Like a "B" horror movie or a political party bereft of ideas and in serious decline, they keep coming back with the same cheesy plots.
Tony Messenger posted on the opponents of the Missouri Court Plan via Twitter this morning:
Better Courts for Missouri group announces they have filed petition hoping to get on the ballot to change how judges are chosen in Missouri. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck
JEFFERSON CITY - Stymied by an unwilling Missouri Senate, opponents of the current method of choosing many judges in the state will head to the ballot and ask voters for help....
....Asked if this was simply part of the political pressure being put on the Senate to make changes, Harris said his group was "serious" about the petition process. He would not, however, tell reporters who was backing the process financially.
[emphasis added]
Ah yes, right wingnuttia and irony impairment go hand in hand.
Special thanks to Michael Bersin and RBH who were instrumental in doing the research that backs up my smartassery. This post would have been a couple hundred words of mostly wisecracks without them and a conference room in the Plaza Branch of the KC Public Library.
*****
We have been pretty gleeful in heaping abuse and scorn on Cynthia "Fagin" Davis for her comments about hunger serving as a motivator for poor children to get jobs, and with good reason.
She is, quite simply, nuts, and unfit to serve as the chair of the state's standing committee on children and families. In case you have forgotten, she was one of the co-sponsors of HJR-34, the "birther bill" - legislation aimed at keeping President Obama's name off Missouri ballots in 2012. The bill was withdrawn and the texts removed from the Missouri general assembly web site - in the hope that everyone else would forget it ever happened. But, the Internets are forever, and we have a copy in our archives:
...Section 8. We the people of Missouri adopt a voter's bill of rights as a defense against corruption, fraud, and tyranny. Missouri voters shall have the following rights:
3. The right to have only qualified candidates placed on the ballot. The secretary of state shall determine that each person is qualified for the office he or she seeks, according to the law, before placing his or her name on the ballot. For candidates who are required by the Constitution of the United States to be natural born citizens, the secretary of state shall request an official copy of the candidate's birth certificate. Other certifications, such as a certificate of live birth, shall not be accepted. Should any candidate fail to provide an official birth certificate within thirty days of the request by the secretary of state, his or her name shall not be placed on the ballot.The secretary of state shall verify the qualifications of any elected officeholder who was previously placed on a Missouri ballot. Should any elected officeholder fail to provide the required documentation or birth certificate within thirty days of the request by the secretary of state, the secretary of state shall turn the matter over to the attorney general who shall within twenty days file suit to obtain the required documentation...
And she is quite the hopper-on of bandwagons, and the wingnuttier the better. Before she got the 'birther' bit in her teeth, she tried to make political hay off the Terri Schaivo tragedy by sponsoring a(nother) bill that went nowhere.
But it isn't just the crazy - it's the hypocrisy.
Cynthia Davis knows first hand that there really is such a thing as a free lunch, but her free lunches aren't the burger and fries that McDonalds employees receive as their shift meal. Her free lunches come from lobbyists.
Yes. The wingnuttiest state rep of them all, the one who says it is the responsibility of the parents to feed their own children apparently thinks it is the responsibility of lobbyists to feed state legislators (and the children of one particular state legislator):
April 2009 Representative: DAVIS, CYNTHIA
Nancy L. Giddens 4/1/2009 Individual Not Amended $8.52 Meals, Food, & Beverage - Dinner
Larry Rohrbach 4/15/2009 Individual Not Amended $17.31 Meals, Food, & Beverage -
William A Gamble 4/20/2009 Individual Not Amended $40.00 Meals, Food, & Beverage - Non alcoholic beverages
Total Amount $65.83
March 2009 Representative: DAVIS, CYNTHIA
Don R. Kissell 3/3/2009 Individual Not Amended $6.33 Meals, Food, & Beverage - SAINT CHARLES LEGISLATIVE BREAKFAST
William A Gamble 3/9/2009 Individual Not Amended $30.00 Meals, Food, & Beverage - Non alcoholic beverages
Total Amount $36.33
February 2009 Representative: DAVIS, CYNTHIA
Jorgen Schlemeier 2/9/2009 Individual Not Amended $5.06 Meals, Food, & Beverage - Lunch
Jeffrey T. Sweet 2/27/2009 Individual Not Amended $12.00 Meals, Food, & Beverage - Lunch provided during Boeing briefing on operations
Jeffrey T. Sweet 2/27/2009 Individual Not Amended $8.00 Gift - Desk clock provided during Boeing briefing on operations
John A. Urkevich 2/28/2009 Individual Not Amended $35.00 Meals, Food, & Beverage - CSD Legislative Breakfast
Total Amount $60.06
January 2009 Representative: DAVIS, CYNTHIA
Lobbyist Name William A Gamble 1/8/2009 Individual Not Amended $67.80 Meals, Food, & Beverage - Non alcoholic beverages
Brad Thielemier 1/9/2009 Individual Not Amended $10.00 Meals, Food, & Beverage - Craig Felzien 1/12/2009 Individual Not Amended $10.00 Gift
C.K. Casteel, Jr. 1/14/2009 Individual Not Amended $33.71 Meals, Food, & Beverage - reception
C.K. Casteel, Jr. 1/15/2009 Individual Not Amended $129.00 Meals, Food, & Beverage - Annual Meeting (2 tickets)
Total Amount $250.51
State Representative Cynthia Davis (r - right wingnuttia) demonstrates that she doesn't quite understand why she's been in the news. In a press release (courtesy of Chad Livengood at the Springfield News-Leader) Representative Davis wears her victimhood on her right sleeve:
...My weekly Capitol Report is a way for me to have two-way communications with my constituents and not a national manifesto for you to mock, distort, and to be quoted out of context...
