"Mitt Romney carried 24 states. We need to have conservative activists from all over the nation contact the electors, the Republican Party and the secretary of state in all of these states and tell them not to participate in the Electoral College when it meets on Dec. 17. If we can get 17 of those states (just over one-third) to refuse to participate, the Electoral College will have no quorum. Then, as the Constitution directs, the election goes to the House of Representatives. That is how we can still pull this election out and make Mitt Romney president in January. We need this concept shared with every tea party, liberty and patriotic group throughout the country. We have time to act, but we must pressure Republicans to do the right thing. It does not matter who gets credit for this. The credit is not important. Using our last chance to defeat Barack Obama is important."
Obama re-elected, winning every swing state (Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Nevada, Wisconsin, New Hampshire and Virgina.)
Democrats gain seats in both the House (preliminary: +6) & Senate (+4 from 51 to 53+2 Inde.), retaining control of the Senate. We had 23 Senate seats to defend while Republicans only had to defend 10. Not only did we SWEEP all 23 Democratic races, but we picked up two more.
Maryland, Maine, and Washington all voted FOR Marriage Equality. Minnesota upheld their existing law.
Iowa judge David Wiggins who upheld Marriage Equality in his state won reelection despite a concentrated effort to unseat him.
Sherrod Brown retained his Senate seat despite being the most heavily targeted Democratic Senator in the country by the Right Wing SuperPAC's.
Wisconsin elected the nations' first openly gay Senator, Tammy Baldwin.
Tammy Duckworth took out "deadbeat dad" and all-around super-douchbag Joe Walsh. (Ed.note: YAY!)
Washington State & Colorado decriminalized recreational Marijuana. Massachusetts passes a law allowing medical Marijuana.
Democrats win Senate seats in deep red North Dakota & West Virginia (Heidi Heitkamp & Joe Manchin.)
Swing state New Hampshire elects women to EVERY seat (Both Senate and both House seats).
The "Redefine Rape" guys, Todd Akin, Roscoe Bartlett & Richard Mourdock all lost... BIG. (side note: Akin & Bartlet were also both on the House Science Committee. No joke.)
Allen West is out (but not gracefully).
Alan Grayson is back in.
Most women in Senate EVER (18).
Missouri, Montana, West Virginia elected Democratic governors.
Obama becomes first Democrat since FDR to win two elections with more than 50% of the popular vote.
This race is far from decided and there is no rush to declare an outcome. Ensuring a fair and accurate counting of all ballots is of the utmost importance. There are still tens of thousands of absentee ballots to be counted in Palm Beach County and potential provisional ballots across the district.
Late last night Congressman West maintained a district-wide lead of nearly 2000 votes until the St. Lucie County Supervisor of Elections "recounted" thousands of early ballots. Following that "recount" Congressman West trailed by 2,400 votes. In addition, there were numerous other disturbing irregularities reported at polls across St. Lucie County including the doors to polling places being locked when the polls closed, in direct violation of Florida law, thereby preventing the public from witnessing the procedures used to tabulate results. The St. Lucie County Supervisor of Elections office clearly ignored proper rules and procedures, and the scene at the Supervisor's office last night could only be described as complete chaos. Given the hostility and demonstrated incompetence of the St. Lucie County Supervisor of Elections, we believe it is critical that a full hand recount of the ballots take place in St. Lucie County. We will continue to fight to ensure every vote is counted properly and fairly, and accordingly will pursue all legal means necessary."
Despite the fact that NOM was able to contribute a record amount to the campaigns (over $5.5 million), we were still heavily outspent, by a margin of at least four-to-one. We were fighting the entirety of the political establishment in most of the states, including sitting governors in three of the states who campaigned heavily for gay marriage. Our opponents and some in the media will attempt to portray the election results as a changing point in how Americans view gay marriage, but that is not the case. Americans remain strongly in favor of marriage as the union of one man and one woman. The election results reflect the political and funding advantages our opponents enjoyed in these very liberal states.
