Am I the only one who is so partisan that I don't like visiting Republican websites for fear of giving them just a tiny bit of ad revenue?
Sweet it is, and it's not like I'm going to click on an ad.
If you intend to have a formal wedding, this outfit would be lovely.
1:Fuck no, and yu can't have my Carolina Dingoes, who were so good today we had to remind the 8-yr-old to ask before petting strange dogs, Over and ower, mama asked me to tell the thr kid to ckeck before petting, for safety's sake. Poll-watchers, the dogs were, at the school, I told the straight dude, but he asked me if I voted, yes and malfeasance hardly matters in Texas, when liberals are Martians and well-behaved dogs.
Me eyes still focus, mostly. Fuck the lady, broke, broken tooth and week in Phoenix. I think I need some music.
Does Jonah Goldberg really believe that "our enemies overseas [are] no doubt high-fiving as we speak"?
That's hilarious.
Don't you know that high-fives are like the Super-Secret Terrorist Handshake?
1: You might enjoy the Shorter Versions here.
1) How happy am I that I got off my ass and submitted a Virginia absentee ballot? SO HAPPY.
2) Six months ago, I never would have believed we'd take back the House and would spend Election Night (and the days after, it seems) wondering if we might have a chance of taking the Senate. Even until a few months ago, I really expected Election Night to be a nail-biter over whether the GOP would increase their numbers to a fillibuster-proof margin. So WOOO!
The link in 11 is awesome
FUNGUS IN THERE TOES
makes me fucking crack up.
Powerline: "George Allen...down to the wire in a race that shouldn't have been this close."
Huh? Does he mean that Allen should have won it handily, or does he agree with us?
Good morning world! Good morning sunshine!
My only question: does this mean we have to take back all the nasty things we said about Republicans rigging the system and stealing elections?
But it is far from a wipe-out, and if you had told me in 1986 that 20 years later there would be a Republican president facing a 20 seat Democratic majority in the House and a two seat Democratic majority in the Senate --and that the Soviet Union had collapsed-- I'd have cheered long and loud.
Interesting priorities there.
I have the worst luck ever. I played two cards, more than half the boxes checked on each, and I still don't have a bingo. Bradrocket kicked my ass and I suggested the game to him in the first place.
As soon as they call Tester, though, I've got it.
Should Santorum run for President, or should he be appointed to the Supreme Court? That is the question.
Oddly, the Hinderaker guys didn't say anything about Klobuchar and Ellison, two hyper-liberals elected in their home state of Minnesota.
19- What narrow-minded thinkers. He should do both, of course.
Like Becks, I am sooo happy I sent in my absentee ballot for Virginia two weeks ago.
Emerson, the Powerline guys have been giving themselves the hives about Ellison over the course of the whole campaign. Give it time.
does this mean we have to take back all the nasty things we said about Republicans rigging the system and stealing elections?
Well, from over here it looks like it means that in a fair election you'd have picked up 50 seats in the House and 8 in the Senate.
I'm thinking of starting a small consulting firm helping recruit teenage dhimmi girls for the harems of the al Qaeda sheikhs. A lot of Americans are going to want to ingratiate themselves with our new rulers ahead of the trend, and as a bonus parents can save their little girls from the ninth-grade cesspool of Godlessness, drugs and immorality. Keith Ellison (who effectively controls the US government at this point) seems to be ignoring my emails, though.
Fox News: "I'm not sure anyone would call this a mandate"
And thus the channel is changed.
I'm loving the 'OBL won the election!' Hey, fuckers, maybe if you caught the guy instead of starting a stupid war in Iraq, he wouldn't be here to.. wait, now... vote Democr.... no, no... report the good news.. oh wait..... mind-melting...
My favorite so far: Hewitt: "Senator Santorum is now available for a seat on the SCOTUS should one become available."
K-Lo nominated him for Secretary of Defense last night.
Yes, because we need that clown to defend against the man-raping dogs.
19 - The fact that Ellison is both African-American and a Muslim suggests that the Freeper worldview could potentially converge on one man, as soon as he becomes an atheistic sodomite in favor of socialized medicine. You can do it, Keith!
My only question: does this mean we have to take back all the nasty things we said about Republicans rigging the system and stealing elections?
No, there were still a couple elections close enough that they were able to be stolen. Tammy Duckworth running to replace Henry Hyde, for example.
I love that Cala likes Santorum almost as much as I do.
At some other blog the wife of mysterious husband X posted a hilarious post diving into Hugh Hewitt's comment section. Comedy gold.
29: So is Ellison the True Gayatollah?
Well, from over here it looks like it means that in a fair election you'd have picked up 50 seats in the House and 8 in the Senate.
For instance, the exit polls in Virginia projected an 8-point victory.
