Tell, Our Failed Media Experiment, Somewhere a Village is Missing its Idiot
This pretty much seems on purpose.
We report, you decide “ehhh, close the hell enough.”
Open thread.
by Zandar| 201 Comments
This post is in: Fables Of The Reconstruction, Clown Shoes, I Reject Your Reality and Substitute My Own, The Wingularity
Boy, North Carolina Republicans are really going straight for the insaneotrons, aren’t they.
A bill filed by Republican lawmakers would allow North Carolina to declare an official religion, in violation of the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Bill of Rights, and seeks to nullify any federal ruling against Christian prayer by public bodies statewide.
The bill grew out of a federal lawsuit filed last month by the American Civil Liberties Union against the Rowan County Board of Commissioners. In the lawsuit, the ACLU says the board has opened 97 percent of its meetings since 2007 with explicitly Christian prayers.
But FREEDOM and DON’T TREAD ON ME so we’ll ignore the First Amendment part that says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” and all that. But it gets even more awesome, now with LIBERTY:
House Bill 494, filed by Republican Rowan County Reps. Harry Warren and Carl Ford, would refuse to acknowledge the force of any judicial ruling on prayer in North Carolina – or indeed on any Constitutional topic:
“The Constitution of the United States does not grant the federal government and does not grant the federal courts the power to determine what is or is not constitutional; therefore, by virtue of the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, the power to determine constitutionality and the proper interpretation and proper application of the Constitution is reserved to the states and to the people,” the bill states. “Each state in the union is sovereign and may independently determine how that state may make laws respecting an establishment of religion.”
The Tenth Amendment argument, also known as “nullification,” has been tried unsuccessfully by states for more than a century to defy everything from the Emancipation Proclamation of the Civil War to President Obama’s health care reforms to gun control.
So yeah, Tenth Amendment nullification, the South’s favorite “I can’t hear you Washington lalalalala” argument since 1828. At this point we’ve got people actively saying that the Union doesn’t matter, that 150 years of precedent and a war fought over the issue doesn’t matter, and that states can do what they want so screw you.
It doesn’t actually work this way. Or at least it didn’t before President Thugheart X Reparations came to power in his illegal Kung-Fu and waffles junta. Now all of a sudden we’re dusting off the Fort Sumter gameplan again. Sure, let’s keep up that outreach, GOP.
[UPDATE] And lest we think this is a nowhere bill written by a couple of dinks from Salisbury who will get politically disappeared, it seems the GOP here is quite serious about passing this, as we see at the end of the article:Eleven House Republicans have signed on to sponsor the resolution, including Majority Leader Edgar Starnes, R-Caldwell, and Budget Chairman Justin Burr, R-Stanly.
This one could get ugly.
North Carolina’s Turn On The Rack, AgainPost + Comments (201)
by Zandar| 93 Comments
This post is in: Austerity Bombing, Fuck The Poor, Show Us on the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You, Blatant Liars and the Lies They Tell
And speaking of the working poor, the Great European Austerity Bombing continues unabated, with precisely the results you would expect.
Unemployment in the euro zone rose to yet another record high in the first two months of the year, official data showed Tuesday, providing confirmation that the economy remains in a deep freeze.
The jobless rate reached 12 percent in both January and February, the highest since the creation of the euro in 1999, Eurostat, the statistical agency of the European Union, reported from Luxembourg.
The January jobless rate for the 17-nation currency union was revised upward from the previously reported 11.9 percent.
For the overall European Union, the February jobless rate rose to 10.9 percent from 10.8 percent in January, Eurostat said, with more than 26 million people without work across the 27-nation bloc.
Perhaps more deficit reduction in the UK is necessary, as an example. Sadly, the only thing keeping us from the same situation was the stimulus the President got through. It was only about half as large as it needed to be, but that’s why we’re dealing with 8% unemployment rather than 12%. Republicans won’t make the mistake of allowing the economy to improve until they get the reins back, then deficits won’t matter again.
Now that we’re on the sequestration diet, I expect that 8% to start creeping back up towards 9%. After all, the only reason those overpaid government jobs we’re shedding aren’t being replaced by shiny new awesome higher-paying private sector jobs is shut up and you’re lazy and Obama can’t shoot hoops and Google doodles of Hugo Weaving and Benghazi and food stamps and Obama took Cole’s effing mustard.
Until then, we’ll stall out for the next four years because national debt is immoral (and soon impeachable) so we must eliminate even more government jobs and put people on government safety net programs, and then cut the programs because there’s too many people on them. Then and only then will millions of jobs suddenly poop out of The Invisible Asshole Of The Free Market. Sure, they don’t pay enough to not require government help, but that’s why God made sure you have more than 40 hours in a week that you could work through.
