Flamenco dance (baile) is a highly-expressive, Spanish dance form. The flamenco is a solo dance characterized by hand clapping, percussive footwork, and intricate hand, arm and body movements.
With roots in Indian, Arabic, Spanish cultures, flamenco dance is known for its sweeping arm movements and rhythmic feet stomping. Flamenco dancers spend a great deal of time practicing and perfecting the often difficult dance.
From the Exotic to the Erotic, from a Ho Down, to a Slow Down, from Hip Hop to the Lindy Hop, Twisting the night away, Hula, Bollywood to Hollywood, Samba, to a Tango 3 Chics will have you moving that body…. Join us as we travel around the world and savor the music and dances of our fellow citizens of the universe.
[wpvideo dIW5ueU7]
Peggy Noonan Predicts Romney Victory
http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/election-2012-romney-noonan/2012/11/06/id/462984
Amid the entire obsession with polls, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has made a stealthy rise to the top and she predicts he will be victorious, says Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan.
“I think he’s stealing in ‘like a thief with good tools,’ in [author] Walker Percy’s old words,” she writes. “While everyone is looking at the polls and the storm, Romney’s slipping into the presidency. He’s quietly rising, and he’s been rising for a while.”
It’s hard to make heads or tails out of the poll data, Noonan says. But as John Dickerson of CBS News pointed out last month it appears that voters are “quietly cooking something up, something we don’t know about,” she writes. “I think they are, and I think it’s this: a Romney win.”
SG2 is having soo much fun…
Morris says Romney will capture 325 electoral votes while Obama will get 213
“Here Comes The LandSlide” – Dick Morris Predicts Huge Romney Victory!
Obama Election Night – The Moment NBC Calls it for POTUS
President Obama 332– Mitt Romney 206
President Obama 2012 Election Victory Speech
http://youtu.be/ddx8t6zGWxA
The Associated Press@AP
MORE: FBI discovered relationship by monitoring Petraeus’ emails; Broadwell may have had access to his email: http://apne.ws/TQZ8Lu -JM
It’s a new election cycle for PBO. sooo glad this mofos OUT! More folks are likely to go to, as he starts throwing down the GAUNTLET on the GOP to get about the business of presiding for the people.
http://youtu.be/FEr0BPOfVw4
_____________________FLATLINES____________________
bwa ha ha ha ha ha
http://twitpic.com/bbre91
“Plouffe…Obama’s huge grassroots network will be maintained. Those grassroots supporters can be activated in support of single issues”
Nice! Like Voting Rights Act- Voter Suppression
Fox News accidentally insults all Mitt Romney voters, LOL
http://www.democraticunderground.com/101647460
Apparently this election was not only divided along racial and financial lines, but on intelligence lines as well. Our favorite thing about this graphic is that the data Kenny used came from Fox Business, so if you’re a Romney voter, this is basically Neil Cavuto accidentally calling you an idiot. Of course, Nevada voted for Obama despite being one of the least educated states, but we can probably chalk that up to the fact that he was the safest bet.
Florida Sec of State has no regrets, won’t apologize for people who were disenfranchised due to ridiculously long lines http://thkpr.gs/QuifvJ
Boehner Is Bluffing
The House Speaker has no leverage on the Bush tax cuts. We should stop taking him seriously.
By Matthew Yglesias|Posted Friday, Nov. 9, 2012, at 3:04 PM ET
Remember the famous scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark when Indiana Jones faces off against a guy who unsheathes a scimitar and wows the audience with his fancy swordsmanship–only to get shot in the chest by Indy? The swordsman—that’s House Speaker John Boehner right now on the Bush tax cuts. Whether it’s out of deference to the office, eagerness to have an interesting story to write about, or plain gullibility, every congressional reporter in town is now dutifully reporting on his negotiating strategy. But this fight is over. Boehner has brought a knife to a gunfight, only nobody seems to have told anyone in the conservative movement.
To recap, the basic situation is this. Back when George W. Bush was in office, he wanted to cut taxes. And he wanted to disguise the cost of his tax cuts. So he had his allies on Capitol Hill write the legislation so that the tax cuts would automatically expire at the end of a 10-year window.
That window closed at the end of 2010. But during the 2010 lame-duck session, Republicans were riding high on electoral victory and the Obama administration was concerned that tax hikes would hurt the economy. So they cut a deal to extend the Bush tax cuts two more years into the 2012 lame-duck session. It was a smart idea for everyone concerned. With the economy weak, there really was no case for a short-term tax increase, and this way the presidential election would resolve everything. If Obama lost, his GOP opponent would surely sign a permanent extension of the Bush tax cuts. But if Obama won, then he’d block any extension.
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2012/11/boehner_and_the_fiscal_cliff_the_house_speaker_is_bluffing_about_the_bush.html
Craig Hickman won a seat in the Maine House of Representatives.
sent him some congrats.
http://craighickman.blogspot.com/2012/11/elected_7.html
WONDERFUL! Congratulations, Craig.