Uh, you put it out there for everyone to see. You're so clueless that you thought no one would see it? Au contraire! If you give us a slow pitch over the plate or a brightly colored piñata, we're going to swing at it. Welcome to the world your modern republican party created Representative Davis - the rest of us only live in it.
It's this comment on the NPR post "Earlybird Ratings Of 2010 Senate Races" (in itself, innocuous enough) which is so telling:
Putting Missouri in the W column for Dems is silly. I live in the state. Carnahan is out-polling any Republican right now on pure name recognition. I can tell you this. Dissatisfaction with Obama's policies are growing in Missouri with every passing week. By next fall, any politician running for statewide office who's associated with Obama and his radical economic policies is going to feel the wrath of Missouri voters.
Conservative grassroots are up for a knock-down, drag out fight in 2010.
Also keep in mind Obama lost Missouri in 2008. Does anyone really think his popularity is going to increase from his blank slate, MSM lovefest, POTUS run in 2008?
Uh, yes the republicans will have all the money they need. And the lobbyists, too. True, Obama didn't win the state, but then again, John McCain barely did and it took a while to figure that out.
And the polling? Well, that would be a foal of a different color:
The closest state during the 2008 presidential election, Missouri shows early signs of opportunity for Democrats to pick up the senate seat currently held by Republican Kit Bond. A new Democracy Corps survey by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research shows Secretary of State Robin Carnahan leading Republican Congressman Roy Blunt 53 to 44 percent and leading former Treasurer Sarah Steelman 54 to 42 percent.
At this early and uncertain stage, Carnahan starts off the contest with a strong personal and professional standing that puts her in a position to defeat either potential opponent. At the same time, it appears as if Steelman may be the tougher foe with a stronger profile than Blunt and the potential to run a fresh outsider candidacy that Blunt cannot offer.
President Obama provides a slight boost to Carnahan, even in a state he failed to carry, with a 56 percent job approval rating (compared to 58 percent nationally) and voters preferring, by a 49 to 40 percent margin, a senator who will mostly support Obama's agenda to get things done rather than one who will mostly oppose his agenda to provide balance.
This report is based a Democracy Corps survey of 800 likely voters in Missouri conducted April 28 - 30, 2009. The survey is subject to a margin of error of +/- 3.5 percentage points.
Do you approve or disapprove of the job Barack Obama is doing as President?
All 57% - approve
40% - disapprove
3% - not sure
"...Dissatisfaction with Obama's policies are growing in Missouri with every passing week...."
Okay. What color is the sky in their world? Ah yes, if republican wishes were reality there would be a bronze statue of George W. Bush on every street corner in Iraq.
...Using the political system to stomp on radicalized fringes does not seem to be very effective in getting them to eschew violence. In fact, it seems to be a very good way of getting more violence. Possibly because those fringes have often turned to violence precisely because they feel that the political process has been closed off to them...
...Lady, are you smoking crack? Are you smoking crack while sitting in a cloud of crack-smoke wearing a T-shirt that says I HEART CRACK while waiting for your crackhead boyfriend to come home with more crack that you sent him out to get so that you'd have some crack when you were done with the crack you're smoking now? Seriously? Because last I checked, "not being able to convince somebody else that you're not a fucking lunatic and that your ideas about everything should be adopted by everybody" doesn't qualify as "the political process has been closed off" to you. That's not how this works, that's not how this has ever worked, and to coddle domestic terrorists by saying they were just pushed to it because they weren't handed everything they ever wanted is ... special. Some kind of special. Some kind of something, that's for sure. What the fuck, today? It's like all the stupid were set free from their stupid-farm for some kind of idiot rumspringa of 24 hours.
For eight fucking years anybody to the left of Pinochet had to kick back and watch while sensible centrists and the Coalition of the Involuntarily Committable got together and raped the country and fucked up the whole world. For eight fucking years we were told that marching in the streets with giant puppets was the most horrific form of treason imaginable, was demoralizing our troops and hurting the debate and making the baby Pope Benedict cry. Not once did I ever in that time hear Megan McArdle or any of her other sensible friends discuss how maybe, just maybe, President Bush and his administration had PUSHED us to the edge, where we HAD to make those puppets because we felt the political process was closed to us.
No, back then it was "elections have consequences" and "you lost" and "look upon my works, ye mighty, and fuck off," and anytime anybody had the temerity to say, "erm, dude, if you don't mind I'll be over here with this sign on a stick" they might as well have been plotting to shoe-bomb Air Force One the way the whiners in the nuttersphere howled and shrieked. There was none of this, "you just don't know how hard it is to be on the losing end of everything including your soul" back then. Just them, partying with Free Republic on the White House lawn, waving their big foam fingers in our faces going "nyah nyah nyah."
Now that they're out of power, natch, what choice do they have but to go shoot up church lobbies in the hopes of bagging abortion doctors for their trophy wall of American apostates? Really, what else could they do? It's not like they could vote, or convince other people to listen to them, or organize, or do any of the damn things I feel like we've been doing since before there was dirt in order to get a not-entirely-crazy in-another-life-he'd-be-a-moderate-Republican dude finally elected so a third of the country could act like Satan just put his feet up on their mother's white-clothed dinner table. It's not like they could do anything else, right? They had to start shooting...
...That is, in fact, the way I felt for much of those eight years. And I had a lot more excuse for feeling that the political process had been closed to me: after all, my candidate for President actually won the election in 2000, for all the good it did him. And yet, somehow, I managed not to kill anyone. Funny thing, that.
