Religion and Repugs

It's no coincidence that both religion and repug politics are imbued with anti-science ignorance and anti-humanity hate.

Down with Tyranny:

In the new Gallup poll, one is counted as "very religious" if they "affirm that religion is important to his or her daily life and that church is attended either weekly or almost every week." That's 40% of Americans. Another 29% claim to be "moderately religious," meaning "they don’t attend religious services regularly (or that faith is not very important to them, but they still attend church regularly). It probably isn't hard to guess that the most religious states are also the poorest, most racist, least educated and most supportive of right-wing political candidates. Here's the list of "very religious: with Mississippi as #1, of course. The percentage in parenthesis was Romney's winning vote share in 2012.

Mississippi.......... 58% (55%)
Utah.................... 56% (73%)
Alabama............. 56% (61%)
Louisiana............ 53% (58%)
Arkansas............. 52% (60%)
South Carolina.... 52% (55%)
Tennessee........... 50% (59%)
North Carolina.... 48% (50%)
Georgia............... 48% (53%)
Oklahoma............ 48% (67%)

To put this into some kind of context, let's look at what Gallup found to be the least religious states and how they reacted to Romney in November.

Vermont............... 19% (31%)
New Hampshire... 23% (46%)
Maine................... 24% (41%)
Massachusetts....... 27% (37%)
Rhode Island......... 29% (35%)
Oregon.................. 29% (42%)
DC........................ 30% (7%)
Nevada.................. 31% (46%)
Hawaii................... 31% (28%)
Alaska................... 31% (55%)
Connecticut........... 31% (41%)
Washington........... 31% (41%)

Notice the correlation? Belief in fairy tales, superstition and an authoritarian father figure living in the sky correlates positively with a political platform based on greed, selfishness, hatred and bigotry. And it always has.

Fourth District's Teabagger Tom Votes to Crash Economy

I hope all you Democrats who sat at home in November instead of stopping this conservatard from representing us in Congress are proud of yourselves.

From Votenote:

Short-Term Suspension of Debt Limit – Final Passage - Vote Passed (285-144, 3 Not Voting)

The House temporarily defused a looming crisis over the debt limit last by passing a bill that, rather than raising the limit – that is, setting a new cap on the federal government’s borrowing authority – actually suspends it – meaning there technically is no limit – until May 19, at which point the limit would be reset at a new, higher level, to reflect government borrowing activity in the interim period. In addition, the bill would institute an enforcement mechanism for each house of Congress to pass a FY 2014 budget resolution. Beginning April 15, if a chamber has not passed a budget, that chamber’s members would not receive their paychecks. This would carry on until the earlier of passage of a budget or the last day of the 113th Congress. Though House Democrats mostly decried the bill as a gimmick, President Obama has stated he will sign the bill if it reaches him.

Rep. Thomas Massie voted NO......send

How a Real Kentucky Liberal Can Beat Mitch McConnell

"Why didn’t they think they could come in and shout ‘socialist’ and ‘radical’ and take me out?” asks Sanders. “I think they realized they can’t roll over someone who has built real connections with people, not with thirty-second ads but by holding town meetings, by using newsletters to talk about economic issues, by taking their side when the big fights come.”

If Ashley Judd is serious about making Mitch McConnell run for his political life against an out-and-proud liberal in deep-red Kentucky, she should ignore New York's Kristen "Blue Dog" Gillebrand and take lessons from Vermont's Bernie "You Bet Your Ass I'm a Socialist" Sanders

 

I blogged about this last month, and I'll keep blogging about it until red-state Democratic candidates get it through their thick Blue Dog skulls:

 

Liberal candidates who stand proud on liberal principles; campaign in person and organize - win.

 

John Nicholas at The Nation:

How does an independent senator, who refuses to accept the false constructs of the Republican right and its media echo chamber, who calls out compromising Democrats, and who rejects the centrist fantasies of so many pundits, keep winning elections by overwhelming margins? And what can progressives learn from his political success—and aggressive progressivism—as they engage in the fiscal-cliff fight, prepare for the coming Congress and set the stage for the elections of 2014 and 2016?

To begin with, Sanders does not accept conventional wisdom, and he does not play by conventional political rules.

