Tag: 2018 Election

Is More Democracy Better?

We have just practiced one of our “inalienable rights”….we voted in the midterms and according to the pundits democracy has won out over the silliness in the country today.

But has it?

I still have not seen a backlash that all were predicting…..okay the Dems won the House…..who did not see that coming?  Repubs keep the Senate….and this is a surprise?  At what point will all that make a difference to my life?  But it does give the high paid pundits something to talk about…..

Just what did the midterms prove?

People voted…..Trump still has a 40% approval……Dems still are as rudderless as always….do I really need to continue?

But now let’s look at the democracy we love (about here someone will no doubt point out that the US is a republic…..thanx for that now go back to sleep)……

Candidates and Political Parties…….the candidates no longer need to hold to party ideology……

n the late evening of August 29, 1968, a balding fifty-seven-year-old wearing a black suit and a black tie took the stage at the International Amphitheatre, in Chicago, to accept his party’s nomination for the Presidency of the United States. Framed by a gray backdrop, Hubert Humphrey promised America a bright new day: “It is the special genius of the Democratic Party that it welcomes change, not as an enemy but as an ally; not as a force to be suppressed but as an instrument of progress to be encouraged.”

When he was first elected to the U.S. Senate, some two decades earlier, Humphrey was hailed as a liberal hero for his outspoken support of civil rights. When he served as Lyndon B. Johnson’s Vice-President, he continued to champion progressive causes like equal-opportunity hiring and privately expressed misgivings about the military escalation in Vietnam. But, during the primaries, he did not publicly distance himself from Johnson even as the President became less and less popular, and activists gradually came to see Humphrey as the hapless face of a failing establishment. “Once a fiery liberal spirit,” the satirist Tom Lehrer lamented in song, “Ah, but now when he speaks he must clear it. / Second fiddle’s a hard part, I know, / When they don’t even give you a bow.”

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/12/is-more-democracy-always-better-democracy

An outside group, Indivisible, has taken upon themselves to help the Dems grow a spine…..a lofty task……..

After more than year of playing defense against President Donald Trump and the GOP’s attacks on healthcare, workers, immigrants, refugees, the LGBTQ community, and the common good, the progressive group Indivisible on Tuesday published a new action guide aimed at helping organizers and constituents go beyond resistance and pressure the new House Democratic majority to fight for a positive, ambitious agenda.

“This guide is for what comes next,” Indivisible notes, contrasting the new roadmap with its viral 2016 Trump resistance guide.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/11/14/help-democrats-stiffening-their-spines-new-indivisible-guide-details-how-trump

The GOP may be a hopeless cause…..they have sided with sex deviates and have lambasted a military man in defense of a cowardly president……their redemption will be harder for these spineless slugs…

Democracy is a fascinating topic and I will re-visit it in the near future….

Turn The Page ….but Stay Tuned!

Closing Thought–28Nov18

The midterms from Mississippi….who cares right?

I live there so I f*cking care!

There has been a back and forth for the office of US Senator from Mississippi….a racist white broad or a black guy with deep ties to DC….I said when the run-off was announced that Hyde-Smith would win no matter what her mouth did……and I was correct……

Mississippi failed to deliver the Democrats an Alabama-style upset in the last race of the 2018 midterms. Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith defeated Democrat Mike Espy and will serve the remaining two years of Sen. Thad Cochran’s term. She is the first woman elected to Congress from Mississippi, the Clarion-Ledger reports. If Espy had won, he would have been the first African-American the state had elected to Congress since 1874, and the first Democratic senator elected in the state since 1982. The victory in the runoff gives Republicans control of 53 out of 100 seats in the Senate. Hyde-Smith had been widely expected to win, though the GOP had to pump funds into the state as the race narrowed in ts final weeks.

Hyde-Smith stuck to a strategy of appealing to President Trump’s core voters—and was rewarded for it, ABC reports. The president appeared at two of her rallies Monday night and she personally thanked him at her victory party Tuesday. “Mr. President, and I just talked to him so I know he’s watching, thank you so much for everything,” she said. The victory follows a divisive campaign that led to several corporate donors asking Hyde-Smith to return their donations, the AP reports. Hyde-Smith was recorded joking about attending a public hanging, and talking about making it “more difficult” for “liberal folks” to vote. (She accused Espy of using the hanging remarks as a “weapon.”)

Espy gave a good fight….but in Mississippi is will NEVER be enough to change the the minds of the racist folk that have a lock hold on government….the “good old boy” network is firmly in control……

A good fight will never be enough in Mississippi.

