#2012 US Senate Elections

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jess Piper at The View from Rural Missouri:

I am not going to make you wonder what this essay is about — the extremism in the Missouri Republican party. This extremism is laser focused on women and girls. To demonstrate how extreme they have become, I only have to take you back a decade. Remember: Missouri is a testing ground for the rest of America. What they have done to us, is meant for you too. Do you remember Todd Akin? He was the Missouri Republican who won the nomination for US Senate, but was beaten soundly by Claire McCaskill in 2012. Do you remember why the race was tilted toward Claire during the last few weeks of the campaign?

During an interview in 2012 at a St. Louis television station, Todd Akin was asked by reporter Charles Jaco whether abortion should be legal for women who have been raped. Akin replied with this: “From what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare,” Akin said, referring to pregnancy resulting from rape. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” Akin also said he would prefer that punishment for rape be “focused on the rapist and not attacking the child." That did it. Those statements sealed the deal for so many voters in Missouri. Akin tried to walk them back and apologized. He even said he misspoke. It didn’t matter to Missouri voters — he paid for those comments by losing the race and becoming a sort of meme for extremism. That was 2012. Today, those statements likely wouldn’t lose a race or even raise many eyebrows in the GOP, especially not in Missouri. We have become nearly numb to the constant barrage of inaccurate, insensitive, and invasive line of comments and laws against women in this state.

[...] The horrifying reality for Missouri victims of sexual assault? Senate Republicans blocked attempts to add rape and incest exemptions to Missouri’s abortion ban. Amendments to legalize abortion in cases of rape or incest, added by Missouri Senate Democrats, were voted down by Missouri GOP lawmakers in February, 2024. [...]

Missouri has slowly been pushed to the edge of extremism. We are the frog in the pot. We have been looking around and trying to use reason to say, “this can’t be happening.” We wonder if these lawmakers are just making missteps — just a quote taken out of context or an off the cuff remark that they didn’t mean. Surely they don’t mean the things they say? No, they do. They mean the things they say. They prove it by the bills they propose and the bills they vote against. The water is boiling and still some of us sit and ponder. It’s past time to jump, friend. The best thing we can do is speak out about what we see and tell everyone we know what is happening in our state. One of the most courageous things we can do is to point out what the GOP is saying and doing and be loud about it. We warn others. We save ourselves by warning the country.

Jess Piper wrote in her Substack blog earlier this week the history of Missouri Republicans-- mostly men-- downplaying or excusing rape, sexual assault or other predatory behavior, such as the infamous late Rep. Todd Akin.

[mariacallous]

The list of Wisconsin Republicans endorsing the Democratic presidential ticket in November has added three high-profile names: Longtime conservative commentator Charlie Sykes, former lawmaker and judge David Deininger and onetime state Senate Majority Leader Dale Schultz.

The three went public just before the weekend in a Zoom call with reporters to declare their support for Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, and their opposition to the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump.

“It is a uniquely dangerous moment, and it’s a moment for us to set aside our differences,” said Sykes, explaining why supporting Harris was “not a difficult choice for me” even though he said he’s likely to disagree with many of the policies on her agenda.

“That’s not the point,” he said of those policy differences. “The point is this choice that America has to make — what kind of country we want to be.”

In backing Harris, the three added to the Democratic campaign’s concerted appeal across party and ideological lines to people who view Trump as a distinct, existential threat. All three declared that under Trump the Republican party has evolved far from the party with which they historically have aligned themselves.

“Unless or until the Trump era ends, that party will not regain its footing, and I think defeating him this year is a way to make sure the Republican Party can rebuild and get back to what has always been the party of Lincoln,” Deininger said.

Sykes has opposed Trump since before he first won the Republican nomination for president in 2016. He’s one of the founders of The Bulwark, a digital publication established in 2019 by anti-Trump conservatives.

Schultz left the state Senate midway through Scott Walker’s tenure as Wisconsin governor after voting against two of Walker’s signature pieces of legislation — a bill that stripped public employees of most of their union rights and another loosening mining regulations.

Deininger was among the former judges who served on the Government Accountability Board — a nonpartisan agency that for a few years served as Wisconsin’s elections and ethics watchdog.

After the board investigated Walker’s campaign for coordinating spending with outside groups in the 2012 recall election — at the time a violation of Wisconsin law — Republicans in the Legislature abolished the independent board in 2015 and changed the state’s campaign finance laws to permit coordination.

“When I was on the Government Accountability Board, our primary function was to protect and preserve the integrity of Wisconsin government and our elections,” Deininger said. “That’s the kind of leadership we need at the federal level, and sadly, it’s the opposite of what we saw from Donald Trump.”

Deininger didn’t equivocate in his criticism of the former president.

“Trump has lied repeatedly to the American public about just about everything, but probably the worst of all is his lies about the outcome and integrity of our elections,” he said, recalling that on Jan. 6, 2021, “Trump encouraged a violent mob to attack the Capitol to overturn the 2020 election.”

“The reality is a second Trump term would be far worse and far more dangerous,” he added.

A U.S. Navy veteran, Deininger also asserted that the president has unique responsibility for overseeing national security — and that he was “dismayed at some of the public comments, publicly reported comments, that former President Trump has made about veterans and military service.”

Schultz emphasized his belief in a bipartisan approach to governing and his faith that Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, would govern in a bipartisan manner. In contrast, he pointed to the destruction brought by Hurricane Helene to the American Southeast and lies spread by the GOP standard bearers in the storm’s aftermath.

