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Loose Change Is Hard To Belive In

Two years ago Barack Hussein Obama was elected President of the U.S. with  Democrats having a majority in  Congess and an almost fiflibuster-proof majority in The Senate. Tomorrow the politicl landscape will have changed somewhat.  To what degree depends largely on how many formerly energised Democratic supporters are “getting out the vote” because we know that a buzzed-up bunch of Tea-Baggers are going gangbusters to rally their people for E-Day.

Conventional Wisdom and assorted Solomons of Psephology like  Nate “NYT” Silver predict Dems will lose the Congress and hold The Senate by a whisker. Seems a fair call, but wouldn’t be surprised if the Dems get done in the Senate too. We’ve all had our two bob’s worth over the possible result and the reasons for it. In the next day, many of those quetions and points of conjecture will be answered.

1,024 replies on “Loose Change Is Hard To Belive In”

Wakefield, we are all Barried out after urging him on for the last six months. Then he did not listen to us.

This is where i always apply the old adage;

“Evil does what evil thinks”
Roos myrmidons are out shrilling already, even before the poor bastards are out of bed voting. WTF

The posturing has even begun early.

Fox News has begun to hint at voter fraud by the Democrats. Bill O’Reilly has alluded (typically without evidence) that vote counts can’t be trusted in Illinois’ Cook County and Washington’s King County.

Typically, Fox is ignoring a Department of Justice inquiry into possible voter intimidation by Tea Party activists in Texas. Given its audience of conservative white seniors, it apparently doesn’t care if elderly black voters are being harassed in their homes.

The most startling accusation has come in a fundraising letter written by a Washington, D.C., lawyer (once a promising Democrat legislator) working for Nevada Senate challenger Sharron Angle.

“Harry Reid intends to steal this election if he can’t win it outright,” wrote Cleta Mitchell. “As a result, we need to deploy literally dozens of election law attorneys and poll watchers to combat these tactics at a cost of $80,000.”

http://www.opednews.com/populum/linkframe.php?linkid=121221

Will do our best to oblige, Wakefield. Can’t gauantee that ocasionally some of us won’t go “over the top” though. 🙂

E-V 02/11/2010

Senate Dem 51 GOP 48 Ind 1
House Dem 202 GOP 216 Ties 17

One more sleep our time then we get the results. 🙂

Just think how conservative a 51 seat Dem Senate can be….

…if a 59 seat Dem senate couldn’t do anything progressive….?

arrggghhhh

i give up on that country.

a bunch of loonies.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

and just to top it all off….districts get re-gerrymandered after these midterms.

and guess who is gonna hold nearly 2/3rds of the Governorships who control the gerrymandering???

2 Gaffhook Spot on gaffy. They were in a position to win big and threw it all away. Spineless that’s all I can say.

Two good things Harry reid looks like he’s gone and Sharon Angle looks like she is in. Sharon will make every Democrat look good.

Caught part of it Jen. Very good. Meant to post on it while fresh in the memory. Got side tracked.

I guess I’m looking for some good news and this shouldn’t be taken as indicative, but here is Nate Silver’s latest blog point…

OK, here’s a sign that tonight might not be an apocalypse for Democrats: the Kentucky 3rd district, where John Yarmuth, a Democrat, had been favored but the polling had been erratic, has been called for him. The other vulnerable Democrat in Kentucky, Ben Chandler, is also leading so far in Kentucky’s 6th district. Even though Rand Paul has won the Senate race in Kentucky, I’m not sure he didn’t hurt the G.O.P. at the margins downballot.

If Obama does the same for the next two years (hides) then what have we got? Hopefully Palin will win the Republicans challenge. Then at leat Obama will have a chance for a second term.

Fox News has called #CAGov for Jerry Brown, who beats Meg Whitman’s $140M campaign #election

Things are going pretty much as expected – the House falls while the Senate holds. The Democrats have to hope that the economy improves, otherwise the Senate could fall next time along with the presidency. And given that nothing much is going to be able to be done by the federal government over the next two years, it is all going to be left to ‘market forces’ – or luck, in other words.

I hope Buck loses in Colorado. It looks as though Reid has won fairly comfortably in Nevada, so Angle can go get bent. 😉 The tea partiers hurt the Republicans, but they may well have helped them regards turnout.

I am hoping that this election demonstrates that one should in general trust the polls. They get it right most of the time, especially when taken in aggregate.

I agree with DG @ 31. An improvement in the US economy will enhance Obama’s chances in 2012 – and help the Dem’s chances in the Senate.

what does it matter what the Dem numbers are in the Senate?