SNIP
Sanders ran no attack ads. In fact, he ran no TV commercials. He finished the campaign still speaking in full sentences, not soundbites; still inviting voters to ask complicated questions on controversial issues—and still answering with big, bold proposals to address climate change, really reform healthcare with a single-payer “Medicare for All” program, steer money away from the Pentagon and toward domestic jobs initiatives, and counter the threat of plutocracy posed by Citizens United by amending the Constitution. Rejecting the empty partisanship of the pre-election frenzy, Sanders was ripping the austerity agenda of Romney and Paul Ryan, while warning that Obama and too many Democrats were inclining toward an austerity-lite “grand bargain” that would make debt reduction a greater priority than saving Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Despite breaking all “the rules, Sanders, who was honored Monday night by The Nation Institute, won—big. The senator took 71 percent of the vote versus just 25 percent for his closest rival, Republican John MacGovern, a businessman and four-term Massachusetts state legislator who promised to replace “the only admitted socialist in the US Senate.” Sanders won among women and men, across income and education categories, and in every region—even carrying the corners of the state that backed Romney. “I go crazy with all these Democrats saying you have to go conservative to win, you have to go cautious to win. These damned consultants come in and say, ‘This is how you have to run,’ and it’s always the same: raise money, spend it on television, don’t say anything that will offend anyone. And the Democrats do it and then they end up in tight races, worried about whether they’ll make it,” says Sanders, who caucuses with Democrats but rarely takes advice from anyone in Washington. “For the life of me, I can’t figure out why progressives listen to consultants. Building movements, making progress on progressive issues— you have to talk to people, educate people, organize people.”

So Sanders took the money he raised for his re-election campaign and put it into an energetic door-knocking project that began long before other candidates were running TV ads. The point wasn’t to build name recognition; through forty years of losing and then winning elections, Sanders has been to virtually every town in the state. At the roughly 20,000 doors knocked on by the legions of Sanders volunteers during this campaign, the “ask” was for a lot more than votes. Vermonters were urged to come out and spend a few hours—yes, a few hours—with Sanders at their town halls. “We’ve organized meetings in towns of 300, and more than 100 people show up. They stay into the evening, talking about saving post offices and getting people dental care and bringing troops home from Afghanistan.”

Sanders bristles when pundits who don’t know Vermont dismiss his approach to campaigning as a regional deviation that might work in what is often portrayed as a quirky liberal state that couldn’t possibly have relevance for the rest of the country. “It wasn’t that long ago that Vermont was one of the most Republican states in the country. Until two years ago, the governor was a Republican; the lieutenant governor is a Republican. This is a significantly rural state. This is a state with some very conservative regions.” Yet, Sanders won by wide margins even in areas where Democrats run poorly. Why? Because the senator does not waste money on TV commercials designed to scare or fool voters into backing him. Rather, he goes where voters live. Personal Democracy Media co-founder and editorial director Micah Sifry, who has followed Sanders and Vermont politics for years, recalls: “Visiting hunting lodges to talk about protecting natural resources for hunting and fishing and establishing a connection with [hunters] was one of the ways that Sanders managed to earn the trust of the predominantly conservative and working-class Northeast Kingdom section of Vermont, which regularly gives Sanders, a self-declared socialist, its hearty support.”

If national Democrats did the same, Sanders suggests, there could be many more progressive Democrats representing rural states. He gets furious at the “swing-state strategies” that target a few competitive states and districts while neglecting the long-term work of building support in “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” areas.

SNIP

In the Citizens United era, the senator thinks Democrats, even (perhaps especially) progressive Democrats, need to get better at winning elections without relying on big money and the cookie-cutter strategies of campaign consultants. It’s a lesson they could learn from Bernie Sanders.

 And it is the only way a Democratic candidate can beat Mitch McConnell in 2014.

Don't Count Red-State Liberals Out

 Because Democrats can't win national elections without us.

Steve Benen at Maddowblog:

This weekend in the New York Times, Karen L. Cox said what I suspect a lot of lefties in the South would like the rest of y'all to hear:

To my chagrin, liberals living outside the South deny our existence, lump us all together by using rhetoric about the Confederacy and heap pity on us with a little condescension thrown in for good measure. They also seem to be unaware of nuance.

The fact is, liberals everywhere live among people who don’t share their views. Are you listening Wisconsin, Arizona, Indiana and, yes, New York? Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond are long dead. Michele Bachmann, Scott Walker and other Tea Party darlings are alive and well, and they aren’t all whistling Dixie.

