It was not only Democrats who lost big in the 2014 election, it was also women and their right to control their own bodies.

Courtesy of Politico:  

The big Republican gains in the November elections strengthened and enlarged the anti-abortion forces in the House and the Senate. But it’s the GOP victories in the statehouses and governor’s mansions that are priming the ground for another round of legal restrictions on abortion. 

Arkansas, for instance, already has strict anti-abortion laws. But with a Republican governor succeeding a Democrat who had vetoed two measures that would have banned most abortions beyond a certain stage of pregnancy, lawmakers plan to seek more restrictions — such as barring doctors from administering abortion drugs through telemedicine. Republican gains in the West Virginia Legislature will redouble pressure on Democratic Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin to accept a ban on most abortions after 20 weeks, which he has previously deemed unconstitutional. And Tennessee voters approved a ballot initiative that removes a 15-year barrier to legislation limiting abortion legislation in that deeply conservative state.  

Abortion rights advocates have had setbacks in the states for several years, with a surge of legislative activity since 2011. Women seeking abortions may face mandatory waiting periods or ultrasound requirements. Clinics may face stricter building codes or hospital admitting privilege rules they can’t satisfy. Dozens of clinics have shut down in multiple states. Texas, for instance, has fewer than 10 abortion clinics now. A year ago, it had 40. 

Republicans now hold two-thirds of the state legislative bodies, after winning control of 11 more chambers. They completely control the legislature in more than half the states, adding Nevada, New Hampshire and West Virginia to that list earlier this month. And they gained two more governor’s seats, so they will hold 31 next year. 

You know a couple of years ago I used to scoff at the idea that the Republicans could find some way to  overturn Roe vs Wade. Well I am no longer scoffing.

In effect in many places around the country on the state level the conservatives have either made it impossible to get an abortion, or extremely difficult. And they are forcing women to travel longer distances and jump through more hoops than ever before.

And the sad thing is that in their furor to stop all abortion in this country, they are increasing the need for them by closing down clinics which helped women get birth control, sex education, and prenatal care.

Of course they care little about that. After all as we have discussed before they only use abortion as their rallying cry. What they really want is to control women's bodies and return them to their rightful place as breeding stock completely subservient to men.

Senator Bernie Sanders has a great idea as to how to bring more people out to vote.

Courtesy of The Hill:  

Midterm election turnout is historically lower than presidential years, but preliminary returns indicate that Tuesday's vote saw the lowest participation rate since the 1940s. 

“Election Day should be a national holiday so that everyone has the time and opportunity to vote,” Sanders said Friday in a statement. “While this would not be a cure-all, it would indicate a national commitment to create a more vibrant democracy.” 

Sanders’s Vermont had its lowest voter turnout in recorded history, with 43.7 percent of registered voters participating. 

Sanders plans to file a bill once Congress returns next week that would add Election Day to the list of federal holidays. Since many jobs take federal holidays off, the move could reduce the costs associated with voting and free up voters to make it to the polls. 

“We should not be satisfied with a ‘democracy’ in which more than 60 percent of our people don't vote and some 80 percent of young people and low-income Americans fail to vote,” he said. 

“We can and must do better than that.”

Actually Sanders is not alone in this idea, according to the article Hillary and John Kerry sponsored a bill to do the same thing back in 2005 when they were both still in the Senate.

I think it's a great idea and I would like to see other incentives to vote as well.

Perhaps providing a tax incentive might be a good start. Americans seem to love those.

Was the 2014 loss due voter apathy on the side of progressives, or was there something else at play?

Courtesy of The Intercept:  

On Tuesday, older, white voters — who traditionally support Republicans — went to the polls in droves, while turnout among traditionally Democratic groups — the young, the minoritized, and women — was down. Indeed, overall turnout declined to an estimated 36.6% of eligible voters, the lowest rate of participation since the 1940s, despite the $3 billion spent by candidates, political parties, and super PACs. 

Yes, President Barack Obama’s poor performance and approval rating undoubtedly played a role in the lower turnout. But the evidence is piling up that systematic voter suppression, including voter ID laws and dubious vote-fraud prevention software, played a significant part in keeping people from casting ballots, as well.

The Intercept goes on to point out irregularities in both Texas and Georgia.  

Georgia, it must also be noted, is one of 27 states using the controversial software Crosscheck to weed out supposed voter fraud. Al Jazeera, which recently finished a months-long investigation of the program, found an astonishing 7 million Americans suspected of voter fraud on the Crosscheck lists. That despite the fact that voter fraud is almost unbelievably rare. One dogged investigator, a professor focused on election administration at Loyola University Law School, found just 31 credible incidents between 2000 and mid 2014, nationwide. 