@goldietaylor:
RT @NBCNews Waffle House CEO demanded sex acts, woman alleges http://nbcnews.to/TzALjf << Prayers for everyone involved.
@colinclarkaol:
Chris Kubasik, anointed incoming CEO for #Lockheed, forced to resign after “lengthy and close personal relationship with a subordinate.”
uh uh uh
Scandal and impropriety. The MSM is holding Petraeus up as a patriot. Ask his wife how patriotic he is, now that he’s shared his main organ with another woman.
now that he’s shared his main organ with another woman
Good riddance to Petraeus!
These undisciplined, dick-wagging mofos. See the MSM has helped push the memes of PBO being called everything but a child of God, and they call Petraeus a fucking PATRIOT!
They can’t make up shit about POTUS, because he keeps his shit tight. He keeps his vows and loves his wife and children. See how it works?
Supreme Court Appears Ready to Nuke the Voting Rights Act
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/11/supreme-court-ready-nuke-voting-rights-act
A key pillar of American civil rights law is now in danger of being nullified by the Supreme Court.
Shelby County, Alabama, is seeking to have Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, the law that first guaranteed the right of blacks in the South to vote, declared unconstitutional. Section 5 forces areas of the country with a history of discrimination—mostly, but not entirely in the South—to ask the Department of Justice for its approval before making any changes to election rules. The DOJ is then supposed to ensure any changes protect Americans’ voting rights. The law has a provision allowing jurisdictions to “bail out,” but conservatives have repeatedly challeged the law as unconstitutional federal overreach that is no longer necessary because America has transcended its history of racial discrimination. The Supreme Court announced Friday that it would take up the case.
The last time conservatives challenged Section 5, in 2009, the Supreme Court handed down a very narrow 8-1 ruling (Clarence Thomas was the only dissenter) that did not declare the law unconstitutional.
Epic Fail! Pay The Piper!
Rove Super PAC Blames GOP Losses On ‘Very Very Weak Candidates’
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/09/american-crossroads-karl-rove-losses_n_2102006.html#comments
David Frum: Republicans Have Been Fleeced, Exploited, and Lied To by Right Wing Media http://dlvr.it/2SSlyg
This MOFO right here:
Rick Scott is a total disgrace. A hateful voting suppressing s.o.b.
Supreme Court To Take Up Voting Rights Act Challenge
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/supreme-court-to-take-up-voting-rights-act
The Supreme Court will take up a case that could affect the way states with a history of racial discrimination make changes to their voting laws, SCOTUSblog reported Friday.
The justices will decide whether Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act violates the Constitution by forcing certain states to get changes to voting laws cleared by either the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division or a panel of three federal judges in Washington, D.C. The Voting Rights Act was originally passed in 1965 and has been renewed four times.
I wish the black-robed ones would mess with the Voting Rights Act. We’ll be following them very closely.
You’d better believe it.
nobody is playing with them
CIA Director David Petraeus submitted his resignation to President Barack Obama citing personal reasons, a U.S. government source tells CNN Intelligence Correspondent Suzanne Kelly. The source said Petraeus admitted to an extramarital affair and that is why he is resigning.
boy, bye!
Akin adviser: Karl Rove super-PAC ‘a colossal failure
ASHINGTON • Karl Rove, the GOP strategist, TV commentator and super-PAC mastermind, is getting a full measure of grief after the Republican Party’s losses in the presidential election and Senate contests.
Conservatives are complaining that Rove’s big-bucks approach to politics this cycle did nothing to aid the GOP cause after expectations that newly liberalized campaign finance rules would make the difference on Tuesday.
Donald Trump congratulated Rove sarcastically on Twitter “on blowing $400 million this cycle. Every race (Rove’s) Crossroads GPS ran ads in, the Republicans lost. What a waste of money.”
Add Rick Tyler, spokesman and key adviser to Rep. Todd Akin, to the list of Rove critics. Tyler is a Newt Gingrich ally and political strategist who journeyed to Missouri in late August to assist Akin’s ill-fated campaign for the Senate.
“They lost every race. It was a colossal failure,” Tyler said of Rove’s political entities. “They went out with their power points and convinced people to give money, but it was as pathetic a performance as I’ve ever seen.”
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/bill-lambrecht/akin-adviser-karl-rove-super-pac-a-colossal-failure/article_70c824a4-5462-5eb3-8f2e-eac9f4153dd2.html
BWA HAH HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Posted at 12:52 PM ET, 11/09/2012
What Obama can do about all those voting problems
By Greg Sargent
During his victory speech, President Obama surprised and delighted a lot of observers with an offhand reference to fixing our voting problems. After noting that people had waited in line for a very long time, he drew applause when he said: “By the way, we have to fix that.”
Good idea. Let’s do it.
