Where are we supposed to post, here or in the actual conversation Amanda and Jess are having?  I’m confused, sorry.

I tried posting in the live thread but didnt see anything come through.

Me too.

It’s so too early to begin paying attention to this stuff.

Cover It Live content is moderated and has to be approved by one of the moderators (Jesse, Amanda, and Lindsay, I presume) to actually appear in the scrolling thread. When you hit “Send” it doesn’t automatically publish, and it will only be published if the moderators find it germane to the conversation.

Alexi Giannoulias is polling 75% in Chicago proper.  He’s winning 48-46% in the suburbs.  He might actually pull this one out and save Obama’s old seat from that asshole Kirk.

I don’t know if I can stand Bill “homophobic, sexist, creationist” Brady being our governor.  Quinn is useless, but a creationist/no abortions ever in charge of the state?

Why didnt Quinn put that out there louder?  The Republicans kept saying this election was about financial responsibilty, not social issues b/c Brady couldn’t handle the social issues.  Why did Quinn buy the frame?

Oh, I guess my comment wasn’t ‘germane” then.  Well pardon me.

I’m actually starting to feel a little more optimistic about the overall results tonight.

It sucks that the GOP will take the House and Boehner will be the next Speaker, but surprisingly, the Republicans have only picked up 3 Senate seats so far. Colorado, Pennsylvania, and Illinois all look hopeful for the Democrats, but Wisconsin is quickly disappearing for Feingold.

The GOP may have to settle for picking up 4 or 5 Senate seats rather than 7 or 8.

Yeah, but it’s such a shame to lose Pelosi as Speaker.  I’m bummed about that.

Agreed about Pelosi.

Grayson’s loss, Feingold’s (likely) loss, and Pelosi’s loss of the Speakership are three of the worst bummers of the night.

That and my state’s teabaggers deciding to send Roy Blunt, one of the most corrupt members of Congress, to fill Kit Bond’s seat. For a group that claims to hate corrupt Beltway crony types, they sure didn’t have much problem voting for Tom DeLay’s former lapdog to be Missouri’s next U.S. Senator.

I’m in New York so I’m relatively happy. Its a bummer about the House but we seem to be doing all right in the Senate. At least Sestak seems to be beating Toomey, thank God. Losing Grayson, Feingold, and Periello is a shame. They were good people. Its sucks that Pelosi is no longer going to be speaker.

  Apparently, the Democratic Party won the Colorado governorship over Maes and Tancredo. Its a nice little piece of sanity and common sense.

And save the “We are contributing through our blog” no ones reading this garbage.

Apparently you are, douchenozzle.

If Sestak, Giannoulias, Bennet, Reid, Boxer, Wyden and Murray all keep their seats, tonight could turn out really great for the Democrats, relatively speaking.

MSNBC just called Wisconsin for Johnson, Feingold is out. As of right now, the GOP has four pickups: Indiana, Arkansas, North Dakota, and Wisconsin. Would be great if that’s all they pickup tonight.

Would be even greater if somehow Scott McAdams somehow pulls off an upset win in Alaska and takes away a Republican seat.

@Murrow Fan

You shouldn’t bother as I can’t imagine he will read your response.  The troll is obviously illiterate.

Well at least the personhood amendment is dead! Also hickenlooper beat buck!!!

For comparison to 1994, the Democrats lost 54 House seats and 8 Senate seats that year, in a much better economy.

They’ll almost certainly lose fewer Senate seats this year, and the number of House seat losses will probably be comparable to 1994. And the current political climate is much worse for the majority party this year than it was in 1994.

It may be a bit of turd-polishing, but Maddow pointed out astutely that the real story tonight isn’t that the GOP won, but that they didn’t win as big as pre-election indications predicted them to win.

In Delaware, you can certainly point to the GOP’s choice of a teabagger nominee is a big reason for lsoing there, and should Democrats hold Colorado and Nevada, you can say the same about those states as well.

This could have been a lot worse if the Republicans had nominated less maniacally insane candidates.

Also hickenlooper beat buck!!!

