Category: Elections

Ahmadinejad Foe Elected Speaker of Parliament

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This is not at all surprising. Except to the degree that he inflames the west, Ahmadinejad appears to be considered the George W. Bush of Iran, a complete loser and not too bright.

Ali Larijani, the new speaker, was previously the chief negotiator for Iran’s nuclear program, but should not be considered a moderate:

Larijani, who has also been a culture minister and head of the state-run broadcasting operations, has emerged as a powerful politician in recent years, running against Ahmadinejad for president in 2005. He was a critic of the country’s nuclear policies under the reformist president, Mohammad Khatami, and opposed the decision to suspend uranium enrichment. Yet his position moderated after he became the nuclear negotiator in 2005 and tried to press back against Ahmadinejad’s radical approach, which had left Iran increasingly isolated.

He is considered close to Ayatollah Khamenei, who has the final word on state matters. Larijani remained Ayatollah Khamenei’s representative at the Supreme National Security Council despite his October resignation.

Senate Poll Numbers

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All are from Rasmussen Reports™.

Election 2008: Kentucky Senate: Lunsford (D) 49% McConnell (R) 44%

This surprises me….I’d love to see Mitch McConnell get bounced, and this is a very bad number for him

Election 2008: Minnesota Senate: Coleman (R) 47% Franken (D) 45%

Franken took a hit over his tax issues, but most undecideds break against the incumbent, so I still think that there is a good chance for a pickup. If there is a debate, I think that Franken will clean Coleman’s clock.

Election 2008: Kansas Senate: Roberts 52% Slattery 40%

I’m stunned that this one is so close. Kansas doesn’t send Democrats to the Senate. Slattery could win this, but he has to get everything right.

Sebelius Vetoes Republican Attempt to Criminalize N***ers Voting

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In Kansas, thankfully there aren’t quite enough Republithugs in the legislature to override her veto of their so-called “voter-ID bill”.

Interesting point was that she had already vetoed a similar bill last year, and they came back with one that eliminated the fee for an ID for low income Kansans.

They didn’t do that in the first place because they don’t want low income Kansans to vote.

Congressional Polls Update

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DSCC: Ronnie Musgrove leads Roger Wicker, who was appointed to replace Lott, by 8%, 48% to 40%. Obviously, as this is a partisan poll, it can be taken with a grain of salt, but any time an incumbent, even one who has been in office for just a few weeks is at 40%, they are in trouble

Rasmussen Reports™ has Kay Hagan(D) leading Liddy Dole(R) by 1%, 48% to 47% in North Carolina, well with in the margin of error, but with Dole as a prominent incumbent being below 50%, she’s got a fight.

They also have Marc Udall with a 6% lead over Bob Shaffer in Colorado, 47% to 41% in the race to replace retiring Senator Wayne Allard with a margin of ±4%.

Zimbabwe Update

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There are now allegations of assassination plans against Morgan Tsvangirai though he is planning to return. It has been put off a couple of times now, but he needs to start campaigning soon, as the date for the presidential runoff is set at June 27.

In the department of Kafka, we have Mugabe accusing the MDC of political violence and arresting newly elected MDC MPs.

In related news, violence against refugees, particularly those from Zimbabwe is spreading across South Africa.

With unemployment among the poor in excess of 30%, and the use of refugee labor to keep down native wages as an unofficial policy of the government, this was foreseeable.

However, a part of this may very be a result fact that the refugee flows have been driven by Thabo Mbeki’s unqualified support of Robert Mugabe, and so some element of rage against him, particularly now that he is a lame duck, may be a contributing factor.

Finally, the International Crisis Group is warning of the possibility of a military coup. I agree.

I could see them deposing Mugabe before the elections, as really believes that he cannot be defeated in the election, and senior officials in the state security apparatus harbor no such delusions. They stole the first round.

They realize that investigations into human rights violations over the years would be a personal threat to them.

GOP Retirements Crippling Fund Raising

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With changes to lobbying rules at the beginning of this yearmaking revolving door payoffs more difficult, the unpleasantness of being the minority party, and the prospect of losing a seat in what was once a safe election, Republican incumbents are retiring in droves, and now it’s reported that this is crippling their fund raising apparatus:

Of the 32 Republicans who have resigned or announced plans to retire, 26 have political action committees known as leadership PACs — which members of Congress typically use to make donations to colleagues facing tough campaigns. Those 26 PACs raised $17 million in the last campaign cycle, but only $5.3 million for this election, a USA TODAY analysis of the latest campaign reports filed in March and April shows.

The bigger picture is that when your fund raising is based on bribery and extortion, which is what Tom Delay’s “K Street Project” was, you can no longer raise money if you lack the power to deliver.

Fee for service also means no fee for no service.

No, Make That Hell No!

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Publius makes an an argument that the realities of votes and politics require that the Democrats keep Joe Lieberman in his chairmanship on the Homeland Security Committee.

While his arguments are logical, they are also wrong. They are predicated on the idea that he generally votes with the Dems, and this is really not true. He votes with the Dems when it does not matter, so he voted against Alito, and voted for Cloture.

If he is the 60th vote for cloture, he will not vote for cloture, because as he has already made clear, he is intent on extracting vengeance against a Democratic party that he feels has betrayed him.

