Campaign to reelect Obama underway: Swing state Missouri Governor vetoes voter ID requirement

Pardon me, Governor Jay Nixon, but your liberal slip is showing.

Nixon vetoed a measure passed by the Missouri legislature requiring voters to provide ID at the polls.

“This [photo ID] mandate would disproportionately impact senior citizens and persons with disabilities, among others, who are qualified to vote and have been lawfully voting since becoming eligible to do so, but are less likely to have a driver’s license or government-issued photo ID,” Nixon said in a letter explaining his veto. “Disenfranchising certain classes of persons is not acceptable.”

The bill included a mandate that the state cover the cost of obtaining a photo ID for those who are unable to do so. In addition, it exempted several groups that could have problems getting a photo ID, including anyone born before 1941 or someone with a sincerely held religious belief against obtaining these forms of identification. Those individuals would be allowed to cast a provisional ballot that would be counted only after an election official verifies their identity by comparing their signature with a signature on file.

Not included in the provisions were illegal alien voters, dead people, felons in jail or Mickey Mouse. And liberals can’t exclude their favorite voting demographics!

He and other Democrats know Obama’s reelection (and their own political futures) are at risk:

Nixon joins with Democratic governors Brian Schweitzer of Montana and Mark Dayton of Minnesota who vetoed photo ID bills passed earlier this year in those states.

What a sham:

In Missouri, voters are already required to provide some form of ID before casting a ballot, but the list includes some without a photo, such as a utility bill, bank statement or paycheck.

All of which can be passed out by ACORN workers to “voters” in need.

A 2009 study by the secretary of state’s office estimated around 230,000 Missourians are registered to vote but lack a government-issued photo ID. A 2007 study by Washington University found that among blacks, the young and low-income residents — historically among the most loyal Democratic voters — about 80 percent of registered voters had access to a government-issued photo ID. This compares to around 90 percent of whites, middle class and middle-aged voters.

A coalition of groups — including the NAACP, AARP, League of Women Voters and ACLU — had called for Nixon to veto photo ID legislation.

Ah, no Democrat can justify “disenfranchising” his core constituents, right? The NAACP et al must have argued that the free government ID provided by the bill would  have somehow debased those poor voters who didn’t yet have one. Can’t have that. The bill addressed real needs, while liberals spew this garbage:

Claims that a voter ID law is needed to stave off voter fraud are ridiculous, critics argued, since there have been no instances of the type of voter fraud this bill aimed to prevent ever occurring in Missouri.

None proven. Here in Colorado, over 12,000 illegals are registered to vote. 5,000 voted in the midterm. The Senate race was decided by a razor-thin margin.

Liberals around the country know what’s at stake in ’12. So do we.

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“All military personnel will continue in normal duty status … [and] will serve without pay until such time as Congress makes appropriated funds available to compensate them for this period of service.”

So explains a Pentagon directive about the potential government shutdown. This is a shift from the last shutdown. Via the Army Times:

When the government was shut down in 1995, military personnel continued to report to work and were paid, but the planning guidance sent to the services and defense agencies says a shutdown this time will be different

What I find spectacular about the way the Army Times–which is just as liberal as the rest of the MSM–frames the argument.  Headline: If government shuts down, so would troop pay. But oh, there’s this:

Troops would miss a payday only if the shutdown continues through April 1.

How exactly would you know you’re working sans pay unless you miss an actual payday?

You wouldn’t.

Will it go on that long? Who knows, but even with the possibility of no paycheck for this household, I pray the Republicans have the cojones to see this through. Make significant and lasting cuts.

Exit question: will legislators receive their paychecks? Will the President? Better yet, will Michelle still have “essential” chefs and stylists at her fingertips while one-income military families struggle to buy food and make house payments should it come to that?

UPDATE: linked by Pundette. Thanks!

A thousand words? Unnecessary.

One works to describe how absolutely wonderful this looks: Hallelujah!  Via Drudge. 

 From Fox, the whopper of the day courtesy the former Speaker:

At her final press conference as House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said, “Deficit reduction has been a high priority for us. It is our mantra, pay-as-you-go.”

The numbers tell a different story.

When the Pelosi Democrats took control of Congress on January 4, 2007, the national debt stood at $8,670,596,242,973.04. The last day of the 111th Congress and Pelosi’s Speakership on December 22, 2010 the national debt was $13,858,529,371,601.09 – a roughly $5.2 trillion increase in just four years. Furthermore, the year over year federal deficit has roughly quadrupled during Pelosi’s four years as speaker, from $342 billion in fiscal year 2007 to an estimated $1.6 trillion at the end of fiscal year 2010.

For more on our new Speaker of the House, see Pundette here and here.  The first steels me against news like this.  Let’s pray the 112th remembers the hows and whys of governance (and the Constitution!) lest their numbers end up in the toilet like Pelosi and her merry band of liars.