This morning I think "You lost. Get over it." are the five sweetest words in the English language.
Shorter K-Lo: "As badly as we've fucked things up, we're lucky we aren't all hanging from trees."
I, for one, welcome our dog-raping overlords and look forward to my mandatory abortion.
(Sorry, couldn't resist.)
29: So is Ellison the True Gayatollah?
When the true Gayatollah comes, he will run for President while still a member of the Nation of Islam, and he will win. This is just a trial run by a scout.
Actually, I truly love this Hewitt statement:
we didn’t lose because our countrymen suddenly misplaced the virtues that make America great. It is a distinctly liberal trait to blame “the people” when they don’t vote as one would dictate. I’ll brook none of that from our side.
Who the fuck talks like that?
Oh, that's right. A man with a horny great dane's cock up his ass. Silly me.
Oh, also? DE, I am *totally* stealing that dog picture for my own blog, tyvm.
Thanks, B, for that piece of linguistic analysis. It's been an enjoyable morning altogether, and that was one of the most enjoyable bits.
Now we need to find what he says when he realises that the dog's cock won't come out
does this mean we have to take back all the nasty things we said about Republicans rigging the system and stealing elections?
What? No. In terms of robocalls; falsely telling people that it's illegal for them to vote; absurdly understaffed polling places; challenges for ID that's not actually required; disgustingly false and/or racist advertising; absentee ballots coming late, never, or being given more than one and having the board of elections refuse to tell you which to use in order to guarantee that one of them would count (happened to a friend of a friend); these things all still happened. They just weren't outcome-determinative in as many races as we let ourselves fear.
In terms of far too much of the system using low-security, un-verifiable technology, that's still the state of the game as well. Congress can, and hopefully will, fix this.
46 states (I should confirm this figure) still use fully partisan redistricting; and I'd really really fucking like to take this option away from both parties before 2010.
D.C. can't vote.
The Electoral College still exists.
The Senate still exists.
So, even if we don't get the Senate when all is said and done, the prospects for Democratic gains in the Senate in 2008 are excellent.
In fairness, it's Dean Barnett, not Hewitt, who said that. He also says hilarious-in-context things like "Everyone involved in leading this nation now has the sacred duty to serve their country first, last and only" and "The loss of good men like Rick Santorum and Chris Chocola hurts." Is there any weirder place than Hugh Hewitt's blog to claim that our duty is to country above party?
I think that looking back on the preëmptive gloating is possibly more delicious.
As cocksure Clinton crony James Carville has acknowledged, "If we can't win in this environment, we have to question the whole premise of the party." Indeed you do.
Same to you, bud.
Santorum's daughter isn't taking this well.
43 should have included this accompanying link re: Senate 08 prospects.
I blame the parents, meself.
Hey, DaveB, here's that Kinja link I promised you.
Redistricting should be done automatically to ensure the maximum possible partisan variety (modulo respect for actual geography).
50: Why? Why not redistrict by respecting actual geography, so groups/areas have a good reason to think of "our" representative in Congress?
Actual geography underdetermines the results.
I was thinking geography inclusive of demographics. But yeah, maybe it'll always be underdetermined.
I feel bad for Santorum's kids. I mean, for Daddy-lost-his-election related reasons, not the Christmas plaid.
55: I feel bad for the plaid too. Poor kid.
52: My city, which has a population in the low 5 digits and can't be covering more than 10 square miles, is split among three Congressional districts. THREE. This is insane.
50: I'm actually conflicted between districts that are designed to be very close and districts that are designed with a process designed to exclude knowledge of partisan-ship indicating factors, with the possible result that some districts will be randomly, but extremely partisan.
Yeah, I'm thinking one of the base rules for redistricting should be that any group of people who are subject to the same local laws ought be in the same fucking district. Unless the city is *so* big that that's not possible. Also, you can't fucking carve a set of districts out of three or more counties so as to combine all the cities into one, and vast swaths of sparsely populated desert/farmland/whatever into three others, which is how my local jurisidictions work.
57: I like the latter. Compact, and driven only by population and geography.
I'm thinking one of the base rules for redistricting should be that any group of people who are subject to the same local laws ought be in the same fucking district.
This is only possible with either allowing slightly more give on one person/one vote than we currently do or (one of my pet proposals) doubling to quadrupling the number of Representatives in the House.
wd: I think I remember George Will getting behind a 1,000-member House in a column some years ago (when I still read him). It does sound like a good idea.
An unanswered question in my mind is how you would redistrict without knowledge of partisan-indicating factors while complying with the civil rights act, and if the latter's voting provisions are still good and necessary now.