If the Democrats are going to be a true majority party, they will need to build a coalition in all 50 states. So rather than see the South as a lost cause (pun intended), the Democratic Party and liberals north and west of us should put a lid on their regional biases and encourage the change that is possible here.

I have seen the kind of reaction Cox is talking about from non-Southerners on this blog -- when North Carolina voters backed a ban on marriage equality, for example, or more recently when Oklahoma placed the 10 Commandments in carved, misspelled glory on the state capitol grounds. Lefties outside the South seem to think very little of suggesting the red states just get out. For kicks, I spent some time this weekend subtracting ballots for Barack Obama in the red states from the president's margin of victory in the national popular vote.

You could do this any number of ways, but if you take out just Alabama, Oklahoma, Arkansas, my own Mississippi and Georgia, the president loses the popular vote. Georgia alone added 1,761,761 votes for Obama. And yes, I realize those same states contributed enough red votes to keep the election close. But every blue ballot represents a natural ally for lefties outside the South, not votes to be thrown out.

What's more, progressives in conservative states are making a new and quite game go of it. On Friday, Rachel played tape of Georgia's state Senate majority leader holding a meeting about UN/Obama mind control. That tape exists because a group of Georgia progressives managed to video the proceedings and then alert the world. After embarrassing Georgia Republicans one too many times, the mind-control senate majority leader didn't run for his leadership position again, and Republicans replaced him with someone Democrats consider easier to deal with. Look for more of this tactic by Better Georgia. From the Atlanta Journal Constitution:

“We’re modernizing politics in Georgia. A lot of people who are in politics right now are using Old World political techniques,” [executive director Bryan] Long said. His group has placed an emphasis on recording Republican public officials as they speak their private minds.

The aggressive tactic may make many of you uncomfortable. Long said it is essential if voters are to realize that many Republican elected officials have “values that most Georgians don’t believe and don’t accept.”

And consider this: Better Georgia worked on their project with James Carter, the same Georgia Democrat who brought the world Mitt Romney's 47 percent remarks and a heap of documents about Bain Capitol. Carter's state didn't go the way he wanted, but the rest of you who vote blue could stand to consider how different this election would have been without him, and how different future elections might go if progressives get strong enough to flip states like Texas and Georgia, and what you might learn from them instead of scribbling them off your map.

The Congressional Atheist Caucus

Steve Benen:

Congress only had one openly atheist member, Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.), who lost his re-election bid this week. However, Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), who describes herself as a "non-theist," appears likely to prevail in her congressional bid (thanks to reader R.P. for the tip).

Sinema is also an out-and-proud bisexual.

May the repug head-exploding never stop.

Change Happens Between Elections

The late, great Molly Ivins counseled against gloating over electoral victories.  But she died in January 2007, before repugs went all  Stop the Ni**er all the time.

So I have spent the last five days gloating up a storm and I hope you have, too.

Because now the real work starts.

You think Tuesday did not change enough?  Well of course it didn't.  It's an election.  Elections don't change anything. Elections merely confirm the changes that have taken place since the last election.

Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money:

There is a clear path to change. Conservatives understand this. You take over the party structure. That’s what they did in the 1950s and 1960s when they were disgusted by the moderate Republicanism of Dwight Eisenhower, Earl Warren, and Nelson Rockefeller. They took over party structures and local offices and turned them into bastions of energized conservatism. Note that conservatives basically don’t run 3rd party campaigns. Libertarians might talk about doing this–but they almost all vote Republican in the end because they know that they are moving their agenda forward by doing so.

Any reading of history shows that change within the American political system does not come through third party campaigns. It comes through the hard work of organizing our communities to demand change. Eventually legal and political changes are necessary–but only after people are organized to demand them. Look at the major movements in the last century. The labor movement, African-American civil rights, the women’s movement, gay rights movement. Each of these movements spent decades (or a century) organizing for change. For each of them, there was a moment when it all came together and they could demand transformations of federal and state law, which for gay rights is happening right now.

SNIP

There’s a reason socialists and communists worked to reelect FDR in 1936 and 1940, even though they thought he was a sell-out to the capitalists. They knew he was the best hope they had to build the kind of society they wanted and that by running some kind of 3rd party, they would completely alienate the base of people they wanted to organize.

