A few years ago, the city came by my quiet neighborhood and installed 4 wheelchair ramps at 4 corners.

Here are those ramps.

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Posted by: Open Blogger at 09:49 PM | Comments (75)
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News 3 calls district 8 for Darling.

Above the fold update:

Update [ace]: The GOP expects to hold Hopper (ahead by 2) and Darling (down by... eight), and only lose one.

District 2 called for the Republican. That's one.

District 10 called for GOP. That's two holds.

District 14 for the GOP. That's three. One more and they hold the Senate. But the other races are either trending Democrat or getting really close.

The AP calls SD-32 for Democrats.

Looks like the Democrats are going to pick up District 18. They did. It's actually amazing this race was this close considering the incumbent cheated on his wife with a 25 year old intern and basically moved out of his district.

It's all coming down to SD-8 and the Democrat is leading there at the moment. Darling, the GOP incumbent, is now up by about 2,600 votes. They might hold on after all.

Original Post:
Polls close at 9pm eastern.

Via @NathanWurtzel, here are the live results.

Here's a rundown of what's going on what to look for.

As six Republican state senators fight for their political lives, first-term Republican governor Scott Walker’s fiscal agenda faces an uncertain future. Today’s half-dozen recall elections jeopardize the GOP’s senate majority. That bloc is the keystone to the governor’s power and was crucial in passing his collective-bargaining reforms and budget cuts earlier this year. Now, thanks to the petitioning union workers who forced the elections, Democrats have an opportunity to pick up the three seats they need to take control of the upper chamber, where Republicans currently hold a 19–14 advantage. Next week, two Democrats are up for recall, but after Sen. Dave Hansen, a Democrat, easily beat a Republican recall effort last month, both parties view the six GOP races as the most important contests of the summer.

Short version...if the Democrats pickup 3 seats they get control of the state Senate. They won't be able to undo the labor bill but they'll stop any more of Scott Walker's reforms.

Here are the way the races look going into today's vote.

there are two Republicans — Sen. Dan Kapanke and Sen. Randy Hopper — who are considered the most vulnerable. Kapanke, especially, has been written off by GOP insiders, since he represents a heavily Democratic district. Hopper, for his part, has been plagued by personal problems — his messy divorce and affair with a young Republican aide have been fodder for the state’s papers.

But there are two Republicans, Walker noted, who will probably win — Sen. Rob Cowles and Sen. Sheila Harsdorf, who are “looking reasonably good, although they’re all very tight.” That leaves two Republicans who must both win if the party is to keep control of the senate: “I think it will boil down to [Alberta] Darling and to Luther Olsen,” the governor predicted. In the final hours,

Darling is District 8.

Olsen is District 14.

Cowles is District 2.

Harsdorf is District 10.

Hopper is District 18.

Kapanke is District 32.

The Walker/GOP reforms have saved school districts and taxpayers millions of dollars. If enough voters in Wisconsin want to punish legislators who made that possible and see that money going to unions, well, they'll get what they deserve.

Added: Via Amanda Carpenter, here's another results link in case the first craps out.

More: Now it can be told! "Sky Isn't Falling"

Gov. Scott Walker's so-called tools will help at least some local governments deal with cuts in state aid. Tough choices and pain remain, but give the governor some credit.

That's from tomorrow's Journal Sentential. Now that the voting is over, it's ok to admit this.

Via John McCormack.

Al Sharpton: We Much Totally Much Be Committed. I much a dream. We much. We much.

more...

Posted by: DrewM at 08:33 PM | Comments (1083)
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Actually it started at 10 PM, but the 11 rebroadcast is just a few minutes in.

Posted by: Ace at 07:07 PM | Comments (46)
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And now a brief respite from the ongoing end of the world as we know it...

The 15 KidÂ’s Books You Need To Read

Well thanks to an inheritance of books from a young uncle and parents who were always willing to buy books for me, I ended reading nearly all of these on my own and was the better for it. And yes they're all pretty much classics.

15. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

14. Asterix

13. CharlotteÂ’s Web

12. Childhood of Famous Americans

11. Encyclopedia Brown

10. The Hardy Boys

9. Have Space-Suit, Will Travel

8. Homer Price

7. The Mad ScientistsÂ’ Club

6. Mrs. Coverlet Novels

5. The Spaceship Under the Apple Tree

4. Tom Swift, Jr.

3. The Three Investigators

2. My Side Of The Mountain

1. The Chronicles of Narnia

In particular I was heavily influenced by Bertrand Brinley's The Mad ScientistsÂ’ Club with its blend of clever (if retro) technology, youthful pranks, and humor along with a serious side. I believe one of the later stories involves the boys using their smarts and knowledge of the local area to help the Air Force recover a lost atomic bomb. One reviewer describes it as a mix of "McGuyver" and "Stand By Me". Luckily these wonderful stories are once again back in print.

