Just heard that Mark Sanford defeated Elizabeth Colbert Busch in the special election for SC-1.
Looks to be somewhere around a 7-10% margin.
If I were living in the South Carolina’s 1st Congressional district, I would be embarrassed.
Category: Elections
Ashley Madison Makes a Funny
They put up a billboard using Appalachian Trail hiker Mark Sanford:
According to AshleyMadison.com founder Noel Biderman, 60,000 cars a day will pass this billboard along 1-26 in Columbia, South Carolina, as Mark Sanford battles Elizabeth Colbert Busch for one of the state’s congressional seats. ………
Heh.
Contemptible Ratf%$# Decides Not to Run for Reelection
Senator, and Glenn Quagmire impersonator, Max Baucus
I am referring, of course, to short timer Senator Max Baucus, who has announced that he will not be running for reelection:
Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), one of the most influential congressional figures of his era, announced his intention Tuesday to retire, a move that could produce sweeping changes in the political and legislative landscape over the next two years.
The announcement could mark the beginning of one of the most consequential periods in Baucus’s long public career, because he pledged to devote the rest of his time in Washington to pursuing a comprehensive rewrite of the federal tax code, an effort that many see as key to breaking the fiscal gridlock that has paralyzed Washington in recent years.
BTW, if thie following paragraph does not fill you with dread, you have no soul:
That paralysis of taxes and spending has been a central feature of Obama’s presidency, and Baucus said that when the president called him Tuesday about his retirement, the talk quickly turned to tax reform. “They’re going to get tired of me,” Baucus said in an interview, adding that White House officials do not “know themselves where they are” on a strategy for ending the stalemate.
Because Baucus has been a cancer on the Senate in general, and Democratic Party in particular, and unencumbered by the potential for reelection, I think that he will try to f%$# the Democratic Party, and the country in any way he can.
After all, he has to be angling to get a cushy, and highly remunerative, gif from corporate America after he retires
As TPM reporter Brian Beutler pithily observes, it’s not just that he comes from a conservative state, and so has to hew right. It is that he hews right except when the politics make it absolutely impossible for him to do so:
Some pols are more or less faithful party-men who stray on occasion during challenging electoral cycles. Baucus, by contrast, has amassed a remarkably consistent record of working at cross-purposes with the rest of his party whether politics in Montana have demanded it or not.
He voted for the Bush Tax Cuts in 2001; then after securing re-election, and against the will of Democratic leadership, supported a Medicare prescription drug benefit that routed tax payer money through private insurers. He spent months and months behind closed doors with GOP lawmakers in 2009 in a futile search for bipartisan support for what became the Affordable Care Act. That quixotic effort dragged on well past the point at which party leaders believed it might pay off, and it delayed legislative action for so long that the bill nearly died when Democrats lost Ted Kennedy’s seat to Scott Brown in early 2010.
………
A key exception to this track record is his long history of bucking GOP attempts to slash and privatize popular social insurance programs like Medicare and Social Security. But viewed through the prism of his broader approach to politics, this seems more an idiosyncratic instance of liberal priorities lining up with Baucus’ venal decision making, than an expression of genuine commitment to the legacy of the New Deal and Great Society.
By contrast, his recent votes against gun legislation and the Democratic budget are vintage Baucus. One can argue that this sort of “independent streak” might protect Montana Democratic candidates in the abstract. But polling on the specifics doesn’t really back up the view that Baucus needed to buck his party on these measures to remain viable. Which helps explain why Baucus’ fellow Montanan Jon Tester (whom, I should note as a caveat won’t be in cycle again until 2018) voted ‘yes’ on both occasions.
(Read the whole thing)
I would also note that he, and his staff leave a trail of slime all the way to K Street:
Restaurant chains like McDonald’s want to keep their lucrative tax credit for hiring veterans. Altria, the tobacco giant, wants to cut the corporate tax rate. And Sapphire Energy, a small alternative energy company, is determined to protect a tax incentive it believes could turn algae into a popular motor fuel.
To make their case as Congress prepares to debate a rewrite of the nation’s tax code, this diverse set of businesses has at least one strategy in common: they have retained firms that employ lobbyists who are former aides to Max Baucus, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which will have a crucial role in shaping any legislation.