 UPDATE: Ah, great minds.

At least the Communist media acknowledges what our “liberal progressives” really are

 Via fellow Potlucker Nice Deb, a clip from Russian TV:

Nice Deb calls it for what it is: an attempt to normalize communism.  But it goes further than that.  When the language of self-avowed “communists” echoes that of our President, I get the willies.

From the clip, the lady communist who says “it’s more positive to say ‘progressive’ or ‘left’,” ends by talking “change” (how odd she didn’t say “hope,” eh?):

[It] is an attempt to make change but maybe right now it’s not in terms of a revolution but a working from within.

The voice-over chick then adds in conclusion:

Which you can call any number of things but probably not unpatriotic.

Note to communist journalist from Russia: It’s not “unpatriotic” in, say, your country.  But it sure as hell is unpatriotic in mine!

What’s fascinating to me is the coverage itself.  During our trip to Eastern Europe last year, I had ample opportunity to watch Russian media.  On the eve of the mid-terms, no less.  And the American political commentators interviewed–I remember one poli-sci prof from Cornell in particular because I wondered if he and Professor Jacobson ever crossed paths–were so far left, even I was awed.  That trashing your country, its people, values and political system on Russian state media wasn’t some form of treason.  Honestly.  But I guess it’s no different than watching MSNBC, right?  Free speech! Free press!

UPDATED: Welcome Pundit & Pundette readers.  Thanks for the link!

More idiots coming out of the woodwork

As per the WaPo’s GOP voters are racist idiots, we have another look-at-these-bitter-clingers-who-vote from a University of Wisconsin political scientist.  (Seriously, is that any surprise?)

Via Byron York, “Top Political Scientist: U.S. voters are pretty damn stupid.”  Heh.

Franklin was responding to a question from Bill Lueders, news editor of Isthmus, a weekly alternative newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin.  In an account published Thursday (H/T Ann Althouse), Lueders says he asked Franklin why “the public seemed to vote against its own interests and stated desires, for instance by electing candidates who’ll drive up the deficit with fiscally reckless giveaways to the rich.”

“Franklin, perhaps a bit too candidly, conceded the point,” Lueders writes.  “‘I’m not endorsing the American voter,’ he answered. ‘They’re pretty damn stupid.'”

Lueders writes that he responded, “Thank you, professor.  That’s the answer I was looking for.”  The rest of Lueders’ account explains that smart voters support things like high-speed rail and higher taxes for the rich, while dumb voters support “an obvious phony like [Republican senator-elect] Ron Johnson over Russ Feingold.”

You know, the (D) powers that be want light rail in that thriving city of Detroit.  So they can hand out free tickets to all the jobless people or something.  (I think they’ve forgotten there aren’t any rich folks left to tax!)

And how about that “That’s the answer I was looking for,” eh?  Had a journalist working for a conservative publication expressed such a sentiment aloud, he would be pilloried. But a wannabe JournoLister?  No problema.

 

As for the “smart voters support… more taxes for the rich,” it’s because those “smart voters” want to keep lining their own pockets as they pull the (D) lever at the expense of someone else.  Meanwhile those dumbass Republican voters understand the simple concept of stopping inane public works projects that aren’t affordable when there isn’t any damn money to spend.  Voting contrary to their interests?  Hogwash.  Voting in the best interests of future generations. 

 

God Bless those dumbass voters.  They may well save our country from the smartasses.

UPDATE: Welcome Pundit and Pundette readers! Thanks for the Featured Blog link!

WaPo: Well, of course GOP voters are racist idiots!

From this morning’s fishwrap Washington Post mourning celebrating the “political divide” in the country:

The Republican Party’s big gains in the House came largely from districts that were older, less diverse and less educated than the nation as a whole. Democrats kept their big majorities in the cities.

Ah, the cities, where Democrat majorities have prevailed for decades, providing brilliant citizens with this

and this

Wouldn’t you love to live in the city with all those smart folks, too?

Oh, wait.  I think the smart folks have fled the city.

All that’s left are the ones who cling to their welfare and violent crime who will never escape the crippling poverty of inner-city Detroit because they look to someone else to solve their problems.

But hey, all’s not lost! They’re smart enough to keep voting (D) year after year while they slip further into the welfare abyss!

UPDATE: linked as a featured blog at P&P.  Thanks!

Saturday Night Swoon: Rubio address

Via Hot Air:

Love. Him. I pray he and others are able to hold the GOP’s feet to the fire and make something of this conservative resurgance rather than squandering it a la Gingrich.

