[witty title]
i have no life. only the internet and canada. {Kingdom Hearts. Disney. Homestuck. The Avengers. Harry Potter. Supernatural. Hetalia. Teen Wolf. Game of Thrones. Sherlock. Doctor Who. LGBTQ+. Feminism & Equality.}lj : twitter
60% of Republicans support "a path to citizenship." If told Obama also supports it, the number drops to 39%. ›
When told, “The President supports it a whole bunch,” 83% say they want to impeach him over it.
Things that are true about Chris Christie:
- He is the governor of New Jersey
- He loves Bruce Springsteen (like, a lot)
- He is fat
- He sucks
He does not suck BECAUSE he is fat, and his fatness should have NOTHING to do with the criticisms against him. I’m so tired of the snide remarks about Chris Christie’s weight in articles, on television, and in blog posts.
Reasons that Chris Christie sucks:
- He enacted HUGE cuts to NJ’s education budget, possibly violating the state’s constitution.
- He’s anti-choice in a variety of ways, including support for mandatory waiting periods, and state-mandated parental notification.
- Believes marriage rights should only be extended to couples consisting of “one man and one woman.”
- Thinks that “the free market” is the best way to solve the health care crisis in this country.
There are more, of course, but NONE of them are “Chris Christie sucks because he’s fat.” Stop. Fat-shaming doesn’t become okay just because this fat politician sucks. Every time Christie does an interview, there’s some joke or bit or question about his weight, and even though he says he doesn’t mind, it’s at the very least a huge waste of time.
We could be asking Christie about his policies in the time we spend giggling at his waistline - we could be demanding he account for the millions of dollars he pulled from poor school districts, but no, it’s more fun to laugh at his appearance.
At worst, this interviews enforce the cultural belief that it’s OKAY to laugh at fat people, that it’s ACCEPTABLE to use them as a punchline, that their weight is any of our damn business.
Chris Christie definitely sucks, but not because of his weight.
WORD to all of this. Here are some additional reasons Chris Christie is awful:
- He spends an inordinate amount of time traveling around the country instead of staying home to govern the state that elected him.
- He may have done well with his Sandy response, but remember when Christie abandoned NJ to go to Florida after we got sacked with some of the worst blizzards we had seen in a while?
- As of late 2012, more than one third of this state is living in poverty. As a reminder, NJ has the third highest cost of living in the US.
- Poverty in NJ has increased every year that Christie has been governor.
- Thanks to Christie’s push for exclusionary zoning laws and to abolish the Council on Affordable Housing, it’s becoming more and more difficult for the middle class to afford to live in NJ.
- Foreclosure filings fell 3 percent nationally in 2012 from 2011′s levels but under Christie, they increased in New Jersey by 55 percent.
- Christie has vetoed a millionaire tax increase not once, or twice, but three times.
- Chris Christie vetoed the minimum wage increase bill.
- Under Christie, NJ’s debt grew by $6 billion in fiscal year 2012.
- NJ’s economic performance is ranked 47th in the nation. Our economy is shrinking while the economies of 43 other states are growing.
- Our unemployment rate is currently 9.6% (pretty much the same it was when Christie took office) and lags behind the national unemployment rate by nearly 2%. We’re still losing thousands of jobs. If unemployment rates included those who have given up looking for work, it is estimated our unemployment rate would be around 10.3%.
- Christie is not shy about letting his former life as a lobbyist color his governing decisions. Look at his support for JCP&L after their abysmal performances in all the storms we’ve had lately.
- Christie has campaigned for other Republicans who supported Todd Akin’s “legitimate rape” comments.
- He believes women are not half his constituency but are a special interest group that Republicans shouldn’t have to “cater to.”
- He cut funding for reproductive health care services, resulting in the closure of 6 family planning health centers (many in lower-income neighborhoods that are in desperate need of affordable health care), and a decrease of 20% in patients served.
- Christie will not allow NJ to participate in a Medicaid Family Planning Expansion authorized under federal health care reform. This expansion could save the state at least $43 million annually.
There are lots of reasons to hate this guy, but his appearance is not one of them. So, fellow progressives, especially you progressive New Jerseyans: stop mocking Chris Christie’s weight, because this is the last guy on earth I want to defend.
(via seriouslyamerica)
(via seriouslyamerica)
Obama Calls Out Rush Limbaugh and Fox News for Creating a Toxic Partisan Environment ›
President Obama is calling out Fox News and Rush Limbaugh by name for creating a toxic environment that makes bipartisanship impossible.
