I love the Fix

I have been reading the washingtonpost.com's The Fix for several years. I like him for many reasons but one is his analysis of congressional races. He ranks them from 10 - 1. 1 being the most likely to change hands. I could also like him b/c, in his analysis, for the past 4 years there has always been about 9 repubs about to lose their seat.

He has ranked the senate this week b/c of all the repubs retirements. All 4 retirements are in swing states that dems have been winning. Ohio, Florida, Kansas, and Missouri.

In this round, he makes an important point about these retirements. Even if we don't win them in the next election, it will cost the repubs a ton of money to keep them. That is critical in keeping the majorities we already have. And hopefully expanding on others.  He says

Not only will GOP strategists have to spend considerable time and money (Florida, Ohio and Missouri are all expensive/very expensive states in which to advertise) to hold the seats but those expenditures are dollars that can't be spent on offensive opportunities in Colorado, Nevada and Illinois among other states.

I totally agree. 

Check out his analysis of future, hopefully, dem victories in the senate. 

Great Line from TPM

I love this story by TPM. My ongoing obsession with Franken, and by extension the misery of Norm Coleman, has taken another step. Coleman and his "sue everything and see what sticks" attitude to try and steal his seat, has now been informed he can reopen his senate office so that he can "shut it down." 

Lovin it. 

Quote of the Day

This is why Obama rocks and is what was needed for our country. The following is from Mitch McConnell, the Repub senate minority leader

Again, I want to express my appreciation to the incoming administration for its responsiveness to Republican concerns. Every time we asked a question it was promptly answered. So far, Republican interactions with the incoming administration have been quite encouraging and appreciated. While I voted on the losing side, I hope the new administration will consider some of my concerns, and we hope their stewardship of these funds is successful in stabilizing the markets according to the original purpose of the TARP.

This, coming from the leader of the repubs. Wow, get strapped in. We are in for a RIDE!

Obama Knocks it out of the Park!

As I have been reading and hearing, Obama has knocked a in the park home run. He got a VERY unpopular bill passed pretty much along party lines but had defectors on both sides. As NBC reports the vote

broke down mostly along partisan lines. Six Republicans, however, voted with Obama (Alexander, Gregg, Kyl, Lugar, Snowe, Voinovich), and nine Democrats voted against him (Bayh, Cantwell, Dorgan, Feingold, Lincoln, Ben Nelson, Shaheen, Sanders, Wyden). But to show you how hot of a political potato the TARP money is, FIVE of those nine Dems are up for re-election in 2010  (Bayh, Dorgan, Feingold, Lincoln, Wyden). And out of the six GOPers who voted with Obama, just ONE is up for re-election in 2010 (Gregg).

Why is this big. Because a new president coming in was able to twist arms to get what needed to get done. This bodes very well for him and his administration. Yeee Hawwww. 

Cluster fuck of Dems Ineptitudes

When the whole Blagovich deal happened, Reid and many dems went running up to whoever would listen saying that no way in hell are they going to accept a Blagoevich appointment. The problem with that was they forgot the first rule in politics: 1. never commit to anything before you have to.

The "Wait and see" policy that has gotten more politicians not commit citing the need of more "knowledge" of the situation is a tried and true montra for all politicians. 

Now look, Blagoevich went ahead and nominated Burris and there was nothing Reid or any other senator could do about it. Their hands were tied b/c they didn't want a state wide runoff, possibly allowing a repub to take the seat. 

Sometime it might be necessary to take your political book back out and restudy the first chapter. 

Now Reid looks weak wehn it comes to these things and will have a harder time next time. 

Cook Political Report Update

Cook Political Report (CPR) does a good job of evaluating races. It has put 6 senate races into the Toss up section. Of the six 5 are currently repubs and 1 is a dem. That is Obama's old seat. The reason is b/c Burris has lost several state wide elections and unless something dramatically changes, he will probably lost that seat over the next two years (when the seat will be available for election). 

The repub states are Missouri, Florida, Ohio, Louisiana (b/c of his brothel problems), and Kentucky. Besides Louisiana, the other 4 are retiring. 

