The Minnesota Supreme Court delivered the smackdown to Smarmin' Normin' Coleman today:

The Minnesota Supreme Court has just ruled that Democrat Al Franken will be the state's next U.S. Senator bringing the months long contest against former Republican Sen. Norm Coleman.

The decision was a unanimous 5 to 0 ruling, finding that Franken was "entitled" to be certified by the state's Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty, and its Democratic Secretary of State Mark Ritchie.

Pawlenty has recently said he would sign the certification for Franken, if ordered to do so by the MN Supremes. The state requires a signature for certification from both the Governor and the Sec. of State before Congress members may be seated. State law also allows for all election contests to be settled in the state before certification is signed.

Here's the kicker, though. I'm not sure that this decision constitutes a direct order. It says that Franken was "entitled" to be certified, but is that an order?

UPDATE: MSNBC is reporting that Norm Coleman has conceded. Doesn't mean Pawlenty will certify the election, though...

Labels: 2008 election, Al Franken

Remember last fall, when ACORN was the new gay, or the new feminist, or the new Islamic terrorist, or whatever the wingnuts' boogeyman-of-the-month is? Remember the "concern" on the right about people being registered to vote who weren't eligible?

Well, well, well...take a look at what's happened in California, courtesy of Brad Friedman:

What's perhaps most interesting here is what isn't mentioned in this story, as written on the Los Angeles Times' "L.A. Now" blog. First, here's their entire blog item...

The owner of a voter-registration company pleaded guilty Tuesday to voter-registration fraud, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.

Laguna Beach resident Mark Jacoby, who collects signatures for petition drives, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and was sentenced to three years' probation and 30 days of service with the California Department of Transportation.

Jacoby, owner of Young Political Majors, registered to vote at Los Angeles addresses that were not his own. State law requires petition circulators to be qualified voters. Jacoby will also be required to show proof he is registered at his correct address.

And what they didn't bother to mention in that story?...Amongst other things, the fact that Jacoby and Young Political Majors were hired by the California Republican Party to head up their voter registration efforts in the state. Jacoby had been arrested for Voter Registration Fraud last October, smack dab during the media's orgasmic heights of last year's phony GOP ACORN "Voter Fraud" hoax, even as Fox "News" (and the other news outlets who similarly fell for the scam) were going wall-to-wall with their unsupported insinuations about voter fraud by ACORN, Democrats and Obama.

The news about the arrest of Jacoby, at the time, had occurred just as I was heading out for an appearance on Fox "News", so I was able to break the news on-air in my own "Fox 'News' Alert". (Video originally posted here, reposted at bottom of this item.)

Given the way the LA Times blog "covered" the story of Jacoby's plea --- not even mentioning the fact that this guy and his group were hired by the California state Republican Party --- I'd say it's a fair bet Fox wouldn't even have bothered to mention the original arrest at all had I not been on air and forcing them to do so myself. Much as they are unlikely to bother reporting Jacoby's plea today.

More here.

It's worth listening to right-wingers in the media and in government, if only because when you hear them decry something, whether it's marital infidelity, gay sex, fraudulent voter registration, Obama Administration intrusion into people's lives, or anything else, they're actually talking about themselves.

Labels: 2008 election, hypocrisy, wingnuttia

And here we thought George W. Bush was the Republican who always insisted on do-overs when he lost a game:

The Coleman team appears to be laying out a continued strategy of casting doubt on the legitimacy of the Minnesota election result by pointing to a fundamental underlying idea of this dispute: The margin of error is simply too big in a race this close.

"Is there some point at which the margin of error is just too wide compared to the difference in votes to determine who truly won?" Coleman lawyer John Rock asked Ramsey County (St. Paul) elections director Joe Mansky. Mansky replied that there is absolutely such a point, with accuracy topping out at over 99.99%.

"All of which is pretty good," Mansky said. "But remember that one in every thousand is not an issue when somebody wins by 200,000 votes. When they win by 200 votes, the margin of error in our computation is likely large enough to have an impact on our result, and I think that's the situation that we find ourselves in here."

Of course, this opens up the question of how Coleman could justify any finding of a win for himself, since even a mathematically possible Coleman victory margin would be too narrow for these purposes. At this point we're looking at Nate Silver's hypothesis, that Coleman might be aiming for a do-over election as a possible outcome.

Why don't they just come out and admit it: The only election result Norm Coleman will accept is one in which he wins.

Labels: 2008 election, Norm Coleman, Republic Party

Isn't it funny how when there was a disputed election in 2000, the Republicans called the ticket disputing the vote count "Sore Loserman", but when it's a Republican who's far more definitively on the losing end, suddenly there's all kinds of righteous indignation coming from the elephant side of the fence? Isn't it funny how Republicans hate lawyers but when THEY don't get their way, they're the first ones to lawyer up?

On November 24, 2000, David Aaronovitch wrote in the U.K. Independent about the Party of Whiners:

What is it, I wonder, about the political right that makes them feel that they are somehow entitled to power, and that - when power is denied them - allows them to claim that they - and the country - have been cheated? Since the election of Bill Clinton in 1992, and that of Tony Blair in 1997, the tone of much of the criticism from the right has not been about policies but has focused instead upon the legitimacy of the administrations themselves: Clinton won because he was a serial liar; Blair won because he was a ruthless dissembler; and now Gore is trying to cheat his way into the White House by what amounts to an election fraud. They would have us believe that the Vice-President - in the words of a spoof poster - is a Sore Loserman.