Two different races… Hickenlooper (D) beat Maes (R) and Tancredo (AC) in the Colorado gubernatorial race.

The U.S. Senate race between Michael Bennet (D) and Ken Buck (R) is still too close to call, though Bennet currently has a razor-thin lead.

Murrow Fan, you forgot one thing. This is a census year. If Republicans win enough state houses, they get to decide on the new district boundaries for Congress.

Illinois and Pennsylvania are starting to move in the GOP’s favor, but Bennet is still starting to pull way ahead in Colorado.

Patty Murray’s seat in Washington looks in danger. That sucks.

Reid is up and Boxer is down, but both Nevada and California are too close to call.

I think the GOP picks up 2 or 3 more Senate seats tonight between Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Washington. Democrats hold California and Nevada. Hawaii stays blue, Alaska stays red (Murkowski has already pledged to caucus as a Republican if she wins).

End of the night, Democrats hold a Senate majority of 52-48 or 53-47, assuming Lieberman doesn’t pull any party-switching stunts.

murrow fan,
Oh yeah, oops got them mixed up (and I’m in colorado!)!Well, Sharron Angle also bit the dust! Thank gawd kooky looney tunes lady didnt get in!

I keep getting “This event is in Standby Mode”.  Is there a control I accidentally hit or something?

@NY Expat

I’m getting the same thing.  I don’t think it is anything we did.

With Boxer and Inouye being projected to win their races, the Democrats have officially clinched control of the U.S. Senate, barring a Lieberman defection.

Six races remain: Pennsylvania, Illinois, Colorado, Nevada, Washington, and Alaska.

The Republicans win Alaska, the Democrats win Colorado and Nevada, and the other three are toss-ups.

So…my boyfriend and I are having a bit of a disagreement.  In Paladino’s “concession” speech, was he offering Cuomo the option of either beating people with a baseball bat now or getting beaten with a baseball bat later, or was he talking about his penis?

Toomey is giving a victory speech and Sestak is conceding, even though all of the networks are still characterizing the Pennsylvania race as “too close to call”...

Whatever.

*sigh* I’m in a debate with someone on FB (don’t ask) and does anyone know of a comprehensive guide/fact sheet on all the fuck ups of the Republicans and how they got us into this mess? I’ve been searching individual stats and stuff and am tired. Perhaps I should stop arguing, but like the XKCD comic says, “Someone on the internet is wrong!”

Weird… according to Eugene Robinson, an African-American Republican got elected to the House tonight in South Carolina, the first time a black Republican has won election to federal office in a former slave state since Reconstruction.

Meet Representative-elect Tim Scott… the Club for Growth black teabagger who will represent SC-01 in the 112th U.S. Congress.

Harry Reid wins, and even beats Sharron Angle in her own hometown. My joy is more a feeling of Schadenfreude for the teabagging morons who gave away a totally winnable race by nominating the biggest whackjob they could find.

Against even a slightly less crazy Republican than Angle, harry Reid probably loses that race.

The teabaggers literally cost the Republicans control of the U.S. Senate tonight. Delaware, Nevada, and Colorado were all completely winnable states for the elephants, and they blew it.

Murrow fan—Is Russ Carnahan going to lose? I saw he was behind in the polls, but I thought STL was super blue.

Did anyone else catch Meghan McCain’s election predictions?

Still waiting on Alaska, but so far she is 0 for 4.

My faves:

Sharron Angle beating Harry Reid, followed by an uncomfortable and possibly bitter concession speech from Harry Reid. This race showcases the complicated Tea Party vs. more moderate Republican relationship, which will be further explored in exactly how Sharron Angle will govern as a senator.

In the tight and hugely expensive California race, I predict a win for the former CEO of eBay. I actually see Meg Whitman as one of the next great Republican leaders.

St. Louis City is super blue - 83% of the city went to Obama in 2008. However, MO-03 includes not just the southern half of St. Louis City (MO-01 represents the northern half), but also the more conservative suburbs of south St. Louis County.  It also includes Jefferson County, which is the lily white KKK-friendly meth-production capital of America.

