A New Way Of Gerrymandering

McConnell-backed law requires the governor to pick a temporary successor who shares the same political party as the departing senator. Mitch planning to quit?

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Author: craigcrawford

Trail Mix Host. Lapsed journalist, author & retired pundit happily promoting nothing but the truth for Social Security checks.

37 thoughts on “A New Way Of Gerrymandering”

  1. craig, that’s mitch’s plan B.  plan A is for the GOPers to take back the senate in ’22 election and return him to the throne.  i assume in the meantime (that is if KY courts don’t toss the new law) he’ll garner goodies from all who want his blessings.  at the moment his princeling-in-waiting choice is cameron (AG of ky and former legal aide to mitch)

  2. a 2010 explanation of that other way of gerrymandering

    Hey kids, here’s a song to explain why our elections are so skewed! Lauren makes current events fun (or at least helps you laugh at them) with literate humor and witty topical comedy songs

  3. and just think, old ben wanted the turkey –  looks like he’s almost getting his wish

     

    See the source image

  4. that’s not the only gube power they’re trying to grab according to AP this morning:

    Shortly after gaveling in after a nearly two-week break, the GOP-dominated legislature turned to sweeping aside a stack of vetoes by Gov. Andy Beshear. The override votes spanned hours, from early afternoon and continuing into the late night. Some of the overrides stripped away parts of the governor’s executive authority, shifting the power to statewide Republican officeholders.

    It continued a theme throughout the contentious legislative session. The governor has hinted he expected more court challenges to some vetoed bills if they become law. Beshear and Republican legislative leaders already are waging a court fight over previous measures that threatened to invalidate the governor’s executive orders to try to slow the spread of COVID-19.

    Lawmakers reconvened Monday with two days left in their 30-day session, which ends Tuesday.

     

    who needs a governor they seem to be saying when we’ve got our good ol’ boys right here so you don’t have to worry your pretty little heads thinkin’ 

  5. but not to worry about such trivia when “impending doom” looms and a few thousand more of us are about to die from the GOPer grippe aka drumpf disease

     Biden, health officials sound alarm as signs of covid surge proliferate – The Washington Post

    “Please, this is not politics,” Biden said. “Reinstate the mandate if you let it down, and businesses should require masks as well. A failure to take this virus seriously — precisely what got us into this mess in the first place — risks more cases and more deaths.”
    An emotional Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, went off script at a briefing Monday morning to demonstrate her alarm. Her words brought to mind a prescient warning from another CDC official, Nancy Messonier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, who told Americans more than 13 months ago that their lives would dramatically change as the pandemic exploded in the United States.
    “I’m going to reflect on the recurring feeling I have of impending doom,” Walensky said at a White House news briefing Monday. “We have so much to look forward to, so much promise and potential of where we are and so much reason for hope. But right now, I’m scared.”
    […]
    “Please hold on a little while longer. I so badly want to be done,” Walensky said at the briefing. “I know you all so badly want to be done. We are just almost there, but not quite yet.” The country does not have the “luxury of inaction” to prevent a fourth surge, she said.

    […]
    “With vaccines there’s hope, which is a very good thing,” he said. ….
    But there was no guarantee of a positive outcome, the president warned, saying conditions could easily become “worse, not better.”

  6. Hey Ol Man……That’s an old friend of mine on the right in the video playing the git-fiddle with Don Gibson…..They traveled the world together.

  7. Based on the look of Moscow Mitch’s hands a few months ago, he’s definitely planning to retire or maybe even “retire,” which we will all do one day.

    He can’t take his money or power with him, but he wants to make sure that the money and power are retained by white men. Mitch McConnell is a racist.

    But wait, I may see a loophole. What’s to stop a known-to-be-moderate Dem from switching parties (claiming Dems are too liberal) so he can be appointed?

  9. BiD, the new law requires guv to only select from the 3 names put forth by GOPer party leaders.  no way that committee will select an iffy turncoat.  only way now is for ky dems & indies to vote in anybody but a mitch clone via the election route.

  11. A very strange time it is.  One group of people, the majority, wanting a better America and a smaller group of people trying their damnedest to destroy America.  It is so very difficult to try to understand their thinking about why a country which has been operating should be replaced with something like a dictatorship or autocracy.  White supremacy is most of it, but I cannot think there is also a desire to be told how to live and be controlled by a strong dictator such as a Putin.

  12. I’m guessing, but what I’m guessing is that the KY governor’s power to appoint to a vacant Senate seat derives from the KY Constitution.  If Mitch retires or Rant gets hit by a bus, Beshear would be wise to appoint a Democrat to the vacancy and force the issue of the state law that tries to limit his constitutional power.  In the right court the constitution wins every time.

  13. pogo, here’s what frankfort local tv news said guv said about that:

    That would put the power in the hands of a few political party bosses, contrary to the 17th Amendment, which gave voters the power to elect U.S. senators, Beshear said. “Senate Bill 228 violates that very purpose of the amendment by returning the power, specifically in law, to a political party to come up with names for a vacancy,” Beshear said at a news conference.

  14. this is what was reported by courier journal today:

     Beshear’s veto statement claimed SB 228 violates the U.S. Constitution’s 17th Amendment aiming to remove the ability of “political party bosses” to select senators, while Democrats claimed it was one of many blatant power grabs against gubernatorial powers after Republicans lost the office.

