2010 midterm elections results

Well the Reps. is projected to take control of the House but not the Senate as of now. What are your thoughts?

i am getting pissed off at the state of illinois...at least with the governor seat, bill bradly will send jobs over seas and open up the retirement/handicap benefits and everybody is over looking it.

NJ is sending a former NFL player that just retired last season, and no political experience, to Congress. That pretty much sums up the election.

I was watching it last night at work and one thing came to me (as an outsider obviously) is the amount of money some of the candidates spent on their campaigns????

Some wifey in California spent millions upon millions....and lost. Surely in troubled times she would be better off investing some of that sum into the economy in some other way?

She wasn't alone either.

I think you're referring to Meg Whitman, yes? She spent $141 million of her own money. But then again, she's a billionaire...

In Michigan, the GOP made a clean sweep- Governor, House, Attorney General, Secretary of State, and Senate (which they already had).

I am somewhat surprised that Reid beat Angle. She was so crazy I liked her in spite of herself.

The next two years will be very interesting in US politics. I haven't had time to look at all the races yet but not only did most of the Blue Dog Democrats lose, so did some of the more progressive fighters like Grayson and Feingold. Nobody is happy after a thumping like that and the President will be hard pressed to get a lot of his preferred action items accomplished legislatively. Like I said, interesting.

Yes that was her. I guess if you are a billionare you lose a bit of perspective of the value of money when it comes to throwing it around.

There were other moments that i recall. The chap who is going to be the new Speaker? I forget his name but he broke down crying at his acceptance speech,and i think he was genuine as well(not just putting it on for the cameras)

Another chap whose name i forget,won in West Virginia and gave a very noble speech!

A name i do remember,Marco Rubio....

Yes i was hugely impressed by his wife

Linda McMahon, the wife of WWE head, Vince McMahon, ran for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut. She spent $46 million of her own money in a losing bid to become one of 100 U.S. senators.

Apparently there was a lot of damage done to her efforts when her "shady" pro-wrestling background was concentrated on by her opponents.

Sources say in midday news conference President Obama will coin a new Democratic slogan designed to shore up support for 2012.

New democrat slogan revealed

Oh yeah....i forgot about her.....

I was surprised that John Kasich beat out Ted Strickland in the Ohio's Governor's race.

I really DON'T understand how Dick Blumenthal was able to beat Linda McMahon. The man lied (repeatedly) about serving in VietNam. How does that get overlooked?? And the governor's race in CT is still too close to call. Several polling places ran out of ballots and they had to rush over new ones. The polling places where this occurred stayed open two hours later, but what about the people who went there to vote, left, and didn't return? CT is one messed up place!

I was not thrilled with Cuomo as a candidate, but preferred him to that nutcase Paladino. I understand that people are angry, but he was a little TOO angry. Oh, and corrupt, too. And racist.

Our County Executive, who has been in office for over a decade, ran for State Senate. He lost to a very young guy whose only experience has been as Town Clerk for a few years. I was rather shocked, especially since the Democrat won!

I don't know anyone from CT but there was a NYT analysis a few weeks back that said that McMahon was having trouble connecting with women voters. Some people thought that the baggage from her family's wrestling empire (profanity/sexualized storylines/semi-nude women) might be a bit much for her to overcome.

I just have to laugh seeing that the "Rent is too damm high" candidate got almost 40,000 votes.

He would've made it if you lived here in NY.

Well, the mortgages aren't all that reasonable either.

THE MORTGAGES ARE TOO DAMN HIGH!

Should be interesting.

However: Most N.J. Democrats retain U.S. Congressional seats despite national trend

I'll move there within 4 years if he runs again. He'll get my vote.

A good whupping for the DEMS, but fortunately most of the real wack jobs on the right were defeated.

Does anybody know how the Alaska Senate race came out?

The Alaska Democrat conceded. The battle is between Miller and Murkowski. Write-ins appear to make up 41% of the total. Miller got 34% of the vote.
However not all write-ins are Murkowski's and it's gonna take a while before a winner is declared. They have absentee ballots to count as well.

Well, I suppose it's no better or worse than Minnesota having sent a comedian with no political experience (unless you count being an Air America host and a run-in w/ Sean Hannity as 'political experience')...to the U.S. Senate, which is exactly what happened last year.

