Miami/Dade County voters won't be able to use the restrooms while in line to vote this year, though Miami voters have been known to have to wait six hours to vote. Apparently the County decided -- in response to a question about whether disabled voters would have access to restrooms -- that "the fair thing to do" would be to deny restrooms to everybody. Bold thinkers! But I bet once everyone in America hears about this, and the lawyers start reading the Americans with Disabilities Act to them, they'll back down.
Tea Party Nation President Judson Phillips -- who not that long ago seemed nostalgic for the days when only property owners could vote! -- claims that a million Democrats voted twice in 2012. He bases that number on "extrapolation" from North Carolina's claim that over 35,000 North Carolinian voters (not Democrats, even, but voters) have names and birthdays that just so happen to match names and birthdays of voters in other states -- but that happens because there are a lot of common first and last names and only 366 different birthdays, because it can take a few years to flush out old election records when folks move from one state to another, and because of easily imaginable clerical mistakes. Judson Phillips is a clown, so let's never speak of him again.
Ho hum, Republicans claim that the Affordable Care Act has driven up health insurance premiums 90% in New Hampshire, but actually that's only for individual buyers, who always get the shaft from insurers, and also that figure comes from exactly one broker. Even worse, that 90% figure is actually only up a few percentage points from the previous year's increase! The state Department of Insurance, by the way, sees an 8 percent decrease coming when you figure in the ACA's subsidies. I guess it's back to individual horror stories of people who refuse to use the ACA to get better health care for themselves because Socialism.
The Shareable blog talks with four "tiny housers" about living small, renewable power, and reducing your ecological footprint. A "tiny house" might have 140 square feet, which is much easier to take off the grid, but getting clean water remains an issue, and zoning regulations also remain an issue. Many tiny housers take to rural areas in states that welcome them (one owner lists six heartland states, five of which went for Mr. Romney in the 2012 Presidential election -- though how long they'll stay friendly once the Koch brothers hear about all this is anyone's guess).
Ars Technica finds that Comcast, still trying to convince everyone that their merger with Time-Warner is a good idea, has given money via its PAC to every single Senator on the Senate Judiciary Committee currently holding hearings on their merger. Sen. Franken (D-MN), an outspoken merger opponent, has received zero dollars from the PAC since entering the Senate, but received $5,000 from the PAC during his recount battle in early 2009. Note well that the Democrats on the committee seem to be getting a lot more money from Comcast than the Republicans -- which may mean Democrats love mammon an awful lot more than we'd like, or that Democrats need more softening up than Republicans do.
Finally, Jenny McCarthy takes to the Chicago Sun Times editorial page to declare that she is not nor ever has been "anti-vaccine." The charge against her, of course, is rather different: as a University of Google student trying to figure out how her son became autistic (which he almost certainly wasn't, though she now says he's "cured"), she heavily promoted now-completely discredited "research" suggesting that vaccines cause autism, which made parents all over America refuse vaccines for their children, which enabled diseases like whooping cough to make a comeback. Frankly, the damage she's done to America may be incalculable, but like the rest of America's venal and foolish elites she doubles down, completely omitting the words "Andrew Wakefield" and asking "what happened to critical thinking?" twice in three paragraphs.
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