Let’s Go To The Sinema

The elections are over and the GOP takes the House by a slim margin and the Senate is in the hands of the Dems….and now that slim margin is even slimmer….for Arizona junior Senator, Krysten Sinema has decided to leave the Dem Party…..

Days after Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock won the runoff election in Georgia, the 51-49 majority the party was expecting in Congress is looking shakier. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema tells CNN that she is leaving the Democratic Party and registering as an independent. The Arizona senator declined to say whether she would formally caucus with Democrats like the other two independent senators, Maine’s Sen. Angus King and Vermont’s Sen. Bernie Sanders. “I’m going to still come to work and hopefully serve on the same committees I’ve been serving on and continue to work well with my colleagues at both political parties,” she says. Nothing will change about her “values and behavior,” she says.

“I’ve never fit neatly into any party box. I’ve never really tried. I don’t want to,” Sinema says. “Removing myself from the partisan structure—not only is it true to who I am and how I operate, I also think it’ll provide a place of belonging for many folks across the state and the country, who also are tired of the partisanship.” In 2018, Sinema became the first woman—and the first Democrat in more than 20 years—to be elected to the Senate from Arizona. Like Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, Sinema was already known as a centrist, opposed to moves like weakening the filibuster. Politico reports the switch means Manchin, “a pivotal swing vote in the 50-50 chamber” will keep “some but not all of his outsized influence in the Democratic caucus.”

Sinema says she informed Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of her decision Thursday and she doesn’t “anticipate that anything will change about the Senate structure.” In an Arizona Republic op-ed, she writes that she has worked “proudly with senators in both parties who have similarly rejected political extremes and forged consensus, helping drain some of the poison from today’s politics.” “Like a lot of Arizonans, I have never fit perfectly in either national party,” she writes. The 46-year-old wouldn’t tell CNN whether she is going to seek reelection in 2024, but she said she’s not planning to run for president.

What a lame excuse….almost as lame as “I want to spend more time with my family”….come on let’s be real….she is worried about re-election mostly…..

The search for answers and future fallout from Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s decision to leave the Democratic Party has turned up plenty of possibilities. Democratic leaders in Washington refrained from bashing her decision, hoping to keep her voting with them. Democrats in Arizona, who invested in her 2018 campaign and helped put her in the Senate, see the decision as strategic, calculated to avoid a difficult primary battle in two years that she might well lose—and not so much about the systemic problems with the two-party system that she cited Friday. The reporting and analyses cover:

The Senate: Sinema sounds like she expects to stay on the committees Democratic leaders assigned her to, and caucus with the party—which affects the chamber’s organization—but she won’t quite say so. It’s not clear which side of the aisle her desk will sit on, per the Washington Post. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called her an effective senator and said her change won’t much affect “the new Democratic majority Senate.” Sinema rarely went to Democratic caucus meetings anyway, per the New York Times.

The timing: She told Democrats of her decision two days after Georgia reelected Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, cushioning the blow to Senate Democrats. She won’t get much Democratic support in 2024 anyway, Aaron Blake writes in a Post analysis, but the same decision would have fallen differently if Warnock had lost. “Imagine her trying to appeal to any of the Democrats who elected her in 2018 after having handed the Senate majority to the GOP,” Blake says. A Democratic House member from Arizona said his wife predicted the switch hours after Warnock won, per Politico. “I bet you she goes independent,” Mona Grijalva said. “In terms of her leverage in the Senate, the universe shifted with that victory,” said Rep. Raul Grijalva.

The ideology: Sinema has shown flexibility here. Progressive activists in Arizona are especially irked by the shifts in a politician they supported and now see her as a major opponent, per the Los Angeles Times. Sinema began in politics in the Green Party and as antiwar activist, a “Prada socialist” called too extreme by her state’s Democratic Party, per the AP. Sinema then went independent, then Democratic. She said Friday her values won’t change. She said that she wouldn’t become “distracted by political drama,” Elvia Diaz points out in a USA Today column, but created it with such attention-grabbers as giving a demonstrative thumbs-down to a minimum wage measure on the Senate floor and posting pictures on social media of a ring with the message “f–k off.”

The next race: Sinema had been headed toward a 2024 primary against Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego, whose campaign sent a fundraising text after her announcement saying he’s “thinking of running,” per Axios. A poll in September showed Sinema with a favorable rating of 37% among Democrats back home; 57% had an unfavorable opinion of her, per the Post. The earliest polls show strength for Gallego. Had Arizona Republicans Kari Lake or Blake Masters won their statewide elections last month, Gallego might have challenged one of them next time, per Bloomberg. But with those paths closed, Sinema’s seat is a prime target; progressives already were thinking of challenging her from the left. Sinema’s unpopularity with Democrats means she would need Republicans and independents to back her next time, Diaz writes, but counting on Arizona’s GOP, especially, to support Sinema seems a tough bet. She made this move because it’s her best shot, Diaz says.

