Yesterday, ever single Democrat-- even the Blue Dogs-- voted against the GOP Farm Bill, Michael Conaway's Agriculture and Nutrition Act of 2018. The bill failed, H.R. 2, 198-213 because 30 Republicans voted against it, a weird combination of Freedom Caucus extremists and mainstream conservatives who didn't want to see food stamps cut 5 months before an election. Oddly, even Paul Ryan voted against it!
Maybe you don't believe that Ryan fled from the field of battle when he noticed that Randy Bryce's @IronStache momentum was leaving him with no pathway to reelection. And maybe you believe that the Speaker of the House decided he really needed to be home in Janesville 7 days a week so he could spend the next few years teaching little Sammy and Charlie how to kill animals with bows and arrows.
Violent surges, historical offenses and Malthusian movies + this day in history w/the Garland, Texas attack and our song of the day by Beach House on your Morning Monarchy for May 3, 2018.
For over a decade it's been hard to find anyone "credible" (or at least "establishment") to run against Paul Ryan. For 4 cycles, Pelosi and her team laughed hysterically as the Ryan family orthopedist, Jeffrey Thomas, was the official candidate of the Democratic party against Ryan. Isn't that cute? It wasn't 'til Rob Zerban ran against him in 2012 that Ryan had a real opponent, albeit still one Pelosi's DCCC gang refused to support in any meaningful way.
As we explained about a week and a half ago, Kyle Frenette is the progressive Democrat running for the old Dave Obey seat in northern Wisconsin, currently occupied by Ryan ally Sean Duffy. Frenette is well known in the music industry as the manager of Eau Claire's Grammy-winning Justin Vernon and his band, Bon Iver.
Paul Ryan knows why he retired from Congress-- audit's not about teaching his sons, Charlie and Sam, to shoot bows and arrows. Randy Bryce is why Ryan is retiring from Congress. I've been trying for a decade to find a credible candidate to run against Ryan. The local Democratic elected officials in the district were all afraid... every one of them. Political cowards who were afraid to give up their jobs to run against Paul Ryan.
Let me put a new candidate on your radar. I've been hearing about him from friends in the music business. That's because this Wisconsin kid from Chippewa Fall, a small town north of Eau Claire in WI-07, Dave Obey's old seat-- a massive district covering all of northwest Wisconsin. It stretches from Bayfield and Ironwood in the north down into River Falls and the Minneapolis suburbs in the southwest across to Chippewa Falls on Lake Wissota and east through Marshfield and Wausau to Rhinelander and Eagle River.
If you’ve been following this blog for any length of time, you’re probably aware that one of the (many) bones of contention we have with the DCCC, is over platforms. They urge their candidates to hide their positions, either not including issues pages on their websites at all or, if they must, to avoid all controversial topics. Their strive for bland reiterations of mom-and-apple pie, bio-oriented statements.
Leaving alone state legislatures, the most corruptely gerrymandered states in the Union are North Carolina, Texas, Wisconsin, Ohio, Maryland, Kentucky, Louisiana, Virginia, Illinois, Utah, West Virginia, Michigan and Arkansas. Pennsylvania would be in there if the state Supreme Court hadn't put a stop to it and redrawn the congressional districts. The state legislative districts are still a joke that should be addressed.Ohio, for example, is a 50/50 state that Obama won in 2012 and Trump won in 2016. There's a Democratic senator and a Republican senator.
