New study finds that the KKK facilitated the move of Southern white voters from the Democratic party to the Republican party. I wish I could be more surprised by this.

Courtesy of Raw Story:

The Ku Klux Klan played an active and enduring role in steering southern white voters away from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party, according to a new study. 

The white supremacist group resurged to prominence in the 1960s as a reaction to the civil rights movement, and its violent extremism inflamed racial division and polarized communities for generations, according to the study published by the American Sociological Review. 

“It encouraged white voters to prioritize the defense of white supremacy when making voting decisions, upending long-standing Democratic Party allegiances,” wrote the study’s authors. 

The researchers — David Cunningham, professor and chair of the Department of Sociology at Brandeis University, Rory McVeigh of the University of Notre Dame and Justin Farrell of Yale University — studied county voting records in 10 southern states where the KKK actively recruited members in the 1960s. 

Analysis of voting outcomes of five presidential elections between 1960 and 2000 showed a statistically significant increase in GOP voting compared to counties with no established KKK chapter, even after filtering out a range of other factors that could influence voting preferences. 

The study found that counties with a Klan chapter were much more likely to back those two candidates, and adjacent counties without an active KKK chapter of their own were also more likely to support Goldwater and Wallace. 

“The Klan played an active role in encouraging white southerners to prioritize white supremacy over party loyalty,” wrote the study’s authors. 

KKK leaders urged southerners to “form a voting bloc to defeat any n*gger-loving politician that runs for office,” and the group evaluated and supported candidates based on their “authentic whiteness” rather than party ties.

And we wonder why the Republican party seems so racist.

Sarah Palin identifies the threat to America's survival. Americans who voted for President Obama.

Click scowl to release the hatefulness.

So last night I kinda sorta listened to the Wasilla Wendigo's preemptive attack against the President's immigration speech.

In it she vomited forth the same old word salad that we have all heard before ad naseum, and of course added that bit about the President giving Americans the middle finger, which was her typically vulgar way of attacking the President.

I then linked to it in my post on the speech and figured that was probably giving her TOO much attention.

But then this morning MSNBC reported something about her comments that I had missed: 

But every now and then, one of Palin’s tirades stands out as newsworthy. 

The right-wing personality released a new online video today, complaining about President Obama and immigration, offering the usual lines in a style that can charitably be compared to a teenager delivering a report about a book she hasn’t read (via Simon Maloy). 

But then Palin added this: 

“We’ll survive this president. The question is (overdramatic pause) can we survive the people who voted for him, twice?” 

For Palin, this may have been a throwaway line, which probably doesn’t deserve too much scrutiny, but 66 million Americans voted for Obama in 26 states. Only six presidents have ever earned more than 51% of the popular vote twice and Obama is one of them. The president took office thanks to the support of a big chunk of the American electorate. 

In Palin’s mind, these people’s very existence puts the nation’s survival in jeopardy? The biggest threat to America’s future is Americans?

So the woman who is always complaining that the President is not listening to the American people, and in fact is giving them the middle finger, just did that very thing herself.  (Just like her daughter Bristol.)

And she also accused good conscientious Americans who voted for the man they think will serve this nation best, as being something that the country needs to survive. As if it is SHE, and not the majority who voted in 2008 and 2012, who recognize what is best for this country.

To that I say, fuck you lady!

I certainly cannot speak for every American who gave Obama their vote in 2008 and 2012, but I for one I am VERY committed to doing what is right for this country. That's why I worked so hard to reveal who you really are to the American people before the 2008 election.

And I also recognize that it is people who are rigidly partisan, and refuse to compromise in order to solve our problems (You know, like the ones that Sarah Palin keeps endorsing.), who are the real danger to our prosperity and our security. Not the President who has bent over backwards at times in order to get the Republicans who work with him, on anything.

So once again Sarah Palin engages in projection. Giving a rambling speech accusing the President of doing the very thing that she herself does only a few sentences later.

Somehow I doubt that the majority of us would be surprised.

