Watching Maddow, and she said, “Rand Paul, the Republican Party Frontrunner for the Republican Nomination in 2016.”
President Aqua Buddha ……… Shudder.
Category: Presidential Campaign
The Demon Sheep Lady? Seriously?
No, Really, Carly paid to make this ad
Carly Fiorina is looking at running for President:
Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO who unsuccessfully ran for U.S. Senate in California in 2010, is diving back into electoral politics.
For now, her work is focused on pushing back against Democrats’ claim of a Republican-led “war on women” in the 2014 midterms. But her recent moves in the first-in-the-nation primary state of New Hampshire have convinced some she’s eyeing a bigger prize come 2016.
Fiorina slipped into the Granite State last week to promote her new political group, dubbed UP for “Unlocking Potential.” Its mission is to engage women with new messages and combat the gaping gender gap that’s hobbling Republicans in races up and down the ballot. In addition to headlining a breakfast last Thursday for more than 200 GOP activists in the business and political spheres, Fiorina attended a GOP gala the night before honoring Joe McQuaid, the conservative publisher of the New Hampshire Union Leader, the state’s largest and most influential newspaper.
Jim Merrill, a top adviser to Mitt Romney’s 2012 New Hampshire campaign, is interpreting the largely under-the-radar moves as a sign of someone that’s at least pondering a White House bid.
“I thought of it as a testing-the-waters exercise and she got a great response,” Merrill says. “It was very clear to me she’s someone taking the temperature of New Hampshire.”
It wasn’t Fiorina’s first trip to New Hampshire this year, either. She was the keynote speaker at the Northeastern Republican Leadership Conference in Nashua in March, when she declared, “The highest calling of leadership and of our nation is to change the order of things. It is time.”
Carly Fiorina, who came to prominence as a senior executive responsible for sales at Lucent, where she was touted as a success, but it all imploded into a morass of shady accounting and fraud shortly after she left.
Then became CEO at HP, where her purchase of Compaq (and DEC, which had been purchased by Compaq) turned out to be largely a disaster, and when she was fired, employees at multiple locations of HP spontaneously singing “Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead.”
Finally, we have her “Demon Sheep” Senate campaign. (See the attached vid)
Damn! The Republicans have a wicked thin bench for 2016!
Chock Full of Awesome
Oh, Not this Sh%$ Again
Jeb Bush is now saying that he is thinking about running for President in 2016:
Jeb Bush on Wednesday was the most vocal he’s been about considering a run for the White House in 2016.
The Republican told a crowd of about 200 people at a Catholic Charities fundraiser in New York that he is “thinking about running for president,” according to an attendee.
The response came to one of the first questions posed to Bush at the Union League luncheon. After his answer, the room went wild, and then someone said they hoped he would take the step.
Please, God, make it stop!
Another Bush?
Haven’t they done enough to destroy this country?
Drip, Drip, Drip
Christie appointed Chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, David Samson, has resigned as a result of scandals that came to light following the “Bridgegate” scandal:
Gov. Chris Christie on Friday announced the resignation of the chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey — the highest-ranking public official to step down during the scandal over lane closings at the George Washington Bridge — as he embarked on an aggressive campaign to re-establish himself on the national stage.
The chairman, David Samson, an éminence grise in New Jersey politics and a cherished adviser to Mr. Christie, had been under fire for his role in the lane closings since January, when emails suggested that he was more concerned about the political ramifications for Mr. Christie than drivers stuck in traffic. That was followed by a steady beat of accusations about conflicts of interest between his role at the Port Authority and his law practice.
With those conflicts under investigation by federal authorities, he had declined to cooperate with an internal investigation Mr. Christie had commissioned.
First, let me criticize the editor at the New York Times: When a reporter uses the term, “éminence grise,” (which means behind the scene power) even at the Gray Lady, it is the job of the editor to take out his red pen, and scrawl “BS” all over this.
“Éminence grise“, seriously?
On a slightly more serious note, while I do not know if Chris Christie will be frog marched out of the New Jersey’s Governor’s Mansion in handcuffs, his putative presidential campaign is done.
