Last Call For A Final Walsh-Out

Montana Dem Sen. John Walsh, dogged by a plagiarism scandal that broke last month, languishing with low poll numbers, and under heavy pressure from the state's newspapers to forego his campaigning, has decided to drop out of the November election.

"I am ending my campaign so that I can focus on fulfilling the responsibility entrusted to me as your U.S. senator," Walsh said in a statement, according to The Billings Gazette. "You deserve someone who will always fight for Montana, and I will." 

Walsh's decision follows a report in The New York Times in July which said that Walsh plagiarized significant parts of his master's thesis. 

Since then Walsh had reportedly been trying to decide whether to continue running in the race or not. Even before the plagiarism story broke Walsh had an uphill battle to victory and faced a formidable challenge in Rep. Steve Daines, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate.

"Uphill battle" is being friendly.  Walsh was down by double digits before the scandal broke.  Now that his career is over, Montana Democrats have only a few days to find a replacement, and by replacement I mean "Getting Brian Schweitzer to run for Senate."

Of course, Schweitzer has his own problems, which pretty much ended his dark horse 2016 presidential aspirations before they could aspirate.

Is there anything else that Montana Dems can do?  There's rules for this all, apparently.

The first stop is at the Secretary of State's office. Linda McCulloch, who holds that position, will first authorize the state Democratic Party to replace Walsh. 

At that point, the party's Rule 15 kicks in. That rule articulates the replacement process: a special nominating convention held by the party at which a new nominee is selected. The party would send out written notices of the time and date of the special convention -- or, if time is running short, simply call the party delegates who are allowed to vote for a replacement candidate. 

Those delegates represent a broad swath of party leadership from across the state: voting members of the executive committee, the chair and vice chair of the central committees for each of Montana's 56 counties, the state committeeman and committeewoman from each county, presidents of charter organizations, and so on. In total, the party estimates, it's about 175 people -- which is actually about 0.2 percent of all of the voters in the Democratic primary election. That number is an estimate. Many counties might not have assigned committeewomen, for example, and not every county has a central committee. 

The convention will likely be held in Helena, with the goal of making it "as open as possible," according to party spokesman Bryan Watt. The first priority will be voting delegates, of course, but Watt would also like to accommodate press and "as many people as possible," should such a convention become necessary. 

Once the convention begins, the process gets a bit murkier. (Again: Uncharted territory.) Delegates will be able to nominate candidates from the floor, and those candidates will have a chance to speak. Then others could speak for or against the nominees. Finally, voting will begin. If none of the candidates got more than 50 percent of the vote in the first round, the lowest vote-getter drops from the ballot, and voting continues until there's a nominee.

So is anyone left to run other than the already damaged Schweitzer?

The names that have been floating around: 

John Bohlinger. Bohlinger was lieutenant governor of the state under Gov. Brian Schweitzer -- and was a Republican at the time. When Baucus left his seat, Bohlinger ran in the primary to replace him, losing to Walsh in June by over 40 percentage points. 

Nancy Keenan. Keenan is the former superintendent of public instruction in the state and former president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, an abortion access advocacy group. She spoke at both the 2008 and 2012 Democratic presidential conventions. 

David Wanzenried. Wanzenreid currently sits in the Montana State Senate, representing the area around Missoula.

And I'm pretty sure all three of those folks are going to have an even tougher time.  So yeah, unless a minor miracle happens, kiss this seat goodbye for the Dems due to several self-inflicted wounds.

GOP Minority Outreach, Operation Mo-Mentum Con't

Mississippi GOP Rep. Mo Brooks is the new hero of the bigoted right for his comments earlier this week on the "War on Whites" that the Democrats are supposedly waging.  And every time Brooks opens his mouth, the Republican party proves it's the party of casual racism, this time calling the GOP's outreach efforts to court Latino voters "race-bating".

