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Tag Archives: GOP

More than one person thought this was a good idea

11 Saturday Jul 2020

Posted by Michael Bersin in social media

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Tags

4th Congressional District, Corona virus, COVID-19, covidiots, GOP, governor, Mike Parson, missouri, pandemic, social media, Twitter, Vicky Hartzler

Today:

Vicky Hartzler @VickyH4Congress
Glad to be with @FitzpatrickMO, @SaraForMissouri, and many others at the @MoCattle annual steak fry!
[….]
7:31 PM · Jul 11, 2020

Some of the comments:

Ah, another #CovidParty, I see….
Note: if you’re running for office and your supporters die off before they can vote for you, it’s harder to win.
Also, leaders LEAD (and listen to the subject matter experts).
PLEASE follow public health guidelines.

Hello? Face masks? Social distancing guidelines ?

Darwin approved.

Nice to see that you’re concerned for the health and well-being of your constituents by social distancing. Oh wait!

Where’s your damn masks?

That’s Congresswoman Disease Vector to you, pardner.

There’s more:

Mike Parson @mikeparson
There is nothing like being in a room full of cattlemen and women.

These folks know what it means to work hard each and every day to put food on our tables.

It’s an honor to be endorsed by @MoCattle.
[….]
8:13 PM · Jul 11, 2020

Some of the comments:

Wow! What a leader! No masks in an enclosed space and no social distancing.

I hope we don’t read that this event results in a large number of covid-19 cases.

My concern is not for you and your supporters but the healthcare workers who will care for you.

Where are the masks??

Useless Parson wear a mask when appropriate? You gotta be kidding me. Let’s spread the Covid, folksFace with symbols over mouth

You forgot “during a global pandemic” at the end of your first sentence.

Shame that you would lure these farm families and our older generation into indoor facilities and not mandate masks during this time.

Seriously.

Sweet 8 pound 7 ounce baby Jesus, I hope this photo was not taken during a global health pandemic.

It was.

That’s a lot white hair sitting closely without masks.

I am pretty sure this is exactly what the CDC says not to do.

#coronavirus #mogov

Jesus Christ!!!!! No social distancing or masks!!!!! C’mon!!!!! What is wrong with you? This is really wrong!!!

Cases in our state are going up, and you choose to spend time in a room with no social distancing or masks. This is tone deaf and irresponsible.

Again, no mask? Given that this crowd looks to be older in age, I’m guessing there are more than just a couple of people who are high risk in this crowd. But, whatever gets you that MAGA vote, right?!

with no masks, no social distancing. a pure death party.

Nothing like a Covid Party, huh. Sure, that’s real smart there

Can we just agree we need a governor with common sense?!

With no masks. In a pandemic. In a state that’s setting records day after day in positive tests.

Peak irresponsibility. We need leadership in MO stat!

Guess we will be seeing a rise in Covid cases in Sedalia now….just in time for your state fair that you insist on having.

And none of them, including yourself, Gov. @MikeParson, cares enough about the others to wear a mask and keep a safe distance in the midst of a rising deadly pandemic in your state. Some honor.

Someone hasn’t been smart and responsible over the weekend! [….]

Too bad a few of them might find out what it’s like to be on a ventilator.

You are complicit.

Next time try and get a panoramic picture for the contact tracers. These are decent, but I expect more out of a leader.

And on and on.

The courage of their convictions

16 Saturday May 2020

Posted by Michael Bersin in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

convention, GOP, Hypocrisy, missouri, vote by mail

Yesterday:

Alisa Nelson @alisagbrnelson
INBOX: MO GOP Party’s state convention next month will be held by mail-in ballot, instead of in-person. The party’s executive committee voted unanimously this week to make the change this year. #mogov #moleg
2:17 PM · May 15, 2020

Alrighty then.

Campaign Finance: Who else?

24 Tuesday Dec 2019

Posted by Michael Bersin in campaign finance

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

campaign finance, GOP, Jeanne Sinquefield, missouri, Missouri Ethics Commission, Rex Sinquefield

Today at the Missouri Ethics Commission:

C000953 12/24/2019 MO Republican Party Rex Sinquefield 244 Bent Walnut Lane Westphalia MO 65085 None Retired 12/23/2019 $20,000.00

C000953 12/24/2019 MO Republican Party Jeanne Sinquefield 244 Bent Walnut Lane Westphalia MO 65085 None Retired 12/23/2019 $25,000.00

[emphasis added]

They’ll have all the money they need…and more.

