On Voting Republicans Out Of Office

THANK YOU OBAMA & DEMOCRATS! The Government Just Posted Its First Four-Month Budget Surplus In Years
Once again, as in prior history, a Democratic President succeeds in cleaning up the horrific economic mess a Republican administration left behind...

The U.S. government posted a net surplus over a four-month period for the first time since 2007 in the March-June, according to the latest monthly Treasury statement.

For June, the surplus totaled $71 billion. That actually fell short of expectations of a surplus of $80 billion.

Still, Washington is now on pace to record the lowest annual deficit since 2008, with a fiscal year to date deficit of $366 billion. That's 28% less than the shortfall recorded in the same period last year, according to Marketwatch, thanks mostly to increased revenue.

“Deficits are rapidly declining,” Paul Edelstein, director of U.S. financial economics at IHS Global Insight Inc. in Lexington, Massachusetts, said before the report according to Bloomberg. “A lot of it is coming on the revenue side, mostly from taxes -- there were increases in payroll taxes last year, which are still being felt this year, corporate profits are up and they are paying more in taxes.”

Here's the chart:



SOURCE:

http://www.businessinsider.com/first-four-month-government-surplus-in-years-2014-7

I've been a very active participant in our governments - national and local. I have even written to my congressmen/women and a couple of presidents.

The last six years have been the worst in our political history; the conress' approval rating is the lowest in history. 100% of the GOP votes no on most legislation. The GOP does everything to disenfranchise voters, homosexuals, women, take away their health insurance, and hurt our great country's economy - and they still get the votes by the very people they're hurting.

It just doesn't make any sense that women, minorities and people earning minimum wage continues to vote for the very people who are there to harm them. If they don't care, why should I care?

This is why:

40,000 Voter Registrations Have Mysteriously Vanished, Could Determine Control Of The Senate

by Alice Ollstein Posted on October 26, 2014 at 4:18 pm Updated: October 27, 2014 at 10:58 am

If they need to steal an election, we need to vote.

ATLANTA, GEORGIA—A court could decide any day now whether tens of thousands of Georgia voters can cast a ballot this November, a choice that could sway the outcome of the state’s neck-and-neck races for Governor and Senator.

Earlier this year, organizers fanned out across nearly every one of Georgia’s 159 counties and registered nearly 90 thousand people who have never voted in their lives, most of them people of color, many of them under 25 years old. But when the groups checked back in late August, comparing their registration database to the state’s public one, they noticed about 50,000 of the registrations had vanished, nearly all of them belonging to people of color in the Democratic-leaning regions around Atlanta, Savannah and Columbus.

Georgia’s state minority leader Stacy Abrams (D), whose group The New Georgia Project led the massive registration drive in March and April, told ThinkProgress what happened next was “deeply disturbing.”

“We asked the Secretary of State to meet with us. We wanted to understand if we were doing something wrong, or if there was another database we didn’t have access to. But he refused to meet with us,” she said.

Joined by the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the Georgia NAACP, the organizers asked twice more for a meeting about the missing registrations. When early voting began across the state and they still had not heard from the Secretary of State, the New Georgia Project took them to court. In arguments on Friday, Francys Johnson, president of the Georgia NAACP, asked Fulton County Superior Court Judge Christopher Brasher to compel the state to process every valid registration.

“In 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, we were only able to know there were problems when it was too late, when people started showing up to the polls and they were not on the voter rolls, and folks were already disenfranchised,” Johnson explained to ThinkProgress over the phone. “We must catch that disenfranchisement before it takes place.”

Lawyers for Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp and three counties who are also the target of the suit countered that state law sets no deadlines for processing voter registrations, and emphasized that any voter unsure of their registration status can always cast a provisional ballot. Those who do so must return within three days to present additional documentation or otherwise cure any problem with the system. But the NAACP and New Georgia Project called this remedy “unacceptable.”

“I cannot tell you what little return we actually see in terms of provisional ballots,” Johnson said. “The election is decided the night of the election. It’s not really a ballot at all.”

Even if every one of the registrations in limbo does get processed and added to the voter rolls by Election Day, Johnson says the uncertainty has still been “problematic.” Because the 40,000-odd voters have not yet received their registration cards in the mail that tells them which precinct they’re assigned to, “this ambiguity may discourage people from going to out to vote, and those who do go won’t know where to go, and they’ll be shuffled around from polling place to polling place.”

Amidst this chaos, the Secretary of State publicly accused the New Georgia Project in September of submitting fraudulent registration forms. A subsequent investigation found just 25 confirmed forgeries out of more than 85,000 forms—a fraud rate of about 3/100ths of 1 percent.

Abrams explained to ThinkProgress that all other third party registration groups must submit every form they get no matter if it’s incomplete or forged. She characterized the subpoena and accusations as an attempt to intimidate and discredit her efforts.

“If you accuse people of fraud, the public will believe there is fraud, just like if you yell ‘fire,’ people run,” she said. “The problem is, if there is no fire, you’re causing damage, and if there is no fraud, you’ve damaged reputations.”

Dr. Francys Johnson agreed, but ThinkProgress the accusations have not worked as the state may have intended.