All the analysis comes down to two items…..money and power.

Sinema saw how much power Manchin wheeled in the last 2 years….she wants that power!

Plus she was also the center of media attention last Congress and she wants that to continue.

Plus she can sit on the fence and see which way the special interest money winds will blow.

The proud servant of the people is more about a self- serving agenda…..typical politician.

Closing Thought–07Feb22

THe GOP has been brutally honest….well some GOPers…..that all their attempts to limit Dem voters is their strategy…..gerrymandering, voters suppression, etc etc are all attempts to remove any GOP opponents from ever winning another election.

Arizona (go figure) is just the most recent attempts……

Arizona Republicans have spent the past couple weeks since the legislative session began introducing a red wave of voter suppression measures. House Bill 2596, which dropped Friday, would eliminate all early voting, emergency voting centers, and no-excuse mail-in voting. The latter has existed in Arizona since 1991, so longer than the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

The House bill would also ban the use of electronic voting machines and require that all ballots are counted by human hands. You might think that would take forever, but they’ll have 24 hours to do it!

Republicans had traditionally held the advantage in ballots cast prior to Election Day. That changed in 2020, so obviously early voting is corrupt and must end. GOP Rep. Shawna Bolick proposed the measure that would only permit emergency voting in “times of war, civil unrest or a natural disaster.” These are obviously the only real emergencies that would prevent someone from voting on Election Day. In real America, emergency voting centers are only for upcoming hurricanes and nuclear wars.

Some of the Republicans who sponsored this bill also reportedly supported and even cheered the Arizona fraudit. A total of seven bills passed out of committee along party lines. State Sen. Wendy Rogers (a QAnon bigot) filed a bill that would prohibit drop boxes with only the most narrow exception for voters with disabilities. Arizonians shouldn’t have to disclose their disability status, and the lack of early voting might make the lines on Election Day a burden even for those who don’t fit Rogers’ likely narrow definition of “disabled.”

https://www.wonkette.com/arizona-gop-officially-done-with-people-voting-against-republicans

This is what we get when the game HALO is more important than voting….the loss of voting rights can be laid only at the feet of the voter.

What will it take to get the lazy toads from behind their game control and vote to preserve our society?

Turn The Page!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–24Sep21

For months we have been hearing all about the silliness with the Arizona vote count….the Trumpie toadies have been in search of anything they can point to as voter fraud…..the well the icing on the cake as the s-called ‘audit’ draws to a close…..

A widely criticized partisan audit of the 2020 election results in Arizona’s Maricopa County cost around $6 million—which, according to a draft report detailing its findings, works out to almost $60,000 for every extra vote it found for President Biden. The Arizona Republic reports that rather than finding the election was “stolen” from Donald Trump, as the former president and his supporters claimed, the hand count confirmed Biden’s win in the county and extended his narrow lead. It found that Biden received 99 more votes than the county reported and Trump received 261 fewer votes than the official tally, per CNN.

The findings are due to be presented to the GOP-led Arizona Senate Friday. Randy Pullen, a spokesman for the election review, tells KJZZ that the leaked copy of the findings is “not the final report, but it’s close.” “Was there massive fraud or anything? It doesn’t look like it,” Pullen says. He adds, however, that other reports to be presented Friday will show evidence of worrying “anomalies” in voting records. The report describes the audit results as “necessarily inconclusive.” The audit was mainly funded by pro-Trump groups.

Maricopa County Board of Supervisors chairman Jack Sellers, a Republican, says the draft report shows the county ran an accurate election. “This means the tabulation equipment counted the ballots as they were designed to do, and the results reflect the will of the voters,” he says. “That should be the end of the story. Everything else is just noise.” The audit was conducted by Florida-based cybersecurity company Cyber Ninjas, which has no previous election experience. Its CEO, Doug Logan, has expressed support for Trump’s claims the election was “rigged” against him.

I could not stop laugh at this news report….all their hard work to try and prove voter fraud and in the end Biden gets 99 more votes.

How much did the people of Arizona pay for Biden’s 99 new votes?

You gotta admit that this was the best story of the week…..you just cannot make this stuff up…..

This does not bode well for the future audits that the Trumpies will try and use to find more votes for their idol…..that may give Biden even more votes.

****Pause here for more laughter…..****

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

McCain’s A Liberal?