Carnahan should pull off the victory, but this has been a tougher election for him than his previous elections. With his sister running (and sadly losing) the U.S. Senate race here, there’s a bit of animosity towards his status as a member of a powerful Missouri political family. Mel, his father, defeated John Ashcroft in the 2000 U.S. Senate race - three weeks after dying in a tragic plane crash. John Ashcroft was so disliked by Missourians in 2000 that they actually voted for a dead guy to replace him (Jean Carnahan, Mel’s widow, was appointed to serve two years in the seat before a special election in 2002).

MO-03 has been blue my entire life… Dick Gephardt held the seat for nearly 20 years before Russ Carnahan was elected in 2004.

Yeah, i remember the dead guy defeating Ashcroft. My mom grew up in Gephardts district.

I am pretty sure that all my teabagger relatives live in carnahan’s district (near towergrove park, if you know the area) and they always act like they are under a constant seige from a liberal black menace, but I was under the impression that they were the exception for their area.

@Jerome B.

People create jobs.  When groups of people come together to work towards goals related to the common good, they are often (though not always) called a government.  Thus, when people create jobs through their coming together in the form of a government, we say that the government creates jobs.

This is the same way that we say things like corporations create jobs.  Corporations do not actually create jobs just as government does not actually create jobs.  This observation is only of interest to those who are just now discovering the meaning of words like government, people, jobs, corporation, etc.

@Jerome B.

Ah, I see I overstated it when I said
<blockquote>This observation is only of interest to those who are just now discovering the meaning of words like government, people, jobs, corporation, etc.</.blockquote>

Apparently, you are still trying to discover those meanings.  I wish you luck, but this is probably not the right place for you.  I would recommend finding a library and a dictionary.

A job is when someone is paid money to do work. The idea that there’s some kind of magical pixie dust in government funds which makes first or second-degree recipients of it not really employed is pure mysticism.

Pretty much all money in the American economy goes through the government on a regular basis, so we’d be pretty well fucked if that money somehow became denatured by its contact with the hated bureaucracy.

The Good: The Republicans are going to wind up doing a lot worse in the Senate races than many of their pundits expected. Given the current tough climate for Democrats, there is no reason the GOP shouldn’t have won both Delaware and Nevada, had they not nominated the two worst possible candidates they could find in those states.

The Bad: The Republicans have won the House… by a shitload. As of this moment, MSNBC projects the GOP will emerge with a 243-192 majority, which represents a 63 seat gain if that projection holds. That will greatly surpass the 54 seat gain they had in 1994, and it would be fair to characterize the 2010 midterms as a massive GOP victory, at least in terms of House gains. That the GOP took the House wasn’t a shock, but I’m kinda surprised that they are taking it by such a huge margin. House Dems got their asses handed to them tonight.

The Ugly: The most effective Democratic leader in Congress over the last two years is going to be losing her position as Speaker to an orange-skinned troll, while her far-less effective Senate counterpart will not only keep his seat but will remain Senate Majority Leader. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad Reid beat Angle and I’m glad the Democrats will keep the Senate. But it sucks that Nancy Pelosi is getting kicked to the curb this election cycle largely because of the fecklessness displayed by so many of her spineless colleagues.

@Djur

It is also worth pointing out that money is itself created by government.

The best I can do to understand Jerome B.‘s position is that he actually might think that corporations get up, walk around, eat waffles, etc. and so they are able to create jobs just like actual people do.  He probably got that from the same children’s book as the government-spawned magic pixie dust.  If that is the case, it is probably part his bedtime.

Colorado could wind up being this year’s Minnesota. Buck is currently leading Bennet by 687 votes, out of nearly 1,500,000 total votes cast for both candidates… less than 0.01% difference.

It’s likely gonna go to an automatic recount, and expect the lawyers to get involved tomorrow… we may not see a winner declared there for a few weeks (or Discoball forbid, months).

