The Last Vestige of Slavery in the Constitution

That is the Electoral College. It was put in place, in part, to give outsized influence in selecting presidents to slave states. It remains the most undemocratic part of our system of electing people, for it makes the presidency and vice presidency the only elected offices in the country for which it matters not how many people voted for them,

And if you live in a state that reliably goes one way or the other, your vote is more or less meaningless. Your only other way to have a say is to donate cash.

I know, it's not going to change, sort of a constitutional convention. Republicans like it because they have a shot at winning despite rarely having the most votes. The so-called swing states love it, because it means that people pay attention to them.

But it's undemocratic bullshit and if Republicans were honest with themselves, they'd admit that. They're depending on a slavery institution.

So you could argue that modern Republicans love slavery, which is a hell of a fall from their origins.

Stifle Your Anger and Figure It Out

I get that Arab-Americans are furious. I'm not denying or denigrating that.

But this is the choice: Kamala Harris or Donald Trump.

Anyone who thinks that there is no difference between the two should rethink that stance. It doesn't really matter which issue is at hand. There is a difference between the two. To those who are unhappy with both and are going to sit on their hands, I have three messages for you:

1. If you can vote and you don't vote, then you should shut the fuck up about what happens starting at noon, EST on January 20th, 2025.  You could have had your say, you chose to not bother, so not only should you shut the fuck up, go away until after you vote in the mid-term election in 2026.
2. Seek professional help.
3. Consider emigrating.  You evidently don't care enough about your freedom or this country to exercise your right to vote, so go to another country where elections don't matter or are organized farces.  May I suggest Russia or Hungary, for starters.

Not voting is choosing to miss your opportunity to make your voice heard (and yes, I've lived in places were elections were decided by two votes and even tied). A few votes can make a difference.

But for some, never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity is a long tradition.

Heh. Heh.

Mike Lupica said: “J.D. Vance is such a bad pick I can’t believe the Jets didn’t draft him.”

The Tired Wannabee Dictator apparently doesn't understand the English language, because he arguably called himself "defective". He was speaking at an event for Moms Support Fascism and, of course, nobody there understood that point. Because they're about burning books, not learning from them.

The dumb bastard party is apparently pushing to shut down the government at the start of the new fiscal year. The few remaining sentient adults in that party know full well that government shutdowns not only don't work, the American people (minus the MAGA Morons) know damn well who was responsible for them, for when the hostages get killed, the hostage-takers are the ones at fault.

Bobby Brain-Worm is suing North Carolina to get off the ballot and New York to stay on it. I suppose there is some sort of rational reason for both moves, but it looks as relentlessly skeevy as he is.

SG Murthy Sabotaged the Biden Campaign

The U.S. surgeon general on Tuesday declared gun violence a public health crisis, driven by the fast-growing number of injuries and deaths involving firearms in the country.

First off, fair warning: If the comment thread gets into a discussion about the merits of gun control, I will shut it down. That's not the topc for this post.

What is the topic is that, a few months before an election that may or may not be the most pivotal in over 160 years, where every vote counts, and which will decide whether we remain a nation of law and freedom or one that is a authoritarian oligarchy/kletocracy, the fucking Surgeon General of the United States decided to put on his clown shoes and wade in on one of the most divisive topics out there.

And it's not as though he doesn't know this. Murthy almost didn't get confirmed the first time that he was SG because of concern that he would do exactly what he just did.

Is he this politically obtuse? Was he so arrogant as to not have this vetted by the White House? And if he did, are there people in the West Wing who are so politically stupid as to not see the minefield in which Murthy decided to go for a nice walk?

Unless President Biden made this call, himself, there are people who should be doing rug dances in the Oval Office this morning.

Joe Liberman is Dead, and So Is His Party

The No Labels group said Thursday it will not field a presidential candidate in November after strategists for the bipartisan organization failed to attract a high-profile centrist willing to seize on the widespread dissatisfaction with President Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

“No Labels has always said we would only offer our ballot line to a ticket if we could identify candidates with a credible path to winning the White House,” Nancy Jacobson, the group’s CEO, said in a statement sent out to allies. “No such candidates emerged, so the responsible course of action is for us to stand down.”

