Daily Kos Elections liveblog thread #6

post from Daily Kos on 28 February 2012 10:18:18 PM. © Daily Kos

Results: CNN (AZ, MI) | Google (AZ, MI)

7:20 PM PT (Jed Lewison): CNN cut away in the middle of Santorum's speech with the news that you already knew: Mitt Romneybot won the place of his fabrication, Michigan.

7:20 PM PT (Jed Lewison): Rick Santorum is rambling on about manufacturing, in sotto voce. He really is rambling. Rambling history. Goodbye Rick, your run was nice. But you don't have what it takes.

7:23 PM PT (Jed Lewison): Santorum says he'll replace Obamacare with Youcare. Like I care. Not.

7:24 PM PT (Jed Lewison): Romney should come out in the middle of Santorum's ramble.

7:26 PM PT (Jed Lewison): I'm going to kill myself if i have to keep on listening to this fuckwad. Please, Mitt, for the love of whatever the hell you love, come out and give your speech already, just so you can cut this idiot off.

7:27 PM PT (Jed Lewison): Santorum, after going on about "bottoms-up" uses the word "stiff." He shivered after he said it. He likes that word, apparently.

7:28 PM PT (Steve Singiser): As Santorum continues to babble, a quick thought about the victor. Amid the celebration for Team Mittens, bear this in mind: in 2008, he was not considered "the leading candidate" for the GOP nomination. He was one of several legit candidates. And he won by nine percent. Tonight, he was the "leading candidate" in the field, at least in the eyes of most folks who are convinced of his eventual nomination. If form holds, he is going to beat a lesser candidate than John McCain, and he is going to do it by around 4 percent. Anyone who talks about Romney "surging" or having "momentum" lacks anything approaching perspective on this one.

7:28 PM PT:

Congratulations are due for a close, hard-fought victory.
Bulls 99, Hornets 95.
— @davidaxelrod via Twitter for iPhone

7:29 PM PT (Jed Lewison): Santorum is practically whispering by the end of his speech, and finally, he puts us out of our collective misery by shutting his yap and walking from the stage, hand-in-hand with his wife.

7:29 PM PT (David Jarman): With 100% reporting in Mackinac County, Rick Santorum finishes 2nd... with 666 votes.

7:38 PM PT (Steve Singiser): It looks like the GOP will hold onto their state House seat in Genesee County, Michigan. HD-51 came open in November when Republican Paul Scott was successfully recalled. With 56 percent reporting, Republican Joseph Graves now holds a 54-41 lead over Democrat Steven Losey. That's a smaller lead than the GOP enjoyed in 2010 (when Scott won by a 60-40 margin), but less than 2008, when Scott won 53-47.

7:40 PM PT (Steve Singiser): The margin in Michigan has been incredibly steady for the past hour or so. With 82 percent in, Mitt Romney still leads Rick Santorum by about 29,000 votes. That equates to a three percent margin (41-38) for Mittens.

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iveblog-thread-6

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Romney Wins Michigan Primary

post from Crooks and Liars on 28 February 2012 10:14:00 PM. © Crooks and Liars

NBC News has called the Michigan primary for Mitt Romney. He also won the Arizona primary tonight.

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http://crooksandliars.com/breaking-news/romney-wins-michigan-primary

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The Class Breakdown

post from Talking Points Memo on 28 February 2012 10:00:43 PM. © Talking Points Memo

The exit polls tell a familiar story out of Michigan. Rick Santorum won blue collar and middle class voters. Romney, meanwhile, won big among more affluent voters and crushed it among voters making over 200k a year. [...]

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down.php

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Romney Opening Up a Lead

post from Talking Points Memo on 28 February 2012 10:00:43 PM. © Talking Points Memo

It's only a bit larger lead than Santorum had for much of the evening. But Mitt Romney's starting to open up a lead in Michigan. (Live Results here) At the moment, we have 18% of the precincts in. Romney has just less than a 4 point lead. That's[...]

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up_a_lead.php

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Looking Like a Long Night

post from Talking Points Memo on 28 February 2012 10:00:43 PM. © Talking Points Memo

As we come up on 9 PM on the east coast it's looking clear we're in for a long night in Michigan. We're near 10% of precincts reporting and Rick Santorum has been holding a very small lead pretty much all night. (Live results here.) The exit polls[...]

