Category: Elections

Obama to Paterson: Drop Dead

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So, Barack Obama’s people have told New York Governor David Paterson that he should not run for reelection, and to put a cap on this, they have leaked this to the press.

New York State government is supremely dysfunctional, and one of the main reasons is because the Republicans managed to Gerrymander themselves into a state senate majority for a very long time, because everyone on both sides of the aisle were cool with it, so long as they were winners in the incumbent-protection racket redistricting process too.

Now that Republicans have weakened enough to lose their hold on the senate, and now that there are indications that the senate will likely stay lost to them in next few cycles, their former Joesph Bruno is under indictment, we have the spectacle of the what might be the most incompetent Governor in the nation insisting that he will run for reelection, which might very well place Republicans back in the Governor’s mansion when redistricting rolls around in 2012 or so.

Cruising Wiki For Information on South Carolina’s 2nd Congressional District

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Just in case you want to get the lay of the land of SC’s 2nd Congressional district, I checked out recent electoral history for the district.

Truth be told, it’s a tough row to hoe:

Year Democrat Votes Pct Republican Votes Pct
2000 Jane Frederick 110,672 41% Floyd Spence 154,338 57%
2001 Brent Weaver 14,034 25% Joe Wilson 40,355 73% <Special Election
2002 (no candidate) Joe Wilson 144,149 84%
2004 Michael Ellisor 93,249 33% Joe Wilson 181,862 65%
2006 Michael Ellisor 76,090 37% Joe Wilson 127,811 63%
2008 Rob Miller 158,627 46% Joe Wilson 184,583 54%

Though the best performance against Wilson to date was Rob Miller’s loss by 8%, so it is entirely reasonable to consider this race to be competitive, particularly since Miller has raised about $¾ million, $733,608.00 on Act Blue alone at the time of this post (below break), and Mr. Miller has name recognition from his last run, and he has generated a lot of buzz in the past 36 hours or so.

Vote Fraud Discovered in Afghanistan

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I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here!
Shaded Regions Indicate Fraud

It appears that the level of vote fraud is so bad that even the Afghan Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC), a group of Karzai toadies, has admitted to widespread vote fraud:

There was “clear and convincing evidence of fraud” in Paktika, Kandahar and Ghazni, areas that largely backed President Hamid Karzai, it said.

Earlier this week results from 600 stations where there were suspected irregularities were “quarantined”.

…

The ECC said in a statement that its investigations in Ghazni found “a number of indicators of fraud”.

Those included unfolded ballots, votes for candidates inserted inside bundles for other candidates, miscounted ballots, missing material, uniformity of markings, seal numbers which did not match numbers on the record of seals and lists of voters with numerous fictitious card numbers, the statement said.

All from Karzai strongholds. (Bottom pic, darker regions)

What a surprise.

GM Bails Out Angela Merkel’s Reelection Hopes

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They decided to sell to Magna, whose bid had been anointed by Merkel and the CDU party.

I’m not sure that Merkel can lose now.

Of course, with the SDP categorically refusing to form a coalition with the Left Party, we’re likely to end up with the status quo after elections anyway: The SDP gets the most seats and votes, but by refusing to ally with the Left Party, it means that the CDU-FDP coalition has more seats than the SDP-Green coalition, and the SDP is once again forced to be a junior coalition member.

This may have been “responsible” in 2005, when the last elections happened, but in 2009, after pretty much every single complaint of the LP about the excesses of capitalism have proved true, it’s just stupid.

An Endorsement

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I have added Rob Miller to Matthew Saroff’s Act Blue Page.

You may not know who he is, but he is running for Congress in SC-02 against incombent Joe Wilson (R). Joe Wilson is the guy who shouted, “You Lie” during Obama’s speech.

The ironic part is that if he had said that in response one of the most objectively true assertions during the whole speech.

Miller appears to have raised something like $100K in the past 12 almost 300K in the past 16 hours over $300K in the past 18 hours.

Aw hell…Is there a way to dynamically embed this data?

Ahhh, here we go:


Had to use the depreciated “iframe” tag to make it work in IE.

Any hints on how to make the “embed” tag, aka proper HTML, work in MicroFlaccid’s browser?

Just How F%$#ing Stupid Does Hamid Karzai Think We Are?

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So, the vote count in Afghanistan is done, and now Karzai has 54.1% of the vote, he was at about 48% at 70% of the vote, so the “late reporting precincts” had to deliver him something like 68%. (also here)

There are non existent polling places, polling places occupied by his supporters, etc.

