Disenfranchisement: Not Just For the Poor and Minority Any More

The Repug War on Democratic Voters is a fucking Hydra: every disenfranchisement trick you stop creates five new tricks. Are demographic trends of increasing minorities turning repugs into an endangered species? Just draw insane districts that combine all the minorities into the fewest possible districts so white repugs can take over the rest.

Ari Berman at The Nation:

In virtually every state in the South, at the Congressional and state level, Republicans—to protect and expand their gains in 2010—have increased the number of minority voters in majority-minority districts represented overwhelmingly by black Democrats while diluting the minority vote in swing or crossover districts held by white Democrats. “What’s uniform across the South is that Republicans are using race as a central basis in drawing districts for partisan advantage,” says Anita Earls, a prominent civil rights lawyer and executive director of the Durham-based Southern Coalition for Social Justice. “The bigger picture is to ultimately make the Democratic Party in the South be represented only by people of color.” The GOP’s long-term goal is to enshrine a system of racially polarized voting that will make it harder for Democrats to win races on local, state, federal and presidential levels. Four years after the election of Barack Obama, which offered the promise of a new day of postracial politics in states like North Carolina, Republicans are once again employing a Southern Strategy that would make Richard Nixon and Lee Atwater proud.

The consequences of redistricting in North Carolina—one of the most important swing states in the country—could determine who controls Congress and the presidency in 2012. Democrats hold seven of the state’s thirteen Congressional seats, but after redistricting they could control only three—the largest shift for Republicans at the Congressional level in any state this year. Though Obama won eight of the thirteen districts, under the new maps his vote would be contained in only three heavily Democratic districts—all of which would have voted 68 percent or higher for the president in 2008—while the rest of the districts would have favored John McCain by 55 percent or more. “GOP candidates could win just over half of the statewide vote for Congress and end up with 62 percent to 77 percent of the seats,” found John Hood, president of the conservative John Locke Foundation.

SNIP

This gives the GOP a major opportunity to build on its gains from 2010. Today GOP Representative Paul Ryan, nobody’s idea of a moderate, represents the median House district in America based on party preference, according to Dave Wasserman, House editor of the Cook Political Report. That district will become two points more Republican after the current redistricting cycle. “The fact of a Republican wave election on the eve of redistricting means that Republican legislators are in far better shape to shore up that wave,” says Justin Levitt, a redistricting expert at Loyola Law School. Though public dissatisfaction with GOP members of Congress is at an all-time high, Republican dominance of the redistricting process could prove an insurmountable impediment to Democratic hopes of retaking the House, where the GOP now has a fifty-one-seat edge. Speaker of the House John Boehner predicts that the GOP’s redistricting advantage will allow the party to retain control of the House, perhaps for the next decade.

SNIP


The use of race in redistricting is just one part of a broader racial strategy used by Southern Republicans to not only make it more difficult for minorities to vote and to limit their electoral influence but to pass draconian anti-immigration laws, end integrated busing, drug-test welfare recipients and curb the ability of death-row inmates to challenge convictions based on racial bias. GOP presidential candidates have gotten in on the act, with Newt Gingrich calling President Obama “the best food-stamp president in American history.” The new Southern Strategy, it turns out, isn’t very different from the old one.

The really diabolical aspect of this strategy is that it disenfranchises not just minorities but white Democratic voters, too.

All you disenchanted democrats who sat home instead of voting in 2010: this is YOUR FAULT. Eat poisoned rat dicks, fuck off and die, and don't ever, EVER complain that Democratic office-holders aren't doing enough.

When They Threaten to Kill You, You Know You're Winning

Brad Friedman

Several opponents of WI's Gov. Scott Walker have been receiving middle-of-the-night death threats, as they've been circulating petitions to gather signatures in an effort to recall the state's controversial anti-union Republican Governor.

According to WISC-TV/Channel 3000 in Madison...

The threats involved phone calls from an area code in Minnesota. The calls came overnight after Walker's opponents began the recall, said Madison resident Tom Peer, who said he received a call at 2 a.m. on Thursday.

"They said, 'If you don't stop circulating recall petitions, we will kill you,'" said Peer.

A similar call came to Heather DuBois Bourenane, of Sun Prairie. The United Wisconsin recall worker jumped out of bed when her phone rang around 4 a.m. on Thursday.

"He said I had attracted the attention of some very bad people, and my life and the lives of my family were in danger," Bourenane said.

She called Sun Prairie police, who confirmed investigators were working on the case.

But you have to wonder: why the overreaction? Are these lone crazies taking out their inability to function in the reality-based world on a few convenient targets? Is Walker so bugfuck insane he's actually encouraging his minions to do this? Have the Koch Brothers finally made the move from just killing the middle class economically to killing them literally?

How to Tell a Denier from a Skeptic

Doomed GOP presidential aspirant Rick Frothy Mixture of Lubricant, Semen and Fecal Matter Resulting from Anal Sex claims global warming is a liberal conspiracy:

".... I think ... the idea that man ... is somehow responsible for climate change is, I think, just patently absurd."

What a relief. We've been waiting for a definitive statement on global warming from our favorite reliable source, Mr. Frothy Mixture of Lubricant, Semen and Fecal Matter Resulting from Anal Sex

Back in reality world, Zandar has found a better metric.

Yep, keep telling yourself it's just a fairy tale, like Angry Invisible Sky Person and the Atlanta Thrashers. Remember, there's an easy way to tell the difference between a true skeptic and an idiot like this as Joe Romm explains:

So here’s one way to tell if you’re a genuine skeptic or a climate denier.

When trying to understand what’s happening to our climate, do you consider the full body of evidence? Or do you find the denial instinct kicking in when confronted with inconvenient evidence?

