Map of Voter Suppression Legislation state by state.

Courtesy of Mother Jones:

What the map doesn't show is that five states, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Ohio, and West Virginia, have actually curtailed early voting as well. As Ari Berman reported, some of these ban voting on "the Sunday before the election—a day when black churches historically mobilize their constituents." 

"Americans are killed by lightning more often than they are victimized by fraud that voter ID would do something to stop," said Justin Levitt, a professor of law at Loyola Law School. "We've amputated a foot to stop a potential hangnail." The Brennan Center for Justice estimates that nearly ten percent of eligible voters lack the kind of photo ID required by these voter ID laws. 

Republican defenders of voter ID laws claim that higher black turnout in Georgia during the 2006 and 2010 elections proves that voter ID laws don't suppress the minority vote—an argument repeated by minority witness Hans von Spakovsky in his Senate testimony Thursday. But in states without such restrictions, the increase in black turnout was actually much larger. Von Spakovsky's analyses would "fail statistics 101 at just about any college in the country," Levitt said.

Before we all get too cocky about the embarrassingly inept pack of Republican candidates fighting over who will suffer a crushing defeat at the hands of our President, don't forget that the Republicans are essentially cowards who are terrified of a fair fight.

They will pull every trick in the book to level the playing field, and WE have to remain vigilant to call them out on these tactics and hopefully find ways to render them ineffective.

And if any of you have doubts that the GOP can steal a national election, than either you must be new to this country, or you were born AFTER the election of 2000.

Feel good picture of the day!

This is the scene at the Borders closeout sale in Maryland.

So nice to see that the Grizzled Mama's stupid book of regurgitated stories she stole from more accomplished authors will STILL not sell, even at 90% off.

And it is equally satisfying to see it on the shelf right next to another lying Republican who should not financially benefit from his duplicity.

Perhaps they should relabel it "cheap toilet paper." I can think of a number of people who would LOVE to wipe their ass with a George Bush or Sarah Palin book.

(H/T to Wonkette.)

The most important editorial on NCLB that I have ever read. And I urge you to do the same.

Courtesy of AJC: 

By Jim Arnold 

We’ve done it now. Eleven years we had to educate the public, to register our protests and do everything in our power to warn people what was coming, and we blew it. We knew the moment would eventually come and we hem-hawed, looked at the ground, kicked at the dirt with our shoes and failed to look the opposition in the eye and face them down. All of us saw this coming, but very few took a stand and now we – and our students – are paying the price. We could have been prophets but failed the test. 

We allowed the proponents of NCLB to control the discussion from the beginning. They wrote the language, sent out the media notices and explanations, wrote the definitions of AYP, Highly Qualified and leaned heavily on the fact that none of us would dare protest anything to do with a name that implies we would be providing a high quality education for every single child in America. They were right. We chose not to speak out, not to fight against a system we knew from the beginning would set us all up for failure, and instead, in our best Dudley DoRight impersonations we set about to change the way we taught and measured and tested and graded and thought. 

We knew from the outset that NCLB and its goal of 100 percent – every child proficient in every area as determined by a single test on a single day each year – was patently, blatantly and insidiously absurd, but we took no concerted action. We knew Adequate Yearly Progress was a sham, and we literally and figuratively rolled over and tried our best to meet whatever impossible goals they set for us and our students. We knew that Federal law in NCLB was a violation of Federal law in IDEA but we went along with the insanity of testing Students with Disabilities based on chronological age rather than by IEP. 

We learned very quickly and much to our chagrin that some student scores – usually the lowest ones – were counted not once, not twice, but often as many as three times, but we went along to get along. All of us were aware that Highly Qualified, for all the high rhetoric that went along with it, only served to make certification as much of a barrier as humanly possible for Special Education teachers regardless of degree or experience. It seems the teachers we needed most were subjected to the greatest roadblocks to reaching the nirvana of HiQ certification.

We tried our best to play the game but the game was rigged from the start. When the AMO’s were low it was pretty easy for most schools. When the AMO’s went up and more and more schools were labeled “failing” we looked around in a panic for help. Surely nobody believed a school deserved the failing label because two or three kids in a subgroup didn’t pass a test? Yes they did. Yes they still do. We let them make the definitions and apply the labels, even when we realized the absurdity of it all. 