Sad, but undeniably true.

We now have some of the best legislators that corporate money can buy, and we as voters allowed it to happen.

Remember folks, you don't get the America you want, you get the America you deserve.

Chicago investigating mysterious robo-calls that caused 2,000 election judges not to show up on election resulting in seven hour long lines at the polls. Want to guess which political party was responsible?

Courtesy of Think Progress: 

Chicago election judges received misleading and factually incorrect robocalls before the midterm, causing close to 2,000 of them to not show up on Election Day. As a criminal investigation gets underway, the Chicago Sun-Times has tied the calls to two Republican activists while the Republican Party has denied involvement and distanced itself from the party members who it claims acted alone. (Yeah, sure they did.)

An unknown number of election judges received one or more automated phone calls that informed them about an additional required training session or told them they needed to vote a certain way in order to keep their position. As a result, polling places across the city were understaffed and lines reached seven hours in some precincts. A smaller number of voters were turned away from certain locations. 

The city was forced to dispatch standby election judges when some polling places had just one or no election judges present at 6 a.m. when polls were scheduled to open. At the time, the Chicago Board of Elections said it didn’t know who made the calls or why they were sent out. The Cook County State’s Attorney has launched a criminal investigation and Mayor Rahm Emanuel called for hearings on the robocalls.

Of course this is on top of gerrymandering that has made some Republican strongholds bullet proof, and the influx of enough corporate money to drown a medium size city under a tidal wave of dollar bills.

You know I did not play too many team sports growing up as I don't work or play well with others. However I did compete in individual sports like powerlifting, wrestling, and martial arts.

And I cannot think of one of my coaches or instructors who would EVER have encouraged me to cheat in order to win. Even if winning were the most important thing in the world to them.

I was raised to try my hardest, refuse to give up, and to accept defeat graciously if I could find no path to victory.

Losing sucks balls. But winning, when you know you do not deserve to win, well that would shame me to my very core.

And what type of people do we have running our local and federal governments, if they have no problem showing up for a job that they know they do not deserve? How can we expect them to be ethical and honest, if they got where they are by being the exact opposite?

Because if you have to cheat, lie, and bully in order to get into a position of power, than that is the very last place you should be. 

Here is a little news that might lift a few spirits.

Courtesy of our friends over at News Corpse:  

But the real story underlying this election is one that the media will almost certainly fail to address. Despite the election returns, America hates the Republican Party and its policies. The turnout is estimated to be about 38%. That means that the GOP victory was achieved with a majority of a little more than one-third of the electorate, or about 20%. That is not exactly a ringing endorsement of the Republican agenda. 

The demographic makeup of the voters this year was decidedly older and whiter. It was also more concentrated in the South which accounted for 34% of all votes. The rest of the country came in a substantial nine to twelve points lower. 

Just two years ago President Obama was resoundingly reelected along with increasing the number of Democrats in both houses of Congress. The turnout then was 58%, or 53% higher than 2014. Exit polls show that both parties are underwater in voter approval, but Democrats are still favored over Republicans 44% to 40%. Exit polling also gives Obama a 41% approval rating, compared to just 13% for Congress. 

On the basis of this fractured and biased sliver of the electorate, Chris Wallace of Fox News declared this morning that “The Democratic Party brand is damaged.” But further examination of the exit polls says that isn’t true. On virtually every policy question, voters sided with the Democrats. That includes ObamaCare, immigration reform, increasing the minimum wage, same-sex marriage, legalizing marijuana, abortion, and climate change. And when asked about preferences for president in 2016, Hillary Clinton is leading every GOP opponent (Clinton 42%, Jeb Bush 29%, Rand Paul 26%, Chris Christie 24%, and Rick Perry 24%). 

2016 holds more bad news for Republicans and their new senate majority. The GOP will be defending 24 seats, as compared to only 10 for the Democrats. Nine of the those GOP seats are in states won by Obama in 2012. So are all of the Democratic seats. With a larger and more representative electorate it is almost a certainty that the senate will flip back to the Democrats. And with a popular and history-making candidate like Clinton that outcome is even more likely.