Ed Morrissey’s explanation of why the Democrats feared a Rubio win is spot-on:

If you want to see why Democrats feared Marco Rubio so much that they tried to stick a knife in the back of their own candidate to stop him, this video demonstrates just how powerful a figure he will become with a national platform on which to speak. The GOP may not have had a speaker like Rubio since Ronald Reagan, excelling at both the message and the mechanics of oratory — and even Reagan didn’t have this kind of compelling backstory. Rubio reminded listeners of his origins from a people exiled from their birthplace because of their desire for freedom, and the dream of a better life that is a “sacred duty” for this generation to deliver to the next, not to mortgage from the next generation for our own exploitation.

Is it too soon to hope for a Christie/Rubio ticket in ’12?  Heck, no one will be able to throw the “the VP candidate has no experience” canard given that he’ll have had the same experience (actually, plus quite a bit from his statehouse days) that Barry O had going in to the top of the ticket.  Just sayin’.  A girl can wish, right?

Liberal angst and anguish: post-election edition

Oh my.  From Vanity Fair, liberal bedwetting on display from the editor, h/t Hot Air headlines:

The general anti-Obama rage out there is palpable. But it’s no more virulent than the anti-Bush sentiment that has pervaded the country for much of the past decade—although this being America, there’s an attendant hatred for Obama that has more to do with race than anything else.

Of course. We just elected two new black GOP congressmen, another Indian-American governor, the first hispanic female governor, and a new Cuban-American Senator. Because we’re racists.

More brilliance:

What makes today’s fury more worrying is the fact that angry right-wing extremists tend to carry guns in disproportionate numbers to their liberal counterparts.

He echoes lefty-wacko-friend-of-the-One Bernadine Dorhn’s concerns, so you know they must really be wringing hands at Upper Eat Side cocktail parties this week.  They’re angry. Racists! And they have guns! Oh my!

On voting for witches and the like:

A distinguished colleague of mine likens the wiggy mood of the nation to that of a hormonal teenager. What do you call an electorate that seems prone to acting out irrationally, is full of inchoate rage, and is constantly throwing fits and tantrums? You call it teenaged. Is voting for a deranged Tea Party candidate such as Christine O’Donnell, who has no demonstrable talent for lawmaking, or much else, so different from shouting “Whatever!” and slamming the bedroom door? Is moaning that Obama doesn’t emote enough or get sufficiently angry so different from screaming, “You don’t understand!!!”

And how, pray tell, is that any different from chugging Obama-aide and voting for a President with no executive experience, a shaky voting record, who wasn’t vetted by anyone let alone the press?   Oh, forgot.  He had a (D) after his name, halos around his head, and would part the seas and stop the inevitable rise from melting ice caps, so that makes it all a-ok.

In need of a palate cleanser?  Try Ann Coulter, “We’re all bigots now!”

UPDATE: Welcome to readers from David Horowitz’s NewsRealBlog.  Thanks for the link!

“This is our morning in America”

From my deck this morning: A glorious one

SarahPAC via Hot Air:

Question: how will liberals continue to abuse the “tea-partiers are racist” meme with Congressmen-elect Allen West and Tim Scott sworn in? It’s worth noting that the first two Indian-American governors are both Republican, and the first Hispanic female governor is a Republican.  Among myriad others.  (Um, RUBIO?) 

Just sayin’. 

Speaking of Rubio, did you hear his victory speech? 

We make a grave mistake if we believe that tonight these results are somehow an embrace of the Republican Party.  What they are is a second chance, a second chance for Republicans to be what they said they were going to be not so long ago. (cheers) You see, I learned early on in this campaign — in fact, it’s what propelled me to enter it — that what this race was about, was about the great future that lies ahead for our country, a future that Americans know is there for the taking.

I know America’s great, not because I read about it in a book, but because I’ve seen it with my eyes.  I’ve been raised in a community of exiles, of people who lost their country, of people who know what it’s like to live somewhere else.  By the way, a community that I am proud to be a part of.  A community — (cheers and applause)  A community of men and women that were once my age, and when they were they had dreams like we have now, and yet they lost all those things through an accident of history.  No matter where I go or what title I may achieve, I will always be the son of exiles.

No wonder he scares the bejeezus out of liberals, no?

Don’t fall prey to liberal traps.

UPDATE: linked by Pundette.  Thanks!

Feeling like an ingrate for being so disappointed after unwrapping all the gifts

Like Pundette, I woke to disappointment upon hearing Dirty Harry won.  And Senator Ma’am. And Barney. 

Bitter disappointment given how the pro-life amendment here in Colorado fared.

It took a little surfin’ to assuage my angst. 

A little Jen-Ru to brighten your morning:

The prospect of an eight or nine or 10 Senate-seat pickup for the GOP has skewed the punditry. You have to keep in mind that the whole House was up for re-election, but the entire Senate wasn’t. Only 37 seats were at issue. Let’s say Ken Buck pulls through. The percentage of seats picked up by the GOP would then be 18.9 percent (seven of 37). In the context of the whole House, this would be the equivalent of an 83-seat pickup. Put differently, given the number of seats up and the fact that there were so many Blue States in play, the GOP’s haul is by any measure an extraordinary achievement. And in the Senate, if Lisa Murkowski wins and caucuses with the GOP, there won’t be single lost seat for the Republicans. In the House, there are three losses so far.

