Starting the good fight

Am currently on vacation but want to start my to do list for the coming term of our Democratic presidency. Last election, the cohort of Obama supporters, the Democratic-led Congress and the Obama administration itself was blind-sided by Dick Armey's astroturfed Tea Party insurrection at the mid-terms. I will do my damnedest to make sure that doesn't happen again.

There are some critical preparations that must be attended to in advance of the 2014 mid-term elections:

1. The drive to register new voters and convince inactive Democrats to get to the voting booth; there can not be another off-year election in which the New Democratic Coalition is outnumbered at the polls by the aging, predominantly white Republicans.
2. Activists must work at the state and local levels to right all previous efforts to disenfranchise minority voters both fraudulently and strategically. We need to get ahead of efforts that, even in defeat, are regenerating new efforts to further cage out identifiable Democratic voting blocs.
3.  At the national level, we must be aware of initiatives being undertaken by the Obama Administration and remain in touch with the grassroots Dashboard tools and other partisan organizations such as MoveOn, Occupy Wall Street and congressional Democrats' messaging.
4. We must identify & prioritize the issues about which we care most deeply and form coalitions to get Congress on board with our agenda. We must be insistent without disparaging. Clear with proposed legislative ideas that can be enacted with proper push.

Among my personal goals are addressing such issues as improving Veterans' services, economic fairness, combating climate change, drug enforcement equity and prison reform. I'm sure there are many others and depending on input both on Twitter and in the comments here, they may change depending on the way our coalitions shape up.

I will update this blog after I return from a much needed rest but wanted to jot down some basics while they are on my mind.

Welcome to the good fight and I look forward to working with you stalwarts. MKSinSA

Join the #RollingJubilee: “You Are Not A Loan” ow.ly/fpfVJ via @prwatch #OWS
— Occupy Wall Street (@OccupyWallStNYC) November 19, 2012

Can't keep a good man down .. but you CAN keep a bad party in disarray. 2014 is close at hand. Are you registered? rockthevote.com
— MKSinSA (@mksinsa) November 19, 2012

SimCoach: a new way for Vets and their families to find expert help & support services for #PTSD.braveheartveterans.org/SimCoach
— Ls (@pettybooshwah) November 20, 2012

Hail to the Chief: President Obama 44 + 4!

And the other winner is ...

Meet Nate Silver

"The FiveThirtyEight blogger had correctly predicted 49 out of the 50 states in the 2008 presidential election. But Silver may do even better than that this election. Not only did he predict Obama’s victory, the statistician still has a chance of going a perfect 50 for 50 provided Florida, which had not been called as of early Wednesday morning, goes the president’s way."

Willard's wild 'Welfare on Wheels' joyride

 Who in the hell is Willard Romney trying to fool taking the high ground on welfare reform after he was such a train wreck on the subject in Massachusetts?

Aside from his request for the very exemption about which he lyingly bashes President Obama, he went all in on a program he created to give welfare recipients free cars, which included AAA membership and state-funded insurance. His Democratic successor Deval Patrick shut it down due to the budget crisis he inherited.

 Under Romney’s Car Ownership Program, the state paid out one year’s insurance, inspection, excise tax, title, registration, repairs and a AAA membership for cars that were donated to welfare recipients. Under the plan, those who lost their jobs and ended up back on welfare were allowed to keep their free wheels. ...

The Patrick administration, mired in a fiscal crisis, hit the brakes on the program that year after a Herald front-page story sparked public outrage.

#Romneywheels

Mittens, gay Latina? Oh, dear!

The raid Romney dreams of commanding

Is there ANYTHING American about Romney?

Romney, Bain buddies and dirty money in play.

First it was U.S. Olympic uniforms made in Burma.

Then it was American jobs shipped to Chinese sweat shops.

Throw in tax havens in about any country not the United States and you've painted a pretty grim picture of a man without a patriotic bone in his body.

Now, reports today throw his entire campaign into full-on foreigner category:

 Restore Our Future, the super-PAC supporting Republican Mitt Romney's run for president, received a $1 million donation in mid-August from reinsurance company OdysseyRe of Connecticut, a "wholly-owned subsidiary" of Canadian insurance and investment management giant Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited.

Citizens' United, that gobsmack of a Supreme Court ruling, be damned -- the law of this country remains that it is illegal for a foreign national to either directly or indirectly contribute money to influence American elections.

Latina not amused by Romney's Latino fundraiser joke

Outsourcer-in-chief keeps outsourcing badly

Buried deep in the breaking news about election fraud enveloping Willard Romney and the Republican party is a nugget that could negatively impact the candidate's ability to rally his troops in advance of November 6.

The bombshell hidden behind the fraud allegations is the fact that the Romney campaign had depended on the firm behind the scandal for much of its GOTV (Get Out The Vote) efforts in some hotly-contested swing states. Willard's team outsourced this activity to the RNC, which in turn paid state parties which further paid consulting firm Strategic Allied Consulting to energize the base and ensure voters showed up to cast ballots.

The development puts the ground game advantage back into the Obama team's court.

After dumping about $3.1 million into the coffers of the Republican vendor, now under investigation for submitting 108 fraudulent voter registrations in Florida, Romney and the party pulled away from deals with the company. The GOP political teams, aware of the firm's past allegations of electoral indiscretions, agreed to embrace the business if it changed its name, so as "to not be a distraction."

Story of Mitt's very different 47-percent moocher class

"There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what ... who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it," Romney said in the fundraiser video.

Chart via Huffington Post

Forget Romney's dismissal of "dependency" of low-wage, federal income tax non-payers, his campaign apparently is rife with moochers riding the coattails of his own wealthy donors. One can hardly wait for the secret tape of him disparaging yet another group of Americans -- his own small non-donor class.