2014 U.S. Mid-Term Elections

[WHO IS SERAFIN]

I have said it before and I will say it again I would rather have true republicans and true conservatives in office then compromise. So if the country has to fall further into a crap hole so be it. Bye, bye Mitch.

So that means you'd vote for Grimes too?

No! I would do a write in. And have done write ins. And will probably do more right in this November.

The country is going to start it's conservative swing. Off years are most often won by the party out of power. Your next president I think will be Ted Cruz.

Do not tease me with such sweet thoughts!

 

[DrLeftover]

"Oh, Jesus."

10 Oct

The Democrats many not want President Barack Obama out on the campaign trial, but they're happy to have him at a fundraiser, which brought him back to Los Angeles Thursday and into Gwyneth Paltrow's backyard.

The actress introduced the President to a crowd of 200 supporters. She gushed: "You're so handsome that I can't speak properly." Paltrow also described herself as one of Obama's "biggest fans, if not the biggest."

Paltrow, who was joined by her children, Apple and Moses, told the crowd: "It would be wonderful if we were able to give this man all of the power that he needs to pass the things that he needs to pass." She cited sustainable energy efforts as well as Obama's push for equal pay, which she called "Very important to me as a working mother."

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/president-obama-at-gwyneth-paltrow-739778

 

[Webster]

New York Times: GOP at 72% Chance To Retake Senate
Excerpt...

Republican chances of taking control of the Senate have risen to 72 percent, the highest level yet in the almost six months that The Upshot’s forecasting model has been tracking the race. The odds rose from 68 percent on Monday and from a low of 50 percent last month.

The main cause of the latest shift is new polling in Kansas, which suggests the race is now a true tossup rather than a race in which the Republican, Senator Pat Roberts, is a slight underdog. Our latest forecast gives Mr. Roberts a 52 percent chance to win in November, making the race between him and Greg Orman, an independent candidate, essentially a coin flip.

As outside money has poured into the state over the past month, Kansas is emerging as one of the most competitive Senate races of 2014. The Democratic candidate, Chad Taylor, quit the race in early September, and Mr. Orman’s chances then spiked. Mr. Orman has said he would caucus with the majority party if he won, converting a sure Republican seat into a possible pickup opportunity for Democrats.

Campaigns over the past month have been trending toward the Republicans in Arkansas, Alaska and Louisiana, and the odds of a Republican upset, though still fairly long, have also risen in Michigan and New Hampshire. To some extent, Mr. Orman’s earlier gains obscured these trends. Now that these gains may be slowing or reversing, the full effect of the erosion in the Democratic position is starting to be felt. Thus in many ways, the latest increase in the G.O.P.'s overall chances is less of a surge and more of a return to normal.

Still, the race has three weeks remaining, and perhaps the most notable aspect of this election cycle (from a forecasting perspective at least) is the uncertainty. The most competitive races are also those surrounded by the biggest question marks. Forecasting models are designed to predict the future by analyzing past data. As a general rule, the less relevant that the past data is, the less certain you can be that your model still makes sense, and a race like Kansas’ falls well outside the scope of past data.

Races in Alaska and Louisiana bring their own challenges. Alaska has a history of polling difficulties, and there has been but one nonpartisan, live-interview poll of the state this cycle. Recent polling has shown the Republican, Dan Sullivan, with a consistent four-to-six-point lead, but questions remain about how much stock to put in those numbers.

Meanwhile, Louisiana seems almost certain to be heading to a December runoff between Senator Mary Landrieu and Bill Cassidy, a Republican challenger. Neither seems likely to get a majority in the so-called jungle primary on Election Day. But it remains an open question how much — and in which direction — conditions will shift after the first election. If it is clear that electing Ms. Landrieu would also give the Democrats the Senate, does that help or hurt her chances? Will she better be able to capitalize on her family’s long history in politics in a head-to-head race?

Given the crazies who currently inhabit the Senate GOP at present, this ain't good news...thoughts?

 

[Webster]

...here's another reason Democrats better hope they keep the Senate in 2014...
Excerpt...

WASHINGTON -- One of the most unpredictable outcomes of a GOP takeover of the Senate, which is looking likely, is the fate of President Barack Obama's judicial nominees.

Republicans, who have been systematically delaying action on nominees all year, would have the ability to block any of Obama's judicial picks in his final two years in office. As the majority, they would control when, or if, his nominees get voted out of the Judiciary Committee and whether they get confirmed on the floor.

There's plenty of residual anger among Republicans over Democrats changing filibuster rules last year, and that anger could well translate into payback. In response to GOP obstruction of Obama's D.C. Circuit Court nominees, Democrats changed the Senate rules last fall so it only takes a simple majority, instead of 60 votes, to advance most nominees. The effect has been Democrats confirming piles of Obama's judicial nominees, with Republicans fuming about being cut out of the process.

