What’s interesting in the news today?
1. The voters have spoken and he doesn’t like what they said.
From TheAP “For anyone expecting postelection contrition at the White House or vows to change course after a disastrous election for Democrats, President Barack Obama had one message Wednesday: Think again.
A day after Democrats lost control of the Senate and suffered big losses in House and governors’ races across the country, Obama struck a defiant tone. He defended his policies, stood by his staff and showed few signs of changing an approach to dealing with congressional Republicans that has generated little more than gridlock in recent years.
Rather than accept the election results as a repudiation of his own administration, the president said voters were disenchanted with Washington as a whole. And rather than offering dour assessments of his party’s electoral thrashing, as he did after the 2010 midterms, the president insisted repeatedly that he was optimistic about the country’s future.”
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2. And speaking of defiant….
From TheCharlotteObserver “Two weeks after he lost his right to vote, former Charlotte mayor and convicted felon Patrick Cannon apparently cast a ballot.
That vote, which was officially challenged Tuesday night, would violate Cannon’s bond and could put him back before a judge, said Greg Forrest, chief of the U.S. Probation Office in Charlotte.
It may even mean the 47-year-old Democrat goes to prison sooner.
“Let’s cut to the chase: He shouldn’t have done that, and we’re going to talk to him tomorrow (Wednesday),” Forrest told the Observer.”
Lock him up and add a new charge.
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3. 5 Democrat myths have been exposed as false.
From TheWashingtonExaminer “As Democratic losses mounted in Senate races across the country on election night, some liberal commentators clung to the idea that dissatisfied voters were sending a generally anti-incumbent message, and not specifically repudiating Democratic officeholders. But the facts of the election just don’t support that story.
Voters replaced Democratic senators with Republicans in Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, North Carolina, Montana, South Dakota, West Virginia and likely in Alaska, and appear on track to do so in a runoff next month in Louisiana. At the same time, voters kept Republicans in GOP seats in heavily contested races in Georgia, Kansas and Kentucky. That is at least 10, and as many as a dozen, tough races, without a single Republican seat changing hands. Tuesday’s voting was a wave alright — a very anti-Democratic wave.
In addition to demolishing the claim of bipartisan anti-incumbent sentiment, voters also exposed as myths five other ideas dear to the hearts of Democrats in the last few months:
1) The election wouldn’t be a referendum on President Obama.”
“4) Women would save Democrats.”
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4. How do you know they’re missing if you never looked for them?
From JudicialWatch “Judicial Watch announced today that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) admitted to the court that it failed to search any of the IRS standard computer systems for the “missing” emails of Lois Lerner and other IRS officials. The admission appears in an IRS legal brief opposing the Judicial Watch request that a federal court judge allow discovery into how “lost and/or destroyed” IRS records relating to the targeting of conservative groups may be retrieved. The IRS is fighting Judicial Watch’s efforts to force testimony and document production about the IRS’ loss of records in Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation about the IRS targeting of Tea Party and other opponents of President Obama(Judicial Watch v. IRS (No. 1:13-cv-1559)). The lawsuit is before U.S. District Court Judge Emmett G. Sullivan.
In its September 17 Motion for Limited Discovery, Judicial Watch argues that, despite two orders, the IRS had consistently failed to provide information detailing how “the missing emails could be retrieved from other sources and produced to Judicial Watch.” On October 17, IRS attorneys asked the court to deny the Judicial Watch request, even while admitting that additional Congressional requests “could result in additional documents being located ….”
In its October 27 Reply in Support of Motion for Limited Discovery, Judicial Watch argued that declarations submitted by the IRS in response to the Judge Sullivan’s orders “fail to answer important questions about the missing emails:”
[I]t has become apparent that the IRS did not undertake any significant efforts to obtain the emails from alternative sources following the discovery that the emails were missing. The emails are potentially responsive to Plaintiff’s FOIA requests, and the IRS’s failure to search for them in other recordkeeping systems raises material questions of fact about whether the agency has conducted a reasonable search.
Judicial Watch lawyers reviewed the IRS court filings and concluded that the agency “did not undertake any significant efforts to obtain the emails.””
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5. As Democrats now call for bi-partisanship (which they never get around to when they run things), here’s something for the Republicans to keep on mind.
From WeaselZippers “Last night, the talking points were already under way from Democrats on how now we must all work together, the time for partisanship is past.
No no, my dear Democrats. Given this election is a very specific and direct rejection of the policies that you and President Obama have espoused(in his own words), now is the time to work nonstop and eliminate those same policies in accordance with the will of the people.
Republicans, Conservatives. Please do remember as you are urged to act in a ‘bipartisan way’, what you have been called.”
“Enemy, paranoid, greedy, Bible-thumping, gun-toting, fear-mongering, racist, sexist, bigot, birther, redneck, homophobic, xenophobic, global-warming denialists, anti-science, Neanderthal, barbarian, terrorist, hobbits, member of the Flat Earth Society, Nazi, bully, Yosemite Sam hillbilly, beer-toting, pot belly, church going, small-minded, whack-job, Evangelical, gun nuts, wing nut, knuckle-dragger, clueless, Teabaggers, narrow-minded, evil, redneck freaks, judgmental, backwards, sick, anti-intellectualist, slut-shaming, slimebuckets, forced-birther, neocons, Zionist, neo-Confederate, wild nasty hard-right fringe, extremist, sewer rats, wacko birds, bitter clingers, misogynist, you suck, Obamaphobic, chirper, white nativist, crazies,”
And that’s not even a third of the list.
Don’t fall for it. Don’t let Lucy do it to you again Charlie Brown.
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Wandering Views 