Previously:

Campaign Finance: Guess Who? (December 23, 2019)

Clapback

09 Tuesday Apr 2019

Posted by Michael Bersin in Missouri General Assembly, Missouri House, social media

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Tags

Crystal Quade, General Assembly, GOP, infrastructure, missouri

Representative Crystal Quade (D) – House Minority Leader [2019 file photo].

This afternoon from House Minority Leader Crystal Quade (D):

Crystal Quade @crystal_quade
As of today revenue is down $251 mil
HB 548 adds a $180 mil loss by 2023 by giving more tax cuts to the wealthiest
We still have tax cuts from SB 509 on the way- $450 mil in losses per year, or $630 mil fully phased in
Zero debate allowed on the underlying bill. Passed 78 to 72
4:30 PM – 9 Apr 2019

The Missouri GOP:

Missouri GOP @MissouriGOP
Taxpayers keeping more of their own money!
[….]
5:33 PM – 9 Apr 2019

Too many emojis there.

Heh. Big mistake. Big. Huge.

And:

Crystal Quade @crystal_quade
Replying to @MissouriGOP
Don’t clap too hard, Missouri bridges might collapse.
7:36 PM – 9 Apr 2019

Mic drop.

They built this

11 Tuesday Oct 2016

Posted by Michael Bersin in social media, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Donald Trump.president, GOP, schadenfreude, social media, Twitter

Donald Trump (r), via Twitter:

trump101016

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump
Paul Ryan should spend more time on balancing the budget, jobs and illegal immigration and not waste his time on fighting Republican nominee
12:22 PM – 10 Oct 2016

And this morning:

trump101116

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump
Desite winning the second debate in a landslide (every poll), it is hard to do well when Paul Ryan and others give zero support!
6:38 AM – 11 Oct 2016

He did that out of site, eh?

Winning the Internets

02 Wednesday Sep 2015

Posted by Michael Bersin in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Denali, GOP, Obama

Via Twitter:

Top Conservative Cat ‏@TeaPartyCat

After Obama renamed Mt. McKinley to Denali, House GOP votes to name a molehill Mt. McKinley to symbolize their outrage. 10:41 PM – 1 Sep 2015

Heh.

Definitely not Bulworth

09 Sunday Aug 2015

Posted by Michael Bersin in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

2016, Domald Trump, GOP, president, republicans, social media, Twitter

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump

So many “politically correct” fools in our country. We have to all get back to work and stop wasting time and energy on nonsense! 7:29 AM – 8 Aug 2015

Not even close.

The old GOP folks at home

18 Saturday Jan 2014

Posted by Michael Bersin in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

energy efficiency, Energy Indepencence and Security Act of 2007, GOP, incandescent light bulbs, missouri, republicans

After Mitt Romney’s humiliating defeat in 2012, many pundits explicitly or implicitly agreed with bloger Ted Frier who wrote that the GOP had deteriorated into a party of ” elderly conservative whites who year by year are a shrinking share of the national electorate.” And it’s true. How do I know? The last-ditch war over light bulbs.

As a result of legislation passed during he Bush administration, The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, incandescent light bulbs that fail to meet higher energy efficiency standards are on the way out. The new standards were phased in, first 100- and 75-watt bulbs bit the dust, and starting this month the popular 60- and 40-Watt bulbs will not be replaced on store shelves after they are sold out. Republicans have been fighting this event tooth and nail. There’s been efforts at legislation such as Rep. Jeff Duncan’s (R-S.C.) bill, H.R. 3818 which attempts to repeal the ban. And now victory of a sort – the new omnibus appropriations bill contains a rider that will defund efforts to enforce the new standards. Of course, American manufacturers have, in anticipation of the new rules, almost completely ceased manufacture of the less efficient bulbs, but, with no prospect of enforcement, such bulbs could conceivably be purchased from foreign suppliers and sold in the U.S. to the folks who just can’t let go.

Stopping the new rules, believe it or not, has been one of the GOP’s leading priorities. When it first came to my attention in 2011, I wrote:

Did you scratch your head when the GOP House, faced with a deteriorating economy, decided to concentrate their energies on light bulb standards a few weeks ago? Did this suggest nothing so much as the crankiness of some of your elderly family members who curse as they try to figure out how to circumvent car seat belts, wax furious when they can’t smoke in restaurants, and carry on about the fools who buy “five-dollar” cups of coffee? …

Yup. You know just who it is who can’t let go. Geezers. I hate to say it because I think – technically at least – I qualify as one, but most of the carpers are undoubtedly geezers. Represented by the GOP, a.k.a. Geezers Only Party.