So, what’s going to happen now that we know that Tea Party rhetoric is an effective force for energizing people, but actual Tea Party candidates scare people and forfeit eminently winnable elections? Are there going to be more establishment Republican candidates that give lipservice to a combination of libertarian ideas and social conservatism in the future, or will this branch be neglected and organized enough to splinter off?

It’s best not to try to discuss economics with conservatives.  It really is a religion with them.

“Government does not create jobs” is a statement with the same level of religious import as “We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth.”

The idea that an economic system crucially depends on both a functioning state and a functioning private sector is literally incomprehensible to them.  And challenging them on this religious belief is no different from challenging a Christian on the existence of Christ.

Don’t Feed The Troll.

I am pretty sure that all my teabagger relatives live in carnahan’s district (near towergrove park, if you know the area) and they always act like they are under a constant seige from a liberal black menace, but I was under the impression that they were the exception for their area.

That’s actually surprising… Tower Grove has become a vibrant urban “gayborhood” over the past 10-15 years, with a ton of beautiful restorations done on a lot of 100+ year old brick houses. It’s actually one of the most liberal areas of the city… the annual PRIDE parade goes right through it. Yes, Tower Grove is part of Russ Carnahan’s district. MO-01, Lacey Clay’s district, begins at midtown and includes North St. Louis.

The city is actually pretty young and liberal. Most of the older teabagger types live way out in cookie-cutter municipalities beyond the I-270 loop that separates the city and inner suburbs from the outer suburbs and exurbs. They come into downtown for Cardinals and Rams games, and not much else, and they all think St. Louis City is the world’s most dangerous place because we have black people.

I love Pelosi and am sad to lose her as speaker. 

On the upside, the House is becoming really swingy and dependent on the national mood.  Incumbency matters less.  If things go well over the next two years and Obama cruises to re-election, we may see her return as Speaker in 2012 riding a huge Democratic wave.  I just hope she hangs on as Minority Leader for the time being so that can happen.

Are you fucking crazy?  Governments do not create jobs.  Even the someone waaay to left of you knows governments don’t create jobs.

Governments do not create jobs.
The government created the Internet.
THEREFORE the Internet has never created any jobs.
Discuss.

Governments do not create jobs.
The government builds roads.
THEREFORE roading has never created any jobs.
Discuss.

Governments do not create jobs.
The government issues money.
THEREFORE money has never created any jobs.
Discuss.

I like the money one best.

@PIATOR

Governments do not create jobs.
The government created the Internet.
THEREFORE the Internet has never created any jobs.
Discuss.

Al Gore created the internet.  Because government creates no jobs, Al Gore did not have a job with the government when he did so.  Thus, the internet (because of Al Gore) has created many jobs.  This is why the Republican party is in love with Al Gore.

On the upside, the House is becoming really swingy and dependent on the national mood.  Incumbency matters less

I don’t know whether to call this a good thing or a bad thing. Sure, it’s good that you no longer have such a great incumbency protection racket that you can have situations where 1 party controls the house for 50 years. On the other hand, I don’t want to see us end up like Post-WWII Italy where the House can’t get a single damn thing done without causing it to fall in the next election.

I also have to keep wondering why the right wingers who post at pandagon consistently have their own brand of incoherence and illiteracy?

Colorado is still not called yet but the Democrats would have had it now but for the Green vote. The Democrats would have taken Obama’s seat in Illinois if the votes for the Green went for the Donkey. Freaking idiots.

  Murrow Fan, Reid is more effective than you think. The job of a Senate leader is a bit different than a House leader because individual Senators are more important and vanity prone. Pelosi had enough problems with Stupak and the Blue Dogs in the House.

They create bureaucracies that idiots like you mistake for jobs.

It’s true! I worked for the government, and they never paid me! They just forced me to run around vast government complexes and stand in endless lines getting papers stamped by bureaucratic officials, and then they had me tortured and killed…

...oh wait, that was Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil.”

Which our troll apparently mistook for a gripping documentary.

So, what’s going to happen now that we know that Tea Party rhetoric is an effective force for energizing people, but actual Tea Party candidates scare people and forfeit eminently winnable elections.