I firmly reject the spin surely to come that this result signals a fundamental shift in American opinion in support of gay marriage. It means that we very narrowly lost four difficult contests in four very deep blue states after being badly outspent. Despite the outcome, I am extremely grateful to all the donors, volunteers, staff, vendors and committee members who were part of our team. I am honored to have played a role in these campaigns to preserve marriage in America. It is an institution worth defending, and I look forward to continuing to play a role in this historic debate.
Galicia Malone's contractions were five minutes apart when she arrived at her polling place in Cook County, Illinois, this morning, but that didn't stop her from studying the ballot carefully and making sure her vote counted.
"I was just trying to read and breathe, read and breathe," the 21-year-old mom-to-be told WBBM Newsradio. "That's what I kept telling myself, 'Read and breathe, read and breathe'."
Pregnant with her first child, Malone went into labor four days early. Her water had already broken when she arrived at the aptly named New Life Celebration Church near Chicago around 8:30 a.m. Tuesday. But even hard labor wasn't enough to stop her from voting in her first presidential election.
"I never voted before so this made a major difference in my life," she told WBBM Newsradio. "And I wanted this to be a stepping-stone for my daughter."
She went into labor around 3 a.m., she said, but refused to go to the hospital until after the polls opened. As she left her polling place, she was holding her lower back and smiling widely. She drove herself to South Suburban Hospital.
"The pains are pretty steady, but my doctor says to think of it as getting ready to give life," she told My Fox Chicago. "This is my first baby, a girl, and I wanted to make a good impression. I want to have a story to tell her."
The results in Maine and Maryland broke a 32-state streak, dating to 1998, in which gay marriage had been rebuffed by every state that voted on it. They will become the seventh and eighth states to allow same-sex couples to marry.
In another gay-rights victory, Minnesota voters defeated a proposed constitutional amendment that would banned same-sex marriage in the state. Similar measures were approved in 30 other states, most recently in North Carolina in May.
Washington state also voted on a measure to legalize same-sex marriage, though results were not expected until Wednesday at the soonest.
One element of this 72 hours or so of compressed and undifferentiated time is that the news cycles — to the extent they exist any more in this new media landscape, which is barely — vanish. It’s one long blur. The candidates and key surrogates move into one breakneck series of appearances that won’t end until tomorrow night. Three days of blur.
Portman admitted that Hurricane Sandy "wasn't helpful" to the Romney campaign at a time when it had some momentum, but suggested televised images of frustrated storm victims in New York and New Jersey might have an impact on a small number of undecided voters this weekend.
"As usual in a major disaster like this, there are a lot of people who are concerned about the government not providing the assistance they deserve and need," Portman told CNN. "People are feeling like, 'Hey, where's FEMA? Where's the help that I was promised?'"
The directive, issued Friday, lays out the requirements for submitting a provisional ballot. The directive includes a form which puts the burden on the voter to correctly record the form of ID provided to election officials. Husted also instructed election officials that if the form is not filled out correctly by a voter, the ballot should not be counted.
According to a lawsuit filed by voting rights advocates, this is “contrary to a court decision on provisional ballots a week ago and contrary to statements made by attorneys for Husted at an Oct. 24 court hearing.”
Indeed, it also appears directly contrary to Ohio law. From the lawsuit:
Ohio Rev. Code § 3505.181(B)(6) provides that, once a voter casting a provisional ballot proffers identification, “the appropriate local election official shall record the type of identification provided, the social security number information, the fact that the affirmation was executed, or the fact that the individual declined to execute such an affirmation and include that information with the transmission of the ballot . . . .”
The law “ensures that any questions regarding a voter’s identification are resolved on the spot or, consistent with due process, the voter is informed that he or she needs to provide additional information to the board of elections. This protects the integrity of the voting process, and provides a reasonable opportunity to resolve deficiencies.”
Romney said that Obama “promised to be a post-partisan president, but he became the most partisan” and that his bitter relations with the House GOP could threaten the economy. As his chief example, he pointed to a crisis created entirely by his own party’s choice — Republican lawmakers’ ongoing threat to reject a debt ceiling increase. Economists warn that a failure to pass such a measure would have immediate and catastrophic consequences for the recovery.
