republican governor

Last week during his address to Congress, President Obama talked about our crumbling infrastructure. One project he highlighted was the Brent Spence bridge, which connects Cincinnati to Northern Kentucky. This bridge is a part of the most major north/south corridor in the United States  - I-75. It is a vital part of transportation, meaning it’s a vital part of commerce. If it were to be unexpectedly shutdown, it would be a nightmare not only for the greater Cincinnati area, but far a large portion of the eastern United States.

The following day this area got another warning about the deteriorating bridge. In Louisville the I-64 bridge crossing the Ohio River into Indiana was suddenly shutdown because of cracks.  The video on this page shows the traffic nightmare commuters experienced yesterday morning from the closure of this bridge.

While our leaders have spent the past decade engaged in extreme partisan warfare, America has fallen apart. We have a Republican Party that looks at replacing these important parts of our infrastructure and economy as being “pork”.  Remember this scene?

Then the special election held in Louisiana yesterday for the state senate district 16 seat, had to be a test for Bobby Jindhal. And guess what? He lost – big time:

Baton Rouge lawyer Dan Claitor beat businessman and fellow Republican Lee Domingue — the candidate with Gov. Bobby Jindal’s backing — to win the state Senate District 16 seat in Saturday’s special election.

Claitor garnered 11,713 or 66  percent of the vote to Domingue’s 6,114 or 34 percent, based on complete but unofficial election returns.

Compare that to the NY-20 race, which is still going back and forth by a handful of votes.

There is a really good rundown of the results over at MyDD.  I can’t wait to hear how Republicans attempt to spin this. So we have all our ducks in a row, here’s where we stand:

• Chris Murphy is ahead, but very slightly in NY-20, which is a very conservative district. To the Republicans this is a sign of a rebuttal of Obama’s agenda.
• A Democrat beats out a Republican endorsed by the state’s Republican Governor in Louisiana. Also this occurred in a very conservative district. Oh and that governor is supposed to be one of the front runners for the GOP in 2012.

So if NY-20 was a rebuttal of Obama, then we can only describe what happened in Louisiana as a flat out kicking to the curb of the GOP’s 2012 hope. There is no other way to describe this, but I’m sure the GOP will have some great spin to put on it in the coming days.

The Republicans have circled the wagons this week around Sarah Palin and her family. Well it seems like that plan is backfiring:

For two days, the chorus from Republicans on TV news and in the halls of the convention has been resounding: Back off and let the Palin family be. "That's out of bounds," said Minnesota's Republican governor, Tim Pawlenty. "There's no need to be intrusive and pry into that."

This is followed by a whole list of how the GOP is using Palin's family, but one part really stuck out at me:

_The extremely cute and bubbly Piper Palin, 7, made her debut on her mother's behalf, appearing in a video on John McCain's daughter's blog. "Vote for my mommy and John McCain," she said, giggling as Meghan McCain grinned.

So I found the video they are talking about:

Yeah it's cute and so is Piper, but why is it fine and dandy for this video to appear, yet Obama was under fire for doing that interview with his daughters? Seems like we got more of the GOP double standards at play here.

Perhaps it could even be seen as racist. "We like seeing the cute little white girls, but don't show the cute little black girls!" I know that's stretching it, but the McCain campaign is stretching it when they call reporting on Palin sexist.

Just like we went through here in Ohio last year, now our neighbor to the south kicks out their corrupt Republican Governor:

Democrat Steve Beshear harnessed voter frustration over ethics and Gov. Ernie Fletcher’s 2005 pardons of his aides to unseat the Republican incumbent.

Beshear, a former lieutenant governor and attorney general, also completed an unlikely political comeback by winning the race for the governor’s office — a position he sought unsuccessfully 20 years ago.

Fletcher, meanwhile, saw a reversal of his 10-point 2003 election victory that came with campaign promises of “cleaning up the mess in Frankfort” and ending “waste, fraud and abuse.”

No room for crooks in this country anymore!

Just now coming in that a grand jury in Frankfort, Kentucky has indicted Republican Governor Ernie Fletcher on misdemeanor charges in connection with state hiring practices. The corruption keeps coming from the GOP.

 Hey KY - Welcome to Ohio now where we can share in the dis-honor of having criminals in the governor's mansion.

I will have more on this after dinner.

Tomorrow (Tuesday, May 2nd) there will be primaries in Indiana, North Carolina and my own state of Ohio.

I will be keeping the blog up to date on the returns here in Ohio. We have a couple hot races that are gaining some national attention.

First we have Jean "Full Of" Schmidt running against former Congressman Bob McEwen in the OH-2 race. This race has already been dirty on the part of Schmidt with her receiving a reprimand from the State Elections Commission last week for lying.

On the state front we have a heated primary for Republican Governor. The race is between Ken Blackwell, who helped Bush get the White House in 2004 and Jim Petro. We also have a primary for Democrat Governor between Ted Strickland and Bryan Flannery. I officially stand behind Ted Strickland as he seems the best choice. Current polls how that Ted Strickland has a strong lead over Ken Blackwell in the November election.

If you live in one of these states then do not forget to go out and vote. If you know someone who does not have the means to get to their polling station then by all means, please offer them a ride. The larger turnout for Democrats the better.

Yesterday the heads of the 9/11 commission were on Meet the Press and told
Tim Russert that we were not prepared for another attack. This has sparked a
great deal of attention from the media:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is still unprepared for another
inevitable terrorist attack after not doing enough to improve communications
for emergency personnel and bolster security at nuclear plants, the heads of
the former September 11 Commission said on Sunday.

Former commission chairman Thomas Kean said preparing for another attack
has not been a high enough priority for President George W. Bush and
Congress.

"A lot of the things we need to do really to prevent another 9/11 just
simply aren't being done by the president or by the Congress," Kean, the
former Republican governor of New Jersey, said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

View complete article
here.

This is not new news. This is something we should of been talking about since
Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast and exposed America to its weaknesses. The main
weakness is our lack of preparation.

The defense the President's people have been arguing is that it was the worst
natural disaster in the country's history. I won't argue that, but 9/11 was the
worst attack on this nation also. Katrina should have been treated no different
than a nuclear or chemical attack in a large city. Instead the devastation was
ignored by George Bush. Why is that? Perhaps he thought it would just go away
and not expose our weaknesses.