“If they thought it would have a chilling effect on voter registration efforts, they were mistaken. It has emboldened our efforts. It has awakened the consciousness of people that the right to vote is still precariously endangered.”

The legal battle comes at a pivotal time for the state of Georgia. The state’s African-American, Latino, Asian and Native American populations have grown extensively, as has their share of the electorate. The growth is dramatic enough that many political analysts predict the state’s political identity could swing from red to blue over the next few years.

At the same time these changes were taking place, the state enacted measures courts have found to disproportionately impact voters of color. In 2006, Georgia enacted a “strict” voter ID law. Five years later the state cut the number of days of early voting. In 2012, the Secretary of State purged thousands of voters from the rolls a few months before the presidential election. Just last month, the same Secretary of State lamented before an audience of Republican activists that the registration of more voters of color would mean a win for Democrats.

Abrams told ThinkProgress she launched the registration effort to make sure the officials in local, state and national office actually represented the people of the state.

“We are facing a new Georgia: demographically, politically, economically, and socially,” she said. “We should all be engaged in a process to bring them into the civic conversation. It is dangerous, no matter your party, to have large swaths of your population disengaged and disaffected.”

A ruling from Judge Brasher could come at any time, and based on his remarks during Friday’s hearing, Abrams says she is not optimistic for a ruling in her favor. The New Georgia Project can appeal, but with the election less than two weeks away, the window is getting narrow for forcing the state to process the registrations.

Even as she vowed to continue reaching out over the coming years to the hundreds of thousands of remaining unregistered voters in Georgia, Abrams said her “deepest fear” is that many of the newly registered young voters will by turned off voting for life if they can’t cast a regular ballot this November.

“Fast-forward ten years, and you’ll have a majority-minority population that has even less power than it has right now, because they’ll have become so disengaged, ” she warned. “And the people with power will solidify that power and put up barriers to any possible change.”

One concrete way this could happen is the next time the state revises its voting maps, in 2020. The governor elected in 2018 will have the final say on those maps, which could be gerrymandered to benefit one political party for many years to come.

This is what I'm talking about; the GOP is doing everything they can to disenfranchise voters. The federal government isn't doint anything about it; especially the SCOTUS; it has federal consequences. They just don't give a shyt. Everything is going into the shyt hole of no return, because the citizens and the governments are allowing it to happen.

Hurrah for demoxracy!

Why Republicans Keep Telling Everyone They’re Not Scientists

By CORAL DAVENPORTOCT. 30, 2014


WASHINGTON — Gov. Rick Scott of Florida, a Republican who is fighting a Democratic challenge from former Gov. Charlie Crist, was asked by The Miami Herald if he believes climate change is significantly affecting the weather. “Well, I’m not a scientist,” he said.

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who is locked in a tight re-election race, was asked this month by The Cincinnati Enquirer if he believes that climate change is a problem. “I’m not a scientist,” he said.

House Speaker John A. Boehner, when asked by reporters if climate change will play a role in the Republican agenda, came up with a now-familiar formulation. “I’m not qualified to debate the science over climate change,” he said.

“I’m not a scientist,” or a close variation, has become the go-to talking point for Republicans questioned about climate change in the 2014 campaigns. In the past, many Republican candidates questioned or denied the science of climate change, but polls show that a majority of Americans accept it — and support government policies to mitigate it — making the Republican position increasingly challenging ahead of the 2016 presidential elections.
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“It’s got to be the dumbest answer I’ve ever heard,” said Michael McKenna, a Republican energy lobbyist who has advised House Republicans and conservative political advocacy groups on energy and climate change messaging. “Using that logic would disqualify politicians from voting on anything. Most politicians aren’t scientists, but they vote on science policy. They have opinions on Ebola, but they’re not epidemiologists. They shape highway and infrastructure laws, but they’re not engineers.”

Jon A. Krosnick, who conducts polls on public attitudes on climate change at Stanford, finds the phrase perplexing. “What’s odd about this ‘I’m not a scientist’ line is that there’s nothing in the data we’ve seen to suggest that this helps a candidate,” Mr. Krosnick said. “We can’t find a single state where the majority of voters are skeptical. To say, ‘I’m not a scientist’ is like saying, ‘I’m not a parakeet.’ Everyone knows that it just means, ‘I’m not going to talk about this.’ ”

But Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster, said that while debate moderators and editorial boards may continue to press the climate change question, the issue does not resonate with voters. He pointed to a Pew Research Center poll showing that Americans rank climate change near the bottom of policy concerns.

“It is very difficult to find an issue that voters place lower on the list than climate change,” Mr. Ayres said. “It vies with gay marriage and campaign finance reform as the least important issue. Most voters care about jobs, economic growth, health care and immigration.”
Continue reading the main story Video
Play Video|0:23
Who’s a Scientist?
Who’s a Scientist?

“I’m not a scientist” is a popular phrase among Republicans faced with questions about climate change.
Video by A.J. Chavar on Publish Date October 31, 2014.

