You might remember a certain Senator name of Joe "Spanky" Manchin outta West Virginny. He is sort of America's Joe Lieberman RealDoll now that sole member of the Joe Lieberman Party has retired to spend more time with the Koch Brother's money at the American Enterprise Institute.
Anyhoo, Spanky Manchin was marketed the good people of West Virginny as the Reasonable Democrat from "No Labels"; a guy who could always be counted on to score a dime-bag of warm fuzzies from Imaginary Moderates by advising Democrats to bend over a little further and touch their toes whenever the GOP decided it was time to fuck the country over again by sabotaging whatever Barack Obama was trying to accomplish that day.
See, for you young 'uns out there, waaaay back two weeks ago in the long ago olden times, wanton Republican vandalism and obstruction was so constant and universal that for many people in the political entertainment industry, it became...just...wallpaper. Something to be shrugged off and ignored as the ordinary background hum of everyday life.
Then, one day, the Obstructors and Saboteurs went from being a legislative minority to a legislative majority. And they danced a vigorous happy dance, Calloohing and Callaying at the prospect of being able do so much more real damage to the country they hate so deeply.
And as the Obstructors and Saboteurs cackled and crowed, Spanky Manchin outta West Virginny did exactly what you would expect a No Labels Democrat to do:
Manchin: I Won't Put Up With 'Bulls**t' If Dems Try To Obstruct GOP
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) made in clear in an interview published Monday that he has no plans to support Democrats who want to take a page out of the GOP playbook by obstructing the new Republican majority.
"That's bullshi—…. I'm not going to put up with that," Manchin told Politico when discussing the prospect of Democrats blocking the Republican agenda over the next two years.
Mr. Tavis Smiley has spent considerable time and energy counselled African American's to withhold their votes from the Democrats because Barack Obama was not black enough to suit him (from Brother Charles Pierce):
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And then, on the panel, Tavis Smiley came back once again to Heighten The Contradictions, and to explain that black people intend to teach the Democratic party a lesson by refusing to vote in elections that will guarantee that black Americans will be disenfranchised even further.
In North Carolina, you say that we want to move beyond race. We're in a post-racial Americans and yet to played the race card in North Carolina. In Louisiana, in Georgia. You can't win lest the black vote turns out for you and in Kentucky, as was discussed earlier, you have a candidate there who four times in a matter of minutes wouldn't even admit to voting for Barack Obama. You want his loyal base to support you, you give the president the Heisman, but you want his constituents to vote for y I mean, Peter only denied Jesus three times. It's a four-time denial in a matter of minutes but you want the black vote to come save you again. You want Hispanics to save you again. I'm not saying that blacks and browns ought to abandon the Democratic Party. I'm saying you've got to hold them accountable. And maybe the lessons about what happens this year ought to start being reviewed now in advance of 2016.
The Naderite crapola that ignores the fact that we are all going to have to live under whatever horrors may come out of Tuesday's elections isn't even worth arguing with at this point. But what St. Peter has to do with the Heisman Trophy, I haven't the faintest idea.
The Purity Brigade spent over a solid fucking year singing the "Obama Is Worse Than Boosh!" song into every microphone anyone would hand them because Barack Obama was not Jill Stein enough them.
Well now that Mr. Smiley and the Purity Caucus have gotten exactly what they asked for and we enter an exciting new age of Congressional witchhunts, impeachment saber rattling, round-the-clock XL Pipeline, Universal Concealed Carry, Jim Inhofe controlling the Senate debate on climate change and Much!Much!More! I hope they are ready for all the accolades coming their way.
Because going forward, I certainly plan to hold the *title quote by very quotable Cosimo de' Medici near to my heart,
And I don't plan to spare the horses.
Because now...
...Conservatives really do have a license to to this.
A time capsule full of memories of what this night was like ten years ago.
Because tonight is bad. For real bad. But if you have been to the rodeo a time or two, you know it's not as bad as the free-falling, gut-punch horror of watching a mob of rage-amped swine and terrified "moderates" gleefully hand the worst President in American history a chainsaw and tell him to please, please go right on wrecking the place.
Because remembering is the Liberal's special burden.
