Here’s what Republicans don’t get about their Jim Crow voter ID laws — before too long just about every person who wants to vote WILL have a picture ID and people WILL kick them out of office and undo the damage they wrought. For now the focus should be on getting voters the IDs they need to vote because ultimately we can’t depend on this Supreme Court to decide the laws are unconstitutional.
Republicans
Goodbye voting rights
When Barack Obama won the White House in 2008 and Democrats took control of both houses of Congress, I figured Republicans would be humbled and accept the will of the people.
Boy was I wrong. Republicans became energized. They weren’t the slightest bit interested in the will of the people — all they cared about was making Obama a one-term president and taking back Congress, by hook or by crook. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) even declared the GOP’s official mission to be limiting Obama to one term. As far as he was concerned, that was his first order of business. How’s that for governing?
But what Republicans realize is that running on a do-nothing platform might not win them enough votes in 2012 — at least not if every eligible voter gets to vote. Remember — Barack Obama won by a healthy margin in 2008, and if all those people (and then some) show up to vote again in 2012, he’ll probably get reelected. So what Republicans also realize is that because they probably won’t win a fair election, they’ll have to cheat.
And the cheating has already begun. Already in many Republican-controlled states, legislatures are passing draconian voter ID laws that will make it difficult to vote for minorities, students, and the elderly. Seniors without picture IDs who’ve voted all their lives might be disenfranchised because they no longer have drivers licenses. Republicans claim this layer of security is designed to prevent voter fraud, but there’s never been voter fraud on a level to justify such measures. What we’re seeing are the modern-day version of Jim Crow laws.
The tea party Republicans may or may not realize that this is what the real tea party was all about — taxation without representation — although if they do, they probably don’t care. After all, someone who is denied their legitimate right to vote is still required to pay taxes, and by being disenfranchised, they will be taxed while denied a voice in their representation.
Voting is a sacred right. That Republicans would deny the right to honest Americans is a travesty of the first order — about as un-American as it gets.
The pain in their heads
For most people, brain freeze (sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia) occurs when they eat something cold, like ice cream. For many Republicans, it occurs when they have to process facts.
Go, Warren!
Warren Buffett’s op-ed piece in yesterday ’s NY Times has created quite a stir. Unlike his ABC interview last year, in which he expressed the same view about the wisdom of raising taxes on the wealthy, this time word has gotten around — and people are solidly behind him. It puts Republicans on the spot as it highlights the emptiness of their position all along! And how much damage that position has done to the economy? It may be impossible to assess, but it’s been clear to progressives that the low capital gains tax rate has contributed mightily to the deficit, and the debt — and Buffett makes it clear that the low rate does nothing to stimulate investment. He should know, because that’s what he does for a living — invest.
Republicans, wake up. Buffett exposes your lies and confirms your treachery. Even your wealthy allies may start to jump ship rather than become pariahs as the country collapses.
Mystified
Considering how the Republicans mismanaged the economy during the Bush administration, and considering how their obstruction during the first two years of the Obama administration, and considering their failure to produce any useful legislation since they gained control of the House in 2010, I’m mystified that there are still Americans who identify as Republicans. I’d be too embarrassed.
Avoid depression — raise debt ceiling
You don’t have to be an investor to worry about a stock market collapse — the Great Depression of the 1930s that followed the crash of 1929 affected everyone. This is why this morning’s Huffington Post headline, “World Markets Tremble As Debt Deadline Looms,” should be a wake-up for House Republicans. They have it in their power to avoid a worldwide depression, and they need to exercise that power. They need to quit posturing and raise the debt ceiling cleanly, and worry about the other stuff later.
Is it too late?
How would you define climate change? Something different, like strawberry Kool-Aid rain? Or the same, except more and worse? Let’s go with the latter, because that’s what we’re seeing. Since global warming was first presented as a threat to humanity, climate change was generally considered to be its gradual manifestation. We wouldn’t become Venus overnight — we would just be seeing variations on familiar themes: storms would become more frequent and ferocious, winds would become more forceful, rain would become more abundant and destructive, droughts would become drier and more prolonged, snowstorms would be heavier and more crippling, heat waves would be hotter and longer. Have I left anything out?
We’ve been seeing all this. It’s becoming noticeable. Make that obvious. Gentle showers are but a fond memory. Summer leapfrogs over spring. There’s almost universal consensus among scientists now that global warming is real, that profound climate change is what we will experience in our lifetimes, and that human activity is the cause. It can’t be a coincidence that we’ve seen measurable changes in atmospheric greenhouse gases since the beginning of the industrial revolution. Yet our leading pinhead, Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), has not backed down from his assertion that global warming is a hoax, and a few Republican dim bulbs have raged about the coming ban on incandescents.
