CA-10, the Forgotten Election

I'm sure we're all glad that the RWNJ Carpetteabagger lost in NY-23, but there was another congressional election as well in CA-10. From yesterday's Firedoglake, links at site:

The AP’s Liz “Donuts” Sidoti has a conventional wisdom article out today about the 2009 Election, and not until paragraph six, as an afterthought, is one of the bigger races mentioned:

Elsewhere, California Lt. Gov. John Garamendi is expected to maintain the Democratic Party’s hold on the open 10th Congressional District seat near San Francisco, while New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is expected to cruise to a third term. Atlanta, Houston, Boston, Detroit and Pittsburgh also will elect mayors, while voters in Maine and Washington weigh in on same-sex unions and voters in Ohio decide whether to allow casinos.

"Elsewhere, California". Been there. It's right next to "Pavement Ends". Heh.

Democratic seat, “near San Francisco,” no big deal. A Democrat replaces a Democrat in Congress. Ho-hum.

Except the difference between the departed Ellen Tauscher and the incoming John Garamendi is numerous. Tauscher led the pro-business New Democrats; Garamendi, the state’s Lieutenant Governor, is one of California’s leading progressives and a longtime single-payer advocate. Tauscher ran away from progressive values; Garamendi charges toward them. Tauscher and her allies were fond of explaining that CA-10 was a moderate district and only moderates could win there; Garamendi ran as himself and will win today. In fact, because of the prominence of vote-by-mail in California, he probably already has.

Robert Cruickshank explains this as succinctly as possible:

CA-10 becomes a left-wing district. John Garamendi, one of the most progressive California politicians we have and a true leader on a broad range of issues, is going to get elected to Congress today. While the right thinks they have an upset potential here, it’s simply not going to happen. Garamendi has a great GOTV operation and widespread support in the district. And whereas the right will spin whatever Harmer’s vote total turns out to be as some sort of victory, the real story here is that CA-10, which as recently as 1996 was a red district, has now become a solidly progressive district. We always said the 10th could do better than Ellen Tauscher. Today John Garamendi is going to prove it.

It doesn’t fit with the storyline that the media has decided for this election. But John Garamendi moves the ideological bar in Congress as much as any election this year, and will provide a strong voice on health care, clean energy and financial regulation. Here’s an interview I conducted with him for Calitics during the primary election.

Garamendi is OK, and he won.

Two for two. Not bad.

Before you die ...

In a runaway Toyota, SHUT. THE. FUCKING. CAR. OFF!

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The 2009 Lexus ES 350 shot through suburban San Diego like a runaway missile, weaving at 120 miles an hour through rush hour freeway traffic as flames flashed from under the car.

At the wheel, veteran California Highway Patrol Officer Mark Saylor desperately tried to control the 272-horsepower engine that was roaring at full throttle as his wife, teenage daughter and brother-in-law were gripped by fear.

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That's all. Turn the fucking key and the engine stops, and you coast to the side safely. WTF? Is this so hard?

Cross-posted at F & G.

It's good to see ...

Our pal Nucks is feeling better:

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You have got to be fucking kidding me, these cunt warts are still trying to mold the discourse and Legislation in this country of over THREE HUNDRED MILLION INDIVIDUAL CITIZENS?!!
Less than ONE HUNDRED,recalcitrant, hissy fit throwing, corporate cock sucking whores are stalling every piece of legislation, every judicial nomination, will not agree that the insurance and pharmaceutical companies in this country are a fucking monopoly and that just being a douchebag is not enough for a public rebuke?
LESS THAN ONE HUNDRED PEOPLE are completely stopping the business of the people of America out of spite.

Think about THAT shit for a minute. [ems and everything else in original]

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Heh ... I'm going to work.

Dear New Jersey,

Didn't realize you missed George Bush so much. Good luck with that.

Regards,

Fixer

Quote of the Day

Ol' Fez:

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This desperate attempt to call anybody that doesn't look like, oh, Darren Rovell (or Lou Dobbs, or Glenn Beck) "un-American" is the most disgusting meme the right-wing has come up with yet.

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Heh ...

Indeed.

PSA*

The Rude Pundit doesn't have comments on his blog, but he sure as shit does on his Facebook page. Go make friends! You don't have to be particularly polite. Heh.

*Positively Snarky Advice

Money-Saving Tip

Today is me 'n Mrs. G's 36th wedding anniversary. Here's the tip:

Instead of buying each other cards, we went to the greeting card display at Safeway and each picked out cards for the other, presented them, read them, thanked each other appropriately, and put them back.

