Daily Kos

So far 2,700 of you have already chipped in toward our last-minute bid to help build a blue wave in Virginia next week!

To recap, Republicans hold a dominant 67-32 lead in the Virginia House of Delegates. However, despite a heavy GOP gerrymander, President Barack Obama won 48 of those districts. In fact, 18 of those GOP-held districts were Obama districts and fertile ground for pickups. The problem, of course, is that off-year turnout is lower among base Democratic groups. Thus, Republicans have build their huge majorities where none should exist.

But that appears to be changing this year. While no one is predicting a chamber flip, even Republicans acknowledge the possibility of eight seats flipping, if not more. A 60-40 would put us within 10-11 seats of flipping the chamber in 2016, a presidential year. Very doable.

And taking the chamber doesn't just mean better governance for Virginia, it means Democrats have a say in the 2020 redistricting. Remember that Republicans hold eight of the 11 U.S. House seats, despite having lost the state to Obama by four points. Taking and controlling at least one of Virginia's legislative chambers in 2020 could mean a three-seat pickup (or a net six-vote swing in the Dems' direction), or even better. Yeah, this is playing the long game, but it's about time we start playing the long game.  

We had four Virginia delegate candidates on our fundraising page, but the opportunities keep popping up so we've added a fifth: firefighter and paramedic Rob Farinholt in this Hampton Roads-area district. It was a 52-47 percent Obama district, and according to the campaign's latest poll, it's looking like a fantastic pickup opportunity: The incumbent Republican Del. David Yancey has a 48-47 lead over Farinholt, essentially tied and under the magical 50 percent mark. Better yet, Democratic Guv candidate Terry McAuliffe is leading 50-40, and the generic legislative ballot is 48-41. Likely voters want to vote for the Democrats.  

We're seeing numbers like that all over the state. Democrats are poised to take advantage of the shutdown politics and a dysfunctional Republican Party. If you want to make Republicans pay for all their craziness this year, here's your chance to do so. So let's help our good friends in Virginia fighting the good fight and donate $3 or whatever you can to beat Republicans up.

A total of 2,700 of us have already given. We've got a week left to make a difference, so let's double that number! Chip in your $3 and help build Virginia's blue wave!
 

While the Republicans are warming up their attacks on sick people for the next round of Obamacare fights, they're not going to let Benghazi HealthCare.gov just go. So this week, you'll see more hypocritical pretending that they care that people are having problems navigating the website Republicans want to abolish to obtain the health insurance Republicans don't think they should have.

Sebelius' planned Wednesday appearance has done little to satisfy the Republican appetite for information. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Sen. Lamar Alexander, the ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee are threatening to issue subpoenas for information they requested Sebelius and HHS if they don't get a response by 5 p.m. Monday. [...]

"We're looking for quick answers so that we can on behalf of the American people straighten out as much as can be straightened out that's above the water—which is the website—and the 90 percent that's below the water like an iceberg that are the other problems in Obamacare," said Issa on CBS' "Face the Nation" Sunday.

They also want you to think they care about your privacy and how your tax dollars are being spent. And, yes, it's pretty much all bullshit. They aren't doing this on "behalf of the American people." If they were, they would have given up Obamacare repeal after the first dozen votes (just to pick a random number from 40+ votes they've taken) and maybe actually would have started work with Democrats to make the law work better.

They'd just as soon the website didn't work, never ever works. Because if people get health insurance through the exchanges, and if it's generous, affordable insurance, the game is completely over for Republicans. This isn't about the American people. It's about attacking the Obama administration and throwing anything they possibly can against Obamacare and hoping it continues to stick.

A little Monday morning laugh: October was an "exhausting" and "grueling" month for House Republicans and now they're "struggling" to come up with things to do in the 19—count 'em, 19—days they have left to work this year:

The House votes Monday evening and will finish its work week Wednesday. After that, the House is out of session until Nov. 12. Internally, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and senior Republicans aren’t discussing coming back early from the scheduled recess, but instead, they are wondering if they’ll cancel some of the remaining days in session.

So even those 19 days aren't set in stone. (And for the record, most Americans will be working about 43 more days this year.) But let's cut these hardworking public servants some slack because:

After an exhausting October full of late-night and weekend votes, the slower pace is a sharp change for the House.

With "full" presumably being the nights Republicans gleefully stayed late to vote on their government shutdown and then, 16 days later, begrudging stayed late to end their government shutdown. Grueling!

But for however many days House Republicans do manage to drag themselves into the office, their agenda will be jam packed with ... the same damn thing:

The future of Obamacare — and how far to go in trying to undo the 2010 Affordable Care Act — remains at center stage for House Republicans. [...]

