This graphic says it all. It’s not about politics, it’s not about policy. It’s about tribalism.

The downside of having an awesome governor who is clamored for by the rest of the country to run for president is that he might take his eye off the ball in his own state, or have his eye on a completely different ball in a completely different game entirely. He may have promised never to raise taxes, which is awesome and all that but when you need trains to run on time and bridges and roads that don’t break your axles, you might need to raise that gas tax and yeah, it might hurt you with the national Republican party, but you gotta.

Oh I can’t keep this charade up. That waste of goddamn space Damaged Goods Christie will waste another couple of years as the governor of NJ just dicking around while we need to raise the goddamn gas tax and build some shit.

It hasn’t been raised since 1988 and 1990 for crying out loud. I am less inclined to debate people at this point who claim things like low taxes are good for people blah blah blah, and just kick them in the balls.

We’re only hurt by these people and their stupid ideology. Voters ought to wake up any moment now… (still waiting).

The media were besides themselves because Hillary Clinton was going to be unopposed. So now that Bernie Sanders is showing that he’s seriously in this thing to be a left wing gadfly pushing crazy socialist Eisenhower era ideas, they treat him like he’s not there, or shouldn’t be. A plan to pay for free college education by a small financial transaction tax is not worth talking about. But if Carly Fiorina says the Chinese are unimaginative and steal our ideas, that’s a story. Not a really productive policy story, kind of a waste of time to say, or type, but a story nonetheless.

Sanders is showing how skewed the media is on left/right issues of taxation and income.

It’s a given that a 90% tax rate is unthinkably radical, even though we had our greatest years of economic growth with just such a top rate. However, it’s completely acceptable to talk about no estate tax or zero rates of taxation on investment, which is not only radical, it’s unproductive.

So when anybody wants to talk about any one religious group as the “craziest” there’s always ammo to hit them with to show the crazy is pretty widely spread.

In Israel, where they’ve had a female chief executive, women serve in the armed forces and are well represented in government, the Orthodox not only can’t shake hands with them or dance with women at weddings and whatnot, they also tend to just erase them from photos.

I get it, just look at this picture on the right. MEN COULD BE AROUSED. This is prime spank bank material, so you gotta Photoshop magic those women out for their own protection. It’s a matter of respect. Personally, I look at the picture with the women, but only through a sheet.

This story is so outrageous. It just can’t be allowed to live, or whatever.

The parents of one of the victims of the Aurora massacre sued the online ammo whore vendors who sold a mentally defective person 6,000 bullets. They lost their case because America and further, because America, they now owe the ammo mongering scum bags $220,000 in attorney’s fees.

Fuck them!

Watch the report here http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/22/maddow-aurora-shooting_n_7421414.html

This Josh Duggar asshole is asshole of the week and not by a little for a very good reason: this child molester literally has claimed that gay people are child molesters.

The hypocrisy of bullshit people like this prick and his entire prick family is maddening. Their only redeeming quality is how they’re going to bring down child molester excuser Mike Hucksterbee.

The former Arkansas governor largely defended the actions of the family since the abuse and said he wanted to “affirm” support for the family. “Josh’s actions when he was an underage teen are as he described them himself, ‘inexcusable,’ but that doesn’t mean ‘unforgivable,’” Huckabee’s statement said. The Duggar family endorsed former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum in the 2012 election, but have backed Huckabee for the Republican presidential nomination this time around.

For second place I nominate every right wing reporter that called protesters and rioters in Baltimore and Ferguson “thugs” and have not seen fit to use any sort of equivalent word for the white gang bangers who shot up each other in Waco. Nine killed, dozens wounded, 170 people arrested and HUNDREDS OF WEAPONS were found in that bar. But they’re not representative of an entire race. They’re not destroying their own neighborhoods. They don’t have father abandonment issues. Every white leader doesn’t have to denounce their actions.

