Last Call

Israel, seeing President Obama has been re-elected, decides if that they can't bomb Israel, they'll just bomb Gaza instead.

An Israeli air strike Wednesday killed the head of Hamas' military wing, the first attack in a broader military operation against terrorist targets in response to an increase in rockets fired on Israel from Gaza.

Palestinian leaders immediately condemned the Israeli attacks as an escalation, with the Hamas military wing saying Israelis had opened "the gates of hell on themselves."

Medical sources said nine people died in the Israeli air strikes, including a young girl, and 35 others were wounded.

An Israel Defense Forces statement said the attack on a vehicle in Gaza carrying Ahmed al-Ja'abari, the Hamas military leader, was part of "an extensive program of direct offensive strikes against Hamas, Islamic Jihad" and other terrorist targets approved by Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, the IDF chief of staff.

So now on top of everything else President Obama is dealing with, we've got Bibi choosing about right now for getting his war on.

This is turning into a hell of a week.

Filled To Busted With Filibusters

In a development that should stun absolutely nobody, The Hill is reporting that despite having at least 54 Dems in caucus (and 55 after Angus King quits playing footsie), the Dems don't have the 51 votes they need for filibuster reform yet.

Lawmakers leading the charge acknowledge they remain short, but express optimism they’ll hit their goal.

“I haven’t counted 51 just yet, but we’re working,” said Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), a leading proponent of the so-called constitutional or “nuclear” option, in which Senate rules could be changed by a majority vote.

“We’re building the momentum right now,” Udall said. “It’s hard to say at this point, but I think it’s looking very good. The last two years have really helped coalesce people’s minds around the idea that we need to change the way we do business.”

The problem for Udall and other supporters of filibuster reform is that many veteran Democratic senators remember when the filibuster was a useful tool in their years in the minority.

Dems don't want to go on record as making the Senate so partisan?  Really?  Have you guys seen the last four years?  Your new Senate collegues were specifically elected because they ran on fixing the filibuster:

All seven Democratic senators-elect — Tammy Baldwin (Wis.), Martin Heinrich (N.M.), Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.), Mazie Hirono (Hawaii), Tim Kaine (Va.), Chris Murphy (Conn.) and Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) — have pledged to support filibuster reform. Sen.-elect Angus King (I-Maine) made filibuster reform a central plank of his campaign.

But Democrats can’t count on a number of their “old bulls,” as was reflected by a vote just two years ago.

Udall, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) proposed a package of reforms for the 112th Congress that would have eliminated filibusters on motions to proceed to new business. Their package also would have required senators wanting to hold up legislation or nominees to actually hold the floor and debate, and shortened to two hours the time that must elapse after a filibuster on a nominee has been cut off.

The package failed in a 44-51 vote, with Democratic Sens. Jim Webb (Va.), Max Baucus (Mont.), Herb Kohl (Wis.), Mark Pryor (Ark.), Jack Reed (R.I.) and Reid voting no. Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), John Kerry (Mass.) and Daniel Inouye (Hawaii) did not vote.

Dems better figure out a way to get this done.  You can bet the next time the GOP gets control of the Senate, they sure as hell will.

The First Fight In The Schism

The Conserva-schism in the GOP continues this week as the Tea Party and Country Club wings of the party battle it out to see who will remain in charge of the House.  The first skirmish on tap is for leadership of the House Conference Committee, the #4 position in the GOP House.

Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (WA) and Tom Price (GA) will go head-to-head Wednesday afternoon as the members hold a closed-door vote to elect the next House Republican Conference Chairman, the party’s No. 4 leadership role.

Speaker John Boehner is officially neutral but privately supporting McMorris Rodgers. Paul Ryan, the returning chairman of the Budget Committee whose profile rose enormously during his vice presidential run, is asking colleagues to back Price.

McMorris Rodgers is the highest ranked woman in the House Republican conference, and a loyal leadership ally who has earned their trust as the conference’s vice-chair. A surrogate for Mitt Romney’s presidential run, she isn’t known as a hard-line ideologue but has cultivated a conservative voting record in recent years.

Price, meanwhile, is the favorite of the GOP’s conservative wing. A former chairman of the deeply conservative Republican Study Committee, he has been backed by outgoing conference chairman Rep. Jeb Hensarling (TX), who is expected to chair the Banking Committee next year.

Those who support McMorris Rodgers say she’s in good shape to win.

Orange Julius on one side, Zombie-Eyed Granny Starver on the other.  I'm hoping both sides lose, but let's keep in mind this position will be the person in charge of hashing out legislation with the Senate, and a Price win here would signal that the Tea Party is running things, Boehner's job is in serious trouble, and that there's zero chance of compromise with Senate Dems.

I'm hoping Price does get the nod.  Giving away the game this early would make things a lot easier on the Democrats in the long run.  We'll see who wins.

