The Midterm Elections

[Stephanie66]

My primaries are today. I am voting all D women across the board. It's not that the men running aren't qualified, I am just still mourning Al Franken and decided that at least women don't generally get into sex scandals.

Of course, I will vote D all day long in the mid-terms, regardless of gender.

[GreyhoundFan]

More Repug games to screw over voters: "Virginia Democrats sue to knock independent off ballot in congressional race amid fraud charges"

Spoiler

The Virginia Democratic Party on Monday sued the state Board of Elections to force an independent candidate off the ballot in the 2nd Congressional District, where aides to the incumbent, Rep. Scott W. Taylor (R), have been accused of collecting fraudulent signatures for the independent in order to split the vote among Taylor’s challengers.

A special prosecutor is investigating claims that Taylor’s aides forged signatures on petitions for independent candidate Shaun Brown to help her get on the Nov. 6 ballot.

Analysts say voters disinclined to vote for Taylor would split between Brown and Democratic challenger Elaine Luria, possibly delivering Taylor enough voters to win a third term.

But the move backfired after nearly three dozen voters came forward and said they never signed the petitions on which their names appeared.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond against Elections Commissioner Christopher E. Piper and the three-member Board of Elections, says Brown’s petitions were “positively riddled with fraud” and should disqualify her from the ballot.

Thirty-five people signed affidavits saying their signatures or those of their deceased relatives were forged, according to the lawsuit.

They include Elizabeth “Bet” Cake, the widow of R. Stuart Cake, a longtime civil servant for the Navy, who died in April, before the date on which he is supposed to have signed the petition. Del. Glenn Davis (R-Virginia Beach) said signatures for he and his wife, were forged as well.

Brown filed 2,512 signatures to qualify for the ballot. The lawsuit claims that in addition to 35 allegedly forged signatures submitted by Taylor aides, more than 1,600 signatures are invalid because the signers do not live in the district and include other technical problems. Without those signatures, the lawsuits says, Brown would not meet the 1,000-signature threshold to be placed on the ballot.

Forging information on election materials is a violation of state law.

Virginia Democrats are represented by Marc E. Elias, a Virginia resident and chair of the political law group at Perkins Coie. He has worked for Hillary Clinton, former governor Terry McAuliffe and Gov. Ralph Northam (D), and spearheaded a spate of redistricting lawsuits on behalf of Democrats.

The Department of Elections declined to comment on the lawsuit.

Brown, through her attorney, James Ellenson, said the lawsuit shows Democrats, with their “bankrupt ideology,” are bent on bullying his client off the ballot.

“They ought to be ashamed,” the statement says. “Let the people speak for themselves on November 6th.”

Democrats nominated Brown to run against Taylor in 2016; he won with 61 percent of the vote.

Brown is awaiting retrial in federal court on charges that she bilked the government out of public funds by inflating the number of meals her nonprofit organization served children in 2012. The first trial ended this month in a hung jury.

Taylor’s spokesman, Scott Weldon, said Brown should remain on the ballot and that Democrats would “stop at nothing” to remove her.

Taylor has said that when the fraudulent signatures were first reported by WHRO-FM, he fired his campaign consultant and that it reinforced his earlier decision to fire his campaign manager.

[Special prosecutor investigating possible election fraud in Rep. Scott Taylor’s race]

The race between Taylor and Luria was already one of the most closely watched midterm contests in Virginia. President Trump won the 2nd District by four percentage points in 2016, and Northam won it by four points last year.

The appointment of a special prosecutor brings more attention to the military-heavy district where Luria, a former Navy commander, is challenging Taylor, a former Navy SEAL who served in the state House of Delegates before his election to Congress.

Elias last week wrote a letter to the Board of Elections threatening to file a lawsuit if the three-member board did not act to remove Brown from the ballot by noon.

In a separate letter, Elias also urged Attorney General Mark R. Herring (D), whom he represented in a recount when Herring was first elected in 2013, to investigate the claims.

Herring’s spokesman, Michael Kelly, said the attorney general’s office would work with the special prosecutor — Roanoke Commonwealth Attorney Donald Caldwell — and the Department of Elections as the investigation continues.

 

[CTRLZero]

I see Florida state house candidate Melissa Howard, who forged her diploma, has "come to the realization that the right thing to do for my community is to withdraw from the race."  Good riddance.

Why it was so hard to just say something up front like, "I attended Miami University of Ohio," (no mention of graduating, therefore no lying) instead of creating and publishing a fake diploma is just beyond me. 