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long_night.php

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Exits Have It

post from Talking Points Memo on 28 February 2012 10:00:43 PM. © Talking Points Memo

The latest exit polls from Michigan have a 3 point margin for Romney. And that's about the results are showing at the moment. [...]

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Romney wins AZ, too close to call in Michigan

post from US Politics | AMERICAblog News on 28 February 2012 10:00:24 PM. © US Politics | AMERICAblog News

Though I'm seeing a lot of chatter on Twitter about Romney doing well. There's also a lot of talk about Santorum's comments about JFK - that JFK's speech about the separation of church and state - made Santorum vomit. Apparently, Santorum made Catholics in Michigan vomit.

CBS's exit polls show 37 percent of Catholic voters in Michigan supporting the Pennsylvania Republican and 43 percent supporting the Massachusetts Republican. Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul won 8 percent and 9 percent respectively.

Meanwhile, CNN exit polls in Arizona show Romney besting Santorum among Catholic voters by a margin of 41 percent to 35 percent.

And maybe, just maybe, the fact that Santorum stuck his neck out on this contraceptive insurance issue, in defense of the Catholic bishops, when regular Catholics don't tend to agree with the bishops (and thus Santorum) on this issue, or much of any issue. Santorum isn't a Catholic. He's a fringe Catholic, an opus dei Catholic (Santorum denies being a member, but he supports them and sent his kids to an opus dei school). There's a difference. And the polls in MI and AZ show that.

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e-to-call-in.html

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Hungry Detroit Boy: 'Tomorrow Is My Night To Eat.
Meanwhile, Gov. Rick Snyder Slashes Safety Net

post from Crooks and Liars on 28 February 2012 10:00:13 PM. © Crooks and Liars

About one in five people (800,000 people) face hunger or a lack of food daily in metro Detroit. One in four children face hunger or a lack of food in the tri-county area, and half of all children in the City of Detroit are hungry or have no food. Republican Gov. Rick Snyder's response? Cut even more of the shredded safety net. Unemployment benefits were cut from 26 weeks to 20, a 48-month lifetime limit was put on cash assistance programs and an asset test for food stamps that 38 other states removed was added. (Michiganders can't look for much help from the GOP presidential candidates, either.)

Just heartbreaking....

Last week, while working on a documentary about hunger in Michigan, Russ Russell had an experience that left him speechless.
?I was visiting with this family and one of the little boys said he wasn?t going to eat,? said Russell, development director for Forgotten Harvest, a Detroit-based nonprofit that rescues and redistributes fresh food. ?He said, ?Oh, I?m not eating dinner because it?s my brother?s turn tonight. Tomorrow is my night.??
On Wednesday, state officials charged with helping to meet the needs of Michigan?s poorest and most vulnerable citizens publicly told a much different story. Maura Corrigan, director of Michigan?s Department of Human Services, assured lawmakers that changes to a core social safety-net program -- cash welfare assistance -- aren?t producing the kind of wide-scale woe critics predicted.
"There hasn't been an uptick in the food banks; there hasn't been an uptick in the homeless shelters," Corrigan told the state?s House Appropriations subcommittee on human services, the Detroit Free Press reported Thursday. "It's a dog that didn't bite, as far as we're concerned."
Three months after implementing a plan to push many long-term welfare recipients off the state?s rolls, Michigan is deeply divided about its impact. It?s as if Russell and Corrigan are talking about different states.
[...] ?You have to wonder if they are asking the right questions, really looking in the right places or if it?s just too early for the problems to show clearly,? said Gilda Jacobs, president and CEO of the Michigan League for Human Services, about Corrigan?s testimony and the impact of the changes to the welfare rolls. "I'm certainly hearing stories."
Food banks and other agencies that help the needy are reporting a rise in those seeking help. Some of the more than 200 agencies to which Forgotten Harvest, a nonprofit that distributes fresh food, now have 30- to 45-day wait-lists for access to their food programs, Russell said. Forgotten Harvest provided the food for 12 million meals in 2008; if trends from the first two months of this year continue, the agency expects it will need to provide 36- to 40 million meals.
At the Gleaner?s Community Food Bank in Detroit, the agency distributed 22 percent more food between October and January than it did during the same period one year ago, staff said. But it?s unclear how much of the increase can be attributed to safety net program cuts.

Read The Full Article:
http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/hungry-detroit-boy-tomorrow-my-night-

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Daily Kos Elections liveblog thread #5

Results: CNN (AZ, MI) | Google (AZ, MI)

6:54 PM PT (David Jarman): 57% are reporting in Michigan, per CNN. Got some minor fluctuation and a slightly bigger Mitt Romney lead: now 40-36 over Santorum, with 11 for Paul and 7 for Gingrich.

