In fairness, the DOJ or another conservative candidate aren't the only things that could oust Arpaio. He's eighty years old, and all the outside money in the world can't buy off the Grim Reaper forever. Not yet, anyway.

That said that's kind of beside the point. Yeah this is seriously fucked up and Joe is a bad bad man and shouldn't be spending another day in power, let alone however many years he's got left on the egg timer. His re-election also says some pretty bad things about the moral fibre of the people who re-elected him, at that.

Ohio GOP Senate Candidate Josh Mandel's Family Takes Out Newspaper Ad Denouncing His Anti-Gay Positions

Just over two weeks ago I posted a video of Ohio GOP senate candidate Josh Mandel espousing his anti-gay positions in debate, saying that he opposed 'DADT' repeal and is a supporter of marriage between a man and a woman, but promising to represent every resident of Ohio and be "blind" to sexual orientation.

Some members of Mandel's family took a full-page ad out in the Cleveland Jewish News denouncing him:

Open Letter to Josh Mandel,
Republican 
Candidate for U.S. Senator from Ohio


Dear Josh,

Four years ago you came into our family. We still remember the excitement surrounding your wedding, and how happy our family members were as they described it afterwards. So we were deeply saddened when you announced during your October 18th debate with Senator Sherrod Brown that you believe only some people should share this right to marry the person they love, while others should not.



Your cousins, Ellen Ratner and Cholene Espinoza, are among the many wonderful couples whose rights you do not recognize. They were married almost eight years ago in Massachusetts, at a time when it was the only state in the nation to allow same-sex marriage. Their wedding, like yours, was a beautiful and happy occasion for all of us in our family. It hurts us that you would embrace discrimination against them and countless other loving couples in Ohio and around the country.



We are equally distressed by your belief that gay men and women should not be allowed to serve openly in the military. Like you, Cholene spent many years in the armed forces. A graduate of the Air Force Academy and an accomplished pilot, she became the second woman in history to fly the U-2 reconnaissance plane. And yet, you have argued that she, like many gay and lesbian soldiers, should be forced to live a life of secrecy and lies.



Josh, as you know, our roots are deep in the Cleveland area and we have friends and family we love throughout Ohio. This family is sprawling and diverse, but it has always believed strongly in the values of equality and inclusiveness. Your discriminatory stance violates these core values of our family. Nevertheless we hope that over time, as you advance in years and wisdom, you will come to embrace the values of inclusiveness and equality as well.



Your cousins,



Michael Ratner, Bruce Ratner, Karen Ranucci, Pamela Lipkin, Rebecca 
Ratner, Elizabeth Ratner, Patrick Markee, Jacob Ratner, Ana Ratner

Read more: http://www.towleroad.com/2012/11/ohi...#ixzz2BdXa6Rmf



http://www.towleroad.com/2012/11/ohi...y-positio.html

Dead candidates win elections in Florida, Alabama
 

(Reuters) - Florida Democrat Earl K. Wood and Alabama Republican Charles Beasley won their respective elections but they will not take office.

Both men died weeks before the November 6 election yet managed to beat their very much alive opponents by comfortable margins.

http://news.yahoo.com/dead-candidate...202607386.html

I knew that Earl K Wood had passed away and I did my research on the guy replacing him and voted for Earl K Wood. Scott Randolph seemed to be a better candidate than Huckeba.

Zimmeh

Click for Link
 

I've been looking around the webs at the different networks the night of the election. I found this clip of Diane Sawyer. Wow. Giving her the benefit of the doubt, maybe she was just really tired, but who knows. The tweets were so funny. Dang, i had 2 margaritas, was loaded on carbs and a ton of comfort junk food and my words weren't slurring as bad as hers.

I think she was just worn out. I'll take her coverage over the other two boring anchors anyday.

Associated Press Survey Done Before the Election
 

"The poll finds that racial prejudice is not limited to one group of partisans. Although Republicans were more likely than Democrats to express racial prejudice in the questions measuring explicit racism (79 percent among Republicans compared with 32 percent among Democrats), the implicit test found little difference between the two parties. That test showed a majority of both Democrats and Republicans held anti-black feelings (55 percent of Democrats and 64 percent of Republicans), as did about half of political independents (49 percent)."




http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...10-27-11-47-18

Ooops, Almost Forgot................
 