For example, let’s look at the question of whether global warming is happening. Do you acknowledge sea level rise, a key indicator of a warming planet, tripling over the last century? Do you factor in the warming oceans, which since 1970 have been building up heat at a rate of two-and-a-half Hiroshima bombs every second? Glaciers are retreating all over the world, threatening the water supply of hundreds of millions of people. Ice sheets from Greenland in the north to Antarctica in the south are losing hundreds of billions of tonnes of ice every year. Seasons are shifting, flowers are opening earlier each year and animals are migrating towards the poles. The very structure of our atmosphere is changing.

We have tens of thousands of lines of evidence that global warming is happening. A genuine skeptic surveys the full body of evidence coming in from all over our planet and concludes that global warming is unequivocal. A climate denier, on the other hand, reacts to this array of evidence in several possible ways.

The most extreme form of climate denier won’t even go near the evidence. They avoid the issue altogether by indulging in conspiracy theories. They’ll pull a quote out of context from a stolen ‘Climategate‘ email as proof that climate change is just a huge hoax. I have yet to hear how the ice sheets, glaciers and thousands of migrating animal species are in on the conspiracy, but I’m sure there’s a creative explanation floating around on the Internet.

That creative explanation is apparently "global climate change is a religion based on pure faith, and there's zero scientific evidence to support it."

What we need is a way to make people who deny global warming - especially those who use their corporate or political power to block solutions to global warming - become the primary sufferers of the consequences of global warming.

Flood their homes permanently, like the residents of low-lying Pacific Islands. Turn them into climate refugees, forced from their homes by invading sea water like the farmers of Bangladesh. Take away their ability to make a living the way their ancestors have for millennia, like the residents of the melting arctic. Force them to starve, like the subsistence farmers of the planet's equatorial zone, which is rapidly turning into desert.

In the meantime, I'll settle for everyone referring to the former Pennsylvania Senator by his true name: Rick Frothy Mixture of Lubricant, Semen and Fecal Matter Resulting from Anal Sex.

Charting a Progressive Path

Robert Reich posted this before the election. We know, of course, that President Obama has passed the center and is racing for the far rightwing, but the rest holds true:

Why are Democratic presidents so much more easily intimidated by the "move to the center" rhetoric after midterm losses than Republican presidents?

Because Democrats think in terms of programs, policies, and particular pieces of legislation. It's easy to reverse course by compromising more and giving up on legislative goals. Bill Clinton never mentioned the words "health care reform" after the 1994 midterms.

Republicans think in terms of simple ideas, themes, and movements. It's far harder to reverse course on these (look what happened to the first George Bush when he raised taxes), and easier to keep them alive: Republican presidents just continue looking for opportunities to implement them.

Republicans are also more disciplined (ask yourself which party attracts authoritarian personalities and which attracts anti-authoritarians). This makes it easier for them to stay the course. Their base continues to organize and fulminate even after midterm defeats. Democrats, on the other hand, are less organized. Electoral defeats tend to fracture and dissipate whatever organization they have.

Republicans are cynical about politics from the jump. Political cynicism fuels them. Democrats are idealistic about politics. When they become cynical they tend to drop out.

Message to Obama: Whatever happens November 2, don't move to the center. Push even harder for what you believe in.

Message to Democrats: Whatever happens, keep the courage of your conviction and get even more active.

This article by Katrina vanden Heuvel and Robert L. Borosage in The Nation makes the fundamental error of assuming Obama wants liberal progress, which he does not. But the last third has good advice for what we can do without a president leading:

Progressives also need to rethink their own strategies moving forward. A majority for progressive reform can still be forged but only with a revival of bold vision, populist energy and independent organizing. Barack Obama provided a vehicle for that energy in 2008, but progressives had paved his way. We stopped Bush when he sought to privatize Social Security. We built the movement that opposed the Iraq War and brought Democrats their majority. We provided the drive for a transition to renewable energy and leadership in the green industrial revolution. Those successes gave an African-American freshman senator the sense that there was something big happening, something he could tap into. It is vital to rekindle this independent energy. To allow the corporate-funded Tea Partyers to capture the populist anger at Wall Street bailouts and special interests is simply political malpractice.

We're headed into a period of defensive struggles—against cuts to Social Security, unemployment insurance, education and Head Start; against the continuation of two wars and increases in military spending; against the climate change know-nothings. Progressives must fight these battles, but we should also be prepared to challenge the limits of the debate.

We need a broad mobilization for jobs, a call to rebuild America that challenges trickle-down economics, special-interest politics and the divide-and-conquer strategies that are destroying America's middle class. That requires mobilizing working families, the unemployed and citizens of conscience to challenge both the cautious White House and the conservative Congress.

This can be complemented with an inside-out strategy, defined not by the White House but in conjunction with progressive members of Congress. In this election, the House Progressive Caucus lost only three seats, while the Blue Dogs lost thirty, leaving Democrats smaller but more liberal. In the minority, they have no chance of passing legislation. But acting collectively, the Progressive Caucus could reinforce movement protests, defining choices with a bright line, exposing how conservatives cater to corporate interests over the common good, while putting forward an alternative direction. Outside organizing could help magnify and broadcast this agenda—insisting on withdrawal from Afghanistan, exposing the climate deniers while pushing for green jobs, detailing the reforms needed to take back our politics from corporate money and interests.

The rear-guard battle against cuts to the social safety net could be reinforced by a poor people's campaign that ends the shameful silence about poverty. Legislators should join the vibrant movement for immigration reform in pressuring the White House to act administratively, while confronting Republicans with the prospect of losing Latino voters for a generation. This effort should be complemented with a push to recruit true progressive champions and finance and staff their campaigns.
Progressives should gear up to run in the primaries of the seats just lost—while putting Democrats on notice that we are prepared to challenge those who stand in the way.

With Washington more and more gridlocked, citizens must move. Americans fear this country is headed into decline, while their government caters to special interests that feed off their tax dollars. They are searching for answers that conservatives cannot supply. A majority for progressive reform can still be forged. But it will require independent action to revive the energy and, yes, the hope that the past few years have squandered.