The fallout from “Bridgegate” and the subsequent developments are peeling his allies away from him like one would peel an onion.
Note also that the press’s man crush on Jabba the Governor has ended, which can be shown by the latest NY Times editorial, from the board, which leads with, “The only thing wrong with the resignation announcement on Friday of David Samson, Gov. Chris Christie’s top appointee to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, was that it took so long.”
The Republicans Jump C. Megalodon
C. Megalodon*
It appears with the implosion of Chris Christie over Bridgegate, Ted Cruz being loathed by every mainstream candidate in the nation, Jim DeMint being the architect of their disastrous government shutdown, Bobby Jindal being too creepy for words, Rick Perry being too stupid (too inarticulate, and ……… oops), Paul Ryan is too creepy, and Rand Paul being too ……… Rand Paul, the Republican Presidential bench is rather lacking for 2016.
It appears that the Republicans are casting about for a viable candidate, and Joe Scarborough’s name has been mooted:
For the past several months, we’ve heard a lot about Joe Scarborough’s blueprint for the Republican Party to get back on track.
The congressman-turned-pundit has been talking about that stuff for years, of course, but it reached a fever pitch last November with the release of his book, “The Right Path.”
“The buzz among GOP insiders is that ‘The Right Path’ has the potential to galvanize conservatives in the way Barry Goldwater’s ‘Conscience of a Conservative’ did half a century ago — especially conservatives ready to return to the winning ways of Ronald Reagan, who is on the cover, shown striding down the White House colonnade,” gushed Politico’s buzz arbiter Mike Allen.
Scarborough talked to TPM about the book, casually suggesting that “Joe Scarborough’s worldview” was in sync with “Ronald Reagan’s worldview and Bill Buckley’s worldview and Margaret Thatcher’s worldview.”
You knew where this was going.
Inevitably, Joe Scarborough’s book tour was viewed as a springboard for Joe Scarborough’s 2016 presidential campaign. A few months after the book’s release, The Daily Caller’s Alex Pappas reported that it’s “widely believed” at MSNBC that Scarborough has presidential aspirations.
Two days after that story ran, Scarborough told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that he “won’t rule anything out.”
I know that somehow or other the Republicans will find a nominee in 2016, but this is beginning to look like the life cycle of a drummer for Spın̈al Tap.
*The largest shark, and likely largest predator fish ever. It died out some 1.5 million years ago. The Genus is still in dispute, between either Carcharodon (Great White) or Carcharocles (broad toothed Mako). But in either case, you are jumping C. Megalodon, you have jumped the biggest shark ever.
Run, Bernie, Run!!!!!!!
If Bernie Sanders runs for President, he has my vote:
Bernie Sanders says he is “prepared to run for president of the United States.” That’s not a formal announcement. A lot can change between now and 2016, and the populist senator from Vermont bristles at the whole notion of a permanent campaign. But Sanders has begun talking with savvy progressive political strategists, traveling to unexpected locations such as Alabama and entertaining the process questions that this most issue-focused member of the Senate has traditionally avoided.
In some senses, Sanders is the unlikeliest of prospects: an independent who caucuses with the Democrats in the Senate but has never joined the party, a democratic socialist in a country where many politicians fear the label “liberal,” an outspoken critic of the economic, environmental and social status quo who rips “the ruling class” and calls out the Koch brothers by name. Yet, he has served as the mayor of his state’s largest city, beaten a Republican incumbent for the US House, won and held a historically Republican Senate seat and served longer as an independent member of Congress than anyone else. And he says his political instincts tell him America is ready for a “political revolution.”
I want to see someone who does more than pay lip service to liberal policies, and Bernie would do that.
I’m not sure how serious he is.
At this point, he does not even have an Act Blue page set up for the 2016 Presidential campaign.
Hillary Drops the H-Bomb
No, I do not mean thermonuclear weapons, I mean the full up Godwin.
