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By Mark D, November 13, 2012 8:58 pm

After being totally routed by Obama, despite spending the last 4 years doing nothing but stopping anything Obama tried to do, you’d think Republicans would try to change course. Millions upon millions of dollars spent by Republicans and they didn’t get their way. 9 of the 10 senate elections in which the Crossroads PAC (Karl Rove’s pac) spent over 10 million dollars the Democrat won. Maybe, just maybe people saw through what the Republicans were up to and decided to punish them.

Now in a sane world, maybe the Repubs would move more to the center, open up their party to minorities and women. Maybe it’s time for a Republican party that doesn’t just kowtow the line of the super wealthy while taking advantage of some of the most ignorant voters in the country. But of course we don’t live in a sane world, so that’s not going to happen.

As you might have noticed, despite losing the Presidential election and losing seats in the Senate, Republicans continue to control the House. Since they had control of the house following the 2010 Census they were able to redraw Congressional districts. Pretty much they shoved as many democrats into as few districts as possible, basically assuring themselves control of the house.

Now why might this matter? Because the new thing that the GOP is looking for is to base electoral votes not on winner take all state wide, but instead on congressional districts. If for example a state has 30 districts and 30 Electoral Votes, each district would be worth 1 electoral vote. Now look at some of the states that Obama won, such as Pennsylvania. Most of the Congressional Seats that were up for grabs went Republican, except for Pittsburgh, Philly and a few burbs. It’s not a wild guess that the rest of the districts went Romney (Obama supposedly won Philly with nearly 4-1 ratio).

This means instead of getting all of the electoral votes for PA, he would have likely gotten votes for 7 of the 19 districts. This is almost worse then actively trying to keep people from voting. It marginalizes people’s votes, especially as some of the districts aren’t exactly proportional in population. It’s bad enough that your vote is a lot more important depending on what state your voting in (I find it funny that neither candidate campaigned in New Jersey) but this is outright marginalizing people’s votes.

Winner take all when it comes to electoral vote in states has been fine for years. There’s no reason to change it now. Instead of looking for ways to marginalize the vote, maybe just maybe it’s time to start changing with the times. When your starting to lose major chunks of the Solid South, it should be a sign. It isn’t the voters to blame for your failures.

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By Mark D, August 28, 2012 1:30 pm

With today’s announcement of the capture of an “Anarchist” militia group in Georgia which had plotted to destroy the government, lately there seems to be a lot of anarchists causing trouble.  But I believe the use of anarchist is a tad too widespread here. Just because you want to destroy the government, does not make one an anarchist. Considering these guys were army men from Georgia who had specifically targeted Obama, I don’t think they were so much anarchists as much as they are racists.  I mean what were these guys up to while they were serving in the army while Bush was President? Plotting to kill him too?

There’s also the Cleveland anarchists, who were somewhat members of Occupy Cleveland. While most of them self-identified as Anarchists more, I’m willing to bet that for the most part they were college political. That means that they suddenly left their nice upscale homes and found out that not everything they were taught was true. Once they graduated or had kids they probably would have moved on and forgotten about that section of their life. Like all the hippies in the 60′s who sold out when they grew up.

There is more to anarchy then just throwing bombs and taking down the government. But let’s be serious, you could drop a nuclear bomb on Washington DC, take out all branches of the government, and the United States would still exist. Because all the other aspects of government exist, and I would suspect we would just hold fresh elections to replace everyone. There is more to anarchy then just destroying the government. There has to be something in the long run. Things aren’t going to change just overnight, and none of these guys seemed to understand that.

Reading Mikeal Bakunin, Voltraine De Clyre, Emma Goldman, and so on, you can see the hope for a brighter future. Yes there are those bomb throwing anarchists in existence. But they were always short sighted. You can’t just destroy a government by taking out the people running it. Maybe back in the 1900s, but not so much today. People need to decide they can do better then the government they have. They have to see that robbing the poor and giving it to the rich isn’t working. Blowing up a bridge in Cleveland, or attacking the RNC convention isn’t going to do that. Neither is killing Obama.

I’m just annoyed that it seems like the only time anarchist comes up, it always seems to be with some sort of bomb plot. Even V For Vendetta, a movie which the main hero was an anarchist, tiptoed around anarchy. There is once in the whole movie that the word anarchy is uttered, and that’s when some guy is robbing a store because the security camera is out. Anarchy isn’t the wild west brought back to life. It’s a society ideal that has lasted longer then all the governments have ever lasted combined. It’s the natural order of things. Only humans have put the limitations of government on themselves, and what have they gotten for it?

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By Mark D, August 11, 2012 4:39 pm

“Don’t worry that he isn’t smart, he’ll have a lot of good advisers to run things, and really the President doesn’t have all that much power anyway”
- Republicans on GW Bush in 2000

“OMG He’s an Evil Communist Facist Muslim whose secretly destroying America from the inside”
- Republicans anytime about Obama

“What does Obama have to hide by not releasing his birth certificate?”
- Republicans on the Birth Certificate

“Doesn’t a candidate deserve some privacy?”
- Republicans on Romney’s tax returns

“What a flip flopper waffling candidate”
- Republicans on Kerry in 2004

“All that matters is his position now”
- Republicans on Romney’s many changing positions

“Allowing a tax break to expire is like raising taxes”
- Republicans on the expiring tax breaks for the wealthy