[snip]

Now the Republican attack dogs are out. You would expect the far-right shock-jocks and radio-show hosts like Rush Limbaugh to continue their anti-liberal campaigning in intemperate tones. But look who's joined them! The bulk of the right-leaning press, commentators and academics seem to have united in attempting to portray the incredibly cautious, centrist Democrats as being somehow the products of a hellish liaison between the Whore of Babylon and Vladimir Lenin.

Peggy Noonan, Reagan's brilliant scriptwriter, yells that "the Gore-Clinton Democratic Party is trying to steal the election". The eminent conservative George Will risks a hernia with the sentiment that "the Clinton-Gore era culminates with an election as stained as the blue dress." (It is unwise, incidentally, to interrogate this metaphor too closely. I tried, and regretted it.)

Claudia Rosett writes in The Wall Street Journal that Gore, learning from his boss, "has every reason to figure that he might as well go right on trying to target and redefine those vital Florida ballots until they become, well, whatever they need to be to elect Mr Gore". For her, it's all part of a pattern. "The unprecedented wrangling and lawyering of Mr Gore," she continues (somehow overlooking the lawyering of Mr Bush), "over the vote count is just the first real sample of Mr Clinton's true legacy."

[snip]

So let's get this clear. If Gore wins, though he will lack authority, he will be a legitimate victor. Should, however, the ludicrous Bush (who says he doesn't like messy situations; he should enjoy the Middle East, then) be inaugurated next January, he will be the president who got 320,000 fewer votes than his rival, and who finally triumphed because there just wasn't enough time for one county to hold a recount - a recount described as being democratically essential by the Supreme Court of Florida.

My God, can you imagine how he would have fared had he been a Democrat?

Well, now we know. Norm Coleman isn't going away quietly, and the Republicans are not going to put up with losing the seat that some believe they dispensed with Paul Wellstone to win. Indeed, John Cornyn has already said they will filibuster if necessary to prevent Franken from being seated.

Somehow the idea that what we have on our side is the milquetoast Harry Reid is not reassuring. So...how's that "new way of doing politics" working so far, Mr. Obama?

Labels: 2008 election, Al Franken, Norm Coleman

Check out this terrific photo essay from the Obama campaign by Callie Shell. Note in particular the photo of our president-to-be wiping up the counter after himself while eating an ice cream cone. This is NOT a guy who's going to wreck everything and then expect someone else to clean up the mess.

Unlike SOME people.

Labels: 2008 election, President Barack Obama

So how did you feel when you voted today?

I always vote. I vote in school elections even though I have no kids. Voting gives me the right to complain. But I have never before voted the way I did today.

I showed up at 7:15 and in my little Republican town of 9600 residents and almost as many McCain/Palin signs, the joint was relatively jumpin', with about a dozen rather glum-faced voters getting ready to cast their votes for More Of The Same Crap. The elderly man from Ireland who mans the table for my district remembered me from my foray into local politics earlier this year, when I ran for county committee and explained to him why the Sequoia Advantage voting machines we use in Bergen County are unreliable. I was able to walk right into the booth, hit the touch pad for each candidate, double check against the readout screen at the bottom of the display, vote yes on the two NJ ballot initiatives, then took a cell phone photo of my choices and sent it to PixPlace to pick up later -- except that it looks like all you can do is send it to another phone.

But then I stood in the booth for a few seconds, just to savor what I hope is the historical event in which I just participated. Then I walked out to the car and went to work. I may even have shed a few tears. Good tears.

Share your stories in the comments.

Labels: 2008 election

Don't forget...online chats tonight at Morning Seditionists and Hoffmania.

And the hell with the TV. Be where the REAL action is tonight, at Maron v. Seder, where Two Live Jews will bring the unexpurgated truth to the intart00bz. They have chat too..

Labels: 2008 election, bloggers, Marc Maron, Sam Seder

I can't recall another election that represented as clear a choice for the future of this country as this one.

It isn't that Barack Obama represents some shining progressive city on a hill; a bus ride to "the magic hopeful place", as Marc Maron mused a few weeks ago during an appearance on Conan O'Brien's show. Assuming he pulls this out today, I expect him to be a moderate Democratic president in the Bill Clinton mode only without the relentless and pervasive need to be liked and to be the center of attention -- and of course with his brain located in his cranium instead of someplace else. I also expect his effectiveness to be limited, given the unlikeliness of having a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. I expect Republicans to block everything Obama wants to do, and Harry Reid to cave every time. I would hope that Reid would MAKE them filibuster, but I'm not optimistic.

I think that after we take our five minutes to celebrate tonight (assuming -- and it's a big assumption that I'm not yet ready to make -- that there's something to celebrate), it's important to note that the forces conspiring against us are still out there and they are not going away. They are the forces of theocracy, of ignorance, of fear and loathing. They are the forces that would bring a new Middle Ages to this country and roll back the progress that has the potential to make this country great again, even though that progress means an end to racial, gender, and sexual orientation hatred. Those forces are embodied in Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber and Michelle Bachmann and the preachers in their megachurches who rake in big bucks playing on people's fears. They are not going away, and we will have to fight them every step of the way.