6:57 PM PT (David Jarman): Mitt Romney leads by 23,000 votes now (235K to 212K). Hard to see where Rick Santorum can make up the difference, as more rural counties have reported and the gap still isn't closing.

6:59 PM PT:

Democrats Shake Up Michigan Primary, Exit Polls Show http://t.co/... #MIPrimary
? @ABC via webAlas, we didn't shake it up enough to deliver the victory to ~~Romney~~ Santorum. But as ABC notes, Romney would've won comfortably otherwise, and perhaps not had to spend $3 million this last weekend to lock down his home state.

7:03 PM PT (David Jarman): We're getting to the point where a statewide Romney victory is looking pretty baked-in, so our attention starts to turn to the individual congressional districts. Winning statewide doesn't get Romney much from a delegate standpoint, as the 2 statewide delegates are allocated proportionally. (Meaning that unless something weird happens in the remaining numbers, Romney and Santorum each get 1.) But for each of the state's 14 congressional districts, the winner of each one gets 2. So it's hypothetically possible for Santorum to net more delegates coming out of Michigan tonight, by winning the majority of the state's congressional districts.

7:09 PM PT (David Jarman): So based on Romney's strength in the Detroit metro area, we can expect him to win the 13th and 14th in Detroit proper, the 12th in Ann Arbor and Dearborn, the 9th and 11th in the northern suburbs, and also the 8th, stretching from exurban Livingston Co. to Lansing. That's 6 for Romney. The real question mark districts are MI-01 (the Upper Peninsula, plus Traverse City), MI-05 (blue-collar Dem-leaning cities like Flint and Saginaw), and MI-10 (suburban Macomb Co, which is going for Romney, plus the rural parts of the Thumb, which are strongly Santorum). These three are the real tossup districts, so keep an eye on them.

7:10 PM PT (Jed Lewison): Santorum takes the stage, says he thankful to so many people.

7:11 PM PT (Jed Lewison): "All I have to say is I love you back." Is that like saying "Fuck you"? I mean, the voters didn't pick him, apparently.

7:12 PM PT (Jed Lewison): As Santorum speaks, Romney opens a 5 point lead according to CNN. These thank yous are really boring. I hope he tells us a story about a tree. Maybe he can focus on the bark? "It had just the right thickness of bark..."

7:12 PM PT (David Jarman): Fear not, Arizonans... we're going to give you some attention too. All of a sudden, 50% of the state's votes have been reported. It's a Mitt landslide, unsurprisingly... he's at 50, with 24 for Santorum, 16 for Gingrich, and only 9 for Paul, despite his strength among the grizzled 1890s prospector demographic, a must-have in Arizona.

7:13 PM PT: NBC projects what we've known for an hour -- Romney will win Michigan.

7:13 PM PT (Jed Lewison): Santorum's mom was a hard working mom, he says. What he means: "I saw the exit polls showed I lost among women. I knew I shouldn't have told them they were sluts for using birth control."

7:14 PM PT (David Jarman): Fresh from the horse (race analyst Chuck Todd)'s mouth: NBC News has called Michigan for Mitt Romney.

7:14 PM PT (Jed Lewison): Oh, shut up Rick Santorum, you worthless asshole. You're no good to me anymore. Let's see another Newt surge!

7:17 PM PT (Jed Lewison): Those are some really, really sad looking people standing behind Santorum. Not quite as bad as Ford Field optics, but close.

7:19 PM PT (David Jarman): Everyone's getting in on the act: CNN, AP and ABC also call Michigan for Mitt. CNN says with 71% reporting, it's 41 Romney, 37 Santorum, 12 Paul, 7 Gingrich. (As I've said, now everyone's eye turns toward the delegates allocated by CD.)

7:20 PM PT (Kaili Joy Gray): Liveblogging continues here.

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http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/7c1JWqnDlTQ/-Daily-Kos-Elections-l
iveblog-thread-5

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Donovan Pressed on Foreclosure Fraud Settlement
in Senate Banking Committee

HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan faced the Senate Banking Committee today, and he said that the foreclosure fraud settlement will shortly be made public.[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://news.firedoglake.com/2012/02/28/donovan-pressed-on-foreclosure-fraud-settl
ement-in-senate-banking-committee/

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