No other lawmaker on Capitol Hill has such a sizable constellation of former aides working as tax lobbyists, representing blue-chip clients that include telecommunications businesses, oil companies, retailers and financial firms, according to an analysis by LegiStorm, an online database that tracks Congressional staff members and lobbying. At least 28 aides who have worked for Mr. Baucus, Democrat of Montana, since he became the committee chairman in 2001 have lobbied on tax issues during the Obama administration — more than any other current member of Congress, according to the analysis of lobbying filings performed for The New York Times.
“K Street is literally littered with former Baucus staffers,” said Jade West, an executive at a wholesalers’ trade association that relies on a former finance panel aide, Mary Burke Baker. “It opens doors that allow you to make the case.”
(emphasis mine)
Hopefully, former Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer, who is popular and rather liberal by the standards of Montana politics.
I’m Not Sure Who’s the Rat, and Who is the Sinking Ship………
But following the discovery of a complaint filed by his ex-wife for trespassing at her home, the national GOP is pulling out all resources from his campaign:
National Republicans are pulling the plug on Mark Sanford’s suddenly besieged congressional campaign, POLITICO has learned — a potentially fatal blow to the former South Carolina governor’s dramatic comeback bid.
Blindsided by news that Sanford’s ex-wife has accused him of trespassing and concluding he has no plausible path to victory, the National Republican Congressional Committee has decided not to spend more money on Sanford’s behalf ahead of the May 7 special election.
“Mark Sanford has proven he knows what it takes to win elections. At this time, the NRCC will not be engaged in this special election,” said Andrea Bozek, an NRCC spokeswoman.
Sanford is facing Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch, a Clemson University administrator and sister of comedian Stephen Colbert, in a race that has grabbed the national spotlight.
The NRCC’s move comes hours after Tuesday night’s report by the Associated Press that Sanford’s ex-wife, Jenny Sanford, filed a court complaint accusing him of trespassing at her home in early February – which would be a violation of the terms of their divorce agreement.
Republicans said they were caught off guard by news of Jenny Sanford’s complaint. They worry other damaging revelations about Mark Sanford’s personal life that they aren’t aware of could come out in the coming weeks.
The calculus here is simple: The district is pretty red, and any money that they spent on Sanford now they would also have to spend in 2014 if he won, so it is better to let Colbert-Busch to have a few months in Congress, where her vote won’t count.
That way you do not have Mark Sanford around your neck like a corpulent albatross.
What is Wrong With Democratic Political Class in One Phrase
It appears that they think that the biggest strength that a candidate can have is he or she, “doesn’t have particularly strong views.”
Because, I guess, nothing always beats something:
Democratic Party officials believe that Kevin Strouse is exactly the kind of candidate who can help them retake the House next year.
He’s a smart, young former Army Ranger — good qualities for any aspiring politician. But what party leaders really like is that Strouse doesn’t have particularly strong views on the country’s hottest issues.
Immigration? Tax policy? “Certainly I have a lot of research to do,” Strouse acknowledged in an interview Thursday as he announced his candidacy in a suburban Philadelphia House district.
Strouse’s candidacy reflects an emerging Democratic strategy for taking back the House from Republicans after the tea party takeover of 2010.
The best way to defeat the conservative, ideologically driven GOP, Democrats say, is to field non-ideological “problem solvers” who can profit from the fed-up-with-partisanship mood of some suburban areas. These districts will offer some of the few competitive House campaigns in the country.
“You pick your strategic high ground and force them to fight on it,” said Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), who as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has begun a particularly early effort at traveling the country and working the phones to lure Strouse and others like him into races.
(emphasis mine)
Steve Israel was, until he wanted a leadership position, he was a one of the Quisling Blue Dog Caucus, and his goal is to restore the decimated Benedict Arnold Blue Dog Caucus, because the f%$#ing Blue Dogs were so good for the party in the past.
In any case, be aware that this sort of mind bogglingly stupidity is from the person trying to pick and choose Democratic Party nominees for the US House of Representatives, and he is bragging about this bit of lunacy.
Choose your own candidates. Don’t give to the DCCC, because they will waste your money on bullsh%$ like this.