It turns out that there are plenty of things Obama and Dems could try to do on the federal level to fix our voting problems — which seemed to disproportionately impact their core constituencies. I asked Larry Norden, an attorney with the Brennan Center for Justice, which closely monitors voting problems and voter suppression, what solutions they might pursue. Here are his suggestions:
* Require modernization of registration at the state level. One of the big problems voters face is glitches involving registration. Would-be voters are told they aren’t registered in the right place; their address hasn’t been properly updated; their name is misspelled; they’ve been wrongly removed from the rolls; etc. Requiring automation at the state level would reduce such problems. State agencies would automate in a way that integrates them electronically; any time you update your info with one agency, it automatically gets updated with state election offices.
* Mandate a uniform early voting period. The president and Congress could pass a law requiring every state to allow early voting, say, during the weekend preceding federal elections. Increasing the voting period is a good way to reduce the crunch at the polls on Election Day — and the myriad problems that result.
* Set standards for voting machine access per capita. The federal government could establish a uniform set of standards for federal elections requiring a minimum number of voting machines, and proper geographic distribution of polling places, based on population. That would ensure more equitable access to the voting booth, and prevent some areas from experiencing dramatically worse delays than others.
* Establish a consumer product database for voting machines: The feds could create a database that tracks the performance of various brands and types of voting machine, one that could establish the track record of problems any particular type of machine experiences. That would enable localities to be more discerning in picking machines and to better prepare for any problems that might arise. “We have a database for auto issues and a database of problems with airplanes,” Norden says. “We don’t have one for voting machines.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line
Headscratching, Part II
Speaking of cluelessness:
“We didn’t think they’d turn out more of their [African-American] base vote than they did in 2008, but they smoked us,” said one Romney operative. “It’s unbelievable that that they turned out more from the African-American community than in 2008. Somehow they got ’em to vote.”
You fool. YOU got ’em to vote. Your voter-suppression tactics motivated and mobilized like nothing else could have. You fool. You absolute fool.
http://pmcarpenter.blogs.com/p_m_carpenters_commentary/
November 09, 2012
Obama’s newser
President Obama reaffirmed his commitment to fiscal balance while splendidly applying some intense heat on the GOP House. He said he was open to “compromise” and “new ideas”–two concepts vigorously rejected by tiresome tea partiers–and he reiterated the electorate’s recent demand: “cooperation, consensus, and common sense.” You will note in this C triad the pregnant omission of John Boehner’s “common ground,” which has become famously synonymous with GOP entrenchment.
Perhaps the highlight of Obama’s news conference was his repetition of “I will not, will not” reduce the deficit the Republican way, and by that he meant, of course, piling more burdens on the backs of those least able to bear the load. Obama’s kicker, the highlight of the highlight: The electorate just ratified this choice. A delicious moment.
What’s more, Obama reminded that electorate that Damocles’ sword awaits us. Congress can do nothing, and watch everyone’s taxes go up, or it can follow the dictates of Election Day and simply reimpose Clinton’s rate on upper-income taxpayers. This, Obama more than merely implied, is the House GOP’s choice.
So do get back to us, won’t you, dear Republicans
http://pmcarpenter.blogs.com/p_m_carpenters_commentary/
found this in the comments at Balloon Juice:
the Conster Says:
My takeaway after reading all of the delicious schadenfreude conservative postmortems is the dawning reality that they lost not just the election fair and square, but the argument. There’s no real place to go for them now, because they didn’t lose with Gore style shenanigans that would give them the victim mentality they’re so good at exploiting. Obama ran on pro-choice, gay marriage, tax increases and healthcare, so people knew what they were voting for, and just told all the old white men, you’re not the boss of me.
Racist Teens Forced to Answer for Tweets About the ‘Nigger’ President
There was an abundance of hate speech on Twitter after Obama’s reelection, with people hurling violent and racial epithets. Many of those tweeters were teenagers whose public Twitter accounts feature their real names and advertise their participation in the sports programs at their respective high schools. Calls were placed to the principals and superintendents of those schools to find out how calling the president—or any person of color, for that matter—a “nigger” and a “monkey” jibes with their student conduct code of ethics.
We contacted their school’s administrators with the hope that, if their educators were made aware of their students’ ignorance, perhaps they could teach them about racial sensitivity. Or they could let them know that while the First Amendment protects their freedom of speech, it doesn’t protect them from the consequences that might result from expressing their opinions. (For example, an adult woman is currently being investigated by the Secret Service for calling President Obama a “nigger” and suggesting he be assassinated on her Facebook page.)
Additionally, several of the teens use imagery of their high schools’ sports teams on their Twitter accounts and Facebook pages. If nothing else, it’s reasonable to alert administrators to the behavior of the students who are publicly representing their schools.
