Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

The words do not have to be perfect.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

This fight is for everything.

He imagines himself as The Big Bad, Who Is Universally Feared… instead of The Big Jagoff, Who Is Universally Mocked.

How can republicans represent us when they don’t trust women?

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

No one could have predicted…

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

I really should read my own blog.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

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Proud to Be A Democrat

Guess Nobody Dared Tell Gov. Goodhair About the “Closet” Rumors…

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… or else the Letterman audience would’ve witnessed Perry read a Top Nine list:

10. Actually, there were three reasons I messed up last night. One was the nerves, and two was the headache and three … um … uh … oops.
9. I don’t know what you’re talking about – I think things went well.
8. I was up late last night watching Dancing with the Stars.
7. I thought the debate was tonight.
6. You try concentrating with Mitt Romney smiling at you. That is one handsome dude!
5. Uh, El Niño?
4. I had a 5-hour Energy Drink six hours before the debate.
3. I really hoped it would get me on my favorite talk show, but instead, I ended up here.
2. I wanted to help take the heat off my buddy Herman Cain.
1. I just learned Justin Bieber is my father.

Then again, maybe Perry really is the guy Matt Taibbi calls “The Best Little Whore In Texas“:

… [T]his is America, remember, where one should never underestimate shallow. And Rick Perry brings shallow to a new level. He is very gifted in that regard. He could be the Adolf Hitler of shallow.
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Perry’s campaign is still struggling to recover from the kind of spectacular, submarine-at-crush-depth collapse seldom seen before in the history of presidential politics. The governor went from presumptive front-runner to stammering talk-show punch line seemingly in the speed of a single tweet, rightly blasted for being too incompetent even to hold his own in televised debates with a half-bright pizza salesman like Herman Cain and a goggle-eyed megachurch Joan of Arc like Michele Bachmann. But such superficial criticisms of his weirdly erratic campaign demeanor don’t even begin to get at the root of why we should all be terrified of Perry and what he represents. After all, you have to go pretty far to stand out as a whore and a sellout when you come from a state that has produced such luminaries in the history of political corruption as LBJ, Karl Rove and George W. Bush. But Rick Perry has managed to set a scary new low in the annals of opportunism, turning Texas into a swamp of political incest and backroom dealing on a scale not often seen this side of the Congo or Sierra Leone.
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Queen City Shuffle

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Across the river in local election results, Cincinnati voters made some major changes to the City Council in the wake of city and Hamilton County employees taking major budget cuts over the last year.

Voters ousted four incumbent Republicans from Cincinnati City Council on Tuesday night, choosing instead seven Democrats, a majority of African-Americans, the first openly gay candidate and enough support to move forward with the streetcar project.

The outcome clearly was the result of the turnout generated by Issue 2, the measure to repeal the collective bargaining reforms of Senate Bill 5. The issue was expected to draw a lot of Democrats and union supporters to the polls.

Issue 2 lost in Hamilton County big, the Nos getting nearly 60% of the vote, and it was a bloodbath for Republicans on the ballot, but they’re blaming Issue 2 for their crushing loss and rightfully so.

Ousted: Chris Bortz, Leslie Ghiz, Amy Murray and Wayne Lippert.

“Issue 2 seems to be dragging the Republican Party down,” said Lippert. “This is transformational, but not in a positive way for the city.”

Hamilton County Republican chairman Alex Triantafilou said the results left him “concerned for the future of the city.”

“No question that Issue 2 played a significant role in this,” he added.

The new council means Cincy’s streetcar project can finally move forward unimpeded by Republicans and that the city can now take steps to fix the city budget without sacrificing police, firefighters, and teachers.  It’s a start.  We’ll see what Mayor Mark Mallory can do with the kind of support he’s always wanted, like from Cincy’s first openly gay council member, Chris Seelbach.

He worked for former Vice Mayor David Crowley and modeled his candidacy after the lessons Crowley taught him. He promises to carry on the goals of his mentor, who died early this year of cancer. Crowley taught him to look for “issues of justice in everything you do.”

All he hears out of City Hall, he says, is what should be cut and not cut. He wants to turn the debate more toward what council can do to make Cincinnati more of a place sought out by young professionals and young families. He worked in 2004 to help defeat Article XII, which banned naming gay people as a protected class. He wants to make public transportation the top priority and move toward a fixed-rail system connecting all neighborhoods.

He’s 31, vice president and chief financial officer of The Seidewitz Group, a marketing and consulting firm. He lives in Over-the-Rhine, is an endorsed Democrat, and is the city’s first openly gay council candidate.