In the meantime, it appears that the House will — once again — vote to delay portions of Obamacare, setting up another fight with Senate Democrats and the White House.

And in other news, the sun will rise in the east tomorrow.

Just a little something to start out your five day work week. Enjoy.  

Attacking the HealthCare.gov roll-out problems is so last week. The Web site will be fixed, so the next round of attacks from the right is gearing up: A variation on the theme of trying to convince young people that having insurance is bad. This time, they're focusing on the people who will see an increase in insurance costs, and will try to pit them against the people who really need insurance.

There is a chunk of previously insured people in the individual market who are losing their coverage and will potentially have to pay more for insurance. Those are the people who previously had high deductible, low coverage, catastrophic insurance plans. They paid bottom dollar for plans that would help them if they ended up in the hospital after an accident or major illness, but generally wouldn't provide any coverage for routine medical care like check-ups, immunizations, prescriptions, etc. Those kinds of plans are no longer allowed under Obamacare. All plans have to cover a basic core of preventive services, and some people will have to pay more for that better coverage (though many will receive subsidies to bring those costs down). And those people are truly seeing rate shock, even though they're getting much more for their money.

Enter the Republicans and their new strategy.

If a flood of stories about “rate shock” scare people out of browsing for plans themselves, all the better. But the real backup plan, such as it is, is to pit a thin demographic — healthy, young, middle-class, disproportionately male individuals who had cheap but crappy insurance until now and are resentful that they have to pay more — against the newly insured, and older, sicker beneficiaries who will see their costs go down, and hope the latter don’t have enough clout to prevail in a political brawl. [...]

They want to mortally damage the law. And as such they don’t care nearly as much about the dollars people will spend because ACA-compliant insurance benefits are fairly generous as they do about the dollars people will spend because they’re cross-subsidizing the ill and the aged. And those are precisely the grounds to fight on if the goal is to get liberals to circle the wagons around Obamacare.

Republicans are making a bet that there will be enough of these people to make a difference, ignoring the fact that there are millions who will be paying less for their coverage, and there will be millions more able to get insurance for the first time because of their pre-existing health issues. Chances are pretty good though, that when the Web site is running at full steam and people are signing up—the majority of whom will see lower premiums—that will become the story. There's even a chance that those who are forced out of their catastrophic plans and into something that gives them more coverage will come to appreciate the greater benefits.

But none of that is likely to keep Republicans from continuing the fight, a fight that the public has shown pretty conclusively and repeatedly that it's sick of. And once again, Republicans will find themselves on the losing side of the Obamacare battle.

Back all of 10 months ago, Republicans were looking at election returns and realizing that passing comprehensive immigration reform was the only way to start digging themselves out of their massive deficit with Latino voters. So Florida Sen. Marco Rubio was going to make his name as his party's savior and elevate himself for 2016 by bringing some far-right members of Congress on board with a bipartisan bill. Rubio was always worried about backlash from the far right, though, and now, with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz pushing Republicans in an even more extremist direction, Rubio is selling out his own bill:

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) now opposes a bicameral conference committee to reach a final resolution to the Senate-passed bill, his spokesman said, arguing that the support is not there for a comprehensive overhaul and that Congress should act where there is consensus.

"The point is that at this time, the only approach that has a realistic chance of success is to focus on those aspects of reform on which there is consensus through a series of individual bills," Alex Conant, a top spokesman for Rubio, told TPM in an email. "Otherwise, this latest effort to make progress on immigration will meet the same fate as previous efforts: failure."

Of course, the only individual immigration bills that are likely to even get a vote in the House are punitive, anti-immigrant bills—think sharks with laser beams and building a dang fence—while House Republicans will do anything to kill the needed path to citizenship. That will keep hurting Republican electoral chances as the percentage of Latino voters grows, but first it will hurt immigrants and their families.

Sign our petition urging your House member to sign a "discharge petition" to bring comprehensive immigration reform to a floor vote.

The government shutdown was something of a public debut for the strategy of far-right members of the House working with far-right senators like Ted Cruz to block bills that could pass both chambers, rather than continuing the old-timey strategy of working within their own chambers to figure things out that can actually become law. You could say it didn't go super well for them, what with the cratering poll numbers and the government eventually reopening without Obamacare having been defunded, but the thing about the Cruz Caucus is that they don't care. They think it's too bad John Boehner didn't let them shoot the hostages they'd taken, but they're planning to continue with the basic strategy:

In interviews, several House members who speak to Lee, Cruz and other senators such as Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) on a regular basis, described the conservative faction’s double-barreled philosophy: Use their influence in the House majority to steer leadership toward conservative goals like defunding Obamacare in spending bills while right-wing all-stars like Cruz use the Senate floor as a national press platform.

