Fascist Things My Friends Post On Facebook: Native Americans

Bill Mahar Lists All The Ways Trump Is Like a Dictator

Midterms

The midterm election is tomorrow.  I don't recall ever seeing so much attention paid to a midterm.  That's a good thing.  In the past the importance of midterms was often ignored, like in 2010, when few people went to the polls and Congress wound up being filled with freshman Congressmen who used their new offices to codify their personal prejudices.



State elections this year are getting a lot of attention, particularly because one party is trying so hard to cheat through historically effective methods - gerrymandering and voter suppression - while accusing the other party of cheating through voter fraud, a rare and certainly less effective tactic. As Brian Klaas says,

Democrats fear voter suppression. Republicans fear voter fraud. The data show suppression is widespread; voter fraud is not. George W. Bush's DoJ studied voter fraud and found it occurs on 0.00000013% of ballots. A recent study found 31 cases out of a billion ballots from 2000-2014.

The voter fraud/voter suppression debate is one of those frustrating "partisan" issues that we can answer with data. It is not partisan to show that, empirically, voter suppression often influences the outcome of US elections; voter fraud does not. Facts shouldn't be partisan.

Here in Oklahoma, we're electing a new Governor.  Our current Governor and most of our State Legislature believe that tax cuts create growth, and many Oklahomans believe that taxes are an unnecessary burden.  We have a Constitutional Amendment that states that taxes cannot be raised without a 3/4 vote in the Legislature or a vote of the people, which has happened only once since 1992. The predictable result, of course is that hospitals are closing, schools are losing teachers and going to shortened weeks, and the State Government has trouble providing basic services.  Efforts on the part of the majority party in the Legislature to raise revenue has met with opposition from the minority because the proposals generally raise taxers on the poor.

Both primary elections required run offs, and on the Republican side, the two candidates were Mick Cornett, whose economic policies during his time as mayor of Oklahoma City helped turn the city from a ghost town into a thriving community, and Kevin Stitt, whose ads complained that Cornett wasn't Fascist enough. This being Oklahoma, Stitt naturally won. Now in his race against Drew Edmondson, his claim is that he's the better candidate because, unlike his opponent, he has no experience in government. If you want to know what his actual policy ideas are, you have to hunt for them online. Basically, however, they are familiar Republican policies. His ads, however, speak of the "career politicians that got us in this mess," while not mentioning that the career politicians that got us in this mess were all Republicans who legislated familiar Republican policies.

Again, he is heavily favored to win.

I read a book a while back with the rather misleading title of "The Republican Brain," which was actually about studies done on the comparison between the ways conservatives and liberals think. It did not, as I think the title suggests, advocate for one ideology over the other. On the contrary, it says that we need both parties, as one is the mind and the other is the heart of the country. I agree: one party rule is bad regardless of which party it is. The book says that if you want to convince a  liberal of something, you should get out the spreadsheets and show him the data. If you want to convince a conservative of something, you appeal to his values. But I've been on Facebook for the last nine years, and what I've seen is that if you want to convince a conservative of something, you stoke his prejudices by filling him up with bogus information and scare the crap out of him. This is not a good way to govern the nation. This does not make for a good society. It does, however, make an effective way to justify Fascist policies.

Nate Silver's statistics webpage FiveThirtyEight estimates that the Republicans have a five in six chance of keeping the Senate - partially due to voter suppression efforts in North Dakota and elsewhere - and the Democrats have a seven in eight chance of taking the House. However, Democrats have a traditional problem: regardless of what the polls say, voters who lean Democratic often fail to vote. But social injustices inflicted by the current administration and currently serving Republicans have energized voters. Will that translate into actual votes?  We'll find out tomorrow.

Untitled (the teapot)

the skies are filled with the half truths and sideways snides
of the coming

quickening

it is there in the sign
of the overturned
teapot,

a pile of ruins
where the floor is wet

if you look
you will see

take a gander where the
side bulged brown,
that piece that is a little 
bigger, and slants to the left

that is the sign of the 
Oft, the King to the West
of understanding

it means that the
Auroras have spoke

and there, you see the
handle, lost without its
burden and rendered
a sad annoyance

