Thanks to the LA Times!

While the country is snarling at democratic candidates in much of the country, there’s at least one Democrat whose chances of a win in 2012 look bright.

Her name is Elizabeth Warren.

If you’re thinking, “I know that name.”  you are not alone…

Warren previously served as President Obama’s Special Adviser to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which she also created.

But now she’s running for the U. S. Senate in Massachusetts facing the rookie Republican Scott Brown.

Recent polls show the candidate leading Brown by a significant 7 points. The Republican incumbent won the seat in the heavily Democratic state after the death of longtime senator Ted Kennedy. He now must run for his own full term.

The new poll results are bound to send more shockwaves across the country, where Democrats and Republicans are closely watching to see whether the Harvard Law professor can knock off one of the GOP’s rising stars. The Massachusetts race could determine the balance of power in the U.S. Senate and Democrats are making the race one of their top priorities.”

While Warren must first win her state’s primary, big name Republicans are already eyeing her as the eventual competitor.

…the consumer advocate-turned-Massachusetts Senate candidate, is fighting back after a new ad from an independent group founded by Karl Rove accuses her of being too close to big business. Warren has emerged as an early target of Rove’s Crossroads.”

Do Democrats have one thing to look forward to in 2012?

In the state of Massachusetts, one election promises to get plenty of national media attention.

Last week, noted consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren announced she would seek the office of United States Senator for the Democrats.

Warren, who is a professor at Harvard Law School, writes and speaks extensively on issues relating to consumer finance protection

She’s a strong advocate for protecting consumers against credit card companies, mortgage companies and student loan outfits who

“want to do business… through tricks and traps and fine print and fooling people.”

President Obama sought Warren’s advice in establishing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau this year. However, she was not nominated to head the new agency. Is the protection of consumers exclusively a liberal goal?

A video of Warren on her “Talking Tour” has gotten a lot of traction online. Her knowledge of serious issues and her ability to explain them to non-experts (in a simple, unpatronizing way) have appealed to some voters.

If she wins the Democratic primary, Warren will face incumbent Republican Senator Scott Brown, the total dreamboat who won the election to fill Ted Kennedy’s seat in January of 2010. Brown’s success in that election was in part due to the lackluster campaign of his opponent, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, who the Democratic party figured was a shoo-in.

According to Public Policy Polling, Warren leads Sen. Scott Brown by two points–but, of course, it’s still very early.

Is Elizabeth Warren the candidate Massachusetts has been waiting for? Will her advocacy on behalf of the middle class win her their support? We’ve got a long campaign season ahead of us. The race between Warren and Brown is definitely one to watch.

Redjeson Hausteen Claude, 2, is rescued from the rubble in Haiti.

Haiti experienced a big aftershock on Wednesday, but thankfully, no one was hurt and rescuers managed to save more people.

Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts has Democrats scrambling to save their health care plan.

Skip those French Fries! Air France might not let you on their planes if you’re obese.

Haitian Coat of Arms- Courtesy of WikiCommons

Boots on the Ground (earthquake-ravaged ground)… US troops arrive at Haiti National Palace to provide aid.

Political Junkies Rejoice… The Massachusetts election is a nail-biter.

This stuff happens in real life!?

A driver whose SUV plunged into a Northern California creek … escaped the sinking vehicle by blasting out the window with a handgun.

Scott Brown (left) annd Martha Coakley

This coming Tuesday is an important day for USDemocrazy. We’re going to see Avatar for the sixteenth time!

But apparently it’s also a big day for blue people that have nothing to do with James Cameron: the Democrats.

Tuesday there will be an election for a Massachusetts Senate seat occupied by the late Ted Kennedy. This election is tightly tied to health care reform, an issue Mr. Kennedy was very passionate about.

Here’s the contenders: Democrat Martha Coakley vs. Republican Scott Brown. And it’s going to be a close one, folks.

Why is this a big election for health care reform? Says the Wall Street Journal:

If Brown wins, ObamaCare dies. He would be the 41st vote to prevent any compromise legislation from coming to the floor of the Senate.