The Huffington Post reported that the comments came in response to a passage from the Republican National Committee's Growth and Opportunity Book 2013, that was read aloud by the National Journal's Ron Fournier, who was also a guest on the show.

"If Hispanic Americans hear that the GOP doesn't want them in the United States, they won't pay attention to our next sentence. It doesn't matter what we say about education, jobs or the economy; if Hispanics think that we do not want them here, they will close their ears to our policies," Fournier quoted from the report, while appearing on "The Dale Jackson Show" on WAPI.

Brooks responded by saying "Americans shouldn't be divided by race" and that targeting Hispanic voters would be "race-baiting."

"That argument, is playing hand in glove with the Democratic race-baiting strategy, and it has to come to a stop," he said. "I'm one of those who thinks that it doesn't make any difference if you're Hispanic, or you're white, or you're Asian, or you're black, people throughout America want to do what's in the best interest of America."

Nothing like an old white guy telling black, Latino, and Asian people that race doesn't matter, and if you think it does, You're The Real Racist(tm). Why can't you people be like us awesome white people and not worry about your race at all because it's meaningless or something?

This argument is as old as race in America.  "Why is there a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and not one for all Americans?  That's racist!"  It's a favorite tactic of the right and has been for decades.  The answer of course is "I look forward to the day when the NAACP is no longer needed", meanwhile, Republicans like Brooks are happily helping to dismantle the Voting Rights Act, civil rights, and everything in between.

Just because white America is "tired" of civil rights and wants people to "get over race already" doesn't mean the need for civil rights is obviated, kids.  Today's bigots in the GOP are proof of that.

PS, keep doing those interviews, Mo.  I really hope you get to the point where you're eventually talking about the "need for more organizations to help white people".  You know, like the KKK.

America First, Unless That's What Obama Would Want

Over at Vox's evil twin with the goatee that is The Federalist, David Harsanyi has suddenly decided that nothing is less patriotic and American than being an American company paying taxes to the American government, and that liberals and President Obama are probably fascists for suggesting that they do so.

Jonathan Alter at the Daily Beast has an idea that will infuse the president’s “economic patriotism” rhetoric with some bite: Compel companies to take “loyalty oaths” to prove their patriotism.

You may find this suggestion a little creepy, maybe even a little fascistic; but Alter says that “it’s time for red-blooded Americans to take matters into our own hands.”

And by taking the matter into “our” hands, Alter means that President Obama would unilaterally bar any company that practices “inversion” – corporate merging with foreign firms to save on U.S. tax bills – from doing business with the federal government. Companies that follow the administration requirements will earn a government seal of approval. If you act “un-American” and fail to recognize your “real interests” and those of the United States – which are, naturally, indistinguishable from the president’s agenda – you will be shunned and your business punished.

You will be powerless to stop it.

You know, except for the part where if you don't like what the executive branch is doing, you get a chance every four years to elect a new one.

It's funny, for six years now people have been slagging President Obama for not putting America's interests first.  When he does, by making sure companies in the US pay taxes to the US government to help fund our roads and bridges and power grids and water mains, infrastructure that these companies use to provide and transport goods and services, it's "fascistic".

Of course, The Federalist thinks any Democrat is a fascist, so that's par for the course.  Harsanyi's conclusion:

As far as patriotism, it’s typically defined as a devotion to one’s country and a concern for its welfare. While people are free to argue that Tea Party types misunderstand or misappropriate the Constitution, at the very least they’ve hitched themselves to a patriotism that is tangentially related to some form of recognizable American idealism. If Alter is right, and our “deepest sense of who we are” really entails whining about tax receipts of multinational companies, then we’re probably in bigger trouble than I think.

"We're libertarians, but we think the Tea Party is pretty okay."  What a shocker, right?  It's funny how the gang at The Federalist regularly lands in the Tea Party GOP camp time and time again, right?

StupidiNews!