Crosscheck scours the names of voters who live in the 27 states, and if a first and last name matches in two states both persons are flagged and purged. The surnames most likely to be flagged? “The lists are heavily weighted with names such as Jackson, Garcia, Patel and Kim — ones common among minorities”, Al Jazeera reported. “List matching is an inaccurate science that burdens, disproportionately, minority voters”, said Wendy Weiser, director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. Weiser also claimed that voter complaints to her group’s hotline were higher this year than ever before.

I think most of us have known that our voting rights have been under attack since as least 2000, and  it seems that as time goes on the Republican's ability to rob us of our fundamental right to vote is getting more sophisticated and harder to track.

If we are going to have any hope of electing a representative government in this country we are going to have to do something very serious about reforming our voting structure.

Sean Hannity invites Sarah Palin on to do her victory dance and then shuts her down by asking if she wants a job in politics.

I have to admit that I did not even know that Palin was on Fox last night, I was too busy ignoring my TV and enjoying life.

However our friend GinaM sent me this link so let's see what craziness awaits us this morning.

Hannity leads off by framing the midterm defeat of Democrats as a harbinger of troubles to come for a Hillary Clinton presidential bid in 2016. (Nice try no-neck.)

After teeing it up, Hannity then asks Palin if Hillary is "as big a loser as the President."

"Oh it was the whole ball of wax wasn't it the other night? All the Democrats felled policies, and felled candidates, and felled surrogates. Well that was just..uh..made manifest by  the American people when we all said no to that, and to stop that, and Hillary of course was a part of that. Of course though the Left, Sean will..um..buck up and they will do all that they can to protect Hillary and try to change the narrative, as you already heard I'm sure. Try to make it sound like, well she was the winner in all of this. That she had chosen the right ones, and the right policies to support. Obviously the facts don't support that...but they will...they will support her anyway and prop her up because they participate in this phony and felled war on women, so to compensate for what it is that they accuse the Republicans of engaging in, they make an extra effort to coddle women and to make them fill that they can't independently, and with their own capabilities, rise to the top. That government and politicians have to do things for them. They will do for Hillary to continue to prop her up."

Wait, Hillary Clinton needs to be propped up by the Democrats? Boy does Palin not know Hillary Clinton!

That is one of the worst cases of projection that I have ever seen.

Hannity then makes the case that in order to run successfully in 2016 that Hillary will have to distance herself from the policies of President Obama, and asks Palin if she can do that.

"No, Barack Obama of course has had his boot on the neck of the American economy, and anyone who has participated in shining that boot, that being the people who he surrounds himself with, and helped call the shots for the nation over these past six years of a lot of failures, anybody who shined those boots? No the American public, you can't underestimate the wisdom of, and will be saying no to anyone who participated. Good point too about Mark Begich, Mary Landrieu, all these folks who they supported Barack Obama, and would continue to, of course, when they got back in there 97, 98, 99% of the time. How stupid did they think American voters were?"

Well smart enough to have rejected you and Grandpa Grumpy-Pants back in 2008.

Hannity then asks if Palin has any advice for the newly elected, or newly reelected Republicans going to Washington, and she rattles off a bunch of her usual talking points about stopping Obama, giving us our freedom, and playing hardball.

Hannity then asks if there isn't an "unspoken expectation" that the Republicans will actually work to solve some of the problems facing the country and not just focus on defeating Obama? Which is actually a surprisingly reasonable question coming from Hannity.

Let's see how Palin handles a real question.

"Right, first and foremost is stop Obama and his felled policies, his lawlessness, but also yes that inspiration that we can gain from the GOP, and what it is that we sent them to do there in Washington is to fulfill their campaign promises and stand strong on the planks of the Republican platform. And they can get specific from there. Lower the corporate tax rate, and quit shoving jobs overseas..um..allow competition in the health care system once you repill Obamacare, as you promised to do GOP. And...uh...allow employers to hire more people. Full time jobs, not part time jobs. What's going on right now Sean is the decimation of the middle class because of these high costs of health care, because of these prohibitions just placed upon employers where they're not able to hire people. Open borders of course is another step toward decimation of the middle class because we'll have a flood of illegal immigrants coming in to compete with American jobs. All of that leads to just this atrophying of a foundation of our country which is the middle class, and that is on the Democrat's shoulder."

Holy shit! What the hell is she saying?

So I think the answer is no, that Republicans do not have an "unspoken expectation" to do anything except attack Obama and give lip service to problem solving while doing nothing.

