History not made

Ted Stevens' brave battle to become the first convicted felon ever elected to the U.S. Senate is over.

WOOOOOO! GO AMERICA!!!

*tears*

Reaping the whirlwind

Free Republic poster writes:

• Virginia and Florida Go Obama Landslide Continues...

  11/04/2008 7:46:17 PM PST · by My Favorite Headache

  Title says it all...this is brutal...beyond brutal. Starting to know what it felt like to be Carter in 1980.

Enjoy the next 2 to 8 years, chumps.

Final pre-election post

Knocking on wood continuously for the next 48 hours.
LOLbama courtesy of Jezebel.

Credit where credit is due, or, The Audacity of Bullshit

I'm sure you've already seen this EPIC FAIL on the part of sometime Weekly Standard editor and current McCain campaign spokesman Michael Goldfarb.



Seriously, how does one show up for a live interview on national TV so unprepared? But lost in our guffawing is the gutsiness of Goldfarb's bullshitting maneuver here. Not enough to make up for being a clueless twit, but executed with total, balls-out gumption.

Sanchez: You said [Obama] hangs around with people who are anti-Semitic. You--OK, we've got Khalidi on the table, give me number two. Who's the other anti-Semitic person that he hangs around with that we, quote, "all know about."

Goldfarb: Rick, we all know who number two is.

[Pause.]

Sanchez: WHO? [Pause] Would you tell us?

Goldfarb: No, Rick, I--I think we all know who we're talking about here.

Sanchez: Somebody who's anti-Semitic who he hangs around with?

Goldfarb: Absolutely.

Sanchez: Well SAY IT!

Goldfarb: I think we all know who we're talking about, Rick.

NRCC pulls funding for Bachmann campaign

Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann is all kinds of crazy.

But crazy doesn't pay the bills.

GOP fundraising committee pulls plug on Bachmann (Minneapolis Star Tribune)

The national fundraising committee for GOP congressional candidates has canceled its Twin Cities TV advertising for Rep. Michele Bachmann, who is using the flap over her comments about Barack Obama to raise money on her own

Keith Olbermann wants to be Edward R. Murrow when he grows up

You've been warned, America: Keith Olberman's "special comment" editorial segments may be broadcast each night until further notice. Things have just gotten that bad! he announced on tonight's Countdown.

Tonight's "comment" is pure gold. He actually concludes it with "good night, and good luck." I heart you, Keith! Rant on!

"All of this has happened before..."

Excellent.

McCain to Democrats:

"I see your pantsuits and raise you one corsage."


John McCain just announced Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his VP pick, to the surprise of many. (WP) He is sure gunning for Hillary Clinton supporters and I imagine this choice fits into that plan.

Palin is young (44), anti-corruption, firmly anti-abortion, has posed for Vogue, and differs with her new running mate on the subject of drilling in the Arctic Refuge.

She also really likes to wear giant flowers on her lapel, a la Carrie Bradshaw in 1999. I thought the pic above, from her gubernatorial inauguration, was an anomaly, until I ran across this one too.

If you happen to have any other documentation of Governor Palin's floral fashion statements, send them my way. It is certainly a distinctive calling card.

Guess what: I'm wearing pants right now!

I still don't understand the obsession with "Hillary's pantsuits."

ABC News: A Look Back at Hillary's Year of Pantsuits
Glamour Magazine Salutes Hillary Clinton's Rainbow Coalition of Pantsuits

You know, technically, Obama always wears "pantsuits." Not that he doesn't have the legs to carry off a tasteful above-the-knee hem.

And no one ever writes about those.

Our bartender is running for Congress

Well, shadow Congress...that's how we do it in the District. (CityPaper)

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

The things you learn on the Colbert Report. I would never have known, until watching last night's "The Word," that John McCain keeps using the word "transcendental" in a really weird way. To wit:

"I believe we are facing the transcendental challenge of the century of radical Islamic terrorism." (johnmccain.com)

I am pretty sure McCain is not proposing yogic flying or a devotion to the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson as key elements of the radical Islamic terrorist challenge. He, or someone on his staff, is dealing a few tarot cards short of a full deck, because what McCain really means is something more like "surpassing" or "overarching." Or maybe "existential?"