And I'd like to give a shout out to Andrew Henry's Meadow. Whenever I needed an idea for a new invention or clubhouse or just felt ignored/misunderstood by my family, this book was both a solace and an inspiration.

So what were your favorite children's books that ought to be on this list? more...

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:44 PM | Comments (614)
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I forgot to call this figure out.

Usually we sort of blow off Congressional disapproval because while voters don't like the other Congressmen that other districts have elected, they like their own.

That's now not true, for the first time in history.

Only 41 percent of people questioned say the lawmaker in their district in the U.S. House of Representatives deserves to be re-elected – the first time ever in CNN polling that that figure has dropped below 50 percent. Forty-nine percent say their representative doesn’t deserve to be re-elected in 2012. And with ten percent unsure, it’s the first time that a majority has indicated that they would boot their representative out of office if they had the chance today.

So, that's bad. Allah considers my own discounting of this poll:

The only problem with that theory: The recent polls on the debt-ceiling deal show that somewhere between 70 and 80 percent of the public either likes the amount of spending cuts in the deal or thinks they should have gone further. The public also likes the balanced-budget amendment that House tea partiers were pounding the table for, so there’s no obvious substantive reason why they’d punish the tea party in polls now. So why the backlash, then? Presumably it’s because of the tactics. Maybe they didn’t like the brinksmanship with the economy in the middle of a hellishly slow “recovery.” The Democrats’ strategy, led by President Present, is to sit back and let the tea party bleed some of its popularity on an aggressive “tough choices” agenda and the occasional serendipitous (for Democrats) political overreach. That way, when the real battle finally begins over entitlements, independents will be more suspicious of the tea-party brand than they were before. It’s a gutless, cynical, irresponsible strategy given the magnitude of our spending problem, but it’s not stupid. It may have worked to some extent here.

Yeah, I don't know.

Commenter suggest that a great amount of disapproval comes from the right wing, angry that their Republican Congressmen compromised too much and accomplished too little.

There's nothing wrong with that theory, but I never know how to tally it on the other side -- presumably, liberals are also annoyed their Congressmen didn't fight harder to destroy the American economy. So are we to take that as a net wash, or what?

One thing, though: Given, as Allah says, that the public believes that the cuts should have been deeper -- couldn't this re-elect number implicate House Democrats more than House Republicans?

Counting against that is that House Democrats actually have higher approval ratings than House Republicans.

I really don't get these polls. All I can think is the public is revolting over the truth -- the truth, yes, that they're going to have to make some hard choices, and cannot continue simply telling their elected representatives to choose both lower taxes and higher spending and throw the difference to their children in the form of debt.

Now being confronted with the fact that this is unwise and, increasingly, impossible, perhaps they're just angry at having been lied to previously.

Although they weren't really lied to. It takes two to tango. They wanted to be told stupid lies and voila!, the created a political class that told them stupid lies.

Posted by: Ace at 04:08 PM | Comments (156)
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Patty Murray, head of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee? The woman charged with Mediscaring every GOP Senate candidate next year? Alrighty then.

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) has selected Sen. Patty Murray of Washington to serve as co-chair of a new congressional committee charged with reducing the debt, ReidÂ’s office announced Tuesday.

Reid has also chosen Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) to serve on the panel, which was created under the terms of the recent deal to raise the nationÂ’s debt ceiling, the statement said.

...

ReidÂ’s selections include none of the senators who served on the so-called Gang of Six, a bipartisan group that met for months to devise a plan to dramatically reduce the debt through spending cuts and entitlement and tax reforms.

Meanwhile, Mitch McConnell talks about his appointees to the committee but doesn't say very much.

"I asked our colleagues, our Republican colleagues, who would like to be on it," McConnell said. "And I basically sat down in person with the people who wanted to be on it, talked to them about it, and have done follow-up calls to several of them that IÂ’m leaning toward appointing."

McConnell also said that he was looking for legislators who were ready to receive a great deal of pressure about the committee.

"IÂ’m putting people on there that I think have high character, great integrity, and can deal with the fact that they are going to be pushed and pulled and lobbied by everyone in this town, including our own colleagues in the Senate," McConnell said.

Remember, it only takes one of the six to side with the 6 members from the other party to get a plan to the floor of both houses. I think McConnell should appoint two hardcore members like Toomey and Rubio and then for the "RINO" member....Orrin Hatch. He has a reputation as a deal maker but he is in full on "Please don't dump me like you did Bob Bennett last year" mode. He'll look moderate but he's scared...in a good way.

I'm not too worried about the House. There are plenty of solid conservatives and Boehner isn't about to come this far only to blow it up by appointing the one vote that screws over the GOP.