Just because he deserves it let’s give what’s due to Charlie Gasparino of Fox Business News (sound of crickets). Gasparino attacked three young woman reporters saying,

“These kids are such f*****g morons,” Gasparino declared, laughing. “They’re stupider than we thought!”

Later, Cavuto interviewed Gasparino about his dismissive reaction to Timpf and the other two young women. Cavuto defended Timpf, in particular, as “beautiful — and smart.”

But Gasparino was unmoved.

“She couldn’t wear my jockstrap as a reporter!” Gasparino scoffed.

So these are the most popular baby names by state. I don’t know what’s more dumbfounding, Emma, Olivia and Sophia dominating so dominatingly – in 43 out of 51 states (and D.C.)!!! Or is it the funky outliers in 8 places:

Mia in NM and no place else? Do they just hate Woody Allen there?
Harper in BOTH Dakotas? Is it “To Kill a Mockingbird”?
Isabella in Florida and nowhere else?
Ava in 3 southern states, defensive and surrounded by Olivias and Emmas
And then D.C. with good old Elizabeth (but I’m old)

Liam? Noah? Seriously? You’re making me nostalgic for Brandon for crying out loud.

At least the boys have more variation, but to what end? Henry? Really Minnesota?

I would not have bet on Mason anywhere, but if I had to would I have foreseen this odd trio of Pennsylvania, Arkansas and Louisiana? Sing it with me “one of these things is not like the other.”

Along with the recent studies on the Fox Effect and how Fox News has skewed political opinion to the right, we have more evidence that lawmakers overestimate their constituents conservatism by as much as 20 points!

On three issues — universal healthcare, same-sex marriage, and welfare — lawmakers’ assumptions about what their constituents believed were “15-20 percent more conservative, on average,” than the actual base of public support for such issues.

Those aren’t the only issues by a long shot:

The vast majority of Americans of all stripes oppose any cuts to Social Security, Medicare or other social safety net programs. The GOP keeps on proposing cutting, changing or privatizing these programs.

Raising the minimum wage garners wide popular support wherever it appears on the ballot or in polls.

72% of voters (NYTimes/CBS poll spring 2009) supported a medicare for all option or the so-called “public option” in the Obamacare debate, and yet it was considered so politically poisonous that Obama unilaterally took it off the table.

Americans were way ahead of the politicians in turning against the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and for that matter, the drug wars. But the two wars in the middle east were accelerated for political purposes before they could be “ended” and the drug wars go through predictable expansions and contractions even though most people would just be happy to have it over with.

Prison reform, drug law reform and decriminalization of marijuana are all, again, ideas that the public embraces in polls, but politicians, with few exceptions, tip toe around them.

Abortion is extremely accepted in this country as something that should be “legal, safe and rare” with very few actual restrictions on a woman’s ability to access it. And yet lawmakers keep pushing legal restrictions and tricks to appeal to the minority.

Many very reasonable and rational gun/ammunition control laws famously enjoy overwhelmingly large majorities of public opinion but cannot be enacted because of the opposition of the NRA. The will of the public has been thwarted by a lobbying organization with under 10 million members and a shrinking power base.

Politicians and the media act like these and other issues are “progressive”, “liberal”, “far left” issues and immediately discount the majority opinion. Why?

As the beginnings of an answer, the co-authors note that many scholars have found “politicians feel much more accountable to the wealthy, party leaders, or interest groups than to rank and file voters’ preferences,” and that “politically active citizens tend to be wealthier and more conservative than others.”

That does answer some of it, especially on the economic issues of inequality, low wages, anti-union activism, outsourcing, taxation, etc. i.e., the issues that the wealthy care about most. The selfish wealthy care more about inflation than unemployment because the former directly effects their bottom line. In the age of Citizen’s United, this has been exacerbated, but doesn’t account for every skewing of the political spectrum.

