CA AG still too close to call

LATimes

Three hours after the election polls closed, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley strode onto a stage at the Beverly Hilton Hotel and gave supporters of his campaign for state attorney general some news to cheer.

"Although my … close advisors think it's a little too early, I'm declaring victory," he said to a roaring crowd.

Early voting tallies showed Cooley with a comfortable lead. But within hours, his advantage had evaporated.

Cooley was widely seen as an early favorite in the race thanks to a history of electoral success in Los Angeles County, where he became the first district attorney in more than 70 years to win three terms.

But in Los Angeles County, Harris led Cooley by more than 14 percentage points. The county has nearly 400,000 uncounted ballots.

Something to consider is that L.A. is heavily Latino and Afro-American and so is the population of our prison system. People are unlikely to vote for the prosecutor that locked up a family member.

"Cooley had everything going for him except for one thing: He had Republican under his name," said Allan Hoffenblum, a former GOP consultant who publishes the nonpartisan California Target Book, which analyzes political races.

Democrats swept to comfortable victories in every other statewide office. And Cooley fared better than the rest of the GOP ticket, notching up more votes than gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman, U.S. Senate hopeful Carly Fiorina or any other Republican candidate.

In Los Angeles County, each of the other Democratic candidates for statewide office swept aside their Republican rivals by 28 percentage points or more — double Harris' lead over Cooley.

I don't like prosecutors very much and wouldn't vote for one for dogcatcher, but that's what we had for candidates and I just want a symbolic clean sweep for Dems, so GO Kamala!

Canada Reports Huge Jump in Immigration

OTTAWA (The Borowitz Report) - Canadian immigration officials have reported a huge increase in the number of requests for Canadian citizenship in the past twenty-four hours, with over fifty-five million such inquiries pouring in since late Tuesday night.

“My only theory is that after the 2010 winter Olympics, the sport of curling is finally starting to catch on,” he said.

In other news, responding to last night’s election returns, Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) told reporters, “I’m so stoked I just turned the tanning bed up to eleven.”

But former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin struck a more somber note, saying that despite several key victories, “it was a tough night for Tea Party voters because it involved so much math.

Headline of the Day Zwei

Jon Stewart congratulates Chris Wallace and Fox News on retaking the House

Headline of the Day

Obama-Claus steals Christmas in Tea Party children’s book

They liked to get 'em early in the Hitler Youth too. Maybe the Russians'll have to come in and deal with 'em like they did last time in Berlin.

The Hangover

Digby (actual picture of Digby. Be still, my heart!) Damn good read:

The right understood they'd lost the youth vote, the ethnic and racial minority vote and usually the female vote. The only demographic vote they had going for them was the elderly. And they've done a masterful job of making seniors feel like they're doing something for their grand kids by denying them health care and ensuring that there will be no safety net for them when they get old. You have to give them credit for that.

Harrumph! Speaking as an 'elderly', I resemble that remark! Ya ain't no spring chicken yerself, kiddo...

Still, she's right: the Repugs bamboozled the shit outta people with lies and made-up shit. Give the devil his due.

Keep the faith. And anyway, what choice do we have?

Update: Oh, and when they try to blame the bloggers or the liberals, just throw this in their face:

Only 47% of the members of the Democratic “Blue Dog Coalition” won re-election. 95% of the members of the “Progressive Caucus” won re-election. We're divided, but not that way.

And just in case the media hasn't noticed, the Democrats still control one house of congress and the presidency.

We've got two years for the Repugs to tear themselves to shreds while they try to fuck us over. That's something.

"Now, here's my plan..."

I wish I could string words together like El Rude-o in this 'must read':

The overwhelming feeling that the Rude Pundit has this morning is utter disgust with a vast number of the people of his nation, this America, for they have demonstrated, once again, that they are selfish, vain, cruel buffoons who are scared by the wrong things and have decided that the best way to handle it is to say, "Fuck it," build isolated bunkers all over the nation, and tell everyone else to leave them the fuck alone. For what is the end result of the vaguely-conceived ideology that was affirmed last night? It is that each of us should have the right to squat in our shitpiles of ignorance, isolated from one another, coveting our precious money, fellating our guns and fucking ourselves against our 50-inch LED screens in our multi-mortgaged, soon-to-be foreclosed on hovels, and if the world outside our caves goes to hell, well, that's because people don't understand how wonderful it is to engorge your faces with poisoned food and asthmatically heave your chest through polluted air and travel on shattered roads and bridges while picking your unmedicated scabs in order to get to work at Wal-Mart for shit wages but at least there's a wall that keeps the Mexicans and the gays out because that's what pissy God and the screaming ghost of Samuel Adams would fucking want for us. Their ultimate goal is to dismantle society itself in favor of Darwinian anarchy. Thomas Hobbes in action, motherfuckers, the animalistic Yahoos gutting the evolved Houyhnhnms.

