"Sandy Hook won't be remembered for the tragedy, but for what started here."
~ David Wheeler, Ben's father
Rachel Maddow did an incredibly moving interview in Newtown, Connecticut with the parents of seven-year old Benjamin Wheeler, a victim of the Sandy Hook Elementary School Massacre. They were among the parents who met to start Sandy Hook Promise, a group pledging to take a measured approach beyond politics to make children safe from gun violence.
~~~~~~~
"It's really not about your party, right now. I really feel like it's about our children. At this moment my gut's telling me that we have to keep talking about the children. They are the future of this country. They're going to be the next set of parents and they would want the same things we want - protection and safety." ~ Francine Wheeler, Ben's mother
The policy debate may move quickly, but we all know that legislation does not move quickly, and we know that government doesn't move quickly. We know that culture and societal change moves much slower than that. It's glacial.
So there may be quick moves in legislation here and there. There may be quick policy announcements or quick policy stances taken by many different people. But what this group is talking about is change that may outlast a great number of legislators' careers.
So this may go through a few generations of people in positions of representation. If that's what it takes, that's what it takes, because we are in it for that long. ~ David Wheeler, Ben's father
I've been trying for three days to make a list of all the good things about this election but there are so many it is overwhelming. And then last night Rachel Maddow spoke it all to power (or lack of power) in a righteous rant against the Republicans and the Tea Party that made my jaw drop in admiration. She said it better than I could, or probably anyone ever could. So I'll let her words speak for all of us:
That happened (the re-election of Barack Obama). That really happened.
We are not going to have a Supreme Court that will overturn Roe versus Wade.
There will be no more Antonin Scalias and Samuel Alitos added to this court.
We're not going to repeal health reform.
Nobody is going to kill Medicare and make old people in this generation or any other generation fight it out on the open market to try to get health insurance.
We are not going to do that.
We are not going to give a 20% tax cut to millionaires and billionaires and expect programs like food stamps and kid's insurance to cover the cost of that tax cut.
We'll not make you clear it with your boss if you want to get birth control under the insurance plan that you're on.
We are not going to redefine rape.
We are not going to amend the United States Constitution to stop gay people from getting married.
We are not going to double Guantanamo.
We are not eliminating the department of energy or the department of education or housing at the federal level.
We are not going to spend $2 trillion on the military that the military does not want.
We are not scaling back on student loans, because the country's new plan is that you should borrow money from their parents.
We are not vetoing the Dream Act.
We are not self-deporting.
We are not letting Detroit go bankrupt.
We are not starting a trade war with China on Inauguration Day in January.
We are not going to have, as a President, a man who once led a mob of friends to run down a scared gay kid, to hold him down and forcibly cut his hair off with a pair of scissors while that kid cried and screamed for help, and there was no apology not ever.
We are not going to have a Secretary of State John Bolten.
We are not bringing Dick Cheney back.
We are not going to have a foreign policy shop stocked with architects of the Iraq War.
We are not going to do it.
We had the choice to do that if we wanted to do that as a country, and we said no last night, loudly.
Ohio really did go to President Obama last night.
And he really did win.
And he really was born in Hawaii.
And he really is legitimately President of the United States, again.
And the Bureau of Labor Statistics did not make up a fake unemployment rate last month.
And the Congressional Research Service really can find no evidence that cutting taxes on rich people grows the economy.
And the polls were not screwed to oversample Democrats.
And Nate Silver was not making up fake projections about the election to make conservatives feel bad. Nate Silver was doing math.
And climate change is real.
And rape really does cause pregnancy sometimes.
And evolution is a thing.
And Benghazi was an attack on us, it was not a scandal by us.
And nobody is taking away anyone's guns.
And taxes have not gone up.
And the deficit is dropping, actually.
And Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction.
And the moon landing was real.
And FEMA is not building concentration camps.
And U.N. election observers are not taking over Texas.
And moderate reforms of the regulations on the insurance industry and the financial services industry in this country are not the same thing as communism.