Bob Herbert writes today about what we face from these people:

Right now the United States is a country in which wealth is funneled, absurdly, from the bottom to the top. The richest 1 percent of Americans now holds close to 40 percent of all the wealth in the nation and maintains an iron grip on the levers of government power.

This is not only unfair, but self-defeating. The U.S. cannot thrive with its fabulous wealth concentrated at the top and the middle class on its knees. (No one even bothers to talk about the poor anymore.) How to correct this imbalance is one of the biggest questions facing the country.

The U.S. is also a country in which blissful ignorance is celebrated, and intellectual excellence (the key to 21st century advancement) is not just given short shrift, but is ridiculed. Paris Hilton and Britney Spears are cultural icons. The average American watches television a mind-numbing 4 1/2 hours a day.

At the same time, our public school system is plagued with some of the highest dropout rates in the industrialized world. Math and science? Forget about it. Too tough for these TV watchers, or too boring, or whatever.

“When I compare our high schools with what I see when I’m traveling abroad,” said Bill Gates, “I am terrified for our work force of tomorrow.”

The point here is that as we approach the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the United States is in deep, deep trouble. Yet instead of looking for creative, 21st-century solutions to these enormous problems, too many of our so-called leaders are behaving like clowns, or worse — spouting garbage in the public sphere that hearkens back to the 1940s and ’50s.

Thoughtful, well-educated men and women are denounced as elites, and thus the enemies of ordinary Americans. Attempts to restore a semblance of fiscal sanity to a government that has been looted with an efficiency that would have been envied by the mob, are derided as subversive — the work of socialists, Marxists, Communists.

In 2008!

In North Carolina, Senator Elizabeth Dole, a conservative Republican, is in a tough fight for re-election against a Democratic state senator, Kay Hagan. So Ms. Dole ran a television ad that showed a close-up of Ms. Hagan’s face while the voice of a different woman asserts, “There is no God!”

Americans have to decide if they want a country that tolerates this kind of debased, backward behavior. Or if they want a country that aspires to true greatness — a country that stands for more than the mere rhetoric of equality, freedom, opportunity and justice.

That decision will require more than casting a vote in one presidential election. It will require a great deal of reflective thought and hard work by a committed citizenry. The great promise of America hinges on a government that works, openly and honestly, for the broad interests of the American people, as opposed to the narrow benefit of the favored, wealthy few.

By all means, vote today. But that is just the first step toward meaningful change.

Enjoy the day, and if this country manages to surprise me and enough of us vote for the future instead of not just the past, but a past of hundreds of years ago, we have five minutes to celebrate. But the barbarians are not leaving the gate with their pitchforks and torches. They are out there perfectly willing to burn people as witches and heretics, and they are not going to go quietly.

Labels: 2008 election

Yeah, Ive been disgusted by the self important youngsters questioning Obama's experience, or the rich folks and their tax cut concerns....like, not that they need 'em, but they just sorta like 'em!
Vote, and not just for the free coffee at Starbucks...I wonder if you have to show them your purple thumb to get that coffee...and heaven knows that some of you will no doubt have to stand in line for a long time so may need the coffee.
My thoughts are with those voters who will wait on lines, including my Mom (though she has that uncanny ability to get up really early ad be there before the line forms!)
My thoughts are also with voters who will be blindsided by questions that are misleading at best (that was, vote NO to question one in CT!!)
Bring your camera/phone/camcorder....

For your party, Bill Maher has kindly provided a party pack including a coloring map to follow along with the ice rink at Rockefeller Center, and special libation recipes to grease the wheels. Check the printout buttons and name tags...This pack is a must for every election party.

...and remember, Maron v Seder will be broadcasting live at around 9PM here. They're also on, you know, weekdays at 3PM, so tomorrow is a double!

The Seditionist blog will have a chat, which I may or may not drop in on depending on what time I get home. The link will be posted here and there.

At this point, it looks good, but I'm not counting my...well, you know...

Ben Afflek did a really funny Keith Olbermann on Saturday Night Live this past weekend...its long but pretty damned funny...if you catch nothing else, check out the special comment towards the end:



For your nervous snacking pleasure, I think its OK to finally eat those Obama heads that you've been saving in the fridge






A dutch company came up with these, and because of overwhelming interest produced the head in white as well as dark chocolate.
The McCain head only came in white chocolate...and for the life of me I cant find the link to the place that was selling them; they're obsolete anyway after tomorrow....Ill keep looking for it.






What am I gonna do with this? I guess she goes down to the shelf in the basement with the Spice Girl dolls,

and Cher...We call it "mom's collection" but I wonder if I'm ever really gonna get around to that eBay listing thing I've been planning for so many months now.














I'd like to send a big shout out to the Freeway Blogger who has managed to take blogging to the next level during this nightmare and reach more people than we could imagine. I hope that he continues his work and that his followers keep on going too...I'm seeing a bit of it around here even, so...its working as a great way to get the word out. Is it possible that we may be looking at the end of our long national nightmare...?
Good luck to us all...At some point some little bit of insight and logic has to dawn around the edges of things...right?


Great thanks to Colbert and Stewart for their part in opening some eyes out there!
And as always, Olbermann himself....