People doubt the results, there is ramapant mistrust. This is the worst possible outcome.
I don't know how the polls could be so wrong, I mean really wrong. Maybe I underestimated Dielbold, maybe we blew our ground game, maybe people are more scared of gays than the draft.
I simply don't know.
What I do know is that the outcome of this election, win or lose, screams for electoral reform. People simply will not trust the result. And that is FAR more dangerous than four more years of Bush. If he had won cleanly, I wouldn't like it, but I could live with it. Not trusting elections, more than any one man, is the true road to dictatorship and a Handmaid's Tale.
Also, American religious mania comes and goes like malaria. To see it in play is disturbing, but not unexpected.
To wake up, after the longest year of my life, to find that lawyers will chose the president again, well, that isn't what I or anyone expected. But that is the case. But thank God, this isn't 1972, when Nixon ran the table taking 49 states.
And unlike 1972, we have the means and tools to organize and fight. Not just the results, but what comes after, whether it's Kerry or Bush.
I would plead with our European and Asian friends, as disgusted as they are by this, they need to remember Americans are insular. Most will not ever travel outside the US. Their opinions are discounted. Americans think America matters the most. And, I fear, they will come to find out that is not the case. But most of the Americans you meet and who live in yuour countries, worked very hard against Bush. They've seen the world and they understand it. Instead of raging against Americans or sending them condescending letters, encourage them to see more of the world, so they can get beyond the suburb and office park.
Remember, Goldwater was defeated because of Vietnam, which Johnson then led us into. But all this whining and angry is stupid. It's not over and may not be over for a while. What we cannot do is quit.
My god, I know some of you are young, or new to politics, but change takes time. It took ten years from the Montgomery Bus Boycott to the Civil Rights act. It may well take eight years to hammer the GOP back. But we will fight that fight, together and organized. And with better tools and we will all be smarter.
No one got the America they wanted without struggle, not just one election. So stop crying in your beer and do some reading. Find out how we really built this country and people who suffered to do so. You not getting the right candidate is not the worst thing that has happened. They used to hang black people for looking at white women. We're a better country than that that today, and we will be better after this mess is over.
Jen,
Yes, I'm worried too. But we're a little older and wiser. And I hope you enjoy that $50 gift certificate when they decide this mess. But you told me how you contribute and if you continue to do that, well, you'll feel better. You did Clinic Defense. You may have to do it again and get up early on Saturdays. We all must sacrifice.
And there is a mayoral election for us next year, and some really good candidates. And a stadium to opppose.
Politics never ends.
OK, after a long year, a major illness and a long night, I'm going to post lightly today and maybe tomorrow. And to be honest, I'm going to post up non-politics as well. Why? We all need a break for what comes next.
However, a couple of things.
Thank you for your lavish support of this site. I am honored to have as many people as do read my words. It's been a source of comfort and support over the last year.
Second, we're going to start to raise money for Operation Truth. They need to be on TV and need to be supported. When that starts, I'll let you know. But while this fight goes into overtime, the fight to end the war in Iraq continues. Our soldiers need our support and prayers and best wishes.
We're going to play Political Machine on the site as well, as soon as the word politics doesn't make our stomachs knot up.
But, for the next day or so, if you have a political screed, send it to me and I'll post it up, as long as it isn't blaming people for what happened. I, however, will be talking about anything but politics for a while. Not disgusted, not angry, just tired of the whole discussion for a while. We've been talking about this election since August, 2003.
Oh yeah, the pcitures will be back. I just didn't want to take the time last night or bother this morning.
Poll: GOP's Michael Grimm Leads By A Whopping 19 Points
Rep. Michael Grimm appears to be his way to a landslide reelection victory on Tuesday, at least if a new Siena College poll is any indication.
The Staten Island Republican leads Democrat Domenic Recchia by a 19 points among likely voters in the district, a shocking result considering that forecasters expected the race to be very close.
Grimm's lead defies the troubled year he has had. In January he threatened to break a New York reporter in half and throw him off a balcony. In April he was indicted by the federal government on fraud charges.