What does a majority of (D)’s actually mean?…Nothing i would suggest. They had 59 and had to scratch and claw for anything 1/4 worthwhile.

Now they have 52 or so…but in that 52 are (D)’s that produced ads of themselves shooting holes in the Cap & Trade bill and ripping up ObamaCare. etc etc

This country is fucked up beyond repair.

It is CorporateReligiousScaredBigotedDumbedDown America….and Hope n Change aint comin’ there anytime soon.

They can’t rip up Obamacare – it ain’t going to happen. Obama has power of veto against such bills.

39 Katielou The Republicans are in control of the house won’t they benefit from any economic turnaround? Mind you after that who knows what the public will do.

ChrisB,

The economy gets blamed on the president. For example, the dems won the house in 2006, yet they were not blamed when the economy went south in 2008 – Bush and by extension the Republicans were held accountable at the ballot box.

So if the economy improves, Obama will get the credit. As he will be on the ticket in 2012, all dems will benefit.

If the economy sits where it is or worsens, then the prospects do not look good.

I guess it is true that America is basically a conservative country, given what you need to say and do to get elected.

Anything worthwhile doing will never be done in that country.

They are fully in the control of Corporations and Churches.

Here,we at last have a third Party trying to drag us back FROM the Right. Over there they now have a third Party trying to drag them FURTHER to the Right.

Wash your hands of this country….aint nothin’ good comin’ outta there. Politically, they are beyond repair.

David “I guess it is true that America is basically a conservative country, given what you need to say and do to get elected.” Nothing was actually done to prove or disprove this. I didn’t see anything go through that was remotely left leaning.

All we have to wait for now is the legal challenges over ballots, recounts, vote flipping and every other way the election lawyers can conjure up to make a quick buck.
Rupert Rules!!!!!!

“Frankly this is not a time for celebration, not when one out of 10 of our fellow citizens is out of work; not when we’ve buried our children under a mountain of debt; and not when our Congress is held in such low esteem.

“This is a time to roll up our sleeves. A time to look forward with determination and to take the first steps towards building a better future for our kids and our grand kids.”

But at times Mr Boehner’s voice cracked with emotion.

“I’ve spent my whole life chasing the American dream,” he said tearfully.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/11/03/3056427.htm

HarryH this just goes to show how fucked up the Seppo landscape is, when you get cretins like this baboon making statements like this. This fucken cretin spent 8 years under the Shrub completely financially fucking the country over and he almost bursts out in tears because he has spent his whole life chasing the Seppo dream.

One can only surmise that his dream is heaps more unemployed and all the money in the hands of the corporations and religious nutbags. Which is what they just failed doing when obama took over.

At this rate Palin will be the next POTUS.

Go figure.

More doom and gloom.
I am trying to work myself into a state where i want to walk out in the back yard in the rain and have a big vomit. :mrgreen:

“Write Off the Senate. It’s Lost to Conservatives Either Way”

The Dems may hold enough of the handful of contested seats– Murray, Sestak, Reid, Bennet, Giannoulias, McAdams, Feingold. But even if they do hold them, they will be saddled with the same Democrat in name only DINO senators who impeded successful Democratic legislation, aiding and abetting Mitch McConnell again and again.

Bluedogs Mary Landrieu, Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman, Max Baucus will be there, siding with the Republicans on a regular basis, blocking the kind of legislation REAL Democrats pass.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Write-Off-the-Senate-It-s-by-Rob-Kall-101102-301.html

In a country with over 300mil people only 90 mil voted.
Let’s say they were evenly split between the two parties, that means 45mil people rule 300mil people in Seppoland. FFS.

talk about whacko.

… and I am so glad I don’t have to listen to those anti-Obama wankers over the fence. Look what they and their mate Rupert have done .. . Sarah The Complete Idiot Palin may end up POTUS.
😡

PITY ABOUT THE PLANET:

The first great extinction of the Third Millenium is underway…….the GOP are calling it a “do-over”.

Published on Wednesday, November 3, 2010 by The Guardian/UK

Barack Obama’s Green Agenda Crushed at the Ballot Box
With a slew of new climate change deniers entering Congress, Barack Obama’s environmental ambitions are now dead
by Suzanne Goldenberg

Many new members of Congress are at best sceptical on climate change, and Republican promises to reduce the role of government could spell the end for progressive energy legislation and could herald a new era of environmental deregulation……….
And the coalition, with their intense focus on Proposition 23, failed to anticipate its evil twin: Proposition 26, which will also hinder action on climate change. The measure, backed by Chevron, requires a two-thirds majority before imposing new taxes or fees. It gathered 54% support, blocking government efforts to get industry to pay for pollution.