And then her quote:  "It was not my intent to deceive or mislead anyone."   Really!?!  You took some effort to deceive or mislead.  These people!  Aaarrgh!  They must just have a lying gene.

 

[Cartmann99]

27 minutes ago, CTRLZero said:

And then her quote:  "It was not my intent to deceive or mislead anyone."   Really!?!  You took some effort to deceive or mislead.  These people!  Aaarrgh!  They must just have a lying gene

I saw that picture of her on the couch with her mother and the fake diploma. You were supposed to see mom and think the diploma must be real, because most sane people wouldn't ask one of their parents to do something like that.

I'm glad she withdrew. 

[AmazonGrace]

I mean sure, I accidentally forge diplomas all the time without intending to deceive anyone. Just some fun arts and crafts. Did mom know it was a fake? 

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[Cartmann99]

The Beto O'Rourke-Zodiac Killer debates are still not finalized:

Quote

AUSTIN — Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz has accepted a proposed Aug. 31 debate with Democratic challenger Beto O'Rourke in Dallas, but the El Paso congressman's camp said it hasn't signed off on any one-on-one matchup.

The debate over the debate started Tuesday afternoon after a letter from Cruz campaign manager Jeff Roe to O'Rourke surfaced saying the incumbent had agreed to take part in an hourlong podium-style debate that would be televised by the NBC affiliate in Dallas-Fort Worth.

Chris Evans, O'Rourke's spokesman, then issued a not-so-fast statement that put the fate of the debate in doubt.

"Our designated debate lead reached out via phone several times over the last few weeks to coordinate details," Evans said. "There has been no response to our messages. There is no agreed upon August debate at this time."

The Cruz camp declined to engage in a back-and-forth over debate negotiations.

Last month, Cruz proposed a series of five debates heading toward the Nov. 6 election. Each would take place in a different city around Texas and each would be held on a Friday evening.

That offer countered an earlier one from O'Rourke for six matchups, including one in Spanish that Cruz promptly took off the table because he lacks the needed language skills.

O'Rourke said he was "encouraged" by Cruz's willingness to debate multiple times and said he looked forward to nailing down all the details.

https://www.caller.com/story/news/local/texas/state-bureau/2018/08/14/cruz-accepts-aug-31-debate-dfw-but-beto-orourke-camp-want-negotiate-details/992843002/

 

[AmazonGrace]

Womp womp 

i think he lost the primary

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

[GreyhoundFan]

More fun with Corey Stewart: "Photoshop fail: Corey Stewart seeks to link Sen. Tim Kaine to radical left with phony image of Contra commandos in Nicaragua"

Spoiler

Corey A. Stewart, the Virginia Republican seeking to unseat Sen. Tim Kaine in November, tried Wednesday to paint the Democrat as a violent left-wing radical by tweeting a photo of Kaine as a young Jesuit missionary in Honduras posing with armed guerrillas.

The problem: The image is a fake.

Stewart’s campaign spliced an image of Kaine onto a stock picture of a gun-toting group of right-wing contra commandos in Nicaragua in 1987 just after they routed a leftist Sandinista force during that country’s civil war.

The tweet prompted a mixture of outrage and laughter from Kaine supporters, with one poster remarking “Clearly photoshopped you numb skull” and another writing “This isn’t even a left-wing group.”

Kaine spokesman Ian Sams called Stewart “a chronic, serial liar who will say or do anything just to get attention. He thinks Virginians and all of us are stupid.”

Sams said the photo of Kaine that was used by Stewart was taken during a trip to Mayan ruins in Honduras, which wasn’t experiencing civil war at the time. “Nicaragua is not Honduras. #Geography,” Sams tweeted.

... < copy of the original picture of Kaine >

Stewart, chair of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors, acknowledged the picture was altered, but offered a somewhat confusing defense.

“Of course it was photoshopped,” he said. “It was meant to prove a point: that Tim Kaine was a radical leftist back in the ’80s and is a radical leftist today.”

The fact that the soldiers in the original 1987 photo available on Wikimedia were not radical leftists is irrelevant, Stewart said, seeking to turn the tables on Kaine.

“I think it’s hilarious that his only defense to this is: He wasn’t associated with the radical right-wing guys, the contra guys,” Stewart said, arguing that the implication is that Kaine was then involved with the radical left. “He’s been a radical his entire life.” 

