Among the few Republicans to vote for the bill were all three Republican women Senators. All the dissenters were white Republican men.

More…

Washington Post, October 13th, 2009

Unlike other results shows — “Dancing With The Stars” we are looking at you — here at the Fix we get right to the nitty-gritty. Yesterday we asked Fixistas to choose the most overrated Senator in the chamber. After more than 3,000 votes, the winner was Arizona Sen. John McCain with 23 percent. Texas Sen. John Cornyn (R) finished second with 18 percent followed by Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell (R) with 17 percent and Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry (D) with 16 percent. More…

Jon Stewart’s latest video on the health care debate and use of facts by the Grand Opposition Party’s Jon Kyl

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, October 13, 2009

McCain and Kyl, of course, vote against Franken amendment to allow lawsuits against employers who encourage sexual harrassment. In KBR’s case it was a gang rape!

Franken gets his first amendment passed in roll call Senate vote

Huffington Post, October 7th, 2009

After operating largely under the radar during his first few months in office, Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) is slowly beginning to make political ripples.

On Tuesday night, the Minnesota Democrat got his first piece of legislation passed by the United States Senate via roll call vote. The amendment stopped federal funding for those defense contractors who used mandatory arbitration clauses to deny victims of assault the right to bring their case to court. It passed by a 68-30 margin with nine Republicans joining each voting Democrat (Note: 30 Republicans voted against). And in the immediate aftermath, Franken was granted the chance to revel, ever so slightly, in his victory.

“The story came to my attention of Jamie Leigh Jones who, when she was 19, went to Iraq to work for [defense contractor] KBR and she was put in the barracks with 400 men and was sexually harassed,” Franken told the Huffington Post in a brief interview shortly after the vote. “She complained. But they didn’t do anything about it. She was drugged and gang raped and they locked her up in a shipping container. She tried to sue KBR and they said you have a mandatory arbitration clause in your contract. She tried to fight back and said this is ridiculous. She took it to court and they have been fighting her for three years.” More…

Here is a link to the actual votes on Senate vote #308.

Note to Curious: Four of the nine Republican votes favoring the amendment were women Senators. Further, every woman Senator voted yes, regardless of party.

Rum, Romanism and Rebellion, September 23rd, 2009

Goddard Beats All Comers

Public Policy Polling has a new poll out that isn’t good news for Republicans thinking that they can hold the Governor’s office next year. Well, one bit of good news for them: Jan Brewer is nearly as popular with Barack Obama voters as she is with John McCain voters. Of course, when only 28% of McCain voters responding to the survey claim approve of the job she’s doing, this is not exactly the best good news.

Now for the fun: y’all really wanted to see what matchups would be like if the election were held today. Of course it isn’t, which is good, because no one is really ready for that anyway. Terry Goddard is listed with a favorability of 44%, and unfavorable of 22%, the favorables/unfavorables of some possible opponents will be given with the hypothetical matchups below.

Jan Brewer (F 26 – U 43)
Brewer v Goddard: 37 – 46

Dean Martin (F 27 – U 19)
Martin v Goddard: 37 – 45

J. Fife Symington III (F 17 – U 54)
Symington v Goddard: 29 – 52

By the way, that last number no doubt has Goddard muttering something like “Where the heck were those people in 1990?” More….

Washington Post, July 11th, 2009

Louis Gill doesn’t like to turn anyone away. The director of the Bakersfield Homeless Center in California has taken to laying out cots and mattresses between the shelter’s 174 registered beds to cope with the rush of homeless families brought to his doors by the financial crisis.

“Last year, we saw a 34 percent increase in homeless families and a 24 percent increase in homeless children,” he said. “Why do we go beyond capacity? Because in a just society, a child should not have to sleep outside or in a car.”

Gill is a frontline witness to the change in the makeup of the country’s homeless. The stereotype of a homeless person as a single man no longer applies. A resident of the Bakersfield center is far more likely to be a young mother with a “good, solid job and a mortgage that she just couldn’t pay.” More…

You’re Invited to a Wingspan House Party on July 16th from 5:30 to 7:30pm, right here in SaddleBrooke. What’s Wingspan? Tucson’s LGBT community center and in fact, the 10th largest in the country. Did you know that 40% of our homeless youth identify as LGBT and that LBGT seniors are many times as likely to age alone as their straight peers. Wingspan provides a variety of programs to help these individuals, but also to survivors of domestic and other forms of violence. Wingspan’s Eon Youth Center also provides a safe hang-out space and primary resource for support groups, leadership development, social activities and community engagement for over 250 LGBT and straight allied youth annually.