She invoked Hitler on the events in the Ukraine:
Hillary Clinton Likens Russia’s Passport Move In Ukraine To Nazi Germany
Hillary Clinton likened aspects of Russia’s involvement in Crimean Ukraine to Nazi Germany during a fundraising event, according to two people present.
Buzzfeed, citing two sources, reported that the former secretary of State said at a fundraiser on Tuesday that Russia’s move to start issuing passports in Crimean Ukraine was akin to “population transfers” that happened in Nazi Germany during World War II.
“Now if this sounds familiar, it’s what Hitler did back in the 30s,” Clinton said according to the Long Beach Press-Telegram. “All the Germans that were … the ethnic Germans, the Germans by ancestry who were in places like Czechoslovakia and Romania and other places, Hitler kept saying they’re not being treated right. I must go and protect my people and that’s what’s gotten everybody so nervous.”
Seriously, her need to go to war at the drop of a hat was why she did not get the nomination in 2008, and here she is making John McCain look like Timothy Leary.
She is not going to be the President-Elect in November of 2016. Hillary Clinton just flushed that down the toilet.
Pass the F%$#ing Popcorn
There are now rumors that former Congressman and current MSNBC journalistic impersonater Joe Scarborough is considering a run for President:
This is only slightly less embarrassing than engaging with a rumor about Donald Trump, how do they say, “mulling a presidential bid,” so let’s start with an apology: I’m sorry. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get down to the lowly business of the day. Joe Scarborough, co-host of MSNBC’s wake-up chat show “Morning Joe,” is “mulling a presidential bid,” according to a couple of anonymous people and Mark McKinnon, who spoke to Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller website. What a world.
Even without the inevitability of some Republican Karl Rove wannabee making an issue of Lori Klausutis, his candidacy would make the Freddie Dalton Thompson clown look like the Obama campaign.
BTW, that rumbling you feel is not an earthquake. It is the writing staff of The Daily Show frantically high fiving each other.
Hillary Will Not Be the Dem Nominee in 2016
I know that she seems invincible, but she seemed invincible in 2007, and her Iraq War vote killed her campaign.
Well, now she has strongly endorsed bombs for peace in Syria (king of like f%$#ing for virginity):
Former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday endorsed President Obama’s call for military strikes against Syria and said “it would be an important step” if Syrian President Bashar al-Assad surrendered his stockpile of chemical weapons.
“The Assad regime’s inhuman use of weapons of mass destruction against innocent men, women and children violates a universal norm at the heart of our global order, and therefore it demands a strong response from the international community, led by the United States,” she said.
Clinton, a potential 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, made her first public remarks on Syria during a previously scheduled appearance at the White House. She said she had just come from a meeting with Obama, during which they discussed a proposal advanced by Russia to avert U.S. military strikes by having Assad turn over control of the country’s chemical weapons to international monitors.
She said that such a move would be important but that “this cannot be another excuse for delay or obstruction, and Russia has to support the international community’s efforts sincerely or be held to account.”
She also suggested that the Russian proposal came about only because of a “credible military threat by the United States.”
She’s been coy about running, but anyone who votes for this clusterf%$# in not going to get the nomination, and she has learned her lesson.
I will say that my opinion of her has improved in the past few days, if just because her successor appears to be either batsh%$ insane, or a flat out liar, or both.
I think that this is a tell. Clinton is not running.
If she had been more reticent, and less explicit, she would have been position to thread the needle.
She chose not to, and it appears to me to be a conscious choice which flows from her not running for President.
I could be wrong though, my predictions usually are.
I’m a Little Bit Less Enthused About Martin O’Malley Now
It turns out that he campaigned with corrupt Joe Lieberman wannabee Cory Booker:
Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) will campaign for New Jersey Senate candidate Cory Booker (D) on Thursday.
The governor, considered a likely 2016 presidential contender, sent out a tweet on Tuesday alerting his followers to his plans.
“Excited to join @corybooker on the campaign trail in New Jersey this Thursday,” he tweeted.
According to PolitickerNJ, O’Malley will make stops on his own in Trenton and Paterson and appear with Booker in Newark, N.J.