“You know that if the President is re-elected, he will still be unable to work with the people in Congress,” Romney said. “He has ignored them, attacked them, blamed them. The debt ceiling will come up again, and shutdown and default will be threatened, chilling the economy.”
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has a response to Mitt Romney’s claim that he will “reach across the aisle” to work with Democrats in Congress, if he becomes president: Don’t bet on it.
“Mitt Romney’s fantasy that Senate Democrats will work with him to pass his 'severely conservative' agenda is laughable,” the Nevada Democrat said in a statement Friday morning. He went on to list a series of Republican-backed measures he said Democrats would never support.
President Obama has shown a firm commitment to using government to help foster growth. He has formed sensible budget policies that are not dedicated to protecting the powerful, and has worked to save the social safety net to protect the powerless. Mr. Obama has impressive achievements despite the implacable wall of refusal erected by Congressional Republicans so intent on stopping him that they risked pushing the nation into depression, held its credit rating hostage, and hobbled economic recovery.
The extraordinary fact of Mr. Obama’s 2008 election did not usher in a new post-racial era. In fact, the steady undercurrent of racism in national politics is truly disturbing. Mr. Obama, however, has reversed Bush administration policies that chipped away at minorities’ voting rights and has fought laws, like the ones in Arizona, that seek to turn undocumented immigrants into a class of criminals.
The military’s odious “don’t ask, don’t tell” rule was finally legislated out of existence, under the Obama administration’s leadership. There are still big hurdles to equality to be brought down, including the Defense of Marriage Act, the outrageous federal law that undermines the rights of gay men and lesbians, even in states that recognize those rights.
In my family, we watched the news every night. Not a single weekday went by where Peter Jennings didn’t explain the daily global happenings to us while we ate dinner. My mother insisted that we be informed, and I payed very close attention to everything. As I watched strings of impossibly grown up tie wearers discuss the events of the day, I began to develop the characters. Republicans were always trying to stop things, or to take things away from people, or say no to something. Democrats seemed to be trying to move us along, ineptly most of the time, but in earnest. They were trying to protect people, and fight for more rights rather than less, to watch out for the little guy, and no guys were littler than my family.
What’s worse than the Obama as is that some people really like it. We do live in a fallen, depraved world destined for the fire.
— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) October 25, 2012
Romans 1 teaches that when God turns a people loose the first sins they embrace are the sexual lusts of the flesh.
— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) October 26, 2012
For people with a healthy view of sexuality, it's an interesting and charming metaphor designed to turn out the youth vote. Nothing too remarkable.
But then, wingers aren't exactly healthy in the sexuality department.
▪ It’s a safe bet Obama wants this [reductions to benefits]. He’s been angling for something like Simpson-Bowles for years. In fact, Simpson-Bowles is his commission. (For more on why I say this with such certainty, click here.)
▪ Unless the Dems take the House, there are only two places this can be stopped — at the White House and in the Senate. The White House is likely — but not certainly — a lost cause (see above). In addition, Sen. Whitehouse said last month that if Obama doesn’t take a strong stand, many Dem senators won’t either. I take that as a request from Mr. Whitehouse, in public, for Obama to do what he fears Obama won’t do. More confirmation of the first point.
▪ In the Senate, Bernie Sanders has marshalled 29 Democrats who will “oppose including Social Security cuts … in any deficit reduction package.” He, they and 96 activist organizations are organizing a resistance to this lame duck catastrophe.
Thank you for contacting me regarding recent proposals to cut the Social Security trust fund. I appreciate hearing from you.
Social Security benefits provide more than 47 million Americans with financial stability during their retirement years. Millions of baby boomers will enter retirement over the next decade. We need to maintain our commitment to retirees by protecting the financial stability and integrity of the Social Security trust fund. I am troubled by recent proposals that would undermine the commitment Congress made.