This is not to say that the GOP couldn’t have done better. Would Mike Castle and Sue Lowden have been able to take Nevada and Delaware, respectively? Almost certainly that would have been the case in Delaware, and quite possibly in Nevada. That said, the Tea Party critics should keep in mind that the Tea Partiers are also responsible for two potential GOP stars getting through the primary and winning big — Marco Rubio and Ron Johnson. They also helped fuel House, Senate, and gubernatorial wins. It would be nice for a party to pick only nominees who can win general elections, but that happens only in the imagination of eager partisans.

This helps the coffee go down.  A little bittersweet here in Colorado considering Ken Buck is so close, and we’re stuck with a loony leftie for a Governor since Republicans couldn’t wrap their minds around voting for the real conservative who wasn’t running as a Republican.  Sigh.  And the prospect of Murkowski pulling through makes me violently ill.  But all in all, it’s not as bad as I first thought this morning.

Jim Geraghty:

It’s the biggest Republican gain in two generations — and yet, because of a few key races, it feels a little disappointing.

Wins to savor tonight: Marco Rubio in Florida, Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania, Bobby Schilling in Illinois. Nikki Haley in South Carolina. Daniel Webster’s defeat of the Devil in Florida’s 8th District. Susana Martinez’s big win in New Mexico. Allen West.

Chip Cravaack beating James Oberstar in Minnesota. Mick Mulvaney beating John Spratt in South Carolina. The big comeback in New York State’s House races.

He’s right.  But the bitterness of those few races still leaves a bad taste, no?  Harry.  Ick.

So no, we may not have the Senate.  But the consolation prize is better than first thought: state houses.  Erick Erickson:

[UPDATE]: The whole of the Maine legislator has flipped to the GOP. Several people I have talked to said such a deep and thorough shift to any one party has not happened in one election in the past 100 years.
——————

This is an unusual Morning Briefing because you need to understand what happened while you’ve been sleeping.

Republican gains are massive. And when I say Republican gains are massive, I mean tsunami.

No, the GOP did not take the Senate and some races are still outstanding, but the Senate GOP has moved to the right. More so, the Republicans picking up, in the worst case, seven seats is historically strong.

But consider that as you wake up this morning the Republican Party has picked up more seats in the House of Representatives than at any time since 1948 — that is more than sixty seats. Ike Skelton, Class of 1976, is gone. Many, many other Democrats are gone.

That, in and of itself, is significant. But that’s not the half of it. The real story is the underreported story of the night — the Republican pick ups at the state level.

There will be 18 states subject to reapportionment. The Republicans will control a majority of those — at least ten and maybe a dozen or more. More significantly, a minimum of seventeen state legislative houses have flipped to the Republican Party.

The North Carolina Legislature is Republican for the first time since 1870. Yes, that is Eighteen Seventy

The Alabama Legislature is Republican for the first time since 1876.

For those saying this is nothing because it is the South, consider these:

The entire Wisconsin and New Hampshire legislatures have flipped to the GOP by wide margins.

The State Houses in Indiana, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, Iowa, Montana, and Colorado flipped to the GOP.

The Maine and Minnesota Senates flipped to the GOP.

The Texas and Tennessee Houses went from virtually tied to massive Republican gains. The gains in Texas were so big that the Republicans no longer need the Democrats to get state constitutional amendments out of the state legislature.

These gains go all the way down to the municipal level across the nation. That did not happen even in 1994.

This was a tsunami.

Feeling better yet?  I am.  Another plum prize via Michelle Malkin: two Secretary of State wins.  No small potatoes ahead of the next election.

A salve from Mark Levin:

We will win around 3 score House races (including several long-time liberal Democrats), several Senate races, a slew of governorships, and this will be spun as a loss.  We are fighting the Democrats on their dark blue turf, they have become the regional party, several states have returned to their red status (Florida, Virginia, Indiana, among others), and this will be spun as a loss.  We are well positioned for 2012.  The conservative movement is back and growing.  Nancy Pelosi and her machine have been defeated.  And the GOP moderates have their backs to the wall.  And this will be spun as a lost.

As for compromise, the victor doesn’t seek compromise, the loser does.  To think otherwise is to switch places.  Furthermore, compromise per se is irrational.  You only compromise depending on what the issue is, and what the compromise means for the broader picture. 

The Democrats have far more Senate seats up in two years.  The Republicans control much more redistricting after tonight.  And this will be spun as a lost.

Would you rather be us today or them?

True enough. 

UPDATE: Welcome  Pundit and Pundette readers!  Thanks for the link!