More to come...stay tuned...

c/p RIPCoco

Labels: 2008 election, Keith Olbermann

I don't even dare to think about it. I've lived too many elections that turned into nightmares. Tonight I went to Best Buy and fought for the online sale price on a front-loader washer and dryer to replace the washer that came with the house 12 years ago and dryer I bought from a co-worker for 25 bucks, also 12 years ago -- figuring that since the old freebie washer is starting to trip the GFCI it's plugged into, and since we're both working, might as well replace it now. Of course this will mean a learning curve to do the damn laundry this weekend, but either the burden will be made lighter by knowing that the forces of fear and loathing and bigotry and hate and darkness and unbridled avarice have been beaten back (however temporarily), or it will be a distraction from the death of the country we live in.

I'm going to go at 6:30 AM and vote in my one-party Republican town on a Sequoia voting machine that's highly suspect -- but since I live in New Jersey and my town is an anomaly, it won't matter too much. I expect Barack Obama to take the state handily. I expect Dennis Shulman, the psychiatrist/rabbi looking to topple Ernie Scott Garrett, one of the most loathsome creatures ever to crawl out from under a rock and emerge as a Republican, to come closer than any of his three predecessors, but still fall short by about four points. I expect Frank Lautenberg to be re-elected. The Gang of Thieves that runs my town aren't up for re-election till next year, not that it matters, since they have run unopposed for over two decades.

Amd that's about it for expectations. I'm too old to dare to hope anymore. I know what I want to be able to say tomorrow night. I just don't want to jinx it.

I'll be at home tomorrow night, because the new job precludes burning the midnight oil. But I'll be hanging out, at least for a while, with the good folks over at PJ's chat and will also stop in and see what's going on at Hoffmania. So if you're in the neighborhood, stop by either place and chime in.

Labels: 2008 election

I know I shouldn't rely too much on my own personal experience, because I live in this southern CT to NYC liberal bubble, and I know that the democratic party in this area doesn't really bother much with the workaday signage and campaigning; we live blue here. The big push in these parts is to have calling parties to call voters in swing states to talk with them, and its not beyond the candidates to stop in to attend high roller fund raising events in tony houses in Greenwich or Rowayton.

I'm usually happy to do the calling thing, and even happier to speak with the bunch of neighbors here who have McCain Palin signs out, because I can say that I'm their neighbor....whatever, I suppose we're all neighbors in some higher sense...but CT. swings blue, so even if we have red voters, its not a strong focus. People don't want to be called, and its so seldom that someone has a question that one can answer.

In any case, I'm troubled, as usual, that the local party hardly bothers to put out signs or rally us generally more than to ask for money and a little bit of volunteerism. Its always the same crowd running things and it smacks of the local PTA where a few alpha moms run the show. I'm still pissed that so many "dems" supported Lieberman after he jumped from the party, and that Lamont's organization was sent to a back room as if we was the independent candidate!

The McCain signs are an annoyance and an emotional drag, as things like this always are when the aggressively stupid or the just plain greedy, insist on their point of view with the bold surety that Fox News is the only network that tells the truth unvarnished. Humvee drivers who seemingly want to project an image that they perceive as being very American, but which comes off as just plain idiotic; the silly young men who drive by my bumperstickered car giving me the finger, as if their vote means anything in this county or state...the young man who last night sat around a firepit at a Halloween party up here, and said with all authority that he is just worried that Obama doesn't have the "experience," which I read as "he's black," readying himself for the vote that is not gonna serve him in his construction job and middle class life where he is unable to buy a house in the town he grew up in or even afford healthcare. These things trouble me, but its not about wining CT for the democrats; Its about the American psyche and how twisted America has become about our collective place in things.


The problem that I see right now is that Chris Shays signs that are everywhere. I believe that alot of people are voting for Shays because hes a hometown boy and pretends to be a liberal. That's, um, liberal republican, and hes really only as liberal as his BFF Joe Lieberman is a democrat! These guys are strong supporters of the Bush agenda, even now, and they really don't represent CT., so much as they represent the last bastion of cronyism that is dying a terrible wheezing death around this state.

I worked hard on the Lamont campaign to get rid of Joe Lieberman, and during that time I had the opportunity to speak with Shays at a town meeting and then on a conference call. My issue was not only with Lieberman changing parties after he lost the primary; he started his own party with the dismissive attitude that he was doing this because we didn't know what was best for our state. The whole thing boiled down to the war in Iraq; Joementum had gone to Iraq with Shays some 14 times,becoming one of the biggest defenders of Bush and his war, and he and Shays were the token liberals in the push to victory. Its well known that Joe Lieberman will do anything for the adulation of having the senate floor erupt in cheers as he returns from his fact finding missions ready to advise and instruct or from his close bid with losing his seat, only to be voted in by Ct's republicans who shunned their own candidate because Lieberman was representing them just fine!


The soft spoken Shays has some sharp claws, and skirts the issues that are important to his constituents, while hiding behind the "liberal" label. Its long past the time when Shays should have retired his seat and moved on. Diane Farrell almost unseated him two years ago, and he retained the seat by a slim margin mainly with a last minute flip flop on the Iraq war. Shays claimed that a trip just weeks before the election changed his mind; this after so many, many trips and the fantasy ideals that were put forth even as the entire country crumbled and people died needlessly.