——————————————————————————–
Ricky Catanzaro plays football for Xaverian High School, a private Catholic prep school in Brooklyn, NY. Students who play sports there must sign an athlete’s contract that stipulates a promise “to be a worthy representative of my teammates and coaches, abiding by school and community expectations.”
http://jezebel.com/5958993/racist-teens-forced-to-answer-for-tweets-about-the-nigger-president?utm_source=io9.com&utm_medium=recirculation&utm_campaign=recirculation
John Cassidy, in the New Yorker, on “A Victory for Obama and Obama’s America“:
… For the fifth time in the past six Presidential elections, the Democrats have won the popular vote. For the second time in succession, Americans have elected a black man as President. Throughout the country, Republican extremists like Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock have been repudiated. Residents of Maryland and Maine (and probably Washington state, too) have voted in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage. The United States of 2012 hasn’t turned into Scandinavia, but it isn’t the United States of 2010 and the Tea Party either. To the extent that the election was about anything more than negative advertising and relentless micro-targeting, it was a triumph of moderation over extremism, tolerance over intolerance, and the polyglot future over the monochrome past…
Though the day-to-day exchanges were often trivial, the underlying dynamics of the election were deadly serious, and everybody knew what they were. As both candidates repeatedly said, it was about what sort of country we want to be. Now the American public has rendered a judgement. By a small but significant majority, it has rejected the insular, backward-looking, feed-the-rich, extremism of today’s G.O.P., even when that extremism has a standard bearer who is relatively moderate—or, at least, flexible. It has reëlected to office a President who, for all his failings, tried during his first term to address some of the biggest problems facing the country, and did so in a spirit of pragmatism and civility that the Mitt Romney who governed Massachusetts would have appreciated.
More rancor and gridlock may well lie ahead. But yesterday the right side won.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2012/11/victory-for-obamas-america.html#entry-more
An especially fine Charles P. Pierce essay, in Esquire, on the newly re-elected President:
Part of what drives people crazy about him — and if you wanted to see crazy, you should have seen the fugue state that overcame the Fox election all-stars last night, because I’ve seen jollier police lineups — is that he so clearly understands his own genuine historical stature, and that he wears it so easily, and that he uses it so deftly. It is not obvious. He does not use it brutally or obviously. It is just… there with him, a long and deep reservoir of violence and sorrow and tragedy and triumph out of which comes almost everything he does. He came into this office a figure of history, unlike anyone who’s become president since George Washington. The simple event of him remains a great gravitational force in our politics. It changes the other parts of our politics in their customary orbits. It happens so easily and so in the manner of an immutable physical law that you hardly notice that it has happened until you realize that what you thought you knew about the country and its people had been shifted by degrees until it is in a completely different place….
The long creative project of America has been to engage all its citizens in that work. That is the history that he wears so well, and that he wields so subtly. That is the truth that he represents. That is the great silent thing that has been there through all the debates, and the ads, and all of that preposterous money. We are working on ourselves. We are incomplete. We are never finished. Elections come and go. The political commonwealth is a work in progress. We work with the tools that time and circumstance provide. As he enters his final term, with the elegiac music playing out there in the distance, Barack Obama will use the history that he has come to embody and, perhaps, even to fulfill, as part of a larger project that never will be completed but only finished, over and over again.
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/barack-obama-2012-14524219?
CNN’s Don Lemon Explains Twitter Fight With Actor Jonah Hill: He ‘Treated Me Like The Hel
by Alex Alvarez | 12:58 pm, November 9th, 2012
On Friday’s Starting Point, anchor Don Lemon gave the rundown on his “Twitter battle” with Superbad actor Jonah Hill.
After an apparently tense run-in with Hill, Lemon Tweeted that he had “Said hi to @JonahHill in hotel. Think he thought I was bellman. Didn’t know his name til bellman told me. A lesson to always be kind.”
You know what would have taught him a lesson, Don? Tweeting “I think I just saw Seth Rogen! :)”
Hill responded by writing that “I said hi what do you want me to do move in with you? I was in a hurry. Didn’t realize you were a 12 year old girl. Peace.” SNAAAAAAAAAP. Snappity snap snap snap.
To which Lemon responded, “Hardly. You’re not my type. But I know rude. And u were.”
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/cnns-don-lemon-explains-twitter-fight-with-actor-jonah-hill-he-treated-me-like-the-help/
Woman fired over Facebook post speculating on Obama assassination http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/11/turlock-woman-fired-facebook-obama.html …
Obamas To Dine With Deval Patrick And Wife Tonight At White House
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/obamas-to-dine-with-deval-patrick-wife-tonight
President Obama and the first lady will have a social dinner with Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick and his wife at the White House tonight, according to a White House pool report.
Republicans are ripping Rush a new one
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/11/09/1159436/-Republicans-are-ripping-Rush-a-new-one
Republicans are kicking Rush Limbaugh in his privates over racial insensitivity, apocalyptic pronouncements, and feeding the right wing mis-information bubble. That hasn’t stopped him from making racially charged statements (see transcript and audio links after the fold).
Rush yesterday: Cubans are not popular among Hispanics because
they’re not as dark and are oriented toward work
Let Rush continue to kill the party. Let him put the republicans out of their misery!
It’s too late for these fools to scream about racism. They’ve fed it, continue to feed it, and they actually believe most, if not all of what this fat turd Rush spews. Let him keep at it.
StateDept@StateDept
President Obama spoke to a number of foreign leaders by telephone. Readout: http://go.usa.gov/Ythh
FL judge just denied Allen West’s request to recount ballots in his lost race to Patrick Murphy.
