Froth Slosh B'Gosh

The Exclaimation Point!

On the Pirate's 2012 collapse was last night's no-hitter thrown against them by the Red's Homer Bailey.  Now, the best the Buccos can hope for is to finish at .500 by winning their final five games.  Its not going to happen.  The only good thing about is that I can cross witnessing a no hitter off my list (The hotdog, nachos and beer were also quite good).  The other shame of it was that A.J. Burnett also pitched very, very, well giving up only one run over eight innings pitched.

  I've now seen just about everything that can happen in a baseball game including rarities like the triple play (althought that one was on TV) and the steal of home.  All that remains is the perfect game, and last night came close to that.

Tell Me About The Rabbits George

If you do not want to eat rabbit, then don't eat rabbit.  I happen to like rabbit, and I promise that if you keep rabbits as pets, I will not lagomorph-nap your charges for dinner. 

Today In Voter Suppression News

I've learned that trying to predict how a judge is going to rule to be something of a futile exercise, but this sure sounds encouraging.

Judge Simpson instructed attorneys for the commonwealth and for a coalition of groups challenging the law to be prepared to outline ways the law could be halted. The hearing resumes Thursday morning.

Of course, the judge could use those arguments to declare that stopping the law from going into effect would be "too hard."  That would be a silly argument of course, since a simple statement of "Don't require people to show a photo ID " wouldn't be hard at all. 

Meanwhile, an attorney weighs in with his opinion in the pages of the P-G.

Never in my eight years as county solicitor did anyone accuse a voter in Allegheny County of in-person voter fraud. Additionally, lawyers for the commonwealth have admitted in court that they can present no evidence of in-person voter fraud ever occurring in Pennsylvania. With or without the new voter ID law, I expect this will continue to be the case because of long-standing protections in Pennsylvania law.

First, the criminal penalty for voter fraud of up to a $15,000 fine and seven years in prison acts as a significant deterrent. And what would be the payoff for someone attempting to commit in-person voter fraud? If you pass a bad check, at least you get money. If you commit in-person voter fraud, you get to vote, maybe a couple of times, which is extremely unlikely to affect an election. This minimal "benefit" clearly does not justify the risk of serving years in prison and coughing up thousands of dollars.

Pretty much what I've been saying for awhile now.  Also, too letter writers blast Daryl Nutcase, The Shame Of Butler County and author of the Commonwealth's voter supression law in the paper's pages today.

 

Poe's Law

According to RationalWiki, Poe's Law "is an axiom suggesting that it's difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish between parodies of religious or other fundamentalism and its genuine proponents, since they both seem equally insane."

Poe's Law was the first thing I thought of when I read this letter in Sunday's P-G:

I am a die-hard Pirates fan living in the Philadelphia area. I am dying hard. But there is a part of the Pirates collapse that is even more disturbing. It's the whole Zoltan thing. I know that it was all innocent fun. But I can't believe the One True God is amused. I don't know the theology of God's favor or disfavor on baseball teams, but I know that God makes it clear in the Bible that "You are to have no other gods before me."

There are players on the team who know better, even in fun, to have exalted a false deity. I think it is time for them to renounce Zoltan, not to stop what appears to be a supernatural free fall, but to honor the only God worthy of honor. I wish I could get this message to the players.

 Clearly, the reason why the Pirates are in free fall has nothing to do with a fictional character from a bad movie.  Kevin McClatchy coming out as gay is the real reason for the Pirate's collapse.

Pepper Power

                                                       Five pounds of peppers picked.

                                                                      Peppers prepared

                                                                   Pickled Pepper Pints

 

A Summary?

Why a summary?

Mitt Romney paid an effective tax rate of about 14 percent last year, his campaign said Friday while also announcing that the Republican presidential nominee had paid an average annual effective tax rate of about 20.2 percent between 1990 and 2009.

Romney made good on his pledge to release his tax returns from 2011 before the election, and went a step further than was previously anticipated in releasing a certified summary of his tax returns over a two-decade period preceding 2010.

Why release a "certified summary" for the past 20 years, instead of the actual returns?  I doubt there's anything in there showing that Romney committed tax fraud (I'm sure his tax attorneys are capable, and the IRS would be all over that if there was any "there" there.  We all know that he uses tax shelters and squirrels money away in tax havens, so finding confirmation of what we already know wouldn't be that damaging.

