Note: I know it’s a repeat of a blog from six days ago. But… here. We. Go.
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Happy Halloween: Enjoy the evening. Because tomorrow, we all need to band together to make a ghost of Scott Walker’s job.
Dear #OccupyWallstreet - it’s time to #OccupyWisconsin.
The recall officially begins November 15th. Spread the word. Lead the charge. Be prepared to hit the ground running.
You can do it legally, quietly, simply by signing a signature and starting the process to make Scott Walker pay the price for being Scott Walker. You don’t even need to freeze your privates in the snow to make this statement.
Find a petition. Sign a petition. Get your friends and neighbors to do it. Make that number so undeniable, crushing and authentic that it’s impossible for the right to claim fraud. Start chatting up ‘em up now.
If you do… if that happens… watch the tea party start to fold like a deck chair.
Scott Walker is their poster boy. And by recalling him, you make him a Teabagging canary in a coal mine.
He goes, they’ll all fear for their political careers. He goes, Mitt Romney won’t be the only one changing his opinions in between heartbeats. They all will.
It will change the entire tone of the Presidential elections. Because the insane things you’re hearing come out of Perry and Romney… these are extensions of what Scott Walker is actually doing.
Which makes Walker the perfect person to be the example. It’s the perfect time to do it, right in the midst of the primary season.
This is a chance to make a statement that every GOP candidate needs to hear: Keep your fringe out of our politics. Act like an American, not a corporate spokesperson.
So let’s send this Walker guy packing.
And make that message resonate.
November 15th. Mark it on your calendar, folks. Two months. 540,208 signatures. That’s all it takes to fight back.
MADISON, Wis. — An effort to recall Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker over his contentious union rights law will begin Nov. 15, Democrats announced Monday, meaning an election could be held as early as next spring.
Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Mike Tate said on the party’s website that recall petitions will be circulated starting Nov. 15, giving supporters of the effort until Jan. 13 to collect 540,208 signatures.
Walker has become a national hero to many Republicans and conservatives and is a hot ticket on the fundraising and speaking circuit. But he is the top target for unions and Democrats as he became the face of the anti-union movement this year with his proposal that took away nearly all collective bargaining rights from most public workers.
“It has become clearer than ever that the people of Wisconsin – the traditions and institutions of our great state – cannot endure any more of Scott Walker’s abuses. To preserve Wisconsin, we must begin the recall of Walker as soon as possible,” Tate said in a statement on the website.
Two Republican state senators who voted for the law lost recall elections this summer, while four other Republicans and three Democrats survived recalls. The nine elections attracted $44 million in spending from national unions, conservative groups and others.
Under Wisconsin law, a recall can’t be started until a year after the officeholder was inaugurated. Walker was inaugurated on Jan. 3, which made Nov. 4 the soonest the recall effort could begin.
Tate’s statement accused Walker of being “dishonest with the people of Wisconsin” when he ran for governor.
“Soon after he took office, he proposed a radical change to state law by trying to take away state workers’ rights to collective bargaining which he never mentioned once during the campaign,” Tate said. “We cannot sit back and allow Scott Walker to continue to dismantle our education system, run our government as an auxiliary of corporate special interests, put our clean air and water at risk, and ignore an unemployment crisis that his policies exacerbated.”
There have only been two successful gubernatorial recall elections in U.S. history. The first was in 1921 in North Dakota and the other was when California Gov. Gray Davis was removed from office in 2003.
In Wisconsin, once recall backers file the required paperwork to start collecting signatures, they have 60 days to return the 540,208 required to trigger the election. If the effort starts on Nov. 15, the deadline for supporters to turn in petitions would be Jan. 13.
Once signatures are submitted to the Government Accountability Board, it has 31 days to review them. It will likely seek an extension to review the large number or signatures, similar to one it received for the recalls targeting state senators.
Legal fights could also delay any election.
If the board certifies the signatures, the recall election must be held six Tuesdays from that date. If more than two candidates run, that election would be the primary. A general election would be four weeks after that.
“It is not possible to say with any certainty when the election would be, especially to say it could be in conjunction with any existing election,” said Reid Magney, spokesman for the Government Accountability Board. “There are many aspects of the process that would make it difficult to do that because of the unpredictability of the timelines.”
No Democrat has announced plans to run against Walker. People mentioned as potential candidates include U.S. Rep. Ron Kind of La Crosse, former U.S. Rep. Dave Obey of Wausau, Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca of Kenosha, state Sen. Jon Erpenbach of Waunakee, and former Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk.
Tate did not say whether the recall would target both Walker and Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch. The Government Accountability Board, which oversees elections, has requested an opinion from the attorney general’s office on how a recall against the governor would affect the lieutenant governor. Candidates for governor and lieutenant governor run on the same ticket in Wisconsin.
Wisconsin has four previously scheduled elections next year: the spring primary on Feb. 21, the spring election and presidential primary on April 3, the fall primary on Sept. 11 and the fall general election on Nov. 6.
Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio addressed his ‘Cold Case Posse’ looking into President Barack Obama’s birth certificate at an Arizona tea party meeting with “birther queen” Orly Taitz Tuesday night.