We are heading for a dark, dark period. The Congress isn't going to get shit done as now everything will have to be approved by DeMint and Paul, even if the Senate is still in Democratic hands, or Harry Reid won't let the crazy shit passed in the House even come to a vote. There's going to be investigations of every bit of grime that Andrew Breitbart and Fox "news" can scrape from under the fingernails of even the lowliest members of the Obama administration. Impeachment will be on the table. Mike Pence, Darrell Issa, and Michele Bachmann will not be humble and cooperative with victory. They will be mad and drunk and ready for vengeance on the man who did nothing more than try to enact the will of the people who elected him by doing some of the very things he said he would do.

We the people abandoned Barack Obama yesterday. Hate what you will about him and about how he approached governing. The awful frustration of watching him compromise with a majority will seem like a happy vacation compared to what's coming. No, too many people who supported him in 2008 voted against him through their congressional races this year. And it was for the promise of a couple of extra bucks in their shrinking pay checks each week. Hope dies cheaply in this dirty, dead century.

Tomorrow: Enough despair. Let's make a plan, motherfuckers.

Thanks to Shel Silverstein who was way ahead of his time.

Quote of the Day

Last ¶ of a piece by Joe Conason:

The voters have told us that they're mad as hell and won't take it anymore. But their madness has ironically guaranteed that they will get more of exactly what they profess to despise.

It's like buying ammo for someone who is shooting at you. Yeesh.

No one but ourselves to blame ...

If you didn't vote (only 45% of us did), you can blame yourselves for the next two years. If you thought the Bush Years were bad, wait until these wackos get sworn in:

...

The citizens of this country have been anything but united since 9/11 and the SCOTUS's decision only proves that even 45% of our citizens united with the common desire to vote is no match for a handful of corporations and their political arm in the Chamber of Commerce.

You have only yourselves to blame and I have nothing but withering contempt for every single last one of you.

...

And like the people on the government dole who bitch the loudest about said government, the apathetic will complain the loudest when more of their money is given to the rich or just downright wasted by the Republicans.

...

The same party that started needless and illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to no appreciable benefit to either of our three countries and eventually cost us trillions bloating the military-industrial complex, the party that wanted to deport over 11,000,000 hard-working brown people, wanted to spy on you without FISA court warrants, that strive to make our children more ignorant in schools, to make abortion illegal even in cases of incest or rape, the same party that is bound and determined to remove the very last sinew of regulation on any industry even as they're polluting our ecosystem and killing us. The same party that demonized African Americans after Katrina, wounded veterans when their neglect was revealed and the newly unemployed and homeless when they understandably looked to our government for help.

...

Glad I lived part of my life when it was a good time to be an American. I won't see those days again.

The best thing ...

About the elections being over; no more robocalls and no more ads and no more commercials. Yay!!!!!

Simon and Garfunkel - The Sound of Silence

Brrrrr....

I just read my county's election results. Thank God there are 57 other counties, maybe a dozen of which have good sense.

I live in the blue end of an exceedingly red county, almost literally like the county was sitting on its ass in the snow.

Anonymous Wins!

Thanks to YubaNet.

Liquid Alert of the Day

Andrew Breitbart Says ABC 'Humiliated' Him, 'Damaged' His Brand

Bwahahahaha!

Letter to a whiny young Democrat

[A big welcome to Crooks and Liars readers. Thanks, Michael! - F]

If it's Wednesday, it must be Morford with a 'must read':

Oh, now you've done it.

Check it out, kiddo: This is not just any Republican party you allowed back into power; these mealy folks are not anything like the war-hungry, Bush-tainted army of flying monkeys and Dick Cheney moose knuckles you so wonderfully helped bury in the history books last election.

No, the GOP of 2010-2011 is even weirder, dumber, less interested in anything you even remotely care about; this GOP is infused like a sour cocktail with a bitter splash of the most cartoonish, climate change-denying Tea Party dingbats imaginable -- most of whom think you're an elitist, terrorist-loving, gay-supporting threat to "real" American values, btw -- all led by a guy named Boehner who wears a bizarre, shellacked tan so fake and creepy it makes Nancy Pelosi looks like a supermodel.

And you made it all happen. Or rather, you failed to prevent it from happening, by not voting, by turning your collective back on Obama's tough love, by getting all whiny and dejected like some sort of sullen teen vampire who can't get laid.

Look, I'm sorry. I know I'm being far too hard on you. Of course it's not just you. It's not completely your fault these dimwit Repubs were allowed to ooze back into a bit of power so soon. As many analysts have pointed out, this wasn't a vote for the Republicans, but against the limp-wristed Dems who didn't step up and lead with more authority and clarity of purpose. Truly, libs and independents of every age are frustrated Obama isn't governing with the same kind of magical, balls-out visionary zeal that fueled his campaign.

And let's not forget a shockingly unintelligent Tea Party movement that stands for exactly nothing and fears exactly everything, all ghost-funded by a couple of creepy libertarian oil billionaires -- the leathery old Koch brothers -- who eat their young for a snack. Who could've predicted that gnarled political contraption would hold water? But hey, when Americans are angry and nervous, they do stupid things. Like vote Republican. It happens. Just did.

