Jeebus.
Scott Brown got served like a Thanksgiving turkey.
Category: Elections
Nice Try Scotty
Looks like little Scotty Brown was trying to avoid his first debate with Elizabeth Warren, using an upcoming Senate vote as an excuse.
Well, Harry Reid felt your pain:
Majority Leader Harry Reid abruptly scrapped votes in the Senate on Thursday so Sen. Scott Brown could participate in a high-profile debate with Elizabeth Warren in Boston.
“No more votes today,” Reid (D-Nev.) said on the floor. “It’s obvious to me what’s going on. I’ve been to a few of these rodeos. It is obvious there is a big stall taking place. One of the senators who doesn’t want to debate tonight won’t be in a debate. While he can’t use the Senate as an excuse, there will be no more votes today.”
Well played, Senator Reid.
It’s streaming on WBZ and on CSPAN-3.
In the first few minutes, Scotty is harping on her family history (the whole “part Cherokee and Delaware” thing).
He is coming across a really, really pissy.
He’s sputtering.
Rob Zerban is on My ActBlue Page
The latest internal poll from Paul Ryan’s normally blood red Congressional district shows Democrat Rob Zerban down only by 7, and Ryan below 50%:
Rob Zerban, the Democrat running against Rep. Paul Ryan, has been trying to make the case that he has a real shot at taking down one of the GOP’s most visible leaders, and his campaign is now touting a new poll showing the race is closer than most expected.
The internal poll, provided to Salon ahead of its release, shows Zerban behind by just 8 points among likely voters when respondents were read a “profile statement” about the candidate. FM3 Research, which conducted the survey, wrote in a memo, “Paul Ryan is not the overwhelming favorite in the 1st Congressional District race … Rob Zerban remains a credible challenger.” After respondents were read the statement, 39 percent indicate they will vote for Zerban, while 47 say they will vote for Ryan. Another 4 percent went for a third-party candidate while 11 percent were undecided.
If you have a few bucks, you might want to throw it his way.
Even if it’s a long shot, it will put Paul Ryan off of his game as Mitt’s running mate, so it’s a win-win.
Certainly it’s better than giving to the DCCC, where (nominally) former Blue Dog Steve Israel is doing his level best to load up the Congress with Blue Dogs and New Dems.
OK, This Could Be Big
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has vacated the lower court ruling which upheld the law.
While this is not an injunction, it does appear that the court is very dubious of the claims by state government:
Signaling that it will tolerate “no voter disenfranchisement,” a divided state Supreme Court is sending the dispute over Pennsylvania’s new voting law back to a lower court to decide whether the state is doing enough to get photo ID cards to voters who need them.
In a 4-2 ruling issued Tuesday, the high court ordered Commonwealth Court Judge Robert E. Simpson Jr., who upheld the law in August, to file a supplemental opinion on whether the alternate-ID programs set up by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and state election officials are providing the “liberal access” to ID cards that the legislature intended.
“If they do not, or if Commonwealth Court is not still convinced in its predictive judgment that there will be no voter disenfranchisement arising out of the commonwealth’s implementation of a voter identification requirement . . . that court is obligated to enter a preliminary injunction,” the majority said in an unsigned opinion.The justices gave Simpson until Oct. 2 – just five weeks before the presidential election – to decide.
So, it appears that they are demanding affirmative proof that the state has set up its voter ID program properly.
I find it highly unlikely that they will be able to show this.
Of course, it is concerning that they basically kicked it down the road until October 2.
It’s a clusterf%$#, and I would argue that this is by design. The goal is to keep blacks and Hispanics from voting.
Yet Another Person Disenfranchised by the ‘Phants
Jim Cramer, host of CNBC’s “Mad Money,” revealed Tuesday that the Republican Party’s voter suppression efforts will prevent his own father, a veteran, from casting a ballot this fall in Pennsylvania.
“I have a problem,” Cramer said on Twitter Tuesday morning. “My dad, a vet, won’t be allowed to vote in Pa. because he does not drive, he is elderly, and can’t prove his citizenship.”
That would mean Cramer’s father is one of nearly 760,000 voters, or about 9 percent of Pennsylvanians who regularly participate in elections, who the state said does not carry a state-issued photo identification. Despite that alarming statistic, a Republican Pennsylvania judge approved the law last month, saying that voters still have time to obtain their ID cards.