SNIP

To summarize:

1. Change happens outside the election cycles–elections are for institutionalizing the changes you have attempted to make in the past 4 years.

2. Every single U.S. president has blood on his hands. Voting in a presidential election is always a choice between two evils.

3. We need to think less about our own personal moral position in voting. It’s not about you. It’s about the community where you live. Even if you vote for Jill Stein, the blood of Pakistani babies killed in drone strikes is on your hands. You cannot wash off that blood without changing the system–something that 3rd parties have never done. You want clean hands–organize the American public around the issues you care about. It will take the rest of your life. That is the timeline of real change.

4. There actually are lessons from the past on these issues. There are lessons in how to organize. And there are lessons about what third parties do and do not do. When someone can tell me what value a third party has had to pushing the agenda to the left in the last 80 years, I’ll be real interested in hearing it.

5. We need a tougher and smarter left. The self-described left punditry and journalists in 2012 has been individualistic, holier than thou, disorganized, and narcissistic. The real story of the left this year is smart and tough–the Chicago Teachers Union. That’s how you demand and make change. Writing editorials obscuring the differences between Obama and Romney and encouraging well-meaning people to protest vote is worse than worthless–it’s mendacious and serves as a tool for conservatives to continue pushing this nation back to the Gilded Age.

Laura Flanders at The Nation

Let us learn from the Dreamers, the young immigrants who made themselves a force to be reckoned with this election. People lead; leaders follow. It could have been worse. People led us back from a brink last night, but it will require the irrepressible force of powerful, passionate social movements that believe in themselves as much as they believe any politician, if we are to force the ship of state off its conventional course, and if f we are to live up to the determination, bravery and smarts that voters showed this election.

Loomis again:

Importantly for progressives needing to learn some lessons about how change takes place in this country, many of these ballot measures show that grassroots organizing works. The gay rights movement and marijuana legalization are social movements creating unstoppable forces for change on the grassroots. They are organizing on the ground and then demanding and successfully creating social change. This is how you do it.

One more day to gloat.  Then get out there and organize.

Use That Mandate Or Lose It

If repugs had taken the White House and the Senate, you know damn well they'd use that mandate to destroy the last vestiges of the Great Society, the New Deal and the Enlightenment. 

Hello, Galtian Paradise; good-bye Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, disaster assistance, public education, national parks, toll-free highways, clean water, safe food, consumer protection and the minimum wage, just for starters.

So if for nothing other than pure self-defense, President Obama and congressional Democrats should use the mandate voters gave them on Tuesday to expand, strengthen and entrench the liberal policies that hold this nation together.

Digby:

If I had my way, he'd take Robert Reich's advice: 

When the applause among Democrats and recriminations among Republicans begin to quiet down -- probably within the next few days -- the president will have to make some big decisions. The biggest is on the economy.

His victory and the pending "fiscal cliff" give him an opportunity to recast the economic debate. Our central challenge, he should say, is not to reduce the budget deficit. It's to create more good jobs, grow the economy, and widen the circle of prosperity.

The deficit is a problem only in proportion to the overall size of the economy. If the economy grows faster than its current 2 percent annualized rate, the deficit shrinks in proportion. Tax receipts grow, and the deficit becomes more manageable.

But if economic growth slows -- as it will, if taxes are raised on the middle class and if government spending is reduced when unemployment is still high -- the deficit becomes larger in proportion. That's the austerity trap Europe finds itself in. We don't want to go there...

The way to ensure continued growth is to continue the president's payroll tax cut and extend the Bush tax cuts for income under $250,000, and continue government spending.

The way to increase growth is to permanently exempt the first $20,000 of income from the payroll tax and make up for lost revenues by raising the ceiling on income subject to it (that ceiling is now $110,100). And increase government spending -- especially on critical public investments like education, job training, and infrastructure.

President Obama can define his mandate however he chooses. And he knows by now that he will never win over the right no matter what he does. So he should probably be aware of this:

A long string of lawmakers who supported the Bowles-Simpson plan — which would slash Social Security and Medicare benefits while lowering corporate taxes — went down in flames last night.

In fact, almost every candidate who was personally endorsed by the authors of the plan was defeated.

Remember: The "fiscal cliff" is a con job. Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit. What the economy needs is more spending, not less.