I'd say they're still necessary generally, in the sense that actions that have the effect of diluting the voting strength of minorities should be prohibited. But if you could get a reliable non-partisan redistricting scheme going, I'd consider that a reasonable candidate for exemption from the VRA. After all, there's no requirement in the VRA (nor should there be) that the voting strength of minorities be systematically enhanced, just that it not be artificially diluted, and so a genuinely fair system should serve that goal.
if the latter's voting provisions are still good and necessary now
They were just renewed, so probably. And this really is the fly in the ointment as far as redistricting reform goes.
I think disagree with both 63 and 64.
63, I'd have to go back and look at the case more carefully, but: in Georgia v. Ashcroft redistricting by the majority Democrat and strongly African-American Georgia state legislature was upheld even with a violation of non-retrogression, but the four liberals dissented and Thomas and Kennedy have sort of idiosyncratic concurrences. I would predict that changes in court personnel and fact patterns would lead some redistricting schemes you and I might like being VRA violations.
64, "fly in the ointment" isn't particularly strong language, but one shouldn't be overly discouraged, I don't think working around the VRA is an insuperable problem, especially if some fairly small number of Congressional Dems decide that redistricting reform is an issue that can help them and tie some funding to state-level reform.
Compact, and driven only by population and geography
Don't be a sucker. Redistricting will always be about partisan advantage. We can be all high-minded about it and draw fair, arbitrary districts, but as soon as the GOP retakes a state house, they'll carve them back up to their own advantage. It would be nice to able to take the principled road, but it requires a principled opposition, which does not exist across the aisle.
Now is the moment to strike hard at the base of the neck.
I'm not talking about unilateral disarmament, just an ideal if we could get it instituted across the board.
I'm with apo. As a general strategy, even. It's important to get a flurry of good press stories initially, passing popular legislation that will make us look like we can make shit happen, but after those first hundred hours or days or whatever, it's time to do the dirty work of making sure our majority sticks. It's politics. It's part of winning. We won't stay the majority for too long if we don't do everything within the law to preserve our majority status. Maybe we'll get a bad story or two in, like, April of 2007, but no one will care 18 months later. No one will remember.
66: Best statement ever is Hazlitt's On the Spirit of Partisanship, not alas online.
I have, admittedly, talked in the past about unilateral disarmament, but I'm not right now. I'm talking about a real and realizable way of improving our country. Given that currently existing gerrymanders greatly benefit the Republicans in some states, and the Democrats in others, it's both strange and short-sighted to assume that it would hurt the Democratic party to put non-partisan redistricting institutions in place in as many states as possible.
Huh? If gerrymandering slants Republican in R-controlled statehouse states, and is nonpartisan in D-controlled statehouse states, how does that not net out to gerrymandering slanted Republican nationally? That sounds like unilateral disarmament to me.
(At least) two issues:
1) What should the Democratic majority in the U.S. Congress do? I would suggest they find a constitutional way to tie a substantial amount of funding for something (highways are always good, though perhaps not constitutional given the lack of connection between districting and road constuction, maybe find a way to tie it to education) to a state's willingness to adopt a process like the latter one in 57.
2) What should State legislatures with either veto proof Democratic majorities or Democratic majorities and a Democratic governor do.
Option A is, I suppose, mid-decade redistricting, which 66 & 68 at least implicitly support.
Option B is to assume that they'll maintain their control of the redistricting process through term doing post-2010 redistricing, and plan to do it in a partisan fashion (though remember that many gerrymanders at both the level of House districts and state legislative districts are in fact done to maximize the number of incumbents retaining their seat, not to gain seats for their party).
Option C is to move immediately to put in place a non-partisan redistricting commission on the model of the latter part of 57 both because it's healthier for the country and because it's hard to predict who will control some state redistricting processes post-2010.
Option D is C plus the legislation doesn't go into effect until a number of at present Republican-controlled legislatures or Republican gerrymandered state in which the Democrats have taken over the legislature but not undone the gerrymander, with roughly equal population, also passes the same legislation.
D, with a nationally orchestrated publicity campaign through the national level Democrats, would be my first choice. But I'd take C over both and A.
I don't think working around the VRA is an insuperable problem
Sure, it's not insuperable, but it'll seriously tie the hands of any non-partisan redistricting board or whatever. There are loads of ways to draw districts in theory, but the VRA makes it a lot harder to make (e.g.) compactness or partisan balance the most important factor.
50: Why? Why not redistrict by respecting actual geography, so groups/areas have a good reason to think of "our" representative in Congress?
THis seems like a really bad idea. I'd rather people voted for ideological parties, not whoeever is personally more appealing or bring home the most pork (military bases/shipyards whatever as well as roads).
Besides, since urban areas are more concentratedly democratic than suburban/rural are republican, it will be a big partisan disadvantage.
