Category: Elections

The Giants Win the Pennant! The Giants Win the Pennant! The Giants Win the Pennant!!!!*

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Democrat Kathy Hochul, has won the special election in New York’s 26th Congressional district, largely because people do not want the Republicans to f%$# with Medicare.

Note here that she also won with some solid numbers, she got 48% of the vote, as versus Republican Jane Corwin’s 42% of the vote, and teabagger nutjob Jack Davis’s 8%.

You have to figure that even if Davis were not in the race, she would have won.

Note that this is not only one of the most firmly republican districts in New York, but one of the more heavily ‘Phant districts in the country, and it wasn’t even close.

*If you are American, and have not heard of the Shot Heard ‘Round the World, shame on you. If you are not American, click the link.

It’s On Bitches

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At least three of the six Republican state senators targeted for recall in Wisconsin will happen:

State election officials ordered July 12 recall elections on Monday for three Republican state senators, setting the stage for what could be an unprecedented summer of recall elections.

The Government Accountability Board, which runs state elections, voted unanimously to schedule the recall elections against Sens. Dan Kapanke of LaCrosse, Randy Hopper of Fond du Lac and Luther Olsen of Ripon.

…………

On Monday, the Republicans successfully struck some of the signatures from the recall petitions against them as invalid, but not enough to prevent the elections. About 15,000 signatures for each senator were needed to hold recall elections, and in each case more than 21,000 valid signatures were gathered.

(emphasis mine)

So they got about 50% more signatures than were required, and unlike the Republican efforts, they did not have to bring in paid signature gatherers, nor did they have to lie about what was being signed or buy the signers drinks.

There are 3 Republican, and 3 Democratic state senators yet to be ruled on, but my guess is that all of them will go through, though I do not expect the Dems, unless the national Democratic Party does something mind-bogglingly stupid, like signal approval to some sort of Medicare cuts. (Yes, Steny Hoyer, have a nice glass of Shut the F%$# Up!)

Wisconsin Election Board Certifies Prosser Winner of Supreme Court Race

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So the right winger who threatened another judge has been declared the winner.

It is unclear at this point whether his challenger, JoAnne Kloppenburg, will be taking this to court.

She probably should, if just to turn over the rocks that is the Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus (probably deliberate) exercise in incompetence in counting votes, but my guess is that she won’t, because Democrats are wimps.

If it were turned around, we would already have James Baker showing up and saying that it’s not fair.

In any case, she has to make her decision by May 31.

It Looks Like 6 of 8 ‘Phant Senators Are Up for Recall in Wisconsin

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When one considers that there have been just 4 recall elections in Wisconsin history, this is pretty impressive, there are additionally 3 recall elections against Democratic state senators, but, as anyone who follows Maddow knows, the effort was significantly less grass roots and honest.  (Signatures for shots of booze)

Additionally, there was a special election in a solidly Republican district for the State Assembly, and it flipped to the Democrats for the first time in a rather long time.

The Dems have to win 3 seats to flip the Senate, which is a non-trivial task, but I think that the voters of Wisconsin are feeling a sh%$load of buyers remorse right now.

They Had an Election in the Great White North

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And it was a doozy:

The Conservatives now have an outright majority in Parliament, posting a 24 seat gain to end up with 167 seats, which was not a big surprise, but the rest of the results were a shocker.

The left leaning New Democratic Party (NDP) picked up 66 seats, and now has 102, making it the official opposition for the first time ……… ever, while the Liberals, who have run Canada for most of the past 100 years, lost 43 seats, dropping to 34, and their party leader, the contemptible Iraq war cheerleader Michael Ignatieff, lost his seat.

Even more surprising is that the secessionist Bloc Québécois also lost 43 seats, dropping to just 4 seat, which means that they lost official party status,and their party leader lost his reelection bid too.

Hopefully, this means that the BQ will have to take their time away from genteel ethnic cleansing* to rebuild their party.

Both Lib Leader Michael Ignatieff and BQ Leader Gilles Duceppe resigned their party positions as well.