_______________
Allen West, go sit your black ass down!
Let’s Not Make a Deal – By PAUL KRUGMAN
So what should he do? Just say no, and go over the cliff if necessary.
It’s worth pointing out that the fiscal cliff isn’t really a cliff. It’s not like the debt-ceiling confrontation, where terrible things might well have happened right away if the deadline had been missed. This time, nothing very bad will happen to the economy if agreement isn’t reached until a few weeks or even a few months into 2013. So there’s time to bargain.
**************
Meanwhile, the president is in a far stronger position than in previous confrontations. I don’t place much stock in talk of “mandates,” but Mr. Obama did win re-election with a populist campaign, so he can plausibly claim that Republicans are defying the will of the American people. And he just won his big election and is, therefore, far better placed than before to weather any political blowback from economic troubles — especially when it would be so obvious that these troubles were being deliberately inflicted by the G.O.P. in a last-ditch attempt to defend the privileges of the 1 percent.
Most of all, standing up to hostage-taking is the right thing to do for the health of America’s political system.
So stand your ground, Mr. President, and don’t give in to threats. No deal is better than a bad deal.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/09/opinion/krugman-lets-not-make-a-deal.html?_r=0
Senator AL Franken is a very SMART man.
Applebee’s franchisee claims he won’t hire because of Obamacare
http://huff.to/RoOl9n
__________________
No one wants to see your tantrums in public.
strike them off my list of places to eat
LOL I don’t do resturant chains anyway. Hope the folks taht do..BOYCOTT these bitches.
Applebee’s is a franchise operation. Boycotting your local one won’t hurt this jackass, it might hurt your local owner. But having said that, if I owned an Applebee’s, I’d be on the phone to corporate legal like right now, telling them to kindly persuade said jackass to STFU. I’m sure he is in violation of his franchisee contract.
Blogger Nate Silver reveals how he called election
[wpvideo SWFeF5vy]
LOL GO Nate! He didn’t let the fearmongers deter him from printing the FACTS.
Peter Morrison, Texas GOP Official, Calls For ‘Amicable Divorce’ From ‘Maggots’ Who Voted For Obama
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/09/peter-morrison-texas-divorce_n_2100165.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003
As some Republicans continue to cope with the prospect of another four years under President Barack Obama, a Texas GOP official is floating a simple way out: cleaving his state from the union.
Peter Morrison, treasurer of the Hardin County Republican Party, wrote a column in the post-election edition of his Tea Party newsletter this week calling for an “amicable divorce” from the U.S., the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports.
“Why should Vermont and Texas live under the same government?” he wrote. “Let each go her own way.”
Morrison went on to express anger at the “maggots” who backed Obama, specifically calling out non-white voters, whom he accused of voting for the president on an “ethnic basis.”
—————-
Peter Morrison, you GTFO of Texas today!
Now you know a graphic is in order here, SG2. BRING IT!
GTFO Peter Morrison
Steven Horsford makes history as Nevada’s 1st black congressman
http://thegrio.com/2012/11/08/steven-horsford-makes-history-as-nevadas-first-black-congressman/
Steven Horsford has cemented his name in Nevada’s history books — first as the state’s first black Democratic state Senate leader, and now as the first black congressman to represent the state in Congress.
On Tuesday night, Horsford won a close election against Republican businessman Danny Tarkanian for the House seat in Nevada’s new 4th district. The large district, which has the highest percentage of African-American voters, stretches across central Nevada, from North Las Vegas to just south of Reno.
Ray Gonzales@KensandMadsDad
President Obama will go down in history for killing the two biggest threats to the country: Osama Bin Laden & the Republican Party.
Whither Karl Rove?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2012/11/08/whither-karl-rove/
Eight years ago, Karl Rove was on the top of the political world. He had guided George W. Bush to a reelection victory while congressional Republicans picked up four Senate seats and solidified their House majority.
His dream of a permanent, or at least durable Republican majority in the country seemed at hand. He was the unquestioned top dog in the Republican strategist world and even Democrats who loathed him acknowledged that he was devastatingly effective.
Times change.
Eight years hence, Rove is at the center of a mini-controversy over his insistence that his employer — Fox News Channel — had mistakenly called Ohio for President Obama and, in so doing, had handed the race to the incumbent.
http://youtu.be/vJg3z5c93zU
Ohio’s GOP Secretary of State Already Has A Plan To Rig The 2016 Election For Republicans
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/11/09/1169761/ohios-gop-secretary-of-state-already-has-a-plan-to-rig-the-2016-election-for-republicans/
Last year, Pennsylvania’s Republican Gov. Tom Corbett proposed rigging the Electoral College vote in his state through a plan that would have given the majority of the state’s electors to Romney even after President Obama carried the state. Under Corbett’s plan, the winner of each congressional district within Pennsylvania would receive a single electoral vote, and the overall winner of the state would receive an additional two electoral votes. Had this plan been in place last Tuesday, Mitt Romney would likely have won 13 of the state’s 20 electoral votes, despite losing the state overall by more than five points.