I noted back in 2011 that there’s more to the great light bulb war than how we get our light. What’s in play is the same impulse Charles Blow was talking about when he wrote that “Republicans are trying to hold back a storm surge of demographic change with a white picket fence.” The GOP plays to a constituency filled with nostalgia for a past that is changing, desperate to hold back a future they don’t understand and fear. Is it any wonder that the future of a GOP so constrained is itself imperiled?

2nd and 3rd paragraph slightly edited for clarity, link added to 3rd paragraph.

2013’s worst of the worst in Missouri

01 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by Michael Bersin in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Ann Wagner, Boeing, Brian Nieves, GOP, Government shutdown, Jay Nixon, Medicaid expansion, missouri, Obamacare, republicans, Rex Sinquefield, tax-incentives, The Greater St. Louis Labor Council, unemployment benefits, Unions, Vicky Hartzler

I admit it. I like making my own end-of-the-year lists, and I like to see how my opinions line up with other list-makers. It’s silly maybe, but it can help to refine one’s perspective. So here’s my first end-of-the-year list which names the political actors and/or acts that struck me as the most absurd and/or inexcusable during 2013, hence the titular worst of the worst. (In order to balance the negativity, though, I’ll be following it with a list of the best of the best.) It goes without saying that my selections are entirely subjective and reflect my opinion only – nobody else is implicated by my judgement, although I invite anyone so inclined to take issue with my selections or offer their contrary assessments in the comments. And with that, away we go:

1. Rex Sinquefield: Sinquefield is a retired billionaire financier whose hobby is buying up Missouri state government in order to provide a staging ground for his libertarian theology. He plays a long game, lavishing tons of dollars on politicians of every stripe as long as they show even some teeny-tiny signs of sympathy for a small sliver of his goals.  What does he want long-term? Just a Missouri with all the attractions of the brutish Randian paradise for wealthy Übermenschen that excites today’s conservatives.

But hey, perverting the political process for the benefit of the rich and powerful is nothing new and, on its own, wouldn’t merit more than an honorable mention among the worst of Missouri’s recent worst. Mr. Sinquefield has been taking full advantage of the Supreme Court’s destructive endorsement of the idea that money equals speech for a long time. This year, however, plantation master Sinquefield found it necessary to crack the whip; he quickly helped launch a lawsuit to stop a campaign finance reform bill that would have reduced the decibels of his green-backed free speech to a level more in line with that enjoyed by less wealthy citizens of the state. And what does he do with this free-speech? He lies – as in his recent Forbes Magazine op-ed, an overtly counterfactual apotheosis of Kansas Governor Brownback’s tax free policies.

2. The Missouri anti-Obamacare obstructionists: And by obstructionists I mean the Republicans who control the state legislature. Thanks to these jerks, 193,000 Missourians will be out in the healthcare cold. These are the people who don’t make enough money to qualify for subsidies on the Obamacare exchanges since those in their income range were were meant to to get coverage through an extension of Medicaid eligibility, an extension that the state’s GOP, taking advantage of another gift from our conservative Supreme Court, have refused to enact. The same folks have refused to set up Obamacare exchanges, tried to hinder use of the federal exchange and pushed one dishonest story after another about the imagined perils of the law. Talk all you want about the initial failures of the Obamacrare Website or Obama’s rather tame “lie of the year,” the folks who’ve done the real damage are quite simply the politicos who are busy patting themselves on the back because they have saved Missouri’s poor from the moral hazard represented by actual health care.

3. Members of the Missouri GOP congressional delegation: These folks, many of them multi-millionaires, came home to enjoy their cushy Christmas celebrations after refusing to extend benefits for unemployed American workers. As a result, last Saturday 21,329 jobless Missourians lost the meager stipend (averaging $242) that often meant keeping food on the table. If nothing is done, 35,400 more workers will lose this cushion in the first months of 2014. The people’s Republican representatives felt free to cut benefits off even though currently there are, according to some sources, three applicants for most jobs and over 4 million long-term unemployed nationally. Missouri’s current unemployment rate is 6.1%.

4. Rep. Ann Wagner (R-2): Wagner makes it onto this list due to her emergence as one of the aspiring leaders of the GOP House membership, in which role she stood behind the recent government shutdown, welcoming the “fight” on behalf of “the American people,” while simultaneously trying to lay the blame on the Democrats who, for some inexplicable reason, wouldn’t roll over and play dead after winning a major election. This shutdown cost taxpayers $24 billion at a conservative estimate. Thanks alot, Ann. If Wagner represents the new face of the GOP, the concept needs some work.