He’s previously helped another New Jersey Democrat, gubernatorial candidate Barbara Buono, to raise cash, lending his name to a fundraising email sent out by her campaign last month.
I understand the motivation, he wanted to hook up with a winning campaign to show that he has some political pull to aid his embryonic presidential bid, but Booker is a corrupt bankster loving SOB.
Oh, well.
The 2016 Coup Attempt Begins
The Republicans are looking to change electoral vote allocation to favor Republicans in 2016:
Earlier this week, Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus endorsed a Republican plan to rig the next presidential election to make it nearly impossible for the Democratic candidate to win the White House, no matter who the American people vote for. The election-rigging plan, which would allocate electoral votes by congressional district rather than by states as a whole in a handful of states that consistently vote for Democratic presidential candidates, would have allowed Mitt Romney to narrowly win the Electoral College last November despite losing the popular vote by nearly four points.
On Monday, seven Pennsylvania Republican state representatives introduced a bill to make this vote-rigging scheme a reality in their state. Under their bill, the winner of Pennsylvania as a whole will receive only 2 of the state’s 20 electoral votes, while “[e]ach of the remaining presidential electors shall be elected in the presidential elector’s congressional district.”
Under this scheme, Obama would have only gotten 7 electoral votes from Pennsylvania.
There would have been similar losses of electoral votes in Ohio, and Wisconsin, Florida, and Virginia.
This is part 94 of why the Electoral College sucks wet farts from dead pigeons.
This also explains why Republicans accuse people of acting like Stalin so often, they are projecting: Because they try to act like Stalin, they think that everyone else does so too.
The House of Saud Tried to Buy Our Elections
This is the natural result of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United Decision:
The “American” in American Petroleum Institute, the country’s largest oil lobby group, is a misnomer. As I reported for The Nation in August, the group has changed over the years, and is now led by men like Tofiq Al-Gabsani, a Saudi Arabian national who heads a Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Aramco) subsidiary, the state-run oil company that also helps finance the American Petroleum Institute. Al-Gabsani is also a registered foreign agent for the Saudi government.
New disclosures retrieved today, showing some of API’s spending over the course of last year, reveal that API used its membership dues (from the world’s largest oil companies like Chevron and Aramco) to finance several dark money groups airing attack ads in the most recent election cycle.
Last year, API gave nearly half a million to the following dark money groups running political ads against Democrats and in support of Republicans:
• $50,000 to Americans for Prosperity’s 501(c)(4) group, which ran ads against President Obama and congressional Democrats.
• $412,969 to Coalition for American Jobs’ 501(c)(6) group, a front set up by API lobbyists to air ads for industry-friendly politicians, including soon to be former Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA).
• $25,000 to the Sixty Plus Association’s 501(c)(4), which ran ads against congressional Democrats.
Jack Gerard, the president of API, was a close ally to the Mitt Romney campaign. Like the US Chamber of Commerce, API is one of several large trade associations that has spent heavily in support of Republican candidates.
Seriously, I’d rather have Greece’s Fascist Golden Dawn party involved in our politics than the House of Saud.
Please, Do This
In 1968, my father said, “Those stupid bastards, they’ve nominated Nixon. There’s no way that they will win now.”
He was, of course, spectacularly wrong, but I feel much more secure in saying that I support Charlotte Allen’s call for Sarah Palin to be the 2016 Republican nominee:
The Republican Party has been doing a lot of hand-wringing and finger-pointing since the presidential election. Half the conservative columnists and bloggers say the GOP lost because it overemphasized social issues such as abortion and gay marriage. The other half says the party didn’t emphasize them enough. And everyone denounces Project ORCA, the campaign’s attempt to turn out voters via technology.
But I’ve got a suggestion for cutting short the GOP angst: Sarah Palin for president in 2016.
You think I’m joking? Think again.
Read the rest of the article. There’s not a bit of snark. She’s serious.
I so want to see this.
I think that we could have a 40 state Democratic victory.
The difference between Palin and Nixon is two fold: She’s as dumb as a bag of hammers, and she believes her own PR.