So now Republicans are pissing off hysterical white dudes.
Isn’t that their base?
What a Surprist
A federal appeals court has determined that Texas’ redistricting plan had a deliberately discriminatory intent and effect:
Hispanic and black voters in Texas were vindicated on Tuesday when a federal three-judge panel rejected the state’s new redistricting plans for Congressional and state legislative seats. A panel of the United States District Court in the District of Columbia properly found that the maps, based on the 2010 census, had a discriminatory purpose and effect in reducing the ability of minority voters to elect candidates they favor.The evidence of the discrimination was stark. Almost 90 percent of the 4.3 million growth in the state’s population in the last decade came from minority residents. That growth qualified Texas for four additional Congressional seats, and it required the state to create new voting districts. Yet instead of adding districts in which minority voters could elect candidates of their choice, the Republican-controlled Legislature drew the districts in a way that reduced the number represented by members of minority groups. About some districts, the panel said, the plans maintained “the semblance of Hispanic voting power,” but the mapmakers actually diluted it.Texas is covered under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act for its history of voting discrimination. It was in court because it had to get prior approval for any changes to its voting procedures from a federal court or the Justice Department — and it could receive permission only if it could prove that the changes would not have a discriminatory effect. The judges, sensibly, said no.As the court’s majority opinion noted, no major surgery was performed by the lawmakers on the Congressional districts of white incumbents. But there was “unchallenged evidence” that in four minority districts, the Legislature performed surgery to cut out “economic engines” and harm the districts. In a couple of cases, the Republicans cut out the district offices of the members of Congress.
You mean that Texas Republicans are racist ratf%$#s?
Hoodoodanode?
Damn
Darcy Burner has lost the primary for Washington’s 1st district.
Former Microsoft exec Suzan DelBene after dropping over a million dollars of her own money, bought second place (it’s a non-partisan primary, with Teabagger Republican John Koster getting a plurality).
Rather unsurprisingly, DelBene also got the lion’s share of the Democratic Party establishment, since they go for the money, and real Democrats scare them.
So the good folks in the 1st have the choice of the Teabagger or the MBA.
My condolences.
Yet Another Reason Not to Give to the DCCC
A detailed examination of how they spending their money reveals that DCCC chair, and former Blue Dog, Steve Israel, is favoring long shot conservatives over more competitive real Democrats:
Monday morning the DCCC was strutting around like a rooster bragging about the campaign to hold Republicans accountable, running an ad (below) called “The Millionaires,” against 23 “Republican Members of Congress who are about to vote for another tax cut for millionaires at the expense of the middle class and seniors.” Let’s not even get into the cynicism of the DCCC backing Blue Dogs who vote with the GOP on this and leave that for the day after the vote itself (when we can replay a tape of Debbie Wasserman Schultz defending anti-family ConservaDems because she’s so proud of her “Big Tent party”).
………
Who are these Republicans? Not many people have heard of any of them. They’re basically all a bunch of backbenchers without any power or influence, mostly pathetic freshmen. Fine… someone has to go after them. It’s a shame though, that that’s all the DCCC goes after! But let’s look at the Democrats running in these districts for a second.
………
So what would a progressive campaign look like instead of this attempt by “ex”-Blue Dog Steve Israel to restock the House Democratic caucus with conservatives?
………
The progressive target list, unlike the DCCC target list, includes vulnerable senior Republicans (Goliaths) like Paul Ryan and Buck McKeon, whose district’s Obama won, as well as vulnerable Republican incumbents with national reputations as especially hateful assholes, like Eric Cantor, Joe Pitts, Mike Coffman, Patrick McHenry, Ed Royce, and Mike Rogers. No one ever even heard of any of the DCCC targets beyond maybe the congresswoman in Palm Springs who used to be married to Sonny Bono after Cher and now lives with her braindead husband– a candidate for the U.S. Senate– in Florida. It’s a pretty unheroic list of targets– and not even one where there are many “sure things.” In fact, some of these people have absolutely no chance of winning whatsoever, like the poor schlemiels running against Vicky Hartzler (MO-04), Larry Bucshon (IN-08), Tim Murphy (PA-18), Kristi Noem (SD-AL), and Scott DesJarlais (TN-04). The money the DCCC will waste in those 5 districts alone could probably make the difference in defeating Paul Ryan, Buck McKeon and Ed Royce, 3 seats ripe for the plucking that the DCCC refuses to contest.