“Allowing a tax break to expire is not the same as raising taxes”
- Republicans on the expiring tax breaks for the poor

“How dare you question the President, that’s being un-American!”
- Republicans especially as anti-war protests started picking up during the GW Bush years

“Obama is Satan”
- Republicans during Obama’s White house years

“One of Obama’s closest confidants is Jeremiah Wright, who is an Anti-American catholic pastor”
- Wait for the next line

“Obama is a Muslim”
- Yep

“The struggles of the Economy at this time is due to Clinton’s policies, its far too early to tell how Bush will effect the economy”
- Republicans 2007/2008 era or so

“Obama has ruined the economy”
- Republicans since 2010

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By Mark D, August 8, 2012 6:47 am

So I have a friend that was asking when I would get around to posting about the Colorado shooting.  I don’t think there’s much to say about the actual shooting itself.  The shooter will either spend the rest of his life in jail, or be facing the death penalty. But the amazing thing has been the news stories coming out. Especially those that are saying “Now is not the time to be having a discussion about Gun Control”. I guess after 9/11 wasn’t a time to talk about Terrorism then? I mean when is a better time to talk about it?

That this is Colorado again (following Columbine) also sort of amazes me. After Columbine the one big thing that the Colorado Legislature did was censure Howard Stern. I don’t even think they closed the loopholes that allowed the guns to be purchased (via a 3rd party without a background check) at a gun show. I mean you think the natural response would be to find ways to tighten gun control.  But no, censoring Howard Stern was at the top of their list.

Some people are shocked that someone could buy an assault weapon and then anonymously buy thousands of rounds online. Really I don’t find it surprising at all. The worst part is that there probably will never be a push to try and limit the ability for people to almost anonymously buy thousands of rounds online. There should be a system or a red alert somewhere that this person was buying a shitton of ammo for no apparent reason. But hey, that’s capitalism today, profits > sanity.

The fact of the matter is that the only reason Gun Control is an issue is because the gun lobby is so huge. Somehow it’s nearly impossible to convince people that maybe it isn’t such a good thing. I even saw a dumb comment saying that if someone in the shooting had a gun they could have taken the shooter down. Yes, a dark movie theater filled with smoke is the perfect time for wanna be vigilantes to start shooting. The gun industry makes a lot of money, and the NRA’s lobbying is insane.

I never understood why for example Vito Fossella took campaign contributions from the NRA and gun rights advocates. Gun Control is a non-issue on Staten Island and in NYC in general. People wouldn’t really care one way or another. Then again Fossella took money from everyone, including the cigarette lobby and it never hurt him. But as someone else has said, it’s gotten to the point that you can’t yell fire in a theater, but you have the right to bring weapons into a theater. Because words are a lot more dangerous then guns.

When the constitution was written, the average gun could maybe fire 3 shots within a minute or so. They could hardly imagine a future in which hundreds of bullets could be fired off in less then 30 minutes. The reality is that they didn’t expect the United States to have a regular standing army (something we didn’t really have for decades). They expected the militia/minuteman system to continue to be used. The failures of the War of 1812 showed how Militia couldn’t be counted on. There were also worries that one day the British Empire or another world power might try conquering the colonies. Worries that no longer exist.

Most of the time when you have a gun or gun in your house, in the long run the person that’s going to get hurt is someone you know. But if your just defending your house, or even hunting, what do you need an assault rifle for? The Assault Rifle ban should really be put back in place. It’s not a defensive weapon at all in this day and age, and I’m willing to bet that since the repel of the assault weapons ban more of them have been used in crimes then in “Self Protection”.

It’s too bad that no one is willing to make a stand, because they might actually anger the NRA. The NRA itself is an amazing dinosaur, hopefully it will die off in a few years. That’s always the hope though, that the next generation will get it, because this generation seemingly doesn’t

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By Mark D, July 23, 2012 10:48 pm

So as you might expect, I am a registered voter who tends to vote in every election. I recently moved from one county to another, and the other day got a letter in the mail from the county board of elections. Since I had filled out a mail forwarding address with the post office, they had my new address. What did this letter say? Quite simply that if I was no longer living at my former address, I would be purged from the voter rolls.

That’s pretty much it. No offer to forward my information to the board of elections in my new area. No new voter registration form that I could full out and send in to update my registration. Nothing at all helpful about the form they sent me, other then confirming to them that I live at my new address. This is a joke and is horrible in this day and age with the internet and about a million different ways to possibly have me update my info.

Add that to the fact that PA is one of the states that have created the strictest laws requiring Voter ID (to combat the non-existent voter fraud) at the booth now. I happen to be lucky, in that despite not having a drivers license (or an ability to get a State ID due to transportation problems) I do have a Passport. But trust me, it wasn’t exactly easy, especially since I don’t have a way to get around. I mostly had to rely on friends and family to get me around to places and get the stuff I needed.

All of this because all that happened was that my former roommate took my license when they moved out by accident and could never find it. My car was already dead, and when I got a friend to take me to replace the license in PA, they wouldn’t until I handed in my Jersey license which I couldn’t get or replace. So getting a license has been fun to say the least.

I can see how a lot of people can have trouble getting IDs just to vote. Of course voters who don’t have IDs skews largely to the minority and poor voters. Ironically for me, most of the places I needed to get to to get a Drivers License are nowhere near mass transit. You’d think they would try to build these places closer to Mass Transit hubs so people who don’t drive could get to them easier.