I agree w/ SB about the CT Senate Race. Having lied repeatedly about service in Vietnam, let alone his fumbled answer on how jobs are created...should've been enough to send Blumenthal packing. It's quite disgusting and somewhat pitiful that the people of Connecticut allowed him to get away w/ that. It was an ominous sign that he even survived the primary despite the Vietnam lie which was front & center at the time.

Apple

so, anybody from illinois know who won the governor seat? i looked on yahoo, and it says that booth quinn and brady has 46% of the vote, but quinn is leading by a good ten thousand votes.

BAM, I'm seeing that Quinn is leading by some 9,000 votes and that is being counted by Quinn's own people to carry him to victory.

One thing I've learned ~ when Illinois Democrats count on something in a close election, they get what they want.

thats good i guess...idk i wish we could have a new governor, but brady is terrible compared to quinn.

I hope the rest of Illinois voted early AND often! The Chicago way!

IMHO Murkowski shouldn't even been a write in canidate since she lost the primary. Does she think that she is entitled to that seat?

I guess there was a lot of "buyer's remorse" with Miller. This won't bode well for Palin if her candidate somehow loses to a write-in candidate in Alaska.

You got an all out prizefight, you wait til the fight's over, one guy's left standing and that's how you know who won...

Evidently there was bad blood between the Palin and Murkowski families from back in the day and this is just the latest display of that. Anyway Lieberman did the same thing after he lost the primary to Ned Lamont. The only rule is just win, baby.
FWIW, Murkowski says if she wins she will caucus with the GOP.

i saw that cook county voted for both quinn (still counting votes) and giannoulias

Sonny Bono Fred Gandy (Gopher from The Love Boat) Jim Ryun Al Franken

There is a long list of inexperienced celebrities that made the jump to politics, although Sonny Bono was the mayor of Palm Springs before becoming a representative. I think his wife replaced him with less experience than he had.

None of the above caused the walls to come crumbling down in the Capitol Building, and though the timeframe on Franken is too new to judge, the others were pretty much considered effective representatives. I don't think a professional legislator is necessarily better than a inexperienced one. Congress is full of career politicians - how has that worked out?

That being said - Jon Runyan, the ex Philadelphia Eagle just elected in NJ, is a political newbie that has never run for any office before. My only problem with him has nothing to do with his political views - it is the way he sort of scammed his way out of property taxes by purchasing 4 donkeys. He has them at the entrance to his property and they are kind of a tourist attraction in the area. This "livestock" qualified his multimillion dollar house to be considered a "farm" and was therefore taxed at a fraction of the going rate. To top it off, he was habitually deliquent on the taxes he did owe. He did nothing illegal, but those of us paying extremely high property taxes in NJ can still resent him for it.

So now the Repubs can blame the Dems for everything that been wrong, as the Dems did when they were in power. Fact is many of these Congress people are in it for the benefits and the graft. Some will become criminals if they are not already and most will be planning their re-election strategies tomorrow. Oh, the sad state of American politics.

IMHO she's nothing but a sore loser, her reasoning was she believes the people deserve a choice. Sorry but they did have a choice and they voter her sorry but out.

No. Only those who were elgible to vote in the Republican primaty has a choice.

From a completely uneducated US political point on view:

Obama, he's not doing too well in his presidancy so far?
These mid-term results somehow reflected that right?

Why the change?

Rightly or wrongly the party in charge takes the credit or the blame for how things are going in the US. Things aren't going particularly well right now. We can argue, discuss and debate as to why, who's responsible and how to fix it but bottom line was that Democrats were going to lose seats in the midterms.

Obama is doing all right, he is not getting his message across. The problem is that the expectations were too high, and since he did not change everything overnight, people turned on the Democrats.

It is fairly predictable that the mid-term elections will result in a Congressional seat gain for the party that does not hold the Presidency. In 1938, the Republicans gained over 70 seats during Roosevelt's second term.

Divided government creates a tension between parties that engenders compromise.

There are those rare occassions when sticking around works in favor of the primary loser.

Sen. Joe Lieberman lost the Dem primary a few years ago mainly because of liberal anger at his support of the war. He then switched parties, ran as an Independent and won re-election.