Schultz also drew a contrast between Trump’s evocation of “a dystopian future” and “a candidate seeking the highest office in the land talking about the need to come together, joyfully, working on the problems that all of us face” — Harris.

“I myself want to cast my lot with those folks who are [optimistic about] our future, not who are hung up on some sort of Mad Max scene that they see as a future for our country,” Schultz said.

While echoing some of the same criticisms of Trump, Sykes focused on the party that once served as the political homeland for all three Wisconsin Republicans on the press call.

“I have been surprised and disillusioned by watching how many conservatives have gone along with Donald Trump — his lies, his insults, his kowtowing to dictators, his willingness to violate the law,” Sykes said. “One after another, Republicans have decided that winning or staying in power is more important than standing up for these values that used to be, I think, fundamental.”

He also noted the number of staff and appointees  from Trump’s four years in the White House “who are now saying that he is not fit to be returned to office,” including his former vice president, his former defense secretary and his former national security advisor. “There’s no historical parallel for this,” Sykes said.

Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, and former U.S. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, the Janesville Republican who served in Congress for two decades, have both publicly stated Trump should not be reelected but have declined to endorse  Harris.

Sykes professed his respect for them, but also said leaving the presidential line on the ballot empty or writing in a name — George Washington, Edmund Burke or Ronald Reagan — wasn’t a sufficient response, since it won’t prevent Trump from being reelected.

“The only two candidates who have a chance to win this election are Kamala Harris and Donald Trump,” Sykes said. “And by voting for Kamala Harris, I think that we draw the line and say that Donald Trump should never be allowed anywhere near power again.”

[meret118]

In 2008, a software developer in San Francisco named Curtis Yarvin, writing under a pseudonym, proposed a horrific solution for people he deemed “not productive”: “convert them into biodiesel, which can help power the Muni buses.”

Yarvin, a self-described reactionary and extremist who was 35 years old at the time, clarified that he was “just kidding.” But then he continued, “The trouble with the biodiesel solution is that no one would want to live in a city whose public transportation was fueled, even just partly, by the distilled remains of its late underclass. However, it helps us describe the problem we are trying to solve. Our goal, in short, is a humane alternative to genocide.”

He then concluded that the “best humane alternative to genocide” is to “virtualize” these people: Imprison them in “permanent solitary confinement” where, to avoid making them insane, they would be connected to an “immersive virtual-reality interface” so they could “experience a rich, fulfilling life in a completely imaginary world.”

Yarvin’s disturbing manifestos have earned him influential followers, chief among them: tech billionaire Peter Thiel and his onetime Silicon Valley protégé Senator J.D. Vance, whom the Republican Party just nominated to be Donald Trump’s vice president. If Trump wins the election, there is little doubt that Vance will bring Yarvin’s twisted techno-authoritarianism to the White House, and one can imagine—with horror—what a receptive would-be autocrat like Trump might do with those ideas.

Way back in 2012, in a speech on “How to Reboot the US Government,” he said, “If Americans want to change their government, they’re going to have to get over their dictator phobia.” He had also written favorably of slavery and white nationalists in the late 2000s (though he has stated that he is not a white nationalist himself).

Both Thiel and Vance are friends of Yarvin.

. . .

In 2016, Yarvin attended Thiel’s election night party in San Francisco where, according to Chafkin, champagne flowed once it became clear that Thiel’s investment in Donald Trump would pay off.

Since entering politics, Vance has publicly praised—and parroted—Yarvin’s ideas. 

. . .

When Vance ran for U.S. Senate in 2022, Thiel spent an unprecedented $15 million on the campaign and persuaded Trump to endorse him (Vance had previously compared Trump to Hitler). In 2024, Thiel led the charge to convince Trump to pick Vance as V.P.

. . .

Yarvin is the chief thinker behind an obscure but increasingly influential far-right neoreaction, or NRx, movement, that some call the “Dark Enlightenment.” Among other things, it openly promotes dictatorships as superior to democracies and views nations like the United States as outdated software systems. Yarvin seeks to reengineer governments by breaking them up into smaller entities called “patchworks,” which would be controlled by tech corporations.

More at the link.

------

Are you fucking kidding me?!! Why isn't this leading every news report? Is this well known, and I somehow just missed knowing about this yarvin sociopath? This needs to be exposed like project 2050 is!

It's like republicans are deliberately trying to see if they can find someone worse to put in the oval office each time - nixon, reagan, dumbya, trump, and eventually vance.

[whenweallvote]

On this day in 2011: Senator Mazie Hirono announced a bid for a U.S. Senate seat in Hawaii. 

Upon winning her election in 2012, she became the FIRST Asian-Pacific Islander woman — and only the second woman of color — ever elected to the U.S. Senate.

Join us in celebrating Senator Hirono’s milestones today! 🎉

[taylorscottbarnett]

Under Obama's two terms Democrats lost a net 13 Governorships and 816 state legislative seats.

As well as a net loss of 12 US Senate seats and 64 House seats since he was sworn in.

A staggering gutting of party-power. Including at one point every single legeslative chamber in the south, with Ky's House being among the last to fall

It was the most party losses down ballot of any president since Dwight Eisenhower.

Biden's 2024 presidential run is looking a lot more fragile than Obama's 2012 run.

National polls have Biden losing to Trump in pretty much every swing state.

Including a stunning average of +2.3 Trump lead in Pennsylvania and +5.7 in Nevada.

Yet, in Michigan, Trump is up only by +0.2.

