Vote like your life depends on it, because it does: Election Day Open Thread

We’ve had a bit of a political shakeup here in Canada. Conservative Tony Clement, a major figure during the Stephen Harper years, has resigned from his parliamentary duties after being the victim of an attempted extortion. Clement admitted to sharing sexually explicit pictures and video with what he thought was a consenting woman, but was apparently someone seeking blackmail material. Given that he was a member of the new National Security Committee, which is charged with overseeing Canada’s intelligence activities, the obvious question is whether a foreign intelligence agency was in any way involved.

Waiting for results in my state. They won’t release any results until everyone who was in line when the polls closed is able to cast their ballot.

Polls closed two hours ago and we’re still waiting.

I feel like MMA fighter, lawer, and congress person is on paper something that the alt-right and misogynistic men would admire as totally alpha.

Except that said congressperson elect is Sharice Davids. Lesbian, Native American, and Democrat. This must be misandry and white genocide.

Spamming again, but one of the best reasons to be excited about Angie Craig winning in MN2? GOP incumbent Jason Lewis is basically an MRA.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/18/politics/kfile-jason-lewis/index.html

I mean

Lewis, who was a regular fill-in for Limbaugh’s national radio show, also offered a defense of the right-wing radio host for his comments on Fluke, saying, “Now Limbaugh’s reasoning was, look, if you’re demanding that the taxpayers pay for your contraception, you must use a lot of them and therefore, ergo, you’re very sexually active and in the old days, what we used to call people who were in college or even graduate school who were sexually active, we called them sluts.”

A GOP congressman once lamented not being able to call women ‘sluts’ anymore
By Andrew Kaczynski, Chris Massie and Nathan McDermott, CNN

Updated 4:32 PM ET, Wed July 18, 2018

(CNN)A Republican congressman from Minnesota has a long history of making deeply misogynistic comments on the radio, including lamenting that women can no longer be called “sluts.”

CNN’s KFile reviewed several months of audio from Rep. Jason Lewis on the “Jason Lewis Show,” a syndicated radio program Lewis hosted from 2009 until 2014 with the tagline “America’s Mr. Right.” In one instance, while arguing that “young single women” vote based on coverage of birth control pills, Lewis said those women were not human beings and were without brains.
Lewis, who was narrowly elected to represent Minnesota’s 2nd District in 2016, is considered one of the most endangered House Republicans in the midterm election. CNN rates the race as a “toss up,” the most competitive designation.
Lewis can be heard on the radio repeatedly demeaning women, and particularly women voters, in 15 months of audio provided to KFile by Michael Brodkorb, the former deputy chair of the Republican Party of Minnesota. Brodkorb, who is currently a columnist for the MinnPost and works in public affairs, initially revealed some of Lewis’ radio comments in a column in February 2016. KFile contacted Brodkorb after seeing his 2016 column and requested raw audio files of Lewis’ show, which he provided.
When radio host Rush Limbaugh called women’s rights activists and then-graduate student Sandra Fluke “a slut” in February 2012, Lewis repeatedly expressed disbelief that people could no longer refer to women as sluts.
“Well, the thing is, can we call anybody a slut? This is what begs the question. Take this woman out of it, take Rush out of it for a moment,” Lewis said in a March 2012 episode. “Does a woman now have the right to behave — and I know there’s a double standard between the way men chase women and running and running around — you know, I’m not going to get there, but you know what I’m talking about. But it used to be that women were held to a little bit of a higher standard. We required modesty from women. Now, are we beyond those days where a woman can behave as a slut, but you can’t call her a slut?”

Fluke, a law student at Georgetown at the time, found herself at the center of a national controversy in early 2012 after Limbaugh attacked her following her testimony to a Democratic congressional group. In her testimony, Fluke said that students paid as much as $1,000 a year for contraceptives and made the case that religious institutions should cover birth control. She said she was “stunned” and “outraged” by Limbaugh’s remarks.
Lewis, who was a regular fill-in for Limbaugh’s national radio show, also offered a defense of the right-wing radio host for his comments on Fluke, saying, “Now Limbaugh’s reasoning was, look, if you’re demanding that the taxpayers pay for your contraception, you must use a lot of them and therefore, ergo, you’re very sexually active and in the old days, what we used to call people who were in college or even graduate school who were sexually active, we called them sluts.”
He continued, “Especially if you want somebody to pay for it. Now you know, obviously that’s a stretch. It was meant as an aspect of entertainment radio.”
He continued, “But have we really got to the point where you can’t refer to Madonna as a slut without being sued? I mean, Madonna has had a series of lovers, as have many in Hollywood. Now in the old days, what did we call this? Madonna dresses up in these sorts of prostitute-like outfits on stage, and she goes there and she sings and she shows half of her body. What did we call those people? 30 years ago? 40 years ago? 50 years ago? You can’t do that today, it’s too politically incorrect?”

Lewis, during a December 2012 segment on changes in the culture, said, “Only we can tell our young women, ‘don’t look like some slut and you won’t get hit on.'”

