– What’s broken about Mars Hill is the misogyny and homophobia more than the way one guy wrote about it, or even the money stuff.
– Downballot races like County Crank deserve more attention.
– There’s all sorts of Halloween stuff. I don’t think I’m going out this year, but if I do it’ll be as sexy Carl Ballard.
– All the best to Kevin Drum
– Did You Know about cities are some of my favorite Tom The Dancing Bug.
When Fear Mongering Infringes On People’s Rights
A political party of ignoramuses who jump on a stool every time a mouse squeaks sooner or later will get their asses sued by people they lock up without due process:
“New Jersey officials announced they plan on releasing on Monday the nurse quarantined over fears she was exposed to the Ebola virus while volunteering in West Africa. Kaci Hickox said over the weekend she planned on filing a federal lawsuit over her confinement, saying she felt ‘like a criminal.’ In a statement, the New Jersey Department of Health said she has been asymptomatic for the last 24 hours. ‘After being evaluated in coordination with the CDC and the treating clinicians at University Hospital, the patient is being discharged,’ the statement read.”
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ka.....-released/
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Looks like New Jersey (read: Republican governor) didn’t plan for health care workers returning from Africa any better than they plan for bridge closures and traffic management (read: in Democratic-voting New Jersey cities). The problem is, it’s one thing to lock up people in their cars on a freeway, and another thing to lock them up in a hospital ward without their permission. That’s, like, imprisonment, ya know? People are liable to get upset about that — especially if the people locking them up are clueless dumb clucks who don’t know what they’re doing (read: Republican governor and his hysterical Republican supporters).
While most of the election focus is on the Senate, the GOP has a governor problem, to wit, several high profile GOP governors may lose because … well, because … GOP office holders have a propensity for getting embroiled in scandals. 2014 is shaping up as a year of massive GOP gubernatorial defeats. Here’s a partial list of GOP governors, many of them scandal-ridden, who are trailing in polls or barely holding their noses above water:
Pennsylvania — Tom Corbett is toast, done, stick a fork in him.
Wisconsin — Scott Walker’s lead in polls has evaporated and Mary Burke has a better than 50-50 chance of taking him out.
Florida — Rick Scott, a rich guy whose health care company bilked Medicare of billions, is trailing by 5 points in exit polls (of absentee voters who have already voted).
Kansas — Sam Brownback’s disastrous fiscal and economic policies appear likely to turn him into a one-termer; everyone, including Republicans, expects him to lose.
Michigan — Rick Snyder, the guy who takes over city governments and then sends in appointed overseers to sell the public parks and strip the copper plumbing and wiring from public buildings in urban areas populated by poor people (especially blacks) and impoverished by Republican economic policies, is trailing in polls.
Maine — It would be hard for anyone to top Paul LePage as America’s looniest Republican office holder. LePage is electable only in 3-way races, because he draws at best only slightly over 30% of the vote, i.e. only the loony wing of the Loon Party votes for him. This year, he’s in a 3-way race again; what’s different about this time is he may finish last instead of first. There’s nothing like actually holding office and making actual decisions affecting real-life people to make the public realize what kind of stuff you’re really made of; in LePage’s case that’s 100% crazy, and not all Maine voters are nuts, only about 30% of them are.
So the right-o-sphere is all up in arms that a CNN Newsreader made fun of Bristol Palin about the audio released of her talking to a police officer during the now famous party crashing in Alaska.
Right. We should be concerned about poor Bristol’s feelings. Never mind that she says, “And I have my five-year-old with me.” So let me get this straight, Bristol took her five year old on a drunken limo tour, crashed a party, got into a drunken brawl and then while talking to an officer of the law says Fuck, or Fucking at least five times and your reaction is, “Look at how mean CNN is to this mother of the year candidate.”
Okeley-dokeley!
@1
Yep, proves yet agains that government is force, just like Judge Napolitano says.
With the problems at Mars Hill, I wonder if they will still be looking into acquiring the Bellevue property that Driscoll said God wanted to have, after Sound Transit had acquired it? Although I doubt a misogynist would be able to deal with the CEO of Sound Transit, Joni Earl.
With Maine, it’s a three way race, and Independent Elliott Cutler does not think of himself as a spoiler, since he came in second in 2010. I believe the Portland Mayor is elected using Instant Runoff Voting, perhaps it should be used for the Maine Governor.
@4 Government in the wrong hands is capable of being a force for evil; we all recognize that. The trick is distinguishing between good and bad political leaders. Some people, including those who generalize about government always being bad in all cases, have difficulty doing that. Let me try an analogy here. Just because one Volvo or Mercedes is a lemon doesn’t mean they all are. In politics, if you don’t elect Republicans, you’ll be all right most of the time.
This election could still surprise. Most polls are moving toward Democrats, and aggregators like Nate Silver are giving the Dems better odds of holding the Senate, in some cases even odds, which is a big improvement over recent weeks. We usually can count on GOPers to self-destruct and once again they’re not disappointing us.
Rabbit @ 2
LePage may very well come in second in Maine, but he isn’t anywhere near 3rd place. The independent has less than half the support of LePage or the Democratic challenger.
http://www.realclearpolitics.c.....-3558.html
Corbett is clearly toast in Pennsylvania, and the rest of the governor races that you discuss seem pretty close.
Well guess what, Steve Ballmer didn’t actually pay $2 billion for a basketball team — we taxpayers did.
“Steve Ballmer stands to gain as much as $1bn in tax benefits as a result of his $2bn purchase of the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team, helping to explain why the Microsoft billionaire paid a record price for the club. … An FT analysis of US tax laws shows that Mr Ballmer could claim about half of the purchase price … under a little-known feature of the tax code covering so-called active owners of sports franchises.”
http://www.cnbc.com/id/1021239.....:topnews:3
Even millionaires think the rich should pay higher taxes and the minimum wage should be raised.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/102123689
Meanwhile, GOP senate hopeful David Perdue is bragging on the campaign trail that only 2,000 women sued him for pay discrimination.
http://www.motherjones.com/moj.....rimination
Roger Rabbit Commentary: The number of women who have sued me for any kind of discrimination is zero. But never mind, I’m not a Republican, nor am I running for U.S. senator.
In Toronto, former Ontario Progressive Conservative leader and talk show host John Tory will be the next mayor of Canada’s largest city. He beat out Mayor Rob Ford’s brother, Councilmember Doug Ford, and former Federal MP Olivia Chow.
http://www.cbc.ca/m/news/topst.....-1.2814902