IOKIYAR*
It’s on!
Mark “Hiking the Appalachian Trail” Sanford won the Republican nomination for the special election in 1st Congressional district in South Carolina:
Mark Sanford’s fiancée, the Argentine for whom he risked a political career, stood next to him Tuesday as he accepted the Republican nomination for a South Carolina Congressional seat.
María Belén Chapur’s appearance was a surprise, especially to leaders in the national Republican Party. It might not have been the most strategic move in Mr. Sanford’s attempt at a political comeback. Still, it was how Mr. Sanford wanted it.
Whether national Republican leaders will decide that the former governor is putting the seat in jeopardy and decide to lend more support is only one question in a race that has already been filled with political and personal drama. After defeating 15 other candidates in a primary race and winning a runoff on Tuesday, Mr. Sanford faces Elizabeth Colbert Busch, a Democrat with enough celebrity appeal and financial backing to change what could have been an easy victory in the special election on May 7 into a real battle.
There is yet another example of just how classless Republicans are in the article:
“Everybody is really concerned because she’s not a bad-looking lady, she is a good speaker and she’s got some money,” said Jerry Hallman, chairman of the Beaufort County Republican Party. “In politics, those things are important.”
Elizabeth Colbert Busch is Stephen Colbert’s older sister, so when the classless Mr. Hallman talked about her celebrity, he was not kidding. (See the vid for more)
Still, it is remarkable how complete a Republican self-immolation can be, and yet they are still allowed to return to positions of public trust.
This is a guy who runs on family values, and he gets caught f%$#ing around on his former wife with the woman who is now his current wife, and it’s, “Hey, no harm, no foul.”
The Republican culture of impunity is a marvel to behold.
*It’s OK If You Are a Republican.
This is Not a Surprise
What a surprise, New York State Senator Malcom Smith was caught bribing Republican officials in an attempt to secure the GOP nomination for New York City mayor:
The two men sat in the state senator’s parked car in suburban Rockland County, but New York City was at the front of their minds and the focus of their conversation.
What the senator, Malcolm A. Smith, wanted to do, the other man explained, was going to cost “a pretty penny.”
“But it’s worth it,” replied Senator Smith, a Democrat, according to a transcript of the January meeting. “Because you know how big a deal it is.”
His plan, described by federal prosecutors in a criminal complaint unsealed on Tuesday, was as ambitious as it was audacious. Mr. Smith was going to bribe his way onto the ballot to run for mayor of New York.
But he needed help, from a disparate cast of characters, including a Republican City Council member from Queens, Daniel J. Halloran III, and two Republican leaders from Queens and the Bronx, Vincent Tabone and Joseph J. Savino. And he needed the help of the other man in the car, who, unbeknown to Mr. Smith, was a cooperating witness for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and was recording the whole conversation.
Instead of appearing on the ballot, Mr. Smith’s name has landed in a marquee spot on the criminal complaint. On Tuesday, he, Councilman Halloran and the Republican Party leaders were charged with wire fraud and bribery. The senator was also charged with extortion.
This is not surprising, because he is also one of the Benedict Arnold Democrats who colluded with Republicans in the state to wrest control from the Democrats who actually won most of the seats:
New York Republicans joined forces with a group of dissident Democrats on Tuesday to form what they called a “bipartisan governing coalition” to run the State Senate, preventing the Democratic Party from taking control even after it appeared to have won a majority of Senate seats in elections last month.
The announcement was the latest twist in a state capital that has had more than its share in recent years, with a string of leadership squabbles, corruption investigations and sex scandals that at times crippled the government and made Albany a laughingstock.
The power-sharing deal announced Tuesday was a victory for New York Republicans, who are outnumbered 2-to-1 in the state’s electorate and who fared unexpectedly poorly in a series of Senate races last month. The exact outcome of the election remains unclear, because ballots in two close races are still being counted, but the consensus in Albany is that the Democrats won more seats than the Republicans.
But shortly after the elections, one Democrat said he would align himself with the Republicans, and on Tuesday five others said they would join with the Republicans to control the Senate. Many of the remaining Senate Democrats were furious, accusing the Republicans and the breakaway Democrats of orchestrating a coup to steal control.
