A top union leader lashed out at AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka for sending out an endorsement ballot for chair of the Democratic National Committee that listed the name of only one candidate.
"A single name on the ballot more resembles an attempt at a coronation in a totalitarian regime rather than an election within the House of Labor," Harold Schaitberger, president of the International Association of Fire Fighters, wrote in an email to Trumka sent late Wednesday.
The ballot, sent Wednesday to members of the AFL-CIO's Executive Committee, provided three options: to endorse Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.); to abstain; or to "make no endorsement at this time." Omitted were South Carolina Democratic Party Chairman Jaime Harrison; New Hampshire Democratic Party Chairman Ray Buckley; and former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, all declared candidates.
Also absent were two prospective candidates reportedly favored by the White House: Labor Secretary Tom Perez and former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm.
The voting began Nov. 30 and continues until Dec. 6. The DNC will choose its new chair at its winter meeting in Atlanta, Feb. 23-26.
Schaitberger, whose union lies at the more conservative end of the labor movement, wrote that Trumka's attempt to "pre-ordain the result by including only a single candidate on the ballot is contemptible."
Ellison has been endorsed by a number of top labor groups. In a memo to the Executive Board that POLITICO reported on Wednesday, Trumka signaled a clear preference for Ellison, citing those endorsements and noting that a "strong majority" favored Ellison in a previous straw poll of the board's Political Committee.
"Your memo notes that both New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Ray Buckley and South Carolina Democratic Party Chair Jaime Harrison took time out of their busy schedules on very short notice ... to attend and address the Political Committee," Schaitberger wrote. "Yet, you failed to give either Mr. Buckley or Mr. Harrison the common courtesy of a place on the ballot because of your own personal bias for Representative Ellison."
Schaitberger also noted that Trumka acknowledged that other potential DNC candidates had contacted him and Executive Council members, including "our very good friend Secretary Tom Perez," to talk about the race. Perez has been mulling running for either DNC chair or Maryland governor.
"This causes me great concern that those who may call into question the integrity of our labor movement will now have more ammunition to use against us when we are in the trenches," Schaitberger wrote, "fighting to protect the hard won gains our members have earned through the years."
And they wonder why so many blue collar union workers voted Trump this year.
Green Party Presidential candidate Jill Stein has been pushing hard for election recounts in several states. Wisconsin agreed, but then Stein demanded that the recount be done by hand, claiming that a manual recount would be more accurate than one done by machine. When the state Elections Commission rejected her, Stein sued, and was joined by Hillary Clinton in the legal effort. After a four-hour hearing on Tuesday evening, however, the court ruled against her.
The state argued that there was no reason to order the entire state to recount the votes by hand, saying there was no evidence that it would be more accurate. Judge Valerie Bailey-Rihn agreed, after Stein’s own experts were unable to show that the computer systems had been attacked.
Despite her legal decision, the judge actually agreed with Stein that a hand recount was a good idea, but despite her belief, could not find appropriate justification. "I follow the law. That’s who I am despite my personal opinions," Judge Bailey-Rihn said. "It’s (the counties’) decision. It’s their discretion. I may disagree with it ... but I must follow the law."
With this decision, the method of how the recount will be conducted will be left to each individual county. Reportedly, all but 19 counties plan to do hand recounts anyway, giving more support to the argument that a statewide order would be ineffective.
[EdwardKlein.com] Why did Hillary Clinton join Jill Stein, the Green Party’s oddball presidential nominee, in asking for a recount of the votes in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania when everyone knows that such a recount won’t change the outcome of the 2016 election?
Part of the answer is that people close to Hillary--Huma Abedin, Chelsea Clinton, and Sidney Blumenthal--encouraged her to ask for a recount as a way of lifting her spirits. Has the woman never heard of opiate suppositories?
"She is weepy, looks ten years older and is very whiny," said one of Hillary’s closest friends. "She has been drinking whine wine pretty heavily, much more than usual. She mopes around all day", Looking for her strawberries...
swimming in a sea of recriminations and complaining that her campaign managers were ’incompetent,’ Bill and Chelsea ’didn’t work hard enough,’ FBI Director Comey was ’in league with Trump.’
In addition, President Obama convinced Hillary that it was in the best interest of the Democratic Party if the Clinton legal team got involved with the recount and didn’t leave it to Jill Stein.
"The president felt that the progressives were acting stunned and helpless and had to rise out of their stupor and show that they weren’t going to take their defeat lying down," said the source. "Contesting the results of the election was the best and fastest way to stir the morale and fighting spirit of the demoralized party.
"Obama felt that a recount would plant a seed with the base that the election was somehow dishonest," the source continued. "He wanted to raise serious questions about the legitimacy of the Trump presidency."
And what did Bill Clinton--the man Charlie Rose called "the best political animal that’s ever been in American politics"--think of all this?
Said a close Clinton adviser: "Bill thinks the recount is going to backfire as a strategy because there are probably no more than a handful of questionable ballots and they could actually wind up adding to Trump’s numbers and validate rather than invalidate his election."