What have you done today to advance the liberal agenda?

Slimy Lying Coward Chandler Tells Slimy Cowardly Lies

No, of course I'm not surprised. Wire Hanger has been beneath contempt for years. But for the sake of the Real Democrat I sincerely hope will step forward to primary his worthless Blue Dog ass in 2012, let's take a look at bennyboy's latest whining excuses.

From the Herald:

U.S. Rep. Ben Chandler said last week he partially blames the Obama administration and U.S. House leadership for Democrats' election losses and his extremely narrow re-election.

"If not there, where else does the responsibility lie?" said Chandler, D-Versailles, who had endorsed Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential election. "You're talking about the loss of 60 or something seats held by capable public servants. There had to be something going on at a level above them. If that isn't the lesson, I don't know what is."

Somebody tell Wire Hangar that the 83,952 fewer votes he got in 2010 than in 2008 were the Democratic and liberal voters he fucked over with his votes to outlaw abortion and deny affordable health care to thousands of Kentuckians.

That's right, Wire Hangar: they sat home and cheered every sweaty minute you spent nearly losing to Ernie Fletcher mini-me Andy Barr. (No, they didn't vote republican - Barr got only 8,000 votes more than your republican opponent got in 2008.)

Those 649 votes by which you "won" this time? Those were the only Democratic voters in the Sixth District who love Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi more than they despise you.

Obama and Pelosi's accomplishments in the past two years saved your worthless DINO hide.

And naturally you're going to show your gratitude by planting your lips on Boehner's limp dick and sucking non-stop for the next two years.

You'd be better off just switching parties now, you loser. Progressives outnumber Blue Dogs in the new Congress three to one. You'll be lucky if Pelosi lets you sit on the pooper-scooper oversight subcommittee.

Hold the Broadcasters Accountable

Fixing the foundational cracks in American democracy revealed by the recent election is going to require multiple efforts on multiple fronts, ranging from reinvigorating the Democratic grassroots on the precinct level to passing and ratifying a Constitutional amendment barring the corporate purchase of elections allowed by Citizens United.

But there's a quicker and easier fix available - if we have the determination to demand it.

Using the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Election Commission to hold television broadcasters responsible for the content of campaign commercials could both break the power of corporate cash and restore the power of independent political reporting.

John Nichols and Robert W. McChesney in The Nation:

The counsel of the self-interested "players" is always the same: raise money, more money and more money still—and don't do or say anything that makes it harder to raise money. This thinking has bled into what is left of our journalism, such that political reporters today spend more time covering the money that candidates, parties and interest groups raise and spend than examining their records and intentions. Whereas journalists once wrote stories about issues, and candidates cut commercials in response to them, now some journalists go through entire campaigns doing little more than fact-checking commercials. On many days, reviews of ads are all that appear in print and broadcast reports. And what do new-media outlets bring to the table? An opportunity to watch ads on YouTube!

As ads become the primary source of political information, we create a politics based on lies or, at best, decontextualized quarter-truths. Campaign ads are unregulated for truthfulness, unlike commercial advertising. Three decades ago Ogilvy and Mather executive Robert Spero determined that if political ads had to meet the same Federal Trade Commission criteria as commercial ads, all of them would be rejected as fraudulent. The regulation of commercial ads may be more lax today, but we doubt that any study of political ads in 2010 would regard them more favorably than Spero did.

The journalists who want to cut through the lies are having a harder time doing so. One of the truly unsettling developments of this election season was the decision by prominent candidates either to avoid the press, as Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle did, or to refuse opportunities to debate. Once upon a time challengers hungered to debate incumbents; in 2010 incumbents like Florida Representative Alan Grayson found themselves chasing after well-funded challengers. Feingold offered to debate his millionaire opponent in forums across the state, but Republican Ron Johnson, who had no record in public life and who even avoided interviews with newspaper editorial boards, refused. Instead, Johnson let his advertisements and those paid for by the Chamber of Commerce, American Action Network and sundry organizations that flooded the state with anti-Feingold ads do his talking. Even when Johnson did debate in a handful of forums available for broadcast by the state's TV stations, many stations avoided airing them in prime time. Wisconsin lawyer Ed Garvey, a former Democratic nominee for governor, tried to tune in to a much-anticipated Feingold-Johnson debate, only to find it was not being aired. He called the station and was told he could track it down on a website. "As a citizen, I was left with no option but the ads. I got nothing of substance from television stations," griped Garvey. "I thought they were supposed to operate in the public interest."

That should be the starting point of any response to the money-and-media election complex. We have to stop thinking about the crisis of our politics merely in terms of reforming the campaign finance system (though of course it's important to fight for reforms). It's a media ownership and responsibility issue as well. It goes to the heart of why freedom of the press is enshrined in our Constitution. And regulatory agencies that are empowered to protect the public interest should be the first to intervene. The Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Election Commission have a duty to figure out exactly how much was spent, by whom and to what end. That examination should start with dollar amounts, but it shouldn't stop there. It should explore the issue of whether TV stations that made a fortune running campaign ads met even the most basic public-interest requirements of companies that obtain broadcast licenses. How much campaign journalism have these stations been doing, compared with a generation ago? How many debates are they airing in prime time? FCC member Michael Copps understands the crisis and intends to press ahead this fall with demands for stronger public-interest requirements for broadcasters. Copps is no fool; he knows this is the hardest of all fights. That's why he will need support from Congress as well as citizens.

House and Senate committees should hold hearings about the money-and-media election complex. How about calling Representative Pete DeFazio to testify? The Oregon maverick was one of many Democratic incumbents facing marginal challengers who suddenly found himself battered by attack ads paid for by a shadowy group no one had heard of. DeFazio pushed back, taking a camera crew to the Capitol Hill condo from which the group operated and exposing the source as a single New York–based hedge fund gazillionaire who was apparently angered by the Congressman's ardent advocacy for holding Wall Street speculators to account. That's the stuff of a good hearing. But don't stop with DeFazio; call the hedge fund manager who went after him. Then call Karl Rove. The 111th Congress has been lame when it comes to oversight; it should finish with a bang. And state legislative committees around the country should do the same.

