Category: Elections

What the F%$#?

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British MP Jo Cox was just assassinated by a pro-Brexit terrorist:

An MP has died after she was shot and stabbed in a “horrific” assault in her constituency, police have said.

Jo Cox, Labour MP [Member of Parliament] for Batley and Spen, was left bleeding on the ground after the attack in Birstall, West Yorkshire. A man was arrested nearby.

One eyewitness told the BBC they heard her attacker shout “put Britain first” at least twice beforehand.

Tributes flooded in from politicians including David Cameron, Jeremy Corbyn and US Secretary of State John Kerry.

Mrs Cox’s husband Brendan said she would want people “to unite to fight against the hatred that killed her.”

………

Mrs Cox, 41, is the first sitting MP to be killed since 1990, when Ian Gow was the last in a string of politicians to die at the hands of Northern Irish terror groups.

An assassination in Britain, with a firearm?

I think that England may be hanging around with the wrong sort:  A mindlessly violent bloke with a firearms fetish:  the good old US od A.

On the Superdelegate Canvass

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— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) June 7, 2016

Jake Tapper Wins with a Chinatown Reference

I was watching TV last night, and flipped over to Maddow and found her over the moon because some anonymous source told the AP that they had Canvassed the superdelegates, and Clinton had secured the nomination.

NBC officially called the nomination last night.

It turns out that being pissed off about this is something that both the Sanders campaign and Clinton campaigns can agree on.

Why the Sanders campaign would angry is self-evident.

For the Clinton campaign, it short circuited what they hoped to be a golden moment tonight.

As to the story, it smells:

Last night, the Associated Press — on a day when nobody voted — surprised everyone by abruptly declaring the Democratic Party primary over and Hillary Clinton the victor. The decree, issued the night before the California primary in which polls show Clinton and Bernie Sanders in a very close race, was based on the media organization’s survey of “superdelegates”: the Democratic Party’s 720 insiders, corporate donors, and officials whose votes for the presidential nominee count the same as the actually elected delegates. AP claims that superdelegates who had not previously announced their intentions privately told AP reporters that they intend to vote for Clinton, bringing her over the threshold. AP is concealing the identity of the decisive superdelegates who said this.

Although the Sanders campaign rejected the validity of AP’s declaration — on the ground that the superdelegates do not vote until the convention and he intends to try to persuade them to vote for him — most major media outlets followed the projection and declared Clinton the winner.

One question that is raised by all of this is who made the call to the AP to get this ball rolling.

I can think of 3 possibilities:

  • Someone who is both completely incompetent and in a blind panic about the possibility of the aftermath of the last days of the primary, and a potentially contested convention that they did something mind buggeringly stupid. (I call this the Debbie Wasserman-Schultz hypothesis.)
  • Someone at the AP is a complete idiot, and convinced his similarly dim cow-orkers that this was a plan so cunning that you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel. (I call this the Baldrick hypothesis)
  • This is a ratf%$#ing from someone who wants to sow dissent between the Clinton and Sanders camps while diminishing whatever Clinton says today.  (I call this the Roger Stone hypothesis)

My money is on Baldrick.

    The Worst Democrat in Congress Just Did a Good Thing

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    Dan Lipinsky is by most measures the worst Democrat in Congress, a light weight who inherited the seat from his father, and has used it to oppose abortion, support anti-gay bigots, oppose healthcare reform, and sh%$ting on immigrants.

    He is a complete clusterf%$# as a Democrat, and this is the party that not long ago had Steve Israel heading the DCCC.

    That being said, his declaration that, in the event of a contested convention, he will vote for Bernie Sanders because that is how is district voted, is a righteous move:

    If there’s a contested Democratic convention this summer, Illinois Congressman Dan Lipinski says he’ll be voting for Sen. Bernie Sanders.

    Lipinski, who’ll be a superdelegate at the convention, says he’d support Sanders because the Vermont senator beat Hillary Clinton in Lipinski’s district.

    “As a Democratic member of Congress, I have a vote at the Democratic National Convention as a superdelegate. Before the Illinois primary I told Democrats in the 3rd District that I decided that I would pledge my vote to whichever candidate won the district,” Lipinski said Tuesday in a statement. “When the votes were counted, Sen. Bernie Sanders received 54 percent and Secretary Hillary Clinton received 45 percent in my district. Therefore, if there is a contested vote at the Democratic National Convention in July, I will vote for Sen. Sanders.”