Last week, the Stamford Advocate had a front page story in which Chris Shays threw McCain under the bus in the service of his own re-election. This is the Chris Shays that I know. He flip flops at the drop of a poll number and heaven forbid that reality ever take hold; until recently he was parroting the republican talking points about the economy. Worst though is that he boasts that CT is the first state to provide health insurance for all of its children. Well, its a horrible system with little coverage, and its not working! Having talked to him about this personally, I can say that what he does is to just deny that its true or possible that providers won't take the state insurance. Shay's modus operandi is that when he is confronted with a problem he acts like it is merely a personal problem of the questioner and he refers them to a staff member who will discuss it in private.

But this is an undeniable problem across the board in CT, so even if his staff were to take me into an office and out of the town hall, so that he could move on to other issues, they couldn't solve the problem that I have to drive 2 hours to get to a specialist for my son....or that it took us an entire year to get a surgery approved, only to have it canceled on the night before because it was suddenly denied again; oh they had approved the surgeon but not the hospital!! By the time this orthopedic surgery was performed on my son, he was the oldest, biggest kid that this surgeon had ever done this procedure on! Now we will probably lose our coverage anyway because our provider, a subsidiary of Blue Cross and Blue Shield, is opting out of the state's program, and our Dr. barely takes what we have...no one will take the alternatives. I'm looking into private insurance and its going to probably be a grand a month for a family plan if I can even find one that will take us! The issue is that the paperwork involved for a tiny reimbursement is not worth it to many doctors who have full time staff trying to deal with the bureaucratic nightmare that is this program (and unregulated health insurance in general!) I've heard lately that some doctors don't want the responsibility of prescribing drugs to children for a gross payment of maybe $19 per visit, which is much less when overhead and man hours processing the claims is taken out! The hospitals with the clinics for the poor, who have the "A" type of insurance, have a deal with the state and they also have institutional insurance and rotating doctors in clinics, so the responsibility is much less.

So, its not about my personal medical issues, as much as its about the boasting that goes on with Shays and Lieberman around this being such a great program. It's the kind of thing that might make them eligible for a task force on national health coverage in a bipartisan position...and I don't think that this plan should be used as anyone's blueprint for how health care should be taken care of in this country. What is really reprehensible is to do this experiment on children...the very poor kids who go to the hospitals tend to get OK care because they have the clinic doctors available. But we cant all go to the hospital clinic, can we? And we make too much money to be in the "A" program, so we pay a premium, which disallows us from a level of service that poorer people have...and no pediatricians or specialists are taking this insurance around lower Fairfield county anyway....so...I would very much NOT like to have the liar Chris Shays walking around Washington DC, misrepresenting what he's done here. It sucks, and along with just about everything else in this region, the move is to push the poor out and make room for more high rises (Trump has a tower going up in downtown Stamford) and mansions. And of course, foreclosures are at an unprecedented high....while Shays claimed that the economy was stable, until he just changed his mind a little while ago.

Jim Himes, who is running against Shays, is an experienced businessman who has worked successfully in business, but his most important work has been in the not for profit housing and financial support sector:

After over a decade at Goldman Sachs, Jim devoted himself full-time to pursuing business-oriented solutions to the problems of urban poverty. Jim found an ideal role with Enterprise Community Partners, where he has run their Northeast operations since 2004. Under Jim's leadership, Enterprise worked with private, public, and community organizations to address complex issues of urban poverty. At Enterprise, Jim developed an innovative program to provide tax preparation assistance and financial services to low-income families at very low cost. Jim led the way in financing the construction of thousands of affordable housing units in the greater New York and Northeast regions, often using new green technologies to achieve energy efficiency and reduce utility costs.

Himes is not a career politician and he is not steeped in the rampant cronyism that has overrun this state. He has spent years developing ways to help lower income people handle their finances and to find affordable housing. He may enter on a junior level, and I'm hearing grumbles from people who feel that he will not be able to get a foothold or be heard on anything important... But, my feeling is that we are going to see an unprecedented turnover of power and faces in this election, and granted that Shays will have to go at some point...besides that he doesn't represent what the voters of his state want, and he lies and flips whenever its convenient...and we always have Chris Dodd, who is the strongest representative that we could hope for!

Shays was so wrong about the war, and even when specialists were telling him and Joe that what they were seeing was not as it seemed, they both insisted that because Baghdad looked better to them in their military security caravan, that it must be so. Shays has been wrong on the economy, on insurance for our children, on federal eavesdropping and privacy issues, and on medicare...he has sided with Bush in just about everything and changes his mind back and forth...I don't want it anymore. Its time for him to go!

Connecticut needs a congressman like Himes on board, and the American house needs this kind of new upcoming public servant working hard to get us back on track and to help America work again. This country is just not feasible for so many people anymore, and the Bush administration has managed, unbelievably, to fulfill its objective, which was to funnel all of the money upwards to a rare few, while the middle class crumbles, and the legions of the voiceless poor grows. Leaders who have been complicit with that movement should have no place in our government going forward. Shays is a lifetime politician who began his career as a young man in my district in North Stamford. Back in the days when the residents of this part of CT were more interested in how a representative might do in bringing funds to our state and our city, the largely democratic population here felt that Shays was liberal enough to represent us. But, more recently, Shays has been singing the Bush line, and that is not working for any of us on any level. And thus the flip flop of this past week...its vintage Shays and I hope that the voters don't fall for it.