Gathering the data and grilling the guilty players will make the case for fundamental reform, which must come at multiple levels. The FCC could require stations to grant equal advertising time to any candidate who is attacked in an ad paid for by corporations, with the free response ad to immediately follow the hit job. The FCC should consider requiring free TV ads for every candidate on the ballot if any candidate buys his or her own spots. This would allow wealthy candidates access but would prevent them from shouting everyone else down. Let the stations jack up rates to cover all the time, if they want. We suspect the appeal of TV ads will decline if the result is simply to open an equal debate rather than allow one side to dominate. And of course there is the long-overdue matter of providing free airtime to candidates and requiring debates to be broadcast.

Radical ideas? Hardly. Much of what we're talking about was outlined in the original version of the McCain-Feingold bill of the 1990s and in other proposals advanced over the years. It's time to renew them. At the same time, we need a public policy commitment to the rejuvenation of news media. A supercharged public and community broadcast system would be a good start. It's no accident that the corporate right is taking dead aim at public broadcasting, as it remains the one institutional force not under its direct control.

The framework of American Democracy - grassroots, Constitutional and regulatory - may be battered and disrespected, but remains strong. All we need is the courage to use it.

Repug Voters to Congress: No Government Health Care for You

I would have bet actual money that there was no hypocrisy on the part of rethuglicans that repug voters would not ignore on the principle of IOKIYAR.

But it seems that in demanding for themselves government health care they want to deny to everyone else, Congressional rethuglicans have crossed the line.

From TPM:

Republicans and independents have decided that incoming members of Congress who ran against health care reform and still take their government-funded benefits are hypocrites. Democrats, not so much.

That's one conclusion from a new national poll from Democratic firm PPP, which shows big majorities of GOP and independent voters saying the politicians who ran against the health care reform law should forgo the health care benefits they're entitled to as employees of the federal government.

Just 28% of Republican respondents said that new anti-reform members should take their federal benefits, while a whopping 58% said they shouldn't. Among independents -- who voted for the GOP in big numbers on Nov. 2 -- 56% say politicians who made health care repeal a cornerstone of their campaigns should deny themselves their government benefits. Only 27% said they should take them.

You tell 'em teabaggers: government health care is for commiemuslinterrists!

The Truth About Turnout

More liberal facts with which to go on rhetorical offense during Thanksgiving:

No, rethuglican victories do not mean that rethuglicans persuaded independents, much less a single Democrat, to vote for them. It means that Democratic voters stayed home.

Down with Tyranny has the numbers.

In congressional rematches, republican candidates who lost in '08 and won in '10 got the same number of votes this time as last, but the Democratic candidates got substantially fewer votes.

In other words, the rethuglicans did not "convert" democrats or independents, but rather the Democratic and independent voters who gave Democrats their winning margin in '08 just stayed home in '10.

... Mary Jo Kilroy, one of the few dedicated liberals to be defeated in the Blue Dog tsunami last week. She didn't deserve to lose, let alone to a creepy bank lobbyist and corrupt Boehner crony, Steve Stivers. After a close 50/50 decision in 2008 (139,582-137,271)-- for an open seat (and with Obama taking 54% in an Ohio that earnestly bought into the Hope & Change message)-- Stivers benefited from huge, shady third party outside spending and beat Kilroy 137,441-93,578. As you can see, almost all his 2008 voters came out and voted for him again while 46,000 of her voters just didn't show up at the polls.

I'd advise those repugs to make the most of the next two years, but not to unpack too many boxes; they're going to be packing up again after 2012.

See more turnout detail here.

Who Really Beat Congress' Liberal Stalwarts?

Despite waging strong Proud Liberal campaigns, two of liberalism's most valuable members of Congress - Sen. Russ Feingold and Rep. Alan Grayson - lost reelection.

But that is not a reflection on their campaigns. No Democratic campaign could have overcome 21 months of the Democratic White House and Congress caving to rethuglicans time and time again.

Susie Madrak at Crooks and Liars:

Alan Grayson came out fighting after the electoral losses this week, blaming the Democrats' quest for "bipartisanship" as a "code word for appeasement":

SNIP

REP. ALAN GRAYSON: Well, my defeat was part of a wave across the country that had Republicans winning because Democrats didn’t vote. We have the results from the pre-election turnout; we don’t have the results from the Election Day turnout yet. In my district, when you compare that to 2008, the Republican turnout in the early voting was down by 20 percent, and the Democratic turnout in early voting was down by 60 percent. And that wasn’t true just in my district; that was true all around Florida and pretty much the whole country, except for the West Coast and New England. And as a result of that, virtually every Democrat who won in 2008 by less than ten points loss this year. There was only one exception out of twenty-four. And there were forty-four more Democrats who won by more than ten points in 2008 who managed to lose this year, because their Democratic voters didn’t turn up. It’s not a situation where Democrats—Democratic voters decided to vote Republican; it’s a situation where Democratic voters didn’t vote. And when Democrats don’t vote, Democrats can’t win.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And why did so many people stay home, in your estimation?

REP. ALAN GRAYSON: I think it’s because the Democratic leadership has failed to deliver to core constituents of the Democratic Party the thing that the Democrats wanted when the Democrats had sixty votes in the Senate, 59 percent of the House, and control of the White House. That’s my view of it. We didn’t vote on the Employee Free Choice Act. We didn’t vote on immigration reform. And we controlled the agenda. This isn’t a situation where we had votes and loss them in the House or the Senate. We simply didn’t bring up these matters of crucial importance to various elements of the Democratic coalition, when we had complete control of the agenda and enough votes to pass anything.