And that’s just how big of a disaster Issue 2 was for Ohio Republicans last night.  Expanding on what Kay was saying below, Kasich is toast, folks.  The failure of Republicans to coalesce around this issue not only backfired miserably, it had the completely opposite effect, creating an off-year grassroots surge that knocked the blocks out from under Cincy conservatives.  He cannot be jettisoned fast enough in the Buckeye State and Republicans in Ohio are now in a deep hole.  The network to bring Ohio back into the blue column next year is already in place.  The overreach was brutal, and a significant number of Ohio GOP voters jumped ship on this measure and mobilized Democrats to boot.

The coattails on the Issue 2 No vote completely reworked the government of one of the more conservative cities in the state and made it overwhelmingly progressive, not to mention creating a majority African-American council to back Mayor Mallory.  Between this and Dems rolling to wins in Kentucky as mistermix mentioned, yeah, Tuesday was a pretty good day for our side ’round my neck of the woods.

Also, the latest PPP numbers in Ohio are looking really good for the President, but I’m waiting to hear how the Issue 2 vote was meaningless because TEH YOONYUN THUGZ created tens of thousands of fake cardboard standee voters after raiding every Office Depot and Staples in the tri-state over the weekend for art supplies…

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Wednesday Morning Open Thread

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(Jeff Danziger’s website)

Who doesn’t love the smell of roasted chestnuts black walnuts in the morning? But, given that Koch daddy Fred C. was a John Birch Society Founder, I don’t know why there weren’t more references to Strom Thurmond’s “unacknowledged” daughter…

Speaking of schadenfreude, Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly ponders the new conservative website NotMittRomney.com:

… Organizers, in explaining the purpose of the “Not Mitt Romney” campaign, argue that because of the candidate’s lack of core principles, Republicans will “have a White House that believes in little” if Romney “some how [sic] squeaks it out.” They added that a Romney nomination will produce a Republican Party “split at the seems [sic].”
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The campaign features some fairly prominent right-wing voices, including GOP activists, operatives, and media figures. The names that jump out include Pamela Geller, Roger Stone Jr, Robert Stacy McCain, and Matt Mackowiak, led by a conservative public-relations professional Ali Akbar.
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I can understand their dissatisfaction with the Republican frontrunner, and I can also understand their willingness to get organized in opposition to Romney. What makes less sense to me is the underlying strategy — Republican voters are going to nominate the party’s presidential candidate, and “Not Mitt Romney” won’t be on the ballot. If these right-wing players want to stop Romney from winning the GOP nod, they’re going to have pick an alternative…

As a proud Democrat, I think it can only be good news for President Obama if outspoken conservatives spend the next few months trying to kneecap Willard. And (via Dan Amira atNYMag Daily Intel), if Willard’s distant cousin Jon Huntsman wants to keep making attack videos, more power to him:

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Open Thread: Break Out the Barn Jacket, Scotty

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Per Glenn Johnson at the Boston Globe‘s Political Intelligence blog, Senator Brown (R-Masshole), a man not necessarily in danger of developing full-bore workaholism, is being forced to step up his schedule:

Senator Scott Brown is stepping up his campaign activity.
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The Massachusetts Republican today released a web video highlighting his recent visit to Gloucester, during which he called for the resignation of the country’s top fisheries official.
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Brown also wrote an op-ed column for the Lowell newspaper rebutting a television ad campaign being aired against him by the League of Conservation Voters…
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Brown publicly states that he won’t start campaigning until next year, when he will be seeking his first full, six-year term after winning a January 2010 special election to replace the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy.
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But the rise of Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren, as well as early advertising by, first, the League of Women Voters and, now, the League of Conservation Voters, have prompted a change…

Shot of the fisherfolk-pleasing barn jacket in action at the link, although the news photog couldn’t shoehorn both the Glouchester Fishing Memorial and the Pickup Truck of Campaigning into the same frame, alas. There’s also a link to Brown’s video, which is a sackful of fail with a slight tang of flopsweat. Schadenfreude being a powerful drug, I am thoroughly enjoying Cosmo Boy’s disgruntled expression — he figured he could loaf through on Tea-Party talking points and blast-fax AFP boilerplate for another six months as long as his competition was split between the first-term mayor, that guy who won’t stop talking about City Year, an Episcopalian priest whose most significant political accomplishment was failing to be elected lieutenant guv, a lady pediatrician, a software engineer, and a state senator whose name is known only to his immediate family. Then Elizabeth Warren lost her dream job at the clammy hands of Scotty’s Rethug co-conspirators, and now he’s got an an actual race on his hands, poor fella. Sweat, Scott Brown, sweat!