“We feel like we can be more effective that way. They’ve got bigger bullhorns [in the Senate] where they can drive the message across the country through the media,” said Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind.). “And in the House, we’ve got the majority. I think it makes a good team at the end of the day.”

If what you want to do is infuriate your party's leadership, kill the Republican brand, and hurt the country, it's a great team. But with a crucial midterm election coming up, it has what used to pass for conservative Republicans freaking out:

"If we don't find common ground and stand on the same side of the line, we're going to have a very ugly and rough couple of years," said Sara Taylor Fagen, who directed political affairs in President George W. Bush's White House.

The teabaggers are definitely not looking for common ground, short of everyone else coming to their ground and kneeling before them on it. So three cheers for Republicans having a very ugly and rough couple of years. Problem is, the extremists still have the power to make it ugly and rough for the rest of us, unless others in their party decide to protect the Republican brand by reining them in.

Reposted from Comics by Tom Tomorrow

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Reposted from Daily Kos Elections by David Nir Leading Off:

• KS-Gov: Gov. Sam Brownback has long suffered from dire approval ratings—something we saw in two new polls just last week—and now we have further evidence that even heavily Republican Kansas may have had enough of his extreme brand of conservatism. A new SurveyUSA poll shows Brownback trailing Democratic state House Minority Leader Paul Davis 43-39. Indeed, Brownback is hemorrhaging Republican support, leading Davis only 59-24 among members of his own party.

From the outset, Daily Kos Elections has believed that this contest is more competitive than it might initially look on paper, which is why we rated this race as Likely Republican. It would have been easy to write off the Sunflower State simply due to its demographics and call this race "safe" for Republicans, but this poll confirms our instincts. Still, it's a long way from here to victory, and Davis has a lot to prove.

There's also one optimistic note for Brownback. Twelve percent of respondents favor an unnamed "third party ticket," and more Republicans than Democrats (12 percent to 4) say they plan to vote that way. While it's possible angry Republicans will take door number three next year, independent bids (especially the hypothetical ones) usually lose much of their support as we get closer to Election Day. So if these wayward Republicans return home to Brownback, they'd give him a much-needed boost. But it looks like Democrats may just have the ingredients—a deeply unpopular incumbent and a credible challenger—to score an enormous upset in this dark red state. (Jeff Singer)

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Plenty of moving targets with which to occupy ourselves this week. The "Food Stamp Cliff" is approaching. And the House claims to want to vote on disapproving the debt ceiling hike implemented by executive authority pursuant to the terms of the shutdown deal. (Remember that?) Off-year elections are around the corner, too.

Netroots Radio is also migrating over to yet another server, so set your bookmarks, browsers and whoozy-whatsits to the new address. I think this is supposed to be it for the moving.

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From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…

The Week Ahead

Monday The Hawaii legislature takes up the issue of full marriage rights for gay couples. Among the supporters: civil rights groups and wedding caterers. Among the detractors: mean people, mostly.

President Obama attends the installation of FBI Director James Comey, including the ceremonial taking-alive-by-copper of the gangster yelling, "You'll never take me alive, copper!"

Hawaii may join the 14 marriage
equality states in which 33% of
the U.S. population lives.

My wall calendar says it's "Labour Day" in New Zealand. Ha ha! They misspelled labor!

Tuesday The tea party releases its latest list of "things liberals are trying to shove down our throats." In addition to the usual socialism and Obamacare, the list includes lamps, tires and, for reasons no one can explain, crab cakes.

Angela Merkel drunk-dials the NSA on her cellphone and ends up sending the entire agency on a mad scramble to find agent Amanda Hugginkiss.

Wednesday It's National Candy Corn Day. Candy corn is yummy-yum. Eat candy corn. A public service message from the National Candy Corn Council.

President Obama visits Boston to promote his ideas for immigration reform, the budget, and the Obamacare 800 number (1-800-318-2596). It's all part of his grand strategy to get the fuck out of DC for a few hours.

Thursday Cory Booker's swearing-in as the junior United States Senator from New Jersey is briefly interrupted so he can rescue Louie Gohmert from a tree.

Trick-or-Treaters swarm neighborhoods for Halloween. The usual exception: Elm Street.

Friday Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki visits the White House. It's all part of his grand strategy to get the fuck out of Iraq for a few days.

This is Plan Your Epitaph Day. I borrowed mine from Rick Perry: "Oops."

Oh, and according to the Mayan calendar, the world will not end this week. Please plan your life accordingly.

Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]

Bill Keller at The New York Times asks Is Glenn Greenwald the Future of News?

