Mr. Franken’s loss to Norm Coleman on election night in 2008, and then the reversal of this outcome by a highly controversial re-canvasing of the vote, gave the Democratic Party their 60th vote in the United States Senate. This perfected the Democrats’ control of the three political branches of government, the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives. The amplification of the Democratic Party’s power that resulted from Coleman’s beginning at +725 and then going down to -312 votes, a difference of 1037 votes, may turn out to be unprecedented in its impact on our history.
....Its importance in the 2008 election is that it resulted in single-party control of government with 59 votes + Al Franken’s vote in the Senate eliminating the possibility of filibuster in the Senate.[i]
In case you want a refresher on the definition of a filibuster, please see the following:
A filibuster in the United States Senate usually refers to any dilatory or obstructive tactics used to prevent a measure from being brought to a vote. The most common form of filibuster occurs when a senator attempts to delay or entirely prevent a vote on a bill by extending the debate on the measure, but other dilatory tactics exist. The rules permit a senator, or a series of senators, to speak for as long as they wish and on any topic they choose, unless “three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn” (Usually 60 out of 100 senators) brings debate to a close by invoking cloture under Senate Rule XXII.[ii]
The filibuster is one of most important checks and balances against really radical legislation by a single-party that is in control of all three political branches of the federal government.
In fact, the election of Scott Brown to the Senate in January of 2010 completely frustrated the Obama Administration’s strategy to pass the Obama-Pelosi-Reid Health Care Bill. Because of Scott Brown, they did not have 60 votes to invoke cloture in the Senate for a debate about the Obama-Pelosi-Reid Health Care Bill. As a result, they had to use all sorts of bribes and political intimidation in the House to pass the Senate version of the bill as the House Bill.
The six-month election recount that turned former “Saturday Night Live” comedian Al Franken into a U.S. senator may have been decided by convicted felons who voted illegally in Minnesota’s Twin Cities.
That’s the finding of an 18-month study conducted by Minnesota Majority, a conservative watchdog group, which found that at least 341 convicted felons in largely Democratic Minneapolis-St. Paul voted illegally in the 2008 Senate race between Franken, a Democrat, and his Republican opponent, then-incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman.
The final recount vote in the race, determined six months after Election Day, showed Franken beat Coleman by 312 votes - fewer than the number of felons whose illegal ballots were counted, according to Minnesota Majority’s newly released study, which matched publicly available conviction lists with voting records.
. . . . “What we did this time is irrefutable,” McGrath said. “We took the voting lists and matched them with conviction lists and then went back to the records and found the roster lists, where voters sign in before walking to the voting booth, and matched them by hand.
“The only way we can be wrong is if someone with the same first, middle and last names, same year of birth as the felon, and living in the same community, has voted. And that isn’t very likely.”
The report said that in Hennepin County, which includes Minneapolis, 899 suspected felons had been matched on the county’s voting records, and the review showed 289 voters were conclusively matched to felon records. The report says only three people in the county have been charged with voter fraud so far . . . .
But the report got a far different review in Ramsey County, which contains St. Paul. Phil Carruthers of the Ramsey County attorney’s office said his agency had taken the charges “very seriously” and found that the Minnesota Majority “had done a good job in their review.”
. . . . “Prosecutors have to act more swiftly in prosecuting cases from the 2008 election to deter fraud in the future,” he said, “and the state has to make sure that existing system, that flags convicted felons so voting officials can challenge them at the ballot, is effective. In 90 percent of the case we looked at, the felons weren’t flagged.”
“If the st... Continue
I want to refer you to a remarkable post on the Hot Air Blog titled “Did the Government cause the Gulf Spill?” to further expound on my previous blog , “Skimmers, Skimmers, Skimmers-Where are the Skimmers???”
The Coast Guard has gathered evidence it failed to follow its own firefighting policy during the Deepwater Horizon disaster and is investigating whether the chaotic spraying of tons of salt water by private boats contributed to sinking the ill fated oil rig, according to interviews and documents.
Coast Guard officials told the Center for Public Integrity that the service does not have the expertise to fight an oil rig fire and that its response to the April 20 explosion may have broken the service’s own rules by failing to ensure a firefighting expert supervised the half-dozen private boats that answered the Deepwater Horizon’s distress call to fight the blaze.[i]
This is just amazing. As stated in the above facts, this is just gross incompetence. But look how these mistakes in firefighting procedures may have resulted in the first trigger of the initiating cause of the “leak:”
An official maritime investigation led by Coast Guard Capt. Hung M. Nguyen in New Orleans is examining whether the salt water that was sprayed across the burning platform overran the ballast system that kept the rig upright, changing its weight distribution, and causing it to list.
Ocean rigs are massive, tall structures - usually several stories high - that float on the water. The rig can be lowered or raised by adjusting air and sea water contained in its ballast tanks. These tanks have seals that were likely damaged by the fire blazing on the rig, which would have allowed the massive amounts of sea water sprayed on the rig to fight the fire to enter the tanks and seriously disturb the rig’s center of gravity.
The main source of the spill was not the blowout preventer, but the riser pipe to the rig. When the rig collapsed and sank a few days after the blowout, the pipe tore open and began pouring tens of thousands of barrels of oil each day into the Gulf of Mexico. Had the rig been salvaged, it’s likely that most of the spill would never have occurred . . . .
Kevin Robb, a civilian Coast Guard search and rescue specialist who acted as the first watch commander the night of the accident, testified that there was no attempt by the Coast Guard Command Center in New Orleans to designate a fire marshal to take charge.[ii]
To men of the sea, fires on any floating vessels are extremely dangerous and demand following governing procedures to the letter. So, at this point, since there was a procedural failure, maybe dereliction of duty is evident. The terrible consequences would make you especially distrustful of the abilities of the federal government as operator of the Coast Guard. Yet this same federal government has taken over the most complicated business in the world -delivering us our health care??
Now if you are a natural cynic, you should read my blogs “Skimmers, Skimmers, Skimmers-Where are the Skimmers???” and “Radical Democratic Party Continues Its Ongoing ‘Jihad’ Against Domestic Oil Production and Eventual Energy Independence.” These will prepare you for this next fact:
An earlier report from Mehta and Solomon also raised important questions that the White House has yet to answer about what Obama knew when. That investigation revealed the White House timeline of events failed to acknowledge an oil leak until four days after the explosion, even though the Coast Guard’s timeline reported a leak one day after the explosion.[iii]
So, many needs of radical liberal Democrats have been satisfied all too conveniently by... Continue
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