They’ll just do what they did with the Xtianists from the ‘80s onward—give the clowns a voice but avoid offering them any real chance at power. That doesn’t bode well for Palin.

The trick is to make the Know-Nothing dopes believe that they’re taken seriously by the party without actually endangering the revenue streams of companies like Halliburton or Goldman Sachs. Fortunately for the GOP, guys like Jerome B. are born suckers.

I don’t want to see us end up like Post-WWII Italy where the House can’t get a single damn thing done without causing it to fall in the next election.

There will be gridlock, because the GOP will start using the House as a pre-emptive dumping ground for any Teabagger who threatens to get too popular. On the other hand, it’s not a parliamentary system and Represntatives have the most direct accountability to their constituents of all Feds, so if they don’t deliver or get some things done they know they’ll be kicked out after 4 years.

I would like to note that my **corporate job** was created by the government. We produce a product that is purchased almost exclusively by a publicly-funded system. We exist because the government pays for the existence of our customers.

So there you go—the government doesn’t even just create government jobs.

#38….I’d also recommend jerome b seek out a therapist and some mental meds as well.

This is totally off topic, but did anyone else do GOTV yesterday? The dems turnout machine here was abso-fucking-lutely terrible. I have worked my ass off in every election since 2002, and this was by far the worst turnout campaign I have ever seen. The dems kept bragging about it too. In the past the way it has worked is that the dems spend a summer canvassing to build a list of supporters and then on election day cross off each voter as they make it to the polls and then keep bugging people who haven’t voted until they go vote. This year, I think the gotv list was created by some sort of algorthm which was supposed to determine who was least likely to vote. My entire list was made up of 20 somethings. 85-90% of these 20 somethings no longer lived at the address they were supposed to be at, so I basically spent 12 hours yesterday knocking on random doors to tell random strangers who may or may not be dems to go vote. Furthermore, the list used to be walker friendly and you just went up and down streets. These new lists covered several miles of territory and had the houses sort of thrown out all over the place so you had to drive and it took forever.

I also have never confronted such a violent electorate. I got cussed out so many times. The biggest offenders seemed to be mama grizzlies who would call me a fucking-cunt right in front of their small children. I also came accross a very large, very angry man who seemed like he really wanted to beat the shit out of me. I am afraid that if I were an average size girl and not a 5’10” runner, he would have.

I am so depressed about losing culver and all those judges who supported gay rights even though I worked my ass off for so many hours. I feel more crushed and hopeless than even in 2004. I can’t even decide whether I want to barf or binge eat.

I am so depressed about losing culver and all those judges who supported gay rights even though I worked my ass off for so many hours. I feel more crushed and hopeless than even in 2004. I can’t even decide whether I want to barf or binge eat.

Get drunk, yell a bit, and sleep.  It’s happened before, it’s swung back, and it’s not worth cutting your wrists over.

On the bright side, nominating a couple of batshit crazy teabagger candidates probably costthe Republicans the Senate.

...what the hell are you even ever saying? Are you just one of those spam bots that regenerates strings of nonsense words? Leftwing margin growth super exist utmost f’tang f’tang barrel!

p.s. the “customers” that are supposed to make me shudder are PUBLIC SCHOOLS, which admittedly seem to have failed you horribly.

On the bright side, nominating a couple of batshit crazy teabagger candidates probably costthe Republicans the Senate.

And proto-Fascist Tom Tancredo got his ass handed to him in Colorado in the Governror’s race. Even if you added in the Republican votes to his total (he ran on the “Constitution” Part ticket) he would still have lost.

Again it seems like the Western US did much better last night than the East.

Jerome—so my mom is teacher. I get that by your estimate, she does not have a real job. She also uses some of her teaching money to buy groceries, eat out, invest in some mutual funds, etc etc. Are any of those jobs real?

Also, taxes stifle growth in the private sector, but spending programs do not. In addition to the fact that commerce would basically cease if the government didn’t provide basic infrastructure, the people being paid to build the roads take their money from their not-jobs and spend it on food and shelter and cars and entertainment thus more (if you believe these are in fact jobs) are created.