Taitz, who conservative outlet WorldNetDaily saysflew in from California on short notice, talked for a few minutes about her claim that the president was not born in the United States. The audience applauded her during her speech, and several members stood up at the end.
“Thanks for your input. We’re looking at this very closely,” said Arpaio. “I can’t tell you everything, but there could be a shock there somewhere that my guys came up with. I can’t talk too much about it. It’s in the process.”
Arpaio said to Taitz, “There are a couple of things you and nobody else here knows anything about yet that could be a little bit exciting.”
Arpaio, the sheriff for Phoenix and its environs, repeatedly declined to give specifics on the investigation. “I’m not going to wait forever,” he said. “I want to get the report out.”
Aww… Sherrif Joe and Orly Taitz, together in the same room. And look at all the old, balding white heads staring at them.
They’ve got a report! They’ve got shocking news! Exciting, shocking news! It’s a super-villain team up: A brainless Lex Luthor and a very unfunny clown faced joker have teamed to take down Superman, because they’ve heard he’s an alien immigrant from some place called “Kryptonesia” or “Kyroptonistan” or something foreign like that.
And judging by the crowd that showed up, they’ve also got a “Golden Girls” marathon running directly after.
These poor, sad, pathetic people. It’s one thing to disagree with someone… but to be so out of your mind phobic that three years later you’re still trying to invalidate an election because your president doesn’t look like your money… get a life, folks.
This is who Rick Perry is courting when he talks to Donald Trump.
This is who Donald Trump is courting when he says he still doesn’t believe the President is American.
And while the Tea Party might go “tsk tsk” to this, they certainly don’t shun these people because a vote is a vote is a vote.
But this is the face of ignorance and fear and crazy and mean.
Well, the backs of their sad heads, anyway.
This is like Rick Perry getting an ad that reads “Do you like white people? Visit our page!”
Really?
I’d say “We hadn’t noticed” but then I saw the polls. Apparently we have!
You were a candle that nobody really wanted, that burned out much faster than we every could have dreamed.
But what we knew of ye, we the ye apparently didn’t like.
Whether it’s your past insinuations that Texas could secede from the union, or the fact that - as many have pointed out - we tried “Loose Canon Texas Governor” before and we all saw how that worked out…
Maybe your anti-vaccination rants or catering to insane parts of the Tea Party?
All we can tell is every time you opened your mouth and talked, a few more people got that ”ew, I threw up a little” taste in their mouth. Check it:
So, I guess: Thanks. Thanks for popping your head out of the gopher hole for 12 seconds and giving us a few laughs.
And by all means, keep swinging. You’re fun to watch, like when one of those guys in “Jackass” gets his junk kicked by an angry mule. But… in so far as actually seeing your name on the ballot? Sorry dude. Time to find another dream.
Might I suggest cartoon acting?
“The minute that the Republican Party becomes the party — the anti-science party, we have a huge problem. We lose a whole lot of people who would otherwise allow us to win the election in 2012.”
— Jon Huntsman, in an interview with ABC News, ripping his GOP rivals on evolution and global warming.
I want to believe it. I do. That somewhere in this pack of lunatics there’s one Republican candidate who is willing to live in this decade, and not try to roll things back to the Scopes Monkey Trial.
He will be ignored by the media, because he isn’t threatening to “Go Texas” on anybody, or fire drones at illegal aliens, or screaming that the President is a socialist, or suggest his impeachment.
Not exciting, not inciting. So he is, I am more than certain, doomed.
It was nice to meet you, moderate conservative in the middle of Hurricane TeaBag.
You will be missed.
Remember all the hullabaloo about oversees ballots counting? How when certain Republican candidates thought soldiers would be voting GOP they screamed about the soldiers, and the flag, and how important it was their vote count?
I do. You do too. Texas seems to have short term memory problems.
Local Democrats are up in arms about a controversial voter ID bill that would exclude veterans’ identification cards from the short list of photo IDs required to cast a vote in Texas.
Ann McGeehan, director of the Secretary of State’s elections division, said last week at a seminar in Austin that photo ID cards issued by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs are not acceptable forms of military ID to vote, according to a recording provided by the Texas Democratic Party.
Jordy Keith, a spokeswoman for the secretary of state, backpedaled Friday on that determination.
Passed after Gov. Rick Perry declared voter ID an emergency issue in the last session, the strict bill is touted by Republicans as a way to reduce voter fraud but decried by Democrats as an effort to lower voter turnout among minorities and the elderly, disabled and poor.
Texas voters, beginning next year, cannot cast a ballot without one of the following forms of photo identification: a Texas driver’s license; a Texas concealed handgun license; a U.S.passport; citizenship papers; or a military identification card.
Veterans eligible for VA medical benefits receive the VA cards, which include photos.
Not allowing holders of the VA card to vote would largely affect veterans who are young, homeless and traumatized by war, said Charlie Jones, head of Texas Democratic Veterans.
So, to be clear… your permit to carry a gun in Texas is a valid document to vote, your permit to carry one for your country is not.
Stay classy, Texas.
