A couple of weeks ago, Wisconsin's far right governor, Scott Walker, warned that Patty Schachtner's upset win over state Rep. Adam Jarchow in a deep red state Senate district was a "wake up call" for the GOP. And he's now figured out how to answer that call. He's refusing to allow special elections to fill vacant seats in the state legislature.
North Carolina is pretty evenly divided between supporters of a progressive vision of governance and supporters of a conservative or reactionary vision. Trump won the state last month— 2,362,631 (49.8%) to 2,189,316 (46.2%). Hillary won all 7 of the state’s biggest counties— Wake, Mecklenburg, Guildford, Forsyth, Durham, Buncombe and Cumberland. Trump won all but one of the state’s 20 smallest, backward, rural counties. But on the same day Trump won, divisive Republican governor Pat McCrory was beaten by Democrat Roy Cooper 2,281,155 (49.0%) to 2,276,383 (48.9%).
CNN released a new poll yesterday, but there were no questions about the presidential primaries per se. Question #34 was: "Do you happen to know what religion Barack Obama is? Is he Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Mormon, Muslim, something else, or not religious?" Although it was a plurality, only 39% got it right-- Obama is Protestant/Christian. The second biggest answer-- at 29%-- was Muslim.
Saturday morning I woke up bright and early and feeling chipper. I tweeted an upbeat statement about Bernie Sanders' likely presidential run: Just once before we pass on, shouldn't we have a president NOT owned by Big Business & Wall St.? It's still up to us http://bit.ly/1rr7eOe.
Over the years there have been attempts to move election day to the weekends so that people who work for a living can actually vote without a lot of extra hassle. Louise Slaughter penned one last year. "Having Election Day on a Tuesday," she said at the time, "is an outdated requirement that simply does not comport with the schedules of modern Americans.
Blue America helped raise money and awareness for Annie Kuster when she ran last cycle. We’re not supporting her again, not because she doesn’t have a horrible opponent— she does— but because she also has a horrible voting record. Soon after getting elected, Kuster quit the Congressional Progressive Caucus and joined the Wall Street-owned New Dems. He voting record is UGLY— really ugly, and we’re ashamed that we got taken in by her.
By now everybody nows what happened among the far right of the Arizona Republican Party over the last few days. The state legislature passed some crackpot anti-LGBT bill that lets anyone make up some religionist excuse for discrimination against gays-- or anyone else they don't like. They passed the same crap last session but Governor Brewer vetoed it. This time Senators Flake and McCain immediately called on Brewer to veto it again-- and so did the Arizona business community. And then several Republicans in the legislature said, basically, "Oops, we screwed up. Can we get a do-over? No?
"Money is all over the place." Really? Watch that video from Thursday's Chris Hayes' MSNBC show above. That's the ugly sound of Republican class war against American families. That's why there are children who don't have enough food to eat. That guy in the bow tie and the canary yellow cardigan could have been reading a script from the days that lead up to the French Revolution. Admit it, you'd secretly watch him being guillotined if it was televised. And the accursed Tom Perkins too. He wasn't on Chris' show last night.
Just a little update on Ken's post from last Saturday on everyone's least favorite brothers… Something to keep in the back of your mind while pondering President Obama's State of the Union message of equality from tonight. Clearly, what the Kochs are doing to America in their anti-democratic jihad, is sociopathic. But is it criminal?