I listen to the victory speech…..and I laughed my ass off….what a pack of bullshit!

“Mississippi you know my heart and my mind”  yes they do and the vote shows they know exactly what she is….

“It was never about me it was about Mississippi”…..it is never about the state and everything about keeping power centered in the hands of the few racist old bastards that remain.

This vote guaranteed two things….a black man will never be good enough and the state will remain at the bottom of every list of good things.  PERIOD!

Sorry if that offends.

Closing Thought–19Nov18

We have had a midterm election and as usual the GOP is claiming voter fraud to explain their losses….I mean it has to be fraud because no one would vote against their racist agenda, right?

But wait the dude that sits in cat bird seat of power has a better explanation of why his idiotic ideas failed……

President Trump asserts that Republicans are losing elections because people are donning disguises to vote illegally. Trump made the claim while discussing the Florida recount with the Daily Caller, along with his belief that Broward County Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes should be fired (more on that here, here and here). The full transcript of the interview shows the president also brought up California before making his disguise statement, so it wasn’t clear which state he meant when he said this:

  • “The Republicans don’t win and that’s because of potentially illegal votes, which is what I’ve been saying for a long time. I have no doubt about it. And I’ve seen it, I’ve had friends talk about it when people get in line that have absolutely no right to vote and they go around in circles. Sometimes they go to their car, put on a different hat, put on a different shirt, come in and vote again. Nobody takes anything. It’s really a disgrace what’s going on. The disgrace is that, voter ID. If you buy, you know, a box of cereal, if you do anything, you have a voter ID.”

The Guardian, which along with other media outlets paints the “disguises” claim as being about Florida, notes that Florida counties face a 3pm deadline Thursday to finish their machine recounts and that it’s not clear all of them will be able to comply; six federal lawsuits have been filed so far over the election in the state. The New York Times reports that thousands of ballots may be disqualified due to signature mismatches, though US District Judge Mark Walker on Thursday extended a deadline on that. He gave voters whose ballots were discounted over their signatures until 5pm Saturday to show a valid ID and resolve the issue, reports the AP. He also chastised state election officials: Florida is “the laughingstock of the world election after election, and we chose not to fix this.” (Trump earlier called Florida ballots “massively infected.”)

You gotta love the bullshit these a/holes can stir, right?

The GOP has become the whiny ass losers they have always been but hid very well…..they come out of the woodwork when they are losing….like there has got to be fraud because we know that everyone loves a Repub right?

Is There A Mandate?

Finally and mercifully the midterms are in the history books…..but the partisan BS goes on and on……

But an observation……. an era of Republican leadership, nationalistic and fundamentalist movements, and changing social conventions. Electing Republican presidents who favored business expansion rather than regulation, the American public enjoyed apparently unlimited prosperity, while fear of radicals and foreigners combined to almost completely close off America to immigration and contributed to the resurgence of hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan.

Sound familiar?

It should it was a description of the 1920’s in the US.

But I digress…….

Dems take the House.  GOP gains in Senate.  And the Congress has a mandate.  Riddle me this….What would that mandate be?

One person has said it is try and break this vicious cycle of tribalism…..really?

To me it looks more like racism than some form of tribalism…..

It’s fashionable in the Donald Trump era to decry political “tribalism,” especially if you’re a conservative attempting to criticize Trump without incurring the wrath of his supporters. House Speaker Paul Ryan has lamented the “tribalism” of American politics. Arizona Senator Jeff Flake has said that “tribalism is ruining us.” Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse has written a book warning that “partisan tribalism is statistically higher than at any point since the Civil War.”

In the fallout from Tuesday’s midterm elections, many political analysts have concluded that blue America and red America are ever more divided, ever more at each other’s throats. But calling this “tribalism” is misleading, because only one side of this divide remotely resembles a coalition based on ethnic and religious lines, and only one side has committed itself to a political strategy that relies on stoking hatred and fear of the other. By diagnosing America’s problem as tribalism, chin-stroking pundits and their sorrowful semi-Trumpist counterparts in Congress have hidden the actual problem in American politics behind a weird euphemism.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/11/racism-not-tribalism/575173/

On the racism thing…..Mother Jones sees the racism in 2018 was down but sexism up…….

Here’s an interesting bit of polling research from Brian Schaffner. He used a panel study to test the effects of racist and sexist attitudes toward voting Republican in 2016 and 2018. Here’s what he found:

https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/11/in-2018-racism-was-down-but-sexism-was-up-among-republican-voters/

Will the past election bring a return to the “rule of law”?