Whats even stranger is the vote for control of the House is basically tied. (2020 saw Democrats hold a +3.1 advantage after all ballots were counted, and 2016 Republicans only held a mear +1.1 vote lead).

Trump leads Biden +4.7 in Arizona, yet the Dem Senate candidate is leading by +4 points.

Dems are running +4 in the Michigan Senate race.

Trump is + 5.7 in Nevada, but the US Senate race for Nevada has dems +6.

In Florida, an absolute bloodbath for dems for years now, Scott - a former Republican Gov no less, leads by just 2 points.

In Ruby-red Ohio Democrat Senator Brown is up by five.

Things like this do not happen in modern political races. They just don't.

Polling looks ready to predict Biden losing the WH but Democrats holding the Senate and taking the US House back -- suggesting an unparalleled level of vote-splitting and scores of Millennials and Gen-zers voting for Trump but Dems down ballot.

This might end up the strangest election year in decades.

[cazort]

Hey, in case people don't know it, abortion rights are on the ballot in Florida. There is a ballot initiative, Issue 4, and voting Yes protects abortion rights in the state constitution.

Please share this even if you don't live in Florida, so it can reach as many Floridians as possible. Don't just share on Tumblr, send it to friends of yours who live in Florida to make sure (1) they know about this, (2) they are registered to vote (Deadline is October 7th, 2024) (3) they are going to vote YES on this.

If you live in Florida, you can volunteer or even take a paid position (they are hiring) to help with on-the-ground organizing. They are going door-to-door to talk to and try to register as many voters as possible.

If you don't live in Florida, you can still donate to this organization, as long as you are a US Citizen.

This initiative is important for multiple reasons. It is highly likely to succeed; abortion-related initiatives have consistently come in in favor of abortion rights, often with surprisingly large margins, in "deep red" states such as Kansas (+18.32%) and Kentucky (+4.7%). Florida has slightly more "purple" politics than either of these states so the margin would probably be even bigger. And I think it goes without saying that we all agree that protecting abortion rights is important.

A second reason is that abortion ballot initiatives tend to result in huge increases in voter turnout, primarily from more women coming out to vote. These new voters (a) tend to keep voting once they vote for the first time (b) are more likely to vote democratic. Florida has tended to vote Republican in recent elections but it is still a "purple" state; Obama won in Florida in both 2008 and 2012, and in 2012 Florida elected a Democratic senator by a huge (+13%) margin. Not coincidentally, that election had high turnout (63.5%) whereas turnout was much lower (52.0%) in the 2018 election that elected a Republican by a razor-thin margin (0.12%) and similarly in the 2022 election (turnout even lower, about 49.35%) that elected a Republican by a much larger margin.

So this initiative could be the difference that not only protects abortion rights in Florida, but leads to Democrats winning both the presidency and Senate, and it may lay the foundations for them winning back the governorship, which is important because DeSantis has not only been highly damaging to Florida but has been a negative figure on the national stage.

[tomorrowusa]

Matt Gaetz, the MAGA Meryn Trant, is now out of the running for US Attorney General. Not that Pam Bondi is much better in terms of policy.

But Gaetz was not exactly the only problematic Trump nominee for office.

Trump has stated that he wishes to abolish the Department of Education. Perhaps to facilitate this, he's nominated a totally unqualified individual who looked the other way when 13 to 15 year old boys were being sexually exploited.

A recent lawsuit alleges Linda McMahon, who President-elect Donald Trump tapped to lead the Department of Education, knowingly enabled the sexual exploitation of children by a World Wrestling Entertainment(WWE) employee as early as the 1980s — allegations she denies. McMahon is the former CEO of the WWE, which she co-founded with her husband, Vince. As head of the WWE, Linda McMahon oversaw its transformation from a wrestling entertainment company into a publicly traded media empire. She stepped down in 2009 to run for Senate, but shelost in Connecticut in 2010 and 2012. As McMahon — who co-chairs Trump’s transition team — vies to be confirmed as Education secretary, a recent lawsuit raises questions about her care for children’s safety at the WWE. The suit alleges McMahon, her husband, the WWE and TKO Group Holdings, the league’s parent company, knowingly allowedemployeeMelvin Phillips Jr. to use his position as ringside announcer to sexually exploit children. The filingalleges Phillips would recruit children to work as “Ring Boys,” helping him set up and take down wrestling rings at WWE events. However, the job was a guise for sexually exploiting the children, which Phillips would do even in front of wrestlers and executives in the locker area, the lawsuit alleges. He also would often film his sexual abuse, according to the filing. The suit was filed in October in Baltimore County, Maryland, on behalf of five John Does, who say they were ages 13 to 15 when Phillips met and recruited them to work as “Ring Boys.” Each of them say they suffered mental and emotional abuse as a result of the alleged abuse.

These allegations are not exactly new.

Phillips’ alleged abuse at the WWE was reported by the New York Post as early as 1992. “It was common knowledge in the WWE — among the ring crew, wrestlers, and executives — that Phillips surrounded himself with a posse of underaged Ring Boys, including when he traveled across state lines and stayed in hotel rooms with the children,” the lawsuit alleges. The McMahons fired Phillips in 1988 after allegations about him sexually exploiting children continued to surface, according to the lawsuit. They “rehired him six weeks later on the condition that he ‘steer clear from kids,’” but he continued sexually exploiting young boys with the McMahons’ knowledge, the lawsuit alleges. “After decades of suffering in silence from their childhood trauma, these survivors come forward now to hold Defendants accountable for their conduct in allowing the systemic and pervasive abuse by Philips,” the lawsuit alleges.