Maybe if all those European Poors were working 90 hours a week at (less than) minimum wage while homeschooling their kids, volunteering for church and training for neighborhood firearms defense militias like us Puritan-streak rock-ribbed salt-of-the-earth ‘Muricans, they’d know le freedom.
by Zandar| 124 Comments
This post is in: Austerity Bombing, Fuck The Poor, Show Us on the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You
America, where pulling yourself up by the bootstraps is a bit difficult due to all the sharp bootstrap-cutting objects lying in your path.
A Tupelo woman hired earlier this month by a KFC was fired Monday after the franchise owner discovered she’s homeless.
Eunice Jasica has been staying at the Salvation Army lodge since early December after losing her job, her car and her home.
The nonprofit organization requires its residents to seek employment daily and, upon finding it, to pay for lodging and start saving for a place of their own. Jasica said she had been job hunting for months and was relieved to find work on March 11 at the KFC on North Gloster Street.
A document signed by that location’s general manager on March 12 confirms Jasica had been hired to perform “prep work” and would receive a paycheck every two weeks.
But when Jasica reported for duty Monday, franchise owner Chesley Ruff withdrew the job offer upon learning she lived at the Salvation Army.
“He told me to come back when I had an address and transportation,” Jasica recalled. “But how am I supposed to get all that without a job?”
Firing someone you hired because they don’t have a place to live when the entire reason they took the job was to be able to afford a place to live, and you don’t pay enough to afford a place to live? I’m betting Chesley Ruff is a lifelong Republican.
Luckily, this story now has a better ending.
A woman fired from a KFC in Tupelo for being homeless has found a new job and an outpouring of support.
Eunice Jasica was tentatively hired Tuesday by On Time Transportation to shuttle Medicaid and Medicare patients to and from doctors’ appointments. She still must complete the final stages of her application process but should be on the job by early April, said the company’s office manager, Yolanda Baskin.
The much larger problem is America is largely designed to keep poor people poor, and ridiculously rich people ridiculously rich.
by Zandar| 71 Comments
This post is in: Austerity Bombing, Fables Of The Reconstruction, Post-racial America, Republican Venality, The Brown Enemy Within, Vote Like Your Country Depends On It, Our Failed Political Establishment
Back home in North Carolina, the Zandarparents inform me that new GOP Gov. Pat McCrory and the Tea Partified legislature are on a roll now that Democratic Gov. Bev Purdue is gone. She was the only thing standing between the Tarheel State and nonsense like this.
Two bills filed by Republican lawmakers seek to cut back early voting and eliminate same-day registration in North Carolina.
Senate Bill 428, filed by Sen. Jerry Tillman, R-Randolph, would cut the early voting period from two weeks to one and would eliminate same-day voter registration.
House Bill 451, filed by Rep. Edgar Starnes, R-Caldwell, goes even further. In addition to cutting early voting and same-day registration, it would also outlaw early voting on Sunday and straight-ticket voting.
To recap, Republicans are happily running in NC on “We want fewer people to vote, and fewer people to be allowed to vote.” Nobody apparently sees the problems with this. They’re not even trying to hide the fact that it’s voter suppression anymore.
North Carolina’s Turn On The RackPost + Comments (71)
Democrats say such bills are intended to make it harder to vote and will disproportionately affect low-income, working and minority voters – groups that traditionally favor Democrats.
The Sunday ban, in particular, would affect popular “Souls to the Polls” voting drives at African-American churches.
“I think Sundays just should be – some things you just shouldn’t do on Sundays, so I am just opposed to voting on Sunday,” Starnes said.
You can practically see the hidden “those people” before the word “voting” in that sentence there. But again, Republicans are actively saying A) we make it too easy to vote in North Carolina, so we should probably put an end to it, because if you can’t vote during banker’s hours on a Tuesday, you don’t deserve to be a part of the body politic.
Tillman said his bill isn’t meant to be partisan, noting all voters would still have equal access to the polls. Meanwhile, he said, keeping early voting sites open for two weeks costs money that could be better spent elsewhere.
“We’re paying people for two weeks to run those election centers,” he said. “Let’s cut it to one week, and we can do the same thing. It’s not to disenfranchise anybody.”
Why should representative democracies spend money on stupid crap like “voting”, anyway? GOP learned their lesson in Ohio, and that lesson is “if the minorities can vote, we lose.” Gotta actively legislate the end of that, call it non-partisan, and say God didn’t want you to vote on Sundays anyway, plus why are we spending money to hold elections? Let’s take the difference and cut some taxes for some one percenters, and they’ll create votes instead!
Oh but it gets worse: Gov. McCrory has just let the state’s Latino population know just what he thinks about them.
North Carolina’s Latino advocates are voicing alarm following the governor’s decision to eliminate the state’s office for Latino affairs.
The closing of the Office of Hispanic/Latino affairs was sudden and caught many by surprise. The move appears to have exacerbated the already tense relationship between Republican Gov. Pat McCrory and the Latino community, including criticism over a driver’s license plan for young immigrants.
Advocates say it sends a message that McCrory and Raleigh conservatives are less concerned with the needs of the Latino community. Paradoxically, it comes at a time when issues of deep concern, such as immigration, are at the political forefront.