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Before getting on with his job as a "shusher" in the prison library, federal prisoner number 40892-424 looks out of the window of the common room and considers
Similar laws have been aggressively pushed in many states by Republican lawmakers who say they are preventing voter fraud, promoting electoral “integrity” and increasing voter turnout. None of that is true. There is virtually no in-person voter fraud; the purpose of these laws is to suppress voting.
In Texas, where last week a federal judge struck down what she called the most restrictive voter ID law in the country, there were two convictions for in-person voter impersonation in one 10-year period. During that time, 20 million votes were cast. Nor is there any evidence that these laws encourage more voters to come to the polls. Instead, in at least two states — Kansas and Tennessee — they appear to have reduced turnout by 2 percent to 3 percent, according to a report released last week by the Government Accountability Office.
Voter ID laws, as their supporters know, do only one thing very well: They keep otherwise eligible voters away from the polls. In most cases, this means voters who are poor, often minorities, and who don’t have the necessary documents or the money or time to get photo IDs.
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All of which should come as a surprise to exactly no one who reads anything other that the Wall Street Journal, listens to anything other than Hate Radio, gets their "news" from anyplace other than Fox, or watched "The Newsroom" back in 2012 (video embedding disabled),
I will say, based on my own informal and unscientific polling that Conservatives have quietly stopped pretending that voting fraud actually exists, and now simply resort to the standard wingnut Fight (IRS!Solyndra!Benghaaaai!) or Flight (BothSides!BothSides!BothSides!) response when confronted with yet another glaring example of Conservative racism and contempt for democracy.
Which is progress of a sort I suppose.
In fact, according to my own sporadic and unscientific visits to the wingnut radio end of the dial, Democrats could solve this whole problem if they could just convince Barack Obama to stop apologizing for Murrica and break out some of his magic Green Lantern Leadership pixie dust.
Because I am a Liberal, I sometimes torment myself by looking back and back and back, beyond the limits of Known History and deep into the neverwhen of Stuff That Happened Before the Obama Administration,
Ten years ago, we were facing another election. It was being aggressively prosecuted by another cohort of utterly loathsome Conservative criminals and lunatics who were hotly, wildly cheered by the same army of fact-impervious Pig People who will flood the polls again this November to try and complete the act of slow-motion sedition-by-sabotage they began the day Barack Obama first took the oath of office, and that they have been fanatically pursuing every day since,
If you're a Liberal, you remember waking up that awful day in November to find that, yes, 60 million of your fellow citizens really were fucking stupid enough to give the Bush Regime four more year to finish the job of wrecking this country on behalf of their corporate benefactors.
And if you're a Liberal, you are girding yourself for the possibility of once again waking up to find that, yes, about half this country has continued to exist in a persistent political vegetative state utterly unmoved or unaware of any of the events of the past 10 years because IRS! Benghazi !DeathPanels! Ebola! Deficits! and so forth.
They are angry, paranoid and often racist houseplants, and continuing to pretend they are somehow competent citizens with whom we can have a civil debate over anything is a habit of mind which outlived its usefulness long ago.
And so, as a public service and in the interest of history, I though it would be a hoot to go back to the feverish days leading up to the 2004 election and remind future history students that this is roughly what the Bush Administration promised us over and over the Iraqi Army would look like in the here-and-now:
By now, our blood and treasure was supposed to have bought us a well-armed, superbly-trained Iraqi Army nearly one million strong, ready and eager to take over the task of protecting the sovereign nation of Iraq from the terrorists our invasion the sovereign nation of Iraq created.
Where did I get those figures?
They are simple, linear extrapolations based on the many, many lies that came pouring effortlessly out of the mouths of the President and Vice President of the United States exactly 10 years ago..
Bush: Let me first tell you that the best way for Iraq to be safe and secure is for Iraqi citizens to be trained to do the job.
And that's what we're doing. We've got 100,000 trained now, 125,000 by the end of this year, 200,000 by the end of next year. That is the best way. We'll never succeed in Iraq if the Iraqi citizens do not want to take matters into their own hands to protect themselves. I believe they want to. Prime Minister Allawi believes they want to.