As part of the deal, the Senate majority leader, Dean G. Skelos, a Long Island Republican, agreed to share authority over the chamber with Senator Jeffrey D. Klein, a Bronx Democrat who was the No. 2 official in his caucus before defecting nearly two years ago to form the Independent Democratic Conference.
The obvious question here is, “Why did he think that he could bribe Republicans into nominating him for Mayor?”
The simplest answer (see Occam’s Razor) as to why he might believe this is is pretty clear here: The Republicans bribed him to jump over the aisle, and so Senator Smith expected them to be similarly receptive to bribes.
I have no evidence of this, but it seems to me that some sort of payoff had to be involved in the “Independent Democratic Conference” knifing their fellow Dems in the back.
The only question is whether it was limited to legal things, like committee chairmanships, or there was something more remunerative involved.
Considering the fact that this is Albany, I’ll take the door behind the piles of unmarked bills.
H/t Ed Kilgore.
Signs of the Apocalypse
Too true
Michael Steel just said something that was:
- Provocative, and
- Not blindingly stupid.
What he said was that, if Republicans want to get minorities to vote for them they have to stop trying to trying to suppress their votes:
Steele said the RNC’s autopsy of the 2012 election does nothing to address the substantive reasons why the party fails to connect with minorities, highlighting voter identification laws championed by many Republicans, including Priebus, that disproportionately affect black voters.
“How does Reince Priebus reconcile his approach and his agreement with voter registration policies that many in the black community view as anti-black, racist, whatever the term happens to be,” Steele said. “You’ve got to reconcile how people feel about your policies, not just the fact that you’re going to show up. You can show up any time. It’s what you say and what you do when you get there that matters most to people.”
He’s right, of course, and he did not put his foot in his mouth in the progress.
I’m pleasantly surprised.
Pope Hilarious!
I really [on edit] DON’T [/on edit]have a dog in this hunt. So my only insight on this is that when I discovered that he chose to take the name Francis, as an homage to St. Francis of Assisi who vowed poverty, my only thought was that he was dissing his Prada slipper wearing predecessor.
That being said, when I heard what Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio chose for his Pope name, I looked up a list of all the Popes, and it turned out that there was an actual Pope Hilarious.
More correctly there was a Pope Hilarius, in the middle of the 5th century, who was later sainted.
Go figure.
This is Fascinating
An analysis by Robert Parry suggests that both Watergate and Iran Contra were about covering up collusion to subvert US foreign policy for electoral advantage, something that the less sophisticated amongst us might call treason:
………
A favorite saying of Official Washington is that “the cover-up is worse than the crime.” But that presupposes you accurately understand what the crime was. And, in the case of the two major U.S. government scandals of the last third of the Twentieth Century – Watergate and Iran-Contra – that doesn’t seem to be the case.
Indeed, newly disclosed documents have put old evidence into a sharply different light and suggest that history has substantially miswritten the two scandals by failing to understand that they actually were sequels to earlier scandals that were far worse. Watergate and Iran-Contra were, in part at least, extensions of the original crimes, which involved dirty dealings to secure the immense power of the presidency.
Presidents Richard Nixon, George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan photographed together in the Oval Office in 1991. (Cropped from a White House photo that also included Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.)
In the case of Watergate – the foiled Republican break-in at the Democratic National Committee in June 1972 and Richard Nixon’s botched cover-up leading to his resignation in August 1974 – the evidence is now clear that Nixon created the Watergate burglars out of his panic that the Democrats might possess a file on his sabotage of Vietnam peace talks in 1968.
………
Similarly, Official Washington and many mainstream historians have tended to dismiss Ronald Reagan’s Iran-Contra scandal as another case of some overzealous subordinates intuiting what the President wanted and getting everybody into trouble.
………
So, while congressional and federal investigators looked only at how the specific 1985-86 arms sales to Iran got started, there was no timely attention paid to evidence that the Reagan administration had quietly approved Israeli arms sales to Iran in 1981 and that those contacts went back to the days before Election 1980 when the hostage crisis destroyed Carter’s reelection hopes and ensured Reagan’s victory.