It is only going to get worse for the repubs over the next 2 years. 

$825 is the new number

The new stimulus package Obama was proposing was around $725 billion as of last week but it has ballooned up to about $825 billion as of today and some dems are thinking it is not big enough while the repubs are pooping themselves thinking it is going to sink the ship. 

Check it out.

Looks Good for Carnahan

The Missouri Senate contest is looking good for dems. Carnahan has a small lead against his closest repub opponent. Carnahan leads his closest competitor by on point 45% to 44%. The other two opponents are well below that. 

Man, with 4 Republican senate retirements already, shit be fallin apart in the repub party. 

Awesome Job To Tennessee Dems

This is awesome. The Tennessee house dems elected a republican as speaker of the house reps. Why do you ask? Well the House was split 50-49 with the repubs with a slim 1 vote margin. The Dems hatched a plan to have all dems vote for Rep Kent Williams who is a moderate republican. Then Kent voted for himself and Kent won. The last time dems elected a house speaker in Tennessee was in 1969

Awesome!!

Franken Files Lawsuit to be Seated

Franken is not standing by while Coleman tries, in vain, to somehow pull out a win from Franken. Franken has petitioned the courts to force the Governor and Sec. of State to issue a certificate of election. From the Startribune. Go Franken!!

Yep, They Tortured

Coming out from the post is an article saying that a judge finally admitted the Bush administration tortured. 

The top Bush administration official in charge of deciding whether to bring Guantanamo Bay detainees to trial has concluded that the U.S. military tortured a Saudi national...

and the judge, Susan J. Crawford, further said

We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani,

Now that a judge has found that Bush tortured people, will we get a prosecution? Probably not.

His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that's why I did not refer the case" for prosecution.

Which makes absolutely no fucking sense.

Franken to the Senate

If you have been under a rock for the past 3 months since the election, then I will update you on this front.

Al Franken started his senate bid last year (officially). But he really started about 4 years ago with his PAC. He went from comedy club to comedy club raising money for his PAC so that he could dole out the love to the Minnesota Political big wig trying to ensure his primary win, which he did. 

He then proceeded to fight, bare nuckles, with Coleman. I loved every minute of it. For obvious reasons. The repubs hate him for his numerous books and radio show, he is farely honest and shoots from the hip, Franken is an additional senator to help the dems, and finally, I can't wait for his senate floor speechs. 

Then November hit and all of a sudden it looked like Franken lost by some 600 votes. Then it dwindled down to 200 vote Coleman lead before the recount even started. During the recount, everything went for Franken and he ended up with a 225 vote lead.

Now, the repubs refuse to seat Franken provisionally in the senate (b/c they hate him) and Coleman has submitted a lawsuit sueing everything. Coleman has basically tried to sue all aspects of the election hoping to see what sticks. 

Franken is most likely to win, barring some obsurd court decision. Yee Haw

Argument for a Commission

The number one question on Obama's change.gov is will he assign a prosecutor for the travesties of Bush's presidency. Obama stated on ABC that he was looking to the future versus the past.

I find that while my hope for a special prosecutor is a dream, I do feel that all the crap of the past 8 years needs to be documented and written up so that these things don't happen again.

Things like illegal wire tapping, torture, illegal wars, being denied habeus corpus, over cronyism.

Right now government is very dirty. It has crap approval ratings and I feel that is a direct result of republicans do their illegal work and Dems too scared to take on a president and being labeled weak. All of the past 8 years needs to be washed clean and ignoring the nasties will only make things worse in the future.

The main reason as to why not is that too many current legislators were involved (both dems and repubs). So what? clean out those cobwebs no matter the price. Only then will the last 8 years will be behind us.

Welcome!!

Hello,

This blog was created as an aggregate for all other important political happenings. I find I peruse over 6 blogs and another 4 newspapers daily to get my main information. I then branch into many different newspapers from all over the US because of links.

I wanted to put this together so that you can get all that you need when it comes to politics.

Thanks, Paul