We actually pretended to believe that it was important for us to make sure that every child was tested on those all important test days so none could escape the trauma we inflicted upon them. We even learned in some places to game the system and hold back those kids we feared might not pass the test or might raise those student numbers to create a subgroup in areas we really didn’t want to see a subgroup or, God help us, to cheat or to make sure that we could hold out two or three or four of “those kids” on test days so their poor scores wouldn’t have a negative effect. 

Oh sure, some of you stuck your necks out and said something to the effect of “NCLB forced us to take a closer look at ourselves, and we are better off for that” in spite of the fact that it was our students that were suffering the consequences. What balderdash. What hubris. Our kids were the ones whose education was stilted by our submission to the belief that one test could effectively distill and determine the depth and extent of an entire year of a child’s education. They are the ones whose time was wasted by “academic pep rallies” and “test prep” and by the subtle and insidious ways we told them the test was “important” and put pressure on them to “do their best because our school is counting on you.”They were the ones that did without art and music and chorus and drama because we increased the amount of time they spent in ELA and Math. 

They were the ones that had time in their Social Studies and Science classes cut back more and more so schools could focus on the “really important areas” of ELA and Math. They were the ELL’s that couldn’t speak English but still had to take the test. Their teachers were the ones that were told “your grading of the children in your classes doesn’t count any more because standardization is more important to us that the individual grades you provide.” This told them in effect that their efforts at teaching were important but only if they taught using “this” methodology or “this” curriculum, then, when things started to go badly, they were the first to be blamed for the failure of public education. They were told to teach every child the same way with the same material but make sure to individualize while you’re at it. Hogwash. 

After a couple of years of this insanity, the “NI” status began to take its toll. Someone somewhere invented the term “failing schools” and, unsurprisingly, the label stuck. Students were given the opportunity to transfer to more test-successful schools, but at a price. Schools that did not meet AYP standards, oddly enough, were often those with high minority populations and high poverty. Nobody seemed to notice the zip code effect that left predominantly white schools meeting AYP standards and minority schools caught by the “failing” label. Oh surely, we reasoned, our government would not want to put public education in a situation it could not win………..or would they? 

I struggled with the rest of you as to why NCLB would go to such great lengths to make public education appear to be such a failure, to set up a system that would guarantee failure for practically every public school as we advanced toward that magical 100 percent level and provide no tangible rewards for success and such punitive actions for not meeting arbitrary goals. On top of all of that, I failed to recognize why our nation’s legislators so nimbly avoided even the discussion of reauthorization to change what everyone knew was a failed policy. One day it finally hit me. 

They didn’t want to change the policy, because the policy was designed in theory and in fact not to aid education but to create an image of a failed public school system in order to further the implementation of vouchers and the diversion of public education funds to private schools. 

I am not usually a conspiracy theory guy, but this was no theory. These were cold hard facts slapping me in the face. We failed in our obligations to protect our students from one of the most destructive educational policies since “separate but equal.” We did not educate the public on the myth and misdirection of Adequate Yearly Progress, and we allowed closet segregationists to direct the implementation of policies that we knew would result in our being the guys in the black hats responsible for “the failure of public education.” 

Now we are paying the price. AYP is here to stay in one form or another, and the vast majority of our parents and public really believe the propaganda that it actually measures a school’s educational progress. If we try to convince them otherwise we are “making excuses.” 

Vouchers – especially for private and charter schools exempt from the same restrictive, destructive policies we are forced to endure – are a part of every legislative session in almost every state. High stakes testing for all public education students is considered a necessary reality and teachers are leaving the profession in droves. Student test scores will soon determine teacher pay in some places even with no data to support the correlation. Students that do not graduate high school in four years are labeled as dropouts, even if they graduate in nine or 10 semesters. 

Only first-time test takers are considered in the grading system for schools regardless of how many students ultimately pass the test. It will take years to undo the damage done to science, social studies, fine arts, foreign languages and other academic electives. Generations will not be enough to rid ourselves and our students of the testing mania neuroses created by our attempts to quantify the unquantifiable. 