Sure, they say that they were trying to mind a middle way. But the truth of the matter was that No Labels was a project funded by billionaires with the goal of sucking enough votes away from President Biden to restore the Russian Asset to power.

Little Baby Bobby Kennedy, a/k/a Trump-Lite (half the coherency, none of the criminality, all of the racism) is still trying to do the same.

Well..........Bye x 2

Nikki Haley "suspended" her campaign, likely hoping that her opponent gets convicted in the hush-money trial.

And:

U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota ended his long-shot 2024 Democratic presidential bid on Wednesday after failing to win a primary contest against President Joe Biden.

Phillips went out with a full-throated endorsement of Biden. Haley, on the other hand, just sort of slunk off into the corner with the knowledge that when it comes to the Party of Trump, she's toast. She's demonstrated her disloyalty to the Führer of Orange, a man who never forgets or forgives a slight.

Well, Bye.

Independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona announced on Tuesday that she won’t run for a second term after her estrangement from the Democratic Party left her politically homeless and without a clear path to reelection.

"Politically homeless"-- Nice way of putting it. Sinema was polling third in a three-way race, a terrible place for an incumbent. If you're going to shit all over those who brung you to the dance, best have another partner picked out.

Kari Lake will likely be the Republican nominee, and then she'll be beaten like a gong by whover runs as a Democrat. Arizonans probably haven't warmed to her brand of crazy; she'll drag Trump down with her. Or vice versa.

How Did “Hold the House and Flip the Senate” Work Out For You, Glenn?

Short answer: It didn't.

Virginia Democrats who campaigned on protecting abortion rights swept Tuesday’s legislative elections, retaking full control of the General Assembly after two years of divided power.

The outcome is a sharp loss for Gov. Glenn Youngkin and his fellow Republicans, who exerted a great deal of energy, money and political capital on their effort to secure a GOP trifecta.

Youngkin campaigned hard on what he said was a middle-of-the-road path on abortion: Restricting it to fifteen weeks. Voters seemed to have signalled to him where he can stuff it.

The GOP keeps trying to deliver on banning abortion for their supporters in the American Taliban, but voters keep interfering with that. Politicaly, the Dobbs decision is a gift that keeps on giving for Democrats.

Shorter RFK, Jr.: I Did Not Say the Things That I Was Recorded Saying.

"Who you gonna believe, me or your lyin' ears" is basically his position. When a congresswoman read his own statements to him, he claimed that he was being slandered.

Gym Jordan and Spineless Kevin thought it would hurt Biden to give Nutball Bobby a platform. Whey they aren't seeing is that the more people get to know RFK, Jr., the more they think that he's an unhinged lunatic. Since the Hyannis Jerkoff is running against Biden, the GOP is, in effect, helping Biden by giving that nepo-baby nutjob a platform.

This is from current polling in NH, where voters were asked for a single word that they associated with Kennedy:

Little Bobby is 60% underwater in the polls:

The only people who like him are Republicans and Fox News. And their opinions don't fucking matter one bit.

Politicians in Long, Black Dresses

North Carolina's highest court on Friday ruled that state law does not bar lawmakers from drawing congressional and state legislative maps for partisan benefit, boosting Republicans' odds next year of maintaining their narrow majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.
...
Friday's ruling vacated the court's previous decision, issued barely more than a year ago when Democratic judges controlled the court, that had found partisan gerrymandering violated the state constitution.

When the rulings depend on which party controls the court, then the rulings are nothing more than political calculations dressed up in highfalutin' legalese.

"Calling balls and strikes"? Yeah, and the umps have been bribed.

Another Public Idiot Is Running for President

In this case, RFK, Jr., noted clean-energy hypocrite and science denier.

He has about as much chance of obtaining the Democratic nomination as does MTG, who is equally nuts.

ETA: Also, this.

Pass the Popcorn; Classified Documents Ed.

