" LEAD BOUNCER, you wrote "Redistricting is going to propel R agenda forward. "
I can't think of anything more cynical and outright ANTI-DEMOCRATIC than this statement... How can you celebrate this? I can't respect anyone, anywhere who believes the districting process should be exploited for political gain. Even FLORIDA yesterday passed state constitutional amendments to remove partisan ship from this process. This is corruption, pure and simple. "

The state of California already put theirs into law according to the interview I heard. They got the R's to sign on and so now its nearly impossible to get elected in CA. They will be turning the process over to a commission for redistricting.

I live in a district with 3 democrats and only the senator had an opponent. She has been in that Seat for 20 years. She works for the ALF-CIO. She raised five times the money and a lot of it was from out of town. She gives money away to other candidates. She never had to do more than throw up some signs. The State and County would not give him any money because they didnt think he could win, even though he had 42 percent of the vote in the primary. On the other hand, other R challengers picked up between 50-100 grand from the county and state party. The two legislators were unopposed and one of them had only one term under her belt. The party could not find anyone to spend the time and money. He spent a lot of time replacing stolen signs. And the signs I found were tossed in the weeds down the bank, so not only are the pricks afraid of the competition, they have no respect for the land. fk um. People move, so they need to redraw the lines. Whether you like it or not, both sides do it. I think we are in fact living under a republican redistricting now, if that tells you how crooked they are. 3 Districts out of 9 are usually R. Wow!

http://vote.wa.gov/Elections/WEI/Results...mp;ViewMode=All

Of course no redistricting over comes the side deal to persuade a democrat from withdrawing from the races so the egomaniac third party can defeat the well spoken Cuban and help dominate the cuban vote in Florida for the next decade or so. When Meeks didnt withdrawl they threw him under the bus.

In everett the union got caught funding both the D and R challenger to the D incumbent because he didnt vote with the union enough, so they wanted him gone. A special election may be ordered depending on what a judge has to say.

In some races democrats funded Teaparty candidates to drive down the numbers of the R in the race, giving the D a better shot.

Jim McDermotts district has never been competitive. There are many others. Gerrymandering isnt new and apparently Barney Frank has quite the district. Ive heard some of the black caucus has a lot of twist and turns in it, between homes in the neighborhood. Might be outdated, but at one time.

John Fund wrote a book a year or two back on elections. The guy knows the stats like a baseball fanatic. Lots of dirt in elections.
Really think Cantwell and Gorton had 2000 votes mixed up in 2000? Sure.....

Ever seen the black panther video from 2008 and they never bothered to prosecute.

A lot of redistricting could be cleaned up by clearing the voter rolls and starting over before every presidental election. Military guys stationed in this state often get the ballot sent to an out of state address. They post office LOST Brian Suits ballot in 2008, so now he walks it into the courthouse. Michael Medveds daughters signature did not match so they sent that back. Im all for fairness. We could start with a local tv station FORGETTING to run two Half hours commercials for ODonnel that were prepaid. In 2008 at the R national convention the Telepromter went out on Palin during the speech and she had memorized it. Good thing too.... The only teleprompter in use today is on its way to INDIA.
Noone has ever used one. They will probably think he has a nervous tick.

LB: 637 words by you, and at least one edit pass, and I have absolutely no idea what you are trying to say. Try writing three good sentences instead of the firehose method.

My point is simple, politicized redistricting = corruption, and is anti-democratic, and anti-american. Do you believe the founding fathers would have thought otherwise? Just because a district isn't competitive doesn't mean it's been gerrymandered, which you seem confused about.

How about we start by putting all of those GW era no bid contracts out for bid? Sure isn't going to happen now.

Going to be tough for the R's to use the freeloader argument.
Anrachy coming to a city near you.

Hank: Out of curiosity, why is extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy a good start? If your top 2 issues are the deficit and jobs, do you seriously believe it will affect either? I know 10's of affected people -- many who run companies like me -- and nobody I know thinks this will influence their hiring *one bit*.

Certainly it isn't the best job-creation idea you can come up with, is it? The annual cost is like $60B to extend it for next year. So really you're saying you support the GOP's new, $60B "trickle down, job creating, stimulus package" as the best use of that money.

I, for one, think I'd rather apply that to the deficit. If we MUST spend it on a jobs program, I would likely spend it HIRING people to do infrastructure work or otherwise. Not giving it to the top earners and hoping for trickle down.

Cool. Reagan was only capable of nearly tripling the deficit in the '80s. I'm sure this new crop of rs can do better than that. Quadruple, maybe?

Yo Hank and all the Rest of the Two Second Attention Span types in Pungentpolis, heres a "Cliff Notes Version" of WHY. And you Goat Abusers can do your own Lookie Up to learn the complete concept. But here goes for the short attention spanners, You Hire a Bill Gates PC Weeny Nerd much like Parker (sorry Parker) to install, update, and constantly fix all that Pee Poor Quality Microcrap software. But sometimes the Moon is Full, Mirocrap actually produces a program not tooooooo buggy, and democrats run an honest election (snicker snicker), so Poor Old Parker does have too much to occupy his COSTLY TIME for HIS PAYCHECK and BENEFITS, so he sits around a lot doing NOTHING. Now multiply that say by the IT FTE Headcount at WDFW and you get the idea. Then heaven forbid, your servers, destops, printers, com lines and all the IT hardware & software goodies are NOT BEING USED 100% of the time (gasp gasp), kinda like Parker hanging out in the break room too much. The Audit Report that recommend that all State Agencies either contract out that particular service to a Professionally Run Private Enterprise that will in fact squeeze maximum efficiency out of staff & resources thereby reducing the costs of those goods and services. Much to his credit, my Rep., VandeWegge actually crafted legislation in his first term in office to REQUIRE State Agencies to do just that. The Audit Recommendations are still there, and the rest of Kevin's fellow DEMOCRATS who were the ONLY ONES IN MAORITY CHARGE just ignored him. Sure made the State Goobermint Unions happy. So if anybody thinks/believes that Crissy cannot CUT MORE is smoking KK's Goat by the Hindend.