Listen, last night was a good night for liberals and for Democrats for very obvious reasons, but it was also, possibly, a good night for this country as a whole. Because in this country, we have a two- party system in government. And the idea is supposed to be that the two sides, both come up with ways to confront and fix the real problems facing our country. They both propose possible solutions to our real problems. and we debate between those possible solutions. And by the process of debate, we pick the best idea.
That competition between good ideas from both sides about real problems in the real country should result in our country having better choices, better options, than if only one side is really working on the hard stuff.
And the if the Republican party and the conservative movement and the conservative media is stuck in a vacuum-sealed door-locked spin cycle of telling each other what makes them feel good and denying the factual, lived truth of the world, then we are all deprived as a nation of the constructive debate about competing feasible ideas about real problems.
Last night the Republicans got shellacked, and they had no idea it was coming. And we saw them in realtime, in real humiliating time, not believe it, even as it was happening to them. And unless they are going to is secede, they are going to have to pop the factual bubble they have been so happy living inside if they do not want to get shellacked again, and that will be a painful process for them, but it will be good for the whole country, left, right, and center.
You guys, we're counting on you. wake up. There are real problems in the world. There are real, knowable facts in the world. Let's accept those and talk about how we might approach our problems differently. Let's move on from there.
If the Republican Party and the conservative movement and conservative media are forced to do that by the humiliation they were dealt last night, we will all be better off as a nation. and in that spirit, congratulations.
You know, the election has already started. In almost half the states in the country, people can already get access to a ballot and start voting by mail, if they want to. You can already do in-person early voting in Idaho, South Dakota, and in Vermont. Early in-person voting also starts on Thursday of this week in Wyoming and in Iowa.
And what that means beyond just the convenience of voting in those states where you can vote early, what that means for this campaign,
is that every day is potentially decisive now.
...With Early Voting every day is election day now.
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From Nate Silver's 538 NYT Blog via The Last Word:
Most ordinary people think of election observers as people who come into third world countries to view elections to make sure the process is fair to all - like Jimmy Carter's UN group. In this country, the history of "Poll Watching" is much more dark, and was originally allowed by states that wanted to suppress the African American vote during the Jim Crow years after Reconstruction.
This year and true to form, the Republican Party wants to use Poll Watchers to intimidate voters in states like Ohio, where Secretary of State Husted is helping the cause by cutting out early voting on weeknights and weekends, prohibiting many minority voters from participating.
Rachel Maddow has done several great reports on "True the Vote," a group formed to allegedly combate "voter fraud" by placing watchers at polling places where they could signal officials if they saw something they thought was a "gotcha" moment.
To give you an idea of what True the Vote is all about, you have to see Their Official Website. It has nothing to do with wanting to make the process fair. It has everything to do with blocking voters from the polls.
Under "Latest News" here is just one article about Pennsylvania Voter ID filled with a sense of palpable disappointment that voters might actually get help in carrying out their right to vote:
The anti-ID crowd continues to have the wind taken out of its sails.
First, Pennsylvania plaintiff Viviette Applewhite gets a photo ID the day after the ACLU’s Voter ID challenge is shot down in court on grounds that the law disenfranchises no one. Now, PennDOT is rolling out its program to provide free voter identification cards to all Pennsylvania voters who can’t otherwise get a state photo ID
Yeah, that's a real bummer. It's too bad the State of Pennsylvania is helping more voters have a chance to vote. That spoils all the fun.
Here's the leader of True the Vote, Catherine Engelbrecht, speaking to her followers. She loves her some Voter ID Laws!!! Basically she is a vigilante bully who believes there is fraud where none actually exists, and she wants to make the process more difficult for everyone. She is an alarmist, and how dare she talk about "civil rights leaders" when some of them would roll in their graves at the thought of an all-white posse looking over an election. Her call for "Election Integrity" is a big dog whistle to the Tea Party because her goal is to favor the white vote over the minority vote.
But of course, there is still Ohio, with Tea Party sympathizer Jon Husted, the Secretary of State who is trying his best to do the one-man election body-block. Last week I posted this impassioned speech by State Senator Nina Turner on The Ed Show, expressing the outrage many feel towards Husted as he tries to rig the system against elderly and minority voters.