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/...hed_fifth.html

Source: CBS News Article
 

Adviser: Romney "shellshocked" by loss

LINKYLOO

A shame. Some people go to the polls to basically vote for the President of their choice. Is that bad? Maybe, maybe not. At least they are voting for their choice and it's counting. On the other hand, What about all the other candidates or referendums, amendments that they are voting for and perhaps have no clue about. :| Alot of people just tend to go with their party and vote that way.

Did ya'll hear that Puerto Rico voted and opts for statehood and Congress will have to approve that. What do you think about that? More latino/P.R. voters for sure. How does all this fare for the election of 2016 and if Republican Sen. Marco Rubio should run for the Presidency.

A lot of latinos, women, and gays voted for Obama for the various reasons Romney didn't appeal to them. However I know some latinos, women, and gay people that voted for Romney. I guess it all comes down to what your interests are in the United States and what appeals to you. Perhaps some of their social issues took a back seat to other issues such as economic, foreign, and environmental. I wonder if the Republicans will look at this coming into 2016 and try to appeal to a broader audience.

This is an interesting article World Reacts To Obama Win and The Issues He Faces Globally Looks like he not only has his hands full at home but abroad for his next term.

Considering Paul Ryan is on the short list for the GOP presidential nominee in 2016, I'm pretty sure the current misunderstanding is "WE LOST BECAUSE WE DIDN'T ALIENATE THE NOT-OLD-RICH-WHITE-CHRISTIAN-MALE DEMOGRAPHIC ENOUGH."

The pundits and tea party folks are saying that Romney wasn't really a conservative, was not far enough to the right. And some folks, I am sure, still blame the liberal media.

But if those were the only reasons Romney and others lost -- not far enough to the right and liberal media bias -- they would have seen it coming. They would not have been shocked.

Republicans have been fear mongers for generations. Appealing to racism and homophobia is clearly not going to work as the electorate becomes less white and and as older voters are replaced by younger ones.

And Obama's ground game has now been shown to have been more effective than expensive ads. All over the press today is Karl Rove's PAC's failure -- that the $100 million raised got them nothing, not a single win.

Plus Republicans have to note the wins for gay marriage.

Republicans will have to move to the center. They will have to find a message that is not about the fear of gays and POC. They will learn the great data driven ground game. They invented it after all.

Think of it. They thought they had won. Not only did they lose, it wasn't really that close. They lost seats in the Senate when they expected to gain them. They can see they are losing the cultural issues -- gay marriage, pot, etc.

In the future, they will have to SOUNDLY repudiate any future Todd Akins. They won't be able to appear on stage with Donald Trump. MOST OF ALL, they have to find a way to get moderate Republicans engaged in the primary process.

Think of what happened in Indiana. Dick Lugar, a senior Senator, lost BIG in the primary to tea party maniac Richard Mourdock, who made his rape comment and lost Republicans that seat. Think of it. The Republicans went from having one of the most senior and influential Senators on the Hill to losing the seat to a Democrat. *Thump*

The primary process pushed Romney so far to the right that he couldn't come back. If he had campaigned as Moderate Mitt, he might have won the general election. But if he had, he would never have gotten the nomination. Catch-22.

Maybe someone with the charisma of Chris Christie can get the nomination next time, especially after this disaster. But they will still lose down ticket races if they don't change their message re gays and POC and if they don't find a way to involve more moderates in the political process.

The Republicans are embarrassed, and they should be.

It really is amazing that most of the Republicans don't really seem to get why they lost and didn't even see it coming. Meanwhile, Team Obama got just the results they were expecting. It really doesn't help the Republicans to produce data that shows them winning if it isn't based in reality.

The Republicans with at least half a brain realize they have a demographic problem, but they don't seem to get they have a policy problem as well. The electorate recognizes there is a deficit. They think Obama's approach of asking the wealthiest Americans to pay a bit more and cutting military spending makes a lot more sense than tax cuts, "closing loopholes" and severely slashing social programs. Apparently Speaker Boehner and friends didn't get the memo that it was President Obama and his policies that won. Not only did they win the election but there is plenty of polling that shows the electorate prefers Obama's approach. I think President Obama should sell his proposal for dealing with the "fiscal cliff" directly to the people because the Republicans don't appear to be ready to compromise. I really hope the Democrats stand firm.