A spokesman for the governor said the duties of the office were being shifted to the office of community and constituent affairs.
by Zandar| 49 Comments
This post is in: Don't Mourn, Organize, Election 2014, Local Races 2018 and earlier, Vote Like Your Country Depends On It, Democratic Cowardice, Rare Sincerity
After yesterday’s post on Ashley Judd, Alison Lundergan Grimes, and Mitch The Turtle’s seat up for election in 2014, I feel I owe you guys some background.
I live in northern Kentucky, just across the river from Cincy. KY-4 is depressingly red. My Congressman, Thomas Massie, is an extremely intelligent, MIT-educated, award-winning engineer. This means I know he’s smart enough to realize exactly what he’s doing when he sees fit to crack jokes about snow hampering DC climate change hearings, and he thinks Rand Paul and Justin Amash are the most awesome people ever because FREEDOM and LIBERTY. And as he’s only five years older than my 37, he’s probably going to end up my Representative for a very, very long time. In an alternate universe where the guy decided to not stick with the party of Luddite assclowns, I’d be honored to have someone like that in Congress representing me. Instead, he uses his powers for suck and awful. That’s got me down about the state of Kentucky politics.
Then throw in Rand Paul and Mitch, a Dem Governor who gives $60 million in tax breaks to a giant ark theme park that will probably crash and burn within the first couple years, and a bunch of other Democrats who know McConnell is vulnerable as hell and who are still too afraid of him to even attempt to run, and the fact that the only person even considering running (who happens to be the daughter of the state’s awful former Dem chair who basically put all these Blue Dogs in Kentucky in the first place) would be slightly to the left of Joe Manchin on her best day, and you’ve got a recipe for a pretty depressed Zandar.
Yes, if Alison Lundergan Grimes gets the nomination, I’m backing her against Mitch 100%. I want him gone for all the reasons several of you pointed out in the comments yesterday. Any D is better than effing Mitch McConnell. I’m just bummed out because it’s the best (and looking like the only) shot we have against Mitch, and I know we could have done better. And yes, I believe Ashley Judd would have gotten her clock cleaned for the reasons I listed yesterday. Short of Mitch going the full Todd Akin with some Larry Craig on top, he’s going to most likely win re-election by double digits. He’s too smart of a political animal to make a moronic mistake like that.
I will proudly cast my vote for whatever Dem rises to the challenge to take on Mitch. I will volunteer for them and man the phone banks and help out in what ways I can on the ground here. But some days it feels like shouting into a black hole. I’ll persevere, because it’s the only way anything’s going to change for the better. It just pisses me off that we’re not doing everything we can here to maximize our opportunity against Mitch, that’s all.
Carry on.
by Zandar| 85 Comments
This post is in: Election 2014, Local Races 2018 and earlier, Democratic Cowardice, Our Awesome Meritocracy
As I have been telling folks, I would have loved to have seen Ashley Judd run and win, but there wasn’t any way she was going to survive King Coal, Kentucky Blue Dog Dems, and Bill Clinton.
Regretfully, I am currently unable to consider a campaign for the Senate.I have spoken to so many Kentuckians over these last few months ~
— ashley judd (@AshleyJudd) March 27, 2013
So while it’s increasingly looking like Alison Lundergan Grimes will run, because six more years of Turtle is going to give me a heart attack…
BREAKING: Sources: Alison Lundergan Grimes has spoken w DSCC, plans to file for #KySen exploratory committee @alisonforky
— Joe Arnold (@joearnoldreport) March 27, 2013
So is a Blue Dog better than Mitch? We’ll see by how much. Here’s a hint, it won’t be by a lot, as Yellow Dog reminds us.
I trust Mitchie-poo is suitably grateful to the Kentucky conservadem
establishment, the DINO Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, Bill
Clinton and his buddy Jerry Lundergan (father of Alison) for sabotaging
the only chance Kentucky had to get rid of him.
It’s going to be damn hard for Lundergan Grimes to inspire liberals in the state to come to her aid when her positions on mining, labor, the environment and the state’s badly needed safety net aren’t any different from Mitch, and that’s where Judd would have been clearly different. On the other hand, Mitch’s plan if he wins in 2014 is simple: to take health care away from tens of millions of Americans by repealing Obamacare, including hundreds of thousands of Kentuckians. On the gripping hand, King Coal still runs this gorram backwater hellhole, and all the other supposedly top-line Dems (Gov. Dinosaur Steve Beshear, Lt. Gov. Dan “The Coal Man” Mongiardo, AG Jack “I lost to effing Rand Paul” Conway, and Rep. John “Deep Blue Dog” Yarmuth) all ran screaming from this race like the cowards they are. So yeah, we’re down to the daughter of the state’s former good ol’ boy Dem party chair and a huge, long-time Clinton backer. Thrilled about that, just thrilled.
All that might be enough to get Grimes the win. I don’t honestly know. Better than Mitch? Yes, but with serious reservations.
We’ll see.