Here is the money quote:

One Western official said that had the Afghan Independent Election Commission not decided on Monday to undo a decision it made the day before to enforce stricter safeguards, Mr. Karzai’s vote total would still be under 50 percent, forcing him into a second election against Mr. Abdullah.

The election commission had moved on Sunday to carry out precautions intended to catch a number of voting irregularities. But as it became clear that those safeguards would prevent Mr. Karzai from surpassing the 50 percent threshold, the decision was reversed Monday, and the election commission announced that it had no legal authority to exclude the ballots, the Western official said.

“He was below 50 percent when you exclude the obviously fraudulent votes,” said the official, who spoke anonymously according to diplomatic protocol.

This is actually an opportunity for Obama. Now he can tell the generals that he afraid to offend to get the hell out of Dodge. It’s what Kennedy should have done after Diem’s assassination.

If he does not use this to extricate himself from the “Graveyard of Empires,” he’s going to be Johnson in 1968 without the accomplishments of Johnson in 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, and 1967, and it won’t be pretty, because whatever Republican gets the nomination, you can be sure that they will not be as intelligent, welcoming, or honorable as Richard M. Nixon….I think that I just hurt something saying that last bit.

The Very Modern Model of a Modern Republican Candidate

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Republican Virginia gubernatorial candidate Robert McDonald mentioned in an interview with the Washington Post that he did a masters thesis on “welfare policy,” and the Post went and did some real journalism: they went to the library at Regent University, Pat Robertson’s diploma mill, which was called Christian Broadcasting Network University at the time that he filed his papers.

What they found was shocking, though not surprising:

  • Called working women “detrimental to the family”.
  • Opposition to birth control.
  • Absolute ban on abortions, including where rape, incest, and the health of the mother are issues.
  • Covenant marriage (basically making divorces much more difficult).
  • Support for religious school vouchers.
  • Opposed tax breaks for child care expenses.

I am so not shocked that he is a right wing medieval nut job, but I think that some Virginia voters might be.

I’m shocked though that the Washington Post actually allowed real journalism to reach its pages. This article is positively brutal, and deservedly so.

Democratic Party of Japan Defeats Liberal Democratic Party

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This is a major change in government, with the DPJ ending over 50 years of LDP rule, winning 308 of the 480 seats in the Diet.

I’m not sure how much of this is ideology, and how much is just that the voters were sick and tired of the LDP, which has been an increasingly rudderless bastion of cronyism.

From what I understand of the DPJ, their ideology is not particularly clear either.

They seem to be a bit more assertive on the foreign policy front, and a bit more inclined to developing internal consumer markets, but the differences are not much.

I do think that anti-American sentiment provided some of their votes, and we will see this all over the world for the next few decades, as we continue to feel reverberations of the absolute disgust of the population at US diplomacy under Bush and His Evil Minions&trade.

In many of the industrial democracies, we have an age cohort that has come to political awareness over the past 8 years, and their sense of the US is not as a beneficial influence in the world.

As they move into leadership positions in the next 20-30 years, we will see an increasingly confrontational foreign policy from them.

Talking to God Does Not Make You Crazy

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But when you hear him answering back, in complete sentences, and he is saying, “Michelle Bachmann, you should run for President….Well, yes, that is batsh%$ insane.

To be fair, Michelle Bachmann is not claiming that God told her to run for President, though she did say that God told her to run for Congress, she’s just saying that she expects God to ask her to run for president.

“The phrase ‘paranoid schizophrenic with delusions of grandeur’ is not in the aardvark’s vocabulary, so, in his mind, he substitutes ‘crazy as a panrovian monk’ . . . ” (Cerebus #5 p 13)

I feel embarrassment sharing a country with her….How do her constituents not go through life with bags over their heads to conceal their identities.

Unbelievably Bad Political Analysis

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Someone at Political Wire declares that Richard Burr (R-NC) is comfortably ahead of all potential challengers, because he has 43% of the voter against all of the, 43%-31% against Elaine Marshall, 43%-28% vs Cal Cunningham, and 43%-27% against Kenneth Lewis.

Just so you know, the rule of thumb is that undecideds break at least 2:1 against the incumbent,* so any time an incumbent is below 50%, they are in trouble, and an incumbent at 43%, is is very real trouble, particularly when his approval number is 38%.

This number has his campaign staff soiling their drawers.

Morons.

*I ran the numbers against Elaine Marshall and it comes to a 3% margin in the best case.

I Got Nothing Here

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Seriously, this actual letter from Michelle Bachmann (R-Land of Oz), leaves me without a proper rejoinder.