[UPDATE]  And the GOP establishment wins as McMorris Rodgers gets the nod.  Sorry, Tea Party.  You lose again.

StupidiNews!

• The exhumation of the body of former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat continues as new evidence has prompted an investigation into the cause of his 2004 death.
• A Utah school district faces an ACLU lawsuit after school officials removed a book about lesbian mothers from school libraries.
• Libyan officials say that after three months, they have yet to arrest anyone in the deadly Benghazi consulate attack that killed four Americans.
• Wednesday brought another coordinated national general strike in Spain to protest austerity measures and PM Mariano Rajoy.
• Pizza chain Papa John's faces steep FCC fines and a possible class-action lawsuit for texting hundreds of thousands of mobile customers without their consent.

Last Call

As I've said before, the chief goal of Republicans now is to do everything they can to punish the Minority Majority in an effort to peel off voters.  Odious human carbuncle Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association wants a national 'clamp down' on Latino voters, who overwhelmingly voted for President Obama and the Democrats last week.

“Hispanics are not Democrats, don’t vote Democrat because of immigration,” the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer said in video posted by Right Wing Watch on Tuesday. “It has to do with the fact that they are socialists by nature. They come from Mexico, which is a socialist country. They want big government intervention, they want big government goodies.”

“Now they want open borders — make no mistake — because they’ve got family and friends that they want to come up and be able to benefit from the plunder of the wealth of the United States, just as they have been able to do.”

He continued: “Republicans can pander all they want to Hispanics, to immigrants and it will not work. There is no way on Earth you care going to get them to leave the Democratic Party. It’s one reason we got to clamp down on immigration.”

Odds of a comprehensive immigration deal?  Zero. Stop kidding yourself, America.  Racist white supremacist assholes like Fischer will continue to beat the Republican Party up until they're the only ones left.

The only way to move forward at this point?  Democrats must take back control of the House.

Election Spoiler Alerts

Matt Welch over at Reason Magazine is usually a complete jackass whom I vociferously disagree with, but today he serves a useful purpose for once and admits that there were several Congressional races in 2012 where the Libertarian candidate cost the Republican candidate the election and handed over the seat to the Democrats.

On Friday, Garrett Quinn pointed out two congressional races in which a Libertarian Party candidate received considerably more votes than the margin separating a winning Democrat from a losing Republican: Massachusetts' 6th District (49.3%-48.1%-2.6% for Rep. John Tierney over Richard Tisei and Daniel Fishman), and Utah's 4th District (48.3%-47.3%-4.5% for Rep. Jim Matheson over Mia Love and Jim Vein).

Last Wednesday, Brian Doherty also flagged Montana's race for U.S. Senate, where incumbent Sen. John Tester defeated the Ron Paul-endorsed Denny Rehberg 48.7% to 44.8%, while LP nominee Dan Cox received 6.5% of the vote. All three losing Republicans had significantly more libertarian credibility than maybe 90% of elected GOPers on the national level.

So are there any other "spoiler" accusations out there? At least four, probably more:

Two of the races he points out are two of the three black Tea Party Republicans defeated in House races I pointed out yesterday:  Mia Love in Utah and Vernon Parker in Arizona. In Utah, Jim Wein got 4.5% of the vote allowing Jim Matheson to keep his seat, and in Arizona, Krysten Sinema won in part because Libertarian Powell Gammill got more than 6% of the vote.

Considering about the only difference between the Libertarian candidates and the tea party ones were the Libertarian view of "live and let live" on social issues and pot legalization, it's notable that we're looking at a situation where social issues burned Republicans badly.

It's also notable that Libertarians put up significant numbers against black Republicans in two states not known for having a high African-American population.  If Love and Parker were white, would they still have lost?

That's a question worth asking among Republicans.

State Of Play

The speculation for who the President will nominate for running the State Department after Hillary Clinton's departure and the Pentagon after Leon Panetta leaves has begun in earnest.  WaPo:

President Obama is considering asking Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) to serve as his next defense secretary, part of an extensive rearrangement of his national security team that will include a permanent replacement for former CIA director David H. Petraeus.

Although Kerry is thought to covet the job of secretary of state, senior administration officials familiar with the transition planning said that nomination will almost certainly go to Susan E. Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

That of course means Scott Brown will get another crack at the Senate, this time to fill Kerry's seat.  Fun.  Republicans are already talking about sinking both nominations, too.

Rice, one of an inner circle of aides who have been with Obama since his first presidential campaign in 2007, is under particular fire over the Benghazi incident, in which U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed.

Some Republican lawmakers have suggested that she was part of what they suspect was an initial election-related attempt to portray the attack as a peaceful demonstration that turned violent, rather than what the administration now acknowledges was an organized terrorist assault.