Going back to the Fox Effect, we can also cite the squeaky wheel or “the loudest, angriest voice” doctrine as a factor. Like the difference between the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street, conservative influence groups are much better funded and organized, much more open and vocal about their wants and needs and very simply have no shame about screaming in the public square, even when they don’t know what they’re talking about. The media and politicians feel they have to respond. In the ’60s the left demanded a voice and changed things. Ever since, conservatives have pro-actively sought to have the ear of the media and lawmakers on issues at a grassroots level.

Media and politicians today have internalized 35 years of liberal bashing on right wing talk radio that metastasized into GOP acceptance of demonization of their opponents as not just people with bad ideas, but bad people. Consider how accepted it is to believe that social safety net programs have failed to have an impact on poverty in the U.S. Or how government itself is reviled as a failed institution that not only can’t solve problems, it IS the problem. The people that defend government and its “failed” policies are fuzzy headed liberals who blame America first, coddle criminals, pander to the poor for their votes and ultimately hate America and freedom. All are disrespectful, immoral, anti-business, anti-constitution and probably in line with the socialist forces of Big Government, Big Union, Big Environmental, Big Poor, etc.

These were once fringe ultra-right-wing ideas promulgated entirely by out there organizations like the John Birch Society. By the mid-80s they became accepted policy points in the GOP, not just the ideas but the characterizations of the other side. Since then the ideas and the characterizations were inserted into the wider debate which cowed liberal voices into being that much quieter.

It’s no accident that a moderate Democratic president like Bill Clinton, who governed as if he’d bought into the entire Reagan menu of conservatism was nevertheless attacked and savaged as if he held the beliefs of Bernie Sanders.

Barack Obama too has governed very moderately, constantly compromising with himself and bending towards conservatives despite the hopes and dreams of his supporters. Kick a hippie (a/k/a the “professional left”) was the policy of the administration in the first term. Moves back towards the middle since Nov. 2012, like immigration reform and acceptance of gay marriage have been approached as surprising successes. Hm, really? The country hasn’t collapsed because a popularly accepted political position was actually embraced by the president? Whoda thunk it?

During the Bush administration we reached a point where news coverage had become a constant episode of Crossfire in which everybody searched for the middle between a lie and the truth, as if that’s a legitimate debate. Media, for fear of being e-mailed to death by the right, treats every issue as if it’s a controversy even when it’s not, thusly no, 92% of the public can’t get limits on the size of magazines for semi-automatic weapons of war, 97% of climate scientists might just be on the payroll of Big Environment so we can’t address climate change. Funny how when 40% of people want something viewed as conservative it’s mainstream (abortion restrictions, balanced budget amendments) but when 60-90% of people want something viewed as liberal, it’s fringy.

The fact is, liberal ideas about government, taxation, fairness, education, crime, race, healthcare etc. are the mainstream. Our media has enabled certain politicians to argue against reality and win.

And not a moment too soon. As Senator from Wisconsin he was Elizabeth Warren before Elizabeth Warren. Russ Feingold had enough and didn’t run for reelection in 2010 and we got the execrable Ron Johnson (your crazy uncle senator).

2016 will be the anti-2010 and Russ Feingold helps in the effort to take the Senate back to Earth.

Johnson was one of the most endangered senators before Feingold committed, now he’s a dead man walking.
Along with a few other GOP senators representing blue states elected in the asshole year of 2010:

Kelly Ayotte, NH – way too conservative for NH it’s expected popular Gov. Maggie Hassan will challenge Ayotte.

Pat Toomey, PA – a real Club for Growth conservative in a blue state, Admiral Joe Sestak is already running

Mark Kirk, IL – just wrong for Illinois, almost any Dem. should be able to take this seat.

Those should be the low hanging fruit in a presidential year.

Now that’s finally a presidential answer.  He now says answering hypotheticals going back in time is a disservice to the troops.

Jeb might have enough bullshit in him to get the GOP nod after all. Very Rovian response indeed.