Goober Class Dismissed, go kill some Fish.

PS. AuntyM, that posting above went a tad over your head cause that is a quote from my personnally autographed copy of Going Rouge.

Wow, no kidding? Who woulda thunk? You better get that gut looked at; there's obviously something wrong with it.
Pretty easy to go look up; about a 30 second Google search will prove it to you. Reagan nearly tripled the deficit.

Tomorrow the jobs numbers are supposed to come out and the unemployment numbers are forecast to rise, most likely due to the sudden unemployment of a whole bunch of Democrats from the House and a few from the Senate.

When considering the likes of Lead Eater and Bait Humper, one shouldn't wonder why tigers eat their young.

No, some companies give bonuses, most do not. It's probably just something you ate giving you that feeling.

Not at all. First, the increase is from including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the budget rather than through the use of “emergency” supplemental spending bills. The previous administration never included his catastrophe in to the budget, he just kept kicking the can down the road. Additionally, the increase assumes the Alternative Minimum Tax will be indexed for inflation; accounts for the full costs of Medicare reimbursements, and anticipates the inevitable expenditures for natural disaster relief. These are all additions that the previous admin either kept hidden, or simply disregarded. Finally, also included is the cost of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (from the previous admin), and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

According to the CBO, the U.S. budget situation has deteriorated significantly since 2001, when they forecast average annual surpluses of approximately $850 billion from 2009–2012. The average deficit forecast in each of those years is now approximately $1,215 billion because of the previous republican House majority. But the CBO based that data on current law. Now with the new republican House majority (that sounds real expensive, doesn't it?), the deficit will increase almost automatically when they extend the bush tax cuts. Although the rs swear they can extend the tax cuts and balance the budget at the same time. Yeah, and I'm going to get a unicorn that farts glitter.

But even given all that, the deficit is still projected to be less than doubled by 2015. Not Reaganesque tripled. And absolutely not astronomical.

Sure, Congress writes the budget according to the President's requests. And all those emergency spending bills were....?

"That makes it pretty hard for the R's to get the cuts extended unless they cut spending elsewhere. I'm confident they'll be able to accomplish those spending cuts that will pay for that tax extension."
That's some funny stuff right there. Not a single r has been able to state one thing they'll cut to reduce the deficit, let alone pay for the tax extension. In fact, Cantor won't even admit they're tax cuts. None of them will even admit it will add to the deficit. You guys are delusional.

And the size of the deficit being less than doubled; that's the CBO's estimate.

Well you might want to rethink part of that last post. The R's House will propose just that reductions, reform, number of issues.......betting on the D's controlling the Senate rejecting it. Will happen bet on it.

That is the Presidents opportunity just as Mr. Clinton had. Move behind the scenes to pull the pragmatic members of both parties to a center coalition. Libs's will scream like hell,( Huffington & Soros could have heart attacks ) Conserv's will scream like hell ( the Newt could join Huffy in the oxy bottle routine ) ...............and the President will look like a bridge building, coalition building SOB and absolutely win reelection. His to do really, or join the ranks of one term like Ford, Bush Sr., and Carter. ( I voted for all just once )

+151,000 jobs in October.
Another positive the R's will try to claim down the road.

Uh, unemplyment really isn't the 9.6% they advertise, try U-6 which is closer to 16-17%.

I really don't care who has which house. I just want to see the finger pointing and blame storming stop. Time for some bipartisan cooperation.

Care to share some of what your smoking?

Fresh out.

RVGY: I think your analysis has merit. Many presidents have gotten spanked and still gone on to win reelection. But the job of building a consensus of moderates if going to be tougher this time. Many of the Blue Dog democrats lost and the Tea Party picked up a good number of seats. The result is fewer in the center of both parties. That is not a good thing for someone trying to find the moderate center.

Who would you be think is in the middle?

Agree. But last time out it was the Lib to Mod R's that bit the dust and the ultra lib core of D's drove policy that got " throw the bums out" again. The difference I think is that the problems are so huge and the mess so great that, well both parties would ignore that. The time frame is the diff DV. Two years between both getting their ass kicked and polls show failure will result the same two years out. The Libs in core of the D will not change anymore than core R Conservatives and that is certain, look at the Botox Queen she don't get it. The strange thing is the Teabaggers are not going to let up on this spending thing and the R's can be beat up. Obama I think really would like to be reelected and 2 years out the D's have a huge number of Senate seats up( R's a few ).

Presidents are made by events while in office and always have one eye on history. Obama may not be my favorite guy but a liberal president can go right of center and stop much better than a conservatives. Take Nixon, went to China, got a bunch of enviro centerpiece stuff in place, a lib never would have pulled it off. Despite everything the R's controlling the house, with D's in the Senate President Obama has the ability to really change the future. The country is about 25% Lib / 25% Conservative / with the other 50% left or right of center, depending on your description of center. In addition Independents are the deciding vote and more and more of the nation are in that spot.

If you look at polls Obama care is not popular but health care reform not yes but hell yes. Budget reform same, government size again the same. The man can make Mount Rushmore, he simply needs to go Clinton and right to the center gather up the middle in both parties and rumble. It is doable but he will choose his destiny not the media or you and I, but as a dyed in the wool R friend of mine said " say what you will about Obama but one thing he ain't is stupid "

Did not vote for him but right now history says stupid to bet against him right now. I think we are about to see the first pragmatic Lib president since LBJ do some serous ass kicking in his party and the R's. It will be prime me thinks.