Rice’s description, days after the attack, of a protest gone wrong indicated that she either intentionally misled the country or was ­incompetent, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said Sunday. Rice, he said, “would have an in­cred­ibly difficult time” winning Senate confirmation as secretary of state.

Kerry too would face a tough road to the Pentagon.

The idea of Kerry heading up DoD was also questioned by Republicans, who warned the selection of the Vietnam veteran-turned-critic wouldn't be simple either.

"He'll run into a buzz saw of Vietnam vets" if Obama taps Kerry for the pentagon slot, a GOP aide said.

A Senate GOP foreign policy aide predicted that ultimately both could be confirmed, but not without a protracted and ugly confirmation fight for the White House — a difficult way to start off a second term.

Let's be honest here, Republicans are going to make a protracted, bruising fight over anyone the President nominates.  So when I hear nonsense like this:

There has even been speculation in foreign-policy circles that the messy departure of Mr. Petraeus might prod Mr. Obama to consider nominating a Republican, like former Senator Chuck Hagel; a hawkish independent, like Senator Joseph I. Lieberman; or even Jon M. Huntsman Jr., who was Mr. Obama’s envoy to Beijing before running for the Republican presidential nomination. Mr. Huntsman dismissed the rumors of his candidacy as “idle hallway gossip.” 

It makes me want to punch people in the face.  If President Barack Obama nominated Joe F'ckin Lieberman for any cabinet position, I'd sign up for GOP black outreach programs immediately and I'm pretty sure all of you would disown me as a result.  I would hope the President would stand up for himself more then that and I dismiss this beltway idiocy out of hand.

Stick with Rice and Kerry and trust in the party, Mr. President.

StupidiNews!

• The probe into former CIA Director David Petraeus has now extended to current Middle East theater commander Gen. John Allen, who has also sent inappropriate emails to a woman linked to the Petraeus scandal.
• A second Massachusetts compounding pharmacy is now said to be involved in an outbreak of deadly fungal meningitis in medicine.
• As the battle over the Syrian border town of Ras al Ayn enters its 5th day, thousands of Syrian refugees continue to flee into Turkey.
• European finance ministers have given Greece until 2016 to get their deficits in line with the rest of the EU.
• McAfee Security founder John McAfee is now wanted for murder in Belize, where he left the US for 20 years ago to avoid a lawsuit.

Last Call

There are still a few House races left being decided at this hour, but one of them was called this afternoon:  in the newly created Arizona's 9th, Democrat Kyrsten Sinema knocked off Republican Vernon Parker to become the country's first openly bisexual member of Congress.

Former Democratic state Sen. Kyrsten Sinema has been elected to represent a new Phoenix-area congressional district, emerging victorious after a bitterly fought race that featured millions of dollars in attack ads.

Sinema becomes the first openly bisexual member of Congress. Her victory came in a year when three states approved gay marriage, and at least five openly gay Democrats were elected to House seats. A Wisconsin congresswoman also became the first openly gay person elected to the Senate.

Sinema had a narrow lead on election night that made the race too close to call. But she slowly improved that advantage as more ballots were tallied in recent days, and now has a nearly 6,000-vote edge that is too much for Republican Vernon Parker to overcome.

Sinema, 36, said Monday she was “honored and ready to start working for the people of Arizona.”

It also means that out of three high-profile House races featuring black Tea Party Republicans, (Allen West, Mia Love, and Vernon Parker) all three of them lost. They were close races, but they lost nonetheless.  There's a lesson there for Republicans, and especially for black Tea Party Republicans, but I don't think they'll learn it unless it's applied with a sledgehammer.

From outer space.

Buckeye Blanked

How badly did Mitt Romney lose in East Cleveland, Ohio?  Entire precincts gave him zero votes.

The vote, incredibly, was unanimous in Obama's favor in nine Cleveland precincts.

The largest of those voted 542-0 in favor of Obama. In seven other Cleveland precincts and one in East Cleveland, Romney didn't pick up a single vote, though votes for third-party candidates stopped the president short of unanimous victories.

On Cleveland's West Side, Obama won 76 percent. And he carried 69 percent countywide.

In the suburbs, Obama won 62 percent of the vote. This was helped, in part, by winning 98 percent in both Warrensville Heights and East Cleveland, but those towns and Cleveland alone did not provide the countywide margin.

Cities where Obama won every precinct stretched from Lakewood and Brook Park to Cleveland Heights and Orange.

Meanwhile, the only citywide precinct sweeps for Romney were in Brecksville, Highland Heights and Independence, though Romney also did so in a handful of villages on the eastern side of the county. 

Entire.  Precincts, folks.  Talk about a shutout, damn.

The Hell Is Going On With This Petraeus Thing?

NY Times reporting this morning that yeah, Justice Department and the FBI knew about the Petraeus affair back in the summer, which means all of Washington knew.  So why the resignation now?

