October 22, 2014

Candidate Pays Almost $300,000 to Consulting Firm that Doesn’t Exist

October 22, 2014October 23, 2014 Buck Banks

$292,000

Amount Arkansas U.S. Senate candidate Tom Cotton (R) disbursed to Right Solutions Partners for “fund-raising consulting,” the New York Times reports. “But here’s the catch: It’s not clear that such an entity actually exists. It has no presence on the Internet, it appears that no other campaign is paying it this year, and it has no office at the Washington address listed on the articles of organization filed with the city last year.”

The South Is America’s Poverty Belt

October 22, 2014 Jon Ponder

map-people-in-poverty-in-us

Poverty has been on the rise in the South, which, not coincidentally is a bastion of Republican Party control, according to a Census Bureau report [PDF] released this summer, according to Huffington Post:

[…]

Christie Shows He’s Just as Out of Touch with Electorate as Romney Was

October 22, 2014 Buck Banks

I gotta tell you the truth, I’m tired of hearing about the minimum wage, I really am. … I don’t think there’s a mother or father sitting around a kitchen table tonight in America who are saying, ‘You know honey, if my son or daughter could just make a higher minimum wage, my God, all our dreams would be realized. Is that what parents aspire to for their children?

— New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), saying he doesn’t want anymore discussion about the minimum wage, TPM reports.

Anthony Weiner Has a Lucid Moment

October 22, 2014 Buck Banks

I mean, realistically, my political career is probably over.

— Former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D), quoted by Politico, reflecting on the sexting scandal that forced him to resign from Congress.

Anchorage Police Release 911 Recording from Palins’ Drunken Brawl

October 22, 2014October 22, 2014 Jon Ponder

The Anchorage, Alaska, Police Department released 911 recordings yesterday from the Palin family’s drunken brawl at a party on Sept. 6.

It’s unclear why the Anchorage PD waited nearly two months to release the recordings, but the ultimate effect is to drag this unsavory story about the Republican Party’s 2008 vice presidential nominee into another news cycle. (And the next time you see John McCain holding forth on “Meet the Press,” keep in mind that selecting Palin to be vice president of the United States was the most important decision he ever made.)

TPM collected a few of the more interesting moments from the transcript:

[…]

Day: October 22, 2014

Candidate Pays Almost $300,000 to Consulting Firm that Doesn’t Exist

$292,000

The South Is America’s Poverty Belt

Christie Shows He’s Just as Out of Touch with Electorate as Romney Was

— New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), saying he doesn’t want anymore discussion about the minimum wage, TPM reports.

Anthony Weiner Has a Lucid Moment

I mean, realistically, my political career is probably over.

— Former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D), quoted by Politico, reflecting on the sexting scandal that forced him to resign from Congress.

Anchorage Police Release 911 Recording from Palins’ Drunken Brawl

Poetic Justice

Verbatim

“One woman at a rally in New Jersey told me last week that she was ‘nauseously optimistic.’ That may capture a lot of people’s last-minute jitters.”

— Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), quoted by Axios, on what Democrats feel ahead of the midterm elections.

“I think Congress made a mistake not protesting turning the Rose Garden into what looks like the entrance to Liberace’s bathroom.”

— Former President Bill Clinton, quoted by The Wrap.

“Boy, they are scraping the bottom of the barrel. It feels like a real desperation play to me, because it has got zero basis in the law.”

— Republican election law expert Ben Ginsberg, quoted by Politico, on the Trump administration’s effort to invalidate Alaska’s election results.

Numerati

3,824

$1.4 billion

-35 points

31%

63% to 38%

KFF Poll: “With the 2026 midterm campaigns in full swing and early voting about to begin, there is a wide enthusiasm gap between partisan voters, with Democratic voters 25 percentage points more likely than Republican voters to say they are ‘more motivated’ than usual to vote (63% vs. 38%).”