5. Governor Jay Nixon: Nixon arguably doesn’t belong on a list filled with boneheads and charlatans – but he landed here because I expect more of him when it comes to looking out for the long-term welfare of the state as opposed to selling us out for a short-term, politically attractive “get.” I’m talking about the Boeing giveaway here. There’s plenty of evidence that massive incentives such as those offered to Boeing are bad economic policy, particularly in a state that like Missouri is already starved for revenue. It leaves a particularly bad taste when one takes into account the sort of underhanded back-room deals that seem to have been required to bring it into being. But no matter how you cut it, $3.5 billion in tax breaks is a bit much to pay in order to buy bragging rights for a handful of jobs – especially when we’re talking about jobs that were probably never going to come  here in the first place. When politicians you have no choice but to trust are influenced by corrupt, corporatist thinking about the allocation of cost and benefit, it makes it just that much harder to believe that change will ever be possible. You want to know why Democrats don’t turn out in off-year elections, why there’s an enthusiasm gap? Look no further.

6. The Greater St. Louis Labor Council: This one hurts. It hurts because it’s more evidence of the demise of labor. It’s clear that Boeing’s effort to spike a bidding war for its 777X manufacturing facility, as the Kansas City Star’s Mary Sanchez noted, is “just leverage for Boeing Co. to go after the jugular of a labor union.”  Now, I’ve always believed that what made unions work was a little thing called solidarity – and that its exercise is not defined in regional terms. Yet not only were local unions willing to undercut their brothers and sisters in Washington, but they quickly squelched Gordon King, a representative of the  local Machinists District 837, when he attempted to stand up and do what union members are supposed to do for each other. When it becomes “my workers first” and not “all workers together,” unions have truly lost the war, and the unbecoming eagerness of the local labor council to kiss up to Boeing is just one more step along the way. I understand the desperation that has brought our local labor leaders to this point, but it still hurts.

7. Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-4): No list of worsts would be complete with the stench of hypocrisy – of which Hartzler is redolent. And make no mistake, it takes chutzpah to vote to cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), part of the safety net for the poor, wile keeping sacrosanct massive agricultural subsidies for rich farmers that Hartzler and her family continue to receive. Hartzler, author of a book titled Running God’s Way that is described as “a must-read for everyone interested in serving God through political involvement,” has shown herself again and again to be unwilling to put into practice Christ’s admonition in Matthew 25:34-36 to minister to those in need, and has, instead, allied herself with the wealthy about whom Christ declared “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God” (Mark 11:25).

8. Brian Nieves: In a state legislature filled with chuckleheads and bozos, if one had to single out one supreme example of the resentment-fueled, raging white doofus, it would have to be state Senator Brian “Mad Dog” Nieves. Sharia law, Agenda 21, drones spying on farmers, gold-buggery, tentherism, you name it, if it’s crazy Nieves is for it. Add to the mix his eagerness to physically and verbally attack opponents, constituents, you name it, and you’ve got a disaster ready to happen. He’s on this year’s list, though, because he’s one of the brains (and I use the term loosely) who responded to the Sandy Hook massacre by pushing a gun bill so irresponsible that even members of his own party ultimately refused to over-ride its veto by the Governor. In his own words:

… If we, as a nation, would collectively take a few short minutes, maybe even an hour, to actually research what our Founding Fathers said, in their own words, about gun ownership and gun control, we would see that what we arbitrarily refer to as “Assault Rifles” would fit squarely with what they wanted us to have! …

Now that constitutional scholar Nieves has devoted an hour or so to researching the issue, I should probably run out and buy my assault weapon today! Then I can wave it around and act tough just like “Mad Dog.” Just in case you’re worried, there’ll be lots more fun and games ahead. And like last year, very little attention to important business.

Slightly edited for clarity.

A case of psychological projection to “drewel” over

23 Tuesday Jul 2013

Posted by Michael Bersin in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Brian Nieves, GOP, liberalism, liberals, missouri

As per Wikipedia:

Psychological projection was conceptualized by Sigmund Freud in the 1890s as a defence mechanism in which a person unconsciously rejects his or her own unacceptable attributes by ascribing them to objects or persons in the outside world.

Now for the fun. GOP state Senator Brian Nieves, while commenting about a “drewel” worthy gun,  casually let drop the opinion that  “liberalism is indeed a mental disorder.”

This from the man who thinks that the 2nd amendment guarantees his right to use a gun to restrain and threaten his political foes.

Of course, it’s also coming from the representative of a party that dabbles in opinions to the effect to that African-Americans are the worst racists in America, not to mention that Christians are more persecuted than gays.

The moral: always consider the source.

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