Worst Week Ever

Hope next week is better.

Michigan Republican Governor Snyder pressing to become a dictator

It’s all about small government…
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In an outrageous power grab, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder and the Republican-dominated state Senate passed, and sent back to the House, legislation today that allows Snyder to declare a local city to be in a financial emergency and appoint an emergency manager. That manager can, without anyone else’s approval, cancel contracts, including collective bargaining agreements, force consolidation of schools, townships, cities and counties and, unbelievably, unilaterally remove local elected officials.

Mark Gaffney, president of the Michigan State AFL-CIO, said the bill allows the financial manager to abrogate collective bargaining contracts for five years. “It takes every decision in a city or school district and puts it in the hands of the manager, from when the streets get plowed to who plows them and how much they are paid. In schools, the manager would decide academics or if you have athletics,” Gaffney said.

This is a takeover by the right wing and it’s an assault on democracy like I’ve never seen.

Unbelievably, the bill even allows Snyder to appoint a corporation as the emergency manager. On her MSNBC show last night, Rachel Maddow made clear what is happening:

This is not about a budget. This is about using or fabricating a crisis to push for an agenda that you would never be able to sell under normal circumstances.

Even more outrageous is the fact that Snyder’s budget creates the crisis by eliminating most of the state financial aid from local schools and local governments that many of them will be in dire straits. So, then, as Maddow points out, the governor who created the crisis can declare an emergency and decide what’s best for an entire town. No one can question it because the emergency manager can suspend the elected officials and even remove the town’s incorporation all together.

The state Senate passed the bill by a 26-12 margin today. The legislation now returns to the House, which already had passed it, to approve minor changes made by the Senate.

Obama’s Space Robots

I was just surfing on PatriotActionNetwork aka PANetwork aka Resistnet grabbing images for a new Wingnut Web, and ran across John W. McSherry’s weird rant about space robots. Apparently, Obama has an army of space robots with lasers that will soon accidentally crash into the Earth and kill us all, or something. In any event, this is a magical posting that everyone must see!

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And, yes, the new Wingnut Web is armed and will be fired off later in the week!

Drain Clogs – 02-28-2011

The Republican class war continues in Wisconsin, and has spread to Indiana and Maine.

The US has wasted tens of billions of dollars on contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. But, we must cut money from the poors, not these rich companies!

US Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) laughed along with the crowd when a supporter asked him when someone was going to shoot President Obama. I’m sure he laughed peacefully at the peaceful questioner who only wants Obama to be shot with a camera, and peacefully reported him to the secret service.

Fucking insane Georgia Republican state rep. Bobby Franklin wants to make miscarriages illegal. Every time a miscarriage happens, there will be a criminal investigation and the woman must prove she didn’t do it herself. Or she gets the death penalty. Culture of life, bitches! Considering like 1/3 of all pregnancies end in miscarriages (many without the woman even knowing), invest your money in death penalty chemicals!

I guess Georgia is sick of Arizona being the worst state in the Union…

South Dakota was going to make it legal to kill abortion doctors, but instead have decide to just make women who want to have abortions have “counseling”

(3) Provide the pregnant mother with the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of all pregnancy help centers that are registered with the South Dakota Department of Health pursuant to this Act, and provide her with written instructions that set forth the following:
(a) That prior to the day of any scheduled abortion the pregnant mother must have a consultation at a pregnancy help center at which the pregnancy help center shall inform her about what education, counseling, and other assistance is available to help the pregnant mother keep and care for her child, and have a private interview to discuss her circumstances that may subject her decision to coercion;
(b) That prior to signing a consent to an abortion, the physician shall first obtain from the pregnant mother, a written statement that she obtained a consultation with a pregnancy help center, which sets forth the name and address of the pregnancy help center, the date and time of the consultation, and the name of the counselor at the pregnancy help center with whom she consulted;

Why these are bad.
What South Dakota already requires women who want abortions to do:

(a) The name of the physician who will perform the abortion;
(b) That the abortion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being;
(c) That the pregnant woman has an existing relationship with that unborn human being and that the relationship enjoys protection under the United States Constitution and under the laws of South Dakota;
(d) That by having an abortion, her existing relationship and her existing constitutional rights with regards to that relationship will be terminated;
(e) A description of all known medical risks of the procedure and statistically significant risk factors to which the pregnant woman would be subjected, including:
(i) Depression and related psychological distress;
(ii) Increased risk of suicide ideation and suicide;
(iii) A statement setting forth an accurate rate of deaths due to abortions, including all deaths in which the abortion procedure was a substantial contributing factor;
(iv) All other known medical risks to the physical health of the woman, including the risk of infection, hemorrhage, danger to subsequent pregnancies, and infertility;
(f) The probable gestational age of the unborn child at the time the abortion is to be performed, and a scientifically accurate statement describing the development of the unborn child at that age; and
(g) The statistically significant medical risks associated with carrying her child to term compared to undergoing an induced abortion.

