The operative word here is "Appearance" of bias. Thomas and Scalia "appear" to have bias because of their close association with parties advocating a particular side of a question before the court. Last winter Thomas visited with the Koch Brothers in Rancho Mirage Palm Springs, California, and apparently Scalia went hunting on the Brothers tab in Colorado. The Koch Brothers finance dozens of radical right wing causes including paying for the pitiful Huckabee ads on cable TV to abolish the ACA.
Monday, January 30, 2012
God and Man at Court
The operative word here is "Appearance" of bias. Thomas and Scalia "appear" to have bias because of their close association with parties advocating a particular side of a question before the court. Last winter Thomas visited with the Koch Brothers in Rancho Mirage Palm Springs, California, and apparently Scalia went hunting on the Brothers tab in Colorado. The Koch Brothers finance dozens of radical right wing causes including paying for the pitiful Huckabee ads on cable TV to abolish the ACA.
Friday, January 13, 2012
Florida Donkey Voters & The Conservative Fringe
In a Charlie Rose interview the other night, Rep. Barney Frank bemoaned the majority politicians in the present US House of Representatives. "Nobody parachuted in through the Capitol dome. They all got elected by these people..." Because the 2010 House is so dysfunctional and despotic it looks like "these people" who voted for them were a deranged fringe group within the body politic. Therein also may be evidence of a sociopathic virus that infected that group in the 2010 voting. In the coming 2012 elections, we people of America need to inoculate our voters to prevent recurrence of the virus. To that end, let's first explore and analyze the epidemiology of the 2010 virus using basic high school math and statistics.
Of the total USA population eligible to vote in 2010 only about 42% actually turned out and cast a ballot. Now consider the winning majority that built the 2010 House. It only takes one vote over 50% of the total votes to win an election. Of the population eligible to vote only about 21% plus one vote elected the 2010 House.
In these United States of America, do we really have so many millions of angry Billy-Bobs who swill whiskey and drive up to the polls in their pick-ups ready to lynch the politicians who caused all their troubles? A million Billy-Bobs per state? Numbers like this can get pretty mind-numbing. Speaking of which, what happens mentally to these people who vote for nut job candidates? Are they really sociopaths? And what causes these people's disturbed, entranced mental state? Was their trance caused by massive media overload? Or was the trance a result of a virus infecting the few in the fringe?
Let's look closer at Florida as an area infected by the 2010 virus. Many of Florida voters outside of the urban centers cast their ballots just like the nation did in 2010. Recall that the 911 hijackers got their flight training at a Florida aeronautical school. That was an early incident of entrancement and infection. How could someone normal not question what a reclusive gang of Arabs were up to intensely studying how to pilot a 767 jet liner? Recently Florida suffered another outbreak with the election of Florida's autocratic governor Rick Scott. And one more thing to put in the mix about Florida: the Fulgencio Batista Cubanos who want to kill Fidel Castro, and they want to kill anybody who doesn't want to kill Castro. It matters not that Castro is pushing ninety years, and that he handed power over to his brother last year. It is still Alpha 66 and "Kill the Komunistas." This fringe group takes the Donkey Voter trophy away from all Billy-Bobs and any others across the nation for being the most destructive fringe out there today.
These people are the people that the republican wonks endlessly examine and cater to because these people are the key to getting the one more vote beyond the half way mark. Watch the Florida primary vote for how we can get that one more vote for our side? For the elections next fall our nation should consider what our dear neighbors down under use for their elections.
Australian elections have a simple rule that all citizens must vote. If you don't vote then you get fined. It works like parking tickets. If you don't show up and vote you get a twenty-five dollar citation in the mail. If the fringe want to protest they can do a "donkey" vote meaning they leave the form blank. I heard from a friend down there that "donkey" votes are trending downward because people take the vote more seriously since they are required to be there.
Can we ask the Billy-Bobs and the Batistas in Florida to get serious and think before they vote? Or can they use anger management? Probably not. But if more Americans get up early and vote we can get the one more vote to win. Put that with a few Donkey Voters and we may get lucky. Then we can get some people in office who have the good will to make America a better and more democratic nation.
Adored By Florida Cubanos
Fulgencio Batista Was Not Australian
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Special thanks for his research help to our friend
Peter Kalos in Melbourne, Australia not Florida.