Oh yeah and the Republican's demographic problem isn't going away if they keep referring to African Americans and others as takers and Latinos as illegals and all the rape talk, not even supporting equal pay for women and trying to suppress the vote. On top of that they have warring factions between the Tea Party and Establishment Republicans.

They have a lot of problems and I am skeptical they can really turn this around. America is changing and changing fast. It has been for quite some time.

from Michael Moore

Video of obama thanking chicago staff

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...ampaign-staff/

Hmmm...
 

This just about makes me cry! When I first came out in '78, the thought that there would now be states where we could marry was so out of my frame of reference, it was unthinkable.

It is a moving train and will not be stopped, though I cannot believe it îs stil not legal in California of all places!

Washington same-sex marriage opponents concede
By Natalie Jennings, Published: NOVEMBER 08, 4:43 PM ET

Washington state is on track to become the ninth state to approve gay marriage as opponents of a referendum there conceded Thursday afternoon:

“With added results showing that we have not closed the gap, it now appears clear that Referendum 74 will be narrowly approved,” said Joseph Backholm, chairman of Preserve Marriage Washington, which worked to defeat the measure.

Voters in Maryland and Maine also approved same-sex marriage measures on Tuesday, while Minnesota voters rejected a constitutional ban on it.

With the news from WA, means 49+ million Americans (16% of pop) will live in states where same-sex couples can get a marriage license!

LGBT Voters Crucial to Obama Popular Vote Victory: LGBT Voters Vital to Outcome in Florida



http://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.ed...-vote-victory/

They're back-peddling on immigration policy. Latinos got out and voted, and it will pay off for them. That is not always the case. We lgbt folks voted Democratic for decades before we started getting crumbs from the table.

It's a good day for my students.

It was fun this morning to hear the clip of Hannity saying he had "evolved" on the issue.

Gawd.

But who cares. This is how politics works. I am just glad that there will be reform.

I meant the Republicans are backpeddaling on their anti-immigration policies. It's a joy to behold. It's another "I never thought I'd see the day."

First elected Transwoman in NH State Legislature: http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/news/...tes-first.html

Also of note is that NH is the first all-woman delegation (Governor, Congresswomen and Senators)! http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2...-and-governor/

Intellectual Stimulation:
 

This is one BAD ASS straight white male. Tell it.

Letter to a future Republican strategist regarding white people

November 9, 2012

To whom it may concern regarding the United States federal elections of 2014, 2016 and beyond:

Allow me to introduce myself to you, the existing (or aspiring!) strategist for the Republican Party. My name is Eric Arnold Garland and I am a White Man. Boy, am I ever – you need sunglasses just to look at my photo!

If I read the news correctly, I fit a profile that is of extreme importance to the GOP, as I embody the archetype that fits your narrative of Real Americans. Just how much should my profile interest you? Are you sitting down?

My family lineage goes back to the MAYFLOWER, BOAT ONE!!! (Garland family of New England-> John Adams -> Howard Alden -> Plymouth colony ->KINGS OF MUTHAF***IN’ ENGLAND)
I am a heterosexual, married to the super Caucasian mother of my two beautiful children who are, inexplicably, EVEN WHITER THAN I AM.
I am college educated (Master’s degree!) and affluent.
I am a job creator and small businessman.
We pay a lot of taxes! Every year!
I grew up in a rural area and despise laziness!
Having started my own business, I have complained at length about the insanity of federal, state and local bureaucracy – and its deleterious impact on the innovative small businessman.
I currently live in the suburbs in a historically Red state.

HOLY WHITE PEOPLE, BATMAN!!! Wow, you’re thinking – this is not some Mexirican in the Sun Belt we need to attract via harsh anti-Castro policies or appeals to “valores de familia” - this is the BREAD AND BUTTER OF THE GRAND OLD PARTY, a Mayflower-descended small business owner, burdened by taxation, looking out for his beautiful White family in the suburbs of a city (St Louis) surrounded by racial tension and urban blight!