The McMahons are rather typical Trump friends.

Allegations of sex trafficking and abuse have followed Vince McMahon for some time. In 2023, Vince McMahon paid a multimillion-dollar settlement to a former employee who accused him of rape, and he stepped down this year as executive chairman of TK Holdings following allegations of sexual assault and trafficking. He has denied the allegations. Most recently, Vince McMahon is a subject in a federal criminal investigation and a separate lawsuit in federal court in Connecticut. That lawsuit was put on hold this summer until early December. A criminal investigation around McMahon also exists in New York, though it doesn’t carry legal risk for Linda McMahon, who left the WWE over a decade ago, according to multiple sources familiar with the investigation.

[darkmaga-returns]

10 shocking stories the media buried today.

The Vigilant Fox

Nov 07, 2024

#10 - Joe Rogan raises SERIOUS questions about Biden’s “81 million votes” in 2020.

“Look at the difference in how many people voted for Biden in 2020. It's unprecedented! It's way higher than any other time since 2012.”

“Look at where the number is. It's all like 65 million [votes for Dems in 2012, 2016, and 2024]. So that is all the same every f—king time except 2020. In 2020, it goes way the f—k up.”

(See 9 More Revealing Stories Below)

#9 - Chris Cuomo Shuts Down Maxine Waters’ Attempt to Blame “Racism” for Kamala’s Crushing Defeat

WATERS: “Trump had a following, basically led by whites. White males voted in big numbers.”

CUOMO: “To me, it seemed to be that the Democrats thought ‘Trump stinks’ is enough. And Senator Bernie Sanders said something that reminded me of you ... ‘The Democratic Party used to be: We are all about doing for working people. That's what we do.’ ... You are now seen as not that, even by Bernie Sanders.”

Join 100K+ Substack readers and 1.3 million 𝕏 users who follow the work of Vigilant Fox. Subscribe to Vigilant News for exclusive stories you won’t find anywhere else.Subscribe

#8 - MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle sends a chilling message, warning that Americans have “f—ked around” and are now about to “find out.”

“What will the future hold now that America has just decided that we’re going to f—k around and find out?”

This disturbing comment came moments after Ruhle complained about @ElonMusk buying Twitter to make it a “propaganda machine.”

“We have now let misinformation become the accepted information. It is washed over us. Elon Musk buys Twitter and then uses it almost exclusively to be a propaganda machine. And we’ve accepted it,” Ruhle lamented.

[ridenwithbiden]

THE DAILY BEAST

"I didn’t want to write this column, I really didn’t.

Since Thursday night I have vacillated between borderline obsession (monitoring every tweet, reading every story, phone-banking donors, reporters, and insiders) and trying to ignore the democratic world that has abruptly and rapidly come crumbling down around us.

But I was always taught that in life you cannot solve a problem you are unwilling to admit.

The major question commanding the conversation is both naive and disingenuous: How did we–the Democratic party–at a time when there is already a crisis of confidence and trust in basic democratic institutions, both affirm that skepticism for the world to see and, potentially, cost ourselves the election all in 90 minutes?

To answer this honestly, a lot of people have a lot to own up to. So first, let’s make our way into the collective confessional booth and have a chat.

First there is the “they” who concealed the truth about the president’s apparent condition. That “they” is comprised of a long and distinguished list, starting with the first family, top White House and Biden campaign staff, and likely a notable list of Democratic senators, Congress members and Cabinet officials.

They’ve been doing it for months, if not well over a year. And don’t kid yourselves, there is a lot of anger from the rank and file over it.

Second, there is the “they” who gaslit us and enabled the situation. That “they” would be the fourth estate, who I’d like to take a minute to congratulate for confirming Trump’s infamous 2016 “fake news” mantra. It’s possible the American public, whose faith in the news was already at an-all time low, will never fully recover from this. So for all of the “reporters” who appear to have found the light switch in the last few days: too little, too late. No one will ever believe that the mainstream media didn’t know this story was there. They will believe that they made a conscious decision not to report it.

Jill Abramson, former executive editor of The New York Times, embodied the issue herself in a head-spinning statement that at first blush appeared to be taking both the White House and the media to task for a massive cover-up and failure to do their jobs respectively, but in doing so outed herself and her former colleagues as complicit when she said the quiet part out loud to Semafor: “I worry that too many journalists didn’t try to get the story because they did not want to be accused of helping elect Trump. I get that…”

“I get that?” Really? You do? Well, do you get why the American public doesn’t trust the news, and believes they’re partisan? Do you get that, too?

Breaking News Alert: The media’s job is not to put its thumb on the scale—no matter their personal politics or that of their editorial boards.

Compounding the problem, ever since Thursday night’s slow-motion car crash, “they”—in this case, the Biden campaign and its inner circle—have committed a series of missteps that could best be described as professional malpractice. They believed the jaw-dropping revelations around the debate could be dismissed as “one bad night” compared to “Obama/Romney 2012” and papered over with a few scripted appearances with the aid of a teleprompter. No press questions would be answered, no unfriendly media allowed.

And then the Bidens departed for Camp David.

Within hours, a story in the New York Times painted the picture of the first family clinging to the East Wing and blaming White House staff for the debate catastrophe.

The article went further, saying that—in light of the staff’s poor performance—the family would be taking on more of an active role. Everything would be fine because the grandkids were going to start volunteering on the campaign. The president, it stated, is leaning on Hunter Biden for advice, leaving many Americans to question the president's judgment as much as they had been questioning his mental acuity.