High-level officials at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department were notified in the late summer that F.B.I. agents had uncovered what appeared to be an extramarital affair involving the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, David H. Petraeus, government officials said Sunday.

But law enforcement officials did not notify anyone outside the F.B.I. or the Justice Department until last week because the investigation was incomplete and initial concerns about possible security breaches, which would demand more immediate action, did not appear to be justified, the officials said. 

The new accounts of the events that led to Mr. Petraeus’s sudden resignation on Friday shed light on the competing pressures facing F.B.I. agents who recognized the high stakes of any investigation involving the C.I.A. director but who were wary of exposing a private affair with no criminal or security implications. For the first time Sunday, the woman whose report of harassing e-mails led to the exposure of the affair was identified as Jill Kelley, 37, of Tampa, Fla. 

So a whistleblower, an FBI/CIA turf war, and agents blabbing to everyone in DC, yet this stayed out of the papers until after the election.  For months.  As I said this morning, Eric Cantor knew in October and certainly could have fried up some Obama hate chips to serve for the last week of the campaign, but didn't.

Consider how much effort the GOP has put into trying to create a scandal out of Benghazi to try to embarrass President Obama when an actual scandal was sitting on Cantor's desk.  It has all the good stuff:  security clearances, potential blackmail, sex, a love triangle among the general, the biographer, and the whistleblower...c'mon, FOX News would have run with this for weeks.

So instead we get nothing.  There's a hell of a story here and I'd like to find out more.  Maybe Bon was right in Sunday's podcast when she said that clueless Republicans who were incompetent enough to lose this election are still just blindingly stupid and fumbled this too (as they liked Petraeus), certainly Occam's Razor bears that out, I mean we are dealing with absolute morons who think dinosaurs and man roamed the earth together like a Flintstones cartoon just a few thousands years ago, and that women secrete anti-rape shutdown hormones to prevent conception under duress.

We'll see.  New tags (since I don't have one) for DC scandals:  Someone Get Me Olivia Pope On The Line and in honor of our friends at the CIA and FBI, Intelligence Stupidity.

StupidiNews!

• GOP House majority leader Eric Cantor was informed of former CIA Director David Petraeus's affair in October through the whistleblower who exposed the security breach.
• At least a dozen are dead after an earthquake struck central Myanmar near the city of Mandalay early Monday.
• Kansas GOP Gov. Sam Brownback continues to reject implementing Obamacare's health insurance exchanges, telling the federal government Kansas will not participate.
• With Greek lawmakers approving another round of austerity cuts in a midnight session, EU leaders now must meet in order to decide on the next round of Greek bailout cash.
• Michael Arndt, the man behind the screenplays for Toy Story 3 and Little Miss Sunshine, has been tapped for the script for the next Star Wars film.

Last Call

Just wanted to wish all our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines out there who served a happy Veteran's Day as we remember those who gave to their country, and those who gave all.

Godspeed.

Podcast Versus The Stupid!

Episode 20 is up, Aftermath Of The Math, in which Bon and I cover the Republican freakout over the lost election, which pollsters were correct and which lost what little credibility they had left, as well as the surprise resignation of CIA Director David Petraeus over an affair with his biographer, SCOTUS versus Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, and Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.'s plea bargain deal.

Listen to internet radio with Zandar Versus The Stupid on Blog Talk Radio

As usual, you can download the episode here and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes!

Republican Pollsters Know Why They Lost

Alex Burns reviews the political epitaph for GOP pollsters filled with apparent dopes who "didn't see it coming", who "didn't think the electorate would vote" for Obama or at all, and "can't figure out what happened."

Let me clear this up.  Republican pollsters knew exactly why they lost.

The crux of the party’s challenge in 2012, said Republican pollster David Winston, was figuring out whether the electorate would look more like the 2004 voting population, when Republicans and Democrats turned out in equal numbers, or the 2008 electorate, which was more Democratic than Republican by 7 points.

Winston questioned how rigorously some campaigns tested their assumptions about who would show up.

“The results fell within the 2004 result and the 2008 result, obviously closer to 2008,” said Winston, who advises the House GOP leaders — who fared well on Tuesday. “That was clearly how everybody had been describing what the potential range was. The question is, as people were assessing their individual campaigns, whether it be the presidential or down ballot for that, was how were they working through the potential scenarios as far as what could happen.”

One top GOP pollster expressed dismay at the ultimate composition of the electorate: “I had no expectation that Democratic advantage on party ID would be the same as it was in 2008. I thought there would be more Democrats than Republicans, but I didn’t think it would be equal to 2008."

Bull.  They knew it was over after the Democratic National Convention.  But unless the race was close, no more polling.  Hence the insanity that Romney had tied the race or even taken the lead after the first debate.  We had to have the horse race mentality so the pollsters would keep getting paid to poll.

This race was never close.  Keep that in mind that they told you it was anyway.