In a 15-page decision filed Aug. 27, Jonathan Allison concluded that Husted has the authority to remove Dennis Lieberman and Tom Ritchie Sr. from their posts.
“Furthermore, I believe the facts warrant removal and recommend that the secretary take such action,” Allison wrote.“It’s not justice when you already know the outcome of being put on trial,” he said. “A hearing examiner appointed by SOS Husted has agreed with his boss. This is not news.”
Husted spokesman Matt McClellan said the state’s chief elections official will make a decision Aug. 28 on whether to remove the two board members.
Lieberman and Ritchie were called to Columbus a week ago for a hearing in Husted’s office after they backed a motion to open Montgomery County’s early polls on weekends in the weeks before the Nov. 6 election, just days after Husted issued a directive ordering boards to adopt uniform weekday in-person early voting hours, with no Saturdays or Sundays.
. . . “We do not want to return to the long lines, the hours upon hours of waiting that took place in 2004 when J. Kenneth Blackwell was in Secretary Husted’s job,” Lieberman said. “Secretary Husted needs to follow Jennifer Brunner’s model in 2008 that led to a historic voter turnout and abandon Blackwell’s 2004 model that was a disaster and made Ohio a poster child for voter suppression.”
It turns out we have proof that Husted is all in cahoots with True the Vote - he was listed as a "featured speaker" for their Ohio State Summit Meeting, but after Rachel Maddow announced that on her show, he withdrew, to be replaced by Ohio State Senator Bill Seitz.
As Maddow reported, when True the Vote started in Harris County, Texas, the mainly white watchers showed up in African American precincts and intimidated registered voters. The group understood that they were intimidating people - but they seem to think that's okay. Hello Jim Crow!
Harris County, the biggest county in the state, is where a Tea Party group called the King Street Patriots launched an anti-voter fraud initiative called “True the Vote,” which recruited poll watchers and amped up fears over groups like the community organizing group ACORN.
Chad Dunn, a lawyer who is representing the Texas Democratic Party, told TPMMuckraker a number of witnesses have been interviewed by Civil Rights Division lawyers already. “We’ve gotten a number of reports — quite a few out of the Houston area — that poll watchers, King Street Patriot training poll watchers, are following a voter after they’ve checked them out and stand right behind them,” Dunn said. There’s at least a dozen reports that they could confirm with witnesses, he said. “Interestingly, it’s all in the polling places in Hispanic and African-American areas,” he added.
Terry O’Rourke, the first assistant in the Harris County Attorney’s office, told TPMMuckraker that there have been allegations of poll watchers talking to voters, which they are not allowed to do, as well as hovering over voters as they are waiting to vote. He said the complaints came from Kashmere Gardens, Moody Park, Sunnyside and other predominantly minority neighborhoods of the county.
Catherine Engelbrecht is the founder of both the King Street Patriots and True the Vote, in that order, and only months apart. Name and IRS status appear to be all that differentiates the two groups. The former, a 501c4, is a Tea Party group that lobbies for conservative issues, chiefly election reform; the latter is a 501c3 that takes a hands-on approach to making sure election reform is implemented—Dr. Jekyl and Dr. Jekyler.
The 2008 ACORN “scandal,” where ACORN was found with thousands of falsified voter registration forms, is partially what inspired Engelbrecht to form the King Street Patriots. Even though no fraudulent votes were cast, Engelbrecht’s King Street Patriots lionized the ACORN tale and used it as a mobilizing tool to recruit hundreds of volunteers for 2009 Election Day poll watching, mostly in black and Latino districts. . . .
. . . Only a handful of fraud cases were tried after the election, and none led to full convictions. Still, the King Street Patriots spun off as “True the Vote” and came out again for the 2010 elections—bulkier with more recruits, again at black and Latino polling places. A local Houston newscast noticed the bulge in poll observers and reported, “As the number of poll watchers have increased, so have the number of complaints.” A video True the Vote circulated at the time contained doctored photos of black people falsely pictured as advocating for voter fraud.