The 52 hostages were not released until Reagan was sworn in on Jan. 20, 1981.
Over the years, about two dozen sources – including Iranian officials, Israeli insiders, European intelligence operatives, Republican activists and even Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat – have provided information about alleged contacts with Iran by the Reagan campaign.
And, there were indications early in the Reagan presidency that something peculiar was afoot. On July 18, 1981, an Israeli-chartered plane crashed or was shot down after straying over the Soviet Union on a return flight from delivering U.S.-manufactured weapons to Iran.
In a PBS interview nearly a decade later, Nicholas Veliotes, Reagan’s assistant secretary of state for the Middle East, said he looked into the incident by talking to top administration officials. “It was clear to me after my conversations with people on high that indeed we had agreed that the Israelis could transship to Iran some American-origin military equipment,” Veliotes said.
In checking out the Israeli flight, Veliotes came to believe that the Reagan camp’s dealings with Iran dated back to before the 1980 election. “It seems to have started in earnest in the period probably prior to the election of 1980, as the Israelis had identified who would become the new players in the national security area in the Reagan administration,” Veliotes said. “And I understand some contacts were made at that time.”
When I re-interviewed Veliotes on Aug. 8, 2012, he said he couldn’t recall who the “people on high” were who had described the informal clearance of the Israeli shipments but he indicated that “the new players” were the young neoconservatives who were working on the Reagan campaign, many of whom later joined the administration as senior political appointees.
I really don’t think that “treason” is too strong a term here.
The assertion here is that the Watergate break-in was about trying to find files implicating Nixon in deliberately extending the war for electoral advantage, and the arms deliveries to Iran were payback for holding the Tehran embassy hostages from being released until after the elections.
It does provide some context to the “Third Rate Burglary” the brought Nixon down.
There were files on his interference, and he could not find them because a Johnson aide had taken them with him, and he was desperate to ensure that they would not be used against him in the 1972 elections.
Considering the 30,000 American deaths, and the million+ dead Vietnamese, Nixon and his merry band of rat-f%$#ers (their term) had to have been in a panic about this.
Your Daily Grillo
The 5 Star Party will ask the Italian President to form the next Italian government:
Beppe Grillo’s anti-establishment 5-Star Movement said on Sunday it wanted to lead Italy’s next government following last month’s inconclusive election and reiterated that it would not agree to an alliance with any other party.
The movement’s newly elected parliamentary leaders told reporters it would make this position clear to President Giorgio Napolitano when he begins consultations later this month on the formation of a government.
“Our proposal will be a 5-Star government,” the movement’s Senate leader Vito Crimi said after a meeting of its lawmakers in a Rome hotel.
It is unlikely that the other parties would accept a government led by the 5-Star Movement. This is partly because of policy differences and partly because although it was the most voted single party at the election, 5-Star has fewer seats in parliament than the center-left and center-right coalitions.
I think that Italian politics is going to get even more bizarrely surreal, which, considering Silvio Berlusconi’s multiple elections as Prime Minister, I did not think was possible.
BTW, here is a video of Beppe Grillo’s comedy routine from 1998.
Its a bit evocative of Carlin, though I think that there is a lot of Italian culture context that I am missing.
H/t Naked Capitalism for the vid.
Scalia: Blacks Only Get to Vote When We Say So
It appears that Antonin “Fat Tony” Scalia thinks that protecting people from having their right to vote stolen is “Racial Entitlement”:
Then, it is reenacted 5 years later, again for a 5-year term. Double-digits against it in the Senate. Then it was reenacted for 7 years. Single digits against it. Then enacted for 25 years, 8 Senate votes against it. And this last enactment, not a single vote in the Senate against it. And the House is pretty much the same. Now, I don’t think that’s attributable to the fact that it is so much clearer now that we need this. I think it is attributable, very likely attributable, to a phenomenon that is called perpetuation of racial entitlement. It’s been written about. Whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it is very difficult to get out of them through the normal political processes.
Yes, preventing bad people from violating other people’s right to vote is “racial entitlement.”
What a repulsive bigoted excuse for a human being.