Kaine first went to Honduras in 1974 as a sophomore at his Jesuit high school in Kansas City, where he grew up in a Catholic family. He was delivering donations to a Jesuit mission in the town of El Progreso. Later, Kaine took nine months off from his studies at Harvard Law School to return to the mission in El Progreso, where he taught carpentry and welding to vocational students — skills he had learned from working in his father’s metal shop. He speaks Spanish.

Stewart’s use of the fake photo is part of an effort by his campaign to link Kaine with the far-left antifa, or anti-fascist, movement, based largely on the fact that the senator’s son, Linwood Michael “Woody” Kaine, was among six counterprotesters arrested outside a 2017 rally for President Trump in St. Paul, Minn., after smoke bombs and fireworks were set off inside the state capitol building.

Woody Kaine was sentenced to a year of probation and ordered to pay $236 in fees and fines for resisting arrest.

Stewart, who is running far behind Kaine in recent polls and has $143,000 in available funds, compared to Kaine’s $6 million, has promised a “vicious” and “ruthless” campaign against Kaine.

In recent weeks, he has been seeking traction on the antifa claims.

He has argued that Kaine incited violence during a 2017 TV interview when the senator called on Democrats to “fight in Congress, fight in the streets, fight online, fight in the ballot box” against unjust Trump administration policies. 

On Thursday, Stewart’s campaign released a digital ad that again distorts the truth.

The ad combines footage of a burning police car and black-clad activists beating someone with heavily edited video of Kaine’s comments to “Face the Nation” that last year’s violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville helped fuel “energetic activism” among Democrats.

Stephen J. Farnsworth, a political-science professor at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, said such tactics “speak to a deep desperation.”

“The best way to pursue a voter is with legitimate evidence,” Farnsworth said. “If that’s not working, you’ve got a problem as a candidate.”

 

[AmazonGrace]

Hypocrisy with Zodiac 

 

[AmazonGrace]

Voting while black 

 

[Cartmann99]

Just in case anyone was confused:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

13 minutes ago, Cartmann99 said:

Just in case anyone was confused:

 

It amazes me how much he loves Dumpy, since Dumpy fired him as head of the Virginia branch of his campaign in 2016.

[Cartmann99]

30 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

It amazes me how much he loves Dumpy, since Dumpy fired him as head of the Virginia branch of his campaign in 2016.

Okay, now I've got Baby Come Back by Player running in my head, except the chorus is now this:

Dumpy come back, any kind of fool could see
There was something in everything about you
Dumpy come back, you can blame it all on me
I was wrong, and I just can't live without you

 

 

[fraurosena]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

It amazes me how much he loves Dumpy, since Dumpy fired him as head of the Virginia branch of his campaign in 2016.

Of course he loves the presidunce! Don't you get it, guys? Everyone who gets fired by him also gets offered hush money soon afterwards. What's not to love? 

[fraurosena]

It's almost as if they actively want to lose... 

Which, come to think of it, is actually an easy way out when you want to get rid of your party's presidunce and want to save face by not having to impeach him yourselves. 

[AmericanRose]

4 hours ago, fraurosena said:

It's almost as if they actively want to lose... 

Which, come to think of it, is actually an easy way out when you want to get rid of your party's presidunce and want to save face by not having to impeach him yourselves. 

I dunno. If they call it 'Obamacare' their voters might not realise they'll be losing the ACA! And we all know Obama = BAD.

[fraurosena]

6 hours ago, AmericanRose said:

I dunno. If they call it 'Obamacare' their voters might not realise they'll be losing the ACA! And we all know Obama = BAD.

Well, that may be true. For the BT’s.

I do not think that the BT’s are the majority of voters though. They are admittedly a slice of the voting public, but non-BT’s by far outnumber them, be they Republican, independant or Democrat. It’s tempting to do so, but we really shouldn’t equate every R with a BT. Not every R is a rabid follower of the presidunce. And not every single one of them is unaware that Obamacare is a euphemism for the ACA. Not after last year’s attempts at abolishing it. Which failed. More than once. People’s eyes were opened when they found out what repealing the ACA would actually mean for them personally. 

If the R’s on the Hill paid attention then, they would know it is an extremely unpopular move to try to take away people’s healthcare. 

And who in their right mind would want to antagonize the public, and galvanize people to vote en masse before probably the most important elections in American history? 

Only someone with an agenda. Be that Putin’s, or be that an anti-presidunce R.

[fraurosena]

We don't want a democracy! Perish the thought.

All we want to do is win, and if we have to lie and cheat to do it, we will.

 

[Cartmann99]

 

[Cartmann99]