Author Archives: cassandra_m

About cassandra_m

"You don't make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas." -Shirley Chisholm

The 19 Commandments of the Republican Party

This is from frequently hilarious commenter Dickday over at TPMCafe (caps are his, but imagine Fred Thompson’s voice reading this):

  • I, THE REPUB PARTY AM THE LORD THY GOD, (OR AT LEAST I AM ON GOOD TERMS WITH HIM) AND THOU SHALT NOT PUT FALSE GODS OR PARTIES BEFORE ME.
  • WHATEVER YOU DO, ITS ALL RIGHT WITH ME, JUST DO NOT GET CAUGHT.
  • IF YOU DO GET CAUGHT, STAY AWAY FROM ME FOR AWHILE UNTIL YOU ARE REBORN.
  • IF YOU GIVE A SPEECH, APPEAR AT A CAMPAIGN RALLY, OR WIN A GOLF TOURNAMENT, ALWAYS THANK ME FIRST.
  • ONLY THROUGH ME CAN YOU REACH TRUE HEAVEN ON EARTH.
  • WHATEVER YOU DO, DO NOT GET CAUGHT.
  • THOU SHALT NOT STEAL, OR LIE, OR COVET BUT WHATEVER YOU DO, DO NOT GET CAUGHT.
  • THE MORE MONEY YOU HAVE THE MORE MONEY YOU SHOULD EARN AND THE MORE MONEY YOU EARN THE MORE YOU CAN PAY ME AND THE POOL BOY IF YOU SO DESIRE; and remember, all contributions to my financial committees are tax deductible.
  • IMMIGRATION IS A BAD THING NORMALLY, BUT HISPANICS MAKE THE BEST GARDENERS.
  • EVOLUTION IS BAD AS A CONCEPT OR THEORY. THE EARTH CANNOT BE THAT OLD, IF IT WERE, ALL MY MEMBERS WOULD HAVE A WHOLE HELL OF A LOT MORE MONEY.
  • THE PEASANTS ARE REVOLTING.
  • TRY TO KEEP THE PEASANTS FROM REVOLTING BUT BASICALLY ALWAYS REMEMBER, THE PEASANTS ARE REVOLTING ANYWAY.
  • FEAR OF THE LORD IS ALWAYS IMPORTANT BUT FOR VOTES THOU MUST INSTILL FEAR IN THE ELECTORATE: FEAR OF COMMUNISM, SOCIALISM, LIBERALISM, HOMOSEXUALISM, TERRORISM, MUSLIMISM, ATHEISM, AND PEOPLE WHO DO NOT LOOK LIKE US WILL GET YOU ELECTED EVERY TIME.
  • REMEMBER, ONLY THROUGH ME WILL YOU SEE THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH
  • THOU SHALT NOT SHIT WHERE YOU EAT. TRY NOT TO STEAL, DIRECTLY ANYWAY, FROM ANOTHER MEMBER OF MY PARTY–WHATEVER THOU DOEST, DO NOT GET CAUGHT.
  • ALWAYS GET YOUR MONEY UP FRONT AND COLLECT ENOUGH INFORMATION SO THAT IF NOTHING ELSE WORKS AT LEAST YOU GOT THE GOODS ON THE OTHER GUY.
  • WHEN ALL ELSE FAILS, BLAME SOMEBODY ELSE, BUT THOU SHALL TRY TO BLAME THE CLOSEST DEM.
  • PAY MINORITIES WHO WORK FOR MY COMMITTEES A LOT MORE THAN WHITES SO THAT MY COUNTENANCE SHALL HAVE THE PROPER FACE; EVEN SOME MINORITIES WILL DO ANYTHING FOR MONEY. (OH AND FIND OUT WHAT THEY PUT IN JUSTICE THOMAS’ TEA AND ATTEMPT TO MASS PRODUCE AND PUT IT IN THE FOODS OF THOSE WHO RESIDE IN THE INNER CITY)
  • DO NOT, EVER, BEAR FALSE WITNESS AGAINST ANYONE IN THE PRESENCE OF A FEDERAL PROSECUTOR OR HIS HENCHMEN. IF YOU DO NOT BELIEVE ME JUST ASK SCOOTER.

You know you are around Real Republicans when they tell you these are their 10 Party Commandments.   Numbers aren’t their strong suit.

Calls for Book Banning and Book Burning in Wisconsin

Another fight started by more folks who want the government to control the media available to you. This is Wisconsin, not the Swot Valley, mind you:

The strife began in February when West Bend couple Jim and Ginny Maziarka objected to some of the content in the city library’s young-adult section. They later petitioned the library board to move any sexually explicit books — the definition of which would be debated — from the young-adult section to the adult section and to label them as sexually explicit.

Ginny Maziarka, 49, said the books in the section of the library aimed at children aged 12 to 18 included homosexual and heterosexual content she thought was inappropriate for youths.