AMY GOODMAN: Congressman Grayson—because you are still a congressman—you said on the floor of the House—you unveiled your namesofthedead.com, where you laid out the number of people who would die because of lack of healthcare. Can you talk more about that?

Watch the video and read the transcript here.

Election Fraud by bible: Freakazoids Intimidate Black Voters

Yeah, tell me again how if it's xian it's true-blue murkin and not to be questioned.

Brad Friedman:

"did anyone else have to swear on a bible that their address was correct before they were able to vote? just wondering, because i did," Philadelphia voter Lindsay Granger wrote on her blog after voting in last Tuesday's mid-term election. "i had to lay my palm on the good book and state my name and address before i was allowed to sign my name in the voting log and enter the booth. they called it an affirmation. i call it creepy… and a little offensive…"

Granger notified VotersUnite.org last week after the incident which, she told the non-partisan election watchdog organization, made her "extremely uncomfortable because i'm not a Christian, and when i brought that up I was told to do it anyway."

In her blog item, Granger, an African-American, admitted to being "hypersensitive" given "the historical context of black people voting in america".

When informed of the incident, Bob Lee, the Voter Registration Administrator for the Philadelphia City Commissioners, confirmed to The BRAD BLOG that Bibles are, indeed, included in the package of election materials provided to each polling site, but says no such oath is required before casting a vote.

Stop right there. A bible is included in election materials? Out of what maggot-infested brain did that idea get vomited?

The incident reportedly took place at Philadelphia's Ward 15, Division 01 polling place at Trinity Baptist Church on Poplar Street. It was Granger's first time voting at that precinct after having moved recently from another area in the city.

Lee conceded that, based on Granger's description of the incident --- which he hadn't heard about until we contacted him for comment --- it sounded like the election board at the precinct "needs some training"...

Uh, no. Every single member and employee of the Board of Elections of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania needs to be run out of town on a rail and replaced by sentient human beings who grasp the concept of secular elections.

He says that few voters had complained about the bibles at polling places in the past, though "occasionally" his office will receive a complaint about one being placed on the voter sign-in table.

"The bible has been there for ages," he explained. "I think it's there for when the board is sworn in to take an oath before opening the polling place, that they're going to carry out their duty in a non-partisan manner. It's in every polling place in the city. It's included in the election pack."

Another irrefutable argument for eliminating the idiocy of touching a bad translation of a worse Bronze-Age fable when swearing an oath.

Granger's brief report to Voters Unite noted that she'd never been asked to swear on a bible --- or at all --- in previous elections. "When I voted in 2008 in a different precinct in Philadelphia (not at a church), that was not the case. My voter registration card was sufficient."

She was also concerned that other voters may have had to go through the same process. "The Bible was sitting out in the open, and the procedure wasn't done in secret, which leads me to believe that I am not the only person who was asked to do that," she wrote.

Read the whole thing.

I've been voting in Kentucky for three decades and I have never seen a bible in a polling place, though I never looked for one, having learned about the secular American government in civics class and never imagining that even the god-botherers of Kentucky would be so stupid as to sully the polls with that nonsense.

Where We Go From Here: Part Eight

Asset:

7. Strong majorities of Americans who hate secret corporate money in elections (even though they were influenced by the campaign ads that money bought.)

Nothing makes civil libertarians like me crazier than when rethuglicans defend unconstitutional police-state tactics with these attacks:

"What are you hiding?" "What are you ashamed of?" "If you haven't done anything wrong, you don't have anything to be afraid of."

But now, I am relishing the chance to use those same attacks against those same rethuglicans who are now trying to defend secret corporate/foreign donations to buy elections.

"Why won't you disclose your donors?" "Real American corporations wouldn't hide behind fake nonprofits - that means your donors must be foreign corporations." "If all your donations are from law-abiding, Real American corporations ... prove it."

Rethuglican obstruction may prevent Senate Democrats from passing the DISCLOSE act forcing Karl Rove and his fellow rethuglicans to reveal their secret corporate/foreign donors, but that is all the more reason to keep pushing the legislation.

Force rethuglicans to vote publicly in favor of corporations/foreigners secretly buying elections. Force them to do it over and over and over again. Accompany each vote with loud choruses of "What are you hiding? If you haven't done anything wrong, you have nothing to be afraid of."

Shame the front groups like American Crossroads using secret corporate/foreign money to elect rethuglicans.

Shame the corporations making secret donations to elect rethuglicans. (Until all the corporations reveal their donations, assume every corporation is guilty.)

Shame the rethuglican candidates who got elected thanks to the secret corporate/foreign money.

For example: Ron Paul is the rethuglican Senator from China. American Crossroads spent millions on anti-Conway ads to elect Paul. Until Karl Rove releases his full donor list, we'll just assume that Paul is a fully-owned and -operated agent of the People's Republic of China.

On this Veterans Day, remember that America's 25 million living veterans did not sacrifice and fight in order to defend the right of obscenely wealthy corporations and foreigners to buy our elections.

Read Where We Go From Here Part One here. Part Two here. Part Three here. Part Four here. Part Five here. Part Six here. Part Seven here.

Where We Go From Here: Part Seven

Asset:

6. Strong majorities of Americans who may have voted for those crazies out of frustration, but who don't trust them to govern effectively.

And the hubristic fuckers in Congress aren't even pretending to try to earn that trust.

Steve Benen:

Let's make this plain: Republicans aren't trying to create jobs or improve the economy. If that happens, I'm sure they'd be pleased, but it's simply not on the list of priorities. When confronted with evidence that their cuts would hurt the middle class, weaken economic demand, and serve as an anti-stimulus in the midst of a weak recovery, GOP officials don't care about any of that, either.

The New York Times noted the other day that "many mainstream economists say such deep cuts could further strain the economy." That's obviously true. It's equally obvious that Republicans couldn't care less.