Florida Senate teabag candidates are hiring assistants for over $100K/year:

But to help them do it they hired 61 assistants, each making more than a $100,000 a year. Salaries in the speaker’s office rose one and a half percent.

Cannon’s top aide, Matthew Bahl, makes $146,000 a year; that’s more than three-and-a-half times the speaker’s salary. Haridopolos’ top aide, Stephen MacNamara, makes more than $175,000, or more than four times the Senate president’s salary.

Fiscal Responsibility!

Cartoon of the Day:

Wisconsin strikes back!

Newly elected Republican Governor Scott Walker decided he was going to go all Freddy Krueger on the Wisconsin state unions, and even threatened to call in the National Guard to take on demonstrations to his plan.

But the demonstrations came anyway, and have continued to grow and grow. Schools closed as teachers threatened to walk off work and went to the protests. Police, football players, students, union workers, state workers, young, old, the numbers kept coming and growing.

Tuesday brought out 12-15,000 protesters,
The crowd has swollen to over 30,000 on Wednesday,

I have never been prouder of our movement than I am at this moment,” shouted Wisconsin AFL-CIO President Phil Neuenfeldt, as he surveyed the crowds of union members and their supporters that surged around the state Capitol and into the streets of Madison Wednesday, literally closing the downtown as tens of thousands of Wisconsinites protested their Republican governor’s attempt to strip public employee unions of their collective bargaining rights.

Meanwhile, Senate Dems have left the state to prevent quorum in the Wisconsin senate! Republicans control the senate 19-14, but you need 20 members to have a quorum. This reminds us old people (on the internet, anyone older than 21 is “old people”) of when the Texas Democrats did this to stop a redistricting plan.

Over 4000 protesters are inside the Wisconsin Capitol building. This is what a real protest looks like, Teabaggers!

And the media is…ignoring all this pretty much. I guess because they aren’t several dozen senior citizens with goofy signs on medicare screaming about socialized medicine, they get no coverage.

Are we finally getting the pushback against the teabagger revolution we need? One hopes so.

FreeRepublic.com loves rape

CBS News’ Lara Logan was sexually assaulted in Egypt during the protests. FreeRepublic.com leaps to the conclusion it is all her fault for being a dirty lib who hangs around with horrible devil monkey men (Muslims) and the comments get more and more awful. These are only a few of the threads:

CBS News’ Lara Logan Sexually Assaulted During Egypt Protests

dog whistle time

To: MindBender26
This is not a surprise actually, when civil order breaks down….. chalk it up to diversity

7 posted on February 15, 2011 1:26:52 PM PST by GeronL (http://www.stink-eye.net/forum/index.php for FR backup site!)

Rape is so funny!

To: MindBender26
Apparently a mob of Egyptions “would hit it”.

10 posted on February 15, 2011 1:27:34 PM PST by Nachoman (Wisdom is learned, cynicism is earned.)

Continue reading

FreeRepublic History of Copyright Infringement

In this thread, Bob J details some of the insider information of FreeRepublic’s copyright infringement lawsuits, both past and present. There is also a condemnation of the ineffectiveness of FreeRepublic in the past few years, largely due to a single figure that you can probably guess is the cause.

Archived from: http://truebluefreedom.com/index.php/topic,248.0.html
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We are not going to speculate on that last sentence, though we are “in the loop”

Bob J also explains why he is saying what he is.
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Bob J was a valued member of Freerepublic.com and someone who helped take it to the next level. Despite disagreeing with Bob J on almost every issue, it would be stupid of me to not see how valuable of a person he would be to any organization. The fact that JimRob has been burning bridges like this for the past 13 years one by one is not only telling, but a future predictor of what will happen with tea party groups across the country. The few organizers who are sane or independent from corporate interests will be overridden and driven out by egomaniacs and sellouts.

In our next post on this subject, we hope to go over some of the past FreeRepublic protests, including such features as Bob J himself dressed as Clintonocci while protesting Hillary Clinton.