After Wednesday, elected officials in the Republican Party should have no doubt that Donald Trump will force them to choose in coming days, weeks, and months between loyalty to him and loyalty to the rule of law, between the public’s right to the truth and Trump’s efforts to hide it.

The president began the day with an extraordinary threat on Twitter: “If the Democrats think they are going to waste Taxpayer Money investigating us at the House level,” he wrote,“then we will likewise be forced to consider investigating them for all of the leaks of Classified Information, and much else, at the Senate level. Two can play that game!”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/republicans-must-choose-between-trump-and-the-rule-of-law/ar-BBPtOxP

Come 2019 will the GOP grow a pair or will they continue to govern on their knees in front of Our Dear Supreme Leader?

My guess is they are springing for new knee pads…..cowards always work best when kept on their knees.

Don’t Be Fooled!

Closing Thought–07Nov18

Did your fav candidate win?  Are you looking forward to a new day in DC?  Is the country better off after this Midterm?

Let me answer all questions with one statement.

“Don’t be fooled, flattered or flummoxed by the election.”

Why?

NOTHING will change and we will have nothing but chaos for the next 2 years.

But hey….don’t take my word for it……

Let’s face it. Most politicians use the mass media to obfuscate. Voters who don’t do their homework, who don’t study records of the politicians, and who can’t separate the words from the deeds will easily fall into traps laid by wily politicians.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/11/06/dont-be-flattered-fooled-and-flummoxed-in-todayss-election/

Whoever said that we Americans get the government we deserve was so damn right…..we deserve the shitty representation that we have now a days…..because we are too busy sucking up slogans and optics and not enough checking the accuracy of the candidates claims.

The American voters are suckers!  They proved it yet again yesterday during the 2018 midterms.

This country can not move forward until the population learns to move forward….as it is now they are stuck in the past and their voting habits prove it.

2018 Midterms Are Over!

I was gonna do this whole breakdown of the races from yesterday and the winners ….but instead why don’t you go to the media that you think has the best news and let them tell you what you want to hear……instead I want to touch on what the important stuff….the different houses of Congress…..

First the Senate……

Republicans will keep control of the Senate for at least another two years—both CNN and the AP have called it. The GOP went into Tuesday’s midterms with a 51-49 advantage, and the party appears to be on track to actually increase that margin. The bad news began early for Democrats when they lost a key race in Indiana: GOP businessman Mike Braun defeated incumbent Joe Donnelly, who had been seen as one of the most vulnerable Senate Democrats, reports ABC News. Democrats also lost another seat in North Dakota and failed to flip a vulnerable one in Tennessee. Meanwhile, the GOP’s Ted Cruz won in Texas, while the race in Florida was too close to call. Notable if unsurprising winners elsewhere included Republican Mitt Romney in Utah and Democratic incumbent Tim Kaine in Virginia.

More details:

  • Missouri. Republican Josh Hawley defeated Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill by a 55-42 margin, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports.
  • Tennessee: Republican Marsha Blackburn will keep the seat in GOP hands. She defeated Democrat Phil Bredesen to replace the retiring Bob Corker, a Republican, reports the Hill.
  • Florida: Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson vs. Republican Rick Scott. This is shaping up to be a nail-biter based on partial returns.
  • North Dakota: Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp lost her seat to Republican challenger Kevin Cramer.
  • New Jersey: Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez defeated Republican Bob Hugin, per the AP.
  • West Virginia: Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin defeated Republican Patrick Morrisey, reports CNN.

A number of other closely watched races were still outstanding, including Arizona, Montana, and Nevada.

Now the House….this is where most thought in-roads could be made…..and it seems there were…..

It wasn’t exactly a blue tsunami, but Democrats were on course to regain control of the House for the first time since 2010 early Wednesday after flipping more than the necessary 23 seats and closing in on the 218 needed for a majority. “Thanks to you, tomorrow will be a new day in America,” said House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, per the Washington Post. Pelosi, who is expected to seek to return to her role as House speaker, said the victory “is about restoring the Constitution’s checks and balances to the Trump administration.” She promised to “drain the swamp” and strive for accountability and bipartisanship.