Krugman:

David Dayen makes a very good point, which I missed: during the Hofstra debate, in which questions were posed by members of the public rather than the Beltway elite, there wasn’t a single question about the deficit. Not one. The public really doesn’t care.

And you know what? Neither do financial markets, which continue to lend to the U.S. government at incredibly low rates.

Meanwhile, the results from austerity are in — and it’s now clear that the adverse economic impacts of austerity in a depressed economy are much worse than the elite imagined (although Keynesian economists knew better), and are in fact so severe that austerity is largely self-defeating, having little impact on the budget deficit even in the short run because reduced revenue takes away much of the initial savings. Once you take long-run effects into account, austerity is almost surely self-defeating.

Yet deficit fever, with demands for spending cuts right away, has dominated policy discussion for almost three years, with all the Very Serious People believing that by pounding on this issue they were demonstrating their Very Seriousness.

 Fuck the deficit. People got no money. People got no jobs.

Why Repugs Hate Public Education

From Divine Irony:

Another Liberal VictoryTuesday

Wanna give your local economy a boost?  Put money directly in the hands of the workers who will spend it immediately?  Raise your minimum wage.

 

Firedoglake:

Three cities in the US voted yesterday to raise the minimum wage: Albuquerque, NM (“raise the minimum wage to $8.50, tie it to inflation, and increase the minimum wage for tipped workers”); San Jose, CA (increase minimum wage to $10.00); and Long Beach, CA (100+-room hotels must either pay $13/hour with paid sick leave for full-time workers or enter into collective bargaining).

And no, raising the minimum wage neither hurts business nor cuts jobs - just the opposite, because that increase in pay goes directly and immediately back into the local economy.  Unlike tax cuts to billionaires, who send their windfall overseas.

Your Grammar Nazi

Jon Weiner at The Nation:

Even in Massachusetts, where Obama’s margin of victory was 61 percent, Romney increased the Republicans’ proportion of the white vote by four percentage points over 2008.

Wrong!

Almost every journalist is innumerate when it comes to percentages.  There's no such thing as a "margin of victory" expressed as a percentage. Obama's "margin of victory" was 22 points - the difference or "margin" between his 61 percent of the vote and Romney's 39 percent of the vote.

You can say Obama's "share of the vote" was 61 percent, or that his "winning percentage" was 61, but you cannot say his margin of victory was 61 percent.

 

You cannot even say "his margin of victory was 22 percent." His margin of victory was 22 points, not 22 percent.

 

This is fifth-grade math, people. How can you possibly follow Nate Silver intelligently if you don't get  percentages?

Quote of the Day

From the Rude Pundit:

Let's kick these fuckers while they're down. Let's degrade them and mock them for not understanding that voters actually give a damn about the nation, unlike the Republican Party. Let's make them feel every ache, every lump, because if we don't, they are going to attempt, again and again, to get up and gut us, like every cliched serial killer in every cheap straight-to-video bullshit flick. You don't walk away when the murderer just looks dead. You cut off his head so that you know he is.

On Amendments, Florida Voters Way Smarter Than Kentuckians

While Kentucky voters are stupider than ever, Florida voters have really smartened up since electing Rick Scott as governor.  Not only did they reject a repug for U.S. Senate, they threw out crook David Rivera and torturer Alan West.  And they sent Alan Grayson back to Congress.

 

Most importantly, they looked at the 11 amendments on their monster ballot, carefully sorted the bad from the good, and passed the latter and rejected the former.

 

Well done, Florida voters! Get rid of Scott and we might start thinking about maybe forgiving you for 2000.

Other property tax amendments fared better, with more than 60 percent of voters approving targeted tax relief for veterans (Amendment 2), poor senior-citizens (Amendment 11) and spouses of military veterans killed in the line of action (Amendment 9).

But all other amendments failed by large margins.

Amendment 10, a $20 million tax cut for small businesses championed by Gov. Rick Scott, also failed, receiving less than half of the vote. Amendment 3, a state-revenue cap backed by Senate President Mike Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, received less than 42 percent approval.

In perhaps one of the most decisive defeats of the night, nearly 65 percent of voters rejected Amendment 5, titled State Courts, which would have given the Legislature more power over the state’s judicial branch. 