Documents with classified markings were discovered in former Vice President Mike Pence’s Indiana residence last week, his lawyer says, the latest in a string of recoveries of confidential information from the homes of current and former top U.S. officials.

The records, which were taken into FBI custody, “appear to be a small number of documents bearing classified markings that were inadvertently boxed and transported to the personal home of the former vice president at the end of the last administration,” Pence’s lawyer, Greg Jacob, wrote in a letter to the National Archives shared with The Associated Press.

Note that Moralist Mikey didn't exactly trot right out and inform the country that there were classified documents in his home. You'll probably have to wait a long time to find a Republican politician eager to criticize him about that.

The difference between Vice President Pence and President Biden, on the on hand, and the TOFF, on the other hand, is that Messers. Biden and Pence have not pretended that the documents were theirs and have cooperated with the National Archives and the FBI. The TOFF, on the other hand, lied, dissembled and refused to turn things over, hence the need to get a search warrant.

But then there is the fact that Pence earlier said that there was no way that he could have taken any classified documents:

“Before we left the White House, the attorneys on my staff went through all the documents at both the White House and our offices there and at the vice president’s residence to ensure that any documents that needed to be turned over to the National Archives, including classified documents, were turned over. So we went through a very careful process in that regard,” Pence said.

Glass houses and rocks, you know.

Let the Cries of "Whataboutism" On the Batshit-Crazy Right Commence, Because They're Going to, Anyway.

The Justice Department is reviewing a batch of potentially classified documents found in the Washington office space of President Joe Biden’s former institute, the White House said Monday.

Special counsel to the president Richard Sauber said “a small number of documents with classified markings” were discovered as Biden’s personal attorneys were clearing out the offices of the Penn Biden Center, where the president kept an office after he left the vice presidency in 2017 until shortly before he launched his 2020 presidential campaign in 2019. The documents were found on Nov. 2, 2022, in a “locked closet” in the office, Sauber said.

Of course, what is not present, in this case, are claims that "them's mine", or refusals to let FBI agents look for themselves, or sworn lies brom attorneys that no such documents exist, but that won't stop the cries about "whataboutism" from the Trumpanzees.

Comments that don't follow the rules of this blog will not be approved for publication. As will comments made by the Banhammer Boys (you know who you are).

At This Point, Why the Hell Not?

Sinema the Attention Whore Has to Keep on Whoring for Attention

Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona announced Friday that she has registered as an independent, but she does not plan to caucus with Republicans, ensuring Democrats will retain their narrow majority in the Senate.

Sinema, who has modeled her political approach on the renegade style of the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and has frustrated Democratic colleagues at times with her overtures to Republicans and opposition to Democratic priorities, said she was “declaring my independence from the broken partisan system in Washington.”

In a video explaining her decision, she said: “Registering as an independent and showing up to work with the title of independent is a reflection of who I’ve always been. ... Nothing’s going to change for me.”

I smell bullshit. Sinema strikes me as being one of those politicians who has to be at the center of the spotlight. She's not a worker, she's a glory-hog. She did zip-point-shit to help anyone else running for office in the 2022 elections. The guiding light in her political career has seemed to be never what good for anyone else, only what is good for her (and her donors). Everyone who knows her says that she is usually the smartest person in the room, that she's a savvy political operator. But one thing has become abundantly clear is that she is very much like the TOFF in that she is happiest when people are talking about her. That would seem to be her only political principle.

But note that she's not really hewing true to her so-called principle of being an independent. She's going to keep her Democratic committee assignments in the Senate, so she will be a IINO, an independent in name only.

Unlike Vermont, I am unaware of any existence of a network of independents in Arizona that could work to get Sinema on the ballot when it comes to time for her to run again in 2024. So look for her to say "oops, I'm still a Democrat" when it becomes convenient for her.

Democrats Keep the Senate!

So projects NBC News.

ETA: AP, too.

If Warnock beats Walker in GA, then the Democrats will have increased their count in the Senate.

The "red wave" has proved out to be a ripple.

No Matter What Other Results Come In....

