Fraudster Rick Scott Claims Fraud In Florida Senate Race (UPDATED)

As Charles Pierce would say, "those rats won't f*ck themselves."

Florida Republican Gov. Rick "Batboy" Scott is using his office to interfere in the Senate election vote counting:

Florida Gov. Rick Scott suggested there was “rampant fraud” and called for law enforcement to investigate two counties over their election practices as the Republican’s lead in the state’s U.S. Senate race continued to shrink Thursday evening.  

As the Senate contest between Scott and Sen. Bill Nelson appeared headed toward a recount, Scott repeatedly accused liberals of trying to “steal” the election from him in Broward and Palm Beach counties. He called out the supervisors of elections, Democrats Brenda Snipes and Susan Bucher, by name, on the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate the way the counties were counting ballots. 

Scott should know all about fraud. (Remember who this slimeball ran against: Sen. Bill Nelson, a former astronaut and man of unquestioned integrity.  WTF, Florida?)

And as far as we can recall, elections in Florida are only stolen by Republicans. So this is yet another Republican effort to interfere with ballot counting while Scott has a tiny -- and shrinking -- lead. Get ready for another Brooks Brothers riot! (Right on schedule!)

Democrats should have learned their lesson from 2000, and Nelson has already assembled a top notch legal team for the mandated recount. But Democratic organizations from the DNC to the Florida state party need to step up and help counter this blatant attempt to steal another election.  Every vote counts, and every seat in the Senate counts.

UPDATE:  Sen. Nelson's office responds --

“The tone, the tenor and [Scott’s] behavior last night is not suggestive of a campaign that believes it’s winning,” Marc Elias, the Nelson campaign’s lead recount lawyer, said on a call with reporters. 

“This is not a third-world dictatorship,” Elias said, referring to Scott’s “veiled threat or suggestion that he was somehow going to involve law enforcement.” 

“We don’t let people seize ballots when they think they’re losing,” he continued.

UPDATE II:  It's not just Florida;  the weasels are pulling a similar stunt in the tight Senate race in Arizona that they're suddenly losing.

(Photo:  Gov. Batboy)

Rick Scott's Irrational Behavior Escalates

We (or rather Carl Hiaasen) have already covered why Republican human/ bat hybrid Gov. Rick "Bat Boy" Scott (Teabag-FL) is the "emptiest suit in America."  Certainly, he has one of the emptiest souls in America, as evidenced by his refusal to expand Medicaid coverage in Florida because !Obamacare!  He's been playing a game of chicken not only with the Obama administration, but with his own Republican-dominated Senate which wants the expansion (the Florida House is another matter, loaded as it is with teabaggers, yahoos and other residents of Galt's Gulch).  Now, with deadlines looming, Bat Boy is getting ready to shut down the State government rather than provide Medicaid coverage to 800,000 low-income Floridians:

(AP) - Gov. Rick Scott told agency heads to prepare for the worst Thursday, asking them to list only the state's most critical needs in the event the Legislature can't reach an agreement on a budget that doesn't expand health care to the poor.

Scott sent the letter to agency heads the day after lawmakers said they were making progress on a budget impasse that they'll seek to resolve in a special session beginning June 1.

"Prepare a list of critical state services our citizens cannot lose in the event Florida is forced to shut down on July 1st," Scott wrote.

"[F]orced to shut down" ... by Bat Boy's soulless, rigid far-right ideology, that is.  Even the once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle says Bat Boy is "taking irrational to a new level."

Shame on Florida for electing and then re-electing this p.o.s.  Maybe they're learning what should have been evident from the beginning:  their governor is a bomb-throwing extremist.

(Photo: Yes, that's really Bat Boy - "Mmmm, that fly looks tasty.".)

Gov. Rick Scott - "The Emptiest Of Empty Suits"

Carl Hiaasen of the Miami Herald sums up the recently re-elected (!!) Governor of Florida, Rick "Bat Boy" Scott (R-Teabag) and the dysfunctional thrashing around that passes for "governance."

Gov. Rick Scott removed his Harry Potter invisibility cloak and flew to Washington the other day.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/carl-hiaasen/article20541393.html#storylink=cpy

There he begged for billions of federal dollars from a person he is suing, Sylvia Burwell, the secretary of the Health and Human Services Department. Burwell patiently listened to the governor and, predictably, sent him back to Florida with nothing.

Last summer the feds informed Scott that the government was phasing out a fund that reimburses local hospitals for taking care of low-income patients, basically replacing it with an expanded version of Medicaid.

At first Scott was in favor of the Medicaid move, even though it was a tangent of Obamacare. Then the governor changed his mind.  [Ed.:  Hiaasen is being too lenient;  Scott lied.] Later, as an afterthought, he sued Burwell and the HHS.

The state Senate supports Medicaid expansion; the House doesn’t. Tallahassee has been paralyzed by the dispute.

In a snit, the House packed up and adjourned the session early, leaving Florida with no budget. Leaders in the Senate were furious.

Remember, these are all Republicans, ripping at each other like addled meerkats.

And where was the newly reelected Republican governor, leader of the party?

Gone is where he was — jetting to crucial functions such as the grand opening of a Wawa gas-and-convenience store in Fort Myers and the debut of a humongous Ferris wheel in Orlando.

It’s impossible to imagine any of the fully functioning governors in Florida’s past — Lawton Chiles, Bob Graham, Jeb Bush, to name a few — vanishing from Tallahassee during a Code Red meltdown of the Legislature.

But Scott isn’t a functioning governor. He is the emptiest of empty suits — no talent for leadership, no muscle for compromise, no sense whatsoever of the big picture.

Scott is but one of several Republican governors whose tax cuts for the rich, anti-government, anti-Obama derangement has plunged their state into turmoil (=cough= Sam Brownback =cough= Scott Walker =cough=  Piush "Bobby" Jindal = cough=).  The voters in those states have only themselves to blame for putting these grifting cretins in charge to begin with, and then re-electing them after they demonstrated their incompetence.  Sic transit gloria, America.

(Photo:  Un-retouched photo of Rick "Bat Boy" Scott.)

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/carl-hiaasen/article20541393.html#storylink=cpy

Quote of the Day

"You don't need a massive voter-targeting operation to find the people who still like Rick Scott in Florida. You need free doughnuts and a good-sized tour bus." -- Charles P. Pierce on the news that Florida Rethuglican Gov. Rick "Not Great" Scott is planning a ginormous Rethuglican dimbulb favorable voter identification operation to overcome his 67 percent disapproval rating in time for his 2014 re-election bid (all breathlessly reported by Politico, a.k.a., Tiger Beat on the Potomac).

(Photo: Gov. Scott - "Did someone say free doughnuts?")