The Social Security system is currently generating a surplus in tax revenues. However, its board of trustees projects that the trust fund will be depleted by 2041. This is a challenge, but not a crisis.
The last time we had a serious national debate about the solvency of Social Security was in the early 1980s, when Social Security truly faced an imminent crisis. Social Security would have run out of funds in July 1983. President Regan and then-Speaker Tip O’Neill, members of opposing political parties, came together and Congress passed bipartisan legislation in March 1983 that secured more than 50 years of solvency. That should be the model for how we proceed today.
I will continue to support and defend the important programs that have helped generations of Americans working through hard times. Although there are many difficult budgetary choices that lie ahead, we must ensure that we pursue a path of shared sacrifice, rather than one that unduly burdens hardworking families who are struggling.
Thank you again for contacting me. Please feel free to keep in touch.
Sincerely,
Richard J. Durbin
United States Senator
So why would so many Democrats, from Barack Obama to Dick Durbin, push a Social Security benefit reduction that would lower that cost of living adjustment even more? The " chained-CPI" is a terrible idea, a back-door cut to Social Security that would be both economically tragic for seniors and politically disastrous for anyone who supported it.
Social Security Works calculated that under the chained-CPI "the average earner at age 45 who begins receiving disability benefits would get a $333 benefit cut at age 55, and a nearly $700 cut by age 65. By age 75 ... that person faces a loss of over $1,000, an 8.1 percent cut." The President said of this change, "Most folks would hardly notice."
(You can get a sense of how much you'd lose under this proposal here, and then decide whether you'd notice.)
Some of these Dems have also suggested raising the retirement age even further than it's scheduled to be raised. That's a benefit cut, too.
Over the past few weeks we've seen a lot of employers telling their employees they need to vote for Mitt Romney if they expect to keep their jobs. The most recent stories come via Koch Industries, ASG Software, and Westgate Resorts.
It turns out they may have been listeners on this conversation, which took place on June 7, 2012. The NFIB (National Federation of Independent Business) held a conference call with Mitt Romney and members. At the end of the call, Mitt concluded his remarks with this:
I hope you make it very clear to your employees what you believe is in the best interest of your enterprise and therefore their job and their future in the upcoming elections. And whether you agree with me or you agree with President Obama, or whatever your political view, I hope — I hope you pass those along to your employees. Nothing illegal about you talking to your employees about what you believe is best for the business, because I think that will figure into their election decision, their voting decision and of course doing that with your family and your kids as well.
Westgate Resorts CEO David Siegel came under fire this week for sending an email to his employees demanding that they vote for Mitt Romney and threatening to downsize the company if they don't. But Siegel's email isn't an outlier. It fits a pattern of imperious CEOs attempting to marshal the support of their employees in pursuit of their own political interests.
Up w/ Chris Hayes has exclusively obtained an email sent by the CEO of a Florida-based software firm, ASG Software Solutions, to his over 1,000 employees asking them to vote for Romney for president and suggesting that their jobs may be at stake if Romney doesn't win. The subject line of the email, sent by ASG President and CEO Arthur Allen on Sept. 30, asks: "Will the US Presidential election directly impact your future jobs at ASG? Please read below."
Allen then suggests that the company may have to downsize, or be bought by a larger company, if President Obama is re-elected, and suggests that massive cuts and layoffs would ensue if that occurs.
House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) says that President Barack Obama's response to the attacks in Libya that killed a U.S. ambassador is like former President George W. Bush's widely-mocked 2003 "mission accomplished" speech which suggested that the U.S had won war in Iraq even though violence was only escalating in the country at the time.
Issa, who held hearings last week over the attacks, on Sunday told CBS host Bob Schieffer that he had determined that the Obama administration had downplayed the attacks in Benghazi because it wanted the appearance that the country had been stabilized.
But Schieffer noted that Republicans had pressured the State Department to cut security by voting to slash about $500 million from the embassy security budget over the past two years.
"Quite frankly, we believe that they didn't want the appearance of needing the security," the California Republican insisted. "The fact is, they are making a decision to not put security in because they don't want the presence of security."