that is Shoden, the brilliant 
sea

it means The Cerelium have
begun the chorus

and it is there where the tea
has met the mat

that is the sigil 
of Raspoon
The Rapier

it means
Harpagia has turned 
the key

I see and I know

the skies are filled with
the wasted ideas and the
midnight sufferings
of fools

the quickening is
coming

grab your babes and run

~~~ Ted Vanderveldt ~~~
September 18, 2015

8 years of suffering under Barack Obama

8 years of suffering under Barack Obama

Teri Carter

The sentence I hear most from well-meaning, conservative friends since President Trump’s election is this: “We suffered 8 years under Barack Obama.”

Fair enough. Let’s take a look.

The day Obama took office, the Dow closed at 7,949 points. Eight years later, the Dow had almost tripled.

General Motors and Chrysler were on the brink of bankruptcy, with Ford not far behind, and their failure, along with their supply chains, would have meant the loss of millions of jobs. Obama pushed through a controversial, $8o billion bailout to save the car industry. The U.S. car industry survived, started making money again, and the entire $80 billion was paid back, with interest.

While we remain vulnerable to lone-wolf attacks, no foreign terrorist organization has successfully executed a mass attack here since 9/11.

Obama ordered the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden.

He drew down the number of troops from 180,000 in Iraq and Afghanistan to just 15,000, and increased funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs.

He launched a program called Opening Doors which, since 2010, has led to a 47 percent decline in the number of homeless veterans.

He set a record 73 straight months of private-sector job growth.

Due to Obama’s regulatory policies, greenhouse gas emissions decreased by 12%, production of renewable energy more than doubled, and our dependence on foreign oil was cut in half.

He signed The Lilly Ledbetter Act, making it easier for women to sue employers for unequal pay.

His Omnibus Public Lands Management Act designated more than 2 million acres as wilderness, creating thousands of miles of trails and protecting over 1,000 miles of rivers.

He reduced the federal deficit from 9.8 percent of GDP in 2009 to 3.2 percent in 2016.

For all the inadequacies of the Affordable Care Act, we seem to have forgotten that, before the ACA, you could be denied coverage for a pre-existing condition and kids could not stay on their parents’ policies up to age 26.

Obama approved a $14.5 billion system to rebuild the levees in New Orleans.

All this, even as our own Mitch McConnell famously asserted that his singular mission would be to block anything President Obama tried to do.

While Obama failed on his campaign pledge to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, that prison’s population decreased from 242 to around 50.

He expanded funding for embryonic stem cell research, supporting groundbreaking advancement in areas like spinal injury treatment and cancer.

Credit card companies can no longer charge hidden fees or raise interest rates without advance notice.

Most years, Obama threw a 4th of July party for military families. He held babies, played games with children, served barbecue, and led the singing of “Happy Birthday” to his daughter Malia, who was born on July 4.

Welfare spending is down: for every 100 poor families, just 24 receive cash assistance, compared with 64 in 1996.

Obama comforted families and communities following more than a dozen mass shootings. After Sandy Hook, he said, “The majority of those who died today were children, beautiful little kids between the ages of 5 and 10 years old.”

Yet, he never took away anyone’s guns.

He sang Amazing Grace, spontaneously, at the altar.

He was the first president since Eisenhower to serve two terms without personal or political scandal.

He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

President Obama was not perfect, as no man and no president is, and you can certainly disagree with his political ideologies. But to say we suffered? If that’s the argument, if this is how we suffered for 8 years under Barack Obama, I have one wish: may we be so fortunate as to suffer 8 more.

Trevor Noah on Victimhood

Snagged from tumblr: Compensation

You cannot simultaneously demand a service, while dehumanizing the person who provides you with it, and demanding they not be compensated fairly.

howprolifeofyou

I work in a hospital. It’s also the worst flu season in recent years in my hospital. You know whose job is one of the most crucial for EVERYONE, doctors and medical staff included? Janitors. Go ahead and try to have a safe working environment, ESPECIALLY in the medical field, without them.

Tell me, do you know how to best create a medically safe work environment? Because I sure as fuck don’t, but the janitors do, and they know this while being on their feet and performing manually exhausting tasks for 8+ hours straight surrounded by caustic chemicals.

Same goes for fast food workers. Do you have any idea how much knowledge and physical work goes into working in a kitchen? Wanna tell me you put out grease fires, what temperatures different foods are stored in, and how to keep a safe working environment for both customers and workers in a job surrounded by hot oil, ovens and chemicals? Not to mention, again, being on your feet for 8+ hours in a hot kitchen being yelled at by customers constantly.

I promise you that these people do a more difficult and oftentimes more important job than a large portion of office jobs I’ve been in.

apersnicketylemon

Fun fact: In my neck of the woods, hospital janitorial staff union wanted a pay raise. Their workers were struggling. The hospitals laughed at them, so they went on full strike.

The hospitals were in crisis mode within an HOUR.

Surgical rooms were not being cleaned, toilets and patient rooms were not cleaned, garbage was not picked up, instruments that get reused were not being cleaned (i.e. scalpels, patient beds), laundry wasn’t done, floors were not clean, biohazard waste wasn’t collected.

The hospitals folded the next day and the union got EVERYTHING they asked for.

Now, you may not work in a hospital @purest-rain but wherever you do work, just imagine what might happen if… suddenly no one cleaned. No one picks up the trash in that fancy office. No one vacuums or sweeps, or cleans anything. Nothing. Not the toilets, not the offices. It might take a little longer, but pretty soon, those fancy law-offices look pretty gross, don’t they? Especially the bathrooms. I’ve cleaned bathrooms, I know exactly how disgusting people are when they use a toilet they don’t have to clean.

Stop shitting on low-wage workers just because you don’t understand how important their job actually is. You cannot simultaneously demand a service, while dehumanizing the person who provides you with it, and demanding they not be compensated fairly.

zombieabbyka

The fact that so many people are getting so defensive about this is disgustingly sad. If you think “anyone can do it” then YOU do it. The job is necessary for your convenience, so fucking be a little more goddamn appreciative.

lynati

Also, I suspect those who assume that the only people making poverty-level wages these days would be surprised to learn just how many “skilled” jobs, including those that require college degrees, are part of what we’re discussing.

And that given how many jobs *period* require college degrees, shitting on janitors and fast-food workers and such for not “earning themselves a better life” is synonymous with shitting on anyone who simply *couldn’t afford* to go to college in the first place.