President Trump called Pelosi late Tuesday to congratulate her on the Democratic victory, although press secretary Sarah Sanders had earlier suggested he wouldn’t, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Trump called Pelosi at 11:45pm “to extend his congratulations on winning a Democratic House Majority,” tweeted Drew Hamill, Pelosi’s deputy chief of staff. “He acknowledged the Leader’s call for bipartisanship in her victory remarks.” The AP reports that the Democratic road to victory involved flipping seats in Rust Belt states and suburban districts Hillary Clinton won in 2016. Redistricting helped the party score some big wins in Pennsylvania, where at least three red seats flipped to blue.

That “Blue Tsunami” was a fart in the bath tub….but Hell don’t believe me……Read more Election 2018 stories.

What does this all mean?

New faces for the group photos.  Beyond that a finger in the eye of the American public.

I guess there are a few things that it means……..

Well the GOP keeps the power to confirm worthless judges and the House will be on Trump’s back on many issues….but they need to not look like it is revenge but rather the search for answers…..and there are many answers that are needed.

Final word…..if you expect something different then you shall go to bed with tears in your eyes…..governing will lack….everyone can spin the successes.

Now I shall leave the 2018 elections behind and return to a world on the brink.

Peace Out!

Peacemakers, Warmongers And Fence Setters

You are about to go to the polls and vote for your favorite candidate or in my case the one with the least smell about them…..but who represents your political thinking…a peacemaker?  Or a Warmonger?  Maybe a coward that sits on the Fence and watches the political winds?

Who represents you?

In lifetime voting records tabulated by Peace Action, the average House Democrat has a 72% peace voting record, while the average House Republican scores only 10%. In the Senate, the difference is 69% to 14%

As a foreign policy crisis explodes over the apparent Saudi assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul, the failure of the U.S. Congress to assert its constitutional war powers over three years of illegal U.S. military action in the war on Yemen and booming U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners is finally coming home to roost.

The UN already reported two years ago that a child was dying every 10 minutes in Yemen, wracked by the war and its consequences, including malnutrition, diphtheria, cholera and other preventable diseases.  Data already showed that more than a third of Saudi-led airstrikes were hitting schools, hospitals, markets, mosques and other civilian sites. But none of the dire warnings by UN agencies and NGOs could trigger the constitutionally required debate and decisive action by the U.S. Congress.  Even now the Trump administration is trying desperately to salvage its blood-soaked arms sales to Saudi Arabia.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/10/23/peacemakers-warmongers-and-fence-sitters-who-represents-you

I look for the person that I feel will keep the US ot of useless wars….and like I said these days I just hold my nose and vote or I look for an alternative candidate that has NO chance of winning but at least I have voted my principles in most cases…..too many cannot say that.

Today is your day to send whatever message you have close to your heart….please go vote…..your country needs you.

Midterms Biggest Loser!

Today is the big day…the day that we all have been hearing about for over a year…..the 2018 Midterms (or is it mid-terms)….but no matter which way you vote….whether as a human or otherwise….there is one thing that is for sure….no matter who wins what the biggest loser will be democracy.

When Angelina Cruz, the head of the teachers’ union in Racine, Wisconsin, goes canvassing, she doesn’t just knock on doors. If she sees someone in the street she approaches them and starts a conversation.

“D’you know you can vote today,” she asked a young black man who walked by last Saturday.

“I can’t,” he said. “I’m a felon.” (A felon is someone who has committed a “serious crime”.)

“On papers or off papers,” she asked. (In Wisconsin your voting rights are only restored after prison, parole and probation have all been served, and you are “off papers”.)

“On papers,” he said.

“Well, ask your friends to vote,” said Cruz.

“Most of them are on papers too,” he yelled back.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/11/02/why-democracy-will-be-biggest-loser-us-midterms

This may not matter to too many people….if not please do one thing no matter what…VOTE!

Dems may win the House but that matters not because…within the Party there is a “Civil War” brewing…..

Now here is something really interesting, via Politico: there’s a growing cultural divide within Democratic ranks:

As the party’s attention turns to the presidential nominating season, one of its biggest challenges will be navigating this culture war in its own ranks. The energy at the moment is with the liberal wing, centered around cities and college towns and on the coasts, its members mostly white and college-educated and far to the left on social and cultural issues compared with the rest of the party. But its voting majority is still more blue-collar and diverse, many of whom favor an incremental approach on social issues and who are more interested in preserving the clout of longtime powers like Crowley and Capuano than in notching symbolic victories for the “resistance.”