I think some Americans realize how ugly next year will be, but the scope of this fiasco won't really sink in until the crises begin.

Voters punished the Democratic majority because they were unsatisfied with the state of the economy, but they replaced it with a new House majority that seems painfully anxious to make things worse.

As we've talked about before, we have a certain luxury when it comes to our economic problems. Some societies don't know they have a problem; some know they have a problem but don't know how to fix it. We know we have a problem and we know how to fix it, but we have policymakers in Congress who refuse to even consider what's necessary.

We need to spend more to stimulate the economy, while fighting against deflation. The prevailing wisdom in Congress is that we need to spend less while fighting against inflation.

I want to be optimistic about the near future, and think we'll somehow muddle though, but the rise of reckless, radical Republicans is probably going to be worse than the country realizes.

Read the whole thing.

The rethuglicans aren't just out to destroy the country. They're not even trying to hide that their goal is to destroy the country. They're actually bragging about it.

This is another easy one. Talk this up. Tell everybody you meet about today's latest rethuglican move to destroy the country. All you have to do is open a newspaper or listen to the news for a couple of minutes. They'll be there every time, gas can in one hand and matches in the other.

Read Where We Go From Here Part One here. Part Two here. Part Three here. Part Four here. Part Five here. Part Six here.

Where We Go From Here: Part Six

Asset:

5. Sixty freshman rethuglicans in the House each on the record advocating the most extreme, racist, bigoted, homophobic, unconstitutional, anti-American, vicious, violent and dangerous positions ever articulated in an American political campaign.

Ooh, this one's gonna be fun.

If you have one of these mutant aliens representing you in Congress: sic 'em!

Set Google Alerts to email you every time the media or a blog mentions your mangy congress critter. Then email the idiot's latest call for outlawing public highways or impeaching Michelle Obama to everyone whose email address you have.

Publicize every statement, every interview, every press release, every public belch and fart. Don't let them fly under the radar.

Tar them with facts, but tar them good - with boiling-hot facts that will strip off their skin. And do it over and over and over again.

Remember that people voted these maroons into office because of the jobless economy, so there's really just one relevant question, as Steve Benen points out:

Republicans on the Hill want to scrap existing stimulus, see more public-sector job losses, shut down the government, and push the United States into default.

"How would that help the economy?"

That need not be a rhetorical question.

Ask it. Ask it every day. To every teabagging, rethuglican, no-nothing utterance, ask:

"How would that help the economy?"

Go get 'em.

Read Where We Go From Here Part One here. Part Two here. Part Three here. Part Four here. Part Five here.

Pouring Salt in the Wound

Not all democracies are equally bad.

Brad Friedman:

How terribly quaint. Via Taegan Goddard's Political Wire today...

British Election Overturned Because of "False Statements"

The Independent reports that former British immigration minister Phil Woolas "lost his seat as an MP today after an election court ruled that he knowingly made false statements about an opponent in May's general election."

Bloomberg notes Woolas was guilty of "an illegal practice" by making statements "he had no reasonable grounds for believing were true and did not believe were true."

The Independent reports that Woolas, a Labour MP, "is to be barred from the Commons for three years and the election contest for his Oldham East and Saddleworth seat [will be] re-run." His crime:

The specially-convened election court had heard that Mr Woolas stirred up racial tensions in a desperate bid to retain his seat in Oldham East and Saddleworth.

His campaign team was said to have set out to "make the white folk angry" by depicting an alleged campaign by Muslims to "take Phil out".

Thank God we, the people of the United States of America, live in a land where there is no such need for laws to protect the electorate from the sort of dirty, disingenuously-divisive, knowingly-false, racially-based fear-mongering that might otherwise plague our totally free and respectable democratic elections!

Sigh.

The problem with trying to make that work here is that the most outrageous campaign lies are told by "independent expenditure" entities separate from campaigns, so the candidates cannot be held responsible for them.

Impeach the Roberts Court Traitors.

Where We Go From Here: Part Five

Asset:

4. A shaken-up Democratic base suddenly faced with the consequences of its apathy and feeling guilty for not voting.

If every person in this country who is eligible to vote actually votes, republicans will never win another election.

Every single republican victory comes down to this: Democratic voters didn't vote.

Some didn't vote because rethuglicans conned, defrauded and intimidated them out of the polls.

Some didn't vote because our ridiculous voting laws require people to jump through hoops - advance registration, limited voting hours, complex voting machinery and overburdened polling places - that most working people can't negotiate.

Some didn't vote because no one asked them. Democratic candidates didn't seek them out. Their state, local and precinct Democratic officials haven't tracked them down, made sure they're registered and can get to the polls, and cleared the way to make voting Democratic easy.

So yes, this disaster is the fault of Democratic voters who didn't vote. It's also the fault of all of us - their neighbors, their precinct officers, their county and state Democratic party and their Democratic candidates - for not giving them reasons to vote and the tools they need to do so.

So get out there and find them: the Democratic voters who aren't voting. Anytime somebody complains about the economy, the government, the general unfairness of life, ask them "Did you vote?" From there, it's just logistics.

Find out who your precinct officers are, and ask them how you can help get every missing Democratic voter to vote in the next election. If your precinct officers are AWOL (mine are, and I showed up in person on a freezing Saturday in April to vote for the fuckers), start nagging your county and state party to name people who will do the job.

Support state and federal legislation that makes voting easy - same-day registration, early voting, extended hours, etc. Oppose the laws that pretend to "protect" the vote but in fact prevent eligible voters from exercising their Constitutional right: picture ID, advance registration, restricted voting hours, etc.

Your first question to every potential and declared Democratic candidate for any office should be this: What are you doing to get non-voting Democratic voters to actually turn out and vote this time?

Read Where We Go From Here Part One here. Part Two here. Part Three here. Part Four here.