She wants to be able to control what everybody’s kids get to read, not just her own. There is pushback:

Maria Hanrahan, also a West Bend mom, set up a rival blog to argue the other side.

“I’m against any other party telling me what’s appropriate for my child and what isn’t,” said Hanrahan, 40, who also created a West Bend Parents for Free Speech group. “We don’t mean to say these are appropriate for everyone, but we don’t feel they should be set apart from other materials or restricted from the young-adult section.”

And some wingnut christianists from outside the community jump in the fray with a lawsuit and a call for public book burning:

Outside West Bend, the fight caught the attention of Robert Braun, who, with three other Milwaukee-area men, filed a claim against West Bend calling for one of the library’s books to be publicly burned, along with financial damages.

If you want complete control over what your kids read, I suggest you do the work to make sure that they read what you want them to, in a spot where you can watch them. Don’t make an entire community enforce your control issues.

Thumbnail pic by Gregory Maxwell used under GDFL.

Mike Castle Taking Credit for Another ARRA Project Here (Updated w/ DL Graphinator)

While looking for links to the DNREC info on the denial of the permit, this is what I found (complete with supersized stunt check) :
07-02-09 ARRA check

This was for an announcement by Gov. Markell of Wasterwater project funding by the Recovery bill. I don’t think that this incident of Mike Castle showing up to help take credit (or celebrate) projects funded by a bill he showily voted against has been inventoried here, so I’ll add to our collection.

So, yo, Liberal Media! Can you please ask Castle why he is trying to take credit for work that he really didn’t want to see happen?
Stimulus Projects

DNREC Denies Delaware River Dredging Permit

Don’t know when this was released, but the Press Release announcing the denial of the river dredging permit showed up in my email this afternoon. A key bit from the letter to Col. Tickner:

“The scale of the project has changed substantially from the project envisioned in the 2001 application, and there has been a great deal of new information developed in the intervening period about the Delaware River and Bay ,” wrote O’Mara in his letter to Army Corps District Commander Thomas Tickner. “Given the hearing officer’s recommendations, the significant changes to the scale of the project, the outdated nature of the record, and the potential procedural flaws in making such an important decision based upon the existing record, I have no alternative than to deny the permits. Please note that having reviewed the record, I take this action without prejudice to any future permit application.”

So basically they’ve sent the USACE back to redo their homework and make sure it is written completely within the lines and margins. DNREC has made no judgment on the environmental issues here, just asking for updated information. Which makes this look like a delaying tactic, but for what? Gov. Markell’s office released their own press release on this which says:

“The decision to award a permit to dredge the Delaware River should be based on sound science and a review of the most current information available,” Markell said. “At the same time, we also need to evaluate the opportunity to create jobs and grow Delaware’s economy. This permit request began eight years ago and the information currently before the Department is outdated and incomplete.”

“We need time to evaluate the opportunity to create jobs and grow Delaware’s economy.” Does that say that there isn’t enough in this project for us?

ps. Tommywonk also weighs in on this.

BONUS: I heard this report this AM on WHYY, talking about the work being done by people at UD to survey the bottom of the Delaware Bay. The radio report is really fascinating, but if you look at the report site, WHYY has provided some video of the actual survey activity and some footage of exactly what these scientists are looking at.

The Wingnutz Are Coming! The Wingnutz Are Coming!

Via Wonkette, the wingnutz over at Freeperland are fantasizing about overthrowing the government:

This would be terrifying if it wasn’t about some lamer old wingnuts and their message board: The person who runs FreeRepublic.com is cold gonna overthrow the U.S. government — that means you, blackenstein — and ho ho, no more taxes on the millionaires! Hooray! Anyway, folks, things are getting Seriously Weird with the wingnuts, birthers, paultards and other middle-aged white suckers who bought into that whole Reagan thing 30 years ago and, whoops, are still poor and doomed.

And then, in 2008, Americans mysteriously voted in droves for a common African Soviet from, er, Hawaii, who has been president now for what, six months? And this NON-PRESIDENT is, uhm, trying to get some health coverage for these poor dumb AM-radio listeners, so …. OVERTHROW THE GUBMINT.

You’ll have to get to the Freepers via Wonkette — it is against my Kenyan religion to link over there. But it is a hoot. You can smell the Cheetos from here….

Hatch and Kyl In a Snit About Sports Betting

The NJ reports this AM about the efforts of Senators Hatch and Kyl to stop sports betting in Delaware. Gov. Markell’s office speculates that these two are stalking horses for the NFL who are really having issues with this betting idea.

In a letter sent to Attorney General Holder, these two want the AG to tell Delaware to stick to parlay bets only and they also want the AG to vigorously defend against the NJ lawsuit to expand sports betting.