Just how far will they go to be more moronic than they are now? I have called McCain many things, some not so nice, but I have never called him a liberal or that he was too liberal to be a Repub……but guess what! The state GOP of Arizona has gone to the far Right in recent weeks……

Seems John McCain is getting too liberal for Arizona conservatives—so liberal that the state’s Republican party has formally reprimanded the senator for his “disastrous and harmful” record, Politico reports. At a party meeting in Tempe yesterday, the party hammered McCain for assisting Democrats on immigration reform, ignoring a GOP plan to defund ObamaCare, and criticizing conservative Republicans while keeping “eerily silent against liberals.” Not only that, he kept telling a rather unkind joke about Congress, the Atlantic Wire reports. Congress “can’t get lower in the polls,” the joke goes (thanks, Atlantic Wire). “We’re down to blood relatives and paid staffers now.” But the censure sounds like no joke: The state GOP vowed to “no longer support, campaign for, or endorse” McCain until he backs the party platform. McCain’s office had no comment, but former Sen. Jon Kyl, another Arizona Republican, spoke up for him: To say McCain “doesn’t have a conservative voting record—that’s just baloney,” he told the Arizona Republic. “I’ve gone to dozens of these meetings and every now and then some wacky resolution gets passed.” At this meeting, some 1,600 committee members also voted to abolish a Constitutional amendment allowing the direct election of senators by the voting public, Reuters reports.

Okay, I am NO fan of McCain’s……but this is pushing the envelope……and then there are those in the GOP that say there is NO purity test that candidates must adhere to…..looks like the Arizona twats missed that memo…….

2011 Anal-Ocity #21

That time again…..more anal drippings from the mouths of politics…..

this time it is an old friend of Anal-Ocity, as a matter of fact he won the 2008 “Assie” Award for the most anal statement of the year….my friend and yours, Sen. John McCain of Arizona…..

Recently when interviewed about the devastating fires in his home state, he said…..

“substantial evidence that some of these fires have been caused by people who have crossed our border illegally.”

Of course the political world went “HUH”? And he then had to do what ALL good repubs have to do…..try to explain what he meant by his statement……

“I was briefed by the Forest Service about the fact that illegal immigrants sometimes start these fires,” he said. And there has been testimony by service officials that “large numbers of warming and cooking fires built and abandoned by cross-border violators have caused wildfires that have destroyed cultural and natural resources.”

With his clarification he clouded up the waters even more……he still has not explain what was the substantial info that he had received that would indicate that they were started by border violators…..

I thought that in 2008 that he was losing it and he has done or said NOTHING that would change my opinion…he is old! Time to go! Somebody has got to make room for Arizona’s newest politician….Palin….

The American People May Not Be In A Coma

Have you heard the news coming out of Arizona? No! Not the immigration thing that has everybody’s panties in a twist….I mean the sales tax thing….as reported by the LA Times:

Voters in this famously tax-averse state Tuesday night approved a temporary hike in the sales tax to stave off brutal budget cuts.

The veteran Republican had shocked many in her party last year by advocating the penny sales tax increase, arguing that the state couldn’t simply cut its way out of a deficit that rivals California’s. Critics said it was economic suicide to raise taxes in a recession.

Political observers have noted that because the governor was defying GOP orthodoxy by pushing the tax increase, she had little option but to sign the immigration bill, which is strongly supported by most Arizona voters and an overwhelming proportion of Republicans.

It seems that the American people, at least Arizonans for now, agree with me that some form of tax increases are needed to save needed programs. The residents voted FOR the increase; this was not some sneak attack on their lives by some shady, back street deal made with politicians.

Given the facts, as best as a politician can give the facts, and the people can make a decision that effects their lives……a plus for more direct democracy.

The Land That Time Forgot

No not that 1960’s flick starring Doug McClure with all the dinosaurs. but for this post it is about dinosaurs………the dinosaurs are the old white people in Arizona……

First, they did not seem to want to recognize MLK day for whatever reason….I am sure that they had a pure logical reason (in their minds) but it still smacked of racism……Then there came the cowboy law….you know that law that says that residents can carry concealed weapons without nay checks, as long as they were not felons….and now we have their antiquated immigration law, where if you look like an illegal alien (whatever that means) you can be stopped and forced to prove ones citizenship……..

I understand the frustration that states like Arizona have with the federal government, but this new law smells like it violates the constitution on several levels and I am sure that there will be a wealth of challenges to the law…

It is possible that this is just a huge bluff trying to force Washington into coming up with a comprehensive immigration policy……if that is so, then Arizona is using its citizens as pawns in some sick political game…

There are also reports that at least 10 other states are considering the passage of some immigration policy…this would add to the urgency of the situation and possibly make it a priority in Washington, even though the Repub leader says there is NO chance of the House considering any immigration legislation this session….

Arizona is full of old white people that refuse to believe that there are any other races but white….they have the cowboy mentality……..

So where does that leave the citizens of Arizona?….behind the 8 ball!

In Saner Thought

"It is the duty of every man, as far as his ability extends, to detect and expose delusion and error"..Thomas Paine

Tag: Arizona