Republicans have so far retaliated by using procedural maneuvers to delay votes on nearly every nominee. But they've also warned that Democrats will rue their decision once they end up in the minority.

"I say to my friends on the other side of the aisle, you’ll regret this," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said as Democrats pushed through the change in rules. "And you may regret it a lot sooner than you think."

It's unclear whether McConnell would keep the change in place if he became majority leader, but that doesn't matter much while Obama is in office. The real question for the next two years is whether Republicans would be willing to play ball with the White House in agreeing to judicial nominees. And if the GOP controls the Senate, for the first time under Obama, it would have real leverage.

"If Republicans control the committee and the floor, it makes sense for a Democrat president to meet them in the middle," said a Senate GOP leadership aide. "This is something that [Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.)] demanded for a Republican president with a Democrat majority."

Some observers are already predicting a nominations crisis if Republicans win the Senate. Norm Ornstein, a scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, said he expects approximately zero judges would get confirmed for the rest of Obama's term.

The White House doesn't view the situation as quite so dire.

Neil Eggleston, the president's counsel and point person for advancing judicial nominations, says he's got a great working relationship with Republicans, and that in the event that they win control of the Senate, he doesn't expect a standstill on nominations. Even now, he said, there are productive talks underway with Republicans to line up nominees for empty court seats.

"I predict a lot of progress between now and the lame duck," Eggleston told The Huffington Post last month.(Huffington Post)

 

[Webster]

National Journal: Senate Democratic Officials Lash Out At White House

The relationship between the White House and Senate Democrats hit a new low Tuesday evening after the administration's press office released a transcript of first lady Michelle Obama's appearance in Iowa on behalf of Democratic Senate candidate Bruce Braley. The problem: The subject line of the e-mail referred to Braley as the "Democratic candidate for governor."

The botch came after the first lady repeatedly referred to the Democratic Senate nominee as "Bruce Bailey" in a campaign appearance earlier this month—and it took an attendee in the crowd to correct her mistake. On Tuesday, she made light of the incident, reminding the audience she messed up his name last time and joking that she sometimes calls Barack Obama "Bo." But the self-inflicted errors continued after her speech with the White House press shop's email. At midnight, two hours after the initial press release, the White House issued a corrected e-mail that reflected his accurate title.

Indicating the sensitivity of the mistake, top Senate Democratic officials wasted no time lashing out at the Obama administration's political team in response, suggesting it was acting like a junior varsity operation two weeks before the midterms. The slipup comes one day after President Obama told Rev. Al Sharpton on his radio show that Senate Democrats keeping their distance from him are still "folks who vote with me. They have supported my agenda in Congress." That alarmed Senate Democrats up for reelection this November, most of whom are working hard to distance themselves from an unpopular president.

"The ineptitude of the White House political operation has sunk from annoying to embarrassing," one senior Senate Democratic aide told National Journal. Another Senate official told the Washington Post that Obama's comments were "not devised with any input from Senate leadership."

Democrats are growing increasingly pessimistic about their chances of holding onto the Senate, with most close races trending in the GOP's direction in a nationalized political environment. Republicans are now in position to net more than the six seats necessary to take the majority. Iowa is emerging as a must-win state for Democrats if they want to halt the Republican momentum, and it's a race where Democrats can't afford late-breaking mistakes. A plugged-in Democratic House official said internal polling showed Braley trailing Republican Joni Ernst in all of the state's congressional districts, even those that typically favor Democrats. Democrats are even struggling to hold Braley's House seat.

President Obama hasn't been invited to campaign in any battleground Senate races, with the exception of Michigan, where Democrats have long held a comfortable lead. Instead, he's spent most of his time headlining fundraisers for the Democratic campaign committees.

 

[DrLeftover]

October 22, 2014

Imagine going to the polls and using a touchscreen voting machine to cast your ballot and as you select your choice, you notice it was flipped to something else. That’s exactly what happened to State Representative candidate Jim Moynihan earlier this week.

Moynihan, a republican candidate for the 56th house district, tells Illinois News Network his vote on a touch screen voting machine was initially being tabulated for his democrat opponent.

“Well, when I was (voting) on a lot of the cases, the check mark came up on the opponent of whoever I was trying to vote for, including trying to vote for myself,” he said.

Moynihan called an election judge to explain the situation and suggested he could fix the problem on his own, which she suggested he do.

“I came to realize that if I touched the box – and this is after a lot of trial and error, by the way – in the lower right-hand corner, I would get my desired result each and every time, but I couldn’t touch (the center of) the box,” he said.

After double-checking his ballot, he cast his vote and returned to the election judge to whom he’d originally reported the problem.

“She just kind of seemed, well, it wasn’t very important to her and I wasn’t sure a call was going to go out before anyone else was going to have a chance to cast a vote on that machine,” he said.

So, Moynihan took down the machine’s serial number and reported it to the Cook County board of elections.