As with all non-profits during these tough economic times, Wingspan really needs our support now. They’ve just undergone their third round of layoffs and are down to barebones staffing to conduct their critical programs. We hope you’ll help us make a difference. To RSVP (by July 11th) for this event and get the address, please email Linda at lindathomas724@aol.com or call her at 808.542.1823.

Minutemen entered a home in Arivaca and murdered two people.

New Border Fear: Militia Violence

ARIVACA, Ariz. — “Somebody just came in and shot my daughter and my husband!” the woman shouted to the 911 dispatcher. “They’re coming back in! They’re coming back in!”

Multiple gunshots are then heard on a tape of the call. The woman, Gina Gonzalez, survived the attack after arming herself with her husband’s handgun, but both he and their 10-year-old daughter died.

The killings, last month, have terrified this small town near the Mexican border, in part because the authorities have now tied them to what they describe as a rogue group engaged in citizen border patrols.

The three people arrested in the crime include the leader of Minutemen American Defense, a Washington State-based offshoot of the Minutemen movement, in which citizens roam the border looking for people crossing into the country illegally. Former members describe the group’s leader, Shawna Forde, 41, as having anti-immigrant sentiments that are extreme, at times frightening, even to people accustomed to hard-line views on border policing.

Major energy-climate bill chugs toward House vote

Associated Press at Yahoo, June 26th, 2009

WASHINGTON – With President Barack Obama lobbying by phone, the Democratic-controlled House churned toward a showdown vote Friday night on historic legislation to reduce pollution linked to global warming and power the nation with cleaner but more expensive energy.

Democrats struggled to solidify a fragile coalition needed for passage and appeared headed for success. “We don’t have the votes to stop this bill,” conceded Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., as the roll call neared on a measure that Republicans said would kill jobs across the country while pushing consumer energy costs higher.

Supporters and opponents agreed the result would be higher energy costs but disagreed vigorously on the impact on consumers. Democrats pointed to two reports — one from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and the other from the Environmental Protection Agency — that suggested average increases would be limited after tax credits and rebates were taken into account. The CBO estimated the bill would cost an average household $175 a year, the EPA $80 to $110 a year, but Republicans and special industry groups said the real figure would much higher. More from Associated Press…

Republicans and special interest groups pull out the stops to say no, no, and no again!

Washington Post, June 26th, 2009

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) today launched the equivalent of a filibuster of landmark climate-change legislation, using special unlimited speaking privileges granted only to party leaders to speak for more than an hour.

Boehner, leading opposition to the bill, was slated to be the second-to-last lawmaker to talk, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (R-Calif.) waiting in the wings to conclude a debate that had already been going on for more than five hours. More from the Washington Post…

It’s passed, and now on to the Senate.

Huffington Post, June 26th, 2009

After a tense debate, in which the margin of success or failure never moved beyond a handful of votes, the House of Representatives passed the most sweeping climate change policy ever considered by Congress early Friday evening.

The outcome had remained up in the air up until the actual vote, with the White House and the president himself engaging in a heavy lobbying campaign aimed at restoring Democratic Party unity that seemed to be fracturing. More from Huffington Post…

Jobless rate rises in nearly all states

Forty-eight states and the District of Columbia post unemployment rates rise in May, while only one state – Nebraska – registers a decrease.

CNN Money.com, June 19th, 2009

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Forty-eight states and the District of Columbia recorded unemployment rate increases in May, the government reported Friday. One state registered a rate decrease, and one state had no rate change.

Several states and regions posted their highest unemployment rate since the report debuted in 1976.

Over the year, jobless rates were higher in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Michigan once again led the nation with a 14.1% jobless rate, up from 12.9% a month earlier, followed again by Oregon at 12.4%, up from 12% in April. Thirteen states have rates above 10%. More…