    Props, but I will still support whoever runs against him in the primary.

    How Utterly Proper

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    Karl Rove’s Crossroads PAC has endorsed Debbie Wasserman-Schultz in the Democratic primary for her Congressional seat:

    The super-PAC founded by GOP operative Karl Rove on Tuesday mocked Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s (D-Fla.) leadership as a boon to Republicans and “endorsed” her reelection bid.

     American Crossroads said Wasserman Schultz’s management has led to electoral gains for Republicans and more tension among Democrats.

     “Congresswoman and DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz has played a critical role over the past several years in the massive Republican gains we have achieved at the state level, in the U.S. House of Representatives, and in the U.S. Senate,” Crossroads President and CEO Steven Law said in a statement.

     “Wasserman Schultz’s leadership has also been a catalyst for the emerging civil war in the Democratic Party this year, ensuring that their nominating process will drag on far longer than that of Republicans,” he added.

     The GOP group is backing her over her insurgent primary challenger Tim Canova.

     “Voters of the 23rd District of Florida should know — American Crossroads stands with Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz in her primary against ultra-liberal outsider Tim Canova, and they should too.”

    Obviously, this is trolling, but it is very high quality trolling.

    Quit Drawing Targets on Your Shoes, Morons

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    The useless meat sacks known as “Senate Moderates” are now prostrating themselves before the possibility of President Trump:

    As Democrats portray Donald Trump as a dangerous leader for his party, most of them barely acknowledge he could be president. But some centrist Democrats say they’re ready and willing to work with the business mogul should he defeat their party’s nominee.

     “The people will have a chance to vote. If Donald Trump is elected president there will be a great opportunity to sit down and have a conversation about what that agenda looks like,” explained Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), who has long backed Hillary Clinton. “If he’s president, we’re going to have disagreement. But we’d better all figure out how to come up with an agenda for the American people.”

     Getting ready for a potential Trump presidency in their home states may just be good politics for moderate senators such as Heitkamp, Jon Tester of Montana and West Virginia’s Joe Manchin. They’ll be top targets for Republicans in 2018, a midterm year that could favor the GOP if recent trends of lower turnouts in nonpresidential elections continue. And it’s a good bet that they’ll need Trump voters to keep their jobs.

    Seriously?

    These cheese eating surrender monkeys are panicking over the midterms, and so they are engaging in activities calculated to demoralize the base.

    It’s stupid on a policy level, it’s stupid, on a political level, it’s even worse.

    This is blind unreasoning panic.

    I’ve seen zebras chased by cheetahs that carry themselves with more grace and dignity.

    Primary Results

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    Bernie Sanders won in both the West Virginia primary and the Nebraska Democratic caucus (Oops, over a month ago), while Trump crushed it in the West Virginia primary and the Nebraska Republican primary.

    Sanders won by about 15% in both races.

    And this just in, Francisco Franco the Ted Cruz campaign is still dead.

    They Finally Lost One

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    The City Council of Austin passed regulations on ride sharing services, and Uber and Lyft spent millions in an attempt to override the vote through a plebiscite, and lost:

    Uber and Lyft spent nearly $9 million on a May 7 special election in Austin, Texas. They offered free rides to the polls, and texted users asking for their support. They pulled out all the stops in a political playbook that has worked in almost every other city in the US.

    For once, it wasn’t enough.

    Voters in the Texan capital came out against Proposition 1, upholding ride-hailing regulations that the city council passed in December. The rules are stricter than ones that Uber and Lyft face in other jurisdictions: They require drivers for the services to pass fingerprint-based background checks, to identify their cars with company emblems, and to avoid picking up and dropping off passengers in certain lanes.

    That is to say, exactly the same requirements as exist for the taxis.

    ………

    Uber, I think decided, they were going to make Austin an example to the nation,” said David Butts, a local political consultant who helped coordinate the campaign against Proposition 1, according to a report in the Austin American-Statesman. “And Austin made Uber an example to the nation.”

    Ahead of the vote, both Uber and Lyft had threatened to leave Austin should the proposition fail. Austin mayor Steve Adler invited them to stay despite the election results.

    ………

    The nay vote on Proposition 1 is all the more crushing for Uber and Lyft considering the lopsided amount of money they spent in favor of it. The companies invested a combined $8.7 million to support the proposition via their lobbying committee, Ridesharing Works for Austin, an unprecedented sum in Austin local politics. That dwarfed the $132,000 that Proposition 1’s opponents strung together from about 500 individual contributions, according to campaign finance filings.