• Two former leaders in Cambodia's Khmer Rouge regime of the the late 70's were found guilty of crimes against humanity in a special Cambodian court Thursday.
• The Mississippi GOP has officially denied Senate primary candidate Chris McDaniel's challenge of the election he lost last month, saying the issue must be decided by the courts.
• Russia is responding to the latest round of EU and US sanctions with a one-year ban on imports of food ranging from American dairy to Norwegian fish.
• As the 72-hour truce between Israel and Hamas holds into its third day, indirect talks between the two sides in Cairo continue with heavy international pressure to reach an extended peace deal.
• Yellowstone National Park rangers are looking for a drone that a tourist crashed into the park's Grand Prismatic Spring over the weekend.

Last Call For Bravely Rand Away

Sen. Rand Paul had a bit of a problem yesterday when a pair of immigration activists found him eating lunch in Iowa along with GOP Rep Steve King Of The Melonheads.  Steve King stuck around to argue (badly) with Erika Andiola and Cesar Vargas, but about five seconds after meeting the pair, Rand Paul apparently got up and fled in abject terror.

Today, Rand Paul made his excuses as to why he fled the scene at approximately MACH 9.

"About two minutes before that, the video doesn't show that another reporter came up and said 'will you do an interview,'" Paul explained on Fox News' "On The Record." "And I said, 'I need to take a couple more bites and we'll do an interview.' And then I was told we had to leave and I had to do the interview. So actually, I stand about ten feet from those people, who were doing sort of a kamikaze interview, and I stood ten feet from them and did another interview." 

The aide who whisked Paul away from the immigration activists, Sergio Gor, previously told the National Journal that Paul "had a media avail after the event and that's where we had to be." 

The Kentucky Republican said he doesn't shy away from debate on immigration. 

"I've always been open to discussing immigration. I'm very open to discussing that I think there should be some kind of immigration reform," Paul told host Greta Van Susteren. "But I don't think you can do it without first securing the border, and that's the problem with the President doing this unlawfully."

Uh-huh.  "I wasn't running away from this interview.  I was running towards another interview, because I'm really important and I'm here in Iowa campaigning for 2016 and besides, I trust Steve King's judgment on immigration."

The old political adage "If you're explaining, you're losing" is apropos here.  Trust me, Rand Paul is losing.

Dear America

"I don't understand why you people are so upset about Rep. Mo Brooks's statement about the 'War on Whites'.  Sure it was a poor choice of words but he was right and besides, it's nowhere near as awful as what racist, racist liberals do to black people every day with affirmative action or what racist, racist Democrats did to minorities with the Great Society, or why racist, racist black people won't vote for Ben Carson or Herman Cain."

--W. James Antle, Daily Caller

Bonus Verbatim Stupid:

Even the real unfairness and injustice of some race-conscious affirmative action programs is far less brutal and systematic than Jim Crow.

Ahh, but we black people are too stupid to see the truth about how systematically being disenfranchised was a whole lot better than being admitted to college, so we probably deserve it.  If only we were smart enough to rise up against the liberals treating us as human beings and would side with the conservatives who see us as an unfortunate social plague of subhuman vermin, everything would be awesome.

The Marriage Equality Fight Comes To Cincy

Cincinnati is ground zero this week in the battle for same-sex marriage as a three-judge panel from the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals will hear challenges to state constitution same-sex marriage bans in Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee and Michigan.

A same-sex marriage showdown happens in Cincinnati on Wednesday as three federal appeals judges, including two Ohioans, hear marriage cases from Ohio and three neighboring states.

It will be the single-largest legal event in the same-sex marriage debate since June 26, 2013, when the U.S. Supreme Court declared part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act to be unconstitutional. Since then, every major federal and state court ruling nationwide has gone in favor of gay-marriage proponents.

The Cincinnati hearings are expected to draw such large crowds of journalists and spectators to the Potter Stewart U.S. Courthouse that the clerk of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has set up two overflow courtrooms equipped with piped-in audio of the proceedings.

The Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law determined that about 18,300 children of same-sex couples, and nearly 52,400 same-sex couples, could be affected by the outcome of the five cases. The group said Ohio has about 19,684 same-sex couples — 54 percent of whom are female — and more than 3,760 same-sex-couple households raising nearly 6,800 children.

If there is a Circuit Court where the decision will go in favor of "traditional values" (you know, like bigotry), it's the conservative 6th.  Two judges on the three-judge panel were appointed by good ol' Dubya, one by Bill Clinton.  I don't expect this to go well for the forces of justice here.

It's a moot point in the long run, however.  Utah has already appealed the 10th Circuit's decision in favor of same-sex marriage to the Supreme Court this week.  A group appealing the 4th Circuit's decision in favor of marriage equality in Virginia last week will file quickly as well.

Should the 6th Circuit embarrass itself as much as I expect it to, a Supreme Court hearing would then be inevitable with differing Circuit Court opinions.

We'll see what happens.

StupidiNews!

• US Army Maj. Gen. Harold Greene was killed in Afghanistan by a man dressed in an Afghan army uniform, the highest ranking officer killed in Afghanistan so far.
• Hurricane Iselle is expected to hit Hawaii as a tropical storm later this week, but Hurricane Julio is following close behind.
• Kansas GOP Sen. Pat Roberts has successfully fought off a primary challenge from Tea Partier Milton Wolf, 48-41%, in Tuesday primary action.
• FOX Chairman Rupert Murdoch has dropped his bid to take over Time Warner as stock prices for the news company had fallen sharply since the deal was announced.
• Russian hackers have collected some 1.2 billion passwords across hundreds of sites ranging from local web merchants to Fortune 500 companies.

Last Call For Kynect The Dots Again

Gallup's new numbers on the uninsured show that Kentucky cut its percentage of uninsured from 20.4% to 11.9, an 8.5% drop and second only to Arkansas, which saw a 10.1% drop to 12.4%.

Arkansas and Kentucky lead all other states in the sharpest reductions in their uninsured rate among adult residents since the healthcare law's requirement to have insurance took effect at the beginning of the year. Delaware, Washington, and Colorado round out the top five. All 10 states that report the largest declines in uninsured rates expanded Medicaid and established a state-based marketplace exchange or state-federal partnership.

Imagine that.  In states where Obamacare was allowed to work, it's working.  In states controlled by Republicans, who want people to be uninsured because they hate Obama, it's not working as well.

As Gallup previously reported, the states that chose to expand Medicaid and set up their own health exchanges had a lower uninsured rate to begin with: 16.1% compared with 18.7% for the remaining states -- a difference of 2.6 percentage points. The already notable gap between the two groups of states widened through the first quarter to 4.3 points, as states that have implemented these core mechanisms of the Affordable Care Act reduced their uninsured rates three times more than states that did not implement these core mechanisms.

"But here in Kentucky, we hate that there Obama fella.  Even though he got us affordable health coverage for the first time in years."

At some point people will recognize what the Affordable Care Act did for them.  By then President Obama will be long out of office, I fear.

I Believe I May Have Located The Source Of Your Problem, America

A new Washington Post/ABC News poll shows that 51% of Americans disapprove of the job their current Representative in the House is doing, with just 41% approving.  That's the lowest approval rating Americans have given their own member of Congress in decades.

Even if it's a "throw the bums out and clean house" election, at absolute minimum 85% of those members will be re-elected in November anyway, and more than likely that number will top 90%.  97% + of House seats will remain in the same party that they are represented by now.

In the immortal words of Sean Connery in The Untouchables, "Here endeth the lesson."

GOP Minority Outreach, Part Infinity

Gotta hand it to Alabama GOP Rep. Mo Brooks, who finally said out loud what pretty much all of the FOX crowd has been thinking for the last six years:  President Obama and the Democrats hate white people or something.