  15. a saving grace is the opportunity for special election as reported by usnews:

    The bill would set up a process for a special election to fill the remainder of the unexpired Senate term. If the vacancy occurred more than three months before a regular election, any candidate able to collect enough signatures would compete in the special election, regardless of party affiliation. If no one received a majority of votes, a runoff would occur between the top two vote-getters.

  16. The billions Rupert Murdoch has made are only a fraction of what he has cost American democracy. But he did get one thing right: America IS watching. And we’ve seen enough.

  19. Jeez, he’s like an old, high school football player trying to claim the Ref cost him that last game.  Dude. Let it go and go away. Pathetic.

  21. the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land**

     the hill:

    Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) on Tuesday moved to squash speculation that he could be eyeing the exits after supporting a bill that requires an appointment to a Kentucky Senate seat vacancy be from the same party as the departing lawmaker. 
    McConnell, speaking to reporters in Kentucky, called the situation posed by the bill, which he supported, a “hypothetical.”  
    “I don’t think we’re going to have a vacancy. I’m not going anywhere. I just got elected to a six-year term. And I’m still the leader of my party in the Senate,” McConnell said.  
    “But I had watched this over the years in the Senate as various vacancies were filled and I thought this was the best way to go,” he said. 
    […]
    “The goal here, that I support … was if such a vacancy were to occur to have the people as quickly as possible elect the new senator. And in the interim, honor the results of the last election,” McConnell said.  
    “I can assure you … I would have supported this had the governor been Matt Bevin,” he said, referring to the state’s former GOP governor. 

     

    **song of solomon 2:12 KJV

  22. good news of the day

    Matt Gaetz eyes early retirement to take job at Newsmax – Axios

    What we’re hearing: Gaetz has told some of his allies he’s interested in becoming a media personality, and floated taking a role at Newsmax.
    One of the sources said Gaetz has had early conversations with the network about what a position could look like.
    The backdrop: Many Republicans turned to the network after Fox News called Arizona early for President Biden.
    Some critics now say Fox is not conservative enough for their tastes, providing an opening for Newsmax and the One America News Network (OANN).
    Gaetz has previously toyed with the idea of running for higher office.

  23. Does Gaetz think he’s telegenic or something?  With that enormous forehead and one of the worst haircuts in DC, aside from being a shrill RW idiot who can’t add 1 and 1 together to get two, who’d want to watch him?

  24. I’d like to have heard that Mare-a-Leggo wedding band.

    I got to hear a Top-Notch New Yawk City Wedding Band up there in the Catsckills……they were slicker’n goose crap, but then they they had nothing on us back in our hey-day. But man oh man the technology they had was other-worldly.

  25. Gaetz will fail upward until he runs into a pile of shit he can’t sling or go around, over, or under at which time he will, like so many other little Turd-Faced Jerk-off Boy Wonder weisenheimers before him, try his best to just fade away.   Haha, remember John Jenrette?      lol

  27. I have to laugh about Fox calling AZ for Biden – one of the few times they’ve been right about anything.

  29. Uh oh……….looks like Gaetz may have discovered a pile so big that even god can’t move it.

  32. @tedlieu

     
    Rep Matt Gaetz should be taken off the

    @HouseJudiciary

    Committee until the

    @TheJusticeDept

    investigation is completed. He should not be sitting on a Congressional Committee with oversight over the DOJ while the Department is investigating him.

    Quote Tweet
    Michael S. Schmidt
     
    @nytmike
    ·
    EXCLUSIVE: Matt Gaetz, Trump’s close ally, is being investigated by DOJ over whether he had a sexual relationship w/17-year-old girl and paid for her to travel with him. Investigation was opened in the final months of Trump admin under Barr. w/@ktbenner nytimes.com/2021/03/30/us/

  33. Jamie – good link.  This is the WashPo lead paragraph:

    G. Gordon Liddy, the undercover operative whose bungling of the Watergate break-in triggered one of the gravest constitutional crises in American history and led to the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon, died March 30 at his daughter’s home in Fairfax County, Va. He was 90.

  34. Lachlan Murdoch and family temporarily moving back to Australia | TheHill

    Lachlan Murdoch, the CEO and co-executive chairman with his father Rupert Murdoch of Fox Corp has moved back to Australia with his family, a source familiar with the move confirmed Tuesday.

    NPR first reported Tuesday.that Murdoch and his family were headed back to Australia. Quoting two anonymous sources close to the family, NPR said that Murdoch’s children were enrolled in a Sydney school and the family will live there until at least then start of the next school year.

    The source confirmed to The Hill that the Murdoch family is back in Australia but said it’s not a permanent relocation. They are “just there for a bit of time,” the source said, adding that the move was made easier now that remote working has become more easy and acceptable because of the pandemic.

    The source did not offer a reason for the move.

    The move comes at what may be a pivotal time for Fox Corp. which owns Fox News, on-demand streaming service Fox Nation and sister network Fox Business Network, along with Fox Sports, Fox Entertainment and FOX Television Stations.

  36. Who?  Murdochs? Their loyalty is not political…it is monetary. 

    Fuck Gaetz. His “explanations” would only fly with MAGATs, and only because he wore presidential knee pads for the last  few years. 

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