I say yes, you say no, OR People are Strange

RL - the only thing I remember from my first MO visits are what I read in the notes taken.  Notes notes notes are a good idea for your niece (and somebody with legible handwriting).  I think I was in shock between dx and bmx.

After I was found to be brca+, though stage 1, the BS ordered a PetScan (pre surgery). Never understood that except for maybe the high risk of also having ovarian, though they also did a battery of tests for ovarian cancer.  In retrospect, I am glad to have had the PetScan and not have to wonder if I was already Stage IV.  This would be such a personal decision for your niece, if even offerred, but that good Pet Scan (even if my feelings are misguided) has given me some solace.

Love the Cruz piece.  Totally demonstrates the hypocrisy of the birthers, or the potential to, let alone Cruz's feigned ignorance of his citizen status.  My cousin is Canadian, but born in US.  She was fully aware, her whole lifetiem, as are most children born to a US Citizen parents), but outside of US, what this means.  I can't tell you how many kids I remember who would brag about these sorts of things.

Speaking of, I think Bachmann continued to pursue her Swiss citizenship.

And she knows it! 

A piece I ran across in the Stragetist.....it is dated the 16th. of Aug.

GOP's Eve of Destruction

Posted by staff on August 16, 2013 11:07 AM

LOVE IT, Jackie!!!

Sorry for putting some of thesse things in late....I'm just getting to some of them.  This article is from the Stragetist:

Posted by J. P. Green on July 29, 2013 7:34 AM

Small =  hopefully much easier to take care of so one can spend a great deal more time in enjoyment and relaxation..............a fantastic place to "lose" the idjuts of the world for a time and not have to deal with their stupidity.  If only there were a pill for stupid but they'd refuse to take it.  That's a losers mentality.

Jackie

Blue, the garden is beautiful and so is the ruler who knows her place in this world.

Thanks all for my morning reading and laugh. Just had read through our local morning paper which is supposed to be the leading paper in the country and its standard of journalism is shocking. I am so tired of sensational headlines which have little reference to the article.

Do love the Cruz saga especially after all the fuss about Obama.

Sunny i could never have a closet like that, everything would be falling out. You should see the cupboard i keepmy sewing stuff in!!!

Todays progress report:

Burning Down the House

Aug 20, 2013

Will GOP Obstructionism Hand the House to Democrats?

As we’ve been discussing, the Republican Party is in the midst of a meltdown over Obamacare. The party is united in its irrational opposition to the law’s offer of health security to millions of Americans; however, the GOP is nevertheless engaged in an all-out civil war over whether or not to shut down the government in a last ditch effort to try and derail the law.

(Ironically, even Republicans admit that shutting down the government won’t actually stop Obamacare from moving forward.)

Dozens and dozens of Congressional Republicans have signed onto letters advocating a government shutdown over Obamacare.

Yesterday, Heritage Action began a national pro-government shutdown tour that NPR reports even Republicans think means “political suicide” for the party. The former Tea Party Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC), now the president of the Heritage Foundation, told a town hall audience that any Republicans who are afraid of shutting down the government ought to be “replaced.”

DeMint may get his wish, sort of. Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Ruy Teixeira, an expert in political demography, explains how the GOP’s “coordinated campaign to alienate anyone interested in functional governance” could hand Democrats control of the House of Representatives in 2014.

Teixeira’s analysis is a bit of a longread for this space, but it’s worth it:

Why are Republicans so freaked out?

At this point, they have a good chance — perhaps around 50-50 — of picking up enough seats to take the Senate, while Democrats’ chances of picking up the 17 seats they need to regain control of the House look considerably smaller than that. And yet, as one Politico story put it, “it is almost impossible to find an establishment Republican in town who’s not downright morose about the 2013 that has been and is about to be.”

Politico suggests the reason for the glumness is fear about the political fallout from the GOP’s unyielding, nihilistic approach to governance on issues like Obamacare and the debt ceiling. That problem may be far worse than they imagine. A close scrutiny of the data reveals several demographic weak points that the current wave of Republican crazy could activate, leading to the outcome they dread the most: Democratic control of both houses of Congress.

