A Welcoming Community
My colleague Andrew Geller at Scrapple TV made this video:
He became personally involved with the issue when it turned out his girlfriend’s parents owned a farm in the heart of PA’s gas fields. PA is the only state that doesn’t charge any tax on shale gas extraction. It’s a scandal, and one of the many reasons Tom Corbett has to go. You might say he gets the gasface:
There’s lots to write about today, but I am dog tired. I’ve been working pretty much non-stop since I got up this morning on Washington Monthly-related tasks. Part of that was accepting an official full-time position with benefits and a healthy raise. So, don’t think I am complaining. I’m feeling quite happy and relieved, actually.
But, I don’t have much left in the tank right now, and part of why I worked so hard this morning is so I could devote my full attention to Finn this evening and make sure he has the awesomest Halloween ever.
I’m officially off this weekend, meaning that I am not blogging for WaMo and can pretty much blow off the whole political scene if I want to. But I will be working on my final Senate projections, which I will publish no later than Monday.
When I was a kid, I associated Blue Oyster Cult’s Don’t Fear the Reaper with the original movie Halloween, a movie that I found terrifying. I guess I still make the association.
Happy tricks and treats.
Stuart Rothenberg is certainly counting his chickens before they have come home to roost. This is something that timeless wisdom has told us not to do. Some people call it “irrational exuberance.” Maybe Rothenberg is correct and will be proven prescient, but I find this bandwagoning quite annoying.
John Stoehr of the Washington Spectator has a new piece up in which he encourages (without much hope) the Obama administration to use the furor and panic over the Ebola virus to make an effort to ram home their nominee for Surgeon General, despite the fact that Vivek Murthy is being opposed for his alleged “anti-gun” attitude.
The position of the surgeon general has been vacant so long no one remembers who last occupied it. That’s in part due to the president’s competing priorities but it’s mostly due to a filibuster last spring by Senate Republicans of Obama’s highly qualified nominee, Vivek Murthy. The reason is quite plain. Murthy is outspoken in the belief that gun violence is not a constitutional issue but a health issue. The National Rifle Association fears that is cannot control a political narrative outside the one it controls—the right to bear arms being a universal, constitutional, individual and sacred right that cannot be infringed by the federal government. The vocal but weak gun-control faction in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party cannot compete with such a narrative because their narrative tells the story of taking something away—guns and freedom, in the opposing view. Only a narrative as powerful, and as fear-inducing, as a public health threat like the one we’re currently seeing has the strength to rival the dominance of the NRA’s narrative. So Obama has an opportunity to ram through his nominee. That is, if he chose to.
Mr. Stoehr thinks that the administration will not do this because Democrats are conflict-shy. There’s something to that argument. It’s always a balance with Obama. He doesn’t like to pick fights he can’t win, and that’s usually the smart move. But, in politics, in a political season, in the midst of a public health panic, it might be the right time to pick a fight without gaming out the end game. It might just be an example of when doing the right thing is good politics, even if you lose on the issue at hand.
(Written by an American expat living in the European Union)
Edited and republished at the request of readers.
In New Hampshire, a GOP state Rep. Steve Vaillancourt poses as the dapper don turned self appointed defacto beauty pageant judge. Pronounces Democratic incumbent Ann McLane Kuster “as ugly as sin” and therefore too ugly to win!! But in saying so, he says he hopes he hasn’t offended sin!! So it is the GOP tries to WIN UGLY AGAIN. By turning this congressional race into his own private circus where in he hoists his ageism and sexist pronouncements on us in a orgy bordering on a misogynistic theater of the absurd!!
Steve Vaillancourt, a Republican state representative for New Hampshire attempts to turn the New Hampshire’s 2nd district congressional race into his own personal defacto beauty pageant wherein he acts as the self-appointed judge, wherein he pronounces in his judgement that the determining factor in the race will come down to the matter of his judgement that incumbent Democratic state Rep. Ann McLane Kuster is “as ugly as sin” and cannot win. In a continuation of his sexist remarks, he goes on to shockingly say that drag queens even look better than her and in doing so tries to create what may only be seen as a circus-like beauty pageant atmosphere to grab headlines in yet another desperate Republican bid to win ugly.
58 year old Rep. Ann McLane Kuster is the Democratic incumbent for the New Hampshire 2nd congressional district who is running for re-election against her Republican opponent 31 year old Marilinda Garcia.