There are Shays signs all over the place in Stamford, and its more likely due to the organized republican party getting the signs out, rather than being representative of who is going to vote for the entire republican ticket. There are way more Shays signs than McCain Palin signs, leading me to think that his independent campaign is more organized, and as has happened in the past, democrats will leave the line for the congressional seat vote. I don't encourage that, because it causes confusion, and even with the new ballots, alot of people may lose their votes by making silly mistakes while trying to serve someone that they are familiar with. That is no reason to make decisions about our children's future; no reason at all.

For CT voters who will be faced with 2 questions about the state's constitution,(those of you from towns with other questions about budget concerns and marching bands are on your own!) I have this to say: They vaguely word the first question to be about having the ability to edit the sate constitution in the upcoming term. The answer would be no, because hidden in that simple question is the stated objective to make gay marriage unconstitutional in CT. It is not the time to mess with any constitution for anything.

The time now is to change our leadership and stop worrying so much about what your neighbors are doing in their bedrooms in private. If people want to enter the unholy alliance of marriage, then that's their problem. I don't recommend it personally, but hey, it makes some people feel more secure; so go for it! Just sign a pre-nup so we don't have more backup in the court systems in this state. My question of the secretary of state is why is this aim on stated in the ballot question?

The second question is about young voters who will be 18 on election day and should they be allowed to vote in primaries when they are 17. I don't understand this or what it represents in a real way. It is supposed to encourage young voters to get involved earlier, but I'd be more in favor of lowering the entire voting age so that voting could be something that becomes part of high school curriculum and then we can bring back civics class and poli-sci and all that! The red flag there is that it also involves opening up the state constitution for editing, and its worded strangely, as these things always are! So, I say no right now, unless I get a compelling reason not to. My son just shrugged...it makes no real sense as a half measure regarding the primaries...like, why then don't we allow driver's licenses to people who will be of age when they can afford their car? I don't know if that is the equivalent, but I'm in favor of an across the board lowering of the voting age rather than this confusing half measure as part of editing our constitution...its all about gay marriage....keep that in mind. So, to question 1, vote NO!







c/p RIP Coco

Labels: 2008 election, Barack Obama, chris shays, jim Himes, Joe Lieberman, John McCain

Would you like to help out a graduate student studying how psychological distance affects the structure of candidate evaluations? Then click on over to the survey here and follow the instructions. Because of the requirements of the project, please don't post comments on this post. I'll have to delete them because of the way the project is structured.

Labels: 2008 election

If so, then we know why John McCain is spending so much time and money in Pennsylvania when it would seem to be futile.

In June of this year, I linked to this Mark Halperin blurb in which he cites John McCain telling voters in Pipersville, PA that "the state will pick the winner in November -- and he will be behind until right before the polls close."

I wondered at the time if McCain was allowing slip that the fix is in, and after watching this remark from Tom Brokaw on Press the Meat yesterday, I think it is.

MR. BROKAW: Four years ago I interviewed President Bush at a time when it looked like he may be in trouble against John Kerry, final weekend of the campaign. I showed him a map. He said, "Oh, I just don't do that. Karl Rove does that." As soon as the interview was over, he said, "I'll win here," and pointed to southeastern Ohio. Where will you win if you win?

And Karl Rove, on Fox News Sunday:

"In order for McCain to win, he's got a very steep hill to climb. He's got to win all of the toss-up states. ... Then he needs to strip away Ohio and Indiana. ... And then he needs to either win Colorado and Virginia ... or win one of them plus Pennsylvania. ... It's a steep uphill climb."

But not if the fix is in. Not if the apparatus is in place in one of those states plus Pennsylvania to cage enough voters and flip enough votes and shortchange enough machines in inner city Philadelphia to flip it for McCain.

And that, MY FRIENDS, is why John McCain is spending so much time in Pennsylvania, and why the conservative pundits are so willing and eager to chalk this election up to being over while the more mainstream pundits are falling all over themselves to try and come up with a plausible McCain victory scenario.

And this is how we wake up on November 5 to find that John McCain's herculean efforts in Pennsylvania came to fruition and brought him victory.

Because the fix is in.

And it always was.

Many more really ominous signs here.

Labels: 2008 election, hopelessness, tinfoil

I guess the Bush Administration has interpreted the Constitution to provide for the King...uh..."president"...to appoint his successor regardless of pesky things like voters:

President Bush is asking the Justice Department to look into whether 200,000 Buckeye State poll-goers must use provisional ballots on Election Day because their names do not match state databases.

White House spokesman Carlton Carroll confirmed Friday that the president will forward a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey from House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), requesting that the Justice Department look into whether the state’s voter rolls comply with the Help America Vote Act.

In a letter dated on Friday, the House GOP leader wrote that with Election Day “less than two weeks away, immediate action by the Department is not only warranted, but also crucial.”

“I respectfully request that you use your authority to direct Attorney General Michael Mukasey and the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate these actions and direct the appropriate authorities in each state to comply with the Section 303 requirements of HAVA,” Boehner wrote.