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) doesn't think that the hardline stance Republicans have taken on immigration could hurt the party’s standing with Hispanic voters. Instead, he thinks Democrats are hurting their prospects with white voters. 

“This is a part of the war on whites that’s being launched by the Democratic Party. And the way in which they’re launching this war is by claiming that whites hate everybody else,” he said during an interview Monday with conservative radio host Laura Ingraham. "It's part of the strategy that Barack Obama implemented in 2008, continued in 2012, where he divides us all on race, on sex, greed, envy, class warfare, all those kinds of things. Well that’s not true.”

Well now, I guess it's okay to say this now, huh?  I mean, you want to talk about ridiculous levels of projection, there you are, but that's what millions of Republican voters actually believe.  Of course Obama and the Democrats are leading a "war on whites".  The Southern Strategy has never been more alive. Nothing has changed for these lowlifes since the 60's.

The 1860's.

"It doesn't make any difference if you're a white American, a black American, a Hispanic American, an Asian American or if you're a woman or a man. Every single demographic group is hurt by falling wages and lost jobs,” he said. 

“Democrats, they have to demagogue on this and try and turn it into a racial issue, which is an emotional issue, rather than a thoughtful issue," he added. "If it becomes a thoughtful issue, then we win and we win big. And they lose and they lose big. ”

Race only matters to those people, you know.  But you're not one of them.  You're thoughtful and smart and not emotional and weak.  And immigrants, well, they're gonna TAKE YER JOBS.

Brooks then later "clarified" his views, which apparently meant doubling down on them.

"They're attacking, by the Democrats' opening soliciting votes of people based on skin color, they in turn are attacking whites based on skin color and that's wrong. Nobody should be attacked based on skin color," he continued.

Brooks then accused Democrats of injecting race into every issue they can, not just immigration issues.

"The Democrats do it on a regular basis and you can see it in the campaign appeals that they make based on skin color. I don't know of a single Republican who has made an appeal for votes based on skin color. I don't know of one," he said. "The Democrats routinely make appeals based on race and they get away with it. It's repugnant to ever make an appeal based on race."

"I'm not a racist appealing to people based on skin color", says the racist appealing to people based on skin color.

Here's my real question:  I know Congress is on its five-week vacation from actually having to do any work, but where are the "moderate Republicans" who oppose this guy's idiocy?  Where are his fellow Alabama Republicans to say "no, this is wrong"?  Where are those folks who understand how important immigration and outreach are to the future of the GOP?

Whereever they are, they had nothing to say yesterday or today.  It's like there are no moderate Republicans left.  That's because they don't exist, because it's clear that the Southern Strategy is now 100% the GOP Strategy.  White resentment is literally all they have left.

StupidiNews!

• A second Ebola patient is heading to Atlanta's Emory University Hospital to receive an experimental treatment to stave off the deadly disease.
• The UK's first Muslim minister has quit PM David Cameron's Cabinet in protest over the government's policy towards Palestinians in Gaza.
• A tentative 72-hour cease fire in Gaza is holding as Israel continues to remove troops from the area, the IDF calling the destruction of tunnels used by Hamas "mission accomplished".
• News giant Gannett Corp will complete its buyout of Cars.com as the company spins off its newspaper business into a second company.
• The military junta that currently runs Thailand feels that PC game and "dictator simulator" Tropico 5 hits too close to home and is banning sales of the game in the country.

Last Call For Benghazi, For Good

So lost in all the chatter of House Republicans now being the party of maximum deportations is the fact the House Intelligence Committee's report on Benghazi has been declassified, and the main finding after 23 exhaustive months of Republican screaming is the fact that Republicans found zero wrongdoing by the Obama administration in the deaths of four Americans.

The House Intelligence Committee, led by Republicans, has concluded that there was no deliberate wrongdoing by the Obama administration in the 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, said Rep. Mike Thompson of St. Helena, the second-ranking Democrat on the committee. […] 

Thompson said the report “confirms that no one was deliberately misled, no military assets were withheld and no stand-down order (to U.S. forces) was given.”