And if ObamaCare dies, then Mr. Obama himself won’t look so great. Hence why he has been right there with Coakley, campaigning hard for a Democrat to keep the seat.  (check out above video that doesn’t include hecklers)

Quoted in a TPM article, Obama says:

“Understand what’s at stake here Massachusetts. It’s whether we’re going forward or going backwards,” Obama said during a rally for Coakley as he tried to energize his dispirited base in this Democratic stronghold. “If you were fired up in the last election, I need you more fired up in this election.”

So, what do the polls say? Will Coakley save the agenda? Or will Brown upset 59 senators and countless other health care champions?

Well, a poll reported in the Boston Herald indicates that Brown is leading Coakley 50% to 46%. (Mr. Brown does have a former Red Sox pitcher, Curt Schilling, on his side.)

Coakley shot back at some of Schilling’s remarks with the ultimate insult, calling him a Yankees fan. Either way, the folks over at poll-heaven FiveThirtyEight.com are still calling it a toss-up.

Some say Martha Coakley is destined to lose. New York Magazine posted a blog entitled “Who’s to Blame for a Candidate Like Coakley?” in which they write,

Even if Martha Coakley manages to win Tuesday’s Massachusetts special election, she’ll come out of the race a loser.

Mother Jones considers what happens if Coakley loses, which would definitely be an unwelcome wake-up call to the Democrats. Losing a blue seat in a blue state on the eve of health care reform would not reflect well upon the party.

Stay tuned and tell us what you think!

Thanks, Wikicommons!

We here at USDemocrazy love discourse, particularly when it involves us telling our editors what we think of their pathetic ideas. Thus, we have been very excited to follow the special election in Massachusetts.

Paul Kirk, the interim replacement for the late Senator Edward “Ted” Kennedy, will not be seeking to serve out the remainder of Senator Kennedy’s term.

This has led to much interest in political circles. Kirk, a Democrat was one of the sixty votes in the Senate that helped health care reform squeak in.

For awesome sites this week, therefore, we want to share some interesting info on that important Massachusetts race. Most notably… the candidates and Health Care.

Let’s start with Democratic nominee and Bay State Attorney-General Martha Coakley. Her website boasts her “progressive health care leadership” , and received an award affirming such. A concise press release on iterates  support for the current U.S. Senate reform plan.

Next there’s  the Republican candidate Scott Brown. He is a state senator who takes a different view on reform. His website says that he supports the state health reform adopted several years ago in Massachusetts, but opposes the current national Health care bill as passed bt the US Senate.

There is a third independent candidate in the race, and this is what makes the upcoming election really special.

He is Joe Kennedy, unrelated to Ted Kennedy or any of the well-known Massachusetts Kennedy’s.

His website bosts that he is the “Tea Party candidate”, presumably relating to the anti-Obama protesters from last year who claim they are inspired by the Boston Tea Party from the 1770’s. His stated position on health care is the the most extreme.

His view is that free market principles should guide reform efforts.

To follow this race, set for January 19th, in greater detail, check out boston.com, the website of the Boston Globe.

We at USDemocrazy are constantly perplexed. (Don’t worry — that’s not our news for the day.)

What’s perplexing us today is the controversial arrest of eminent African American scholar, professor, author (and the list goes on…), Henry Louis “Skip” Gates, Jr.

Dr. Gates was apparently struggling to get into his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts (home to Harvard University), as his front door was jammed. According to the story in the New York Times,

Cambridge police say they responded to the well-maintained two-story home after a woman reported seeing ”two black males with backpacks on the porch,” with one ”wedging his shoulder into the door as if he was trying to force entry.”

When the police arrived, Gates was in his home. What happened next is the point of contention.

Professor Gates says he produced a drivers license and a Harvard ID to the dispatched officer.  The white policeman on call had a different take:

”Gates continued to yell at me, accusing me of racial bias and continued to tell me that I had not heard the last of him,” the arresting officer wrote.