In Your Face, Wayne LaPierre
There was a primary to replace Jesse Jackson Jr. in the Illinois 2nd Congressional district, and it ended up a referendum on gun laws, and the pro-gun control candidate won it in a walk:
Riding a wave of “super PAC” spending that helped catapult her to the front of a crowded Democratic field, Robin Kelly, whose campaign called for tougher national gun laws, clinched her party’s nomination Tuesday in a special primary election for the House seat vacated by Representative Jesse L. Jackson Jr.
The outcome of the contest, which had been unexpectedly cast into the center of the national gun debate, was welcome news for Michael R. Bloomberg, the mayor of New York and a staunch gun-control advocate. He poured more than $2.2 million into attacking Ms. Kelly’s chief opponent, Debbie Halvorson, this month.
Flooding Chicago airwaves, Mr. Bloomberg’s super PAC, Independence USA, ran a series of advertisements criticizing Ms. Halvorson for opposing certain gun control measures and endorsing Ms. Kelly as the alternative candidate.
………
In Illinois’s Second Congressional District, which includes parts of the South Side of Chicago and southern suburban counties, Mr. Bloomberg’s super PAC financed a wave of mailers and television advertisements that criticized Ms. Halvorson, a former House member, for having gotten an “A” rating from the National Rifle Association in earlier elections and for opposing bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazine clips.
………
Last week, the Illinois State Rifle Association responded to Mr. Bloomberg’s effort by sending out mailers asking its members in the district to vote for Ms. Halvorson on Tuesday. Ms. Halvorson said she had not asked for the endorsement.
She was considered a front-runner after Mr. Jackson resigned in November, just weeks after his re-election. He pleaded guilty last week to one count of fraud for spending campaign money on personal expenses and celebrity memorabilia.
………
In he victory speech, Ms. Kelly, a former state representative who has worked as a chief of staff for the Illinois state treasurer, told supporters they had sent “a message that tells the N.R.A. that their days of holding our country hostage are coming to an end.”
Your mouth to God’s ear, Ms. Kelly.
Quote of the Day
Even though, as the headline shows, I have little Italian, and less Italian politics, I’m so chuffed that Beppe Grillo did well in yesterday’s Italian elections — even though he was neither a wizened, permanently tanned, and shamelessly unrehabilitated whoremonger nor a Goldman Sachs alumnus (sorry for the redundancy) — that I thought I’d do a wrap-up before conventional wisdom completely congeals. Alert readers will, of course, correct and amplify this post in comments!
—Lambert Strether of Corrente on the recent Italian elections.
(emphasis mine)
Of course, the whoremonger is Berulusconi, and the Goldman Sachs alum is Monti.
The election results were as follows:
Italy’s center-left coalition won the most votes in the parliamentary election, mustering 110,000 more votes than its traditional rival, final data from the Interior Ministry showed early Tuesday.
The victory came thanks to inclusion of the SVP party, a regionalist movement that has long ruled the German-speaking South Tyrol region.
Pier Luigi Bersani’s center-left coalition had 29.54% of the total vote while Silvio Berlusconi’s center-right coalition had 29.18% of the vote.
Under Italy’s electoral law, the winner of the most votes wins 340 of the 630 seats in the lower house, while losers split the rest proportionally.
“It’s too close to call,” said Angelino Alfano, the head of Mr. Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party, signaling he may demand a closer scrutiny of the vote tally.
In fact, Italy’s two main coalitions of the past 20 years together claimed less than half of all eligible votes, and their combined total fell more than 10 million from the last national vote in 2008.
Turnout was the lowest in Italian history at 75%, but the big surprise was Beppe Grillo’s Five-Star Movement, an anti-establishment party born only three years ago, which took 25.55% of the vote. Activists in his party said they had no interest in negotiating “little stitched-up backroom deals.”
Outgoing Prime Minister Mario Monti’s centrist coalition won 10.56% of the vote as support for the two veteran politicians he chose to ally with collapsed. Gianfranco Fini, once Mr. Berlusconi’s virtual dauphin, won 0.465 of the vote while Pierferdinando Casini’s UDC party, which claims to be the heir of the Christian Democrat party that ruled Italy for decades, won 1.78%, final data showed.
I would disagree with the assessment on Monti’s lack of performance.