The Tories did not get anywhere near a majority of the vote, they got less than 40%, but they got them in the right places, and with the NDP surging, largely because the Liberals had been folding like a bunch of broccoli ever since Ignatieff took control, and people choose something, particularly a something which gave them their world class healthcare system, over nothing, they went to the NDP.

The downside is that Conservative leader Stephen Harper, after 2 terms running a minority government, probably feels entitled to do what he really wants, which is tax cuts for the wealthy, cuts in social services, and more prisons and fighter jets.

I fully expect a stealth assault on socialized medicine.

On the bright side (if you are an optimist):

  • The BQ and their nativist bigoted platform were beaten down.
  • The Libs deserved to go down, and the only thing keeping them afloat over the past few years was “the conservatives are scary,” don’t split the vote, but now the NDP can make this argument.
  • Harper is a real honest to God Neocon, and the only thing that has made him look moderate is the fact that he has had minority governments, so hopefully, when the mask is removed, Canadians will recoil from him, and make Mulroney’s drubbing look like a walk in the park.
  • Perhaps the Liberals will learn that folding like overcooked cabbage because an insane right winger said bad things about them.
  • Perhaps the Liberals will learn that appointing an Iraq War supporting moron (Michael Ignatieff) is stupid.
  • Michael Ignatieff is done.
  • Michael Ignatieff is done.
  • Michael Ignatieff is done.

Then again, I am a bit of an optimist.

*It’s why the largest Jewish community in Canada is now in Toronto.

Why Not Gus Frerotte?

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The most wanktastic representative in the Democratic caucus, Heath Shuler, had got himself a primary challenger, Cecil Bothwell:

North Carolina Blue Dog Democrat Heath Shuler is getting a primary challenge.

Councilman Cecil Bothwell, who originally said he would run as an independent, has changed his mind on the advice of friends and supporters, according to The Asheville Citizen-Times.

“I originally believed that the best way to address issues too long ignored and to challenge the corporate power over the national parties was to run as an independent,” he said. “But I’ve heard from hundreds of people, from WNC to Washington, DC, who believe the most likely path to success is up the middle instead of trying for an end-run.”

He’s not on Act Blue yet, but when he is, I will add him to my Act Blue page.

He’s actually an interesting guy, the only openly Atheist politician I know of, according to his Wiki Page.

Koch Whores

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Koch Industries is now explicitly coercing its workers about who they vote for:

On the eve of the November midterm elections, Koch Industries sent an urgent letter to most of its 50,000 employees advising them on whom to vote for and warning them about the dire consequences to their families, their jobs and their country should they choose to vote otherwise.

The Nation obtained the Koch Industries election packet for Washington State [1]—which included a cover letter from its president and COO, David Robertson; a list of Koch-endorsed state and federal candidates; and an issue of the company newsletter, Discovery, full of alarmist right-wing propaganda.

Legal experts interviewed for this story called the blatant corporate politicking highly unusual, although no longer skirting the edge of legality, thanks to last year’s Citizens United Supreme Court decision, which granted free speech rights to corporations.

“Before Citizens United, federal election law allowed a company like Koch Industries to talk to officers and shareholders about whom to vote for, but not to talk with employees about whom to vote for,” explains Paul M. Secunda, associate professor of law at Marquette University. But according to Secunda, who recently wrote in The Yale Law Journal Online about the effects of Citizens United on political coercion in the workplace, the decision knocked down those regulations. “Now, companies like Koch Industries are free to send out newsletters persuading their employees how to vote. They can even intimidate their employees into voting for their candidates.” Secunda adds, “It’s a very troubling situation.”

This is what happens when people who earned their fortune through the genetic lottery think that they own the people who work for them.

Truly repugnant.

Wisconsin Election(s) Update

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In the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, JoAnne Kloppenburg filed a petition with the Government Accountability Board for a recount, which is automatic, and at state expense, because the margin was less than the ½% margin.

She also called for an investigation of the actions of Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus, who has been using odd methods, and generating odd results, for years.

I don’t know how this will turn out, but given that Wisconsin uses paper ballots, my guess is that Ms. Nickolaus will not look good at the end of this, because even if she isn’t shown to have engaged in ballot fraud, her history of incompetence is well documented.