So Republicans themselves were not able to find anything wrong.  After nearly two years of ridiculous accusations, endless moronic preening by Darrell Issa, and fake outrage driven by the FOX noise machine, the game is now over.

Of course until the next manufactured outrage arises, and we play the game all over again.

GOP Playing The Dozens

I had somehow manged to miss this last week: National Republican Senate Committee head Jerry Moran is now talking about Republicans gaining 12-14 seats in November, because he's completely high on his own supply at this point.

National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Jerry Moran said Tuesday the GOP’s pickup opportunities have expanded to around a dozen states — twice as many as needed to take control of the Senate. 

“I think we have a good map in the sense that we have good candidates and good states,” Moran told CQ Roll Call’s Niels Lesniewski. “The map has expanded over time. In my view, [it] started out with six or seven — now 10 or 12.” 

Republicans have clear advantages in South Dakota, West Virginia and Montana. About three months before the elections, the party is also in a better position in Iowa and Colorado than it was at the beginning of the year, and the GOP is giving Democratic incumbents strong challenges in states including Arkansas, Louisiana, North Carolina and Alaska. 

Beyond that, Republicans are hopeful in Michigan, New Hampshire, Minnesota and a couple others, though Democrats remain favored in each of those. 

“Again, all — all circumstances are positive for having good candidates in states that they can win,” Moran said.

Moran later told the Daily Caller that number could be as high as 14.

Look, I expect Moran to say stuff like this, for the same reason DCCC char Steve Israel says he thinks the Dems can take back the House.  But 14 seats?  Al Franken and Jeanne Shaheen losing, along with Jeff Merkeley in blue, blue Oregon?  He's bonkers.

Yes, it's going to be a rough fight in NC, Louisiana, and Alaska (and SD, WV and Montana are pretty much lost causes.)  But the Dems can win those races because they've won them before.  Most people are talking 5 or 6 seats, not fourteen.

At any rate, the trick on our part is to get out and vote in November, and get other people to vote too. Registration deadlines are coming up in a number of states in the next few weeks.  It's time to make sure our game faces are on.

A Complete And Total Walsh-Out

The editorial board of Montana's Billings Gazette paper is pulling no punches, calling on Sen. John Walsh to surrender the race, stop campaigning, and to finish out his appointed term to follow up Max Baucus after his retirement and to leave without a fuss.

Gov. Steve Bullock, who chose Walsh as his lieutenant governor running mate in 2012, endorsed his Senate bid and appointed him to the U.S. Senate earlier this year, bears significant responsibility for sending Montanans a weak Senate candidate.

Other Montana Democrats, including Bullock, should put pressure on Walsh to do the right thing. They need to distance the party from this, as well as demonstrate they can make a stand beyond politics. Instead of closing ranks around Walsh, Democrats should call on him to do the right thing.

Having repeatedly said that he wants to do the honorable thing, Walsh should stop campaigning and do his utmost to serve Montanans well in the remainder of his brief Senate appointment. That is the honorable course.

We call on Walsh to devote all his time to serving as U.S. senator and bag the campaigning. Montana needs full representation as the Senate reauthorizes the surface transportation bill, finalizes the budget, deals with public land issues, veterans services and numerous other issues important to our state.

Haunted by a serious lapse in academic honesty, Walsh is finished as a U.S. Senate candidate. But he should work even more diligently to finish the Senate job he already accepted.

That's a pretty rough assessment and an even rougher solution.   The Gazette freely admits that if there was more time between now and November Walsh should resign, but that would leave Montana with only one senator, and the board complains very loudly that it would just put the now-suspect Gov. Steve Bullock in the same situation he was in before of having to appoint someone.

Still, calling on Walsh to abandon his campaign and for the rest of the state's Democrats to turn their backs on him is a major and telling blow.  The cold reality is that there's little the Dems can do to keep this seat in November at this point.