Monday, straight from the department of horrific timing, Jill Biden, appearing to do her best Claire Underwood impression, graced the cover of Vogue, leaving top Democratic donors and operatives nationwide wide-eyed, mouths fully agape.

And amidst the greatest crisis to face the party in modern political history, the party elders have been all but absent. Neither Bill Clinton nor Barack Obama appear to be taking a leading role in ushering their successor to his come-to-Jesus moment, nor are they serving as the public face of his defense, their support muted and confined to social media.

With the Bidens dug in and the party’s institutional forces appearing to apprehensively tow the line, the only thing that could change the dynamic was numbers.

And then… polling started to trickle in.

CBS was the first significant survey out of the gate: 72 percent of Americans no longer believe the president has the mental and cognitive health to serve as president. A New Hampshire one put Trump up 2—a 12 point swing since December. Harvard/Harris put Trump up nationwide by 6 points—results that were mirrored by CNN. Leaked internal Democratic polling put Biden behind in all seven battleground states.

Suddenly elected Democrats—who were split between publicly falling in line and privately fuming—have begun to openly call for the president to leave the ticket.

So now what? Where do we go? Identify the solution. Or in this case choose between two less than ideal, realistic options.

After days of fantasy football-like jockeying, yelling out good-on-paper names that are largely unknown, untested and unvetted nationally–some of whom are not the least bit interested (Michelle Obama), others who could turn the next four months into a referendum on the state of San Francisco (Gavin Newsom)—let’s let a dose of reality set in.

Campaign finance laws don’t allow for Biden/Harris funds to be transferred to a brand new set of knighted candidates. While another duo could arguably energize the donor class, no one in their right mind would flush $240 million down the drain and start from scratch. That, this week’s polling boomlet putting Kamala as the party’s best shot to contend with Trump, and the already complicated politics of attempting to side-step the nation’s first-ever Black female VP, put to bed the question of who the party’s nominee—if it is not Joe Biden—would be.

The only realistic paths forward are either 1.) President Biden remains the nominee, and in turn—absent a seismic governmental or political event in his favor (which could happen)—Trump likely wins in November;

Or 2.) Historically unpopular Kamala Harris takes the party’s reins. In the latter scenario Harris could choose Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro as her VP, putting the crucial swing state back squarely in play, hope that the historic nature of her candidacy energizes the backbone of the party, and give it a shot.

Neither is far from a sure thing. But we have reached the fork in the proverbial road.

And our deadline is not the convention. Thanks to an inconvenient quirk in Ohio’s election law, presidential tickets must be certified by Aug. 7, meaning the Democratic party has 35 days to make a choice.

Knowing the existential threat that a second Trump presidency would present compounds the recklessness and culpability of everyone involved. And there isn’t another minute to waste.

Tick. Tock."

The Daily Beast

[keep-both-eyes-on-trump]

Trump Watch #4

Trump has appointed Florida Representative Matt Gaetz as attorney general in a decision yesterday that is so unpopular it deserves its own section. Gaetz is a fierce loyalist to Trump and has caused waves among his own party in the House in the past. 

His nomination for attorney general means that he will be taking the helm of a department that until 2023 was investigating him for sex trafficking offenses; ultimately no charges were brought against him. 

In 2021 the House Ethics Committee began an investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct, illicit drug use, acceptance of bribes, and seeking to obstruct government investigations. Gaetz denied all allegations. As recently as June 2024 they were again investigating after the DOJ closed its own investigation with Gaetz calling the investigations “frivolous.” His resignation from the House on Wednesday means that the House Ethics Committee’s ongoing investigation into Gaetz for alleged child sex trafficking will end without a report. 

Before his nomination Gaetz apparently wrote this on Twitter (now known as X), “We ought to have a full court press against this WEAPONIZED government that has been turned against our people. And if that means ABOLISHING every one of the three letter agencies, from the FBI to the ATF, I’m ready to get going!” 

The post no longer exists, and as attorney general he would have oversight over both agencies. 

He will likely have a hard road to confirmation in the Senate. Most Republicans have declined to give direct answers as to whether or not they will support Gaetz as Trump’s pick for attorney general. However, the GOP will have a 53 seat majority and be able to rely on Vance to break any ties allowing for a handful of defections to still confirm Gaetz. 

In other news, it is confirmed Trump has selected Sen. Marco Rubio as secretary of state. 

He has also selected Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence.

Gabbard is a four-term congresswoman, 2020 presidential candidate, and New York Times best selling author. She is also a veteran with multiple deployments to the Middle East and Africa. 

She is a former democratic congresswoman from Hawaii and first Hindu elected to the House of Representatives in 2012.

She has criticized President Biden’s support of Ukraine. 

She holds anti-LGBTQ+ views.

The Watcher

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Emily Singer at Daily Kos:

Montana Republican Senate nominee Tim Sheehy appears to have been caught in yet another lie about his military service. NBC News reported on Thursday that despite Sheehy claiming to have been discharged from his service in the military because he was declared medically unfit to serve, his discharge records say Sheehy voluntarily resigned and did not cite any medical conditions. 

[...]

