updated: welcome to tea party america…

Huffington Post: October 21 – The office of Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) has been locked down due to the presence of a suspicious package covered with swastikas …. an “envelope containing white powder” was mailed to Grijalva’s Tuscon office

Grijalva has served in the House since 2003. He was reelected in 2008 with 63% of the vote.

* Raul Grijalva’s father was a migrant worker from Mexico who entered the United States in 1945 through the Bracero Program and labored on southern Arizona ranches

* Grijalva was born in Tucson, Arizona, and graduated from Sunnyside Magnet High School in 1967. He is a 2004 inductee to the Sunnyside High School Alumni Hall of Fame. He attended the University of Arizona and earned a bachelor’s degree in Sociology

* Grijalva co-chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus and is widely considered one of the most liberal members of Congress — in 2008, he was among 12 members rated by National Journal as tied for most liberal overall

* For the first session of the 111th Congress, Grijalva received a 100 percent score from Americans for Democratic Action, Peace Action, the League of Conservation Voters, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and several other notable groups

* Grijalva has been an outspoken advocate of mining law reform and other environmental causes during his time on the House Committee on Natural Resources, where he chairs the Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands

* He has been a vocal opponent of the recently enacted Arizona law that mandates police checks of citizenship documentation

* Shortly after the measure was signed by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, Grijalva called on legal, political, activist and business groups not to hold their conventions or conferences in the state, a position he says has been misconstrued as a call for a general boycott of the state economy

* Grijalva has a pro-choice voting record. He was strongly critical of the Stupak-Pitts Amendment, which sought to place limits on taxpayer-funded abortions in the Affordable Health Care for America Act

* Grijalva has sponsored numerous education bills during his time in Congress, most recently the Success in the Middle Act and the Graduation for All Act

* On Feb. 24, 2010, Grijalva wrote a letter signed by 18 other Representatives calling for an investigation of the BP Atlantis offshore drilling platform due to whistleblower allegations that it was operating without approved safety documents. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill began on April 20

* As a member and chairman of the Pima County Board of Supervisors, Grijalva was widely regarded as a central figure behind the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan, an ambitious and highly regarded County program for planned land-use and biodiversity conservation

* He consistently supported endangered species and wilderness conservation on the Board of Supervisors and has continued to do so in Congress, introducing a bill in 2009 to make permanent the National Landscape Conservation System within the Bureau of Land Management

* In 2008, Grijalva released a report called The Bush Administration’s Assaults on Our National Parks, Forests and Public Lands, which accused the Bush administration of mismanaging public land and reducing barriers to commercial access

* Grijalva supports increasing restrictions on the purchase and possession of guns and increasing enforcement of existing restrictions on gun purchase and possession

* As co-chair of the Progressive Caucus, Grijalva was a prominent supporter of a public option throughout the debate over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

* Grijalva has a long history in community health activism as an early supporter of Tucson’s El Rio Community Health Center. He supports single-payer health care, but voted in favor of the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act because he felt it was a major improvement over the status quo

* Grijalva supports the DREAM Act and the Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America’s Security and Prosperity Act (CIR ASAP) and has recently come to greater prominence because of his role in promoting immigration reform

* Grijalva is a strong supporter of sovereignty and government-to-government relationships. In April 2010 he introduced the RESPECT Act, which mandates that federal agencies consult with Native tribes before taking a variety of major actions

******** UPDATE: HE WON!!!!! ********

See here

nice

Senator Patty Murray has won a fourth term in Washington

Governor Pat Quinn has been declared the winner of the race for governor of Illinois

thank you

two years ago ….

the good fight: ‘reid rips repeal and replace’

Leader’s office blasts out riposte to McConnell speech, says GOP is kidding itself if they “think the American people want to go back to giving insurance companies free rein.”

Harry Reid: “It speaks volumes that the first thing on Republicans’ ‘to do’ list is to give power back to big health insurance companies. What Senator McConnell is really saying is, Republicans want to let insurance companies go back to denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, let them go back to charging women twice as much for the same coverage as men, and let them push millions of seniors back into the Medicare donut hole.

“Republicans have always been the party of putting big business over the middle class, and they are wasting no time in trying to jam through favors for big corporations at the expense of hard-working families who are struggling to make ends meet. If Republicans think the American people want to go back to giving insurance companies free rein to impose their abusive practices on middle-class families and seniors, then they are truly out of touch with the middle class.”

Harry? I think I ♥ you

ah, more lies

No, President Obama’s trip to Asia is not going to cost $200 million a day

USA Today: That figure — first thrown out by a single Indian media outlet and now viral on conservative talk radio — is wildly, wildly off the mark.

The problem is that the costs for these trips are impossible to determine, for many of the president’s expenses would be incurred whether he was visiting India or Atlanta or simply hanging around the White House….

….. “The numbers reported in this article have no basis in reality,” said White House spokesman Tommy Vietor. “Due to security concerns, we are unable to outline details associated with security procedures and costs, but it’s safe to say these numbers are wildly inflated.”

To be sure, these trips do cost millions of dollars per day. Whenever a president travels, he or she takes a mini-White House with them, from bulletproof limousines to gaggles of aides. This can come in awfully handy when trouble happens, such as the terrorist attacks on 9/11 when George W. Bush was in Florida. Ronald Reagan was traveling in Asia when the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Russia blew up in 1986.

Foreign trips are expensive but are a staple of presidential duties. India is a rising economy power. It is next to — and has an intense rivalry with — one of the world’s most dangerous countries, Pakistan. It can be a counterweight to threats from China. Any president is going to deal with India.

There’s no evidence that Obama’s team is spending any more money than its predecessors….Yes, these gigs will cost money. But $200 million a day? Not even close.

One other thing to keep in mind: The Secret Service is not going to let anything happen to a president overseas if they can help it. They’re going to do — and spend — whatever it takes. That’s just a fact of life.

Full article

A man walks his camel past a sand sculpture of President Barack Obama on a beach in Puri in the eastern Indian state of Bhubaneswar November 4

Full schedule for the President’s trip to Asia here

d’you know? this world is pure bonkers

‘the new normal’

update

President Barack Obama attends a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, DC on November 4

picture perfect: no 16

President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and senior staff, react in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, as the House passes the health care reform bill, March 21, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

See all the Picture Perfect photos here