This vote, albeit one with low turnout by Italian standards, was about a rejection of austerity and German Hegemony in the EU.
Of course, it did not help that Monti was completely clueless about how widely loathed the very serious people are loathed: (H/t Paul Krugman)
There was a symbolic moment in the Italian elections when I knew that the game was up for Mario Monti, the defeated prime minister. It was when in the middle of the campaign – in the midst of an anti-establishment insurgence – he took off to Davos to be with his friends from international finance and politics. I know his visit to the elite gathering in the Swiss mountains was not an issue in the campaign, but it signaled to me an almost comic lack of political realism.
(emphasis mine)
Yes, sipping champagne with the rich ratf%$#s who ruined the world economy, and then end up even richer, that’s a productive use of your time.
I’m with Simon Johnson on this: We need to break the back of the privileged class that broke the world as a first step to fixing the world.
The so-called “Technocrats” like Monti are just water carriers for these folks, and as such, are a part of the problem, not a part of the solution.
It’s a Start
In the primary to replace Jesse Jackson, Jr. in Congress, a leading candidate has been forced out largely because of her high ratings from the NRA:
Illinois State Sen. Toi Hutchinson dropped her bid to fill the Congressional seat of former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. on Sunday after her moderate views on gun safety made her a target of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s political action committee, Independence USA.
In what will be the first election since the shooting in Newton, Connecticut, the $2 million ad buy criticized Hutchison and another candidate for receiving an “A” rating from the National Rifle Association (NRA). “In the race for Congress, the big issue? Fighting gun violence. Debbie Halvorson and Toi Hutchinson both earned an A from the NRA, they can’t be trusted,” the ad began before endorsing former state Rep. Robin Kelly who supports background checks and banning assault weapons.
Guns have become a central issue in the primary, as Kelly attacked her opponents’ views on gun safety and “pointed out that Hutchinson received a 92 percent rating from the NRA” and does not support a statewide concealed carry ban. She also urged all candidates to “sign on to a five-point pledge to reduce gun violence: banning assault weapons and high capacity magazines, closing the gun show loophole, supporting Illinois’ conceal carry ban, and refusing support from ‘organizations that oppose reasonable gun safety legislation.’”
A few years ago, it would have been unthinkable that a high rating from the NRA would be used against a candidate, but the recent behavior of the organization, in particular the batsh%$ insane pronouncements of their CEO, Wayne LaPierre, have, when juxtaposed with the Newtown shootings, made the organization increasingly toxic.
This is good.
Buh Bye Scotty
Scott Brown will not be running for Senate in the special election.
My guess is that he decided that the Republican Party is just too damn radioactive in Massachusetts this year.
It looks like the Republicans may try to convince former Governor William Weld, the only Republican I ever voted for,* but I cannot imagine that the Club for Growth crowd would not end up subverting a campaign of his.
He is an old-line New England liberal Republican, and there are significant elements of the Republican base that would support a Democrat against him, just as the did with Lieberman over Weiker in the 1980s.
*He was running against BU President John Silber, who was a f%$#ing lunatic. Even though I still believe that it was the right thing, but I felt dirty afterward.
There Will Be a Primary in the Democratic Senate Race in Massachusetts
We already knew that Ed Markey was in the race, but now Stephen Lynch has announced that he will run as well.
Lynch is a right wing ratf%$# who voted to intervene in the Terri Sciavo affair, where the Republicans in Congress decided to intervene in the medical affairs of a brain dead woman, one of only 30 Democrats who did this, and the only Dem from New England to do so.
He’s an opponent of abortion rights, and was a big booster of the war as well.
Here’s hoping that Lynch gets destroyed in the primary, and that it leads to him being unseated in the 2014 9th district elections as a result.
As to how the primary will effect the special election, where Scott Brown is almost certain to be the Republican candidate, I generally favor primaries.
This is All F%$#ed Up and Sh%$
I am referring, of course, to Israel’s election results:
Coalition talks have begun in Israel after near-complete general election results gave right-wing and centre-left blocs 60 seats each in parliament.
President Shimon Peres is expected to ask Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to attempt to form a new government.
His Likud-Beitenu alliance lost a quarter of its seats in the Knesset but remains the largest grouping with 31.