But there is something fishy there. Could it have anything to do with this?

Tax returns require taxpayers to state their residence address, and the Romney returns already produced, although partially redacted, state clearly that they lived in "Belmont, MA 02478" in 2012 (tax year 2011) (pdf) and 2011 (tax year 2010) (pdf):

But the Romneys, arbitrarily, refuse to disclose a copy of the returns they filed in 2010 or 2009 (for tax years 2009 and 2008) – which, perhaps not coincidentally, bracket the time period when Romney allegedly committed fraud by voting in Massachusetts when he actually resided in California. So here's the question: did Romney put his son's basement's address on the returns he filed in 2009 and 2010? Or did he truthfully use his real (non-Massachusetts) address, thus implicating himself in voter fraud?

For all the noise Republicans make over voter fraud, it would be absolutely fatal to his campaign if those tax returns showed he was living in California while voting in Massachusetes.  We'd have an actual, verifiable case of deliberate voter fraud, one committed by the Republican nominee.  And I suspect that is the real reason why those returns are not being released.

 

 

That Explains The Smirk

Will the video of Willard's off-the-cuff remarks fatally damage his campaign?  The bloodletting continues.

The man who thinks you should elect him as Commander in Chief is hoping for American deaths for his political gain. That makes the congressional Republicans hoping to tank the economy just to sink President Obama's re-election chances look like such small potatoes.

Texas Sees Dead People

Texas purges 80,000 people the state says are dead from its voter rolls.  One slight problem:  Many of them aren't quite dead yet.

One of the biggest problems with voter "purges" is that names are rarely unique, even given a relativly small geographic area.  So when a state relys on a Social Security, or other list of "dead" people, many of the still living can, and are, identified as deceased.  The way this works in a voter supression scheme is thus:  A governmental agency lists a "Mary Smith" living in Pittsburgh as deceased.  If the locality if question has a history of heavily favoring the political party that party in power wants supressed, then the majority if not all of the "Mary Smiths" are purged. 

At least Texas is sending letters out, so some can become the "undead" but I always thought a better way of "purging" is to strike names of inactive voters, say those who haven't voted in the last 15 years.

Tell Us How You REALLY Feel Mitt!

Wow.  Just wow.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney told a small group of wealthy contributors what he truly thinks of all the voters who support President Barack Obama. He dismissed these Americans as freeloaders who pay no taxes, who don't assume responsibility for their lives, and who think government should take care of them.

Funny, looking at my most recent pay stub, I see that I've paid over $13,000 so far this year in federal income tax.  Adding in the state and local taxes, its close to $20k.  I guess I'm a freeloader because I support the President? 

Willard didn't make things much better for himself at his recent presser:

Romney gave a press conference that is likely to have made his situation worse. He doubled down on what many (including thoughtful conservatives who are not lockstep political partisans defending him no matter what) think was a damaging statement to make. In essence he said, yeah, it was inelegantly stated but his statement was not wrong. He did not use the word “deadbeats” or “moochers” when the secret tape showed him dissing 47% of the American electorate, but many will take it that way.

And if they don’t, the Democrats will help them to see it that way. Democratic ad production companies must be drooling.

I've got to wonder how such a ham-handed person managed to become so sucessful in business? Perhaps a better way to look at it is that sucessful businessmen do not necessarily make sucessful elected officials.

You might want to check out the map over at 2 Political Junkies showing where the bulk of the freeloaders live. 

PA Voter ID Law...Situation Murky

The State Supreme Court has sent the Voter ID lawsuit back to the lower courts.  So the situation remains cloudy on what, if anything, is going to happen.

After reading through the Court's decision, it looks like it hinges on the ease, or lack of ease, to obtain an acceptable state-issued ID.  I am not a lawyer, but I do work with the law everyday, and I think I have a pretty good grasp of legal-speak.  It looks like the Supreme Court has placed the burden back on the Commonwealth to prove that no one will be disenfranchised by making available an easily obtained, non-secure photo ID.  If the Commonwealth cannot show that its solved the problems that exist with trying to obtain a secure Penndot issued ID, then the law will be struck down.