True the Vote’s lawyer Kelly Shackelford, of the Christian rightwing organization Liberty Institute, explained away the intimidation complaints this way: “Poll watchers show up for the first time and [the poll watchers are] a different color than them and they just don’t like that.”
Fantastic segment tonight from Rachel Maddow on MSNBC discussing the history and major players in the anti-abortion movement which led to the strange view held by Todd Akins that there is never any pregnancy from rape. It's shocking that most of the guys are white men, shocking that they have molded public policy and law based on this anti-scientific idea, and shocking that nearly every Republican candidate in the primaries seemed to share this belief (or said they did to placate the Tea Party).
Most shocking of all: Paul Ryan is one of them and has always been proud of it, until now, when he has to move towards the center with Mitt Romney. Of course, now that Akins has turned the light of day onto this subject, chances have gone way up that Ryan will be asked some difficult questions about his past beliefs. Does he think there are different types of rape? Does he think women can't conceive from rape? What about incest? He thought this was never going to come up in the debates or anywhere, but now he will have to face the music.
Why would the Republican women ever put up with this Cro-Magnon attitude towards rape? I've known plenty of conservative women who are nurses and teachers and smart ladies. They know how the human body works, and certainly how a woman's body works. I guess for them, the "sacred life of the fetus" is more important that the soul of a woman who is put through the mill after a rape with no one to believe her or help her. They muster empathy for the cells in the womb, but no empathy for the people already born. Note: I don't consider myself to be "pro-abortion," but the lack of empathy for women in difficult situations or in fear for their lives is sickening to me.
It reminds me of Sarah Palin when she was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, refusing to let the town pay for rape kits for victims.
In 2000, Alaska lawmakers learned that rural police agencies had been billing rape victims or their insurance companies $500 to $1,200 for the costs of the forensic medical examinations used to gather evidence. They quickly passed a law prohibiting the practice.
According to the sponsor, Democrat Eric Croft, the law was aimed in part at Wasilla, where now-Gov. Sarah Palin was mayor
. . . It is not known how many rape victims in Wasilla were required to pay for some or all of the medical exams, but a legislative staffer who worked on the bill for Croft said it happened. "It was more than a couple of cases, and it was standard practice in Wasilla," Peggy Wilcox said, who now works for the Alaska Public Employees Association. "If you were raped in Wasilla, this was going to happen to you."
. . . In 2000, there were 497 rapes reported in Alaska, FBI statistics show. That's a rate of 79.3 per 100,000 residents, the highest in the nation.
. . . Congress in 2005 passed a law requiring states to provide rape exams free of charge or reimburse victims for the costs, says Knecht, whose group supported the provision.
"The reason we passed the legislation was that we saw it was prevalent enough to be a pretty considerable problem," Knecht says. "There are no other victims of crime that end up being billed for evidence collection."
No. Words.
Here's the main idea these Teapublicans believe : if you get pregnant, you must have wanted to have sex after all, and cooperated so the "juices would flow" and insemination occured, and therefore - no rape! How they justify this in terms of incest, I have no idea, except that it is cruel and unusual. Why we are having to discuss this on a national level in the 21st century is almost too scary to contemplate.
From Rachel Maddow: "This is a moment of instability in Republican politics. They're going to have to figure out which way to go on this. The Republican Party let this strand of strange politics grow within its midst. They let it become mainstream Republicanism. And now the Republican Party is witnessing the country recoiling from what the Party has become."
Rachel Maddow did an excellent spot about the connections between natural gas "fracking" - forcing wastewater from drilling into deep underground wells - and earthquakes in Texas where historically few have occurred.
It's heartbreaking, but we need to suck it up and move forward. We have larger fish to fry with the fall Presidential election, so here's some good news: Groups are beginning to register voters in Florida again after the intervention of the Department of Justice and a Federal Judge struck down Rick Scott's draconian rules that were trying to disenfranchise voters. Rachel Maddow had one of the County Election Supervisors on her show. What a brave lady! Rachel called the Supervisors the "firewall" in Florida because Governor Scott cannot force them to purge voter rolls
“We’re going to dust off our clip boards and pick up the forms and get into the business of registering people to vote,” declared St. Petersburg League of Women Voters President Darden Rice. “Registering citizens to vote is part of our core mission, and we’re excited to get back to work.”