In an interview with The New Republic, Obama brought up the role of right wing media in killing bipartisanship.
One of the biggest factors is going to be how the media shapes debates. If a Republican member of Congress is not punished on Fox News or by Rush Limbaugh for working with a Democrat on a bill of common interest, then you’ll see more of them doing it.
I think John Boehner genuinely wanted to get a deal done, but it was hard to do in part because his caucus is more conservative probably than most Republican leaders are, and partly because he is vulnerable to attack for compromising Republican principles and working with Obama.
The same dynamic happens on the Democratic side. I think the difference is just that the more left-leaning media outlets recognize that compromise is not a dirty word. And I think at least leaders like myself—and I include Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi in this—are willing to buck the more absolutist-wing elements in our party to try to get stuff done.
The odds of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh not punishing Republicans who work with Obama are exactly zero, because Fox and Rush make their money by keeping a large segment of the Republican base outraged. They have a financial incentive to keep the partisanship high, and the national discourse toxic.
Congressional Republicans are paying the price for the decision to allow the most powerful members of the right wing media establishment to fill their party’s leadership vacuum. It doesn’t seem to matter to these Republicans that Limbaugh and Fox News have little impact on elections.
They are afraid of the wrath of Rush and Fox, so many of the members of the Republican majority in the House rigidly toe the conservative media line.
A secondary issue is that much like their base many congressional Republicans are grossly misinformed because they rely on Fox News, talk radio, and right wing websites for their information. It is nearly impossible to forge a bipartisan consensus on any issue when a segment of the legislative branch is getting their information from an alternate universe where any and all facts that are not partisan talking points are questioned.
The president was dead on about the difference between liberal and conservative media. The vast majority of the left understands compromise. There is a segment of the left that like the right makes their living off of fanning the flames of perpetual outrage, but the difference is that the professionally outraged left isn’t running the Democratic Party. (In fact, one of the reasons why they have gotten so angry is that many of the white male progressives who used to be viewed as the voices of the left have been replaced by less white and less male Obama Democrats.)
H/T: PoliticusUSA
Virginia's GOP Senate Had One Day... ›
VA’s state senate has 20 Democrats, 20 Republicans. So what did the Republicans do on Monday? They waited until one of the 20 Democrats, a 79 year old African-American civil rights attorney, went to the inauguration, and engaged in a probably unconstitutional redistricting scheme that will make it harder for black voters to have an effect on electoral outcomes and for black candidates to be elected. On MLK, Jr day, and under cover provided by the inauguration of our black president.
Because if they can’t win elections, they’ll use everything in their power to steal them and they’ll do it blatantly.
There’s also a dark — a dark vein of intolerance in some parts of the party. What do I mean by that? I mean by that that they still sort of look down on minorities. How can I evidence that? When I see a former governor say that the President is ‘“shuckin’ and jivin’,” that’s racial era slave term. When I see another former governor after the president’s first debate where he didn’t do very well, says that the president was lazy. He didn’t say he was slow. He was tired. He didn’t do well. He said he was lazy. Now, it may not mean anything to most Americans, but to those of us who are African Americans, the second word is shiftless and then there’s a third word that goes along with that. The birther, the whole birther movement. Why do senior Republican leaders tolerate this kind of discussion within the party?
Fifty-eight Republican leaders supported aid for victims of Hurricane Katrina, but not for those hit by Sandy.
Here’s a party that’s facing a President with a 70% approval rating, in terms of being likable. 52% of American’s approve of the job he’s doing as president. Only 26% approve of the republican party. John Boehner has an 18% approval rating. The Tea Party a 9% approval rating. This is a party in retreat… The extreme part of the republican party is in retreat.
The Newtown massacre created a tipping point on the gun debate in America. The Obama administration and Democrats are moving quickly to reframe the issue and move new policy. As a citizen, I think it is appropriate and overdue. As a political observer, I think it’s smart politics. As a Republican, I think it’s yet another instance where the party, by refusing to recognize reality, is going to end up looking like the “stupid party” that fails to adapt and evolve to changing circumstances in our society.
Unless the GOP comes out with a proactive plan that has some appearance of responding to recent events, then it continues to play defense and digs deeper the hole it has been digging for itself in recent years. On issues where the physics are moving irrevocably forward, like immigration, gay rights, and guns, the Republican Party continues to look backward. And backward is a sure path toward irrelevance.