Sore losers!!

I agree with you on that but I also think that healthcare bill didn't help the Dems either.

Actually, Obama is getting his message across loud & clear.

And he's changed plenty since being elected, mainly Healthcare which was soundly rejected by the American people, both before and after it passed.

As far of the expectations being too high...he has only himself and his 2008 campaign to blame for that. For some reason too many people thought this was..as Oprah so succinctly put it...THE ONE!

As a result, much of his final two years as President will be spent either in gridlock (which would be just fine)...or hammering out 'compromise' as he now claims to want to explore.

A key moment in defining Obama's presidency so far came from of all people, Hugh Hefner who guested on Larry King Live a few months ago. Hefner's statement was..."I like him, I voted for him, but I'm waiting for something to happen."

Apple

Thanks guys, and what's controversial about this health bill?
Aside from how many pages there are!

As health care kicks in, I think it will be less controversial.

One thing is for certain, in politics two years is forever. Two years ago Obama all but walked on water in the opinions of most Americans, not he is in the doghouse. Who knows what the perception will be in 2012.

Obama's major concern is that some real lefty like Howard Dean will take him on in the primaries. For the GOP, the moderates are going to have to make some kind of deal with the tea party people or they could come into 2012 divided.

Obama's best bet is to to what Reagan said when the GOP got a beating in 1982 "Stay the course," but do what Clinton did in 1994 when the Contract With America election steamrolled him...Triangulate.

If he holds up in the White House surrounded by only a few aides, he'll be joining Jimmy Carter and G.H.W. Bush as another one termer, but one would think he has learned his lesson.

i just hope the republicans can actually compromise with obama...because if not, they will lose their seats in 2014.

Or visa-versa or he won't get a second term.

I thought this section was as good as place as any to put this news. I never thought of him as a journalist so much as a pundit/columnist but rules are rules.

Msnbc TV host Keith Olbermann was suspended indefinitely on Friday for making campaign donations to three Democratic congressional candidates, apparently in violation of NBC News ethics policy.

The announcement came in a one-sentence statement from msnbc TV President Phil Griffin: “I became aware of Keith's political contributions late last night. Mindful of NBC News policy and standards, I have suspended him indefinitely without pay.”

The donations were first reported by the Politico website earlier in the day.

Olbermann acknowledged the donations in a statement to Politico, saying he gave the maximum legal donation of $2,400 to Arizona Reps. Raul Grijalva and Gabrielle Giffords and Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway, who waged an unsuccessful campaign for the U.S. Senate against Tea Party standard-bearer Rand Paul.

Like most news organizations, NBC News, parent of msnbc TV, prohibits political contributions by its journalists without prior approval of the president. (Msnbc.com, a joint venture of NBC News and Microsoft, also has a policy against its journalists contributing to political campaigns.)


Olbermann Suspended Indefinitely

Even that's being too nice. Olbermann is as much a lefty clown as any of the righties on Fox.

Yeah Olbermann can be pompous, no doubt. I think the point's been made though and he should be brought back.

Maddow defends him here.
Maddow Video

Agreed. It's hardly a hanging offense.


Speaking of Lefty Loons . . .

Rachel does seem excited, though. Maybe because flannel shirt season is back .

God I wish George W Bush could run for president again.

ds

I don't

Don't miss Matt Laurer's interview with the former President on Monday night.

And don't forget to turn your clocks back.

i wish i could turn the clocks back to the 50's...at least that era wasn't as screwed up as it is now.

In part, that would depend on whether you were black rather than white or female rather than male.

Hmmm... with the Red Scare, Senator McCarthy and his ilk, the Cold War...

Not sure I would agree.

Signor V.