Dems Should Agree With Rethuglicans: No Compromise

A week before the election, that Passionate Man of Reason, Robert Reich, explained why Democrats should be as anti-compromise as the republicans:

Why are Democratic presidents so much more easily intimidated by the "move to the center" rhetoric after midterm losses than Republican presidents?

Because Democrats think in terms of programs, policies, and particular pieces of legislation. It's easy to reverse course by compromising more and giving up on legislative goals. Bill Clinton never mentioned the words "health care reform" after the 1994 midterms.

Republicans think in terms of simple ideas, themes, and movements. It's far harder to reverse course on these (look what happened to the first George Bush when he raised taxes), and easier to keep them alive: Republican presidents just continue looking for opportunities to implement them.

Republicans are also more disciplined (ask yourself which party attracts authoritarian personalities and which attracts anti-authoritarians). This makes it easier for them to stay the course. Their base continues to organize and fulminate even after midterm defeats. Democrats, on the other hand, are less organized. Electoral defeats tend to fracture and dissipate whatever organization they have.

Republicans are cynical about politics from the jump. Political cynicism fuels them. Democrats are idealistic about politics. When they become cynical they tend to drop out.

Message to Obama: Whatever happens November 2, don't move to the center. Push even harder for what you believe in. Message to Democrats: Whatever happens, keep the courage of your conviction and get even more active.

Read the whole thing.

Where We Go From Here: Part Four

Asset:

3. Blue-Dog-loving Democratic campaign committees exposed as worthless, money-wasting losers directly responsible for the biggest rethuglican victory in 72 years.

If you still need an excuse to stop giving money to the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, then this election has given you one.

The DNC, the DCCC and the DSCC ignored liberal challengers with legitimate chances of beating rethuglican incumbents and instead wasted tens of millions of dollars on republican-voting DINOs like Blanche Lincoln who lost to republicans by double-digits.

Give only to individual candidates whose voting record and campaign statements reflect your own political priorities. Several independent organizations that support only progressive Democratic candidates have appeared in the last few years, including Blue America and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.

Among blogs, Down With Tyranny stands out for its work researching and identifying truly liberal candidates who deserve your support.

If you've ever given money in the past to the DNC, DCCC or DSCC you know you're on their permanent patsy list because you still get letters from them begging for money that they just waste on Blue Dogs who empower republicans. I always throw them away, but from now on I'm going to take the time to respond - using their postage-paid return envelope, of course - telling them precisely why I will not give them a dime and why I am telling all my friends, family, neighbors, co-workers and strangers on the street to not give them a dime, either.

This is also the perfect time to get involved with/launch a hostile takeover of your local Democratic party. If it is successful and effective, then get involved and help any way you can. It's not too early to start working toward 2012.

If your local or state party is a failure and worthless, like the Kentucky and Missouri state democratic parties, then it's even more important that you start organizing liberal Democrats in your neighborhood, precinct or county to throw out the losers and start working toward winning in 2012.

Read Where We Go From Here Part One here. Part Two here.Part Three here.

Kentucky's Congressman Awesome

So Wire Hangar slithered his way back into Congress by 649 votes. Don't celebrate; he's a corporate-owned Blue Dog who'll stab Pelosi and Obama in the back every chance he gets.

Focus instead on the one politician who keeps Kentucky from being Mississippi.

Media Czech on the TIME profile:

John Yarmuth just can't help but be Congressman Awesome:

"One of the problems we had nationally was that we had a lot of members who had been in office a long time and had kind of been cruising," Yarmuth told TIME on late Tuesday over the still raucous cheers of relieved supporters in the background. "So when they found themselves in an environment where people were yelling in their faces, they lacked the skills and the confidence to defend the good things they had just accomplished." Instead, he said, too many congressional Democrats "pandered" to an angry and frustrated electorate, instead of selling them on the benefits of health care reform and the rest.

Yarmuth, easily the most liberal member of Congress from Kentucky in decades, never apologized for any of the legislation he has helped passed since Obama's Inauguration. "I've been outspoken on these issues for a long time," he told TIME. "And when I've been out talking to constituents, I have never wavered on my positions. They know I am someone who will say exactly what I feel."

It was a strategy that proved pivotal compared with those of his compatriots across Kentucky. Much more moderate Democrats fared far less well. Democrat Ben Chandler declared apparent victory but only after he squeaked ahead by a few hundred votes in Kentucky's 6th Congressional District. Paul's opponent in the Senate race, Democratic state attorney general Jack Conway, never seemed to show voters exactly where he stood or find his voice — at least not before giving a passionate and articulate concession speech on Tuesday.

Yarmuth was reluctant to criticize Conway, who is also from Louisville, but he agreed that the Democratic Senate candidate had failed to convince skeptical voters that he stood for something powerful. "I hate to talk about Jack's campaign, because I feel Jack did what he had to do," Yarmuth said, giving a nod to the fact that Kentucky voters as a whole are far more conservative than the ones he faced in Louisville. "But one of the problems Jack had was that he never — well, he tried to kind of guess where most Kentuckians were on the issues. And voters usually can see through that. He didn't stand up for particular values and say, 'This is my position, even if it's unpopular.' He may have believed in every position he took, but he never convinced voters."

Is it possible to overdose on Awesomeness? Yarmy may have to tone it down a bit, for his own health.

SNIP

And if you haven't seen Yarmuth's victory speech yet, please set aside 12 minutes of your time sometime today or this weekend and watch this thing from start to finish. We should all be really grateful to have someone like this in Washington DC representing our state.

Where We Go From Here: Part Three

Asset:

2. A far more liberal Democratic caucus in the House. Twenty-eight of the 54 conservadem Blue Dogs lost re-election. Only three of the 79 members of the Progressive Caucus lost re-election. Progressive Democrats now outnumber DINOs by a factor of three.

Today it's actually 30 Blue Dogs flushed down the toilet. And at least three if not four more new members for the Progressives.