Posted by: Vast Right Wing Conspiracy ||
12/01/2016 00:00 ||
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#1
"She is weepy, looks ten years older and is very whiny"
You would be too, if you had
'hanging, fat or pregnant chads'.
*It bears repeating that we dodged a bullet of downright Biblical proportions when the voters defied the expectations of Their Betters and voted for Trump. The FIRST time Malificent came up against a political argument - or worse, an international crisis - that didn't go her way, God alone knows what would have happened next.
*For all his horndog nonsense, Bill Clinton is still probably one of the best pure politicians we've seen in the last fifty years. Had Malificient's people listened to him - and had he not been so damaged himself by his past actions - we might be singing a very different tune this morning.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
12/01/2016 5:18 Comments ||
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#3
At the end of the day, Swil had about as much juice as Mel Carnahan's widow. But without the sad, sad widow's tale...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/01/2016 5:25 Comments ||
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#4
...M.Murcek -
True, but frankly, if she had thought it would help...
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
12/01/2016 6:05 Comments ||
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#5
She got to where she is by not listening to Bill, but it's not her fault. "Anyone else but me! Everyone else! I am not responsible!"
Wotta crybaby.
Posted by: Bobby ||
12/01/2016 8:06 Comments ||
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#6
Part of the answer is that people close to Hillary--Huma Abedin, Chelsea Clinton, and Sidney Blumenthal--encouraged her to ask for a recount as a way of lifting her spirits.
"She is weepy, looks ten years older and is very whiny," said one of Hillary’s closest friends. "She has been drinking whine wine pretty heavily, much more than usual. She mopes around all day",
swimming in a sea of recriminations and complaining that her campaign managers were ’incompetent,’ Bill and Chelsea ’didn’t work hard enough,’ FBI Director Comey was ’in league with Trump.’
#7
She probably doesn't listen to Bill much since he's most likely been lying to her for YEARS about, shall we say, his peccadillos.
After a lifetime of living with a liar, you probably take nothing they would say seriously, and begin to believe that they're actually out to get you somehow. Especially in her 'fragile' mental condition.
I do agree with Mike, Bill was and still is the ultimate pol.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
12/01/2016 9:19 Comments ||
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#8
Wonder how much longer until her health starts really failing. Depression of this scale can't be good for her.
Posted by: Charles ||
12/01/2016 9:47 Comments ||
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#9
Procopious2k - I always felt that Shrillary's election night meltdown had that exact quality to it. It was her "die krieg ist verloren" moment and it confirmed what most of us feared.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
12/01/2016 9:54 Comments ||
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#10
She really needs to take up a hobby, get her mind off of the election. I recommend something gradual. Free climbing the face of Long's Peak in Colorado.
#12
She really needs to take up a hobby, get her mind off of the election. I recommend something gradual. Free climbing the face of Long's Peak in Colorado.
#13
"Part of the answer is that people close to Hillary--Huma Abedin, Chelsea Clinton, and Sidney Blumenthal--encouraged her to ask for a recount as a way of lifting her spirits."
And if the recount fails (as everyone suspects because you'd need to steal 10K votes) she's back to where she was. I suspect at this point Huma and Sid are probably just hoping to give her a stroke so they can be free of her.
#16
The photo needs updating. "I'm Ready" was the 2008 slogan> The arrow should point to her 2016 slogan: "I'm with Mish"
Posted by: regular joe ||
12/01/2016 14:25 Comments ||
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#17
"The president felt that the progressives were acting stunned and helpless and had to rise out of their stupor and show that they weren’t going to take their defeat lying down"
Remember that Mr. Obama will also be around and doing this shtick for at least another 25 years.
[CNSNEWS] During the presidential campaign, Republican Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States... said he would not cut Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid, but no matter.
Sen. Chuck Schumer Senator-for-life from New York, renowned for his love of standing in front of cameras. Schumer has been a professional politician since 1975, when disco was in flower. , the next Senate minority leader, on Tuesday warned that Republicans are "plotting a war on seniors."
Given that seniors and the middle aged broke decisively for Mr. Trump, according to exit polls, that seems unlikely.
The New York Democrat said he was "so disappointed" that Trump has nominated Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) to be his Health and Human Services secretary. "When it comes to issues like Medicare, the Affordable Care Act and Planned Parenthood ...has received federal funding since 1970, when President Richard Nixon signed into law the Family Planning Services and Population Research Act. It is sometimes described as the gynecololgical wing of the Democratic party. , Congressman Price and the average American couldn't be further apart," Schumer told a news conference on Capitol Hill.
Agreed. It was the Democratic president, Barack H. Obama, who took money from Medicare to pay for the care of newly arrived illegal alien "children".
All Chuckles is missing here is a granny, a wheelchair and a cliff...
Posted by: Fred ||
12/01/2016 00:00 ||
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Agreed. It was the Democratic president, Barack H. Obama, who took money from Medicare to pay for the care of newly arrived illegal alien "children".