I hope the generation of teachers and administrators that follows has learned something from the failure of our generation to ward off those determined to destroy public education. We didn’t stand up to be counted, we didn’t stand in the schoolhouse door and tell them they couldn’t do that to our kids, and we didn’t educate the public about what a gigantic failure another one size fits all education policy would be. In the words of that great educator and philosopher Jimmy Buffet: “Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.” 

We have all been left behind. 

There is no more that I can add to this amazing, and extremely honest portrayal of what has happened to public education in this country.

However I urge you to spread far and wide these very important words from Mr. Jim Arnold, who served as both a Principal and Superintendent of schools in Georgia, and is sadly very well educated on the terrible damage that No Child Left Behind has inflicted on our country, our education system, and our children.

(H/T to Alaska Dispatch.)

Three reality based charts you can use to shut that Right Winger in your family up for good. Assuming of course that they understand charts.

Courtesy of The Smirking Chimp:

Notes, this chart includes Clinton's last budget year for comparison. 

People who claim that Obama "tripled the deficit" are either misled or are trying to mislead.

And finally a chart that many of us may seen once or twice before in the past, but on that still remains quite relevant and informative.

Yes I know that for most of these ignorant knuckle-draggers, even making the numbers in the form of a pretty picture will not convince them that all of the country's ills are not solely the responsibility of the Islamic Socialist anti-white racist currently living in the White House.

But hey at least you can give it a shot. I mean somebody has to start somewhere, don't they?

In the least surprising news of the day, Dick Cheney is still a liar.

I have the hardest time imaginable believing ANYBODY from the Bush administration.

But if I had to choose somebody, it would be Colin Powell hands down.

If the video does not play for you, try clicking here.)

You know it really damages President Obama's credibility that he constantly uses a teleprompter. I mean it is not like EVERYBODY uses a teleprompter. Right?

What am I thinking?

Clearly THESE people are using the teleprompter in a very pro-American, pro-Capitalist  manner. Unlike the President who always uses it like a sneaky Socialist.

As they say in Texas, Rick Perry is "All hat and no cattle."

Ever since Perry's prayer-a-palooza earlier this month he has been swaggering from photo-op to photo-op, while doing his best George Bush impersonation, and attracting media attention like flies to....well you know what.

And just like George W. Bush, the Texas bullshit he spews is almost as deep as his lack of knowledge about how to run this country.

However he has a few talking points which, on the surface, might convince the paint eaters, especially those that have been sniffing Sarah Palin's non-candidate panties so long they have suffered brain damage, to support his campaign.

The one he is most well known for is his "40 percent of the new jobs created in America, were created in Texas" horse-pucky. Think Progress examines that claim:

Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX), since he launched his presidential campaign on Saturday, has paraded around the stat that “since June of 2009, Texas is responsible for more than 40 percent of all of the new jobs created in America.” “Now think about that. We’re home to less than 10 percent of the population in America, but 40 percent of all the new jobs were created in that state,” Perry says. 

This stat leaves out a lot of the story. The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas has promoted the number, but “it acknowledges that the number comes out different depending on whether one compares Texas to all states or just to states that are adding jobs.” Between 2008 and 2010, jobs actually grew at a faster pace in Massachusetts than in Texas. 

In fact, “Texas has done worse than the rest of the country since the peak of national unemployment in October 2009.” The unemployment rate in Texas has been steadily increasing throughout the recession, and went from 7.7 to 8.2 percent while the state was supposedly creating 40 percent of all the new jobs in the U.S. 

How is this possible, since Texas has created over 126,000 jobs since the depths of the recession in February 2009? The fact of the matter is that looking purely at job creation misses a key point, namely that Texas has also experienced incredibly rapid population and labor force growth (due to a series of factors, including that Texas weathered the housing bubble reasonably well due to strict mortgage lending regulations). When this is taken into account, Texas’ job creation looks decidedly less impressive:

Clearly, there is no miracle for Texas here. While over 126,000 net jobs were created in Texas over the last two and a half years, the labor force expanded by over 437,000, meaning that overall Texas has added unemployed workers at a rate much faster than it has created jobs. And although states like Michigan have lost jobs (29,200 since February 2009), the state’s labor force has shrunk by over 185,000 since then. As a result, while there are fewer jobs, there are significantly less workers looking for them.

So much for the "Texas Miracle."