This is the latest false claim Sheehy appears to have made about his time as a Navy SEAL, service he has touted on the campaign trail in his quest to unseat Democratic Sen. Jon Tester. In April, The Washington Post reported a discrepancy in a story Sheehy told about being shot in the arm. On the campaign trail, Sheehy said he was shot in the arm while serving in Afghanistan in 2012. However, in October 2015, Sheehy went to the emergency room after a trip to Glacier National Park, where he reported having a gunshot wound in his arm. He told a park ranger that he had shot himself in the arm in the park by accident, and was fined $525 for illegally discharging a weapon in a national park. He later said he purposefully lied to the ranger about the gunshot wound because he hadn’t reported being shot in the arm to the military. He said he didn’t report it to the military at the time because the wound may have been from friendly fire and he didn’t want anyone in his unit to get in trouble.

[...] Questions about his military service are not the only scandal Sheehy has faced during the election. Sheehy was hit by a lawsuit in April from former employees of his aerial firefighting company of defrauding them out of millions of dollars.  Sheehy has also been slammed by Native American groups in the state after he used racist stereotypes in talking about the Native population in the state. At a fundraiser in November 2023, Sheehy talked about going cattle branding on Montana’s Crow Reservation, and said it’s “a great way to bond with all the Indians out there while they’re drunk at 8 AM.” Polls show Sheehy, a multimillionaire Minnesota transplant, leading Tester in the race, which could determine control of the Senate. Tester has an uphill battle to overcome the likely double-digit win former President Donald Trump will pull off in the state, which would require Tester to win over a number of GOP voters.

GOP Montana Senate nominee Tim Sheehy caught in yet another lie about his military service record.

This should be disqualifying, but sadly, he’ll defeat incumbent Jon Tester (D) and flip this seat (and likely the Senate) red.

[deadpresidents]

My PoliSci professor was telling us that more people vote for Republicans in national elections than Democrats because the country is more conservative than people admit out loud. Do you agree with him?

For your sake and for the educational well-being of you and your classmates, I sincerely hope that your professor misspoke or that you misunderstood him. Because if that's what he thinks, he's flat-out factually incorrect and it's not the type of thing that a Political Science professor should think, let alone teach.

To be sure, I do believe that phenomena like the Bradley Effect and Silent Majority are real and have impacted elections in the past. And of course there are people in our lives who lie about who they voted for because they are ashamed of who they actually supported, or because they know we'll be disappointed to learn they voted for someone like Donald Trump or Marjorie Taylor Greene. But if your professor said that Republicans get more votes than Democrats in national elections, he's just objectively wrong unless he's talking about the post-Civil War Presidential elections of the late-19th Century.

National elections are Presidential elections. We're not talking about Senate or House races; those are state and local elections. It's very easy to look up the results of those national elections, and it's clear that more people aren't voting for Republicans than Democrats in most of those elections.

In the past 33 years, only ONE Republican has won the popular vote in a Presidential election (George W. Bush in 2004). There have been eight Presidential elections since 1990, and the Democratic nominees have won the popular vote in seven of those elections. We'll spell that out again very simply for your professor: since 1990, the Democratic nominees have received more votes than the Republican nominees on Election Day in every single Presidential election except for 2004. Just show your professor this Popular Vote Scoreboard if he insists that Republicans usually get more votes than Democrats in Presidential elections:

•1992: Bill Clinton (D) 43%, George H.W. Bush (R) 37.4%, Ross Perot (Ind.) 18.9% •1996: Bill Clinton (D) 49.2%, Bob Dole (R) 40.7%, Ross Perot (Reform) 8.4% •2000: Al Gore (D) 48.4%, George W. Bush (R) 47.9% •2004: George W. Bush (R) 50.7%, John Kerry (D) 48.3% •2008: Barack Obama (D) 52.9%, John McCain (R) 45.7% •2012: Barack Obama (D) 51.1%, Mitt Romney (R) 47.2% •2016: Hillary Clinton (D) 48.2%, Donald Trump (R) 46.2% •2020: Joe Biden (D) 51.3%, Donald Trump (R) 46.9%

[dankusner]

We Recommend — Allred for U.S. Senate

In the recent debate between Republican Sen. Ted Cruz and his Democratic challenger, U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, Cruz told us to pay attention not to Allred’s words but to his actions.

It is generally good advice, and we have heeded it by carefully examining both men’s records in public office, from their votes to their legislation.

But Cruz’s advice can only take us so far.

Because words do matter, and they matter especially in the business of leadership.

So we looked not only at their actions but also listened to their words, and, after doing so, we recommend voters cast their ballots for Allred in the coming election.

The three-term congressman from Dallas has demonstrated over time that both the words and action of bipartisanship matter to him.

There are areas where we disagree with Allred, and there are areas where we are more aligned with Cruz.

For example, we think Democrats, including Allred, were far too late in recognizing that our porous southern border represents a destabilizing crisis.

And Allred’s description of a proposed border wall as “racist” was a serious error in judgment when physical barriers have long been integral to border security, as Allred now acknowledges.

But Cruz had the opportunity to support a step toward a solution with the bipartisan Lankford-Sinema bill that would have provided massive resources for border security.

He refused, calling the bill a “steaming pile of crap.”

Allred voted in favor of it, recognizing it as an imperfect but necessary step forward.

Similarly, Cruz could have supported the bipartisan CHIPs and Science Act to boost onshore microchip production.

Building chips here is vital to American security because Taiwan, where most chips are produced, is vulnerable to Chinese aggression.

But on this important matter, Cruz voted no.

Allred voted yes.

Cruz, 53, could have supported the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to help rebuild our country.

Sixteen Republican senators joined in supporting that act.

But Cruz refused.

In the House, Allred joined with Republicans and Democrats in voting yes.

Cruz could have supported the peaceful transfer of power in the 2020 presidential election.

