[HoosierDaddy]

Sssssshhhhhhh.

Play it off as trolling.

"He's just trolling folks. He's not serious! Really! None of these things are remotely connected to either his party affiliation or geopolitical location! It's just fun 'n games!"

[Terez]

 worrywort, on 05 February 2013 - 04:39 AM, said:

Todd Kincannon, former executive director of the South Carolina GOP, went crazy yesterday during the Super Bowl, and he's still at it: https://twitter.com/ToddKincannon

The stuff from yesterday: http://www.dailykos....ervative-Tweets

In the Kos comments, someone suggested this guy probably carries a big gun because small dick. Then someone posted this:

http://thetrenches.u...exting-scandal/

Too funny.

[HoosierDaddy]

Yeah, I don't really care if he's sexting people. It makes him a hypocrite about Weiner, but most people are hypocrites at some point. At least he isn't a homosexual bashing closeted-homosexual like so many turn out to be in the end.

Guy seems like a scum-bag. At least he isn't still in charge of SC's GOP.

[worry]

I agree with you about the scandal, more or less, but I also don't doubt he's supported policy that was abhorrent and hypocritical. And all not being charge anymore means is that he doesn't have to fake civility in public anymore, and yah he's just one guy, but he was always this guy, and he still made it to being in charge.

[HoosierDaddy]

I guess I'm just not surprised or shocked. The further south of the Mason-Dixon line you go, the more idiotic these things tend to get. Dude seems like a typical racist in South Carolina. They aren't in shore abundance there so it is no surprise he was in a position of power.

Quote

First state to secede! YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!

[stone monkey]

This also seems apposite... http://www.patheos.c...r-black-voters/

We all knew the GOP were going to learn the wrong lessons from the last election... But it would seem, despite calmer heads eventually prevailing, that they really went to town on it.

[Terez]

 HoosierDaddy, on 05 February 2013 - 05:22 AM, said:

Yeah, I don't really care if he's sexting people.

From a general ethical standpoint, I don't either (though there is the general hypocrisy point worry hinted at). I just think it's hilarious, that's all.

@SM—It's not all that different from the electoral college, or the gerrymandered system that currently gives the GOP an edge in the House (they lost the overall popular vote for the House). I'm not saying it's not as racist as it appears to be, but as long as we have the electoral college and other states (like Maine and Nebraska) that already divide electoral votes by congressional district, then it's hard to call these guys out for it because they have not only precedent, but active precedent.

[stone monkey]

I guess so... It just struck me as particularly... blatant. They weren't even trying to hide the implications. I don't know enough about the US to tell whether that's something new in the post-Civil Rights era

[worry]

There were actually multiple states considering such a maneuver -- for weeks Rachel Maddow quite emphatically pounded away at the beltway media for not covering it, even though it got the backing of no less than GOP chairman Reince Priebus, and she was successful because they eventually caught on. And then even the craziest states (Michigan, Florida) backed away from it. But Virginia and Pennsylvania of all states actually going through with proposing these bills is sickening, even if the bills die.

I disagree with Terez on one point: even though there's a couple small states with precedent for this, that doesn't mean these blatantly undemocratic maneuvers from sore loser Republicans in swing states can't or shouldn't be called out. And in fact, calling them out on it instead of letting it happen under the radar actually worked, because it's not going to happen anymore in any of these states. This was a step beyond the usual gerrymandering scheme, and they got caught and had to stop.

[Terez]

 stone monkey, on 05 February 2013 - 09:38 PM, said:

I guess so... It just struck me as particularly... blatant. They weren't even trying to hide the implications. I don't know enough about the US to tell whether that's something new in the post-Civil Rights era

It is, in the sense that it's unusually weighted gerrymandering. But aside from precedents I mentioned, it's part of a voter suppression scheme that has been brewing since the close election of 2000 which was scary for Republicans, and has been especially heating up since 2008 when early voting enfranchised a lot of working poor. So in that sense it's not new; it's just the latest tactic, and perhaps the boldest so far.

[LinearPhilosopher]

http://churchandstat...wash-americans/

[Tsundoku]

 Terez, on 05 February 2013 - 10:36 PM, said:

... since 2008 when early voting enfranchised a lot of working poor.

They got the power to vote? Didn't they already have it? I'm sorry but I don't quite follow you on this bit.

@BalrogLord
An interesting bit in that article:

"All of these claims are demonstrably false, yet Fox News viewers will maintain their veracity with incredible zeal. Why? Is it simply that we have lost our respect for knowledge?"