SNIP 

Voters — by an 11-point margin — also rejected Amendment 6, an anti-abortion amendment that would have enshrined the federal ban on tax money for abortions into the Florida Constitution. The change would have weakened privacy protections for women who want to terminate a pregnancy.

Amendment 8 also failed. Voters rejected the so-called Religious Freedom amendment, one of the most controversial on the ballot, by 56 percent. The proposal would have repealed the 127-year-old Blaine Amendment, which (in theory) banned the state from giving money to religious institutions. In truth, the state has long contracted with religious charities to house the poor, educate the illiterate and feed the hungry.

Voters also rejected an amendment that would have prohibited the state from requiring people to buy health insurance, which would have put the state constitution in conflict with federal law.

Repug Response: Voting Democratic Must Be Illegal

Because for once something is true in both Bizzaro-Denial World and the reality-based world:

Repugs cannot win national elections as long as Democratic voters are able to cast ballots and those ballots are counted.

I haven't read all the reaction this morning, but I am sure I am not the first to say this (Steve M. probably was):

Repugs will absolutely, positively not respond to yesterday's results by realizing that history and demographics have passed them by and they must abandon their all-hate-all-the-time strategy.

No. They will double and triple and quadruple down on the racism and the misogyny and the homophobia and the gravity-denial.

I wish I could say that the result will be repugs becoming ever-more irrelevant until they are no longer viable as a political party.

But the likely outcome will be that every election repugs lose after campaigning on hate will drive their supporters to greater insanity, until violence - mass-casualty violence - becomes their only option.

But Democrats must not - can not - negotiate with that terrorism. Or attempt to mitigate it with concessions now. Yes, there will be violence and calls for Democrats to surrender on issues to prevent even worse violence.

But repugs have to be stopped here, stopped now and stopped for good. And only full, complete, permanent defeat will do that.

The Congressional "Fuck You, Repugs" Caucus

Elizabeth Warren

Alan Grayson

Sherrod Brown

Bernie Sanders

Tammy Duckworth

Tammy Baldwin

No Quarter. No Mercy. No More Fucking Filibuster.

Zombie Ben Chandler Finally Falls Down

He's been a walking loser since his 600-vote escape two years ago.  The only question was just how many Democratic voters who vote for President Obama today would refuse to vote for Ol' Cowardly Worm.

Don't cry for Cowardly Worm.  He richly earned every disgusted Democratic voter who rejected him today.

The second time around proved a winner Tuesday for Republican Andy Barr in wresting Central Kentucky’s 6th Congressional District seat from Democratic incumbent Ben Chandler.

Barr, a Lexington attorney, lost to Chandler in 2010 by 648 votes but defeated him Tuesday, thanks in large part to a huge sentiment against Democratic President Barack Obama.

Your repug spin is showing, Jack Brammer.  We'll see tomorrow how the Sixth District numbers break down for Obama and Cowardly worm.

Democratic Nominee Adkins Makes Good Showing Against Billionaire-backed Teabagger

The Kentucky Post is calling the Fourth Congressional District for repug Thomas Massie. At 8:44 p.m., with 65 percent of the vote counted, Adkins has 38 percent of the vote versus 59 percent for Massie and three percent for Libertarian Independent David Lewis..

In 2010, repug incumbent Geoff Davis beat Jon Waltz 69 percent to 31 percent. In 2008, a Democratic wave year, Davis beat Michael Kelley 57 to 41 percent, when McCain beat Obama in Kentucky 67 to 33 percent.

Adkins getting 38 percent in a deep-red district against the blank checks of a billionaire is an accomplishment to be proud of.  It also speaks directly to the importance of turning out democratic voters who sit at home in off-year elections. I'll have more on that tomorrow after we get the full turnout numbers.

Half-Hour Line in KY-4 at 6 a.m.

I got there at 6:08 a.m. The parking lot was full, with a dozen cars parked on the verge along the drive and the road.

There were 25 people in line, and I barely got in the door. People were polite, discussing generally our amazement at the length of the line so early, but no overtly political conversations that I heard. One couple  complained that they couldn't get their teenaged offspring out of bed that early to vote.

Wake up, young people! After you vote, you can sleep all day!

Something new: a sign on the sign-in table listing acceptable ID: driver's license, social security card, credit card, or something else with a picture and signature. 

There was one more voting station than usual, for a total of three - one electronic machine and two optical scan ballot stations that shared one scanning machine.