Corbett’s election-rigging plan died, largely because Republican members of Congress in Pennsylvania feared that it would cause the Obama campaign to shift resources into their districts and endanger their own chances of being reelected. Now, however, Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted (R)– who spent much of 2012 inventing ways to prevent pro-Obama votes from being cast or counted — wants to revive this election rigging scheme. According to the Ohio political blog Plunderbund,
________________
Why are they always looking for ways to cheat? Dishonest bee.itches!
he really thinks somebody is playing with him.
Memo to Jon Husted, Rick Scott and any other GOP-baggers who think we’re playing with them;
WE’RE GOING BE ON Y’ALL LIKE WHITE ON RICE, LIKE CORN ON THE COB, LIKE A DEAD FLY ON A RIBBON… GOT THAT?
Pundits are quickly turning to immigration to explain the Republicans’ Latino problem and to offer a possible cure, but the reality is that the rot cuts much deeper. The GOP doesn’t have a problem with Latino voters per se. Rather, it has a problem with a broad spectrum of voters who simply don’t feel that it’s speaking to their economic concerns. The GOP has an economic agenda tilted strongly to the benefit of elites, and it has preserved support for that agenda—even though it disserves the majority of GOP voters—with implicit racial politics.
Consider the GOP’s deeply racialized campaign against Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. What was so surprising about this—and I know I’m not the only fair-skinned English-dominant person with a Spanish surname who was genuinely shocked—was that conservatives could have easily opposed her purely on policy grounds. Sotamayor is a fairly conventional Democrat on constitutional issues, and that would have been ample reason for conservatives to criticize her. Indeed, Justice Elena Kagan was attacked on precisely those grounds. But rather than tempering opposition with at least some recognition that Sotomayor’s life story might be a great example for immigrant parents trying to raise children in difficult circumstances, the country was treated to a mass racial panic in which Anglo America was about to be stomped by the boot of Sotomayor’s ethnic prejudice. The graduate of Princeton and Yale Law, former prosecutor, and longtime federal judge was somehow not just too liberal for conservatives’ taste but a “lightweight” who’d been coasting her whole life on the enormous privilege of growing up poor in the South Bronx.
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2012/11/latino_vote_2012_opposition_to_immigration_doesn_t_explain_romney_s_crushing.html
Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson laments ignorance
By Steve Benen
Fri Nov 9, 2012 9:19 AM EST.
Among Republicans, there are competing explanations for what went wrong in the 2012 elections, but Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) has reached his own conclusion: Americans just aren’t sharp enough to appreciate the far-right message.
Johnson attributed Obama’s win on the heels of those Republican gains in Wisconsin to an uninformed electorate who voted in this election but not in the [Scott] Walker recall.
“If you aren’t properly informed, if you don’t understand the problems facing this nation, you are that much more prone to falling prey to demagoguing solutions. And the problem with demagoguing solutions is they don’t work,” Johnson said.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/11/09/15048850-wisconsins-ron-johnson-laments-ignorance?lite
Obamacare Is Coming
Kate Pickert outlines the next steps:
[G]overnors will soon decide whether to set up their own health insurance marketplaces to regulate individual and small business health plans. Many Republican governors had held off making this call until after the election. States that opt not to set up exchanges will open the door for the federal government to run them instead. Thanks to a part of the Supreme Court Obamacare ruling that left the law’s large Medicaid expansion as optional instead of mandatory for states, governors and state legislatures will also have to decide whether to widen eligibility for the public insurance program. (Here’s a reliable timeline of Obamacare provisions and when they are scheduled to go into effect.) As Phil Galewitz reported for Kaiser Health News, some state-based Republicans may be persuaded to get on board with such pieces of the law now that it’s definitely staying on the books
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/
Posted at 09:00 AM ET, 11/09/2012
The Morning Plum: Dems should call GOP’s bluff on tax hikes
By Greg Sargent
For months, President Obama pointed out — rightly — that the single greatest obstacle to a compromise between the two parties remained their seemingly unbridgable differences over whether to raise taxes on the rich. In a campaign focused heavily on the proper moral responsibilty the most successful have to give a bit more back to the society that helped enable their good fortune, at a time when the middle class continues to take a beating, Obama repeatedly asked voters to break this “stalemate.”
On Tuesday, they did — in Obama’s favor. Yet Republicans interpret the results very differently. They argue that the fact that they retained the House has given them a mandate to hold the line against higher tax rates on the rich. Indeed, John Boehner is now arguing that high end tax hikes have no prayer of ever passing the House.
Putting aside the argument over the election results, what does this mean for the next few months? Today Obama is set to make a statement on the economy that will hint at how Dems plan to proceed.