This is where Hannity decides to ambush Palin by asking her if she is thinking at all about getting back into politics.

And this is the look on her face the moment he asks it at the 6:15 mark.

Deer, meet headlights.

Her response?

"I would love to."

Then Hannity follows up, by asking her "what job?"

She looks completely lost, before shaking her head and saying, "I don't know which job, but of course, and in the meantime, I'm out and about doing what I can to support good candidates."

Palin then breathlessly tattles off a bunch of upcoming appearances. Ultimately making it clear that she does NOT really want a job where she cannot do what she wants, when she wants.

Most of this interview was the same old word salad, peppered with Palin brand moosenuggets. But that last question, that one actually seemed to have drawn blood.

Here is a little news that might lift a few spirits.

Courtesy of our friends over at News Corpse:  

But the real story underlying this election is one that the media will almost certainly fail to address. Despite the election returns, America hates the Republican Party and its policies. The turnout is estimated to be about 38%. That means that the GOP victory was achieved with a majority of a little more than one-third of the electorate, or about 20%. That is not exactly a ringing endorsement of the Republican agenda. 

The demographic makeup of the voters this year was decidedly older and whiter. It was also more concentrated in the South which accounted for 34% of all votes. The rest of the country came in a substantial nine to twelve points lower. 

Just two years ago President Obama was resoundingly reelected along with increasing the number of Democrats in both houses of Congress. The turnout then was 58%, or 53% higher than 2014. Exit polls show that both parties are underwater in voter approval, but Democrats are still favored over Republicans 44% to 40%. Exit polling also gives Obama a 41% approval rating, compared to just 13% for Congress. 

On the basis of this fractured and biased sliver of the electorate, Chris Wallace of Fox News declared this morning that “The Democratic Party brand is damaged.” But further examination of the exit polls says that isn’t true. On virtually every policy question, voters sided with the Democrats. That includes ObamaCare, immigration reform, increasing the minimum wage, same-sex marriage, legalizing marijuana, abortion, and climate change. And when asked about preferences for president in 2016, Hillary Clinton is leading every GOP opponent (Clinton 42%, Jeb Bush 29%, Rand Paul 26%, Chris Christie 24%, and Rick Perry 24%). 

2016 holds more bad news for Republicans and their new senate majority. The GOP will be defending 24 seats, as compared to only 10 for the Democrats. Nine of the those GOP seats are in states won by Obama in 2012. So are all of the Democratic seats. With a larger and more representative electorate it is almost a certainty that the senate will flip back to the Democrats. And with a popular and history-making candidate like Clinton that outcome is even more likely.

Of course all of that is true, and I have been kind of telling myself some version of this since yesterday, but it is still upsetting when you lose like this and have to imagine just how badly the Republicans can damage the country before the Democrats can wrest it out of their hands again. 

I mean let's face it Obama is STILL trying to put the pieces back together after George W. Bush not only left the country in shambles but left political IEDs all over the damn place to constantly blow up in the President's face as he tries to clean up the mess.

At this time I can only imagine what sort of booby traps the Republicans will leave for Hillary before they are eventually chased out of office.

The mind reels.

In my opinion 2016 cannot come fast enough.

Elections have consequences. Thanks to the Republican takeover of the Senate this guy will now be in charge of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

Courtesy of The New Republic: 

In handing Republicans control of the Senate on Tuesday, Americans effectively voted for the party's hostile plans against President Barack Obama’s environmental legacy. Their votes also put the Senate's environment and climate policy into the hands of the worst science-denier in national politics: Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, who is almost certainly the next chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. 

Inhofe claimed in 2003 that global warming might help humanity. “It's also important to question whether global warming is even a problem for human existence. Thus far no one has seriously demonstrated any scientific proof that increased global temperatures would lead to the catastrophes predicted by alarmists. In fact, it appears that just the opposite is true: that increases in global temperatures may have a beneficial effect on how we live our lives.” In that same speech, he argued that an international body of climate change scientists “resembled a Soviet-style trial, in which the facts are predetermined, and ideological purity trumps technical and scientific rigor.” 

Inhofe refuted climate change science in 2012 by citing the Bible. “[T]he Genesis 8:22 that I use in there is that ‘as long as the earth remains there will be seed time and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night.’ My point is, God’s still up there. The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous.”

I first heard this on election night from Rachel Maddow and I was hoping that there might be a slim possibility that she was wrong.

Nope.

So what do you think, since the UN says that most electricity must be produced through renewable energy by 20150,  we need to get off of fossil fuels altogether before 2100, do we think that Inhofe is going to do any work toward making that a reality?

