SavageDem

"I don't belong to an organized political party – I'm a Democrat." – Will Rogers

Category: Political

  • DWI Emmer Wants to Make It Easier for Drunk Drivers

    GOP candidate for governor Tom Emmer is a great choice for Minnesota’s next top dog – if you’re a habitual drunk driver. Emmer, who has two DWIs of his own, has authored several bills that would ease penalties on DWI offenders.

    …he authored a bill which would have the practical effect of allowing DWI offenders to hide their convictions from the public after a period of time.

    It’s not surprising to find that Mark Buesgens – the guy that hates poor people, gays, minorities, and educating children, but still calls himself a “Christian” – is chairman of his campaign. These two scumbags were made for each other, and I’ll be laughing like hell watching their campaign go down in flames. They might as well get used to hot flames now…

  • Pawlenty Broke the Budget, But Refuses to Fix It

    Great post over at MNPublius on non-Governor Pawlenty and how he broke Minnesota’s budget, illegally – and that’s not opinion, that’s fact – tried to “fix” it by “unallotting” funds, and now refuses to support a real solution. TwoPuttTommy’s comment afterwards lays out a concise time-line showing exactly how this whole thing went down.

    The February 2009 Forecast predicted revenues of $31.1 Billion (rounded). Knowing that number, Pawlenty proceeded to sign Spending Bills of $33.8 Billion (rounded) anyway.

    This created a $2.7 billion deficit; from the Governor-approved spending and the Feb 2009 Forecast. A bill to balance that deficit, HF-2323, was passed and presented to the Gov. to sign. Except, Pawlenty didn’t sign that revenue bill to balance the budget; he vetoed it.

    Upon creating an unbalanced budget, TBag immediately claimed unilateral power to fix the problem he created. As to Pawlenty actions creating an anticipated budget problem, then using powers to deal with unanticipated budget problems? Twice, the Courts ruled against him.

  • The Fourth Reich

    Unbelievable. The Arizona Board of Education is banning teachers that have “heavy” accents from teaching English. They’re also eliminating funding for classes that “advocate ethnic solidarity” – aimed at eliminating the Mexican-American Studies Department in the Tucson school district.

    …in a move that was more covert until the Wall Street Journal uncovered it, the Arizona Department of Education has told schools that teachers with “heavy” or “ungrammatical” accents are no longer allowed to teach English classes.

    Full article at Huffington Post

    Asking for papers (“Ihre papiere, bitte.”), arresting people based on their skin color, driving out teachers and eliminating education on a ethnic basis…takes you right back to 1937.

  • A Funny: Democrats and Republicans

    A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She lowered her altitude and spotted a man in a boat on a lake below. She shouted to him, “Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am.”

    The man consulted his portable GPS and replied, “You’re in a hot air balloon, approximately 30 feet above ground elevation of 2,346 feet above sea level. You are at 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude and 100 degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude.

    The woman rolled her eyes and said, “You must be an Obama Democrat.”

    “I am,” replied the man. “How did you know?”

    “Well,” answered the balloonist, “everything you told me is technically correct. But I have no idea what to do with your information, and I’m still lost. Frankly, you’ve not been much help to me.”

    The man smiled and responded, “You must be a Republican.”

    “I am,” replied the balloonist. “How did you know?”

    “Well,” said the man, “you don’t know where you are or where you are going. You’ve risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. You’re in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but somehow, now it’s my fault.”

  • Mark Buesgens and Tim Pawlenty Vote to Doom Poorest Minnesotans

    Savage Pacer Letter to Editor for 2010-02-27

    I’m embarrassed that Mark Buesgens is our state representative. Embarrassed and saddened. By obstructing legislation, he is signing a death warrant for some of our most vulnerable Minnesotans. The MN State Legislature recently overwhelmingly passed 125-9 a bipartisan bill to extend General Assistance Medical Care (GAMC) for over another year. One of the nine legislators to vote against this bill was Mark Buesgens. GAMC provides medical and mental health care for 35,000 of the poorest and most needy in our state. Governor Pawlenty vetoed this bill to the consternation of Democrats and Republicans alike. His response was that the affected people can go onto Minnesota Care, a state-run health plan. Unfortunately, this is NOT an option, as Minnesota Care requires premium payments that the people on GAMC cannot afford! For many of the people currently on GAMC, the $203 per month that they receive is the only way they can afford medications and treatments for severe medical conditions like diabetes and heart disease. Taking this away will doom a number of these most vulnerable to early death.

    We, as a caring and moral community, must not let this happen. It’s vitally important that we let our legislators – specifically Mark Buesgens – know that Minnesotans take care of our fellow citizens, and demand that they override Pawlenty’s veto to continue GAMC. To turn our backs on the most impoverished people in our state would be criminal.

  • Words of Wisdom

    I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.

    — John Stuart Mill

  • The Things You Learn as an Election Judge

    I took the oath and put on my “Election Judge” sticker for the third time last week. ‘Twas quite a departure from a year ago: as opposed to the nearly 2,100 voters passing through my precinct then, we had merely 85 (including five absentee ballots!) yesterday. The only offices on the ballot were city council and school board, but still…a disappointing turn-out.