Saved eight bucks to go spend on dinner at Village Pizzeria, which is a nicer restaurant than it sounds.

Gotta keep our priorities straight, after all.

Headline of the Day

‘Victim in fatal car accident tragically not Glenn Beck’

Just as an aside, I got to thinkin' how much I'd like to slap the dogshit outta Miss Becky because he's such an embarrassment on so many levels to this country and his alleged gender, but then I realized just how wrong that would be.

I would have had to do it before his transgender procedures were completed, and it's way too late for that.

How the GOP is killing America

The post title might be considered part of an ongoing series. In this one, The Existentialist Cowboy goes off like one of Fixer's party favors on the right wing shills who are fearmongering and demagoguing about how them Meskins are comin' ta murder us in our beds as just part of the larger picture about trying to distract us from what's really going on.

The piddly amounts of drugs sold across the border are a strawman --peanuts compared to the heist of US wealth pulled off by just one percent of the US population!

The GOP is either nuts or crooked or both! I often wonder what the US might have been if right wing psychopaths had not demagogued every war or every so-called 'crisis' and in ways that enriched only their 'base'! The end result is that just one percent of the entire population owns more than some 95 percent of the rest of us combined! Anyone not of that ruling elite still supporting the elitist GOP and complicit DINOs is nuts! And I have no sympathy for you!

And if Mexican drugs are sold in the US --what of it? Isn't that just good ol' laissez-faire, right wing, GOP 'free enterprise'. How long would that evil drug trade last if 'yankees' were not lined up to buy? And what percentage of the GOP is 'hooked' on cocaine? How long would the border traffic last if 'white shirted', clean shaven GOP faithful were not lined up to buy?

Let's talk about the stupid people who have taken over the US and the shill media which kisses up to them. Let's review the implications of a recent article in the Texas Observer.

On March 25, CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° rolled into El Paso to report on Mexican drug-cartel violence. Cooper was one more in a recent wave of national news heavy hitters to parachute in, scare the pants off millions of viewers, then jet off to the next headline destination.
...

By God, they’re coming to your neighborhood! Looking at another live feed from El Paso, listening to the breathless reports of violence and “expert” analysis about “spillover,” viewers could only assume that the city in which Cooper stood was under imminent assault.

That’s the reality these days for El Pasoans. Or rather, it’s the twisted perception created by border-warrior politicians and national news media, and foisted on Juarez’s relatively peaceful sister city. For El Pasoans and residents of nearby border towns, it might all be a mere oddity—maybe even worth a chuckle—if it didn’t mean the construction of 18-foot border walls, blustery talk about National Guard troop surges, and new resources for the disastrous war on drugs. While “troop surge,” “border wall,” and “drug war” might sound irresistibly sexy to politicians and pundits, it’s border residents who have to live with the fences and tanks and consequences.

Enough is enough!

A good start will consist of shutting up the right wing media. Turn off CNN, Fox and the bullshit peddlers all over the tube! Secondly, the people of the US must effect the complete and utter repudiation of right wing practices which have, in fact, enriched just one percent of the entire population as some 95 percent of the rest of us have gotten poorer, impoverished utterly.

Secondly, the GOP must be held to account for war policies that have, in fact, bankrupted the US.

Much, much more. I love this picture and hope the late Señor Bedoya is enjoying yet another parody of his classic line:


I wish I knew how to say "Fuckin' A!" in Spanish!

In the beginning...

I was reading the review and ad for R. Crumb's latest work of graphic fiction and thought the last paragraph might be apropos in light of Fixer's post:

But, as every student of the Bible knows, there’s no such thing as a reading without interpretation. A big challenge from the start: how should God be depicted? In an interview with Time, Crumb explains that he considered rendering God as a light emerging from a cloud, or coyly recontextualizing him as a black woman, but in the end settled on a more pedestrian bearded and robed figure that he says resembles his father: “if you actually read the Old Testament,” he told Time, “he’s just an old, cranky Jewish patriarch.”

The oldtimers who invented the God we're kinda stuck with had to go with what they know which wasn't much.

From Crumb's wiki on his new book:

It contains all 50 chapters of Genesis and comes with a warning on its cover: "Adult Supervision Recommended for Minors."

When it comes to creation legends, I would recommend adult supervision for adults as well lest they take that shit literally and think it's really so.

As creation stories go, I'm kinda partial to the Navajo one. Very colorful and doesn't try to make you feel guilty for things that never happened.

Hmmmm. Musta been a cranky old Jewish mother influence on Genesis too...

We're alone ...