Or do we think he is going to do everything in his power to defund climate science research and completely disregard any current findings that conflict with his belief that the climate is controlled by God with a thermostat in the sky?

We're doomed.

Chances are when it comes to terror tonight will have NOTHING on November the 4th.

Courtesy of Salon: 

Consider the remarkable number of races that remain tossups at this late stage. According to RealClearPolitics’ polling averages, less than three points separate the candidates in Alaska, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Kansas, Georgia, and Iowa. Moreover, based on pollsters’ recent history of overestimating GOP strength and underestimating Hispanic turnout, there’s reason to believe that the Colorado Senate race is even closer than the 3.6 point edge held by Republican Cory Gardner over Democratic Sen. Mark Udall suggests. The razor-thin margins that separate the candidates in these contests all but ensure that at a clear victor won’t emerge in at least one or two of them on election night. Accordingly, some candidates, including Iowa GOPer Joni Ernst and Republican Thom Tillis and Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan in North Carolina, are gearing up for weeks-long legal battles. 

Meanwhile, up in Alaska, where Democratic Sen. Mark Begich appears to be making something of a comeback, the state’s time lag and relatively slow vote-counting process mean that a winner probably won’t be declared until November 5 at the earliest. In 2008, Begich wasn’t proclaimed the winner of his race against Sen. Ted Stevens until two weeks after Election Day. Though polls suggested Begich was headed to an easy victory, he ultimately only won by a point. Observers expect the Democrat’s race against Republican Dan Sullivan this year to be similarly close. 

Add it all up, and it’s increasingly clear that political junkies hoping for a firm Senate result next Tuesday night will probably find themselves disappointed. At this point, the likeliest scenario for a definitive election night answer is a GOP wave. If Republican Scott Brown knocks off Sen. Jeanne Shaheen in New Hampshire early Tuesday night, for instance, that portends an excellent night for the Republicans and substantially increases the odds that the GOP will have 51 Senate seats in its column by the end of the night. Despite polls indicating a tightening race, however, Brown’s ceiling of support appears to be roughly 48 percent, and a new survey showing Shaheen with an eight point lead underscores the likelihood that she’ll ultimately hold on. 

So fasten your seat belts — it could be a bumpy few weeks.

You know I am a tried and true TV watcher, and I get really sucked into the reality of my favorite shows sometimes.

For instance I about jumped out of my skin when the Mountain suddenly gained the upper hand during his epic battle with Prince Oberyn Martell. (NSFW gore.) And I was on the edge of my seat during that Terminus Slaughter Scene. (More gore.) But I have no doubt that all of that will seem like nothing compared to my stress level while waiting for the votes to be counted and the elections to finally be decided.

There is just so much hanging in the balance here.

Part of me wants to have confidence in the voting public. but then the other part of me thinks "Fuck those people they never know what's good for them."  So you see I am conflicted.

It's an easy choice folks. Either we embrace the future, and cast our votes to move the country toward a brighter tomorrow. Or we allow fear and cowardice to rule the day and choose once again to give power to the party of "You have to be this white, and this male, to ride this ride."

How hard of a choice is that?

It finally took the Mississippi Supreme Court to tell Chris McDaniels that he lost the Republican primary election back in June.

"Hey, I don't know the meaning of the word 'lose.' No really, I don't."

Courtesy of TPM:  

Chris McDaniel's months-long quest to overturn the results of the Mississippi Republican Senate primary appeared to reach its end when the state supreme court rejected his legal challenge Friday. 

McDaniel lost to Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS) in the June primary, but he has been using the legal system ever since to undermine the election. Allegations of voter fraud and illegal crossover voters have abounded, and the case eventually made its way to the Mississippi Supreme Court. 

But the court dismissed McDaniel's challenge on Friday, citing timing and political considerations, according to election law expert Rick Hasen's analysis. 

"Sometimes these rulings are a mercy killing. McDaniel’s evidence of fraud seemed weak, and his legal theories about crossover voting even weaker," Hasen wrote. "This timing ruling was a way for the courts to end the process without going through a long drawn out trial. Not that the courts would ever admit they were doing that, but I guess this was in the back of at least some Justices’ minds."

Okay I have seen some sore losers in my time, but this asshole takes the cake. 

I hate to say it but I really think that this is the plan for other GOP candidates in the general election as well.

I think that is why Joni Ernst of Iowa is already gathering information about recounts even though the election is still ten days away.

If I am right about this many of our elections may not be decided for weeks, or even months, after November 4th, and some of us could be in for a very long, expensive, and frustrating battle that undermines our democracy and leaves voters stuck in a kind of political purgatory.

Oh joy.