Surely they can’t all be that stupid, yet Republicans continue to strip funding for environmental agencies and programs. Republicans steadfastly refuse to engage in a serious discussion about an energy policy that would come to grips with the problems we face. It’s almost as if they’re determined to destroy the world we live in.
As unified as science is about the cause and effect of global warming now, what no one seems to be able to agree on is whether or not it’s too late to do anything about it. Have we, in other words, passed the tipping point? Can we reverse the trend and return to a more familiar climate state? Well, we have to look at what would be required.
That can be summed up this way: we would have to be removing more greenhouse gases from the atmosphere than we add — carbon dioxide and methane, principally. It wouldn’t be enough to simply reach a zero net increase state. That would leave us where we are now, which isn’t necessarily desirable, because our current climate trends would continue, our poles would melt. and our sea levels would rise. The resulting chaos is unimaginable.
Part one of the solution, then, is drastically reducing the amount of greenhouse gases we add to the atmosphere. Part two is to find a way to remove what’s already there. Nature has a mechanism to keep these gases in balance. It’s called “photosynthesis” — the process of converting carbon dioxide into organic matter. This happens when plants absorb CO2 and grow and multiply. Plants (on land and in the oceans) are stored carbon, and we simply don’t have enough plants to keep up. If we did, we wouldn’t be here now.
The oil and coal we’re now burning is carbon that was captured by plants eons ago, over millions of years, and converted to familiar fossil fuels by the pressures beneath the surface of the earth. One doesn’t need to be a climate scientist to understand that we’ve released millions of years’ worth of carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere in about 200 years. One doesn’t need to be a rocket scientists to see the logic behind climate change.
So back to the question: is it too late to turn things around? Well, I can only say that I won’t see it happen in my lifetime.
our sea levels would rise,
How would you define climate change? Something different, like raining Kool-Aid? Or the same, except more and worse? Let’s go with the latter, because that’s what we’re seeing. Since global warming was first presented as a threat to humanity, climate change was generally considered to be its gradual manifestation. We wouldn’t become Venus overnight — we would just be seeing variations on familiar themes: storms would become more frequent and ferocious, winds would become more forceful, rain would become more abundant and destructive, droughts would become drier and more prolonged, snowstorms would be heavier and more crippling, heat waves would be hotter and longer. Have I left anything out?
We’ve been seeing all this. It’s becoming noticeable. Make that obvious. Gentle showers are but a fond memory. Summer leapfrogs over spring. There’s almost universal consensus among scientists now that global warming is real, that profound climate change is what we will experience in our lifetimes, and that human activity is the cause. It can’t be a coincidence that we’ve seen measurable changes in atmospheric greenhouse gases since the beginning of the industrial revolution. Yet our leading pinhead, Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), has not backed down from his assertion that global warming is a hoax.
Surely they can’t all be that stupid, yet Republicans continue to strip funding for environmental agencies and programs. Republicans steadfastly refuse to engage in a serious discussion about an energy policy that would come to grips with the problems we face. It’s almost as if they’re determined to destroy the world we live in.
As unified as science is about the cause and effect of global warming now, what no one seems to be able to agree on is whether or not it’s too late to do anything about it. Have we, in other words, passed the tipping point? Can we reverse the trend and return to a more familiar climate state? Well, we have to look at what would be required.
That can be summed up this way: we would have to be removing more greenhouse gases from the atmosphere than we add — carbon dioxide and methane, principally. It wouldn’t be enough to simply reach a zero net increase state. That would leave us where we are now, which isn’t necessarily desirable, because our current climate trends would continue, our poles would melt. and our sea levels would rise. The resulting chaos is unimaginable.
Part one of the solution, then, is drastically reducing the amount of greenhouse gases we add to the atmosphere. Part two is to find a way to remove what’s already there. Nature has a mechanism to keep these gases in balance. It’s called “photosynthesis” — the process of converting carbon dioxide into organic matter. This happens when plants absorb CO2 and grow and multiply. Plants (on land and in the oceans) are stored carbon, and we simply don’t have enough plants to keep up. If we did, we wouldn’t be here now.
The oil and coal we’re now burning is carbon that was captured by plants eons ago, over millions of years, and converted to familiar fossil fuels by the pressures beneath the surface of the earth. One doesn’t need to be a climate scientist to understand that we’ve released millions of years’ worth of carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere in about 200 years. One doesn’t need to be a rocket scientists to see the logic behind climate change.
Liberal Buzz 