Tag Archives: Michigan

Michigan Dems, Don’t Play Dirty Politics

Sometimes you’ve got to “get down in the mud with the fucking elephants.”

Sometimes you don’t.

The Michigan primary race is one of the latter.

On Feb. 15, 2012, DailyKos.com founder Markos Moulitsas Zúniga launched “Operation Hilarity,” a grassroots, web-based political campaign that encourages Democrats to vote for Rick Santorum in states such as Michigan, whose open primaries allow crossover voting.

The goal of Operation Hilarity: To “keep the GOP clown show going!” by boosting Santorum’s support, denying presumed nominee Mitt Romney key victories, and dragging out a nomination fight that has already done immeasurable harm to the Republican Party while simultaneously boosting President Obama’s re-election odds.

The result of Operation Hilarity: Democrats looking like Republicans for trying to rig an election.

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Pete Hoekstra pulls racist website down, Debbie Stabenow raises over $150K from it

Debbie Stabenow: 1, Pete Hoekstra: 0

After the devastating news coverage of the past week over the racist ad and website put up by Pete Hoekstra, he has now redirected Chinese-themed www.debbiespenditnow.com to his own website www.petespenditnot.com. The YouTube video is still up, however, with over a million views. Comments and ratings are still turned off for the very obvious reasons. On his new site is a new ad without the anti-China references.

Meanwhile, a money bomb for Senator Debbie Stabenow based on reaction to Hoekestra’s odious ad and website resulted in a big haul: over $150,000.

Donors have poured more than $150,000 into Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow’s campaign in response to an ad run this week by GOP rival Pete Hoekstra. [...]

Stabenow’s campaign asked donors to help her raise $144,000 in response to Hoekstra’s first ad, the amount his campaign planned to spend airing it.

Stabenow campaign officials report raising more than $150,000 as of Friday morning.

I’m chalking that up as a win for Debbie Stabenow. You can contribute to her campaign HERE.

Cross-posted from Eclectablog. Photo credit: Anne C. Savage

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More on (Moron?) Pete Hoekstra's racist Super Bowl ad

You’re in a hole, Pete. Stop digging.

The fallout from Senatorial candidate and racist Pete Hoekstra and his offensive, xenophobic political ad continued unabated today.

Another GOP consultant, Mike Murphy, tweeted that the ad was “really, really dumb”. According the Washington Post, “Foreign Policy magazine managing editor Blake Hounshell called the ad ‘despicable.’”

Ironically, the ad, which seems to blame U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow for the outsourcing that is sending jobs over seas, was not produced in Michigan. Rather, it was made by media strategist Fred Davis of California-based Strategic Perception Inc.. In other words, he outsourced it to another state.

Joan McCarter at Daily Kos reports that Hoekstra spent $150,000 on this monstrosity that, as she put it, “Offend[s] most of the state of Michigan”.

MaddowBlog linked my piece in a post titled “Pete Hoekstra’s viral bait”:

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Pete Hoekstra airs offensive, racist ad during Super Bowl XLVI

Who thought THAT was a good idea?

Twitter Pete” Hoekstra, the man who wasn’t even smart enough to buy his own domain during his run for Governor of Michigan, ran an ad during this year’s Super Bowl that was so blatantly racist and offensive to Asians that even GOP consultants are flinching.

The portrayal of a young Asian woman speaking broken English in a Super Bowl ad being run by U.S. Senate candidate Pete Hoekstra against Michigan incumbent Debbie Stabenow is bringing charges of racial insensitivity.

GOP consultant Nick De Leeuw flat-out scolded the Holland Republican for the ad.

“Stabenow has got to go. But shame on Pete Hoekstra for that appalling new advertisement,” De Leeuw wrote on his Facebook page Sunday morning. “Racism and xenophobia aren’t any way to get things done.”

Here’s the ad:

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Indiana, “right to work” laws, and “Power in a Union” – Fridays with Billy

This week, my neighboring state of Indiana became a “Right to Work” state — which sounds oddly like it’s now a better place to work, rather than part of a larger, nation-wide effort to gut unions and strip away the rights that the labor movement has battled for decades to establish (and from which we all benefit, whether or not we are union members – as but one example: Planning to enjoy a two-day weekend this week? Thank a union).

Are unions perfect vessels of workers’ better angels? No. Nothing humanity does is. But I figure unions are an awful lot like democracy: A terrible mess that is immeasurably better than anything else on offer.