Additionally, it looks like Wisconsin will be more than doubling its recall elections in its history, there have been 4 total in history, but now 5 recall petitions have already been filed against state senators, which means that there should be at least 5 recall elections.

I would expect a lot of money from the Koch brothers to flow in for both the recount and the elections.

Great, Another Recount………

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In the JoAnne Kloppenburg – David Prosser race for Wisconsin state Supreme Court Justice, Kloppenburg is ahead by around 300 votes out of the 1.5 million cast.

Prosser is clearly a horrorshow.  He’s cursed at and threatened the chief justice, he’s explicitly stated that he will enable Scott Walker’s political agenda, and he was part of an all-Republican ruling on recusals and campaign contributors that flew in the face of a US Supreme Court ruling, so I really hope that Kloppenburg wins in the end.

That being said, absentee ballots, Wisconsin has fairly liberal absentee voting laws but no early voting, could swing it.  Republicans tend to push absentee ballots hard.

The politically savvy thing to do right now would be to start calling for Prosser to give it up, the uncertainty is bad for the state, as is the cost of the recount, but I cannot bring myself to do this:  I remember these same arguments in 2000 and Bush v. Gore, and I cannot say them.

In any case, what’s good for the state, and what’s good for the taxpayer never gets in the way of any Republican’s quest for power, so why bother asking.

Kaine to Run For Virginia US Senate Seat

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With Senator Jim Webb retiring after one term, former governor Tim Kaine has announced that he will be running for his seat.

His most likely opponent is former governor, former senator (Jim Webb beat him), and blithering idiot George Allen, Jr.

Kaine will lose for a number of reasons:

  • George Allen will not engage in the self immolation, like his “Macaca moment” and the unseemly scramble at damage control.
  • He is not following on the coat tails of very his very popular predecessor when he ran for governor, Mark Warner.
  • The base is simply not excited or motivated as it was in 2006.
  • As head of the DNC, he was very much a water carrier for Barack Obama, who has continuously blasted, and demoralized,  the base.

Notwithstanding the fact that the announcement of his candidacy pretends that Barack Obama does not exist, he cannot run away from the fact that he was Barack Obama’s man at the DNC, brought in to expunge the successes of Howard Dean (2010 worked out so well).

I’m not saying that Obama per se  is an albatross around his neck, I am saying the reality is that he is a FoB (Friend of Barack), and any attempt at distancing himself will just hurt him in the campaign.

Meanwhile, In the Humitarian Disaster Not Involving Oil…

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I am referring, of course, to The Republic of Côte d’Ivoire, where forces supporting the guy who won the election, Alassane Ouattara, have taken the capital, Yamoussoukro:

Rebel forces in Ivory Coast have taken control of the official capital, as power seems to be slipping away from the president, Laurent Gbagbo.

Residents and military sources said troops loyal to Gbagbo’s rival, Alassane Ouattara, had entered Yamoussoukro, meeting little resistance as security forces fled. The port city of San Pedro also fell.

This has been going on for how many months now, (Hint: it’s been 5) and hot a hint of anyone wanting to intervene, because, of course, they don’t have oil.

So you have two African leaders, both without much in the way of support, who are oppressing their opponents and the general population, but the one that is a mid-level oil producer gets the full NATO bombing treatment, while the world’s leading exporter of cocoa gets some minor finger wagging in the general assembly of the United Nations.

A little bit of oil we spend blood and treasure on, but a lot of chocolate, that ain’t worth nothing.

Talk about screwed up priorities.

Speaking of Rat F%$#ing

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Brutal!

This ad is positively brutal.

The thing is, assuming that the facts as stated are true, this is not rat f%$#ing.

If David Prosser, who is running for reelection as a Wisconsin state Supreme Court justice, colluded with the diocese when he was a prosecutor to cover up a priest child predator, and to have him shipped out of his district, this is a legitimate issue.

But the fact that it’s an important issue does not preclude it from being rag f%$#ing.  What makes it not rat f%$#ing is the fact that it’s true, the Bishop’s archives confirm this removes this ad from the realm of rat f%$#ing, even if it is nasty.