He instead was the first senator to rise in objection to certifying the electoral vote and one of just six to do so.

His actions were a catalyst for what became one of the worst days in our nation’s history.

Yes, you can find examples of Cruz sponsoring bipartisan bills.

But these are often peripheral matters.

On the items of crucial importance to our country, he digs in in the most partisan mode possible, making no room for common ground.

Meanwhile, the Common Ground Committee has twice named Allred, 41, the most bipartisan member of Congress.

And the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has singled him out for bipartisan work.

Cruz has long embraced a politics of division.

His us-against-them rhetoric has defined his political career since at least 2012.

Members of his own party, from Lindsey Graham to John Boehner, have been open about their low opinion of him.

Allred, meanwhile, speaks and acts in ways that demonstrate he is willing to treat differences as things we overcome, rather than root in.

And on the most important issues we face, he is willing to compromise in the name of solutions and moving forward together.

For that reason, we think he is the better choice.

[bedlamsbard]

I for one would LOVE to hear about That Man's opinion on the Sokovia Accords, and any other blends of the real world into marvelverse as you have time and space for

Donald Trump is the horrifying combination of anti-Accords, anti-Captain America, and anti-Iron Man. I have THOUGHTS on this.

Okay, so CACW takes place in 2016, yes? which was a horrifying enough election year IRL, but in the Marvel Cinematic Universe we're looking at a scenario where I have postulated that Matthew Ellis is the Democratic candidate. Ellis was elected in 2012 after Barack Obama dropped out of the 2012 race post-Battle of New York as a result of pressure from the World Security Council; my best estimate is that Ellis takes Joe Biden's place as Obama's vice president in the 2008 election (apologies to our Irish Catholic granddad, we can probably safely assume he's still a senator in this AU) and coasts to electoral victory on a wave of post-BONY patriotism. (see my hard-hitting investigative journalism on who was president during the Battle of New York. George W. Bush was president during the events of IM1, we can assume that all real world presidents prior to Ellis served as usual, a.k.a. FDR was president during CATFA, Bill Clinton was president during Captain Marvel and the BW prologue -- actually, we know Clinton was president, because we see him in the BW credits, same with a few others.)

For better or worse -- worse, as it turns out -- Ellis's administration becomes closely linked to Tony Stark and James Rhodes, since Tony and Rhodey very publicly save his life during the events of IM3 and are responsible for his VP (Rodriguez, no first name that I'm aware of) being arrested for treason and probably other nasty stuff. Four months after that, the events of CATWS go down, and while Ellis is quoted in Steve's Smithsonian exhibit with the "Welcome Back" wall bannerand thus they presumably met, Steve is not closely associated with Matthew Ellis in the same way that Tony Stark is. Steve is also closely associated with a major blow to the American intelligence apparatus, the deaths of most of the World Security Council, the destruction of SHIELD, the "death" of Nick Fury, the disgrace and death of Alexander Pierce, and the arrests of a number of major American politicians, including Senator Stern of Pennsylvania. We know from CATWS that Ellis himself was a target of Project Insight; I have also postulated that the Hydra reveal had a major effects on his administration, including either the arrest or the resignation of his original Secretary of State. Thaddeus Ross got the SecState position not because he was Ellis's original pick, but because post-CATWS (or possibly post-AoU), he was able to leverage his previous experience with the Hulk and other recipients of the super soldier serum to be politically useful.

Ellis has to be in favor of the Sokovia Accords because his SecState is running the show -- in theory the Accords will be administered by a UN panel, in actual practice, as we see in CACW and BW, the intent is for either the American SecState in general or Thaddeus Ross specifically to have sole control over the Avengers. Less than ideal by anyone's standards. Pre-Accords, no one knows how this is going to shake out.

Let's go back to how Donald Trump hates Steve Rogers, like, so much. The feeling is mutual. I'm pretty sure Trump personally knew, or at least met, Tony Stark pre-Iron Man, because they would have been in some of the same social circles: those personalities are going to clash. That's not going to go over well. Trump probably made overtures to Steve because CAPTAIN AMERICA! we love America! what's more great for America than the Greatest Generation! only uh. it's Steve. and Trump pre- (and post-) 2016 is everything Steve Rogers hates. sure, he's a great piece of American propaganda, but he grew up as a poor second generation immigrant son of a single mother with significant health issues during the Great Depression. that didn't go away when he got the serum and it certainly didn't go away when he got out of the ice! so Steve probably rebuffed the initial overtures politely, but he did rebuff them, and Trump, hmm, doesn't handle that sort of thing real well. so then a big part of That Man's campaign turned into the "fuck Captain America" tour with a side of "fuck the Avengers," playing heavily into the damage done during the events of Phase 1 and Phase 2.

Which Ellis's campaign was probably also doing, but more circumspectly because Matthew Ellis is an actual politician and he's politically linked to two of the ten Avengers (Tony and Rhodey); Tony's also the one with the most obvious "pull." Steve's got some but Steve doesn't actually want to use it.

So on the one hand, if Ellis is pro-Avengers and pro-Accords, but in a "they should be controlled but we need them" sort of way, then his main opponent is going to not be in favor of either. In 2016 Trump does want the Avengers controlled (so he can have personal pull over the two Avengers he hates the most, Tony and Steve; he's probably also not fond of many of the others! like, Natasha and Wanda are both women and immigrants...). But he doesn't want them controlled by a UN panel, he wants them controlled by the United States of America. You don't let THE UNITED NATIONS give orders to CAPTAIN AMERICA. The Avengers are mostly made up of American citizens, they include some fine pieces of American engineering; this is America's business. So that's his focus on the Accords leading up to CACW.