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Monday Morning Open Thread

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Quick pick-me-up Sunday post, now going wide in the pixelverse. Greg Sargent reports that “David Axelrod goes there: GOP may be trying to destroy economy on purpose“:

… As you know, Obama’s newly aggressive populism and (gasp) partisan rhetoric has sparked a good deal of handwringing and complaining from centrist columists (see Brooks, David) and leading GOP officials (see Ryan, Paul), who have been arguing that the new approach is somehow out of bounds or that it risks alienating the middle of the country. Axelrod’s amplification of the charge that the GOP may be tanking the economy on purpose suggests the Obama campaign isn’t taking these objections too seriously.
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Indeed, it’s worth asking whether we’re seeing a fundamental shift in the thinking of the Obama team and some Dems — a basic recognition that the old rules don’t apply anymore, that the unprecedented tactics being employed by the opposition require a new kind of response. As Dana Milbank notes, you can see the evidence of this in the unapologetic populism driving Elizabeth Warren’s Senate candidacy, which suggests that “Democrats will no longer play by Marquess of Queensbury rules while their opponents disembowel them.”
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But this may be about something broader than just a new approach to Republicans. The Occupy Wall Street protests; our political conversation’s intense new focus on inequality and economic justice; and the extraordinary levels of voter anxiety and dissatisafaction with our institutions all seem to suggest that the political landscape is shifting in ways we can’t really appreciate yet. It looks like the Obama campaign is placing its bet on what kind of political response these big changes are demanding.

More at the link. This is good news for Democrats — to hell with the “centrist” fetish for imaginary moderates in search of the perfectly tepid non-response; it’s only the One Percenters (and their deluded supporters among the Twenty-Seven Percenters) who believe “All Is for the Best, in This Best of All Possible Worlds” is a workable political philosophy.

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Open Thread: “Scott Brown, Tea Party Patriarch”

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From Noah Bierman at the Boston Globe’s Political Intelligence blog:

A day after a Republican video mocked Democratic US Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren as the “Matriarch of Mayhem” for claiming significant credit for the Occupy Wall Street movement, a Democratic leaning political action committee has released “Scott Brown: Tea Party Patriarch.”
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The liberal video uses similar production techniques as the conservative video — splicing images of Brown, a Republican senator, making sympathetic comments about the Tea Party movement, with footage of the movement’s most radical elements played over ominous music…
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The video is being released by American Bridge 21st Century. Its president, Rodell Mollineau, said in a statement that the video is “a warning that unfair, inflammatory, and inaccurate attacks will not go unanswered.”
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The dueling videos, a year ahead of the 2012 Senate election, suggest the campaign is already getting rough. Two interest groups have already paid for television ads attacking Brown’s environmental record.

Emphasis mine. Props to American Bridge 21st Century, because fighting back makes me Proud to Be a Democrat!

Since Brown has also volunteered as a spokespod for the Contractor Tax Cheat Protection Bill, there will be no lack of ammunition for our side…

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Doug Rubin on Elizabeth Warren: That Was Before She Hired Me!

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The Boston Globe is, so far, cautiously pro-Warren, but that takes second place to tweaking a former hireling of the competition:

In a former life, after he was Deval Patrick’s campaign manager and chief of staff but before he took leadership of Elizabeth Warren’s US Senate race, Doug Rubin worked part-time as a columnist for the Boston Herald.
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Drawing on his experience in Democratic politics, including working against Republicans in a state that picked a member of the GOP to be governor for 16 consecutive years before Patrick, Rubin offered uncommon perspective about the happenings on Beacon and Capitol hills.
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He tapped that network and expertise in June to issue a pointed warning: Democratic officials in Washington should cease carping about the lack of a high-profile candidate to challenge US Senator Scott Brown as the Republican seeks reelection next year…
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“The speculation from D.C. hurts the existing (Democratic) field, which is already filled with strong, talented candidates. It keeps donors who are loyal to the party on the sidelines, and forces some very important grass-roots organizers to hold off from making a commitment to a candidate. It also creates media stories about the supposed weakness of the field, which is a disservice to those candidates who have chosen to run.”
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Two months later, the candidate who was the focus of much of that D.C. affection and entreaties – Warren – left Washington and the Obama administration and returned home to Massachusetts. One of her first acts? She hired Rubin to advise her as she weighed a Senate campaign.
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Last week, during an interview with the Globe’s Joan Vennochi, Rubin disputed that Warren was the Beltway creation against which he warned, and which he feared would be so harmful to the democratic process…
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“What I was railing against was the guys in D.C. coming in and anointing a candidate, and I think Elizabeth Warren has done the opposite,” Rubin said. “She was taken her campaign to the living rooms of Massachusetts, which is exactly what I was advocating for.”

It’s a pretty fair article, despite that, and Rubin’s correct that there’s a difference between “Don’t daydream about a Great Democratic Savior being air-dropped from the Oval Office” and “Okay, now we’ve got a sterling candidate with a proven record, as opposed to a half-dozen well-meaning individuals whose combined name recognition factor hangs in the single digits even among Mass-based political junkies.” But it won’t be the last of the concern-trolling about how flashy media darling Elizabeth Warren cruelly broke the cherished dreams of Setti Warren (no relation), Andrew Massey, Alan Khazei, Tom Conroy, Marisa DeFranco, and Herb Robinson.

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