Pirate Party Founded in Massachusetts

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And I know the guy who did it, James “Jamie” O’Keefe:

The Massachusetts Election Division has approved the Massachusetts Pirate Party as a political designation, allowing voters in the state to register as a “Pirate.”

The party strives to increase government transparency, promote personal privacy, reinforce the spread of knowledge through copyright reform, and abolish patents.

“We live in a country founded on the ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” the Massachusetts Pirate Party said in a statement. “For many people, those ideals are not real. The Supreme Court and Congress have expanded the power of corporations and made them more powerful than people. Increasingly government officials ignore open meeting laws, make deals favorable to corporations behind closed doors and sell off our public information to private interests.”

I went to UMass with him.

Note, as the article does, that Jamie is not the criminal asshole who cooks up fraudulent videos.

Note that my inclinations on IP are very similar, though perhaps a bit more moderate, than those of the Pirate Party.

Could Wisconsin Democrats Please Send Some Spare Backbone to Washington, DC?

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After a couple of weeks of a growing grassroots effort to initiate recall campaigns against 8 Republican state Senators, the Wisconsin Democratic party has officially joined the effort:

The Wisconsin Democratic Party has decided to throw its weight behind a nascent grassroots drive to recall a number of GOP state senators, a move that will considerably increase the pressure on them to break with Governor Scott Walker, the Dem party chair confirms to me.

“The proposals and the policies that Republicans are pushing right now are not what they campaigned on, and they’re extreme,” the party chair, Mike Tate, said in an interview. “Something needs to be done about it now. We’re happy to stand with citizens who are filling papers to recall these senators.”

Previously, Wisconsin Dems had not publicly supported talk about recalling GOP Senators, in hopes of privately reaching a negotiated solution to the crisis. The Wisconsin Democratic Party’s decision to support the recall drives represents a significant ratcheting up of hostilities and in essence signals that all bets are off.

Eight Republican Senators are eligible to be recalled right now, [the state Senate has staggered terms, and you cannot initiate a recall in the first year of a term] and various groups around Wisconsin are beginning to file papers to make it happen. Tate told me that the party would throw its organization behind such efforts.

You know, I think that when the base is motivated, this might be a better idea than what they do in DC, which is to try to defang motivated Democrats, and call them names like “Professional Left.”

Then again, what do I know.  I don’t have experience engineering the biggest electoral reversal for Democrats in history with the realities of politics.

Maybe deliberately demoralizing the party faithful actually works.

And maybe I’m Charlie Sheen.

The Irish Elections, and What it All Means…

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Former Prime Minister, and former Fianna Fail head, Brian Cowen, in an unintentionally apt photograph

So, Fianna Fail, having been in government for 60 of the past 79 years, has been tossed out by a resounding margin.

They fell 59 seats to 18 in Parliament, and the Green party, its coalition partner, lost all of its seats, while Fine Gael picked up 19 seats to 70, the Labour Party picked up 16 seats to 36, Sinn Fein(!) picked up 9 to get 13, the United Left Alliance (a coalition of various socialist parties) picked up 5 seats, and the new “New Vision” Party picked up 1 seat.

This is obviously a crushing defeat for Fianna Fail, and for the bank coddling policies, where the indemnified not just the depositors, but the banks’ bond holders, thereby committing the Irish taxpayers to what can only be called “debt slavery”.

What is interesting here is that Fine Gael is actually a further right party than Fianna Fail, and what the voters were really calling for were basically three policies:

  • F%$# the Irish banks.
  • F%$# the foreign banks that hold Irish debt.
  • F%$# the banks.

Whether this electoral landslide has any long term effects has to do with whether the people who voted for real change actually see it.

While there is both a moral and treaty obligation to make the account holders whole (up to something around €20,000), the idea that the Irish are impoverishing themselves in order to prop up foreign bond holders, largely British and German, who received higher returns than they would have at home because of the higher risk, banks is clearly something that the average Irishman finds unacceptable.

A lot of people are talking about how this is a seismic reshaping of the Irish body politic, but I doubt it.