For now, “I’m not a scientist” is what one party adviser calls “a temporary Band-Aid” — a way to avoid being called a climate change denier but also to sidestep a dilemma. The reality of campaigning is that a politician who acknowledges that burning coal and oil contributes to global warming must offer a solution, which most policy experts say should be taxing or regulating carbon pollution and increasing government spending on alternative energy. But those ideas are anathema to influential conservative donors like the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch and the advocacy group they support, Americans for Prosperity.
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Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, said his group intends to aggressively work against Republicans who support a carbon tax or regulations in the 2016 presidential primary campaigns. “They would be at a severe disadvantage in the Republican nomination process,” Mr. Phillips said. “We would absolutely make that a crucial issue.”

In the meantime, climate change has come up this year in at least 10 debates in Senate and governor’s races — including those in Florida, New Hampshire, Colorado, Iowa and Kentucky — forcing Republicans to respond to a growing number of questions about the issue. In 2012, President Obama and Mitt Romney never once mentioned climate change in their three debates.

All the Republican presidential candidates that year but one — Jon M. Huntsman Jr., the former governor of Utah — questioned or denied human-caused climate change. Republican strategists at the time saw that position as essential to winning support from the conservative base and inconsequential in influencing swing voters in the general election.
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Since then polls show that the political landscape has changed. A 2013 survey by USA Today and Stanford University found that 71 percent of Americans say they are already seeing the results of climate change, and 55 percent support limiting greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. Mr. Krosnick of Stanford analyzed polls in 46 states conducted between 2006 and 2013 and found that in every state surveyed, at least 75 percent of the population acknowledged the existence of climate change, and at least 67 percent said the government should limit greenhouse gas emissions.

One result is that a cadre of Republican staffers and advisers, most under the age of 40, have started pushing their bosses to find a way to address the issue.

“The general dialogue has been, ‘We have to do something about this,’ ” said one Republican adviser who asked to remain anonymous in order to speak candidly. “We have to be less head-in-the-sand and acknowledge we are losing public opinion on this issue.”

While the politicians debate, the scientific evidence linking weather extremes to climate change continues to mount. Earlier this year, the National Climate Assessment, a study by 13 federal agencies, detailed the ways in which climate change caused by burning coal and oil is threatening the American landscape, from rising sea levels in Florida to more wildfires in Colorado to more devastating droughts across the Southwest. Major corporations, including longtime Republican donors like ExxonMobil, Walmart and Coca-Cola, have acknowledged the science of human-caused climate change and are planning for future taxes or regulations on carbon pollution.

For Mr. McKenna, the energy lobbyist and Republican adviser, the political future is clear. “We’re going to keep getting this question until we nail down a hard answer,” he said.

A version of this article appears in print on October 31, 2014, on page A18 of the New York edition with the headline: Why Republicans Keep Telling Everyone They’re Not Scientists. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

**** the weather. Here is a real problem.

Another Republican ad about baby diapers
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/30/john-stewart-koch-brothers_n_6076138.html?utm_hp_ref=media

CNN Poll: 40% President Obama is too liberal; 17% not liberal enough; 40% Just right
If you listen to most stories, President Obama's disapproval is due to the rightward tilt of American citizens. Yet, nearly 60 percent of people either think that President Obama is just right or not liberal enough. But, you never hear this angle on the corporate media. Likewise, for all the stories about President Obama's "unpopularity," you never hear about how Congress's approval is near historic lows or that this Congress has been among the least productive in terms of legislation that has been passed. We don't hear about how Boehner can't even manage his caucus.

Instead, listening to the Sunday news, you would hear the upcoming election being seen as a rejection of liberalism, the ACA, climate change, gay marriage, etc.

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2014/images/10/27/10274pm.poll.pdf

In general, would you say that President Obama's views and proposed programs for the country are
too liberal, not liberal enough, or just about right for the country?

Too liberal 40%
Not liberal enough 17%
Just about right 40%
No opinion 3%

Do you approve or disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job?

Approve: 13%
Disapprove: 85%
No opinion: 2%

Good stuff.

Good satire. The Daily show did accept their money and agreed to have them advertise, so....... is there a point?

I rarely watch to the news, don't really keep up with the internet news too much. I kinda get caught up on world events right here. Anyway, I bet, this good news hasn't been talked about much?

That CNN poll only proves what I've been saying all along; the voters in this country are too confused to know what they're doing. THAT'S A FACT.

Their rating may be more accurate than anything else, but they still vote them back into office. Isn't that a conflict, or is it me! LOL

For dropping the median income by 5,000 dollars since 2008. That is what needs to improve and their policies are not working. That is what the real people out there are dealing with.

A big fat 0, for a big fat FACT. The average American is suffering in this economy.

Obamas new staff.

Aren't you sick of the lies yet?

http://freebeacon.com/issues/seven-unions-top-kochs-in-super-pac-spending-and-thats-just-the-money-we-know-about/

http://liberallogic101.com/?p=17691

http://drrichswier.com/2014/11/03/predicted-voter-fraud-underway-massive-scale-examples/

Obama, the manipulating hack, strikes again.

http://www.publiusforum.com/2014/11/02/unprecedented-obama-orders-insurance-industry-withhold-new-prices-midterm-elections/

Hey cj. Don't forget to vote on Wednesday.