Thursday, November 13, 2014

Thank goodness we have people to explain it for us

EVBB for me concludes (perhaps) today, and we'll get back to the hard stuff as soon as it does.

-- Voter turnout lowest in 72 years; Texas last.  How much worse could it be if nobody hired political consultants who stabbed their paying customers in the back like this?  How much worse could it get if nobody hired political consultants at all?

The next time you go to a meeting where a political consultant is the guest speaker, and he/she is analyzing election results, ask them just one question: do you support overturning Citizens United?

If you want to understand why people don't vote, it's right in front of your eyes.  Just not his.

-- Oh, and there's this also.

In a move that mirrors their failed midterm election strategy, Senate Democrats are trying save Sen. Mary Landrieu’s job by voting on approval of the Keystone XL pipeline next week.

The Senate will vote (next week) on whether or not to greenlight construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. 

Even TransCanada has already moved on, for cripe's sake.

The vote on the Keystone XL pipeline is an attempt to save Mary Landrieu’s job. Landrieu still needs five Democrats to join her in supporting the bill, or it will fail next week. The problem with the vote is that it is an obvious betrayal of the values that Democrats have been championing for years. With their majority gone in January, Harry Reid is allowing a vote on a bill that he has refused to bring to the floor for years.

There probably are five Senate Dems who will vote for it.  If it passes, will Obama sign it or veto it?  I think it would be interesting to see what he does, particularly in the wake of the game-changing climate accord this week with the Chinese.  But how this helps Landrieu in any way is one of the more cynical gambits the Democrats have pulled on their base in a long, long time.

I suppose they think those rubes in Louisiana can't see through it.

Update: Joan Walsh nails it.

-- As we wait for the Ferguson grand jury's verdict on whether or not to indict the policeman who shot Michael Brown, it appears that things have a good chance to be worse than the last time.

Yeah, that's all the greatest country in the world needs right now: more racial violence.