I know that there should be some sort of rejoinder to this, something witty and devastating, but the stupidity, and self-centered immaturity stun me, and I’ve got a 12 year old daughter:

Don’t let them Palinize me!

Dear Friend:

Last month, I appeared on Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News Channel. I was talking about the Democrats’ latest scheme to pick the taxpayer’s pocket to pay for a $1.5-billion slush fund for ACORN.

Before getting into the meat of this terrible new anti-taxpayer proposal, Sean Hannity said that he considers me “the second most hated Republican woman,” second only to Governor Sarah Palin.

With Governor Palin taking a well-deserved step out of the spotlight, it appears that I may be absorbing even more of the liberals’ scorn.

And, I’d really appreciate your support so that I can defend myself against their attacks. Click here to make a donation!

I’m out there every day speaking the truth about their attempts to guide this nation into socialism:

• Their government-run health care proposal that will put government bureaucrats in between you and your doctor and end up rationing care — and the most vulnerable will suffer first and most.

• Their cap-and-trade national energy tax that will drive up energy costs for every American and send our jobs overseas.

• Their spending spree that has pushed the national budget deficit over the $1 trillion mark for the first time in our history. We’re already closing in on $2 trillion and there’s no end in sight to their spending.

• Their dozens of White House czars with power over your lives and futures and absolutely no accountability to Congress or the people.

• And, speaking of unaccountable — when are they going to open up the Fed’s books to the public?

• Their political patronage to groups like ACORN — doling out billions of your tax dollars and partnering with them to collect your private information for the Census.

But just as they did with Sarah Palin, the more I talk about the issues, the more they attack with below-the-belt personal hits. In fact, yesterday, a Minnesota paper gave a full column to a hit piece on one of my kids!

Can you help me to defend against these attacks? Click here to make a donation! [Yeah, like I’d supply a frelling link to that nutjob]

I’ll tell you the truth: Their sticks and stones will not stop me from going out and speaking the truth about their bad policies! And, your support really helps!

God bless and thank you for your support.

Sincerely,

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann

From the Urban Dictionary:

Palinize:

To smear or mock someone using falsehoods, baseless accusations or unsubstantiated character assassinations for the purpose of blocking them from achieving a goal.

To exaggerate the truth or lie by omission.

To attack a person for his or her conservative values by focusing an inordinate amount of attention on a single example of that person falling short (or being perceived as falling short) of the values they espouse.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to wrap my head before it f$#%ing explodes.

I would note, however, that she does not give one of the more popular definitions from the Urban Dictionary, you know, something like, Palinize, “When someone answers a question without any form of intelligence or foresight. In an attempt to divert from giving a correct answer and in the process sounding unintelligible.”

Senator Mel Martinez (R-FL) Resigns

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No indications of any “hikes along the Appalachian trail,” my guess is that he is just sick and tired of an increasingly racist and anti-Hispanic GOP, and wants out.

It may also be that he does not want to be in the position of ,making the swing vote for cloture on healthcare reform, and you still need 60 votes even if he is gone (it rounds up).

Charlie Crist, who is running to replace him in 2010 (he had announced that he would not seek reelection) would appoint his successor, but has promised that he will nto appoint himself, so the dynamics are interesting.

Specter Loses Lead to Toomey In General Election Matchup

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The latest Quinnipiac poll has them in a dead heat, Specter 45%, Toomey 44%, while a Sestak/Toomey matchup has Toomey leading 39% to 35%.

The obvious implication here, beside the fact that a lot of people do not know who eityher Sestak or Toomey are, is that there are a lot of people who are voting for Specter, and not for Toomey, and that despite the strong support of the Democratic establishment, he is not a strong candidate in the general.

Specter is also generally a weasel, but that is another story.

Pig Fight!!!!!!!

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It looks like the primary campaign between Arlen Spector and Joe Sestak is heating up, with Specter calling Sestak a hypocrite for not registering as a Democrat until a few years back, and Sestak has responded that he felt that it was his obligation as a military officer not to declare party affiliation until he left the service.

Seeing as how the person making the initial attack about insufficient party loyalty is Democrat-turned-Republican-turned-Democrat Specter, I’m inclined to go with Joe Sestak.

So it would seem are a fair number of campaign donors, as Sestak raised over a million dollars in this Spring.

Additionally, even if Specter were a better Senator than Sestak, and there are some issues where Spector is closer to me than he is to Sestak, Specter being challenged by Sestak is a better Senator than just Specter.

We are not hearing any more of the crap about how he won’t toe any party line, and he’s fallen into line on labor, healthcare, and climate change legislation as a result of this challenge.