One lesson to be learned here is that while the Blue Dogs, and to a slightly lesser degree the New Dems, may not like Republicans, but they hate real Democrats.
Pick and choose your candidates, and vote for, and donate to, real Democrats.
If you delegate this to Steve Israel and the DCCC, we will get an affirmative action program for DINOs.
Yep, No Racism Here
The former head of the Florida Republican party is now saying that the Republican voter ID law was specifically intended to suppress the black vote, and that this was explicitly discussed behind closed doors:
In the debate over new laws meant to curb voter fraud in places like Florida, Democrats always charge that Republicans are trying to suppress the vote of liberal voting blocs like blacks and young people, while Republicans just laugh at such ludicrous and offensive accusations. That is, every Republican except for Florida’s former Republican Party chairman Jim Greer, who, scorned by his party and in deep legal trouble, blew the lid off what he claims was a systemic effort to suppress the black vote. In a 630-page deposition recorded over two days in late May, Greer, who is on trial for corruption charges, unloaded a litany of charges against the “whack-a-do, right-wing crazies” in his party, including the effort to suppress the black vote.
In the deposition, released to the press yesterday, Greer mentioned a December 2009 meeting with party officials. “I was upset because the political consultants and staff were talking about voter suppression and keeping blacks from voting,” he said, according to the Tampa Bay Times. He also said party officials discussed how “minority outreach programs were not fit for the Republican Party,” according to the AP.
One hopes that his testimony is introduced in the suits that the DoJ is filing against Rick Scott and his merry band of racists.
This is the proverbial smoking gun.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot??!!??!!??
Wingnut Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, he of the “emergency manager” law intended to make sure that Black votes don’t count, has just vetoed the latest voter suppression bill to come out of the Michigan lege:
Gov. Rick Snyder vetoed election reform bills that sparked angry protests and cries of voter suppression during committee hearings.
Snyder, in one day doubling the number of bills vetoed during his tenure, nixed bills that aimed to prevent voting fraud by requiring a voter to reaffirm U.S. citizenship before receiving a ballot and requiring photo ID when picking up an absentee ballot from a city office.
He also rejected a bill that would have required training for people, companies and organizations participating in voter registration drives.
Snyder in a release said he appreciates the issue of ensuring voters are eligible and U.S. citizens, but believes the bills would have created voter confusion among absentee voters.
Snyder also said he supports the concept of training individuals involved in voter registration, but said the changes with the registration of third party voter registration organizations, and the timing and training of those entities, may cause confusion with ongoing voter registration efforts.
I’m having trouble wrapping my head around this.
He’s arguably one of the three biggest Teabagger governors in the country, and he just vetoed a Republican voter suppression effort.
I’m Surprised
It turns out that the Egyptian Generals decided not to steal the presidential elections. My guess is that they decided that reducing presidential authority, as well as disbanding parliament was enough:
As his supporters in Tahrir Square were chanting on Sunday for the end of military rule in Egypt, the country’s president-elect, Mohamed Morsi, had glowing words for none other than the army, saying he regarded it with a “love in my heart that only God knows.”
Mr. Morsi’s remarks, during his first address to the nation after his victory was announced, were an acknowledgment of his new, changed role. He had gone from being a representative of a banned Islamist group to the leader of a nation and its public’s chief negotiator with the military generals who assumed power after the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak in February 2011.
As the first freely elected president of Egypt, Mr. Morsi has a historic opportunity, but he faces a litany of challenges that could prevent him from becoming more than just a figurehead. He will have to spar with the generals, who, just after the election, stripped much of the power from the presidency, and he must overcome the doubts of those who chose his opponent — nearly half of the voters — and millions more who did not vote.
Mr. Morsi will also have to convince Egyptians that he represents more than just the narrow interests of the Muslim Brotherhood and to soothe fears among many that his true goal is to bind the notion of citizenship itself more closely to Islam.
I’m thinking that there was a lot pressure put on the generals to accept this from inside of and outside of Egypt, and they blinked.
New Protests at Tahrir Square
And I still don’;t expect any pro-democracy actions to be taken by our government, because, after all, the Egyptians buy our weapons, not Russian weapons:
Tens of thousands have gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square to protest against a decision by the ruling military council to assume new powers.