And if that was not enough to convince anybody that Perry is simply lacquering his Texas economic turd to look like a gold nugget, take a look at what they put together over at the Big Picture:

In each case, I ranked the 50 states in a manner where “1″ is the best score achievable and “50″ the worst (e.g., the highest high school graduation rate would garner a “1,” the lowest incidence of STD’s would also garner a “1.” In other words, if you’re a governor — a state’s CEO, as it were — you always want to be #1 and, conversely, nowhere near #50.).That said, let’s have a look at how Governor Perry’s Texas ranks in a dirty dozen metrics (and keep in mind that Perry has held the governorship for 11 years): 

Not quite so impressive when you really examine the facts now is it?

Look I don't want to discriminate against anyone who might want to make a run at the White House, but considering how much damage was caused by George W. Bush to this country, I think this should be the mantra of the American voters for the foreseeable future. 

Texas apologizes for Rick Perry. Well I should think so!

(H/T to Politicususa for the video.)


Well I appreciate the thought Texas, but you will have to do better than that! I mean seriously, WTF?

Rick Perry, or "Governor Good Hair" as Molly Ivins referred to him, may be perhaps the most dangerous Teabagger in the Republican party at this point in time.

He is George W. Bush with fewer functioning brain cells, Rick Santorum with even more hatred toward women, and Sarah Palin with slightly larger clitoris.

In other words he is all of the bad fixins of the Tea Party, rolled up in a spicy Texas tortilla, and molded to look like George Bush if he had his Id set free after shotgunning Dr. Jeckyl's potion.

But the slack jawed, knuckle dragging, dimwit is more than just a simple minded, anti-government, secessionist, with a chimp like face.

"How come everybody always looks at me like that when I say Evolution's not real?"

 He is an extremely aggressive campaigner, who has a reputation for grinding his opponents under the wheels of his metaphorical monster truck. and whose many failings sound like the masturbatory fantasies of today's Teabagging GOP:

Perry has flaws, huge flaws. Not the least of which is that he presided over the execution of one of his constituents, Cameron Todd Willingham, who was probably innocent. But I’m not sure that's a liability in today's Tea Party–obsessed GOP. There’s a legend in Lone Star politics that one of Perry’s Republican rivals in Texas tested the Willingham issue in a focus group. One Republican man, the story goes, squinted and said, “Well, I like that. Takes a lot of balls to execute an innocent man.” At that moment, folks say, Perry’s rival knew opposing him was fruitless.

However, besides the fact when we close our eyes and listen to him speak he sounds EXACTLY like the guy who fucked this country up in the first place, the thing that might REALLY derail Perry's run at the nomination is his much vaunted, yet completely overblown, ability to create jobs. Which is so important to his campaign that he even had it stenciled, Sarah Palin style, on his rather uninspiring bus.

Here let Paul Krugman explain it to you:

Still, does Texas job growth point the way to faster job growth in the nation as a whole? No. 

What Texas shows is that a state offering cheap labor and, less important, weak regulation can attract jobs from other states. I believe that the appropriate response to this insight is “Well, duh.” The point is that arguing from this experience that depressing wages and dismantling regulation in America as a whole would create more jobs — which is, whatever Mr. Perry may say, what Perrynomics amounts to in practice — involves a fallacy of composition: every state can’t lure jobs away from every other state. 

In fact, at a national level lower wages would almost certainly lead to fewer jobs — because they would leave working Americans even less able to cope with the overhang of debt left behind by the housing bubble, an overhang that is at the heart of our economic problem. 

So when Mr. Perry presents himself as the candidate who knows how to create jobs, don’t believe him. His prescriptions for job creation would work about as well in practice as his prayer-based attempt to end Texas’s crippling drought.

So much for that.

However will Rick Perry most likely overshadow Michele "Watch me eat a corndog" Bachmann?

Yes, he will.

Does he present a REAL challenge to the equally follicly resplendent Mitt Romney?

Yup.

Will he eventually win the GOP nomination?

Hell if I know!

That depends on just how much control the Teabagger-Borg now exerts over the Republican party.

If the rootin' tootin' Yosemite Sam faction of the party now has a death grip on the steering wheel, and is determined to "drive this bitch over a cliff," than Rick Perry is going to be standing on the debate stage next to President Obama, Thesaurus in hand, as he tries to figure out "what in the sam hill" the President just said that made him look like such a fucking imbecile.