New Hampshire State Rep. Steve Vaillancourt wrote a long blog post predicting the outcome of the race in the state’s 2nd Congressional District on one factor: incumbent Democratic Rep. Ann McLane Kuster’s looks.
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“Let’s be honest. Does anyone not believe that Congressman Annie Kuster is as UGLY AS SIN? AND I HOPE I HAVEN’T OFFENDED SIN,” Vaillancourt wrote on NH Insider, a New Hampshire politics blog.By contrast, he wrote, Kuster’s Republican challenger, State Rep. Marilinda Garcia, is “one of the most attractive women on the political scene anywhere, not so attractive as to be intimidating [sic], but truly attractive.”
At first glance most progressives on it’s face would not take Rep. Steve Vaillancourt seriously. However, in the face of this type of sexism if we do not take his behavior seriously, we do so at our peril because it isn’t possible to let this type of behavior go on unanswered. In fact the simple truth is this gives new meaning to the charge that Republicans are quite prepared to win ugly if need be but win at all costs by going negative.
So where is the backlash? Why Mr and Mrs Progressive America do we tolerate this type of hatred from the GOP from a guy whose conceit knows no end. In proclaiming himself as a type of defacto self-appointed beauty pageant judge turning a congressional race into his own private circus and theater of the absurd, whereupon he hoists his ageism and sexist pronouncements on us in a clear case where if these were two male candidates it wouldn’t even be possible to have such a vacuous conversation in a congressional campaign where real people have real problems that we can ill afford to have hi-jacked by the GOP election circus agenda. In a disgraceful showing of ageism and sexism which initially was not repudiated by either State Rep. Marilinda Garcia or the GOP party, both of them initially were prepared to profit from their silence while they were waiting to see what effect this may have (if any) on the latest polling numbers. Having waited and first profited from it for 3 days, Rep. Garcia finally came out and repudiated Rep. Vaillancourt’s remarks as sexist. In doing so, Rep. Garcia in good GOP form is a day late and a dollar short as usual.
“How ugly is Annie Kuster?” he begins. By the end of the story, he concludes, “By now you probably know why I think of Annie Kuster whenever I walk by Mados; sad to say, but the drag queens are more attractive than Annie Kuster….not that there’s anything wrong with that.”…… “Annie Kuster looks more like a drag queen than most men in drag,” he concludes.
Source: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-hampshire-republican-rep-ann-mclane-kuster-is-ugly-as-sin/
In America today we have real problems: 40 million people without access to medical care, 45 million people on food stamps, 130 million people who don’t have any dental coverage. Millions more unemployed and homeless. Can we really afford to stand by and let GOP supporters turn congressional elections into a circus by their sad and poor behavior, and therein their own personal theater of the absurd?
Vaillancourt as a six term member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives has a rich controversial history. Which includes the fact that as we can see here in this you tube video link which shows Vaillancourt had to apologize for uttering the the Nazi salute “Sieg Heil,” on the floor of the New Hampshire House in a heated moment back on May 15, 2012 as reported by the Chicago Tribune.
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-05-15/news/sns-rt-us-usa-newhampshirebre84e1k8-20120515_1_ne
w-hampshire-legislator-podium
(Here are some words of wisdom from MAnn Coulter.)
The sad truth is it seems like in every election someone, somewhere is always playing to the lowest base instinct of the male GOP base, in their position on objectifying women. As for Mr Vaillancourt one can only wonder in all honesty what he is prepared to say if Hillary Clinton or other female progressive candidates run in November 2016 in federal and statewide elections. It seems that we better all sit down and buckle our seatbelts, because the 2016 election cycle is likely to be the most expensive and dirtiest elections in American history. Thanks in no small part to people like Mr Vaillancourt playing to the lowest base instincts of the male GOP electorate.
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I’ve been and continue to be quite busy. I just did most of the work to put the November/December issue of the Washington Monthly online. Look for it on Monday. It will be good.
What’s on your mind?
I love love LOVE how this sounds like a deranged version of the English Beat’s Ranking Full Stop:
Open Thread…
Just for the edification of Paul Waldman, the arrogance that leads Chris Christie to insult people who he thinks are stupid isn’t some personality quirk. It’s a cultural trademark of the Garden State that it shares with people from the greater New York metropolitan area. It’s a trait that you can see in Bill Maher in basically equal measure. If you’re looking for another politician, try Bayonne-raised Barney Frank. You can see it in entertainers like Frank Sinatra. Or look at Hall of Fame football coach Bill Parcells.