The protests were called by the Muslim Brotherhood, as it claims its candidate won last weekend’s presidential poll.
His rival, former PM Ahmed Shafiq, also says he has won.
Wanker of the Day
Senator Scott Brown today rejected a debate proposed by Victoria Reggie Kennedy, after the widow of Senator Edward M. Kennedy refused his precondition that she not endorse a candidate in his reelection campaign against Democrat Elizabeth Warren.
“We respect Vicki Kennedy’s decision but we regret that we cannot accept a debate invitation from someone who plans to endorse Scott Brown’s opponent,” Brown Campaign Manager Jim Barnett said in a statement. “The Kennedy Institute cannot hold itself out as a nonpartisan debate sponsor while the president of its board of trustees gets involved in the race on behalf of one of the candidates.”
The announcement came shortly after representatives of Vicki Kennedy said she would not agree to Brown’s demand that she remain neutral in the race, in exchange for the senator’s participation in a late September debate she had proposed be hosted by the University of Massachusetts Boston and Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate.
Barnett had said Monday that Brown would participate only if Kennedy, president of the board at the Kennedy Institute, not endorse in the race and that MSNBC not be the broadcast sponsor of the debate.
What a whiny bitch.
He’s (rightly) terrified that Elizabeth Warren will have his sorry ass for lunch, so he’s making up excuses.
The Bad Guys Win in Greece
I’m not sure what the right path is, but Antonis Samaras and the New Democracy Party, which appears to have eked out a 2% win, are not it.
They are the ones who created the crisis in the first place, working with Goldman Sachs to create the swaps that masked the debt.
I don’t see a government coming from this.
SYRISA, the leftist party, and close 2nd place finisher, wants to completely renegotiate the bailout agreement, and PASOK (Socialist in name only and almost as corrupt as the New Democracy Party) which fell even further as a 2rd place finisher has said that it will not join a government without SYRISA.
ND needs 43 seats to gain a majority, they have 108 in the 300 seat parliament, but SYRISA and PASOK have 104 together, which means that they would either need to go hard right (which would have to include the facist/neo-Nazi Golden Dawn) or try to thread the needle with the left of center, but not as left of center as SYRISA, Democratic Left, and the Independent Greeks, who were formed by politicians thrown out of ND when they voted against the austerity packages.
Not a clue as to how this will shake out.
This Ain’t Good
The Egyptian Army has blockaded parliament:
Egypt’s military rulers moved to consolidate power Friday on the eve of the presidential runoff election, shutting down the Islamist-led Parliament, locking out lawmakers and seizing the sole right to issue laws even after a new head of state takes office.The generals effectively abandoned their previous pledge to cede power to a civilian government by the end of the month, prolonging the increasingly tortuous political transition after the ouster of Hosni Mubarak last year. The power play has also darkened the prospects that Egypt, the most populous Arab state and one that historically has had tremendous influence on the direction of the region, might quickly emerge as a model of democracy for the Middle East.Their moves, predicated on a court ruling on Thursday and announced with little fanfare by the state news media, make it likely that whoever wins the presidential race will — at least at first — compete with the generals for power and influence. The military counsel also indicated through the official news media that it planned to issue a new interim constitution and potentially select its own panel to write a permanent charter. The generals have already sought permanent protections for their autonomy and political power.
Additionally, there are indications that the military is preparing to engage in massive voter fraud on behalf of the Mubarak hack running for President:
The Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsy is tempering forecasts of victory in Egypt’s presidential election with a warning that vote rigging typical of the Hosni Mubarak era may hand victory to Ahmed Shafik, the deposed leader’s last prime minister.
On the eve of the run-off, Morsy, 60, hopes a big turnout of voters worried about a revival of the old regime will prevent that outcome and make him Egypt’s first Islamist president.
But after a court ruling by judges appointed under Mubarak dissolved a new parliament in which the Brotherhood was the main force, momentum appears to have ebbed away from Morsy, reflecting a broader sense that a political transition which had brought his movement dramatic gains is no longer going its way.
What a surprise, the generals like running things.
With a real civilian government, their control of much of the economy would be at risk, and the the gravy train would end.