However if the Grand Ole Party kicks the frat boys to the curb, and starts thinking with their wallets instead of their dicks, they will certainly choose Mitt Romney, who will actually be able to stand on the stage and sound reasonably competent.

I mean yeah he'll still lose, since the Evangelicals hate his Mormon Tabernacle ass and he puts audiences to sleep faster than warm milk spiked with Ambien, but at least he will not embarrass the entire party before he goes down for the count.

That said, I am still not taking my eyes off of Rick Perry for an instant.  Just like Sarah Palin, I think he could be a very dangerous individual to have running lose across this nation, even if he does NOT get the nomination.

Just a reminder as to how we got here.

Courtesy of the Political Animal:

1980: Ronald Reagan runs for president, promising a balanced budget

1981 - 1989: With support from congressional Republicans, Reagan runs enormous deficits, adds $2 trillion to the debt.

1993: Bill Clinton passes economic plan that lowers deficit, gets zero votes from congressional Republicans.

1998: U.S. deficit disappears for the first time in three decades. Debt clock is unplugged.

2000: George W. Bush runs for president, promising to maintain a balanced budget.

2001: CBO shows the United States is on track to pay off the entirety of its national debt within a decade.

2001 - 2009: With support from congressional Republicans, Bush runs enormous deficits, adds nearly $5 trillion to the debt.

2002: Dick Cheney declares, “Deficits don’t matter.” Congressional Republicans agree, approving tax cuts, two wars, and Medicare expansion without even trying to pay for them.

2009: Barack Obama inherits $1.3 trillion deficit from Bush; Republicans immediately condemn Obama’s fiscal irresponsibility.

2009: Congressional Democrats unveil several domestic policy initiatives — including health care reform, cap and trade, DREAM Act — which would lower the deficit. GOP opposes all of them, while continuing to push for deficit reduction.

September 2010: In Obama’s first fiscal year, the deficit shrinks by $122 billion. Republicans again condemn Obama’s fiscal irresponsibility.

October 2010: S&P endorses the nation’s AAA rating with a stable outlook, saying the United States looks to be in solid fiscal shape for the foreseeable future.

November 2010: Republicans win a U.S. House majority, citing the need for fiscal responsibility.
December 2010: Congressional Republicans demand extension of Bush tax cuts, relying entirely on deficit financing. GOP continues to accuse Obama of fiscal irresponsibility.

March 2011: Congressional Republicans declare intention to hold full faith and credit of the United States hostage — a move without precedent in American history — until massive debt-reduction plan is approved.

July 2011: Obama offers Republicans a $4 trillion debt-reduction deal. GOP refuses, pushes debt-ceiling standoff until the last possible day, rattling international markets.

August 2011: S&P downgrades U.S. debt, citing GOP refusal to consider new revenues. Republicans rejoice and blame Obama for fiscal irresponsibility.

Any questions?

A graph that every Teabagger needs to see.

Courtesy of Ezra Klein:

What’s also important, but not evident, on this chart is that Obama’s major expenses were temporary — the stimulus is over now — while Bush’s were, effectively, recurring. The Bush tax cuts didn’t just lower revenue for 10 years. It’s clear now that they lowered it indefinitely, which means this chart is understating their true cost. Similarly, the Medicare drug benefit is costing money on perpetuity, not just for two or three years. And Boehner, Ryan and others voted for these laws and, in some cases, helped to craft and pass them.

To relate this specifically to the debt-ceiling debate, we’re not raising the debt ceiling because of the new policies passed in the past two years. We’re raising the debt ceiling because of the accumulated effect of policies passed in recent decades, many of them under Republicans. It’s convenient for whichever side isn’t in power, or wasn’t recently in power, to blame the debt ceiling on the other party. But it isn’t true.

This is the main reason I have NEVER taken the Teabaggers seriously because they are so clearly resistant to recognizing that the tremendous economic problems facing our country have virtually NOTHING to do with President Obama and EVERYTHING to do with George W. Bush, the fake president who came before him.

Let's face it, if the Teabaggers were serious about "taking their country back," they would have been Democrats or even true Independents, not obviously transparent covert Republicans.