I'm guessing nothing comes of this "super committee" and they simply find a way to waive the second half of cuts while releasing the rest of the debt ceiling increase.

Posted by: DrewM at 03:11 PM | Comments (176)
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There's a reason to discount this poll. I'm going to assume, provisionally, that the actual numbers are accurate.

Just 33 percent of Americans approve of the Republican Party, while 59 percent disapprove in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Tuesday. ThatÂ’s a net negative 10-percentage-point shift from less than a month ago...

At the same time, DemocratsÂ’ numbers have improved slightly, with approval and disapproval each at 47 percent. In July, 45 percent approved and 49 percent disapproved, an net 4-point positive change.

The tea party movement fares slightly worse than the GOP and has its most dismal ratings since CNN began asking about the movement in polls in January 2010...

Of those surveyed, just 41 percent say they think the House member in their district should be reelected — the lowest ever — while 49 percent said the member does not deserve another term.

First of all, this is a poll of adults, and is then not really predictive of electoral results. Assume Republicans would do better by 4 or 5% among likely voters.

But that's not really why I discount the poll.

I discount it because one party (GOP/Tea Party) is offering plausible but painful policy options to the country.

Oh, we sugar-coat it. We always do. We are not exactly running hard on the Ryan plan, for example.

Nevertheless, most House Republicans voted for that unpopular bill, a fairly gutsy stance that they're not credited enough for.

The other party, on the other hand, offers up pablum and non-solutions that sound good -- "balanced approach," "investments," "modest reforms," etc. -- but are in fact unworkable, and are not really plans at all.

Harry Reid, for example, cannot offer a budget because the budget would be politically embarrassing. The only budget he could offer would demonstrate he intends to explode debt even further. Because he can't agitate for higher taxes (unpopular with independents), and he can't permit significant cuts to anything (the Democratic Welfare Base would not even consider it).

The GOP is therefore offering tough medicine. This tough medicine is not polling well, but it is also not polling catastrophically. The GOP is actually offering its agenda, and that agenda is full of tough, unpopular stuff.

The Democrats, however, are not offering their agenda at all. Obama and Reid and Pelosi continue to strongly imply the fantasy that we can close some corporate jet loopholes and goose taxes on the "wealthiest 1%" and we'll be right as rain.

That is a position with some amount of popular support but, alas, no actual support in the tangible world of real numbers. What is being offered is pure horseshit.

At some point the Democrats will be compelled by circumstance to offer their actual agenda -- and we'll see how that fares when the public understands what they mean by "a balanced approach."

Still, it's dicey for 2012. No one ever went bankrupt betting on the gullibility of the American people, as (I think) P.T. Barnum said.

Posted by: Ace at 01:23 PM | Comments (392)
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I was trying to find evidence for a theory. I did not find it. I am going to give you the theory anyway. (The media taught me that.)

It is my recollection -- this is my gut -- that public opinion began to soften on the Iraq War after about a year, and then, after the second year, maybe 24 or 30 months in, turned against Bush and the War.

I can't find evidence for that impression, because the Gallup numbers I looked at showed a steadily increasing level of opposition to the war; that is, there was no clean break at some point in the second year at which I can point and say, "Ah ha! There! There is the moment opinion shifted!"

It just shifted slowly but consistently.

So, okay, I have no evidence for this. However, that's not going to stop me.

I am thinking that when we speak of the public being "patient" with a policy which is not resulting in clearly positive results, we are speaking of patience for 24-30 months. Two years to two and a half years.

That is, I'm hypothesizing, the duration of public "patience."

Before the public seemed to really sour on the Iraq War, I felt that while polls still said they supported it, they did so tepidly, more out of habit than conviction. And that at some point -- say, the unending pacification of Sadr City, the implication that the war simply would never end -- a crystallization occurred, and they stopped supporting the war, and began to oppose it.

The downgrade may be that sort of event. While people have been tepidly "giving the president's policies a chance to work," again, more out of habit than conviction, the downgrade may represent the moment where people are forced to evaluate their actual beliefs, and take stock of where their previous support of the president has brought them.

Economic confidence is absolutely plunging. It has fallen dramatically in the past two weeks, and Obama's approval rating seems to be stuck in a bad place for him -- 40% supportive, 50% disapproving.

I have waited for public opinion to finally break against him; perhaps the overnight loss of three points of of support represents, finally, this break.

I have vaguely predicted that a tipping point would come at some point. I don't think I ever said "And now here it is!" I just expected it to come sometime.

I think this is actually the tipping point. I think this is the point where the 6% or so of the public that seems to give Obama support one week, and then withdraw it the next, based on daily incidents and pure mood, will, overall, now just break against him, lost to him.