He has offered to work with the newly-formed Yesh Atid party, which shocked observers by coming second with 19.
However, its leader, popular former TV presenter Yair Lapid, has demanded reform of a law under which ultra-Orthodox Jewish seminary students can defer their military service. Religious parties in the current governing coalition are strongly opposed to any changes.
Mr Lapid has also said he would only join a government that was committed to reviving the peace process with the Palestinians.
In 3rd place again is labor, and Kadima, formerly the leading opposition party, is down to just two seats.
I’m hoping that Yesh Atid gets into the coalition (does not look likely), because it has a strongly secular platform, and ending the draft exemption and subsidies to the Ultra-Orthodox would be a very good thing.
As to figuring out what this all means, I’m not sure that anyone knows what it means.
Certainly, I cannot figure out how this will all sort out.
This is Why You Cannot Trust Republicans
The Virginia state senate is evenly divided by party, but yesterday, when a Democratic member of the institution was at the inauguration, they passed a Gerrymandered redistricting of the senate:
An ambush reapportionment effort by Virginia Senate Republicans spilled into partisan conflict tinged with racial resentment Tuesday, raising fears of a legislative train wreck that would derail the Republican governor’s final bid for a legacy.
Black Senate Democrats referred to the GOP’s party-line power play Monday as “plantation politics,” reprising the specter of the same spiteful partisan gridlock that paralyzed the Senate last year.
A scowling Gov. Bob McDonnell delivered a clear rebuke while most Republicans in the House maintained a cold, dismayed silence over the Senate move that caught them off guard.
“Obviously the tactics used yesterday were a surprise and don’t think that’s the way business should be done,” McDonnell said. “I’m not happy about the things that have happened.”
“What I’ve said is that this session should be about education and transportation, not redistricting and other things,” he said.
Despair over the partisan rift was so deep that many lawmakers of both parties compared the damage to the 2001 session, the only one in modern Virginia history to adjourn without finishing work on the state budget.
Ignoring ancient legislative traditions and even a just 2004 amendment to the Virginia Constitution that limits redistricting to once a decade, the Senate’s 20 Republicans shocked Capitol Square by their actions Monday. They abruptly amended a House bill that previously made minor technical boundary adjustments into a total revision of all 40 Senate districts passed in 2011.
With Democratic Sen. Henry Marsh away at President Barack Obama’s inaugural Monday, Senate Republicans caught the 20 Senate Democrats one vote short and muscled Sen. John Watkins’ surreptitious floor amendment to passage on a 20-19 vote with little debate in just 30 minutes.
(emphasis mine)
As to “Governor Ultrasound’s” disapproval, I would not expect a veto.
After all, he disapproved of the transvaginal ultrasound bill, and signed that into law.
Even if he were inclined to veto the bill, McDonnell wants to be the Republican Presidential or Vice-Presidential pick in 2016, and dirty tricks and voter suppression has become a core value of today’s Republican Party.
The 2016 Coup Attempt Begins
The Republicans are looking to change electoral vote allocation to favor Republicans in 2016:
Earlier this week, Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus endorsed a Republican plan to rig the next presidential election to make it nearly impossible for the Democratic candidate to win the White House, no matter who the American people vote for. The election-rigging plan, which would allocate electoral votes by congressional district rather than by states as a whole in a handful of states that consistently vote for Democratic presidential candidates, would have allowed Mitt Romney to narrowly win the Electoral College last November despite losing the popular vote by nearly four points.
On Monday, seven Pennsylvania Republican state representatives introduced a bill to make this vote-rigging scheme a reality in their state. Under their bill, the winner of Pennsylvania as a whole will receive only 2 of the state’s 20 electoral votes, while “[e]ach of the remaining presidential electors shall be elected in the presidential elector’s congressional district.”
Under this scheme, Obama would have only gotten 7 electoral votes from Pennsylvania.
There would have been similar losses of electoral votes in Ohio, and Wisconsin, Florida, and Virginia.
This is part 94 of why the Electoral College sucks wet farts from dead pigeons.
This also explains why Republicans accuse people of acting like Stalin so often, they are projecting: Because they try to act like Stalin, they think that everyone else does so too.