Oh, and they NEVER would have been ignorant enough to call themselves the "Tea Party" either.

Just a reminder from 2004 of who the Republicans are, and what they are capable of doing to gain, or hold on to, power.

Karl Rove and George Bush patting each other on the back for fucking over the American people.

Courtesy of Truthout:

A new filing in the King Lincoln Bronzeville v. Blackwell case includes a copy of the Ohio Secretary of State election production system configuration that was in use in Ohio's 2004 presidential election when there was a sudden and unexpected shift in votes for George W. Bush.

The filing also includes the revealing deposition of the late Michael Connell. Connell served as the IT guru for the Bush family and Karl Rove. Connell ran the private IT firm GovTech that created the controversial system that transferred Ohio's vote count late on election night 2004 to a partisan Republican server site in Chattanooga, Tennessee owned by SmarTech. That is when the vote shift happened, not predicted by the exit polls, that led to Bush's unexpected victory. Connell died a month and a half after giving this deposition in a suspicious small plane crash.

Additionally, the filing contains the contract signed between then-Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell and Connell's company, GovTech Solutions. Also included that contract a graphic architectural map of the Secretary of State's election night server layout system. 

Cliff Arnebeck, lead attorney in the King Lincoln case, exchanged emails with IT security expert Stephen Spoonamore. Arnebeck asked Spoonamore whether or not SmarTech had the capability to "input data" and thus alter the results of Ohio's 2004 election. Spoonamore responded: "Yes. They would have had data input capacities. The system might have been set up to log which source generated the data but probably did not."

Spoonamore explained that "they [SmarTech] have full access and could change things when and if they want."

Arnebeck specifically asked "Could this be done using whatever bypass techniques Connell developed for the web hosting function." Spoonamore replied "Yes."

This is the kind of thing to keep in mind when you are hearing the Teabaggers talk about "taking their country back."

The GOP are the ones who rigged not one, but TWO, elections and took the choice away from the voters.  It was the Republicans who lied to the American people in order to start an unnecessary war in Iraq. And it was the Republicans who put this economy into the tailspin that we are still trying to recover from today.

So exactly WHICH party is the one that stole this country away from its people?

And our President is supposed to negotiate with these unscrupulous bastards?

Another reminder of why the GOP hates teachers and their unions so much.

From CNN:

A year earlier than usual, the nation's largest teachers union on Monday endorsed President Barack Obama for re-election in 2012.

The National Education Association, which represents 3.2 million teachers and administrators, approved the recommendation from its political action committee at its annual meeting in Chicago.
Obama "shares our vision for a stronger America," NEA President Dennis Van Roekel said in a statement issued by the group. "He has never wavered from talking about the importance of education or his dedication to a vibrant middle class."

Since taking office in 2009, Obama has championed education reform and used stimulus money to help keep teachers employed. Now he is calling for maintaining or increasing spending on education despite negotiating federal budget cuts.

However, not all of the Obama administration's education policies have pleased the union, particularly its support for charter schools and continued reliance on standardized testing to assess performance.

The NEA statement said the organization usually waits until the summer of an election year to endorse a candidate. This year, it did so earlier than normal "in order to provide early and strong support to help ensure the election of a candidate who is on the side of students and working families."

Of course it stands to reason that a union made up of educators would decide to throw their weight behind the candidate with the brains. Doesn't it?

I also have to add that I agree with the NEA's frustration over the fact that Obama supports charter schools and standardized testing as well, but I also know that he is our best hope for dumping NCLB, and getting our education system back to where it was before George Bush took a big steaming crap on it.

Just who do you think Michele Bachmann might model her Presidency after? Perhaps watching her fawn over a recent President will provide us with a clue.

Jesus, that was disturbing.

One has to wonder if there had not been a crowd present exactly how Bachmann might have shown her affection for the Worst President Ever?

It is kind of bizarre that if the Teabaggers were honest about their frustration over what has happened to their country they would seek to have George Bush brought up on charges of treason, but I guess because he is white like them he gets a free pass.

Well if this is the guy that gets Bachmann's panties all wet, I have to imagine his two terms would serve as the blueprint for her own.  As if we needed yet ANOTHER reason to dismiss this nutjob.