Ted Menzel, Deputy General Counsel for the Illinois State Board of Elections, said Moynihan did the right thing and the State Board of Elections and local elections officials test machines vigorously, even on Election Day.

“The State Board of Elections tests the systems before they’re allowed to be used in Illinois,” Menzel said. “We do a pretty thorough testing election day. The touch screens do need to be calibrated to ensure where you touch lines up with the boxes and records the votes in the right place. And machines occasionally get out of calibration and need to be recalibrated. I haven’t heard anything that indicates the machine was defective other than needing to be recalibrated.”

Moynihan reporting the machine to the board of elections was the right thing to do, Menzel said.

http://ilnews.org/3093/state-rep-candidate-experiences-touch-screen-problem-while-voting/


It would appear the old 'fix' is already in.

 

[Webster]

It would appear the old 'fix' is already in.

...that might be the only thing that saves us come Election Night...

 

[Webster]

...another day, another Republican scandal...

U.S. Senate candidate Mike Rounds as governor knew his Cabinet secretary, Richard Benda, was going to work for an investor in the Northern Beef Packers plant about the time Benda approved a proposal to give the plant more state aid — or found out immediately afterwards but was not alarmed.

Benda, then the Secretary of Tourism and State Development, authorized an extra $600,000 in loans to Northern Beef on Dec. 23, 2010. That was a little more than two weeks before both he and Rounds left office.

A state audit later found Benda didn't "disclose his future employment plans" and should have been required to "remove himself from involvement in subsequent matters relating to (Northern Beef.)"

But Rounds said Tuesday he knew before leaving office that Benda was going to work in connection with the beef plant. "My staff told me that when he was leaving state government, he was going to work for an investor in the beef plant," Rounds said.

Rounds said he didn't recall when exactly he learned Benda would be going to work for a Northern Beef investor, making it impossible to say whether Rounds learned of Benda's future employment before Benda approved the Northern Beef money or immediately afterward.

Benda didn't identify which investor he would be working for, and Rounds said he didn't press. Benda went to work for SDRC Inc., a company managing EB-5 foreign investments for projects, including Northern Beef. On Tuesday, Rounds said he now feels Benda "misled" him by not disclosing where he was going.

At the time, though, Rounds didn't ask Benda for more details.

"I said 'Good, I'm glad to hear that he's going to be actively involved in the beef plant,'" Rounds said in a live interview on the Argus Leader's "100 Eyes" online show.

Rounds' focus at the time, he said, was on which of his Cabinet secretaries "should I meet with to find out if they need assistance in finding other opportunities" — not whether they were "leaving government with a conflict of interest," as Argus Leader managing editor Patrick Lalley asked Rounds. Benda already had lined up a job, so Rounds said he focuapprsed attention elsewhere.

Benda didn't break South Dakota law by not disclosing this conflict and not removing himself from questions related to Northern Beef. The state audit found the Department of Tourism and State Development lacked even "a formal written policy... regarding ethics and conflicts of interest." The Governor's Office of Economic Development implemented such a policy this year after the audit's recommendations.

Rounds is in a close four-way race for U.S. Senate against independent Gordon Howie and Larry Pressler and Democrat Rick Weiland. He's been dogged by criticism of how he managed EB-5, a federal program he championed as governor to recruit foreign investors to South Dakota projects.

EB-5 provided most of the funding for Northern Beef. SDRC Inc. was given the contract to manage South Dakota's EB-5 program in December 2009, a year before Benda went to work for it as a loan monitor.

Rounds had championed Northern Beef as the cornerstone of his South Dakota Certified Beef initiative. He pitched it as a way to get more money for South Dakota by processing cattle in Aberdeen instead of in other states. Northern Beef got millions of dollars in state support, and Benda traveled to East Asia to try to recruit foreign investors for it.

On Tuesday, Rounds refused to second-guess his handling of EB-5.

He said it brought a lot of investment and benefit to South Dakota. And when asked if he regretted "not questioning this more deeply" when he was governor, Rounds declined. The only thing he'd have done differently, Rounds said, was pay more attention so he could better explain EB-5 today.

"If someone said, 'By the way, four years from now or five years from now... they're going to ask you a question on this'... yeah, let me go ahead," Rounds said. "But I'm not a prophet. I don't know what questions are going to be asked in (2014) about an activity that was occurring back in (2009)."

The EB-5 program, Rounds said Tuesday, "wasn't raising red flags anywhere for us."

"It was a proven, successful program for financing during a... major recession," he said.

Benda died by suicide in October 2013. At the time he was facing indictment for allegedly pressuring beef plant officials to redirect a state grant to pay his salary, though Benda was maintaining his innocence.

Rounds has said he'd have fired Benda if he knew what his cabinet secretary was doing. On Tuesday, he said he didn't know about any wrongdoing.

"Richard Benda did some things in the last couple of weeks (of Rounds' term) that I did not know about, and that I'd like to ask him questions about," Rounds said.(Sioux Falls Argus Leader)