In Washington, there was only devastation. 2010 is shaping up to be one of the warmest years on record, but that is unlikely to weigh heavily on the minds of many of the Republican newcomers to Congress.
Obama in interviews on the evening of the elections, admitted there was no change of sweeping climate and energy legislation in the remaining two years of his term. He said he hoped to find compromise on “bite-sized” measures, such as encouraging energy efficiency or the use of wind and solar power.

A cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions was the sleeper issue in the mid-term elections, a galvanising force for Tea Party activists. It saw the defeat of a handful of Democrats from conservative states who voted for last year’s climate change bill – such as Tom Perriello and Richard Boucher, in Virginia.
“I don’t think there’s any question about it, cap-and-trade was the issue in the campaign,” Boucher’s former chief of staff, Andy Wright, told Politico. “If Rick had voted no, he wouldn’t have had a serious contest.”

It also installed a heavy contingent of conservatives hostile to the very notion of global warming in Congress – and solidified the opposition of establishment figures to co-operation with Democrats on energy legislation.
The new speaker of the House, John Boehner, once said: “The idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment is almost comical.” Vicky Hartzler, who took out the 34-year veteran Ike Skelton in Missouri, has called global warming a hoax.
A number of the victorious Tea Party candidates in the Senate, including Rand Paul of Kentucky and Marco Rubio of Florida have said they do not believe in man-made climate change.
Some of the surviving Democrats are just as opposed. Joe Manchin won his Senate seat in West Virginia by, literally, shooting his rifle at Obama’s climate agenda.

In her election night stint as a Fox news commentator, Sarah Palin singled out the Environmental Protection Agency as an example of big and wasteful government. The Republican leadership has signalled they it is opposed to a whole array of EPA regulations, including those on ozone and mercury. The EPA is seen as a fallback route for the Obama administration to deal with the regulation of greenhouse gases after the US senate dropped its climate bill in the summer.

The new crop of Republican leaders in the house are way ahead of Palin, with plans for sweeping investigations of climate science and of Obama administration officials such as Lisa Jackson, who heads the EPA.
As far as the leaders are concerned, the science of climate change is far from settled. “We’re going to want to have a do-over,”

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/11/03-4

.

I really don’t feel terrible about the mid term results. I’m not saying they’re good, mind you. But I think the US electorate will regularly throw out the people in power – whatever party they are – and that’s what has happened. Yeah – they think short term and selfishly – as many here do as well. But soon they’ll hate the Republicans too.

I think it was Michael Fullilove who was talking on PM last night – he said that when Clinton experienced big losses in the Congress, the Dems had controlled the Congress for 20 years. Since the 90’s, the control keeps swapping from party to party.

And I don’t think Palin’s got a snowflake’s chance of winning the presidency. The best thing that could happen for Obama is if Palin wins the GOP nomination, imo.

Blue Dog Coalition Crushed By GOP Wave Election.
****************************************

Tuesday was a tough night for Democrats, as they watched Republicans win enough seats to take back the House in the next Congress and began to ponder life under a likely House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). But one group hit especially hard was the Blue Dog Coalition, with half of its members losing their seats.

According to an analysis by The Huffington Post, 22 of the 46 Blue Dogs up for re-election went down on Tuesday. Notable losses included Rep. Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin (D-S.D.), the coalition’s co-chair for administration, and Rep. Baron Hill (D-Ind.), the co-chair for policy. Two members were running for higher office (both lost), four were retiring and three races were still too close to call.

Yes!

More here..
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/03/blue-dog-coalition-gop-wave-elections_n_778087.html

74 A counter view to Davids comment at the bottom of 44. “I guess it is true that America is basically a conservative country, given what you need to say and do to get elected.”

Hope you are right KatieLou – I like your positive take on it , and I sort of agree. It is disappointing though to see just how fast things have turned around and how shortsighted people are. Doesn’t auger well for us here either.
As for Palin as POTUS… they did reelect GWB and she is just as stupid as him . More even, if that is possible .
Hopfully they learnt something.

Still some confusion about whether its a Qantas plane. Qantas has apparently said there was a plane with engine trouble that returned to Singapore but that it had a successful emergency landing at Changi airport.

How Safe is Reid’s Leadership Post?
While Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) may have fended off a tough reelection challenge, there has been growing chatter about the safety of his position as majority leader.