There’s Going to Be a Recount in Wisconsin Senate Race
This is no surprise:
A Republican Wisconsin state senator asked Friday for a recount in the election that could hand Democrats their only victory in this month’s six recalls, and at least a temporary majority in the state Senate.
An official canvass this week showed incumbent Racine Republican Van Wanggaard trailing Democratic challenger John Lehman by 834 votes, or 1.2 percent of the nearly 72,000 votes cast.
Democrats had called on Wanggaard to concede, saying a recount would only waste taxpayer money and delay the inevitable. But Wanggaard’s campaign said it was concerned about reports of voting irregularities and wanted to ensure the outcome was accurate.
The state Senate currently has 16 Democrats and 16 Republicans, meaning the winner of the Wanggaard-Lehman race will give his party majority control. The victory, however, could be largely symbolic. The Legislature isn’t expected to convene again until January, and the November elections could cause the balance of political power to shift once again.
Of course he’s asking for a recount.
800 votes objectively does not seem like many, but it’s 1.2%, which is well nigh insurmountable.
It’s (mostly) about being a dick, and perhaps about delaying control of the professional staff in the Senate by the Democrats.
Well, He Does Look Kind of Dead
Brains … Brains … Brains!!!!!
Florida Governor Rick Scott had to cast a provisional ballot in 2006 because the voter records said that he was dead:
Six years before he made national headlines, Gov. Rick Scott found himself being purged from voter rolls after local election officials thought he was dead.
Collier County election officials on Thursday confirmed that the governor was required to vote with a provisional ballot for the 2006 primary and general election after county officials mistook him for Richard E. Scott, who died in January 2006 and had the exact same birthday — 12/1/1952 — as Florida’s 45th governor.
Election officials said the governor was required to vote provisionally because local election officials had received a Social Security Death Index Death Record showing that Richard E. Scott died on Jan. 27, 2006.
The governor, whose full name is Richard Lynn Scott, recounted his voting difficulties in radio interviews on Thursday as the state tangles with the federal government over just that – how likely is it that elections officials might make a mistake and purge the wrong person from the voter rolls?
I’m not sure I believe him.
It’s very convenient for this story to come out now.
I’m just sayin’.
About F%$#ing Time
The AFL-CIO is going to fight voter suppression laws being enacted by Republicans:
The nation’s largest labor federation plans to mount an aggressive campaign against voter identification laws in a half-dozen battleground states that will be key in the presidential election.
AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker told reporters on Tuesday that the labor federation will have boots on the ground registering and helping voters in Florida, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in coordination with the group’s political program.
Labor is pushing back against voter ID laws, which they say suppress voting by minorities, the elderly, the poor and students. Supporters of the measures say showing identification to vote is needed to crack down on fraud and protect the integrity of elections.
They should have started this a year ago.
Dems Hold Giffords’ Old Seat
I’m unsure of the significance, Ron Barber was a former Giffords aide, and he was shot when Giffords was, so there is the whole sympathy issue.
Additionally, his opponent, Jesse Kelly, is a major teabagger, and the movement is clearly not as strong as it was in 2010.
As to my feelings about this, it’s, “Meh.”
Giffords was a Blue Dog in Congress, and Barber seems to be cut from the same mold, waffling on voting for Pelosi in the caucus, and for Obama in the general election
He Would Have Liked to Help, But He Had to Wash His Hair
That’s the reason that Obama gave for doing absolutely nothing with regard with the Scot Walker recall:
President Obama suggested Monday that he was too busy to campaign in Wisconsin ahead of the recall election that targeted Republican Gov. Scott Walker, whose victory last week has raised questions about whether there are broader implications for the president in the fall.
In his first public comments about the election, Obama responded to a question about his decision not to appear in the state to support the Democratic challenger, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, by explaining that he has “a lot of responsibilities” as president.
Obama had limited himself to sending a message on his Twitter account expressing support for Barrett on June 4, a day before voters went to the polls.
“I was supportive of Tom and have been supportive of Tom. Obviously, I would have loved to see a different result,” the president said in an interview with WBAY, an ABC TV affiliate in Green Bay, Wis.
Some political analysts concluded that Obama was hesitant to spend time in Wisconsin because he wanted to avoid being tainted by an embarrassing defeat if Barrett lost.
Seriously, does anyone in the Obama administration besides Hillary have any balls at all?