Headlines - Monday May 28

They died for this?

 

As we head into this year's Memorial Day, a day when we remember those who gave their lives in the service of what this nation is supposed to stand for, the whole exercise seems somewhat hollow. Oh, there will be parades tomorrow, and veterans will march, and people will attend the parades, and my little neighbor next door, who loves all things military, will wave his flags and try to get his parents to let him sell cups of water to raise money for the soldiers. And the guy at my local post office yesterday who was in the Army band in World War II and feels terrible saying that he has no idea what we're doing in Afghanistan, and if we can't figure it out we should just leave will also attend the parade and remember all the guys he served with long ago who never came home.

But most people will skip the parades. They'll go to Best Buy and pick up a new air conditioner, or they'll pick up a new bathing suit at the mall, or get the tomatoes planted. They'll catch up on housework, or spend one last hot humid day at the beach before heading back to work. But there's one thing they won't do, and that's think about how the stage is being set for this November's election to be a sham, a banana republic election that Saddam Hussein would have been proud of, one in which everyone that Republicans can't rely on to vote for them will be prevented from voting, either by rigging the voting machines, or providing inadequate machines to precincts, or by voter ID laws, or simply by purging people from the voter rolls for no reason. This latter tactic was perfected by Republican hero Jeb Bush in Florida in 2000, and convicted criminal and now-Governor Rick Scott is continuing Jeb Bush's grand tradition of disenfranchisement:

Maureen Russo was born in Akron, Ohio. For the last 40 years she's operated a dog boarding and grooming business — Bobbi's World Kennels — with her husband in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Maureen is 60 years old and has been a registered voter in the state for the last four decades. She regularly votes at the church around the corner from her home.

Two weeks ago she received a letter from the State of Florida informing her that they had received information that she was not born in this country and, therefore, was ineligible to vote.

She was given an option to request "an administrative hearing to present evidence" disputing the determination of the State of Florida that she was ineligible to vote. Unless Maureen returned a form requesting such a hearing within 30 days, she was told, it would result in "the removal of your name from the voter registration rolls."

She immediately sent off a registered letter to the State with a copy of her passport. She hasn't heard anything back.

Florida will be stolen again through voter roll purges of anyone who is a threat to vote Democratic. And so will Pennsylvania and Virginia -- three swing states that could decide November's election. Funny how DNC chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is utterly silent on this, as are all the other Democrats, even after Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004, which leads me to ask the question: Do the Democrats WANT to lose, or they simply that fucking stupid? This is how democracy ends, not with a bang, but with a whimper.

 

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Afghan Family of Eight, Including Six Children, Killed in Nato Missile Attack

 

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The goal of the EU policies was to boost farm growth so that the region was less reliant on outside food sources but the end result has been a bird population that has been cut in half since 1980. The Guardian:

Indeed, according to a new survey, the chances of encountering any one of the 36 species of farmland birds in Europe – species that also include the lapwing, the skylark and the meadow pipit – are now stunningly low. Devastating declines in their numbers have seen overall populations drop from 600 million to 300 million between 1980 and 2009, the study has discovered.

This dramatic decline represents a 50% reduction and is blamed on major changes in farming policies enforced by the EU over the last 30 years.

In order to boost food production across Europe, the wholesale ripping up of hedgerows, draining of wetlands and ploughing over of meadows has robbed farmland birds of their homes and food. Numbers of linnets, turtle doves and lapwings have crashed as a result.

 

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Maine New Hampshire House Majority Leader D.J. Bettencourt is super sorry he is such a lying shitweasel, and also so very lazy and slothful and piggish (all three). And in Maine New Hampshire, apparently, making up 11 weeks worth of detailed entries for the law internship you only actually spent one hour on is enough to get you dragged screaming from your lofty perch in the Maine New Hampshire leadership! At least when the law internship is with J. Brandon Giuda, a fellow Republican who, weirdly, does not resemble the crusty old coot we imagined when picturing the kind of Mainer New Hampshirite who would force a fellow GOPpy to resign from the House over pathologically lying his way through a little paperwork. Anyway, Giuda saw a Facebook picture of Bettencourt graduating from law school, and he had himself a righteous holy snit. FACEBOOOOOK!!!! He demanded Bettencourt resign from the House for "personal reasons," and then fink on himself to the law school; instead of placing blame on himself and his "personal problems," though, Bettencourt blamed the resignation on his upcoming wedding. Giuda was not nearly satisfied with such a weaselly resignation, one that sought to hide how "dishonorable" he was, and made Bettencourt resign again. READ MORE

 

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Mitt Romney has announced that he will not be canceling his hot Las Vegas dinner date fundraiser with washed-up nut sack Donald Trump just because Donald Trump has been having birther "episodes" in the press — this time that he "knows" Barack Obama was born in Kenya — again. What is Romney supposed to do, go around discriminating against mentally ill people? That is not fair. He will just take their money, like any decent person.

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Hey Americaphile, what's new in Jersey? Anything interesting going on with respect to driving tests at whatever New Jersey calls the DMV? Could you please answer in the form of everything in bold and ALL CAPS?

Republican Sens. Gerald Cardinale of Cresskill and Michael Doherty of Warren/Hunterdon offered a bill to require both portions of the examinations for personal licenses – written test and skill test – to be administered only in English.

THIS MEASURE WILL MAKE ENGLISH AVAILABLE TO ALL AND BE A STRONG BULWARK AGAINST BIGOTRY AND RACISM!!!!

That is intriguing indeed! We did not understand the first word in your link back to your previous post about how "English-only" driving tests protect against bigotry and racism, so we will just have to take your word for it. Maybe because all the gross foreigners will be gone, so nobody can be racist against them? Yes, that makes the most sense by far. (At least more sense than Ireland and the Klan what?) But is there something crazier you would like to tell us, maybe what this English-only driving-test bill by these two American heroes has to do with Popery? READ MORE »