Most Jersey politicians don’t act like this, but it should be obvious by now that Christie’s act isn’t judged negatively in New Jersey the way it would be in areas of the country where this behavior is unfamiliar. The reason is that telling people that they’re stupid is a state pastime in Jersey.
Of course, this is different than picking on people or “punching down.” It isn’t considered good form to insult someone’s intelligence if they are genuinely “slow.” But, if someone is expressing a strongly held opinion and they’re an idiot, then telling them to shut their stupid face is normal in Jersey.
Whether you find this appealing or abrasive, the important thing is that it doesn’t translate well to other areas of the country. Sure, there’s a subset of people (conservatives) who genuinely enjoy punching down. They like Christie’s act because they don’t really understand it for what it is. They can’t distinguish it from the acts of politicians like Michele Bachmann and Paul Ryan who just insult liberals and poor people and minorities because it’s how they excite the base.
So, yes, Christie will have some problems winning voters in “polite” Iowa, but not so much in the caucuses when he’s appealing to a very conservative base that thinks Christie is beating people up because they are weak instead of because he’s an arrogant prick from Jersey.
For all the reasons I have stated before, Nate Cohn agrees that if the polls are off in any direction, it is far more likely that they are overstating the Republicans’ advantages than the Democrats’. Unfortunately, the kind of errors that pollsters are likely to make are minimized in this election for several reasons. Most of the competitive races are taking place in states with small Latino populations (Colorado being the most glaring exception). The hardest to reach voters are precisely the ones least likely to vote, particularly in a midterm election. This includes highly mobile people, exclusive cell phone users, urban dwellers, college students, young people, and people on the margins of society. It also includes people for whom English is a second language, which is a group larger than just Latinos. These voters are heavily Democratic and they are likely to be underrepresented in polls, but the fewer of them that there are, the less of a skew will result.
In other words, the same factors which led pollsters to underestimate the size of President Obama’s reelection victory are still largely in play despite legitimate and concerted efforts to address them, but the size of the error is going to be less even if the problems have not been corrected.
This means that Democrats hoping to see an across the board result far better than predicted are probably going to be disappointed. Some states, like Colorado, still have the potential to greatly defy expectations, both because it has a large Latino population and because they’ve changed their voting process to a mail-in format. But most other states don’t have this same potential, or have it to a much smaller degree.
Races polling within the margin of error are going to be competitive, but don’t expect too many results this time like Harry Reid’s four years ago.
I’m not sure whether The Association of Raelian Scientists is taking transubstantiation too literally or not literally enough, but it never occurred to me that you could convince anyone of the truth or falsity of the doctrine by doing before-and-after DNA tests on communion wafers.
“Nobody can contest a simple DNA test like that conducted by our scientists,” Brigitte Boisselier, spokesperson for the Raelian Movement, said in a news release. “Supernatural statements of long-established organizations like the Catholic Church can be exposed for what they are, a poor sham from the Middle Ages that has no place in this new century. All scientists should educate the public.”
I’m not sure exactly how they conducted their experiment, but I think they necessarily missed a crucial element of the ritual, which is the actual consumption of the host.
The Raelian researchers collected consecrated hosts from five different Catholic churches in the United States and Canada, and then tested the samples for human DNA.
“But DNA analysis performed on five different hosts collected after the Catholic ritual of consecration showed no DNA change whatsoever in them,” Boisselier explained. “The wheat DNA remained wheat DNA, with no human DNA present other than that resulting from contamination caused by human handling of the hosts. This study clearly falsifies the claim that a religious ritual performed by a priest can actually change the substance of a bread wafer into the substance of a human body.”
The authors of the study acknowledged they used deception to obtain the consecrated hosts, but said their research was justified because Catholic indoctrination had long-lasting negative consequences.
What they should have checked is whether it is a chemical in human saliva or maybe in our stomach bile that acts as a catalyst for the genetic transformation. I thought that Raelians would have a little more imagination. Don’t they ever watch MythBusters?
It’s a stupid experiment anyway, as a wafer that still presents itself as a wafer despite having human DNA would be just as magical and unexplainable by science as one that doesn’t but somehow contains the presence of Christ.
In any case, according to the Synoptic Gospels and Saul of Tarsus, Jesus told his disciples to eat the bread and drink the wine as a way of remembering him. The ritual seems to work just fine for this purpose.