And so the best indication about when we can bring our troops home -- which I really want to do, but I don't want to do so for the sake of bringing them home; I want to do so because we've achieved an objective -- is to see the Iraqis perform and to see the Iraqis step up and take responsibility.
Bush: ...a free Iraq is going to make this world a more peaceful place.
Bush: ...And I'm optimistic. See, I think you can be realistic and optimistic at the same time. I'm optimistic we'll achieve -- I know we won't achieve if we send mixed signals. I know we're not going to achieve our objective if we send mixed signals to our troops, our friends, the Iraqi citizens.
We've got a plan in place. The plan says there will be elections in January, and there will be. The plan says we'll train Iraqi soldiers so they can do the hard work, and we are.
Bush: There are 100,000 troops trained, police, guard, special units, border patrol. There's going to be 125,000 trained by the end of this year. Yes, we're getting the job done. It's hard work. Everybody knows it's hard work, because there's a determined enemy that's trying to defeat us.
Bush: ...You can't change the dynamics on the ground if you've criticized the brave leader of Iraq. One of his campaign people alleged that Prime Minister Allawi was like a puppet. That's no way to treat somebody who's courageous and brave, that is trying to lead his country forward.
CHENEY: I would. We've made significant progress in Iraq. We've stood up a new government that's been in power now only 90 days. The notion of additional troops is talked about frequently. But the point of success in Iraq will be reached when we have turned governance over to the Iraqi people, they've been able to establish a democratic government. They're well on their way on their way to doing that. They'll have free elections next January for the first time in history.
We also are actively rapidly training Iraqis to take on the security responsibility. Those two steps are crucial to success in Iraq. They're well in hand, well under way, and I'm confident that, in fact, we'll get the job done.
CHENEY: The Senator has got his facts wrong. I have not suggested there's a connection between Iraq and 9/11...
CHENEY: Classic example, he won't count the sacrifice and the contribution of our Iraqi allies. It's their country, they're in the fight, they're increasingly the ones out there putting their necks on the line to take back their country from the terrorists and the old regime elements that are still left. They're doing a superb job, and for you to demean their sacrifice, that strikes me as --
EDWARDS: Oh, I'm not --
CHENEY: -- beyond the pale. It is, indeed. You suggested that somehow --
EDWARDS: No, sir --
CHENEY: -- they shouldn't count, because you want to be able to say that the Americans are taking 90 percent of the sacrifice. You cannot succeed in this effort if you're not willing to recognize the enormous contribution the Iraqis are increasingly making to their own future. We'll win when they take on responsibility for governance, which they're doing; and when they take on responsibility for their own security, which they increasingly are doing
BUSH: Two days ago in the Oval Office, I met with the Finance Minister from Iraq. He came to see me. And he talked about how optimistic he was and the country was about heading toward elections. Think about it. They're going from tyranny to elections. He talked about the reconstruction efforts that are beginning to take hold. He talked about the fact that Iraqis love to be free. He said he was optimistic when he came here. Then he turned on the TV and listened to the political rhetoric and all of the sudden he was pessimistic.
This is a guy who, along with others, has taken great risk for freedom. And we need to stand with him. My opponent says he has a plan. Sounds familiar because it's called the Bush plan. We're going to train troops -- and we are. We'll have 125,000 trained by the end of December. We're spending about $7 billion.
He talks about a grand idea -- let's have a summit. We're going to solve the problem in Iraq by holding a summit. And what is he going to say to those people that show up to the summit? Join me in the wrong war at the wrong time at the wrong place? Risk your troops in a war you've called a mistake? Nobody is going to follow somebody who doesn't believe we can succeed, and somebody who says the war where we are is a mistake. I know how these people think. I meet with them all the time. I talk to Tony Blair all the time. I talk to Silvio Berlusconi -- they're not going to follow an American President who says, follow me into a mistake. Our plan is working. We're going to make elections and Iraq is going to be free, and America will be better off for it.
Bush: The best way to take the pressure off our troops is to succeed in Iraq, is to train Iraqis so they can do the hard work of democracy, is to give them a chance to defend their country, which is precisely what we're doing. We'll have 125,000 troops trained by the end of this year.