I would say it was more a case that a depressing number of so-called adults were happy to be swindled into outsourcing it.

This post has been edited by Sombra: 07 February 2013 - 07:05 PM

[Terez]

 Sombra, on 07 February 2013 - 07:01 PM, said:

 Terez, on 05 February 2013 - 10:36 PM, said:

... since 2008 when early voting enfranchised a lot of working poor.

They got the power to vote? Didn't they already have it? I'm sorry but I don't quite follow you on this bit.

The general argument goes that the working poor are less likely to have the luxury of voting in places where there are typically long lines, usually good-sized cities. Some cities are actually good at organizing things so that there aren't any lines, but basically all big cities have precincts that go badly and people have to wait in line for hours. If you have to work, then you can't wait in line for hours, maybe not even for one hour. So opening up early voting takes a lot of pressure off of the election day lines, and weekend voting in particular has been shown to increase the number of working poor who can vote. There are two problems working together here: the fact that the affluent are much less likely to live in crowded places where long lines occur, and the fact that they generally have more freedom to take time off from work for important things like voting. The research supports the logic fairly consistently. Some states allow absentee voting by mail with no restrictions, but most have so many restrictions that it's not a viable option. Washington State does mail-only voting, but they're the hippies of the US.

[Vengeance]

 Terez, on 07 February 2013 - 07:10 PM, said:

 Sombra, on 07 February 2013 - 07:01 PM, said:

 Terez, on 05 February 2013 - 10:36 PM, said:

... since 2008 when early voting enfranchised a lot of working poor.

They got the power to vote? Didn't they already have it? I'm sorry but I don't quite follow you on this bit.

The general argument goes that the working poor are less likely to have the luxury of voting in places where there are typically long lines, usually good-sized cities. Some cities are actually good at organizing things so that there aren't any lines, but basically all big cities have precincts that go badly and people have to wait in line for hours. If you have to work, then you can't wait in line for hours, maybe not even for one hour. So opening up early voting takes a lot of pressure off of the election day lines, and weekend voting in particular has been shown to increase the number of working poor who can vote. There are two problems working together here: the fact that the affluent are much less likely to live in crowded places where long lines occur, and the fact that they generally have more freedom to take time off from work for important things like voting. The research supports the logic fairly consistently. Some states allow absentee voting by mail with no restrictions, but most have so many restrictions that it's not a viable option. Washington State does mail-only voting, but they're the hippies of the US.

Oregon does mail only voting also. Something like a 95% voting rate.

[Terez]

No, you're right; it's Oregon, not Washington. But the whole west coast is pretty hippy. (Except for vast and relatively unpopulated stretches of Real America.)

[Tsundoku]

Ahhhh ... OK thanks for that. I did notice lots of stories about how the lines were less long and people were making a point of staying when the lines were long anyway in this last US election, but I didn't put 2 and 2 together.

I guess when you live in a country that has elections on Saturdays for the whole day, you tend to forget that other places haven't figured this stuff out yet. For compulsory voting to work, you kind of have to make it accessible to all eligible voters.

[Terez]

It's not that we haven't figured it out. It's that we (or rather politicians) have figured it out. We've been wanting to expand voting days in places like these for decades, literally, but the Republicans have figured out that it only hurts them, and they've always resisted it. There was an easing in 2008 after the disaster of the 2004 election in Ohio, but after they saw the results they cracked down pretty hard, and thus in 2012 we had fiascoes in places like Florida and Ohio, the states that usually decide the election. It was all over MSNBC in the months preceding the election, but hardly anyone else talked about it in the mainstream media.

This post has been edited by Terez: 07 February 2013 - 07:30 PM

[worry]

Fairly good speech, nothing totally out there, but it makes for a solid blueprint/outline for the next year.

Now Rubio is giving his speech. Same tax&spend rhetoric nonsense. He just voted against VAWA today btw, and now he's going on to talk about how everyone's on an even playing field except when government interferes.

[worry]

He just blamed the financial crisis on the government, then went on to say the sequester cuts stuff was, personally, Obama's idea. I think he's forgetting who caused the debt ceiling crisis, that 172 Republicans voted for the sequestration plan, and that Boehner himself championed it as getting "98% of what I wanted."

[worry]

So nervous! Lots of face-rubbing and someone put his water comically just out of reach so he had to duck. Very weird.

I think he almost started crying by the end as he saw his career disappear before his eyes.