I’m not a partisan on this sports betting thing, but it does seem to me that Hatch and Kyl are driving way outside of their lanes here. Sports betting already exists in the places where it is legal and they can’t point to a deterioration of any sporting events there as evidence of their pretty wild claim of

Sports betting in Delaware “threatens the integrity of the pastimes our citizens enjoy and the nature of the games they follow,” wrote Sens. Orrin Hatch of Utah and Jon Kyl of Arizona in a letter. “Indeed, the expansion of state-sponsored betting will promote gambling throughout our culture, particularly among young people.”

When, of course, sports betting is pretty prevalent already on a casual or illegal basis — the effort by Delaware (or any state for that matter) is about capturing some of that pie for themselves. Much like the way that states eclipsed the illegal numbers game by ramping up state-sponsored lotteries.

These two could step up to some real leadership if they were to actually make the point that governments are playing a fools game by relying on gambling for a serious revenue stream. But just armoring up to do the NFL’s business (who are just pissed they don’t get a cut) is just as much of a fool’s game.

Mike Castle’s Electorial Conundrum

Rick Perlstein wrote a very smart piece in Newsweek discussing how Sarah Palin highlights the very real split in the GOP among the conservative intellectual elite (yes, I know) — some want to quit the old coalition largely built on populist resentments and others want to chart a broader, more inclusive direction. This part of the article interests me:

Another thing that makes some elite conservatives nervous in this recession is the sheer level of unhinged, even violent irrationality at the grassroots. In postwar America, a panicky, violence-prone underbrush has always been revealed in moments of liberal ascendency. In the Kennedy years, the right-wing militia known as the Minutemen armed for what they believed would be an imminent Russian takeover. In the Carter years it was the Posse Comitatus; Bill Clinton’s rise saw six anti-abortion murders and the Oklahoma City bombings. Each time, the conservative mainstream was able to adroitly hive off the embarrassing fringe while laying claim to some of the grassroots anger that inspired it. Now the violence is back. But this time, the line between the violent fringe and the on-air harvesters of righteous rage has been harder to find. This spring the alleged white-supremacist cop killer in Pittsburgh, Richard Poplawski, professed allegiance to conspiracist Alex Jones, whose theories Fox TV host Glenn Beck had recently been promoting. And when Kansas doctor George Tiller was murdered in church, Fox star Bill O’Reilly was forced to devote airtime to defending himself against a charge many observers found self-evident: that O’Reilly’s claim that “Tiller the baby killer” was getting away with “Nazi stuff” helped contribute to an atmosphere in which Tiller’s alleged assassin believed he was doing something heroic.

It seems to me that the Castle videos we were looking at from the townhall downstate captured this split between the old school conservative elite (Castle) and the so-called grassroots looking for their populist due. And these grassroots can only be happy with results that jive with what their real leadership — the Limbaughs, the Becks, the Savages and all of the other managers of resentments — tell them might ameliorate those fears and resentments. Nothing does, of course, because they only way these folks are useful is if they are glued to every word their radios and TVs say.

So the question is how many people who think that the government is trying to vaccinate them without permission does Castle need to win a primary? It is hard to know without numbers, but all over the Northeast at least, so-called moderate Republicans are having a very difficult time winning primaries. Those who lose their primaries see a Democrat win the office. Why? Because the current GOP base (or at least if you assume the folks in that video are the base) have very little to speak to, much less convince independents to vote for them. UI asked this question earlier — can Castle survive a primary given that so much of the “grass-roots” have apparently lost their minds?

Budget Crisis To Lead the Way to Legalizing Marijuana?

The California Tax Board has told the state that if they legalized marijuana, the state could raise $1.4 billion in revenues. This assessment looks at an actual bill pending before the CA Legislature:

The bill (Assembly Bill 390) by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, is still awaiting its first committee hearing and is likely not to be considered until next year. It would impose not only sales taxes but a $50 per ounce fee on marijuana sales, which would be licensed by the state much as alcoholic beverages are regulated.

So the taxes would be pretty steep, and I have no idea how this just doesn’t jump start a grow-your-own effort. But I wonder if California may just cross over the next revenue-generation frontier — legalizing drugs just because there is money to be made. This is, after all, the trajectory that gambling has taken — legalized and managed so that the state gets a cut plus some taxes AND some favored businesses get some goodies in the name of creating venues. I’d rather see a straightforward legalization (of marijuana certainly) rather than get there because the state needs money, but hey — this does do the trick. So what do you think about this?

Lenny Dykstra’s Financial Career

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Lenny Dykstra’s Financial Career
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show
Full Episodes		 Political Humor Joke of the Day

“He thought somebody gave him the sign to steal.”

Somehow, baseball legend Lenny Dykstra got convinced he was a financial guru. When this happened, I have no idea. But apparently the economic bust has not been so kind to Lenny, just as it hasn’t been to the credibility of one of his major boosters. And you have to watch to the end to see it.