Money talks. Schumer's bullshit ... talks and never shuts up.
#8
Battle preparation. Sooner or later the Fed will have to loosen interest rates and inflation may rise and when that does Seniors really will be hit worst. That is if I understand these things correctly.
#9
...well when interests rate go up, that 20T debt becomes even larger just to service its interest. Cause you're going to sell new debt to pay off the old debt. Can you say zero to ninety in under 10 seconds? Don't cry for me Caracas.
Congratulations. Enjoy leading the minority party even further from the levers of power.
The gift that keeps on giving...
[WASHINGTONPOST] House Minority Leader Nancy San Fran Nan Pelosi Congresswoman-for-Life from the San Francisco Bay Area, born into a family of professional politicians. Formerly Speaker of the House, but it's not her fault they lost. Really. Noted for her heavily botoxed grimace... (Calif.) on Wednesday won the race to lead the Democratic caucus for an eighth term, prevailing in a contest that became a vote of confidence in her continued stewardship and an early proxy battle over the future of the Democratic Party.
Pelosi easily toppled Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), a seven-term politician who launched an upstart bid to lead House Democrats two weeks ago in response to the party’s disappointing November election results.
After 14 undistinguished years in Congress, Ryan emerged from the backbench -- he literally sits on the last bench in the chamber -- as a vessel of discontent and forced Pelosi to fight for the top spot like never before. It’s prompted her to offer structural changes to leadership and more opportunity to the burgeoning crop of junior politicians who have never served in the majority.
Pelosi vowed to expand the number of seats at the leadership table to stave off defections and leave her firmly in charge of a caucus ruled by an "iron fist," as Senate counterpart, Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) once described her leadership style.
There are 194 members of the House Democratic caucus, and four nonvoting delegates are allowed to vote in caucus elections. On Wednesday, 197 of the 198 members showed up. Pelosi won with 134 votes, compared with 63 votes for Ryan in a secret-ballot election held in the committee room of the House Boodle Central.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/01/2016 00:00 ||
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Nancy Pelosi is 76. May she live another 100 years and remain House Minority Leader until the bitter end.
[RedStateWatcher] As we all suspected, the spree of anti-Trump vandalism was faked. This video captures a city attorney committing vandalism.
Philly.com reported: Police are investigating an assistant city solicitor in connection with anti-Trump graffiti sprayed on a grocery store in Chestnut Hill.
Duncan Lloyd is one of two men seen in a surveillance video that captures the vandalism, said Craig Straw, first deputy city solicitor.
"We do not condone this type of behavior from our employees," Straw said. "To my knowledge, Mr. Lloyd has already contacted the Philadelphia Police and is cooperating with them. We will decide on a course of action once we obtain more information about the investigation."
#1
Nothing fake about it. It was a genuine act of vandalism from one of Philadelphia's elite and at $3,000 t0 $10,000 damage, a felony.
Joe DeFelice, the chairman of the Philadelphia Republican Party, said that Lloyd should be fired for his actions.
“If the image of an upper-middle class city attorney clad in a blazer and sipping wine while vandalizing an upscale grocery store with an anti-Trump message strikes you as perhaps the most bourgeois sight imaginable, that’s because it is,” DeFelice wrote. “Nothing can better represent the hysterical pearl-clutching of the 'progressive' elite in response to this earth-shattering election, when residents of Chestnut Hill and similar neighborhoods across the country discovered – gasp – that other people have a voice too. The assistant city solicitor in question had ostensibly taken the law into his own hands, since a democratic election didn’t yield his preferred outcome.”
“For somebody with extensive legal training to feel entitled to vandalize a newly opened super-market strikes us at the Philadelphia Republican Party as an astonishing feat of idiocy. Did the extra glass of Shiraz give him some sort of delusional confidence that there are no cameras on Germantown Ave? The taxpayers should be entrusting exactly none of our faith into this man. He should be fired from our city’s law department immediately.”
#2
Philthy couldn't deliver for the Clinton machine this year. It becomes clear why that is.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/01/2016 5:19 Comments ||
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#3
bar discipline is in order as well
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/01/2016 7:01 Comments ||
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#4
Now from his pocket quick he flashes,
The crayon on the wall he slashes,
Deep upon the advertising,
A single worded poem comprised
Of four letters.
And his heart is laughing, screaming, pounding
The poem across the tracks rebounding
Shadowed by the exit light
His legs take their ascending flight
To seek the breast of darkness and be suckled by the night.
Posted by: Bobby ||
12/01/2016 7:59 Comments ||
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#5
Bizarre story because it would only be fake if the attorney was pro-Trump and didn't mean it. Nothing fake at all about it but I guess that makes it seem less messed up or something.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
A top union leader lashed out at AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka for sending out an endorsement ballot for chair of the Democratic National Committee that listed the name of only one candidate.
[CNSNEWS] During the presidential campaign, Republican 