.... Dr. Oz fucking lost.

And, to the guy on the banhammer list who submitted a nasty comment chortling about how the Republicans' red wave was going to sweep away everything: Eat shit.

Pro-choice state constitutional amendments won. In governors' races, LePage in Maine lost, Lake (AZ) may lose, Whitmer (MI) won.

Also, Boebert may be out.

And this:

A real quote from Donald Trump about tonight’s results:

"Well, I think if they win, I should get all the credit. If they lose, I should not be blamed at all."

pic.twitter.com/u0O8yWfCoE

— Matt Wilstein (@mattwilstein) November 8, 2022

Because that's how the Asset rolls.

Also, this:

The people who scoffed at Dems back in '17 saying that "Trump has broken your brain!" found themselves five years later trying to explain why Herschel Walker and Dr. frickin' Oz were perfectly normal, sensible candidates for Senate.

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) November 9, 2022

And this:

I just listened to Mike Lindell. I am now utterly convinced that a custom sandal dealer at a souk in Marrakesh used a Chinese satellite to steal the PA Senate race.

— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) November 9, 2022

An Example of Why People Detest Politicians, CO Ed.

Joe O’Dea, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Colorado, said Friday that he would not support former president Donald Trump if he runs for president in 2024 — a switch from his comments during the primary.

Speaking to libertarian radio host Ross Kaminsky, of Denver’s KOA station, O’Dea said he hopes Trump “doesn’t run.”

“I don’t want to see him as president. Again, we’ve got a lot of great candidates, Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott, Nikki Haley, there’s a lot of great talent out there. We need to move this country forward,” O’Dea said. “I think that seeing a Biden-Trump rematch again in 2024 would rip the country apart. I think a lot of people are ready to move our country forward. So I wouldn’t support him running again.”

O’Dea, a self-described moderate Republican who is looking to oust Sen. Michael F. Bennet, said on June 21 — a week before the primary — that he would support Trump if the party nominates him in 2024.

So, when this clown needed only the votes of Republicans to win the nomination for Senate, he was out there, implying that he supported the TOFF. but now that he's secured the nomination and he needs the votes of Independents and Democrats to win, he's not supporting the TOFF.

I'm not saying that Mr. O'Dea is a weaselly backstabber whose word is not worth a bucket of warm pig shit, but it's pretty evident that is indeed the truth of the matter. It's guys like him, who turn their coat faster than Benedict Arnold, who give the voters a reason not to trust them as far as they can throw an anvil.

X + Y = Z

As in "X Percent of Americans Are in Favor of Y Equals Zip Point Shit."

For the sake of this post, X can be anything. Gun control. Abortion. Eating whale meat. Heating homes with coal. Repealing child labor laws. Burning Mitch McConnell at the stake.

It's all pointless, because, as you should know, that's not how things work. We elect politicians to enact things we'd like to see. Which means that if the person you're voting for is not in favor of your pet issue, it matters not. Because most people are not single-issue voters; if their candidate is good on some issues but not on others, then they mauch chose not to worry about the points of disagreement.

But if there is a subset of voters who are single-issue voters, then those voters can excercise an outsized influence.

Which is why Biden's clarion call to do something about guns will go largely unanswered.

What's Happening in TX?

The FBI was on the scene Wednesday near the Laredo home of U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar for what authorities described as a court-authorized ongoing investigation.

FBI spokesperson Rosanne Hughes confirmed law enforcement’s presence in the area but did not clarify what authorities were investigating.

Hughes said in a statement that the FBI was present on two streets around Cuellar’s house in Laredo “conducting court-authorized law enforcement activity.”
...
Agents were seen taking cases and other items from the congressman’s home, according to MyRGVNews. FBI officials were also present at a downtown building owned by Cuellar that reportedly houses his campaign office as well as other private businesses, according to KGNS News.

One quibble: "Court-authorized law enforcement activity" is bullshit-speak for "executing a search warrant". The Supremes have not so trashed the Fourth Amendment that the FBI can sign its own search warrants.