The ballot was pretty simple:  straight ticket, president, congress, state representative, commonwealth attorney, district judge, board of education,  soil conservation board and a fucking stupid constitutional amendment to enshrine hunting and fishing rights that no one is contesting.  Yes, that last is entirely the NRA's idea.

There was only one candidate - repug incumbent - each in the state representative and commonwealth attorney races because the county and state Democratic Parties are cowardly handmaidens to the repugs and criminal wastes of time. One candidate only also for judge and board of education, which are officially non-partisan.

I voted at 6:28 a.m., meaning the wait was a little more than one minute per person in line.  Pretty good, as Kentucky limits voting time to two minutes if anyone is waiting behind you.

Dear Young People: Be Smarter Than We Were. Vote.

From Divine Irony:

Hi Tumblr, it’s me, a slightly older person…

I see a lot of you 20 somethings saying things about how you aren’t going to choose the lesser of two evils and that their policy on important matters are identical so what’s the point they’re both stooges for Wall Street and the Industrial War Complex.

You are right. Kind of.

I know y’all LOVE the 90’s. Me too. And I remember after after eight years of Clinton/Gore, I thought those motherfuckers were the devil. I was soooooooooooo upset with Bill Clinton waving his deregulation wand and his fucked foreign policy that I was all FUCK THE DEMOCRATS and I strongly advocated for Ralph Nader, even though he too didn’t really care about my “gonad politics.” Even when not choosing between the “lesser of two evils,” I was STILL having to compromise major issues.

Having been an adult person through 8 years of Clinton/Gore and 8 years through Bush/Cheney, I can tell you without a shred of hesitation that I will line up like my ass is on fire to vote for the lesser of two evils because the greater of two evils almost had us all living outside and eating dog food. 

And if you think that a Romney presidency won’t be worse than Bush/Cheney, you are out of your mind. 

I am fucking begging all of you, please, go vote. Aside from the fact that far more dangerous things are happening on your local level, (like collective bargaining being taken away in Illinois) this shit does matter. 

If you think voting for Obama is the lesser of two evils, you’re wrong, it’s the lesser of three because not voting IS voting for Romney. Not voting is voting for dickbag judges that sentence people to jail in counties that have privatized prisons for minor drug infractions. Not voting is voting to remove pensions and collective bargaining and the last shreds of union power from the people. Not voting this election is voting for Feudalism.

Go vote.

 I voted for Gore, but I didn't work to get others to vote for him, not like I should have. So I, too, am fucking begging all of you, please, go vote.

Last-Minute Repug Rejection of Massie

Sheesh, Marcus, maybe you should have waited until what, 5 p.m. on Election Day to let your fellow repugs know that Thomas Massie would be a fucking disaster for your party?

And yeah, we knew the non-teabagging repugs of Northern Kentucky didn't vote for Massie in the primary and aren't happy about him being the nominee, but holy shit whatever happened to party loyalty? 

Marcus Carey, former Fourth Congressional District Republican Party Chair:

After months of research, a number of conversations with people all across the district and a keen eye trained on the fourth district race from a unique perspective, I have put together an admittedly long, but comprehensive view on how this race has shaped up.

EDITORIAL

 I am addressing this post to my fellow republicans in the fourth congressional district. Next Tuesday you will have choices in the race for Congress. You might assume that your choices are limited to voting for libertarian/republican Thomas Massie or democrat Bill Adkins. You are missing something. You also have the choice of not voting in that race, which I encourage you to consider and here is why.

Read the whole amazing thing, which makes emo-prog laments over Obama's "betrayal" read like CBO reports.

Is this a personal thing between Carey and Massie?  Is Carey still smarting over the Tribble-Toupeed One's victory over Great Repug Hope Trey Grayson?  Does anyone listen to anything Carey has to say?

It's certainly too little, too late to hurt Massie. But it's yet another reason for every Democratic voter in the Fourth District to get out tomorrow and vote for President Obama and Democratic nominee Bill Adkins. And take every Democratic voter you know with you.

Quote of the Day

New York Times Sunday editorial: 

“This year, voting is more than just the core responsibility of citizenship; it is an act of defiance against malicious political forces determined to reduce access to democracy.”

 Vote, dammit. Round up every Democratic voter you can find and make them vote, too.