    ………

    Uber and Lyft have cultivated the impression that their services are indispensable to cities. But Uber in particular has also spun itself as politically unbeatable. It has the money; it has the policy talent; it has the app that makes reaching potential voters as simple as sending a text or push notification to their phones.

    ………

    That’s a potent narrative. With the loss in Austin, it’s starting to come undone.

    The myth of inevitability and invincibility is central to Uber’s and Lyft’ssuccess.

    It is what allows them to move into new markets, break the law, cheat their employees, place their customers at risk, and create a multi-billion dollar stock valuation.

    It may not be the beginning of the end for the lawless players in the “sharing economy”, but it might be the end of the beginning.

    How Evocative

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    Last night said that he had mixed emotions about Ted Cruz leaving the race, because it cleared the decks for Trump:

    Is this a yay? I’m so conflicted. I mean, Ted Cruz lost, but it’s because Donald Trump won. It’s like finding out your herpes is gone but it’s because your dick fell off.

    This is an almost perfect metaphor for the campaign season.

    Here Is the Latest Scare Story about a Brexit

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    It appears that a French economist with close ties to the government is makign dire predictions about what would happen if the UK votes to leave the euro:

    Eurozone economies would gain at the expense of Britain if the UK voted to leave the EU, a leading French economist has predicted, with a relocation of financial activity out of London causing sterling to plummet.

    Mathilde Lemoine, a prominent member of the French government’s budgetary watchdog and chief economist of the Edmond de Rothschild private bank, said sterling could rapidly fall 34 per cent against the euro.

    The report by the private bank demonstrated how European finance houses could profit from Brexit if the Leave campaign wins the referendum on June 23.

    Ms Lemoine, also a former adviser to the French prime minister, wrote that the rapid relocation of financial activity would add to the “brutal drop” in sterling she expects after a vote for Brexit.

    Such a vote, she said, would “immediately” reopen the question of the location of clearing houses for eurozone business, which are mostly in London after the UK government won a case last year in the European Court of Justice. It ruled against the European Central Bank’s requirement that clearing houses of euro-denominated business between European banks had to be based in the eurozone and regulated by the ECB.

    After a Brexit vote, “it is certain that the grounds for the European Court of Justice’s decision would no longer exist,” Ms Lemoine wrote. “As a result, the European Council could immediately require clearing houses handling euro transactions to be located in the eurozone. On our calculations, sterling would fall 34 per cent against the euro in the space of three months”.

    It’s enough to make one want to invoke the proverbial briar patch.

    If  Lemoine’s predictions are true, this win for the UK:

    • Finance moves out
      • Should reduce insane real estate prices in and around London.
      • Restructuring of the economy from finance is better for 99+% of the people with less inequality, and more productive industry.
      • The corruption influence of finance and other rent seeking industries on the political system is reduced.
      • Intellectual capital that is otherwise wasted on finance and banking returns to productive pursuits.
    • Pound falls.
      • Trade balance improves, because imports are more expensive, and exports are cheaper.
      • Inflation increases, which solves the UK’s current disinflation, which will make recovery better, because people are less inclined to hoard money, and inflation devalues debts.

    This horror story really isn’t particularly horrible.

      Buh Bye Teddie………

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      The Results are in from the Hoosier state, and Bernie won, and Cruz got beat so badly that he dropped out of the race:

      Businessman and reality-TV star Donald Trump became the Republican party’s presumptive presidential nominee on Tuesday night, after Trump’s closest rival – Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) – withdrew from the race, following a crushing victory by Trump in the Indiana primary.

      The GOP’s chairman, Reince Priebus, called Trump the “presumtive [sic] GOP nominee” in a Twitter message about 9 p.m., and added a plea that “we all need to unite and focus on defeating” Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.

      In the Democratic race in Indiana, Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) was projected as the winner, taking an upset victory over Clinton. That victory will not allow Sanders to make up much ground in the race for Democratic delegates, but it will ensure that their race continues on — creating a scenario few would have seen coming last summer, with Trump gaining a head start on the Democratic nominee.

      Sanders won by about 5 points, and Trump by about 17 points.

      This makes it a pretty good night.

      Well, there was some Good Primary News Yesterday

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      As I noted a few months ago, Chris Matthews’ wife, Kathleen, was running for Congress, and that Chris Matthews was pimping his show to her campaign donors.