Glenn Greenwald broke what is probably the year’s biggest news story, Edward Snowden’s revelations of the vast surveillance apparatus constructed by the National Security Agency. He has also been an outspoken critic of the kind of journalism practiced at places like The New York Times, and an advocate of a more activist, more partisan kind of journalism. Earlier this month he announced he was joining a new journalistic venture, backed by eBay billionaire Pierre Omidyar, who has promised to invest $250 million and to “throw out all the old rules.” I invited Greenwald to join me in an online exchange about what, exactly, that means.

Bernie Sanders in an Op-Ed at the Los Angeles Times writes The right way to make a federal budget:

Interestingly, today's "deficit hawks" in Congress — Rep. Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) and other conservative Republicans — voted for those measures that drove up deficits. Now that they're worried about deficits again, they want to dismantle virtually every social program designed to protect working families, the elderly, children, the sick and the poor.

In other words, it's OK to spend trillions on a war we should never have waged in Iraq and to provide huge tax breaks for billionaires and multinational corporations. But in the midst of very difficult economic times, we just can't afford to protect the most vulnerable people in our country. That's their view. I disagree.

So where do we go from here? How do we draft a federal budget that creates jobs, makes our country more productive, protects working families and lowers the deficit?

Owen Jones at The Independent makes clear that ideological assaults against unions continues to be a global phenomenon in The Grangemouth dispute makes it clear who really runs the country:

A Swiss-based private company has held to ransom not just hundreds of workers and their families, not just their community, but an entire nation. The Grangemouth dispute was not some parochial, localised affair, a potential tragedy for yet more livelihoods sacrificed on the altar of global capitalism. It wasn’t just that its closure would have had a shattering impact on the Scottish economy, as well as frightening implications for Britain’s fuel security. The whole episode raises again an age-old question, not whispered enough, let alone asked loudly: who runs Britain?

Inevitably, in a country with a media institutionally hostile to what remains the country’s largest democratic movement, Fleet Street has embraced a narrative of scapegoating trade unions and ignored the fact that Ineos is the secretive, largest privately run company that operates in Britain. Having fled Britain’s tax regime in 2010, Ineos is a corporate giant that has legally saved millions from the greedy clutches of schools and hospitals by operating in up to six tax havens.

You find links to and excerpts from other pundits below the fold.

David Rohde at The Atlantic writes Our Fear of Al-Qaeda Hurts Us More Than Al-Qaeda Does

Three disclosures this week show that the United States is losing its way in the struggle against terrorism. Sweeping government efforts to stop attacks are backfiring abroad and infringing on basic rights at home. CIA drone strikes are killing scores of civilians in Pakistan and Yemen.  The National Security Agency is eavesdropping on tens of millions of phone calls worldwide — including those of 35 foreign leaders — in the name of U.S. security. And the Department of Homeland Security is using algorithms to “prescreen” travelers before they board domestic flights, reviewing government and private databases that include Americans’ tax identification numbers, car registrations and property records. Will we create a Minority Report-style Department of Precrime next? Obama administration officials have a duty to protect Americans from terrorism. But out-of-control NSA surveillance, an ever-expanding culture of secrecy and still-classified rules for how and when foreigners and even Americans can be killed by drone strikes are excessive, unnecessary and destructive. Twelve years after September 11, 2001, the United States’ obsession with al Qaeda is doing more damage to the nation than the terrorist group itself. Two new reports issued this week by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch detailed dozens of civilian deaths caused by drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen. Classified documents obtained by the Washington Post suggest that CIA officials who carry out the strikes make little effort to track civilian deaths. “There is a lot more pressure building” on President Barack Obama, Sarah Holewinski, head of the Center for Civilians in Conflict, a group pushing for greater transparency in drone strikes, told me this week. “He’s going to have to look at these legal questions.” […]

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Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2007—Bush's Appalachian War: Bombing Ancient Mountains:

Bush cites his "global war on terror" and the need for energy independence as reasons to legalize the killing of mountains from a range that has lived for millions of years.  There is no way to bring back the over 450 mountaintops that have been razed solely to permit profitable coal mining for his buddies.  Instead of pursuing a clean energy policy, Bush has declared war on Appalachia.  Many Americans are not aware that our self-proclaimed patriotic warrior who loves to preach adherence to religious doctrine is killing our "purple mountain majesties" that God has "shed His grace on" for the benefit of all. This is a war, complete with Bush authorizing mining companies to occupy Appalachia, literally bomb away the mountain summits and kill not just mountains and streams, but people, culture, environmental habitat and species. During 1985-2001, "approximately 800 square miles of mountains were leveled."  What would this look like in your state? Well, some perspective is provided by looking at the 10,000 acre Hobet MTR Complex in West Virginia which was superimposed over 38 US cities to show how much land would be destroyed.

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