So here's what you need to know, right now: Barack Obama is, and will continue to be, a bit of goddamn miracle. He's simply as good as we're going get for an articulate, thoughtful, integrity-rich Democratic prez in your lifetime. Period. To hamstring his administration out of spite and laziness is childish and sad. Check the accomplishments. Understand the process. Deal with the messiness.

It will never be perfect. It will never be giddy liberal nirvana, because it doesn't work that way. Politics is corrosive and infuriating, de facto and by definition, even with someone as thoughtful as Obama in the Big Chair. Understand it. Deal with it. Get back in the game. If you don't, we all lose.

Your choice, kiddo.

The same kinda thing happened in the '60s too. A lot of youngsters, full o' piss and vinegar, took on the older generation and thought they were going to change the way the world worked.

They did, too. For about ten seconds. And then a shiny nickel rolled by and it was over. The pissed-off old white people gave us Nixon and started our downhill slide.

Not all the youngsters in those days were liberal activists, of course, but boy were the ones who were loud!. Today's youngsters do not have the draft and Vietnam to look forward to, and while a lot of them are liberal, they'll never have to go to war for capitalism and big oil and thus have no skin in the game. They helped elect Obama and Dems. And then a shiny nickel rolled by...

A lot of us didn't change much from back then, but the others are having their turn now and are today's pissed-off old white teabaggers, and boy are they loud!

And the downhill slide continues.

The Thick Blue Line

From California girl Joan Walsh:

In California, Democrats win big, showing wealthy Republicans can't always buy what they want

As it often is, my state of California is an outlier. Listening to the sports radio station that broadcast my World Championship San Francisco Giants games all summer (you knew I'd get that in on this sobering night) I got an earful of the GOP strategy for the 2010 elections. Meg Whitman had her harshest anti-welfare ads on KNBR; just today, ran an ad absolutely lying about Brown's (disappointing to me) position on Prop. 13. Only yesterday, I heard an ad attacking Jerry McNerney for supporting "the Wall Street bailout" and "the failed trillion dollar stimulus."

So even though I live in a blue-state, I got the gist of the GOP message that won nationwide -- but was defeated in California. We live in a blue bubble: Whitman lost to Jerry Brown, Barbara Boxer defeated failed Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, Gavin Newsom is our new lieutenant governor, and even McNerney seemed on the verge of pulling it out early Wednesday morning.

The McNerney ad was a window on the message that worked for Republicans nationwide. They attacked Democrats for Obama programs, and pledged to look backwards – and still they won. Still, 25 vulnerable conservative Blue Dog Democrats lost too. It was that kind of year.

California will have turned out to be the party's thick blue line, especially in the Senate, where Boxer's victory almost assured the Dems would hold that body. I'd like to say that's our superior judgment and better candidates, but I'm not sure. Fiorina and Whitman defeated themselves; they were two wealthy ex-CEOs who thought they could buy their way into office, and who overlooked state voters' hunger for a government they can trust.

There were other bright lights in the darkness: Harry Reid defeating Sharron Angle; Tea Party candidates losing 54 of 89 contests, John Boehner strangely losing his composure even as he became the likely speaker, Christine O'Donnell going up in flames. But the results were bad news for Democrats, and we'll be diving into the details of the results for weeks to come.

That last sentence gets my "No Shit! of the Day" award!

Coulda been worse here too...

My big deals were Brown, Boxer, legal weed, and defeating the oil companies who wanted to end CA's AB32 climate change legislation. Oh well, three outta four ain't bad. Ah-nold damn near made mota legal recently anyway.

The other Props went mainly OK and so did the statewide offices.

The Repug wave crashed on the rocks before it got to the West Coast. A 'sea wall' of sensibility perhaps.

Headline of the Day

Thank you Sarah and Sharon, and all Tea Party candidates. You just handed President Obama a second term.

Not much meat in the article but I like the headline.

Quote of the Day

Mr. Philadelphia:

I'm reasonably sure that the lessons learned [from the election] will be that we need to cut taxes for millionaires and repeal health care reform, at least all the good bits.

Same old song and dance.

Coulda been worse ...

Dave Neiwart sums up the carnage succinctly:

...

We'll all talk about this more tomorrow, but I blame the geniuses in the Democratic Party -- both in the White House and elsewhere -- who failed to establish firmly the narrative after the election that needed to be hammered home daily and relentlessly and fearlessly: that Americans had repudiated conservative rule because it had manifestly proven itself a failure. Instead, Democrats thought "bipartisanship" was more important. Sure it was.

...

Finding one gem, I'm proud of my fellow NYers for going "D" in a big way. The Teabaggers got no traction here and that's good. We'll still have major dysfunction in Albany but I give thanks that our senators and governor, and most house seats, remained blue.

Hi, I'm a Tea-Partier

A Tea Party Patriot tries to explain how our freedoms are in jeopardy.

Thanks to TrendingToday.

Headline of the Day

Johnny Cash’s daughter to GOP chief: Stop using my father’s name, you ‘asshat’

I hope Boner's asshole (redundant, I know) is a burning ring of fire...