“Unless action is taken by the Department immediately, thousands, if not tens or hundreds of thousands, of names whose information has not been verified through the HAVA procedures mandated by Congress will remain on voter rolls during the November 4, 2008 election; and there is a significant risk — if not a certainty, that unlawful votes will be cast and counted.”

Meanwhile, U.S. attorneys have been fired for not investigating so-called "voter fraud" that never existed, and not once has any of these Republicans who think that "Help America Vote" only applies to what they regard as "Real America" (read: REPUBLICAN America) ever cited even ONE actual case since they started braying about "voter fraud" in 2000, of anyone who wasn't registered or who wasn't eligible to vote actually succeeding in voting. This is a manufactured "issue" designed to play into the fears of Red America about hordes of brown-skinned people flocking to the polls to vote their own interests instead of the interests of White America™ -- as if people's interests somehow diverge with skin color.

Labels: 2008 election, Bush Administration, vote suppression, wingnuttia

If American life lacks the punch of a reality show to the point that we demand larger than life puppets as candidates for our highest office these days; if Jerry Springer-esque family drama played out in oil wrestling is the thing we need to fill our check-out-line reading needs; maybe we shouldn't be so fucking surprised that we pay to fully costume the actresses and actors and that the production companies...er...campaigns stand on the sidelines with the storyboard and airbrush machine at the ready. No such luck for the McCain campaign which history may look at as really a night course in performance art 101 taught by some agitprop group found in Washington Square Park. It seems impossible that any professional politicos could have run thigns exactly this badly without it being part of some sorta joke. But then, the delusional current administration did at some point drink their own koolaid and after all that inmates/asylum stuff blows over, it will be anyone's guess if we can ever untangle what part of the nightmare thats gonna lave quite a hangover in this country for a long time to come. Whats left to hope for? Well, I hope that my son might be captured by Obama's hope thing in the way that I was captured by Jimmy Carter and before that the Kennedys, when I was a kid. Maybe he can feel some feeling of being able to shape the destiny of his world before the reality comes crashing in.

Labels: 2008 election, Barack Obama, John McCain, Marc Maron, Sarah Palin

No, I am not joking. Tonight I got a message from Bigass Bank asking me to call to verify charges that had put a security hold on my credit card account. I called Bigass Bank back, and got an overly-friendly young man who was clearly in Bangalore congratulating me on my vigilance in ensuring the integrity of my account. When I told him to cut the crap and just tell me what the flagged charges were, he cited four charges: One was to Skype for a three-month subscription to the service's unlimited calls to 36 countries that I need for those 2:30 AM teleconferences with my team China, Australia and Korea. One was for Maggie's echocardiogram at the vet (her ticker is fine, thanks for asking -- what appeared to be a heart murmur is a high-pitched sound that is not uncommon when cats are stressed, LIKE WHEN YOU HAVE TO RUSH THEM TO THE EMERGENCY VET BECAUSE THEY'VE BEEN GNAWING ON FRIGGIN' MOUSE BAIT, as we had to last summer). And then there were two charges for donations to "Obama for America" and "Franken for Senate."

Look, I'm all for vigilance on the part of the credit card companies to keep both their losses and my hassles to a minimum if my card number is stolen. Capital One does an especially job of striking a balance OK, I can buy that the Skype purchase might flag something. But a charge to "The Vet at the Barn"? I frankly think that Bigass Bank is flagging cards containing political contributions to Democrats for "security holds".

So there's only one thing I can do. Make donations this weekend to Darcy Burner, a progressive Democrat running for Congress in Washington state who really needs the money in these last days before the election and Scott Kleeb, who's running a close Senate race in Nebraska. And Dennis Shulman right here in my own Congressional district. And maybe I'll kick in another few bucks for Franken.

Let's see if they flag my card again.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE: OK, now I want to know how many of you have experienced holds after making political donations to Democrats. Commenter Kiterea and Minstrel Boy have both had holds put on their accounts after making political donations. If this has happened to you, please describe your experience in the comments.

Labels: 2008 election, tinfoil

I can't help but believe that if John McCain had only not decided to resort to the ugliest campaign we've seen since George W. Bush used the same tactics against him; and if he hadn't chosen an incurious, provincial, hypocritical, greedy, religious nut as his running mate, we'd have seen the New York times endorse McCain while saying that Barack Obama has a brilliant future ahead of him and they look forward to endorsing him in the future.

But McCain chose instead to play to the worst instincts and fears of the most vociferous part of his party, and so the Grey Lady is endorsing Barack Obama:

Mr. Obama has met challenge after challenge, growing as a leader and putting real flesh on his early promises of hope and change. He has shown a cool head and sound judgment. We believe he has the will and the ability to forge the broad political consensus that is essential to finding solutions to this nation’s problems.

In the same time, Senator John McCain of Arizona has retreated farther and farther to the fringe of American politics, running a campaign on partisan division, class warfare and even hints of racism. His policies and worldview are mired in the past. His choice of a running mate so evidently unfit for the office was a final act of opportunism and bad judgment that eclipsed the accomplishments of 26 years in Congress.

Given the particularly ugly nature of Mr. McCain’s campaign, the urge to choose on the basis of raw emotion is strong. But there is a greater value in looking closely at the facts of life in America today and at the prescriptions the candidates offer. The differences are profound.