First Read: “Despite his big win last night, is Harry Reid’s position in leadership totally safe? On ‘TODAY’ this morning, he sounded as if he was trying to send a message to the Democratic incumbents who are up in 2012 that he’s received a wake-up call and he can lead the Democratic Senate in these tumultuous political times. But remember: Many of the 2006 Dem Senate class have ties to Chuck Schumer.”

Will the close friendship between Schumer and Reid prevent a leadership battle? Or will the urge to scapegoat win the day for Senate Democrats?
http://politicalwire.com

I thought he Democrats ran a pathetic campaign since January. I thought they had a plan. Nope. No such thing. They didn’t learn anything from Clintons time. Unbelieveable!

Worst Poll of the Year?
******************
A Rasmussen survey in Hawaii showed Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI) leading challenger Cam Cavasso (R) by 13 points two weeks ago, 53% to 40%.

The final results showed Inouye winning re-election by 51 points, 72% to 21%.
http://politicalwire.com/

The GOP Plan To Investigate Obama: The First Four Potential Investigations
*************************************************

Reps. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Lamar Smith (R-TX) have been attacking the Obama administration since pretty much the day Barack Obama took office. Until now, as just the ranking members of two powerful House committees and members of the minority party, their criticisms of administration officials and their decisions have been mostly limited to issuing press releases.

Now — as the expected chairmen of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and the House Judiciary Committee, respectively — they’re the proud new holders of subpoena power, will have a much more robust unit of investigators and will likely be a huge thorn in the side of President Obama and his top cabinet members.

More here..
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/11/the_gop_plan_to_investigate_obama_the_first_four_potential_investigations.php?ref=fpb

Adam Green on why Dems lost: ‘weak, watered-down change – and weak Democratic leaders’
******************************************************

What the average voter saw of Democrats was weak, watered-down change – and weak Democratic leaders who cut deals with the very Wall Street banks and insurance companies they are supposed to be fighting,” Adam Green, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee said in a statement.

More here..
http://www.americablog.com/2010/11/adam-green-on-why-dems-lost-weak.html

Rasmussan by Natge Silver
*********************

While waiting for the remaining results to trickle in from states like Colorado and Alaska, I did a quick check on the accuracy of polls from the firm Rasmussen Reports, which came under heavy criticism this year — including from FiveThirtyEight — because its polls showed a strong lean toward Republican candidates.

Indeed, Rasmussen polls quite consistently turned out to overstate the standing of Republicans tonight. Of the roughly 100 polls released by Rasmussen or its subsidiary Pulse Opinion Research in the final 21 days of the campaign, roughly 70 to 75 percent overestimated the performance of Republican candidates, and on average they were biased against Democrats by 3 to 4 points.

Every pollster is entitled to a bad cycle now and again — and Rasmussen has had some good cycles in the past. But their polling took a major downturn this year.

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/02/live-blogging-election-night/#rasmussen-reports-polls-were-biased

Barack Obama set this disaster for the party and his presidency in motion before he was even sworn in as president, by choosing Wall Street hacks as his economic advisers in the midst of the worst economic crisis in 75 years, and by choosing as his key political adviser Rahm Emanuel, who famously called progressive critics “fucking retarded,” and who, when warned that the GM bailout plan would hurt the United Autoworkers members who worked there, also famously said “Fuck the UAW!”

Emanuel never, at least in public, ever said “Screw the Schwarzes!,” but he and Obama might as well have, for all the help they’ve offered to a population that is suffering with twice the unemployment rate of whites, and that is being imprisoned at a rate that is virtually re-enslaving the nation’s young male African-American population.

Well, those progressives and liberals and minorities and workers that Emanuel and Obama, and most of the Democrats in Congress have dissed and pissed on have now returned the favor.

http://www.opednews.com/populum/linkframe.php?linkid=121296

No doubt the blame game will reach exotic heights as the days go by. I do recall all the flak flying around about lots of Barrys appointments to places that counted. So they have said a big Fuck You, but what are they in for now. That’s the trouble with only having two parties where one is miles more corrupt than the other i suppose.

I can only see the retards really trashing what is left of Seppo land for the next two years.

Hamsher, Vindicated

FireDogLake founder/blogger Jane Hamsher, who led a fairly lonely liberal campaign against the Democrats’ compromised (public option-less) health care bill, claims vindication now that the bill’s not becoming popular. Hamsher took a lot of heat for buying SurveyUSA polls that tested the least popular aspects of the bill, and she says Democrats should have listened:

“The DCCC was very good at getting not-so-savvy poll analysts to try and discredit the SurveyUSA polling. (Those same pollsters, ironically, didn’t see anything weird in the Research 2000 polls they were quoting authoritatively at the time, which many now find suspect — though Jerome Armstrong spotted it). Somehow Democratic members of Congress engaged in magical thinking and believed Rahm’s BS about the popularity of the health care bill increasing if it passed.”