One of the reasons I can't get behind religion. This is an image of the Milky Way galaxy, the place where we live. Along with the Solar System (our sun and the planets that orbit it), there are a few hundred million others in this picture. In the known universe, there are several hundred million galaxies like the Milky Way (each containing hundreds of millions more stars (presumably some with planets orbiting them).



So tell me, in all this vastness (that God supposedly created, by the way), why we are so arrogant to believe we are the only ones out here? That God created us and no one else?

You must be kidding me.

Off to vote for my local criminals ...

Pic from here. Link thanks to Maru.

The End of Prohibition

Slate

Why gay marriage, getting high, and going to Cuba will soon be legal.

The trifecta! I can spot a '59 El Camino a mile away, high or not, and if me'n Fixer go to Cuba together, who's ta say we're not on our honeymoon?

Murphys

If yer one o' them wino-philes, here's some more California wine country you've never heard of. We have a lot of those.

Norton Buffalo 1951 - 2009

I won't be surprised if you've never heard of Norton Buffalo (wiki, website), but he's been huge out west here for many years. I've been to see him at a lot of small venues around here. At times, his show was the only live music for forty miles. He made his harp rock.

EssEffChron

(11-01) 21:11 PST PARADISE (BUTTE COUNTY) -- Norton Buffalo, harmonica virtuoso, one-of-a-kind performer and consummate accompanist to the stars, died Friday night from cancer in Feather River Hospital, near his home in Paradise (Butte County). He was 58.

Mr. Buffalo, who appeared on more than 180 albums and spent 33 years as a member of the Steve Miller Band, was diagnosed with cancer in September. His life will be celebrated Jan. 23 at the Fox Theater in Oakland in a benefit concert starring the Steve Miller Band and the Doobie Brothers, with special guests Huey Lewis, George Thorogood, Charlie Musselwhite and Bonnie Raitt.

"He was the antithesis of East Coast cynical," said Raitt, who spent Sunday morning watching Buffalo videos on YouTube. "He was always in funny mode without being too gooey about it. He's been that guy all this time. In one guy, you got all the hope and optimism of the '70s."

Take five and go read about him.

Adios, dude.

Oh., the irony...

Ironic Times

China Signs Huge Oil Deal With Iraq, Huge Copper Deal With Afghanistan
Your tax dollars at work.

World's Largest Cruise Ship Sets Sail on Maiden Voyage
Royal Caribbean's Oasis of the Seas has 2700 cabins, 33 Olympic-sized swimming pools, 1200 restaurants, 114 discotheques, 11 supermarkets and two cemeteries.

Big City Newspapers' Circulation Down 25% in Last 6 Months
According to reliable blogs.

In related news:

Cruise Line to Retrace Voyage of Titanic on 100th Anniversary
On April 8, 2012, HM Balmoral will leave Southampton carrying over two thousand print journalists.

Quote of the Day

Our buddy Nucks:

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Go buy some food, winter is coming and the economy is being dragged on the ground behind some so called expert economists like toilet paper on yer ex wife's heel coming out of the bathroom.

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Going to work ...

Sorry ...

For the lack of posting lately. We're busy as hell at the shop and I've been working on the Mrs. office the rest of time, trying to get it finished in a minimum of time - hopefully by sometime next week. I'll be back in form soon.

Remember?

Remember a few years ago, when Bush and Congress decided the President needed broader surveillance powers (we can't keep you safe unless we listen to everything), wiretapping our phones and electronic activity? Remember how we jumped up and down and the Rethugs chalked it up to "Bush hatred"? Remember when we said we didn't want any President to have the power to basically ignore our privacy rights?

Well, seems the current White House has gotten used to having that capability and doesn't want to give it up either:

The Obama administration has, yet again, asserted the broadest and most radical version of the "state secrets" privilege -- which previously caused so much controversy and turmoil among loyal Democrats (when used by Bush/Cheney) -- to attempt to block courts from ruling on the legality of the government's domestic surveillance activities. Obama did so again this past Friday -- just six weeks after the DOJ announced voluntary new internal guidelines which, it insisted, would prevent abuses of the state secrets privilege. Instead -- as predicted -- the DOJ continues to embrace the very same "state secrets" theories of the Bush administration -- which Democrats generally and Barack Obama specifically once vehemently condemned -- and is doing so in order literally to shield the President from judicial review or accountability when he is accused of breaking the law.

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Sorry, but when it comes to this, I don't trust this White House any more than I did the last one.

I hope the rest of yer day goes better...

Thanks to onaitsabes21.