Jesus Versus the GOP

The GOP vs. a Climate Scientist

You can pretty much guess the outcome of this contest:

So, this last guy says he won't believe what climate scientists have to say about climate science because they are professional climate scientists. Can anyone explain to me why that makes sense? And who exactly does he think he can trust on these issues, the oil companies financing his campaigns?

Marriage News Watch: March 17, 2014

Sorry for the delay...

Another Official Leaves the GOP

From Huffington Post: 

Former Nevada Lieutenant Gov. Sue Wagner told the Reno Gazette-Journal that she has left the Republican Party because she thinks hardline conservatives have pushed the party too far to the right.

According to the paper's Tuesday report, Wagner -- who has also served as a state senator, assemblywoman, and gaming commissioner -- is now registered as a nonpartisan voter rather than as a Democrat.

"It’s grown so conservative and tea-party orientated and I just can't buy into that," Wagner said. "I've left the Republican Party and it's left me, at the same time."

Her action comes despite a long-time family connection to the party.

~

A Gallup poll released earlier this month found that the proportion of Americans who identify as Republicans has fallen to 25 percent, down from a high of 34 percent in 2004.

Sound Advice For President Obama

The Conservative Agenda: The Week in Wing-Nuttery

So, how is the Republican rebranding going?

Republicans Need a Memo to "Have Emotions"

Republican: Pre-Existing Conditions Are Your Own Fault

Training the GOP on Talking About Women's Issues

The Latest Election-Rigging Attempt by the GOP

From Think Progress: 

Last winter, shortly after President Obama won his second term in office, many Republicans rallied behind a pair of election-rigging plans designed to make it virtually impossible for a Democrat to win White House again. Though the two plans differ in important ways, the crux of both plans is to rig the Electoral College by requiring blue states to award a significant portion of their electoral votes to Republican presidential candidates — all while ensuring that red states will award 100 percent of their electoral votes to the Republican as well. Though these election-rigging plans appeared dead after a wave of Republican officials came out against them, one of them has just returned to life in California.

On November 22, a man named Hal Nickle filed a proposed ballot initiative in California which would change the way that state allocates electoral votes to ensure that a large chunk of California’s 55 electors go to the GOP, even though Californians consistently prefer Democratic candidates to Republicans. Rather than allocating all of California’s electoral votes to the winner of the state as a whole, as nearly all states currently award their votes, the election-rigging initiative would allocate the states votes proportionally according to the percentage of votes won by each candidate. Thus, if this plan had been in effect in 2012, Mitt Romney would have received 37.12 percent of California’s electors — adding 20 to his overall total.

The trick behind this proposal is that if would only change the law in California, while leaving red states free to award all of their electors to the Republican...

Counter: perhaps Democrats should try this in Texas, Louisiana, and other reliably red states. it would be interesting to see the GOP try to wiggle their way around saying it is okay to do this in blue states but not red states (because you know they would try to rationalize that "logic").

Pro-ACA Republican Wins in Louisiana

From Think Progress:

Louisiana voters elected Republican Vance McAllister in a runoff to fill the state’s vacant Fifth District U.S. House seat on Saturday. McAllister, a businessman who embraced the expansion of Medicaid available to the state under the Affordable Care Act, defeated a Republican party favorite who called for full Obamacare repeal.

In a district won by Mitt Romney with 61 percent of the vote in 2012, two Republicans were the top vote-getters in a 14-candidate October primary. McAllister, who received nearly 60 percent of the vote in Saturday’s special election, criticized much of the Affordable Care Act, but also criticized Gov. Bobby Jindal’s (R) decision to dismantle charity hospitals in the state, and to reject its Medicaid expansion, which would expand the qualifications for Medicaid recipients and extend healthcare coverage to hundreds of thousands of uninsured Louisianans. “Our governor and Sen. Riser right here have gutted [heath care] to the core and privatized it.”