Gates’ colleagues and peers spoke out immediately, loudly crying “racial profiling” to anyone who would listen  - which, it turns out, was everyone.

Since his arrest, the charge of disorderly conduct against him has been dropped, but the race debate goes on. Blackpoliticsontheweb.com wrote:

The charge was dropped Tuesday, with a statement from the city of Cambridge calling the incident last Thursday “regrettable and unfortunate.” Police offered no apology, nor did the officer accept blame.

So, though the charges have been dissolved, the mug shot remains, the news stories are still circulating, and the implications of the arrest of the head of the W.E.B. DuBois Institute for African and African American Research remain, and no apology means no closure.

After the incident, all eyes turned toward President Obama, who has addressed the topic of race numerous times — and most recently at the meeting of the N.A.A.C.P. last week. During this speech, Obama stated,

Make no mistake: The pain of discrimination is still felt in America.

No kidding.

He went on:

We have to say to our children, Yes, if you’re African-American, the odds of growing up amid crime and gangs are higher. Yes, if you live in a poor neighborhood, you will face challenges that someone in a wealthy suburb does not.  But that’s not a reason to get bad grades, that’s not a reason to cut class, that’s not a reason to give up on your education and drop out of school. No one has written your destiny for you. Your destiny is in your hands and don’t you forget that.

Obama was asked in his press conference on Wednesday night for his take on the arrest, to which he responded:

But I think it’s fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home.

(Someone just got called stupid by the president of the United States!!)

And though outraged, Dr. Gates has been honorably tolerant of the situation, as the website Gawker points out.

He also granted an interview to his daughter, Elizabeth Gates, a contributor to the Daily Beast, in which he said:

If I had been white this incident never would have happened. He would have asked at the door, “Excuse me, are you okay? Because there are two black men around here try’na rob you [laughter] and I think he also violated the rules by not giving his name and badge number, and I think he would have given that to one of my white colleagues or one of my white neighbors. So race definitely played a role. Whether he’s an individual racist? I don’t know—I don’t know him. But I think he stereotyped me.

Gates’ take on the incident is insightful (we would expect nothing less), and we recommend reading the entire thing for a better understanding of the role of racism in his arrest.

So, what does everyone think? Is anyone outraged? Let’s hear it.

We at USDemocrazy are nutzo for the ‘net, but we’ve also talked before about our passion for paper. Thus, we get kinda depressed when we hear of major American newspapers shrinking, shrivelling and shutting down all together.

Ever heard of a little (OK, not little) paper called the Boston Globe? We have learned the venerable Globe came pretty darn close to being shut-down by its parent company, The New York Times Company. Fortunately, we also learned (through newspapers, no less) the close-down crisis may had been averted. 

The New York Times Company, the Globe, and the three major Boston unions worked through the night on Sunday and reach a deal. The Globe stated:

This includes agreements with the drivers, mailers, pressmen, the electricians, machinists, and technical services group. As a result of these agreements, which are subject to ratification by union members, we expect to achieve both the workplace flexibility and the financial savings that we sought from these unions.

It appeared maybe a modern metropolitan media meltdown may have been missed! BUT NO!

One of the unions, the Boston Newspaper Guild, has stopped… and then resumed negotiations with the paper over lifetime job guarantees for 200 of its employees. (The Globe reportedly offered to cut Guild wages by 23%.)

HOLD THE FRONT PAGE! There’s MORE!

Some Washington big-wigs are coming to the Globe’s rescue! Massachusetts Senators John Kerry and Ted Kennedy, insist that the biggest newspaper in their state should not be left to die. John Kerry declares newspapers are vital to our free democracy.  (We tend to agree.)

This all comes amid the announcement of Amazon’s newest version of the Kindle, which is rumoured to have a larger screen and facilitated for reading news “papers.” We’re keeping our eyes on the news of the newest Kindle, which we’re wondering will make news “papers” obsolete entirely…