Well, I don’t remember talking to the DCCC about this, but I remember not being savvy! I noted back in January that Hamsher was polling in swing districts and that liberals were annoyed with what they saw as messaging for the other team. She was right and they were wrong. I’d just quibble with her characterization of the “pass HCR and it gets popular” theory as “Rahm’s BS.” It was Bill Clinton’s BS, too!

http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/weigel/archive/2010/08/31/hamsher-vindicated.aspx

HusseinStWorm. I remember how I felt after that deal fell through. However I thought the Democrats could recover and still get up. Not so. Jane was certainly on the money.

Obama Can Pursue Ambitious Agenda Without Congress’s Help.
**************************************************

If President Obama wants to pursue a progressive agenda in the next two years, there are plenty of ways he can do that even without any help from Capitol Hill.

At his post-election news conference on Wednesday, Obama offered more lip service to the notion of compromise. But the fact remains that the next Congress looks to be hopelessly gridlocked. The opposition party is more radicalized than ever. And the only thing the resurgent GOP seems prepared to even discuss with Obama is cutting taxes.

So the big question will be what lesson Obama takes from Tuesday’s election results. If he and his advisors are finally ready to acknowledge that the source of voter unhappiness was government ineffectiveness — rather than government overreach, or a general economic malaise — then there’s plenty of room for him to maneuver on his own.

Indeed, progressives are urging him to seize the opportunity to take a more muscular approach with his executive powers, starting by getting much tougher on banks. They also hope Obama will use his regulatory authority, his enforcement powers, and his prerogatives as commander in chief to make decisive moves that can’t be sabotaged by Congressional Republicans.

The basic message: So much for the prime minister routine, it’s time to act like a president.

“The most important thing the president has to communicate is strength,” said Neera Tanden, a top official at the Center for American Progress. “One of the lessons of history is that the president stands apart from Congress… He has to think about ways he can lead the country without his fate being tied to the Hill.”

“There’s tons of things that can be done,” said Damon Silvers, policy director of the AFL-CIO. “The administration has a vast capacity to act to improve the lives of ordinary Americans, regardless of what happens in Congress.”

Its all up to Obama. Lets see if he gets any backbone now.
More here..
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/03/obama-can-pursue-busy-age_n_778583.html

Running From Their Successes
Joe Klein: “The Democratic performance this year was one of the more mystifying, and craven, in memory. Usually, a political party loses when it has failed to do its job. These Democrats lost because they succeeded in doing what they’ve been promising for decades. They enacted their fantasies, starting with health care reform, and then ran away from their successes. Why on earth would a political party enact major pieces of legislation and then refuse to take credit for them?”
http://politicalwire.com

Pay TV ups ante in prime sport rights tussle.
***********************************

THE Gillard government has entered final and decisive talks with the heavyweights of the television industry ahead of a landmark decision within a fortnight expected to allow pay television more access to some premium sporting events.

Free-to-air television networks fear Communications Minister Stephen Conroy will make a decision soon in which more AFL matches will be made available to pay television broadcasters rather than locked up on a list that gives Nine, Seven and Ten first option on the high-rating games.

The Age has been told pay TV is seeking access to more than half the popular AFL and rugby league matches currently reserved for free-to-air television in the eleventh-hour talks with officials.
Advertisement: Story continues below

Senator Conroy is meeting senior executives from both the free and pay TV camps this week and, while no one is commenting, AFL and rugby league is believed to be front-and-centre in the discussions.

Lets see if the ALP wants to lossen Murdochs grip…

More here…
http://www.theage.com.au/national/pay-tv-ups-ante-in-prime-sport-rights-tussle-20101104-17fw8.html

Obama moves toward GOP on tax cuts.
*******************************

For the second day in a row the White House signaled it could bend on extending the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

The first overture came after Tuesday’s election results showed Republicans will control the House in the next Congress.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters Thursday morning that President Obama was indicating a willingness to listen to Republican arguments for extending the tax cuts when he spoke Wednesday.

During the post-election presidential press conference Wednesday, the president was asked if he was willing to negotiate on an extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, which was a key talking point for Republicans on the campaign trail. Obama said “absolutely.”

Gibbs said that Obama “does not believe” extending those tax cuts is a good idea, but he is “open” to talking to Republicans about it.

Will Obama fail at the first hurdle?
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/127699-obama-moves-toward-gop-on-tax-cuts

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