    Sitting at the polling place for 141/2 hours did, however, give me an opportunity to converse quite a bit with my fellow election judges. What an eye-opener! I found out many things:

    • Health care is just fine in the U.S. – if you can afford it – so we should stop trying to make it so “socialist.” Especially because there was this one person from Poland who said that their universal health care was OK most of the time, but he knew a woman who died from breast cancer because she had to wait a month for a mammogram.
    • ACORN has been changing elections with their wicked ways.
    • The “Big Bang” theory is ridiculous. God created the Universe.
    • If you fill a write-in vote with a nonexistent candidate then your entire ballot should be discarded.
    • The Internet is funded entirely by pornography.
    • The United States is a Christian nation, blessed specifically by God in the Bible.
    • People in the U.S. don’t care about life any more because of the millions and millions of babies we kill every year with abortions.

    Needless to say, I live in a very Conservative, Catholic, mostly-Right RepublicanT city. Savage, MN, if you must know. Not many Democratic candidates get votes here; even Barack only got 41% vs. McCain’s 57% last year. I should be inured to it. But the hopeless romantic in me keeps expecting people to wise up.

    Now granted, I was by far the youngest election judge; let’s just say that MTV started the year I graduated high school. We had one judge who was perhaps in her mid-50s – and was the only other Democrat in the room – one who just retired, and the other three were age 79 or older. But the old adage about age bringing wisdom certainly didn’t seem to apply.

    Although we also found several pleasant, non-political things to talk about throughout the day, it seemed – to this Progressive – that often their goal was to affirm the wackiest of the wacky right-wing memes in order to cause me maximum irritation. If so, they succeeded, but I kept my turmoil internal. For the most part.

    Recognizing the futility of trying to combat a (long) lifetime of religious and closet-racist dogma, I silently gritted my teeth and went to my happy place whilst the senior simpletons spluttered senselessly. Only once did I emerge from my self-imposed conversational exile, and that was when the rabble started bemoaning how the minions of ACORN had destroyed the validity of our elections. After I had set the record straight – no conspiracy, a few bad eggs, ACORN itself reported the wrongdoing, evildoers apprehended, no fraudulent votes ever cast, procedures changed, etc., etc. – there was a quiet response of, “Oh, really?” and the subject was dropped. One tiny bit of recompense for my suffering.

    It still stuns me when I come face to face with this, this…willful ignorance. I don’t know everything, nor do I play an actor who does on TV. But I do endeavor to read a bit, listen a bit, stay open-minded, explore the issues, and – call it naive – expect that people act in the best interests of others. Crazy, right?

  • ACORNs of Wisdom from Alan Grayson

    Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) is rapidly becoming my new political hero. And no, not just because he’s really making the media rounds lately (although that is how I came to learn of him several weeks ago). It’s because he looks to be the real deal: a guy who says and does the right things because he truly believes them, not just because it’s politically expedient to do so. In fact, he’s taken a huge risk in doing and saying the things he has over the last few weeks!

    Yesterday Grayson took on the attempted GOP railroading of ACORN. Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) tried to introduce more legislation to deny future funding to ACORN. There’s a small problem with that: writing legislation that punishes a specific entity when there has been no guilt established by any court is illegal. Doing so – the illegal thing – is called a “Bill of Attainder,” and it happens to be specifically prohibited by this little thing we like to call, “The Constitution.” Perhaps you’ve heard of it. And since Republicants often like to refer to it, mayhaps they should adhere to it.

    Watch Grayson in action schooling Broun on how our system of government works. Fantastic stuff!

    For backstory on what’s going on in the video – besides a severe butt-whipping – check out this excellent explanation by Glenn Greenwald.

    Bonus footage: Alan Grayson on The Ed Show talking about the effectiveness of confronting the Republicants.

  • There’s a Rep for that!

    Need Insane Fundie Republican Congress members? There’s a Rep for that!

    Check out the great video (playing off the iPhone campaign).

  • The Governor Who Wasn’t There

    Minnesotans continue to confound me with whom they elect. For a supposedly “liberal” state, we come across looking like the rednecks of the North. It’s been apparent from the beginning that Li’l Timmy Pawlenty was more interested in his own ambition than in actually governing, but he has sunk to new lows in recent months.

    Pawlenty is the newer incarnation of Norm “The Chameleon” Coleman. He is apt to change his stance daily depending on the political winds. He would trade parties, gender, sexual orientation (just not publicly), countries, or sex-for-favors to get elected. He has no principles, other than his infamous (and idiotic) “I will not raise taxes” stance. Evidently the idea that taxes are necessary for things like education, bridge repair, and the health and well-being of our citizenry is just too complicated a concept for him (and the wool-pulled-over-eyes constituency that flabbergastingly put him in office).

    Pawlenty hasn’t even been seen in MN for the past several months, as he works on the not-so-secret Timmy in 2012 campaign instead of trying to solve the:

    • public education crisis
    • budget crisis
    • health care crisis
    • various and sundry other crises

    in the state that he supposedly governs. He exemplifies the “Party of No,” as the only time he shows up is to veto any meaningful legislation. It is hard to imagine a worse governor. Oh, wait: I forgot about Mark Sanford. And Sarah Palin. I guess I can imagine a worse one…but not much.