How can I put this gently? My wife and I are not sensitive to your messaging, nor did we vote for the candidates you proposed for us this past Tuesday.

B-b-but, what? Aren’t we investors, hard-workin’ white folk surrounded by same in a manicured cul-de-sac, scared by a vision of economic collapse amidst the takers in a land of fewer givers? Didn’t Mitt Romney’s strong family, wealth, leadership history and chiseled chin give us the uncontrollable urge to high-five him into the White House?

No.

May I explain why not, purely for your education, such that you might be interested in winning an election on the national level at some point in the future? It bears pointing out that I should be your Low Hanging Fruit, the easy vote to get as opposed to, say, African-Americans, Latinos, or Asians – and you’re not even speaking well to me. The reasons why ought to concern you deeply.

As a Card-Carrying White Male I love expressing my opinion irrespective of whether people care to hear it, so let’s get started.

>>>>>>

Science - One of the reasons my family is affluent is that my wife and I have a collective fifteen years of university education between us. I have a Masters degree in Science and Technology Policy, and my wife is a physician who holds degrees in medicine as well as cell and molecular biology. We are really quite unimpressed with Congressional representatives such as Todd Akin and Paul Broun who actually serve on the House science committee and who believe, respectively, that rape does not cause pregnancy and that evolution and astrophysics are lies straight from Satan’s butt cheeks. These are, sadly, only two of innumerable assaults that the Republican Party has made against hard science – with nothing to say of logic in general. Please understand the unbearable tension this might create between us and your candidates.

Climate - Within just the past 18 months the following events have come to our attention: a record-breaking drought that sent temperatures over 100 degrees for weeks, killing half the corn in the Midwest and half the TREES on our suburban property – AND – a hurricane that drowned not New Orleans or Tampa or North Carolina but my native state of VERMONT. As an encore, a second hurricane drowned lower Manhattan, New Jersey and Long Island. The shouted views of decrepit mental fossil Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma that this is a fraud perpetrated on the American people by evil, conspiring climate scientists is belied by such events and is looking irresponsible to even the most skeptical.

Healthcare - My wife and I are quite familiar with America’s healthcare system due to our professions, and having lived abroad extensively, also very aware of comparable systems. Your party’s insistence on declaring the private U.S. healthcare system “the best in the world” fails nearly every factual measure available to any curious mind. We watch our country piss away 60% more expenditures than the next most expensive system (Switzerland) for health outcomes that rival former Soviet bloc nations. On a personal scale, my wife watches poor WORKING people show up in emergency rooms with fourth-stage cancer because they were unable to afford primary care visits. I have watched countless small businesses unable to attract talented workers because of the outrageous and climbing cost of private insurance. And I watch European and Asian businesses outpace American companies because they can attract that talent without asking people to risk bankruptcy and death. That you think this state of affairs is somehow preferable to “Obamacare,” which you compared ludicrously to Trotskyite Russian communism, is a sign of deficient minds unfit to guide health policy in America.

War - Nations do have to go to war sometimes, but that Iraq thing was pretty bad, to put it mildly. Somebody should have been, I dunno – FIRED for bad performance. Aren’t you the party of good corporate managers or something? This topic could get 10,000 words on its own. Let’s just leave it at: You guys suck at running wars.

Deficits and debt - Whenever the GOP is out of power, it immediately appeals to the imagination of voters who remember the Lyndon Baines Johnson (!) administration and claim that the Republican alternative is the party of “cutting spending” and “reducing the deficit.” The only problem with your claim is that Republican governments throughout my entire 38 year life (Reagan, Bush 41, Bush 43) have failed to cut spending and deficit and debt EVEN ONCE. I hope you understand that your credibility suffers every time you promise one thing for three decades and do the EXACT OPPOSITE. Egads – if you actually were the party of fiscal responsibility – you might win our votes despite your 13th century view of science!