      Running against her was a wine mogul who spent over $1o million dollars, and the winner was the people of Maryland’s 8th district, because very liberal constitutioal law professor Jamie Raskin beat them both:

      State Sen. Jamie Raskin defeated self-funded businessman David Trone and former television news anchor Kathleen Matthews in the most expensive congressional primary race in the nation — a crowded contest in Maryland’s Montgomery County-based 8th District.

      ………

      The campaign to succeed Democratic Rep. Chris Van Hollen in the district was competitive and costly. Van Hollen’s decision to run for the Senate created a rare open seat.

      Candidates competing for the seat spent more than $14 million since last year – more than $10 million of it by Trone, who finished second.

      Trone, founder of the Total Wine & More retail stores, blanketed the district – which stretches from Montgomery County north into Frederick and Carroll counties – with television and radio ads and mailings. “We don’t take money from PACs, lobbyists or corporations,” was a prominent campaign message. His strategy included a push to win over voters who are using absentee ballots.

      ………

      Raskin won by about 7,000 votes, holding a 34 percent to 27 percent advantage over Trone. Matthews took third at 24 percent.

      If Raskin wins the general, and it is a very safe district, then Raskin will be the only out atheist in Congress.

      It’s a little thing, and I am still stuck with Dutch Ruppersberger in my district, but I’ll take it.

      And the EU Implosion Continues Apace

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      The Austrian right wing Freedom Party just scored a surprise win in its Presidential elections:

      Austria is braced for political turmoil with fears that the landslide victory for a rightwing populist and gun-carrying candidate in Sunday’s first-round presidential vote could trigger snap elections.

       Norbert Hofer, of the rightwing Freedom party (FPÖ), defied pollsters’ predictions to beat the Green party’s Alexander Van der Bellen into second place, gaining 36% of the vote. The two candidates will go head to head in a run-off ballot on 22 May.

       While the presidential post is mainly a ceremonial role, Hofer has threatened to make use of a right to dissolve parliament before the 2018 elections, warning other candidates in a TV debate that “you will be surprised by what can be done [by a president]”.

       Hofer, a youthful 45-year-old who is partially paralysed after a paragliding accident, has campaigned for disability rights and is seen as having lent a friendly face to a party that balances virulently anti-immigration and Eurosceptic messages with leftist stances on welfare issues, led by firebrand Heinz-Christian Strache.

       Hofer, who claims to protect himself in the “uncertain times” of the refugee crisis by carrying a Glock gun, scored overwhelming victories in all of Austria’s states apart from Vienna. In Styria, Burgenland and Carinthia – border states most affected by the refugee trail from the Mediterranean to central Europe – Hofer managed to gain 40% or more.

      Let’s ignore the racism right now.*

      The policies of the FPÖ are support for the welfare state, which the German dominated EU is trying to minimize, and it is skeptical of an increasingly anti-democratic structure and culture in Brussels.

      It’s not surprising that this party is popular. Their positions are popular.

      Meanwhile the mainstream parties have stapled themselves to EU policies that are based on delusional economics that are causing pain and misery for the vast majority of the population.

      It’s no wonder that the 2nd place party was the Greens, with the two mainstream parties getting absolutely demolished:

      ………

      Austria’s two main parties, which clung to a majority in the last national elections in 2013 after having run the country for most of the past 70 years, have seen approval ratings slump as they flip-flopped on the migration issue. The government’s inconsistency added to simmering domestic discontent about rising unemployment and economic stagnation.

      The presidential candidates running for Faymann’s Social Democrats and Vice Chancellor Reinhold Mitterlehner’s People’s Party took 11 percent each, and were eliminated from the run-off. They managed to beat only Richard Lugner, an octogenarian shopping-mall operator and socialite famous for his appearances at Vienna’s Opera Ball together with celebrities such as Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian.

      The European experience has not yet failed, but it has been digging itself into a hole for decades.

      It has become detached from, and disdainful of, the people that it is supposed to serve, ad its response to increasing hostility from ever larger segments of the populations is to build the walls higher on their fortress mentality.

      *Apart fromthat Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

      Endorsements in the Maryland and Pennsylvania Senate Races

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      In Maryland, I endorse Donna Edwards, because on every issue where they differ, she is right, and Chris Van Hollen is wrong.