Mr. McCain offers more of the Republican every-man-for-himself ideology, now lying in shards on Wall Street and in Americans’ bank accounts. Mr. Obama has another vision of government’s role and responsibilities.

[snip]

Unfortunately, Mr. McCain, like Mr. Bush, sees the world as divided into friends (like Georgia) and adversaries (like Russia). He proposed kicking Russia out of the Group of 8 industrialized nations even before the invasion of Georgia. We have no sympathy for Moscow’s bullying, but we also have no desire to replay the cold war. The United States must find a way to constrain the Russians’ worst impulses, while preserving the ability to work with them on arms control and other vital initiatives.

Both candidates talk tough on terrorism, and neither has ruled out military action to end Iran’s nuclear weapons program. But Mr. Obama has called for a serious effort to try to wean Tehran from its nuclear ambitions with more credible diplomatic overtures and tougher sanctions. Mr. McCain’s willingness to joke about bombing Iran was frightening.

[snip]

It will be an enormous challenge just to get the nation back to where it was before Mr. Bush, to begin to mend its image in the world and to restore its self-confidence and its self-respect. Doing all of that, and leading America forward, will require strength of will, character and intellect, sober judgment and a cool, steady hand.

Mr. Obama has those qualities in abundance. Watching him being tested in the campaign has long since erased the reservations that led us to endorse Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic primaries. He has drawn in legions of new voters with powerful messages of hope and possibility and calls for shared sacrifice and social responsibility.

Mr. McCain, whom we chose as the best Republican nominee in the primaries, has spent the last coins of his reputation for principle and sound judgment to placate the limitless demands and narrow vision of the far-right wing. His righteous fury at being driven out of the 2000 primaries on a racist tide aimed at his adopted daughter has been replaced by a zealous embrace of those same win-at-all-costs tactics and tacticians.

[snip]

Mr. Obama has withstood some of the toughest campaign attacks ever mounted against a candidate. He’s been called un-American and accused of hiding a secret Islamic faith. The Republicans have linked him to domestic terrorists and questioned his wife’s love of her country. Ms. Palin has also questioned millions of Americans’ patriotism, calling Republican-leaning states “pro-America.”

This politics of fear, division and character assassination helped Mr. Bush drive Mr. McCain from the 2000 Republican primaries and defeat Senator John Kerry in 2004. It has been the dominant theme of his failed presidency.

The nation’s problems are simply too grave to be reduced to slashing “robo-calls” and negative ads. This country needs sensible leadership, compassionate leadership, honest leadership and strong leadership. Barack Obama has shown that he has all of those qualities.

Of course the people who agree with Ann Coulter that they wish Timothy McVeigh had bombed the New York Times Company isntead of the Murrah Federal Building won't care about the paper's endorsement. To them, it's just another mark of the elitism of all New Yorkers, other than the ones who were unfortunate enough to be in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, whose corpses the Republican Party has been desecrating for seven years.

Labels: 2008 election

Remember in 2004, when Denny Hastert said that Al Qaeda wanted John Kerry to be president:

At a campaign rally Saturday in his Illinois district with Vice President Dick Cheney, Hastert said al Qaeda "would like to influence this election" with an attack similar to the train bombings in Madrid days before the Spanish national election in March.

When a reporter asked Hastert if he thought al Qaeda would operate with more comfort if Kerry were elected, the speaker said, "That's my opinion, yes."

I wonder what Denny Hastert (and his party) thinks of this:

Al-Qaida supporters suggested in a Web site message this week they would welcome a pre-election terror attack on the U.S. as a way to usher in a McCain presidency.

The message, posted Monday on the password-protected al-Hesbah Web site, said if al-Qaida wants to exhaust the United States militarily and economically, "impetuous" Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain is the better choice because he is more likely to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"This requires presence of an impetuous American leader such as McCain, who pledged to continue the war till the last American soldier," the message said. "Then, al-Qaida will have to support McCain in the coming elections so that he continues the failing march of his predecessor, Bush."

SITE Intelligence Group, based in Bethesda, Md., monitors the Web site and translated the message.

"If al-Qaida carries out a big operation against American interests," the message said, "this act will be support of McCain because it will push the Americans deliberately to vote for McCain so that he takes revenge for them against al-Qaida. Al-Qaida then will succeed in exhausting America till its last year in it."

I wish I could say it was insulting that the person who wrote this thinks that Americans are so stupid that they would rally behind the candidate of the party that allowed Al Qaeda to commit not one but two attacks on American soil -- and did nothing to retaliate against those who actually committed the first one; that they would not be able to put two and two together and see the ineptitude of the Republican approach to terrorism.

But then I think about McCain/Palin voters and realize that while it might be insulting to me, it describes all too many Americans.

Labels: 2008 election, al-Qaeda, John McCain

If an effective campaign ad is one with simple images and words, than this is awesome:


(h/t)

Labels: 2008 election

In case anyone other than the two Tarheels whom I know read this blog hasn't heard about this: Apparently in North Carolina, you cannot vote for Barack Obama by choosing a straight Democratic party line vote; you MUST make your presidential selection separately. This is not a vote suppression issue, it's just appallingly bad design and policy, passed in 1967.

More details here. Please pass the word on to your friends and relatives in North Carolina.

Labels: 2008 election