There is a Difference Between a Conservative Democrat and a Disloyal Democrat
That’s Gotta Leavea Mark!
Andrew Cuomo, governor of New York, and on the list for the 2016 nominee, appears to have been actively working to maintain a Republican majority in the state senate:
IIf the New York state Senate remains controlled by the Republican Party, it won’t be because of the voters. Democrats have 30 seats, with 32 required for a majority. They’re also ahead in two races currently being recounted. Simcha Felder, who won a Senate seat on the Democratic and Conservative Party lines in Brooklyn, has already announced that he will caucus with the Republicans. If the Democrats end up with a majority, there is a good chance a bunch of conservative Democrats will switch parties to ensure that the GOP retains control. One guy who’s staying conspicuously out of the fight: Democratic governor and 2016 presidential contender Andrew Cuomo.
………
But it’s not just that Cuomo’s not trying to help his party win a majority that voters actually voted for. He has at times actively hindered their chances. Cuomo signed off on gerrymandered state Senate districts and did not demand independent, nonpartisan redrawing. In doing so he intended to preserve the status quo — Republicans in charge of the state Senate, Democrats in charge of the more representative assembly — but voters in New York pretty clearly decided that they preferred Democrats in charge of both houses, even with districts drawn specifically to make that nearly impossible.
………
And if Republicans get their majority, with the tacit support of Cuomo, the governor will have once again shown that he is not the progressive figure he will likely try to sell himself as if he runs for president. His tenure so far has been marked by flashy liberal victories on issues like gay marriage, along with a quietly conservative economic agenda: A property tax cap, total neglect of mass transit, and (partial) support for fracking. Even on economic issues where Cuomo has more liberal priorities, he rarely pushes his Republican friends particularly hard. (A Republican-controlled state Senate will almost certainly block a minimum wage increase Cuomo ostensibly supports.) There’s a reason, in other words, that the National Review loves him.
You can also see Chris Hays unload a case of whup ass on him as well. (see vid)
Let’s be clear here: In every case where Andrew Cuomo had to make a decision regarding the state senate, that decision cut to favor Republican control of the state senate to the maximum degree that political realities make it possible.
If there is a lesson to the Democratic party regarding the career of Joe Lieberman, it is that there is a difference between a conservative Democrat and a disloyal one.
Cuomo seems to be inclined toward the latter.
I don’t know who is going to be the Democratic nominee in 4 years, but I really hope that it is not him.
H/t Crooks and Liars.
Paul Ryan Assumes the Role of a Scooby Doo Villain Bigot
They tore off the mask, and Paul Ryan’s response was, “I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for those meddling N*****s:
Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin on Monday blamed Democratic turnout in “urban areas” for the loss by the Republican presidential ticket last week, saying he was surprised that he and Mitt Romney did not do better in the nation’s big cities.
“The surprise was some of the turnout, some of the turnout especially in urban areas, which gave President Obama the big margin to win this race,” Mr. Ryan said in an interview with WISC-TV. “When we watched Virginia and Ohio coming in, and those ones coming in as tight as they were, and looking like we were going to lose them, that’s when it became clear we weren’t going to win.”
The remarks prompted scorn from some liberals who viewed Mr. Ryan as blaming inner-city minorities for the Republican defeat.
Including this liberal.
What a miserable excuse for a human being.
Who Knew that Big Bird Came from Jersey?
Stephen Colbert Calls it For Obama
So it’s over.
Dems hold onto the Senate, and Tammy Baldwin beat Tommy Thompson in Wisconsin.
In Maryland, the Dems picked up a seat in Congress, and the octogenarian neanderthal Roscoe Bartlett was defeated.
In the initiatives, the MD Dream Act passed, and gay marriage and gambling are still too close to call.
God Bless The Onion
The Election Night Drinking Game
I’m not doing Alcohol tonight, so instead I’m going to take an additional shot of Siracha (Rooster) Sauce in my salsa each time I hear “Razor thin margin”.
I fear that my butt will look like the Japanese war flag by tomorrow morning.