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Mitt Romney's "Michigan Problem"

Regrets, I’ve had a few…

Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney has a problem. A Michigan Problem. It’s not just that he penned an op-ed for the New York Times calling for the bankruptcy of our domestic vehicle manufacturers. It’s not just that he then doubled down on that statement in one of the presidential debates. It’s not just that, as former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm put it, if he had been president in 2009, our state would be far worse off than it is now (and it ain’t in very good shape at the moment as it is.)

No, it’s also because just last December, he mocked the technology behind latest piece of awesomeness to come out of Detroit: the Ford Fusion.

What’s the Ford Fusion? Just the car that won Autoweek’s Best in Show vehicle at the Detroit International Auto Show a couple of weeks ago. It’s a plug-in hybrid electric car and it is beautiful.

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Half of Michigan African Americans will soon be under the rule of an Emergency Manager

With the breaking news today that Michigan Governor Rick Snyder will be installing an Emergency Manager in Detroit, this brings up an interesting point to ponder:

Based on 2010 census figures, when Detroit gets an Emergency Manager, over 49% of Michigan African Americans will have lost their representative government and will be under the rule of an Emergency Manager.

(Note: I’ve been reminded that Ecorse has an Emergency Manager as well so I have updated the chart below.)

City Population % African American # of African Americans
Benton Harbor 10,038 89.2% 8,954
Detroit 713,777 82.7% 590,294
Ecorse 9,512 46.4% 4,414
Flint 102,434 56.6% 57,978
Pontiac 59,515 52.1% 31,007
Total 692,647

[Source: U.S. Census Bureau]

Michigan had 9,883,640 residents in 2010, 14.2% of whom were African Americans for a total of 1,403,477.

I’ll leave you to do the math as a take-home exercise.

Cross-posted from Eclectablog.

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Michigan state Rep. Kurt Damrow: Republican trainwreck (seriously, you won't believe it)

Truth?! You can’t HANDLE the truth!

Last month I wrote about the Republican trainwreck that is state Rep. Kurt Damrow from the thumb area of Michigan. At that time, he had been unceremoniously tossed out of his County party and was facing potential prosecution for making unfounded allegations to the Michigan State Police (MSP) against several folks in Huron County. According to media sources, Damrow gave the MSP a “five-page narrative . . . that included a laundry list of allegations against several officials and residents in Huron County.”

Well, all of this has come to a head this and then some. First, yesterday, a complaint that Damrow filed false allegations was been forwarded to the Tuscola prosecutor by the MSP.

On Tuesday, Damrow was unavailable to comment by phone about the fact that the complaint alleging he filed a false police report has been forwarded to the Tuscola Prosecutor’s Office. However, he did respond to an e-mail the Tribune sent him to see if he knew about the situation and whether he has been contacted about the complaint.

He responded that he “hadn’t heard anything. That’s [Huron County Sheriff] Kelly’s (Hanson’s) option.”

The complaint wasn’t forwarded to the prosecutor’s office by the sheriff, though. It was forwarded by the MSP. Damrow would not clarify whether he meant he was not contacted by the MSP about the complaint being forwarded to the prosecutors or that he was not contacted by investigators whatsoever about the complaint he filed a false police report.

Stay with me. This gets good. There’s a cow involved.

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The Colbert Report Points Out Hypocrisy in "Anti-Bullying" Bills

Cognitive dissonance, thy name is Leviticus.

Religious nutbags across the country are getting more and more desperate when it comes to slapping homosexuals upside the head with the Bible.

Fighting against a tide of equality, these people are determined to inflict their bastardized version of Christianity on all of us — including our children.1  And if that means sanctioning the physical assault of young people, then goddammit, that’s what they’re gonna do.

Eclectablog’s post on the anti-bullying bill which the Michigan Senate passed last week lays out just how vile and abhorrent this new trend is.  Essentially, wingnut Michiganders carved out an exception from an anti-bullying bill named after Matt Epling, a young man who committed suicide after being assaulted for being gay by students at his high school.  The exception permits students to cite a religious or moral conviction as an excuse for their bullying behavior.

The exception reads:

“This section does not prohibit a statement of a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction of a school employee, school volunteer, pupil, or a pupil and parent or guardian.”

Setting aside that the phrase “sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction” is so vague as to be entirely meaningless, the notion that elected representatives — and not just in Michigan — are legislatively sanctioning gay-bashing is appalling.

In West Virginia, for example, conservative groups are criticizing a proposed school policy which would protect LGBT students from student bullying and harassment.  Their claim?  Freedumb of speech, of course: Continue reading

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