Gay marriage - As the child of Baby Boomers who got divorced (as was the fashion!) in the 80s and 90s, and for whom 50% of my friends had their homes broken by divorce in the critical years before age 18, I sure am unsympathetic to your caterwauling bullshit that “gays will destroy the sanctity of marriage.” Perhaps if everyone in your generation didn’t take the period of 1978 – 1995 to start surreptitiously banging their neighbors and coworkers, only to abandon their kids because “they just weren’t happy,” I would take your defense of marriage more seriously. The institution of Middle Class suburban marriage was broken by the generation of aging white Baby Boomers who populate what is left of the Republican Party, so your defense is wrongheaded and disingenuous. And moreover, as someone who got called “faggot” about 127 times a day from the years 1985 through 1991 – guess what – I grew up to be pretty good friends with actual homosexuals, whose sexual orientation is usually the least significant thing about them. The Republican perseveration on homosexuals as any sort of threat consigns them to history’s trough of intellectual pig dung.

>>>>>>

That’s quite enough for one essay, wouldn’t you say? Now, given my initial description as a wealthy, hard-working, job creating, heterosexual, married suburban White Male – doesn’t your current platform look woefully insufficient to the task of gaining my vote? This doesn’t even get into the demographic tensions that show that people of my exact profile are going away permanently in America. You can’t even win on what you perceive to be “home field advantage.”

Uh oh, wait, I can already hear you through the web browser, dismissing all of my above points because THAT GUY WAS NEVER GONNA BE A REPUBLICAN ANYHOW, CUZ HE’S A LIBRUL WHO HATES AMERICA AND…

All right, let’s do one last point:

Meanness- Your party is really mean, mocking and demonizing everyone who does not follow you into the pits of hell. You constantly imply – as Mitt Romney did in his “47% speech” – that anybody who disagrees with you does so not by logic or moral conviction, but because they are shiftless, lazy parasites who want “free stuff” from “traditional Americans.” Wow, you guys managed to follow up a stunning electoral defeat with insulting the very people you wish to attract for a majority in the political system! Brilliant! You are losing elections because being angry and defensive and just-plain-mean is more important than being smart and winning elections – and thus you deserve everything happening to you.

If you want to know exactly where you failed in 2012, and will continue to fail, here it is. Look you assholes, I’m as traditional an American as it gets, and I do not “want free stuff.” I am a taxpayer, and ALWAYS HAVE BEEN. I got my first job – dragging bags of cow manure, horse feed and fertilizer around a farm store – when I was 12. I started my first company when I was 28. I have followed the vast majority of the rules set out for middle class white males (for good and for ill.) And if it weren’t bad enough that your policy positions are a complete clusterfuck for the reasons I lay out in great detail, you manage to follow up the whole exercise with insulting me, my wife, and my friends of every stripe who didn’t vote for your political party – all of whom are hard-working, taxpaying, job creating, law abiding, great AMERICANS of EVERY COLOR AND CREED.

From this white, Mayflower-descended strategic analyst, allow me to offer you the three strategic options you have before you:

1. You drastically moderate your platform to harmonize with the policy positions I present above

2. You disband the party and reorganize it to reflect current realities

3. You kick and scream and stamp your feet and call me and my friends names – and submit to several decades of one party rule

While I do not want a one-party system, I also don’t particularly care which of these options you choose. If you look carefully at the numbers on Tuesday, nobody else cares, either.

Just a word to the wise from one White Man to (presumably) another.

Maureen Dowd:
 

"Romney and Tea Party loonies dismissed half the country as chattel and moochers who did not belong in their 'traditional' America. But the more they insulted the president with birther cracks, the more they tried to force chastity belts on women, and the more they made Hispanics, blacks and gays feel like the help, the more these groups burned to prove that, knitted together, they could give the dead-enders of white male domination the boot. The election about the economy also sounded the death knell for the Republican culture wars. Romney was still running in an illusory country where husbands told wives how to vote, and the wives who worked had better get home in time to cook dinner. But in the real country, many wives were urging husbands not to vote for a Brylcreemed boss out of a ’50s boardroom whose party was helping to revive a 50-year-old debate over contraception. Just like the Bushes before him, Romney tried to portray himself as more American than his Democratic opponent. But America’s gallimaufry wasn’t knuckling under to the gentry this time."