If Republicans won’t agree to budge on high end taxes, Democrats can simply do nothing, let all the Bush tax cuts expire, and allow us all to go over the fiscal cliff. As many have pointed out, while there’s no minimizing the long term risk to the economy that poses, a deal early in 2013 would prevent any real damage. Senate Dems can simply come back in 2013 with their stronger, more liberal majority and vote on restoring just the middle class tax cuts. As David Dayen noted recently, they can vote on the Obama tax cuts for the middle class.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line
This deserves a post all its own. Titled “MOST WANTED”
http://twitter.yfrog.com/kh318lgfj
Oliver Willis@owillis
wanna know (in part) why black voters turned out for obama again? this. http://yfrog.com/kh318lgfj via @toddzwillich
ALL.OF.THIS. We will not tolerate the disrepect, and WE WILL CONTINUE CALLING IT OUT WITH A QUICKNESS!
Two Parts of the Con
By mistermix November 9th, 2012
I’ve always thought that there was something fishy about the GOP’s GOTV and advertising operations. We’d hear every cycle that a massive, highly effective GOTV operation was cranking up to make the big difference in the election, but I never saw clear evidence of what, exactly, that operation was. Ads are a little more transparent. From the financial disclosure forms I’ve seen, it was clear that Republican consultants bundle charges for making and placing ads, while Democratic consultants make the ads and then the candidate pays for airtime in a separate transaction.
With GOTV, I suspected that the Republicans mainly relied on the long-true fact that Republicans are more likely to vote on their own than Democrats. With ads, I thought that there was a huge incentive for consultants to crank out formulaic crap ads and place them indiscriminately to pocket as much money as possible.
Unless the Romney campaign is far less competent that previous ones, my suspicions about the GOP GOTV operation were right and then some. This post by a Republican poll worker (via OTB) is just a catalog of failure at every point. Lists were emailed as 60 page attachments the night before the election, poll workers weren’t certified for their precincts, a mobile “app” that was supposed to revolutionize the operation didn’t work, and the net result was this motivated poll worker couldn’t work on election day.
As for the consultants, even a writer at the conservative Breitbart says this (via Jay Rosen):
[…] The left thinks the Republican party is beholden to its billionaire donors. Actually, the Republican party treats these donors as easy marks. The party is actually beholden to a small cadre of political consultants and media buyers who exert total control over the party’s messaging and outreach.
All institutional arms of the Republican party have lists of “approved” vendors and consultants. If a campaign doesn’t use someone from this list, the party will threaten to withhold financial support. If consultants on this list were competent, it wouldn’t be such a problem, but the “approved” consultants tend to produce generic, cookie-cutter campaigns. Can anyone remember a single memorable ad from a SuperPAC or GOP campaign this cycle
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2012/11/09/two-parts-of-the-con/#comments
Norway quick to congratulate Obama
http://www.newsinenglish.no/2012/11/07/norway-quick-to-congratulate-obama/
Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg sent congratulations from his breakfast table Wednesday morning to newly re-elected US President Barack Obama, saying he looked forward to continue cooperating with the Obama Administration in the White House.
“The USA is our most important ally,” Stoltenberg said. “Our relationship is based on common values and interests.” Stoltenberg added that “strong American leadership” is especially important in an “unpredictable world.”
A recent poll suggested that an overwhelming majority of Norwegians hoped Obama would win against Republican candidate Mitt Romney, and even the leaders of Norway’s conservative parties have expressed support for Obama. The country’s left-center coalition government led by Stoltenberg of the Labour Party was no exception.
THOR- saurus says, “Vikings for Obama”. ]:-)
Norway is proof of EVOLUTION amongst our species.
‘Obamacare is the law of the land’
By Steve Benen
Fri Nov 9, 2012 8:35 AM EST
The road to health care reform hasn’t exactly been easy. After waiting nearly a century, Americans had to (1) wait for a Democratic president and a large Democratic congressional majority; (2) overcome a Supreme Court challenge; and (3) re-elect that Democratic president.
As of this week, the pieces are in place for the law’s prolonged security, and as of yesterday, the nation’s leading Republican conceded he’s effectively giving up trying to destroy the Affordable Care Act.
Republicans’ efforts to undo President Barack Obama’s health care reform law appear to have come to an end, as House Speaker John Boehner described it Thursday as the “law of the land.”
In an interview with ABC News, the nation’s top elected Republican seemed to indicate that Congress wouldn’t engage in the type of repeated repeal votes the way it had in the past two years.
Keep in mind, as recently as July, congressional Republicans had voted 32 times over the last two years to kill “Obamacare,” as if only 31 floor votes may have left unanswered questions about the GOP’s intentions.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/11/09/15048098-obamacare-is-the-law-of-the-land?lite
Montana Voters Deprive Corporations Of Their Humanity
When you went to Wal-Mart today, you probably could not help but notice that the store was sad. That is because on Tuesday Montana voters overwhelmingly voted to deprive them of their humanity. Initiative 166 was passed with 75% of the vote, and states that corporations are “not entitled to constitutional rights because they are not human beings.” The initiative was on the ballot due to the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United, which held that corporations are cuddly people just like you and me, and are entitled to drop limitless amounts of money into political campaigns.