My guess is that Fianna Fail will be back in the majority in the next election, because now that the opposition has control of government, we will see half measures, and coddling of both the Irish banks and their foreign creditors, which will result in a tsunami in the other direction in the next elections.

As has been noted, a, “deeply indebted economy with just 1.8 million people at work cannot underwrite private banking liabilities of €200bn.”

If Fine Gael, (and one their likely coalition partner Labour) do not understand this, and do not force haircuts on the bond holders through threat of default (which has the added benefit of transferring the pain to the feckless Angela Merkel ), the voters will turn on them.

For a recent political case study on the wages of timidity in this sort of a crisis, one need only look to the US, and the Democratic Party under the leadership of one Barack H. Obama.

Jim Webb Not Running for Reelection to US Senate

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I am unsurprised by his announcement, he never struck me as someone who enjoyed the “World’s Greatest Deliberative Body” (Hah!), but it means that it’s highly likely that whoever the ‘Phants nominate in 2012 will take the seat, which means that they will need only 3 more seats to take control of the Senate.

While from a numerical perspective, this is a bit of a bummer, from an ideological perspective, he was always a bit of a DINO, he served in Reagan administration, so I am not sad to seem him go from that perspective.

Good Riddance

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Representative Jane Harman (CA-36) is retiring to run the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC.

My guess is that she realized, after Marcy Winograd lost in the primary with 41.2% of the vote, that with a Republican Congress, and the attendant loss of power (and pork for her district), she would be toast in either the primary or the general election.

So, less than a month into her new term, she’s bailing for a cushy job working in Washington, DC, and saddling the taxpayers with the cost of running another (2 if there is a run off) elections.

Stay classy, Blue Dog.

Big Surprise, the New Black Panther “Voter Intimidation” Was a Manufactured News Event

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Listen to GOP Lawyers Manipulating the Video at the Time

What a surprise. One of the things that had the right wing echo chamber, and George W. Bush’s corrupted Civil Rights Commission, the allegation that the New Black Panthers were somehow a part of of a Democratic voter intimidation scheme (in the blackest part of Philadelphia?).

Well it’s all a fraud, and it has been literally since day 1:

In the extended version of the footage, posted by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights this month, a police officer tells Morse to back off. That’s when the commotion begins.

The video shows someone off-screen to Morse’s left, telling the officer “I got him, I got him.” A man who appears to be Chris Hill, a Republican poll watcher who was accused of intimidating voters at the polls by another woman at the location, says “Put it down. You’ve got enough.”

Then Bartle Bull chimes in. “Don’t you threaten him with your hands. You’re threatening him. Don’t you use your hands!”

………

The video shows that the white Republican poll watchers who showed up to the majority African-American precinct knew exactly what kind of media sensation they had on their hands.

“We’re on the same team,” says another Republican poll watcher off screen.

“You’re f%$#ing up the story. Don’t f%$# up the story,” one unidentified poll watcher tells Morse.

“You guys are lawyers, I’m a videographer,” Morse says.

Morse told TPM in an e-mail that he doesn’t think it was Hill who was intimidating him, but says someone was.

“A couple of guys wearing SUITS were were actually intimidating ME at this point,” Morse told TPM in an e-mail. “It was certainly not Mr. Hill who told me to put the camera down. It was one or two GOP lawyers, whose names I never got and I never saw again.”

“I remember a crowd of maybe 10 lawyers (or seemingly lawyers, suits I should say, since Bull isn’t a lawyer) standing around — in the original (more famous) video — one lawyer makes it into one of the shots, but im pretty sure it was another guy — not the bald guy in the shot — who was being a dick to me,” Morse told TPM in an e-mail. “At least one person was being a dick, and I was quite angry at this point when they were telling me to shut the camera — hence the expletive (which i make no apologies for using!).”

(%$# mine)

They didn’t just edit the tape, they manipulated the taping on site at time.

The ‘Phant lawyers were attempting to edit the event in real time. 

It makes reality difficult to determine, but I always fall back on what work when the USSR was at its zenith: If they accuse you of some sort of skulduggery, it is safe to assume that this is what they are doing themselves.