- Maureen Dowd, writing for the New York Times.

CBS Morning News
 

Ben Stein: The GOP will come back


(CBS News) Before we close the book on the week just past, some last thoughts on Campaign 2012. Republicans have been doing a lot of soul-searching since Tuesday's election - and that includes our contributor Ben Stein:

Wow. It sure hurts to lose, and we in the GOP came so close in so many vital states and in the popular vote.

And, in hindsight, we can see we made some big mistakes - weak behavior in the third debate, wacky Senate candidates, naming as a candidate a man of great wealth and a finance background after a Wall Street debacle.

But let's not cry and swear to leave the country, as some of my Republican friends did the other night.

Our position as a party is not at all terrible. We still control the House. We have enough votes in the Senate to block anything we hate. The Democrats know they won by a modest margin. They have no overwhelming mandate, and they know it.

I have seen our party in far worse shape - after the Goldwater disaster of '64; after Watergate and the thorough beating we got in the 1974 elections when we barely held a third of the House. We have been pronounced dead and buried over and over again. And we've always come back, like the Energizer Bunny.

Only we don't want to be just a bunny. We want to be the creating party, the party of life and energy. And we can be.

We still have great ideas: Limited government; a warm welcome for small business and job creators; appreciation of living by work, not handouts; the protection of innocent life; fairness for he working family; recognition of the basics of individual liberty.

But we have to make some changes in our hearts - big changes. This is not the white man's country exclusively anymore, and it hasn't been for a long time. The strategy of appealing to angry white men is not correct, either morally or practically.

This is a genuine multi-cultural, multi-racial democracy today. We must appeal to working women, to single women, to blacks. In particular, we can and must stop hurting the feelings of Hispanics and start inviting them into our party. We must plead with them to see that we have common cause on many issues, especially small business, the value of hard work, the sanctity of family and life.

We can do it and we will do it.

Next time around, let's find a man or woman with the eloquence and charisma of a Barack Obama on our side, and a party platform that invites everyone, of every sex and race who shares the best of our values into our tent. And at their best, they are still America's best values.

© 2012 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Mulling This Over
 

Why Arizona is a red state in a sea of blue states

"Before this election cycle, New Mexico experimented with messaging and figured out how to reach its diverse Latino population. They created messages that moved beyond “Sí, se puede” (Yes, we can) and which appealed to first-generation Latinos as well as to sixth-generation Latinos, resulting in a greater voter turnout. New Mexicans, in other words, did not treat Latinos neither as a static or homogenous group, and took steps to ensure its message appealed across generational lines."


http://21border.com/2012/11/12/why-a...f-blue-states/

Oh lookie, Georgia wants to be like Texas...
 

Georgians 'peacefully' petition the Obama administration, asking to secede from the United States

It's been less than a week since the nation re-elected President Barack Obama, giving the Commander in Chief another four years in office. Unsurprisingly, the election's outcome didn't please everyone. But rather than simply deal with the results, however, thousands of Georgians have decided that they would rather secede from the United States.

What would JC -- Jimmy Carter -- say?

add alabama, arkansas, colorado, florida, indiana, kentucky, louisiana, michigan, mississippi, missouri, montana, new jersey, new york, north carolina, north dakota, oregon, south carolina and tennessee to the list

they need 25,000 signatures in 30 days to be reviewed by the admin


i think a vote with your feet response is valid to a government you find destructive

it's an interesting where would you draw the line question though

in the past i have toyed with the idea of being an individual secessionist
i find the idea of being a sovereign entity very appealing

What the hell...
 

By Mike Krumboltz, Yahoo! News | The Lookout – 7 hrs ago


In the wake of last week's presidential election, thousands of Americans have signed petitions seeking permission for their states to peacefully secede from the United States. The petitions were filed on We the People, a government website.
States with citizens filing include Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas. Oddly, folks from Georgia have filed twice. Even stranger, several of the petitions come from states that went for President Barack Obama.

LINKYLOO

at least Colorado voters actually legalized marijuana by constitutional amendment.....LEGAL in the state....not decriminalized.....and they also legalized industrial hemp..........

Washington state also legalized marijuana and hemp.