As to whether you allow him to caucus with the Dems, that’s their business, but he should not be chairman of anything significant, particularly homeland security, which has been politicized, and needs to be de-Bushified.

Any authority that he is granted will merely serve his petty vendetta.

Texas Attorney General Does Not Think that N***ers Should Vote

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Once again, we have a wingnut trying to prove massive vote fraud, and once again, despite his best effort he cannot find anything, this time in the wingnuttiest of states, Texas.

Attorney General Greg Abbott, a ‘Phant, entered office pledging to, ” root out what he called an epidemic of voter fraud in Texas”.

Net result: 26 prosecutions, almost all against blacks and Hispanics, because in Texas, it’s a crime for darkies to vote.

In 18 of the 26 cases, people were prosecuted for neglecting to put their name on the envelope when they carried it to the mailbox for someone else.

They did encounter some real vote fraud in the remaining cases, it appears to be about a dozen votes, no doubt Bigot Abbot will use as justification to aggressively pursue voting while dark prosecutions.

The Republicans Are Starting to Attack Each Other

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It appears that the Loss in the special election has shaken them up something fierce:

House Republicans turned on themselves yesterday after a third straight loss of a GOP-held House seat in special elections this year left both parties contemplating widespread Democratic gains in November.

The Republicans have a real problem. When the Dems lost power in 1994, it was because of a few bounced checks in the house bank, not delivering on healthcare, and supporting NAFTA.

When you consider the war, child molestation (Foley), corruption, incompetence, etc. of the Republicans, it’s going to be a lot longer than 12 years for them.

Happy dance!!!!

Today’s Elections

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Hillary stomped Barack in West Virginia….No Surprise there.

However, there are some other elections of interest, in Mississippi, you have Democrat Travis Childers running against Greg Davis in a district that went 62%-37% for Bush in 2004.

Childers won the first round, but was just short of an absolute majority, and as of about 10pm EST, courtesy of the Cotton Mouth Blog:
CHILDERS (D) 42,029 – 51%
DAVIS (R) 40,275 – 49%
(366 of 462 precints reporting)

Update: AP Calls it for Childers, and there was much rejoicing.

We also have a primary contest in Nebraska between Scott Kleeb and Tony Raimondo for US Senate. Kleeb has gotten a fair amount of netroots support, and Raimondo was a Republican until he decided he wanted to run for senate, so I’m pulling for the guy with the 5 letter name.

At this moment, the NE Secretary of State is showing Kleeb with a 68%-26% lead over Raimondo with 24% reporting.

Keeping N***ers from Voting

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The bigots in this country moved from Democratic to Republican over the past 50 years, and now Republicans in Missouri are doing their level best to reinstate the poll test.

They are going one step beyond the photo ID requirement in Indiana, Missouri is now attempting to require voters to provide proof of citizenship, either a birth certificate or a passport.

Lillie Lewis, a voter who lives in St. Louis and spoke at a news conference last week organized to oppose the amendment, said she already had a difficult time trying to get a photo ID from the state, which asked her for a birth certificate. Ms. Lewis, who was born in Mississippi and said she was 78 years old, said officials of that state sent her a letter stating that they had no record of her birth.

“That’s downright wrong,” Ms. Lewis said. “I have voted in almost all of the presidential races going back I can’t remember how long, but if they tell me I need a passport or birth certificate that’ll be the end of that.”

Look at this woman, and know that the sponsor of this amendment to the state constitutional, State Representative Stanley Cox, thinks that this is just fine, because he does not want N***ers to vote.

Zimbabwe Runoff to Be Delayed, ZANU-PF Placing Conditions on Election Observers

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Theoretically, the runoff for president of Zimbabwe is supposed to be held within 21 days of the announcement of results, but the electoral commission is saying that it will not be able to conduct an election in that time frame.

I’m not sure how much is organizational incompetence, and how much is the desire of ZANU-PF to have time to use the state security forces to intimidate the opposition.

The MDC has demanded outside observers/peacekeepers for the elections, and Mugabe’s government has not been receptive, to put it mildly.

They are now demanding an end to economic sanctions before allowing western observers in.

Iraq Plans to Go “Apocalypse Now” Out in Sadr City

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They are ordering civilians to leave, and they are preparing tent cities in soccer stadiums. I think that they intend to go Fallujah on Sadr City, where somewhere around half the buildings were destroyed.

The problem is that neither the US military nor the Iraqi government can take care of the thousands of people who will be displaced by this.

Nouri al-Maliki must be desperate to get rid of the Sadrists before the provincial elections.

Zimbabwe Elections Update

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Any similarities between this and Bush v. Gore are not coincidental….Though the MDP has a lot more in the way of Cojones than do the Dems.

We now the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) saying that they doubt the official presidential election results, and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is talking about some sort of UN in the runoff elections.

In the parliamentary elections, we have protests on over half the seats, with the ZANU-PF and the MDC lodging 53 and 52 seats respectively.

In the what took you so long, the Zimbabwean opposition is calling for Mbeki’s replacement as mediator. Seeing as how Thabo Mbeki has done everything in his power to support Mugabe, it is not surprising that he has no credibility left.

Unfortunately, it appears that the MDC will not participate in the runoff, at least that’s their word for now, as they claim that Morgan Tsvangirai won outright.

He probably did, but a boycott won’t help.

Journalists, lawyer arrested in Zimbabwe – CNN.com