Start with minorities. It’s not well-known, but Republicans in 2010 benefited not only from relatively low minority turnout (standard for an off-year election) but also from relatively low minority support for Democratic candidates. Emphasis here is on the relative: minority support for House Democrats in 2010 was 73-25 — high, but below the 77-22 margin that minorities averaged in the three off-year elections that preceded 2010. If minorities snap back to 77-22 Democratic support as a consequence of Republican misbehavior, and the expected 2 percentage point increase in the share of minority voters from population trends emerges, then the Republican 6.8 percentage point margin in 2010 will be immediately sliced in half. And if the minority vote goes even stronger for the Democrats, reaching 2012 levels, that would eliminate about three-quarters of the Republicans’ 2010 advantage all on its own.

Another demographic problem for the GOP comes from a more surprising quarter: seniors. As Erica Seifert of Democracy Corps noted in a recent memo:

There’s something going on with seniors: It is now strikingly clear that they have turned sharply against the GOP. This is apparent in seniors’ party affiliation and vote intention, in their views on the Republican Party and its leaders, and in their surprising positions on jobs, health care, retirement security, investment economics, and the other big issues that will likely define the 2014 midterm elections.

We first noticed a shift among seniors early in the summer of 2011, as Paul Ryan’s plan to privatize Medicare became widely known (and despised) among those at or nearing retirement. Since then, the Republican Party has come to be defined by much more than its desire to dismantle Medicare. To voters from the center right to the far left, the GOP is now defined by resistance, intolerance, intransigence, and economics that would make even the Robber Barons blush. We have seen other voters pull back from the GOP, but among no group has this shift been as sharp as it is among senior citizens.

It is therefore quite plausible that the GOP will benefit far less from senior support in 2014 than in 2010. If the senior share of voters returns to normal levels (19 percent) and the Republican margin among this group drops to its post-2000 average (6 points, about where it is right now in the Democracy Corps polls) that would take care of the rest of the GOP margin from 2010, getting the Democrats slightly past the break-even point in the popular vote.

Of course, given the well-known GOP advantage in translating seats to votes, Democrats probably need to do substantially better than breaking even to attain a majority in the House. That won’t be easy, but there are certainly potential avenues to shift the 2014 House vote even farther in Democrats’ direction. There is the youth vote, for example, which was relatively poor for the Democrats in 2010 (55-42) and could certainly improve, as well as possibly turn out in larger numbers. The latter could also be true of the minority vote, whose projected 2 point increase in voter share, is due solely to population increase. If relative minority turnout is better in 2014 than 2010, then there will be an even larger increase in minority vote share over 2010, pushing the Democrats’ margin farther toward what they need to take the House.

Make no mistake about it: the Democrats face an uphill climb. But the possibilities outlined above inch closer to reality every day the GOP continues its coordinated campaign to alienate anyone interested in functional governance.

BOTTOM LINE: If Republicans shut down the government over Obamacare or their demands for more damaging austerity, they might get to personally experience repeal and replace after all.

Given the fact that most of the States with Republican governors have passed voter suppression laws, the Dems had better be working NOW to help minorities and the inner city poor get Voter ID in conformity with each States' laws.  Then, the Dems need to have transportation to the polls on voting days.  The ground game better be going on now or nothing good will happen in 2014

Voters will turn out if they have ID, transportation and a call from a volunteer asking them to vote.  That's what got Obama elected twice. 

Yes, there will be Red districts, but we shouldn't write off even those districts because there are Republicans who will vote Dem out of disgust with the T-party. My sister who has always voted Republican because she is prolife will now vote Dem.  I just mentioned to her that Republicans are pro fetus, not prolife.  She gets it.  She is now telling her very Repub friends the same thing.

We need to explain that we are the party that wants to see healthy, well-educated children and adults with jobs.