McAllister’s top opponent, State Senator Neil Riser (R), received support from House Republican Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), three of the four other Louisiana Republican Congressmen, the National Rifle Association, FreedomWorks and, more tacitly, Gov. Jindal. Riser ran ads saying that he would go to Washington to balance the budget and stop Obamacare — not make friends — andslammed McAllister for ” attempting to redefine himself and stand with President Obama.”

Republican Election Shenanigans in Virginia

AG candidate Mark Obenshain (right)

From Salon: 

Last Friday, after most of the counties had finished going through their provisional ballots but while Fairfax County still had a fair amount of work to do, the state Board of Elections issued a directive telling Fairfax County and the rest of the state boards that they cannot have legal representatives (or party lawyers) stand in for voters to advocate that certain votes be counted. Fairfax County said its representatives had been allowed to do so in the past. The state board, which has two Republican members and one Democratic member, said it issued its clarification on the legal advice of the attorney general’s office in an effort to assure uniformity. From that point on, voters would have to argue for themselves that their provisional ballots deserved counting.

Democrats cried foul, noting that the rule change emanated from failed Republican gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli’s office and came after the other counties were done counting, while Herring was closing the gap. Fairfax County—it should be noted—tends to skew Democrat. It looked like a rule change midstream, intended to benefit Obenshain, the Republican. Monday, however, the Virginia Board of Elections issued a further clarification, stating that Fairfax was the only county with this supposed policy (allowing outside advocates to argue for provisional ballots) and that it would be unfair for Fairfax to use this different rule. The board further clarified Monday that a voter would not need to show up in person but could supply any missing information by email or fax.

Republicans Are "Lying Like Motherf***ers"

Gov. Kasich (R): There Seems to Be a War on the Poor

From the New York Times:

“I’m concerned about the fact there seems to be a war on the poor,” he said, sitting at the head of a burnished table as members of his cabinet lingered after a meeting. “That if you’re poor, somehow you’re shiftless and lazy.”

“You know what?” he said. “The very people who complain ought to ask their grandparents if they worked at the W.P.A.”

Ever since Republicans in Congress shut down the federal government in an attempt to remove funding for President Obama’s health care law, Republican governors have been trying to distance themselves from Washington.

Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin schooled lawmakers in a Washington Post opinion column midway through the 16-day shutdown on “What Wisconsin Can Teach Washington.” Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, with a record of bipartisan support at home, remarked after a visit to the nation’s capital, “If I was in the Senate right now, I’d kill myself.”

But few have gone further than Mr. Kasich in critiquing his party’s views on poverty programs, and last week he circumvented his own Republican legislature and its Tea Partywing by using a little-known state board to expand Medicaid to 275,000 poor Ohioans under President Obama’s health care law...

Texas Voter ID Law Vs. Women

No More Shutdowns?

A (Former) Republican Judge on His (Former) Party

Ted Cruz's Ultimate Goal

Obama's Advice to the GOP

GOP Numbers Are Getting Even Worse

From ABC News:

A new high of 74 percent of Americans disapprove of the way the Republicans in Congress are handling Washington’s budget crisis, up significantly in the past two weeks and far exceeding disapproval of both President Obama and congressional Democrats on the issue.

The latest ABC News/Washington Post poll finds that criticism of the GOP’s handling of the budget dispute has grown by 11 percentage points since just before the partial government shutdown began, from 63 to 70 and now 74 percent – clearly leaving the party with the lion’s share of blame. Indeed 54 percent now “strongly” disapprove.

See PDF with full results, charts and tables here.

By contrast, 53 percent disapprove of Obama’s work on the issue, essentially flat since the crisis came to a head and a broad 21 points lower than disapproval of the Republicans. Fewer, as well, strongly disapprove of Obama’s performance, 39 percent.

The Democrats in Congress, for their part, remain positioned between the two: Sixty-one percent disapprove of their handling of budget talks in this poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates, unchanged from last week and up 5 points from the week before...