A GOP congressman once lamented not being able to call women ‘sluts’ anymore
By Andrew Kaczynski, Chris Massie and Nathan McDermott, CNN

Updated 4:32 PM ET, Wed July 18, 2018

A Republican congressman from Minnesota has a long history of making deeply misogynistic comments on the radio, including lamenting that women can no longer be called “sluts.”

Lewis, during a December 2012 segment on changes in the culture, said, “Only we can tell our young women, ‘don’t look like some slut and you won’t get hit on.'”

In a statement, Lewis’ campaign defended his comments.
“This has all been litigated before, and as Congressman Lewis has said time and time again, it was his job to be provocative while on the radio,” Lewis’ campaign manager Becky Alery said in a statement.
Lewis’ time as a radio show host initially came under scrutiny during the 2016 campaign. In addition to Brodkorb’s column, The Atlantic magazine dubbed Lewis Minnesota’s “Mini Trump” in an article that reviewed a sampling of comments he made about women and minorities, including a comment in which he called young female voters “ignorant of the important issues in life” who needed to be educated.

He added, “One of the reasons that the Democrats love the quote unquote female issue is because they know women vote more liberally than men do. Now you could say in a very, very sexist, misogynistic way that, ‘well, that’s because women just don’t understand money. They don’t understand, they’re, they don’t handle finances. They’re guided by emotion not reason. Why, that’s why they didn’t have the vote for a full century in the country.’ Well, it is true that women cast more votes for Democrats. All I’m saying, I’m not validating the stereotype. I’m married to a woman for heaven’s sakes, but I will say this: Do not, do not pander and move left to get the female vote.”

Holy fuck. Blockquote Mammoth made a return. Sorry about that.

Anyway, spamming again, but I just found out that Dave Hutch won my county’s (Hennepin) sheriff race. Incumbent Rich Stanek sent cops to Standing Rock to put down the protests, coordinates with ICE and has been all pissy about Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey’s commitment to having us as a sanctuary city.

So glad Stanek is ousted. People don’t normally pay attention to sheriff races, but Hennepin county voters clearly wanted to vote against ICE tonight. Yay!

With the Dems winning the House, I have 2 hopes:
That the Repubs will realize their slavish boot licking of Trump won’t get them elected, so they can start acting like they represent their electorate, and stop ass kissing the wanna-be dictator.
And that the wanna-be dictator gets so outraged by the outcome that he pulls a Rumplestiltskin. (Apparently, he is still baffled at why Roy Moore lost after he stumped for him.)

Something odd: on Saturday Nov 3, I found a door hanger for Stacey Abrams on my porch with my polling place listed (a tabernacle).
Except my polling place is my local elementary school – I double checked it last week and after I got the door hanger.
Hubby & I voted early, at a different location, so it didn’t matter to us, but I can only wonder if it was an accident (someone crossed a precinct boundary & didn’t realize it) or something more nefarious?

AnyBeth You deserve a medal, or at least, a gold plated “I Voted” sticker.
I should think that using a building without handicap access as a polling place would be illegal. Is there any state that doesn’t require public buildings to be handicap accessible (though churches might be exempt from these laws)?

lamenting that women can no longer be called “sluts.”

And I lament that women can no longer slap men across the face when they behave like sexist cads and their menfolk can’t take them out behind the barn to thrash some manners into them.
I mean, that would be assault & illegal (just like touching women without their consent) so I really don’t advocate for it but if you are longing for the “good old days”, are you advocating for this too?

As far as I know, Youtube hasn’t been recommending me much in the way of right-wing videos. I mean, I’ve got video game and tabletop gaming interests, which sometimes intersect with entitled dudebros, but on the rare occasions where I stumble across someone overtly right-wing, I scrub them from my watch history and that all but removes those suggestions entirely.

It’s not impossible that some of the more apolitical channels I watch secretly harbor right-wing views, but if they do, they keep it under their hats pretty well.

I get a ton of leftie-type suggestions. Contrapoints, Seth Meyers, Lindsay Ellis, etc. And I mean I click on them a lot so I guess the algorithm has got my number.

(The most baffling suggestions I got were the dashcam car crash compilations. I’m not sure why Youtube thinks I want to see those. I guess because sometimes there are cool things that get caught on dashcam footage and youtube assumes I like all dashcam footage.)

I wonder if living in Canada makes a difference- maybe the right-wing targeting is focused on bigger-ticket places like the States.

@Jane Done
“blocking shitty people is one of my favourite pastimes”

Honestly, same.

I voted early and, to my great joy, just saw our wonderful Kate Brown retain her job as Oregon governor! Plus, Democrat Peter DeFazio once again is going to D.C. as our Congressman. So far, almost all in my state went Democrat.

On an equally happy note, we now have more women governors and more women in Congress. And they are a full rainbow of colors! Yay! Something is shifting and I sincerely hope that this is just the beginning.

I know that quite a few Native Americans, many women, also ran for office. Anyone know how many made it?

Via The Guardian:

After calling the night a “tremendous success” earlier, Trump is now tweeting praise of himself.

Of course he is…

I’m mostly going to be intrigued by the voter turnout results, and what they augur for 2020.