      While he now disavows this position, he has been receptive to cutting Social Security, which is reason to never support him in the primary.

      In Pennsylvania, the Senate Primary race is between Joe Sestak and Katie McGinty.

      Sestak would be a slam dunk in this campaign, except for the fact that he defeated Arlen Specter, who had switched parties to Democrat, in the 2010 primary, which has so enraged Chuck Schumer that he has dumped a ton (something around $2 million) of money on the non-entity (she came in a distant 4th in a 4 man race for Governor in 2014) Mcginty.

      She’s never held elective office, so there’s not a whole bunch of record to go after, but she has taken a lot of energy money, including over $100,000.00 from fracking interests, and she’s trying to run as an environmentalist.

      So, it’s clear that she thinks that you fool enough people for long enough to get into office, and her dismal performance in the gubernatorial primary 2 years ago does not bode well for her ability as a campaigner, so no, just no.

      Please, make Chuck Schumer cry.

      OBama Really Wants His Poodle to Stay in the EU

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      Obama is now saying that if Britain votes to leave the EU, there won’t be a free trade deal with Britain for over 10 years.

      This is, of course, a shameless attempt to threaten the British voters into staying in the EU, so that US influence on this body is not diminished.

      The US (IMNSHO correctly) that the UK will blindly promulgate US policies and US interests within the European Union:

      The UK could take up to 10 years to negotiate trade deals with the US if it leaves the EU, Barack Obama has said.

      In a BBC interview, the US president said: “It could be five years from now, 10 years from now before we were able to actually get something done.”

      Britain would also have less influence globally if it left, he added.

      His warning over trade has angered UK campaigners for leaving the EU – with UKIP leader Nigel Farage dismissing Mr Obama’s comments as “utter tosh”.

      As much as it pains me to agree with him, Nigel Farage is right.

      Bad Bosses Strike Back!

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      In Oregon Maine, where they are proposing raising the minimum wage, along with eliminating the sub-minimum wage for tipped workers, the worst boss in the world wrote an editorial saying that her workers hated the idea of being paid fairly.

      Her workers responded by resigning en masse and described their dysfunctional workplace, and their dysfunctional boss, in exquisite detail:

      Oh hey, it’s a Maine story (about the minimum wage, no less) that doesn’t directly involve Gov. Paul LePage!

      Five servers at a restaurant in Portland called Five Fifty-Five have quit in one hell of a mic drop, giving their notice in a Portland Press Herald op-ed. The inciting incident was when their boss, Michelle Corry, wrote an op-ed that claimed to speak for her employees about the citizen-initiated ballot referendum in the state to both increase the minimum wage to $12 and eliminate the tip credit (also known as the “sub-minimum wage”). It’s the latter point that had Corry in such a huff.

      ………

      Opponents of eliminating the tip credit say that doing so would bring about a restaurant industry apocalypse and there would be much rending of garments and gnashing of teeth. Restaurant owners in states like California, Washington, Oregon, and Minnesota, which pay their servers a guaranteed living wage and, at last check, had not devolved into a Road Warrior-esque hellscape, say “Um, not so much?”

      Right, back to Maine and Michelle Corry’s op-ed. So, Corry argued strongly for a counter-proposal to the ballot initiative that would raise the minimum wage to only $10 and keep the tip credit intact. Since at last blush 75 percent of the state is in favor of raising the minimum wage, anti-minimum wage douchebuckets (even LePage — dammit, he showed up in this post despite our best efforts) know they’re going to have to compromise at least a little bit here, and the counter-proposal is that compromise. But in arguing for it, Corry tried to speak for those it would directly affect:

      Ask any tipped employee at a restaurant near you if they would prefer to make a set wage or hustle and create their own destiny. The employees at my restaurant would always choose their own initiative.

      Putting words in her servers’ mouths turned out to be a less-than-ideal move on her part.

      There have been many issues at the restaurant, from capricious schedule changes to questionable practices on wages and tips. This latest insult of our boss falsely claiming to speak publicly on our behalf on an issue we care deeply about is just the final straw. We are submitting our notice and will be leaving her employment.

      Translation: whatever the incredibly white Maine equivalent is of “oh HELL naw.”

      The kicker to all of this is that Michelle Corry is the vice chair of the Maine Restaurant Association.

      It is highly unlikely that I am going to be in Portland, Maine in the near future, but if I do, I won’t be going to Five Fifty-Five.

      H/t Atrios.