First Cuppa Coffee – Monday, March 5th, 2012 : Boycotts, Debates & Job Creators Edition

Quote of the weekend… George Will, appearing on ABC’s This Week, talking about GOP leadership’s unwillingness to criticize Rush Limbaugh: “They want to bomb Iran, but they’re afraid of Rush Limbaugh.”

 Given that March is federally recognized as Women’s History Month and the Republican celebration of the occasion with a burst of interest in women’s private parts, it only seems appropriate that we should highlight these middle aged experts from funnyordie.com explaining their qualifications for discussing women’s health issues.

The war on voter fraud…. You can always tell when you’re dealing with a GOP troll in the comments section of a blog when they start talking about “voter fraud”.  The Brennan Center for Justice estimates that no less than five million voters will be disenfranchised during the coming year as the result of legislation introduced by Republicans in State Legislatures around the nation. The favored line of the troll-types is to introduce the subject of ID’s being required to cast your ballot; it just sounds so reasonable until you become aware of the actual number of voter fraud cases in the US… from 2000 through 2007 there have been 32,299 cases of reported UFO’s nationally, 352 deaths caused by lightening and >>>drum roll, please<<< 9 reported cases for possible voter impersonation.

The next GOP front in the war on people who aren’t “job creators”…  Virginia, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Wyoming and a host of other states are lining up to find ways to cut benefits paid under worker’s compensation laws.  In Virginia, the claim is being made that longshoremen are “double-dipping” and therefore cheating the system. Although it is true that dockworkers do have the choice of Federal or State benefits, both systems only allow for one kind of benefit to be paid. Other states are contesting the number of claims being made for mental illness.  So, look for a number of “exposés” in GOP influenced media over the next few months that make claims about outrageous overpayments under the workman’s compensation system.

The next Mayoral debate here in San Diego is this Thursday… All four major candidates have pledged to attend. And it’s going to held at the Jacobs Center at 404 Euclid Avenue and is sponsored by the San Diego Voice & Viewpoint. That address is in a (gasp!) non-white neighborhood. >>>Memo to Carl DeMaio: they don’t bite.<<<  Advance registration is required to attend the debate. Do it here.

GOP Translator… For the politically impaired.  Given that there are going to be three Republicans and one Democrat at this debate we present this handy-dandy cheat sheet to assist you in translating GOP-speak. Also for the politically impaired, there’s this new line of GOP apology greeting cards for those situations when a Tweet just won’t do the job.  Example: When I said I wished terrorists would bomb San Francisco, I obviously didn’t mean that literally. I just meant that, in theory, our country would be better off if all those people were dead.

Three way debate better than Xanax…. It was kinda funny reading the great debate in the SDUT’s Opinion section this weekend over why people don’t join political parties anymore. Since neither of the two authors the paper had selected for this debate chose to include the Democratic Party’s support for public employees as a reason for why people don’t support that party, the paper generated its very own editorial just to make we knew that IS the problem with Deomocrats.  All three opinionistas somehow missed the point that mass based organizations no longer play a significant role in a society where political interactions are no longer based on geography (neighborhoods), theology (churches) or professions (work).

And then… there’s this story about how “one million moms” will be boycotting Toys-R-Us because they sell Archie comic books? (Did ya hear? There was a same sex AND  multi-racial wedding in an Archie Comic?)  The boycott may have succeeded, (or not) as all copies of the comic were sold out within a matter of days.

Or this… Minnesota State Rep. Mary Franson video claiming that food stamp programs are virtually similar to feeding wild animals. And that’s enough stupid for one day.