Of course all of that is true, and I have been kind of telling myself some version of this since yesterday, but it is still upsetting when you lose like this and have to imagine just how badly the Republicans can damage the country before the Democrats can wrest it out of their hands again. 

I mean let's face it Obama is STILL trying to put the pieces back together after George W. Bush not only left the country in shambles but left political IEDs all over the damn place to constantly blow up in the President's face as he tries to clean up the mess.

At this time I can only imagine what sort of booby traps the Republicans will leave for Hillary before they are eventually chased out of office.

The mind reels.

In my opinion 2016 cannot come fast enough.

Alaskan voters angered about letters revealing voting records of friends and neighbors and threatening to reveal more before the election.

Billionaire Paul Singer, whose Right Wing organization is behind the mailings.

Courtesy of KTUU:  

A series of letters from a shadowy group is telling Alaskans’ friends and neighbors whether they voted in previous elections -- and threatening to release their voting records in the Nov. 4 general elections. 

In letters photographed by Channel 2 viewers who received them, the Alaska State Voter Program lists 10 friends and neighbors, along with their home addresses and whether -- but not how -- they voted in the 2008, 2010 and 2012 elections. At least one person reported subsequently receiving an email from the group containing the text of the mailed letter. 

An introduction in the letters rhetorically asks why people don’t vote, then poses the group’s solution to the issue. The language is mirrored on the group's website, which allows people to generate a list similar to those in the letters by entering their name and mailing address or their Facebook account. 

“This year, we’re taking a new approach,” ASVP members wrote. “We’re sending this mailing to you, your friends, your neighbors, your colleagues at work, and your community members to publicize who does and does not vote.” 

Channel 2 viewers have uniformly condemned the Alaska mailings as an unwarranted intrusion on their privacy, with one saying a friend who received a copy of the letter at his Wasilla home did not respond well. 

“He and his wife are furious because the letter lists names and addresses of their neighbors and what years they voted -- which means their names are probably on a letter in other people's households,” the viewer wrote. “These types of shaming and bullying tactics are unacceptable and they cross the line.” 

A second viewer pointed out the possibility of information from the letters enabling criminal activity. 

“We recently had ID theft and the last thing we want to publicize is where we live,” the viewer wrote. “I wonder how many people are outraged like us.” 

A third viewer said the mailings represent a threat to Alaska-based service members’ operational and personal security. 

“How is this even okay to send out people’s names and addresses?” the viewer wrote. “What about the military families in this state who are trying to maintain proper OPSEC and PERSEC, who just had their names and addresses sent out to random other people?”

This Alaska State Voter Program attempts to camouflage itself as a local political outfit, even using some of our beautiful scenery on its website, but it is certainly NOT an Alaskan organization.

And by the way when they say "this year we're taking a new approach" that is bullshit as this seems to be the first year they have even been in existence. In fact they really don't seem to even exist today.

Gee I wonder where they came from, and who is paying for all of this?

Well KTUU has some of those answers: 

While ASVP isn’t registered with the Alaska Public Offices Commission according to Fenumiai, she said the interstate nature of its PAC would leave it covered by the Federal Election Commission. State officials have been unable to uncover much more about the nature and origins of the group, she said. 

An attribution at the bottom of the letters says they are paid for by the Opportunity Alliance PAC, a political action committee associated with the Republican-affiliated American Opportunity Alliance. The alliance’s website doesn’t list a page for Alaska, but includes links to an attack ad against U.S. Senate incumbent Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), as well as endorsements of Republicans Joni Ernst in an Iowa U.S. Senate race and Martha McSally for an Arizona U.S. House seat. 

Apparently the Opportunity Alliance PAC is run by billionaire Paul Singer who it just so happens donate $600,000 to Dan Sullivan's campaign last year.

Gee an out of state PAC supporting the carpetbagger trying to steal an Senate seat in Alaska? You could have knocked me over with a feather.