David Dayen at Firedoglake:

You may have seen the statistic going around that 47% of Blue Dogs got returned to Congress last night, while 96% of the Progressive Caucus returned. That isn’t a completely fair statistic. For the most part, those progressives are in safer districts. For the ones in less safe districts, they had big problems last night: Alan Grayson, Phil Hare and John Hall got beat. (Grayson should find another seat in Florida and move there). And for the most part, your ideology didn’t matter so much as the D next to your name. Everyone got beat.

But those are just the numbers of candidates who lost. What about the ones who won? Democrats picked up three seats from Republicans, making good on some prior anomalies and realigning correctly. Colleen Hanabusa (HI-01), Cedric Richmond (LA-02) and John Carney (DE-AL) all won. Of those, I would say Hanabusa and Richmond will join the Progressive Caucus. In AL-07, Terri Sewell replaced Artur Davis. She’s a lot more progressive than he ever was, and she will likely join the caucus. David Cicilline (RI-01), the replacement for Patrick Kennedy and another openly gay member of Congress, is likely to join (Patrick Kennedy never did). The race that a progressive lost in a primary, Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick (MI-13), was over ethical issues, and she’ll be replaced by Hansen Clarke, likely to join the caucus.

What’s likely, then, is an increase in the ranks of the Progressive Caucus numbers. Even if they opened the floodgates on the Blue Dog Caucus, which they limit, they won’t increase their numbers.

Also note that the only Democrat endorsed by the Tea Party Express, Walt Minnick, who used the endorsement to engage in basically racist tactics, lost too. The tea party imprimatur didn’t matter.

A better gauge of all this is how Blue Dog tactics undermine Democrats everywhere. They destroy the Democratic brand and give the impression that Democrats either stand for nothing or deserve scorn. They hurt progressives, moderates and even the Blue Dogs in their own caucus who align with them for various reasons but don’t hurt the party in any major way. A better road would be to stop neglecting the base and lavishing attention on people who are ashamed of you.

What has happened has happened. I’m less interested in talking about the ways the administration screwed up, than in what they’re going to do about it in preparation of 2012. First thing’s first — stop bashing the base, or the professional left, or whatever liberal boogeymen pisses them off. Fact is, people who fall in those disaffected categories — the young, blacks, Latinos — don’t read blogs, or watch Keith Olbermann, or read Firedoglake. But they are losing their jobs and their homes, and they see Wall Street get all manners of bailouts without any of it trickling down to them. That has killed us. Make their lives better, or (since nothing will happen with Boehner in the House) at least fight to make their lives better.

This isn’t about throwing a bone to the base to make them happy, it’s about doing the right thing for America — fight for jobs, fight for opportunity, fight for equality under the law. Democrats believe that government can make people’s lives better, so embrace and fight for that belief. If Democrats are in it to protect Goldman Sachs, they might as well flip to the other team.

Markos calls for the firing of Tim Kaine in that rant. I can’t see how this would hurt.

I think we need Results Democrats willing to put people first. That about sums it up. Those types of people are far more likely to join a progressive caucus than a Blue Dog coalition.

The members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus are the people who will enthusiastically support exactly the liberal legislation you want. And now, even though Democrats are in the minority in the House, progessives are almost half of the Democratic total. They have more power than they have ever had. Make them your new best friends.

Find out who is a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and how to call or write them, here.

Tomorrow, what to do with our third asset.

Read Where We Go From Here Part One here. Part Two here.

Where We Go From Here: Part Two

Here's your choice: give up and let the barbarians burn the country to the ground, or double-down on your participation.

Reject the losers' whine that they can't do anything now that the rethuglicans have the House and 47 seats in the Senate. Congressional Democrats and the president pissed away the power they had with super majorities, so now they're just going to have to do the dirty work of beating the rethuglicans the hard way.
"Bipartisanship" means surrendering to the rethuglicans. "Victory" means beating the rethuglicans into whimpering pools of shit.

Asset:

1. The White House and the Senate. Both diminished, neither as strong as we'd like, but both still in Democratic hands.

Yes, it does seem clear that neither President Obama nor Congressional Democrats listen to anything Democrats, much less liberals, have to say. Even, or maybe especially though we have been right about everything from the beginning, and every mistake they have made, every failure, has come because they ignored our advice.

But maybe blogs and internet petitions are the wrong medium. Maybe the personal touch will get through.

Talk directly to President Obama and the Democratic Senators. If your own state's Senators are rethuglicans, talk directly to the Democratic Leadership - Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin. Or the relevant committee chairs. (Full list here. Click on the name to get that Senator's home page with contact info.)

Talk in person, of course, if you get the chance, but talk by whatever means you can - email, phone, letter. Emails and phone calls get handled by staff, but still get counted. If you want to make a big impression, send a letter. If you want to set the office on its ear, send a hand-written letter.

It doesn't have to be an essay - short is actually better. And it doesn't have to be particularly eloquent, although feel free to exercise your inner Hemingway if you're so inclined. Your own words, rather than your electronic signature on a petition, is what makes it stand out.

Just state simply and clearly what you want and what you expect from them. Rant if you must, but plain demands for specific action on a particular issue work best. (Rant right here in comments; wasting handwritten letters on rants just undermines your later demands.)

I plan to add a sentence or two making clear that I know procedural excuses are bullshit - there is always a way to get it done if you're not squeamish about hard-nosed methods. People care about results, not process.

One issue per letter, even if that means sending a letter every single week. If you send the same issue letter to several people, make it businesslike: address it to one of them and at the bottom, list the other people as "cc."

Follow up as frequently as you can, and keep it specific: "On Nov. 4, 2010, I wrote to you requesting .... It is two weeks later and you have not taken the specific action I requested. To repeat, I insist ...." Ignore the response letters you get - they are boilerplate excuses for not doing anything. Respond only to action, or lack of same.

No, maybe it won't work. But if you don't do it, it definitely won't work.

Tomorrow: What to do with our second asset.