Not to mention:

Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray
South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio

Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, television
North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe

Rosenbergs, H-bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom
Brando, "The King and I" and "The Catcher in the Rye"

Eisenhower, vaccine, England's got a new queen
Marciano, Liberace, Santayana goodbye

CHORUS
We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it

Joseph Stalin, Malenkov, Nasser aand Prokofiev
Rockefeller, Campanella, Communist Bloc

Roy hn, Juan Peron, Toscanini, dacron
Dien Bien Phu falls, "Rock Around the Clock"

Einstein, James Dean, Brooklyn's got a winning team
Davy Crockett, Peter Pan, Elvis Presley, Disneyland

Bardot, Budapest, Alabama, Krushchev
Princess Grace, "Peyton Place", trouble in the Suez

CHORUS

Little Rock, Pasternak, Mickey Mantle, Kerouac
Sputnik, Chou En-Lai, "Bridge on the River Kwai"

Lebanon, Charlse de Gaulle, California baseball
Starkweather, homicide, children of thalidomide

Buddy Holly, "Ben Hur", space monkey, Mafia
Hula hoops, Castro, Edsel is a no-go

U-2, Syngman Rhee, payola and Kennedy
Chubby Checker, "Psycho", Belgians in the Congo

By DAVID B. CARUSO The Associated Press updated 11/6/2010 4:44:56 PM ET

NEW YORK — A congressional election on eastern Long Island that had appeared to end in victory for a four-term Democrat, U.S. Rep. Tim Bishop, is now up for grabs after authorities discovered they had misreported the result of the vote.

Officials with the Suffolk County Board of Elections said they discovered Friday that the unofficial tally released in the hours after the polls closed was off by thousands. A routine check of voting machine memory cards showed that instead of leading by about 3,500 votes, Bishop was trailing Republican challenger Randy Altschuler by a little less than 400.

There are still some 9,000 absentee ballots to be counted in that Long Island election, plus there will, no doubt, be a recount.

MSNBC has been showing more promos for her show which show Rachel in the office or doing interviews. I honestly thought that was a man at first. It's amazing what lighting and make up can do.

When Maddow first got her show I thought Stephanie Miller would have been a better fit but then it turns out Miller is in the same demographic as Maddow and frankly not as intelligent/funny...

Even after all the rhetoric, arguing and voting - The rent is still too damn high!

There's a John Lee Hooker song where he says his landlady is complaining about the back rent. He says she's lucky she gets any front rent...

In a past life I used to be an editorial cartoonist at the local fish wrapper here in town. Apologies to all who take this stuff seriously, but I have seen too much BS in my drawing days to get worked. Politicians are the "front men/women" whose allegiance and integrity waiver upon the the biggest donors' check and support. It takes a certain kind of person to be controlled by modern day "pezzonovante". I can't help but to laugh at all the characters involved. I see cartoons in all of these colorful characters every time they speak. Too bad newspapers see cartoonists as the first people to whack when budget cutting...

@KeithOlbermann: Greetings From Exile! A quick, overwhelmed, stunned THANK YOU for support that feels like a global hug & obviously left me tweetless

STATEMENT REGARDING KEITH OLBERMANN - From Phil Griffin, President of MSNBC: "After several days of deliberation and discussion, I have determined that suspending Keith through and including Monday night's program is an appropriate punishment for his violation of our policy. We look forward to having him back on the air Tuesday night."

Is it true that Olberman once admitted on The View or somewhere that he doesn't vote as a 'symbolic gesture', so as not to appear partial?

Kind've amazing for someone with such strongly defined political preferences. I mean really...if you're going to contribute to somebody's campaign then you may as well cast your vote as well.

Backing out from the 'global hug' Keith...maybe you better think about registering by 2012 because your President is going to need all the votes he can get!

I wish a buck was still silver and it was back when the country was strong.
Back before Elvis and before the Vietnam war came along.
Before the Beatles and yesterday when a man could still work and still would.
Is the best of the free life behind us now and are the good times really over for good ?

I wish Coke was still cola and a joint was a bad place to be.
It was back before Nixon lied to us all on TV.
Before Microwave ovens when a girl could still cook, and still would.
Is the best of the free life behind us now and are the good times really over for good ?

Are we rollin' downhill like a snowball headed for hell?
With no kind of chance for the flag or the liberty bell?
I wish a Ford or a Chevy would still last ten years like they should.
Is the best of the free life behind us now and are the good times really over for good?

Stop rollin' downhill like a snowball headed for hell.
Standup for the flag, and let's all ring the liberty bell.
Let's make a Ford and a Chevy that'll still last ten years like they should...
The best of the free life is still yet to come and the good times ain't over for good.