In many of the cases outlined above, the policy differences between the candidates are microscopically small. Nearly all Democrats favor tackling income inequality, raising taxes on the wealthy and the minimum wage, and reforming the criminal justice system. There is some dispute over how fast to move and how far to go, but the broad outlines are the same. The differences, in one analysis, are stylistic, and so it is easy to imagine that they will be worked out over the next year as the party settles on another presidential nominee.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/democrats-hidden-civil-war/

The Midterms may make these divisions more pronounced…..but the real battle will begin January 2019….how will the country turn?

Will They Or Won’t They?

For months upon months we have been bombarded with election stuff…..predictions and speculation will not stop until the votes are counted…..

There is one group in this election that all pundits are concerned with that they may not go to the polls…..and they just cannot understand why Millennials would not vote.

But why would they not want to be part of the process?  The same reason that many do not want to be part of the process.  The process is broken and money plays too big in elections…..but the Millennials are a group, a generation. that could well make a difference…..

In what people are calling — accurately, in my opinion — the most important American midterm election in our lifetimes, there’s been a lot of things we’ve never seen before: like, for example. a president sending thousands of troops to the U.S. southern border or erasing the existence of more than a million transgender people, all to boost GOP voter turnout a point or two.
And then there’s this: non-voter porn.
If you read the news, you know the kind of political smut I’m talking about. Full-frontal exposures of mostly attractive 20-somethings, revealing their often lame-sounding excuses why they’re joining the more than 60 percent of eligible Americans who typically don’t vote in midterm elections.
We’re talking about 20-somethings who’ve never used the U.S. mail and are traumatized by the idea of finding a postage stamp for a registration form, or so don’t see how a small president in search of a balcony is any different than any other politician.
Tomorrow will these voters go to the polls or will they stay home and let the old farts pick their leaders….and then they bitch…..
Shut up and go vote!

 

What Do The Democrats Have To Offer?

Just days away…the mid term elections…..and as a progressive a true progressive and it is an insult to call us liberals….we are so much better than that….but as a progressive an antiwar supporter I would like to ask what do the Democrats have to offer me?

The truth of the matter after looking at policies, slogans and issues then the answer is…they have NOTHING to offer me….

Chants of “No More War” from delegates at the 2016 Democratic National Convention gave voice to sentiments that still resonate through the base of the party and the broad U.S. public, notably in communities with higher rates of military sacrifice.

While Trump’s 2016 victories in swing states may well have been aided by his posing as a foe of protracted war, his administration’s Mideast policies have largely exposed that masquerade. Unfortunately, the weak and confused positions of Democratic leaders on endless war and bloated military spending offer little alternative to war-weary voters.

Polls show the popularity of a progressive domestic agenda on issues from jobs to healthcare to free public college, but few Democrats in Congress are willing to strongly challenge the unaccountable military budget, which soaks up most discretionary spending that could be redirected toward the party’s proclaimed domestic agenda. By Obama’s last year in office, overall “defense” spending was higher (adjusted for inflation) than “at any point since World War II,” according to Peter Beinart (“The Democrats Keep Capitulating on Defense Spending“) – and significantly higher than during the Vietnam War.

https://original.antiwar.com/Jeff_Cohen/2018/10/15/few-democrats-offer-alternatives-to-war-weary-voters/

Like I have said….the election is just days away and I have NO candidate in mind that I can support….they are all big money warmongering toads.

I have little respect for a society that has all but forgotten that we are at war in many countries and our troops are in danger to keep the M-IC afloat……there is something wrong to put war out of mind is a sign of a defective society.

Beyond the war thingy….Dems are still really screwed…they come up limp dick slogans and half baked ideas…..

It’s always been fascinating (and revealing) how people regard the core beliefs of our two major political parties. Not how they themselves vote, which is boring, but how they go about articulating the differences between the two parties when asked to do so.

Granted, there will always be those who insist there’s no real difference between Republicans and Democrats, that both parties are worthless, etc. But because we’ve had two separate parties for more than 150 years, there have to be certain basic, fundamental, differences between them, at least in principle, otherwise we wouldn’t have two of them.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/10/30/no-wonder-were-screwed/

Try again Dems you are falling far short of a workable party….we are screwed…..

Truth to told…I am one that thinks today’s parties are worthless and spineless……both parties spend all their time on their knees in front of the moneyed few…they are part time help at best

My daughter knowing that I am a Boomer blames my generation for a lot of the problems….she made me a banner…..

THANKS FOR NOTHING BABY BOOMERS!

She knows that it does not mean me….for she knows how I have voted over the decades…..but she is right Boomers f*cked up society and we are now paying for that f*ck up……all in the name of Me, Me, Me………