Month: September 2015

Candidate and committees update

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By Craig McDermott, crossposted from Random Musings

Some updates –

Federal offices:

…Shawn Redd, a Navajo businessman, has filed to run for the R nomination for US Senate.

…”Cranky Pants”, no treasurer listed and a committee address of a mail drop in Litchfield Park, has filed to run for president as an independent (the filing is probably someone’s idea of a practical joke, but it gives me an excuse to use the phrase “cranky pants” in a post that isn’t about John McCain 🙂 ).

Note: the first day for real candidates to file the paperwork necessary to appear on the ballot for Arizona Presidential Preference Election is November 13; the deadline is December 14 at 5 p.m. (AZ time)

 

State level offices:

…The races for the legislative offices in LD26 (parts of Tempe and Mesa) are getting complicated.

Incumbent state senator Ed Ableser (D) is resigning at the end of September in order to move to Nevada for a job.

Current State Rep. Andrew Sherwood and chair of the LD26 Democrats Sam Pstross are among those who have indicated an interest in being appointed to serve out the rest of Ableser’s term in the Senate.

Michael Martinez, a candidate for JP in 2014, and Steve Muratore, a fellow blogger (full disclosure time: while Steve and I both have our individual blogs, we both contribute to Blog for Arizona), have formed committees to run for a House seat there (probably on the presumption that Sherwood will run for the Senate seat regardless of who is appointed to serve out the term).

Expect others to step up in both races…

…Judah Nativio, a member of the Queen Creek Unified School District’s governing board, has filed for a run for the Republican nomination for on of the House seats in LD16.  In 2008, in the then-LD18, he was the Democratic nominee for state senate (Russell Pearce won that particular election).

…Current state rep. Sonny Borrelli and former state senator Ron Gould have formed committees to run for the R nomination for the LD5 senate seat currently held by Kelli Ward, who is running for the US Senate seat held by John McCain.

...Pamela Powers Hannley, also a blogger and also a contributor to Blog for Arizona, has filed to run for the Democratic nomination for one of the LD9 House seats there.  Incumbent Victoria Steele is running for Congress.

 

Note: Readers who don’t live in Maricopa County can stop reading now.  The rest of this post is Maricopa-centric. 🙂

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Pope Francis Addresses Congress

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PopeFrancis.2The big question preceding Pope Francis’ address to a joint session of Congress was whether anyone opposed to his views would be so disrespectful as to disrupt the Pontiff’s speech.

It appears that only Arizona’s Rep. Paul Gosar behaved badly, by boycotting the Popes’ speech.

Best headline of the day: Congress mostly behaved during the Pope’s speech. And of course, Boehner cried. So much so, it became distracting.

Vatican officials had asked lawmakers to remain seated and quiet during the address, but our Congress critters ignored them. The Pope was interrupted by applause and standing ovations as if this was a State of The Union Address. This may have given the appearance of partisanship at times. It was not the fault of  Pope Francis. Blame the usual suspects.

Here are some highlights from Pope Francis’ address to a joint session of Congress, the first ever by a Pope. Transcript: Pope Francis’s speech to Congress:

I am most grateful for your invitation to address this Joint Session of Congress in “the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

First interruption by a standing ovation. The Vatican’s protocols were immediately disregarded.

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Anatomy of the “both sides do it” strategy

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

Birther Pie Chart

At long last, it appears that the Birther conspiracy is enough of an embarrassment to the GOP that they are not only dropping what seemed to be an official position of tacit tolerance, if not encouragement of it. Republicans are now actively distancing themselves from it and the way you can tell for certain they are is they have shifted into full “Democrats do it too!” mode. More specifically, they are accusing one Democrat – none other than Hillary Clinton herself! – of manufacturing the whole thing. I first noticed it on MSNBC’s UP with Steve Kornacki this past weekend, when GOP flack Amy Holmes was quick to raise the accusation when the conversation on the panel turned to the Birther topic. I thought her response was interesting, to say the least, and it turns out that Republicans, including none other than GOP primary front-runner Donald Trump(!), have been pushing this line hard lately, as Dave Weigel explains in the Washington Post.

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Pope Francis at the White House

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pope_whitehouse_09There has been a great deal of speculation and conjecture in recent weeks by reporters and pundits about what Pope Francis would say when he was welcomed to the White House, and in his address to a joint session of Congress.

I prefer to wait to hear what “Papa Fancesca” actually had to say. A number of pundits were suggesting that Pope Francis would be political, but after listening to both speeches, anyone familiar with Catholic teachings knows that the Pope was being pastoral, teaching by homily from Catholic doctrines.

Pope Francis at the White House:

Mr. President, I am deeply grateful for your welcome in the name of all Americans. As the son of an immigrant family, I am happy to be a guest in this country, which was largely built by such families.

In his opening comments Pope Francis, the son of Italian immigrants in Argentina, reminds Americans that we are a nation of immigrants, the “great melting pot” of many people and many nationalities. E pluribus unum: out of many, one.

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About that “sensible” 20 week abortion ban the Senate tried to pass this week

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

Congress.Gov
Congress.Gov

Anti-choicers like to tout the popularity of some of their positions and one of those that they do frequently is that of the 20 week ban on abortions. They have relentlessly and ingeniously painted procedures at that stage as being done mostly on flighty women who, midpoint in pregnancy or later, callously decide to dispatch with the inconvenient fetus. It seems to have worked. “I’m not even a sanctity-of-life guy,” a local alternative weekly columnist told me on Facebook a while back, “but it seems ghoulish to me to wait that long.” Comments like that amply illustrate how anti-choicers deftly wove their narrative about women who abort after the first trimester into existing negative views on women’s trustworthiness and mental and moral competency in the larger culture.

Because that perception about abortion has taken root in the general public and especially with many journalists, it is difficult for pro-choicers to counter it with facts and nuance. The reality is that there are many reasons that women don’t get abortions prior to the twentieth week of pregnancy and ideally in the first trimester (which is up to 13 weeks and when the most people support abortion on demand). They include things like geographical barriers, lack of funds, intimate partner violence, trauma, and, of course, health problems. Many fetal abnormalities are detected at weeks 18 to 20, and lead some patients to opt for termination. Basically, it’s a lot more complicated than the simplistic “damn, don’t wait so long, lady!” truism would have you believe.

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