Montanans overwhelmingly approved the initiative, which received 74% of the vote. C.B Pearson, a spokesman for Montanans United, the group behind the initiative, said, “Montanans are calling on every elected official in Montana to fight for fair elections and overturn the horrible Citizens United decision.”
Corporations were not so happy. When asked for comment on the passing of the initiative, a local Home Depot just looked away and stared stoically into the mountains beyond. Elected officials, none of whom would speak on the record, lamented the fact they would no longer be able to go golfing or hunting with their favorite corporations.
http://gawker.com/5959023/montana-voters-deprive-corporations-of-their-humanity%22
Big SKY country has spoken. GO MONTANA!
Top Republicans suddenly back Immigration Reform after Latinos overwhelmingly back Obama http://thkpr.gs/S4to1J
AINT THAT ABOUT A BITCH
Here’s An Insane Chart Showing Just How Much The Fiscal Cliff Is Being Hyped
Here’s An Insane Chart Showing Just How Much The Fiscal Cliff Is Being Hyped
Joe Weisenthal
As Calculated Risk (and many others) note, the term ‘Fiscal Cliff’ is a misnomer. The US economy is not going to fly off a cliff and implode on January 1 if we don’t make a deal. There will be a drag due to higher taxes and lower spending, but much of that can and be wound back early in the year.
But the talk about the fiscal cliff has grown into a deafening roar, and here’s proof that it’s way out of proportion.
Matthew Fleury of Bank of America takes a look at the volume of articles mentioning The Fiscal Cliff and The Debt Ceiling:
http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-fiscal-cliff-vs-debt-ceiling-2012-11
Holder says he is undecided on whether to stay on as attorney general
By Sari Horwitz,
Nov 09, 2012 12:29 AM EST
The Washington Post Published: November 8
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. told a group of law students Thursday that he has not decided whether he will remain for President Obama’s second term.
Speaking at the University of Baltimore School of Law, Holder said that he still has to have a conversation with the president and with his wife before he makes a decision.
“That’s something that I’m in the process now of trying to determine,” Holder said. “I will have to think about, ‘Can I contribute in a second term?’ ” he added. “I have to sit down, obviously, to talk to [the president], speak to members of my family, particularly one who I’m married to.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/holder-says-he-is-undecided-on-whether-to-stay-on-as-attorney-general/2012/11/08/698c5d80-29e2-11e2-bab2-eda299503684_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines
A new America speaks
By Eugene Robinson,
Nov 09, 2012 12:23 AM EST
The Washington Post Published: November 8
So much for voter suppression. So much for the enthusiasm gap. So much for the idea that smug, self-appointed arbiters of what is genuinely “American” were going to “take back” the country, as if it had somehow been stolen.
On Tuesday, millions of voters sent a resounding message to the take-it-back crowd: You won’t. You can’t. It’s our country, too.
President Obama and the Democratic Party scored what can be seen only as a comprehensive victory. Obama won the popular vote convincingly, and the electoral vote wasn’t close. In a year when it was hard to imagine how Democrats could avoid losing seats in the Senate, they won seats and increased their majority.
Republicans did keep control of the House, but to call this a “status quo” election is absurd. After the 2010 midterm elections, Republicans had the initiative and Democrats were reeling. After Tuesday, the dynamics are utterly reversed.
Don’t take my word for it. Listen to the conservative bloviators who were so convinced that Mitt Romney would defeat Obama, perhaps in a landslide, and undo everything the president has accomplished.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/eugene-robinson-a-new-america-delivers-its-verdict/2012/11/08/ae348d12-29e8-11e2-96b6-8e6a7524553f_story.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions
The Tea Party Is Dead. Long Live the Tea Party.
Odds are Republicans won’t get back from crazytown for a while. Will Dems take advantage?
Its birth certificate says that the tea party was born one month after Barack Obama’s inauguration, on the day that CNBC’s Rick Santelli delivered a blistering on-air tirade against Obama’s mortgage bailout plan. But that’s only the official story. In reality, we’ve seen the tea party before. When FDR was president, it was called the American Liberty League. When JFK was president, it was the John Birch Society. When Bill Clinton was president, it was the Vince Foster conspiracy theorists. America’s far right fluoresces like this whenever a Democrat is in the White House, and Obama’s first term was no exception.
But the tea party burned bright and fell fast. Sure, it galvanized opposition to Obama in a media-friendly kind of way, and helped power the Republican Party to a big majority in the House of Representatives in the 2010 midterms. But given the state of the economy this was a victory they probably would have won anyway. And on the other side of the Capitol building, the tea party was almost certainly responsible for the loss of three winnable Senate seats that year. By 2012, after tea party forces nominated several more “wackadoodles” (in Republican strategist Steve Schmidt’s phrasing) and helped the GOP lose two more winnable Senate seats, its name was officially mud.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/11/tea-party-future-gop
So the party will need to moderate or die.
***smiling***
Let the party die!
Happy FRY-day, Everyone! :-)
Good Morning Ametia SG2 and Everyone :)
Buenos Dias!
Nice!