At some point people really have to notice the elephant in the room, and that elephant is complete failure in every single respect of job performance. (Except, of course, for making the "Gutsy Call" to kill the man the United States has dedicated itself for ten years to killing.)

Posted by: Ace at 12:56 PM | Comments (139)
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Kaus writes about almost exactly what I've been thinking about.

Regarding Obama's statement yesterday that, in both the area of defense and non-defense domestic spending, there is "not much further we can cut."

Really?

Kaus actually writes more (including on Medicaid cuts) so make sure you click over. Then maybe the DC won't mind a lengthier excerpt.

“Not much further we can cut” seems like a hanging curve ball, an open invitation for ongoing ridicule–the sort of naive assertion that might come easily to someone who had never worked in the federal government, who only realized after promoting his half-trillion-dollar public works-based stimulus plan that there was “no such thing as shovel-ready projects.” Or someone who doesn’t want to know. Or who wants to act as if he doesn’t know.



Here is the official list of federal job openings. [Link omitted; find it at the original article-- ace.] They are still hiring. Sure, big enterprises keep hiring essential employees even in tough times. But these aren’t essential jobs. Many of them seem like the sort of job a private firm, in a financial crisis like the feds are in, would consolidate with another job or leave unfilled. (The first one that jumps out is the “Associate Administrator for Administration” at the Department of Transportation, which pays $119,554 to $179,700. It seems that this person will do administrative work to maintain the layer of bureaucracy that “coordinates” the DOTs research programs. The new hire will also give “advice and assistance in directing, coordinating, controlling” etc. this little fiefdom. You don’t have to be Peter Drucker to realize that this position does not have to exist.)



Part of the problem, of course, is that since it is virtually impossible to fire an actual underperforming federal employee, conscientious administrators have to hire new people (or consultants) to actually do the work the unfireable employees arenÂ’t doing.



But there’s no sense, reading through this list, that the federal bureaucracy knows it is in crisis–a crisis that might one day cause a GS-12 or GS-15 somewhere in the D.C. metro area to actually lose his or her job in the sort of streamlining layoff private firms routinely go through. ...

In any case, a politician who says “there’s not much further we can cut” is blundering into trouble. Don’t voters want a President who spends a year or two at least trying to wring the fat out of government before he jumps to the conclusion that he needs to extract more in taxes? …

Exactly. Exactly.

Exactly.

Let me note the dog that didn't bark.

Have you heard any stories of older, more expensive federal employees losing their jobs during this budget crisis -- as corporations typically do when they are hemorrhaging money?

Have you read any stories about departments drastically cutting back and looking for money-saving solutions -- doing more with less, as they say, or "working smarter, not harder"?

Has the media been full of stories by weary bureaucrats complaining, like teachers are apparently instructed by their unions to claim, that they have to buy their own supplies to properly do their jobs?

Has there been any grousing that federal employees are missing expected pay raises and promotions, being forced to work at their old salaries through this crisis?

The answer is no.

While the country is teeters on the verge of a Depression (if it has not tottered over already), the federal bureaucracy remains gold-plated and immune to cutbacks.

They have plenty. They have enough money to hire "Associate Administrators for Administration" (Good God All Might!). There is no change from business as usual. When they want a new bureaucrat, to make sure the workloads of the already-serving bureaucrats are not unduly increased, they hire a new bureaucrat.

There are no consolidations, no reorganizations, no firings of redundant or little-needed middle managers.

There are no firings of long-serving bureaucrats -- this always sucks, and I'm not loving doing this as a general matter, but the fact is that the older workers make higher salaries than younger ones, and stressed corporations often find this to be a sad but necessary area for saving money.

No wave of negotiated/ordered early retirements?

Where is the evidence -- even the anecdotal evidence -- that the federal bureaucracy (and the domestic spending it oversees) is in any manner part of this "balanced approach" in which we "all" are expected to "sacrifice" for the good of the nation?

Medicaid: Medicare is available to all seniors; they qualify when they're 65.

Medicaid, on the other hand, is available to the qualifying poor.

Any time there's a system in which benefits accrue to anyone who simply avers the right things on an application, it's open to abuse and gaming.

Now, have we heard of the federal bureaucracy making a concerted effort to block fraudulent Medicaid claims? Or uncover false billing?

No, we haven't. In fact, James O'Keefe's gang just stung state-level Medicaid intake bureaucrats, catching them advising clearly-criminal fraudulent applicants on how to defraud the government.

Any effort to reduce this form of stolen tax money? Are administrative judges who rule on denials of application being accused of tightening up their standards for overruling a denial?

Is there any evidence whatsoever that the government is actually trying to save money in any account?

Posted by: Ace at 11:59 AM | Comments (259)
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Just a fun little compilation, thanks to Slublog.

Below a video of a dirty girl, Elizabeth Lambert. more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:43 AM | Comments (90)
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