The father of Christopher Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya who was killed in the attack in Benghazi last month, said his son’s death shouldn’t be politicized in the presidential campaign.
Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee, has criticized President Barack Obama for not providing adequate security in Libya, saying the administration has left the country exposed to a deadly terrorist attack.
The gunfire at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, had barely ceased when Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney seriously mischaracterized what had happened in a statement accusing President Barack Obama of "disgraceful" handling of violence there and at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo.
"The Obama administration's first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks," Romney said in a statement first emailed to reporters at 10:09 p.m. Eastern time, under the condition it not be published until midnight.
In fact, neither a statement by the U.S. Embassy in Cairo earlier in the day nor a later statement from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton offered sympathy for attackers. The statement from the Cairo Embassy had condemned anti-Muslim religious incitement before the embassy walls were breached. In her statement, issued minutes before Romney's, Clinton had offered the administration's first response to the violence in Libya, explicitly condemning the attack there and confirming the death of a State Department official.
Former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice ignores him entirely with a gracious statement, including thoughts of Ambassador Chris Stevens, "a wonderful officer and a terrific diplomat who was dedicated to the cause of freedom." Republican congressional leadership has also been muted and responsible in their responses, none of them—Paul Ryan included—even referencing Romney's action, or using the attacks as an opportunity to attack the administration. House Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor, even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell expressed their sympathy for the families and their resolve for unity, with McConnell saying, “We honor the Americans we lost in Libya and we will stand united in our response.”
Former Republican presidential nominee John McCain was actually quite classy.
Just watched an excellent and moving stmt by Sec. Clinton- just the right message and tone.
— John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) September 12, 2012
It’s worth noting that there’s one area these cuts don’t touch: Medicare benefits. The Affordable Care Act rolls back payment rates for hospitals and insurers. It does not, however, change the basket of benefits that patients have access to. And, as Ezra pointed out earlier today, the Ryan budget would keep these cuts in place.
In a statement, the Justice Department said "the burden of proof" couldn't be met to prosecute Goldman criminally based on claims made in an extensive report prepared by a U.S. Senate panel that investigated the financial crisis.After a yearlong investigation, the Justice Department said Thursday that it won't bring charges against Goldman Sachs Group Inc. or any of its employees for financial fraud related to the mortgage crisis.
"Based on the law and evidence as they exist at this time, there is not a viable basis to bring a criminal prosecution with respect to Goldman Sachs or its employees in regard to the allegations set forth in the report," the statement read.
The Justice Department reserved the right to bring charges in the future if new evidence emerges.
In a statement Thursday, Goldman said: "We are pleased that this matter is behind us."
In April 2011, the U.S. Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations published a scathing report on the financial crisis, highlighting Goldman as a culprit. Lawmakers accused the firm of breeding a greedy culture and running conflict-ridden businesses, and they said Goldman put its own interest ahead of clients.
Sen. Carl Levin, D., Mich., chairman of the Senate's subcommittee, said Goldman executives lied to Congress about the firm's bets against the housing market. The accusation triggered a Justice Department probe of possible perjury.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Levin's office didn't respond to a request for comment Thursday.
The report concluded that even as securities firms flooded the market with securitized mortgages and advised clients to buy them, firms privately used words like "crap" and "flying pig" to describe the financial instruments. The department's probe was launched when Goldman's reputation already had been battered by civil-fraud charges filed against the New York company by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC accused Goldman of fraud related to a mortgage-bond deal called Abacus 2007-AC1.
Goldman was accused of failing to inform investors that hedge-fund firm Paulson & Co. had helped choose underlying securities in the deal and was betting against it.
Goldman agreed to pay $550 million to end the SEC's civil-fraud suit. The company said marketing materials for the Abacus deal contained "incomplete information."For a change, the talking heads are right -- both sides do it. Update: It's Ryan, and the left-wing blogs -- even some of the not-so-left-wing blogs -- are creaming in their pants. Watch Obama's people fumble it.
