Last Call For Republicans Are Awful, Con't

At some point you really have to question the intelligence of Republican lawmakers when they get publicly saying idiotic stuff like this.

A white Florida Republican suggested knocking a black, longtime Democratic congresswoman out of her seat by gerrymandering more prisoners into her district, according to audio obtained by Politico and published on Wednesday.

Politico reported that state Rep. Janet Adkins (R) made the suggestion regarding U.S. Rep. Corinne Brown's (D) district in a closed-door meeting of the North Florida Republican caucus. 

“It's a perfect storm," Adkins said on the audio recording. "You draw it in such a fashion so perhaps, a majority, or maybe not a majority, but a number of them will live in the prisons, thereby not being able to vote." 

Adkins made sure there were no reporters in the room before she made her comments, according to the report. 

Brown, who is black, has filed a lawsuit to challenge the proposed redrawing of her district. She also told the Florida Senate Redistricting Committee that she was concerned that redrawing her district to include more prisons would lower its black voting population from 50 to 45 percent, according to Politico.

One, this is why Republicans don't want felons to be able to vote. Only two states do, Vermont and Maine, and when it comes to ex-felons, Florida in particular makes it nearly impossible to ever get the right to vote back.  (For those playing at home, if you are convicted of a felony, you can never vote in Kentucky, period.)

And that brings us to point two, that African-Americans in particular are far more likely to be convicted of felony level crimes, and therefore lose the right to vote.  This is not by accident, folks. Combined, you are much more likely to be disenfranchised when black.

Which returns us to Florida state Rep. Adkins here, who knows damn well that felons count as population to be represented, but cannot vote.  Since the system is rigged to incarcerate a much higher percentage of the black population for felony crimes, state prisons equal automatically disenfranchised black votes.

So of course the plan is to redraw the district to unseat a powerful black Democratic lawmaker in the state to include undesirable, non-voting prisoners.  That's what Republicans do when given power.

And we keep giving it to them anyway.

Not Ridin' With Biden For This

I'm once again reminded why I haven't thrown my support behind Joe Biden, because whenever I start feeling like I should be doing so, he goes and says things like this.

Vice President Biden in an interview with a Jesuit publication says that he accepts Catholic doctrine that abortion is “always wrong.” 

Biden, who is publicly struggling with whether to run for the White House, is pro-abortion rights, and he said there’s a debate among Catholics over that issue. 

“Even – I don’t want to start a theological discussion, I’ll get in trouble, it’s above my pay grade, although it’s my avocation, but there’s, you know, there’s even been disagreement in our church, not that – abortion is always wrong, but there’s been debate, and so, there’s, for me, at a point where the church makes a judgment, as we Catholics call fide doctrine, said, this is what our doctrine is,” Biden said in an interview with America published on Monday. 

Biden also said that he believes life begins at conception. 

“I’m prepared to accept that at the moment of conception there’s human life and being, but I’m not prepared to say that to other God-fearing, non-God-fearing people that have a different view,” he said. 

He added that there is room in the Democratic Party for people who believe abortion should be illegal. 

“Absolutely, positively,” he said. “And that’s been my position for as long as I’ve been engaged.”

No, Joe.  There really isn't room in the Democratic Party of 2015 for people who think abortion should be illegal when it's been legal for 40 years now.  And I'm extremely disappointed that you accept that doctrine, when as President you should be accepting the law.

And yeah, reminder, Joe Biden is an old white guy from a small state that got his ass kicked in the 2008 election, but made a good VP with strong foreign policy chops.  As president I would take him in a heartbeat over any Republican.

But over any Democrat?

We've got to come to terms with the fact that precisely none of the folks running for 2016 will be Obama's third term, and it's a real toss-up as to which one is the closest because of how utterly far away from Obama all of these candidates are from the man.

And yeah, that includes Joey B.

BREAKING: Orange Julius Squeezed Out

John Boehner is out, folks. The NY Times:

Speaker John A. Boehner will resign from Congress and give up his House seat at the end of October, according to aides in his office. 

Mr. Boehner was under extreme pressure from the right wing of his conference over whether or not to defund Planned Parenthood in a bill to keep the government open.

Holy hell.

National Journal's Alex Rogers with this home run tweet:

Yesterday Boehner's office said: http://t.co/sYx9VXPaLVpic.twitter.com/4kGeZ224Qo

— Alex Rogers (@arogDC) September 25, 2015

Bwahahahaha.  And yeah, Imani is right, I've been waiting to write this headline for years.

StupidiNews!

• Four college students are dead and dozens were injured in Seattle Thursday when a tour bus collided with a duck boat vehicle on a bridge.
• A Saudi prince was arrested in Los Angeles for trying to force a sex worker to perform oral sex on him, freed on $300,000 bail.
• President Obama will host Chinese President Xi Jinping at a state dinner today as talks over China's role in hacking of US government systems is not expected to yield a breakthrough.
• Volkswagen is expected to name Porsche CEO Matthias Mueller as the company's new chief executive after Martin Winterkorn stepped down earlier this week amid a massive scandal.
• Boeing has released images of what is believed to be the first stealth fighter prototype made more than 50 years ago, dubbed "Quiet Bird".