News Roundup for 8/18/09

How to make 40 bucks a minute

-Headline of the day-
"ActBlue Raises Over $40,000 For Public Option -- In A Few Hours."

That's gotta tell you something. According to the report, "The top fundraising page right now on ActBlue, the online fundraising clearinghouse for Dems, is for House Dems who have pledged to only support health care reform with a public option... This fundraising page, which went up late this morning, has already raised over $43,000 in a few hours. This has cheered Dems who are heavily involved in the public option fight, making them cautiously optimistic that there’s a real wellspring of energy to tap."

That post went up at 3:43 EST, so I decided to go check and see where the figure was at at 2:54 CDST. That figure was $47,124. Let me break out my old fundraiser's hat and write up a report. 708 donors have brought the number to that total, so that works out to an average gift of sixty-six and a half bucks. There's no info on when the campaign started, but we can take the difference between the reports numbers and mine and figure that it's averaging forty bucks a minute. Of course, the report's from Greg Sargent, who has a large and liberal audience, so he probably had a lot to do with pumping up the numbers.

And here I am doing my own humble bit. Visit ActBlue and send them some money. Doesn't have to be a lot, because it all adds up. If we can get the number up high enough, I think we might be able to make Glenn Beck cry.

Not that it's hard to do that. (Plum Line)


-Republicans are dumb-
Not really news to most of us, but there ya go. Still, it's nice to have proof in the form of a Research 2000 poll for Daily Kos. According to the report, "Respondents were asked whether the reform proposals under consideration would create 'death panels' that would dictate medical care based on Americans' 'productivity in society.'" Not surprisingly, 72% thought this was horseshit, 11% thought it was true, and 17% didn't know.

But when it was broken down by party, only 43% of Republicans said no, 26% thought it was true, and 31% didn't know -- in other words, 57% of Republicans either believe that Obama wants to kill their grandma or aren't sure whether he does or not. The more Republican you are, the more likely it is that you'll believe crazy stuff. Mostly because a lot of them have no idea what the hell they're talking about. Only 7% of Democrats didn't know that Medicare is a government program, but twice as many GOPers were ignorant of that fact.

This comes after news that 11% of North Carolina Republicans don't know if Hawaii is a state or not -- which might explain the 46% who don't know if the president is really an American.

In the next poll, they ought to find out how many know how to tie their own shoes. (Political Animal)


-Bonus HotD-
"GOP Rep. encourages guns at town hall meetings."

Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) is an idiot. So I guess that means he's a real Republican. (Raw Story)