At a similar news conference in Orlando, organizers were joined by officials from the nonpartisan group Rock the Vote, which also is resuming Florida voter registration efforts in the wake of last week’s court ruling.
Rock the Vote president Heather Smith said her group registered 100,000 young voters in Florida in 2008 and still should be able to surpass that total this year. Deirdre Macnab, president of the Florida League of Women Voters, estimated her organization, which also emphasizes educating voters about issues and candidates, registers tens of thousands of people each cycle.The voter registration groups still will face more restrictions than they’ve been accustomed to, including registering with elections offices and submitting the names of every volunteer collecting voter registration forms.
At nearly the eleventh hour, just days before the Wisconsin Governor's Recall Election on June 5th, the Democratic National Committee is finally drumming up some major funds and support on the ground to help Democrat Tom Barrett defeat the despicable union-hater Scott Walker.
Tonight on MSNBC, Rachel Maddow had a great overview about Walker's union busting and why it puts the future of the Democratic Party in Wisconsin in jeopardy.
... Republican Legislators all over the country have all gotten religion all at the same time about the importance of killing off public sector unions. The most high profile among them is, of course, is Republican Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin, who with the stroke of a pen wiped out 50 years of union rights in the State of Wisconsin...
Scott Walker did not campaign on getting rid of those rights, but once he got elected he said he had to, he said he had to kill union rights in Wisconsin to 'save the state's budget.' When the unions said 'yes' to all of the financial concessions he asked for, and he still wanted to kill them off, it became clear that it wasn't about money, it was not about the budget. He wanted to get rid of union rights in order to get rid of unions altogether.
"If you get rid of unions altogether, then there is no one funding the other side. There will be no one funding the Democrats when business funds the Republicans. You get rid of union rights, you thereby get rid of unions, you thereby game the whole state so Democrats cannot compete in the big money part of elections ever again. Pull that off and Wisconsin didn't just go all red in 2010 - Wisconsin will be all Republican, all Red from here on out permanently. Democrats will never recover.
But there is help on the way for Badgers who have been on the ground trying to throw Walker out of office for months: the Democratic National Committee is finally stepping up to provide fundraising for Walker's opponent, Tom Barrett.
“The DNC is fully committed to helping Mayor Barrett win next month’s recall election in Wisconsin,” said Melanie Roussell, DNC Spokeswoman. “DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz has spoken to Mayor Barrett and has pledged the DNC’s support for his successful election next month. She will host a fundraiser for Mayor Barrett, and the DNC will utilize both its substantial network of activists, volunteers and supporters and extensive online resources to assist in building the ground game that will win on Election Day.”
In the fundraising e-mail, Wasserman Schultz says:
“Of all the elections we are preparing for in 2012, one of the most important ones isn't happening in November.
On June 5th, the people of Wisconsin will have their chance to recall Governor Scott Walker, whose attacks on workers' and women's rights are the definition of a fireable offense. Democrats are rallying around our nominee, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, and with just 14 days to go before the election, we're organizing one of the largest get-out-the-vote efforts in state history.
Will you donate today to help Wisconsin Democrats build the grassroots organization it's going to take to beat Scott Walker and win in 2012?
It's up to Democrats across the country to help win this thing.”
"Choices don't get clearer than this," read the email sent Wednesday
evening by the DNC chair, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.).
"Winning in Wisconsin sends a powerful message to the far-right
extremists, and it starts to roll back their worst offenses. To build
our organization and make it happen, Democrats need to come together to
turn out hundreds of thousands of voters -- and we all have a part to
play."
What's notable about this fundraising appeal
is that the money will go directly to Wisconsin Democrats, rather than
to the DNC. Other national organizations -- including the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee -- have sent out solicitations related to the recall, but the money has not directly gone to Wisconsin entities.
A Democratic party official told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that Wednesday's fundraising email was being sent to "millions" of people.