CACW itself is a political disaster for Matthew Ellis and almost certainly flipped the election for him -- it goes so horrifically badly for him even if he got the "victory" of the Accords passing that there's basically no way to recover from it, though presumably he tried in the months between May and November 2016. The events of BW and the Raft breakout during those months put the nail in the coffin of Ellis's reelection campaign. Trump spends that time beating Ellis's failure to control the Avengers into the ground, along with personal insults about Tony's incompetence as a superhero and Steve's disloyalty as an American, etc. etc., along with all the other stuff from his 2016 campaign. Absolute disaster for everyone on every level.

(Ross manages to skate through into Trump's administration -- since we know he's there in IW in 2018; I think he's addressed as "Mr. Secretary" there but can't check rn -- because he's a slippery son of a bitch and probably manages to parlay his Hulk experience, his hardheadedness in going after Natasha Romanoff, and tbh probably the fact that his nickname is Thunderbolt Ross into a cabinet position. (We've all heard the speculation that Jim Mattis got the real world SecDef position because his nickname is Mad Dog Mattis, right?) It's possible that in IW he's no longer SecState and is in fact running that UN panel, but I think that table of people we see has U.S. military uniforms at it and Rhodey specifically refers to potentially being court-martialed.)

presumably there are no Avengers-level disasters between 2016 and 2018 (we know the events of Spider-Man Homecoming and Ant-Man and the Wasp take place then, but they're not "call the team out" big), which is probably the only thing that keeps the whole disaster from going up in flames before then. the fact that no one can catch Steve or the other rogue Avengers must be driving That Man crazy and he probably went on some vicious Twitter rants about that.

and then, in my heart of hearts, he gets snapped in 2018.

I am sorry for making you think about Donald Trump's political views but at least they aren't his actual real world ones (horrifying).

[qnewsau]

Sarah McBride becomes the first out transgender person elected to US Congress

New Post has been published on https://qnews.com.au/sarah-mcbride-becomes-the-first-out-transgender-person-elected-to-us-congress/

Sarah McBride becomes the first out transgender person elected to US Congress

Sarah McBride has become the first openly transgender person elected to Congress.

McBride, a Democrat, has defeated Republican John Whalen III, taking 57.8 percent of the vote with 95 percent of the vote in.

“Tonight is a testament to Delawareans that here in our state of neighbours, we judge candidates based on their ideas and not their identities,” McBride said.

Kelley Robinson, the president of the Human Rights Campaign, the US’ largest LGBTQIA+ advocacy organisation, described McBride’s win as “a landmark achievement on the march toward equality.”

“This historic victory reflects not only increasing acceptance of transgender people in our society, ushered in by the courage of visible leaders like Sarah, but also her dogged work in demonstrating that she is an effective lawmaker who will deliver real results,” Robinson said in a statement, adding that HRC is proud to see McBride, who previously was the organisation’s national press secretary, “reshaping the halls of Congress.”

  View this post on Instagram

  A post shared by Sarah McBride (@sarahemcbride)

McBride is no stranger to making history. She initially made headlines in April 2012 when she came out as trans in American University’s student newspaper at the end of her term as the student body president.

The same year, she became the first out trans woman to work in the White House when she interned with the Obama administration.

Then, in 2016, she became the first trans person to speak at a major political convention when she gave a speech at the Democratic National Convention.

In 2020 she became the country’s first openly trans state senator.

US election results are expected to take a number of days, as a close race between Harris and Trump comes down to key swing states.

For the latest LGBTIQA+ Sister Girl and Brother Boy news, entertainment, community stories in Australia, visit qnews.com.au. Check out our latest magazines or find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

[cherryblossomshadow]

North Carolina—and Iowa?

by Mary L. Trump

Excerpts:

On Saturday night, Ann Selzer, a pollster with a stellar reputation who specializes in the state [of Iowa], released a poll that has Kamala Harris up by 3 points.

Here is the history of Selzer’s polls since 2012. The actual election results are in parentheses:

2022 Senate: R+12 (R+12)

2020 President: R+7 (R+8)

2020 Senate: R+4 (R+7)

2018 Governor: D+2 (R+3)

2016 President: R+7 (R+9)

2014 Senate: R+7 (R+8)

2012 President: D+5 (D+6)

The result shocked the political world. It also reminded us that the Supreme Court’s Dobb’s decision continues to have serious electoral consequences for the party that is determined to turn women into second-class citizens.

Iowa has one of the most restrictive abortion bans in the country. Beyond that, the state has been losing OB-GYNs since before Roe v Wade was overturned. And, in the wake of the decision, it’s been losing medical providers of all specialties.

.

In response to Selzer’s poll, Nate Silver, another pollster, that it was “incredibly gutsy to release this poll.”

Cohn recently admitted that “it is much safer, whether in terms of literal self-interest or purely psychologically, to find a close race than to gamble on a clear Harris victory.”

“When their results come in very blue, they don’t believe it,” Cohn wrote. “And frankly, I share that feeling: If our final Pennsylvania poll comes in at Harris +7, why would I believe it? As a result, pollsters are more willing to take steps to produce more Republican-leaning results.”

These comments are staggering:

Cohn and Silver see a close race because they want to see a close race.

This morning, The New York Times ceded the most valuable real estate on its front page to Nate Cohn, and ran his piece with this headline:

“Some Surprises in Last Battleground Polls, but Still a Deadlock”

And so it goes.