When the government spends money it creates jobs. When the government cuts taxes, depending on for whom taxes are cut and the causes of unemployment, it may create jobs. The biggest difference is where the benefits are distributed.

Government does not create jobs.

Indeed.  Only tax cuts create jobs, and tax cuts are bestowed by sparkly magical unicorns and certainly not by the government.

She also uses some of her teaching money to buy groceries, eat out, invest in some mutual funds, etc etc. Are any of those jobs real?

No, the only real job is whatever it is Jerome B. does for a living. And it’s true…the government has very little to do with the number of available Mom’s basements.

I bet his mom doesn’t even take the homeowner’s subsidy for her basement.

Yeah, why aren’t those teachers’ unions spending their dues to send people like Jerome B. to Washington?  Those teachers, poor things, forced into supporting Democrats who don’t think that their jobs should be completely abolished.  If life were fair, they wouldn’t be forced into a union because there wouldn’t be a job to unionize.

And when did a school teacher become civil service?  In the U.S., it predates the fucking Revolution.  I suppose it is too much to ask that Jerome B. even pretend to know what he is talking about.

And about those tax cuts and the unicorn, hey asswipe the government forced my employer to take that money from my check.

No one forces your employer to take federal income tax from your paycheck, except YOU.  You could set your withholding to zero and make yourself responsible for paying or not paying your taxes, but, since you’re obviously too fucking stupid to figure out how taxes work, that’s obviously too difficult for you.

I do see your point about public schools, though.  You were “educated” in one, weren’t you?

I do see your point about public schools, though.  You were “educated” in one, weren’t you?

I wouldn’t be so quick to blame the schools. Some people, and admittedly largely through no fault of their own, are simply too stupid to be educated. Despite the efforts of all around them, they remain piss-ignorant, foul, and shit-hearted until the sad, lonely end of their wasted days.

Our troll of the day is one of them.

I’m still very happy the personhood amendment got fucked outta here!!!!

@Jerome B.

Yeah, they were.  They are.  Guess history wasn’t your strongest subject?  (Although, it obviously wasn’t English, Mathematics, Civics, or Econ either….  Are you an “artist”?)

I went to private schools if it really matters to anyone but kismyasshi.

Guess any reservations we may have had about public schools just went right out the window.

Not all corporations are evil.  They are, in fact, a form of government, though.  They also benefit tremendously from actions undertaken by the government.  Your job exists because of the government.

@Bean Slap

It is excellent news!!  Sorry if it seems like I’ve been ignoring you.

This thread has the return of the Most Awesome Troll of All-Time, Pro-Life Austin Nedved of Plants Reproduce Like Salt on Food Fame.  He will, I am sure, appreciate your news (if he ever returns).

I wouldn’t be so quick to blame the schools. Some people, and admittedly largely through no fault of their own, are simply too stupid to be educated.

Yes, I know.  Shit, I was educated in public schools, and did you notice how my sentences make sense and don’t seem like they were generated by a spambot?  It’s truly wondrous.

I just couldn’t resist that slam.  I also don’t believe for one second that Mr. Troll was educated in a private school.  Homeschooling, I can believe, not private school, which actually has standards (even if they aren’t as rigorous as many public schools’).

You are such a weird troll. Nothing you have said makes any sense. Where you accusing me of predating the revolution? What revolution are we referring to? Did it happen after 1988? Do you not believe that money spent by civil servants create jobs or do you not believe that people who cater to civil servants have real jobs? Did they have economics at your private school? Why is atheist a feminist not believable? Do you think that you can’t be an atheist and a feminist or do you not believe in atheists?

Their too busy

Private school, eh?

resembles your ideas about how the Idiot in Cheif would govern

Bush has been out of office for two years.  Give the man a break already.

Far and away the most fail-filled troll ever. Smarter monkeys, please!

No one forces your employer to take federal income tax from your paycheck, except YOU.  You could set your withholding to zero and make yourself responsible for paying or not paying your taxes,

I know this is late, but this is not such a good idea—there is a penalty for underwithholding.