The Clinton/RFK flap: just one more reason I want this election to be over

This has just gotten silly. I'm not even a Clinton supporter, per se, and it was immediately clear to me that her mention of the June assassination of Bobby Kennedy was meant simply to illustrate her point that Democratic nomination races have, historically, continued into the summer.

The assassination was not mentioned as "a reason to stay in the race," as Eugene Robinson misleadingly writes in his column this morning, or a suggestion that either Democratic contender might be assassinated for heaven's sake. This was Clinton picking her brain for a good example of a long nomination fight and failing to screen the results. Even Obama says so.

I hope Senator Clinton has learned her lesson about choosing historical examples a little more carefully, and props to Bobby Kennedy, Jr. for his classy response to the hubbub.

McCain veep selection process sounds like an episode of The Bachelor

Or maybe The 5th Wheel...

Senator John McCain of Arizona is set to meet with at least three potential running mates at a gathering at his ranch this weekend in Arizona...

...Mr. McCain is heading home on Friday for three days without a public schedule. His campaign described this as a social weekend that would include 10 couples, and -- as has been its policy -- declined to discuss any aspect of the vice-presidential search. (NYT)

Market segmentation creeps me out

Apparently our presidential candidate preferences fall along Fig Newton/chewy chocolate chip/crunchy chocolate chip lines. That's right--marketing researchers have correlated food choices with political choices. Read more here and here about how Obama has "the arugula vote," McCain voters seem to prefer margarine, and my love for Kashi GoLean inaccurately points to a preference for Clinton.

Those crunchy chocolate chip cookie people...weird, no surprise they are voting for McCain. I have nothing in common with those people. Chewy all the way.

My 2 cents on Bittergate

Sigh. When will candidates ever learn? What you say to your bosom buddies and supporters in public at fundraisers has got to be ready for prime time America as well. How many macacas must be uttered before this simple fact hits home? Everything you do is tracked and recorded. If I were running for president, I would not sing in the shower without first running the lyrics through my messaging people. 'Cause that shit could well end up on YouTube.

Do you ever wonder why sociology professors rarely get elected president? You have your answer, Mr. Obama!

Nader returns

Sigh.

Nader Announces New Bid for White House
By HOPE YEN

WASHINGTON (AP) - Ralph Nader said Sunday he will run for president as a third-party candidate, criticizing the top White House contenders as too close to big business and pledging to repeat a bid that will "shift the power from the few to the many."

Grey Lady harshes on Giuliani

Today the editors of the New York Times endorsed Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination and McCain for the Republican nomination.

They also took the opportunity to discuss, at length, why they passed over hizzoner Rudy Giuliani.

Why not choose the man we endorsed for re-election in 1997 after a first term in which he showed that a dirty, dangerous, supposedly ungovernable city could become clean, safe and orderly? What about the man who stood fast on Sept. 11, when others, including President Bush, went AWOL?

That man is not running for president.

The real Mr. Giuliani, whom many New Yorkers came to know and mistrust, is a narrow, obsessively secretive, vindictive man who saw no need to limit police power. Racial polarization was as much a legacy of his tenure as the rebirth of Times Square.

Mr. Giuliani's arrogance and bad judgment are breathtaking. When he claims fiscal prudence, we remember how he ran through surpluses without a thought to the inevitable downturn and bequeathed huge deficits to his successor. He fired Police Commissioner William Bratton, the architect of the drop in crime, because he couldn't share the limelight. He later gave the job to Bernard Kerik, who has now been indicted on fraud and corruption charges.

The Rudolph Giuliani of 2008 first shamelessly turned the horror of 9/11 into a lucrative business, with a secret client list, then exploited his city's and the country's nightmare to promote his presidential campaign.

Ouch!

Lieberman endorses McCain; McCain uses awful new word

"I was a little reluctant to ask him, because I didn't want him to do something that may cause any harm to his political future," McCain told reporters in Concord. "I felt it would be impactful in the election otherwise I wouldn't ask for it." (NBC First Read)

Ugh, impactful? That is even worse than the use of "impact" as a verb. Please do not use this word, English speakers.

Welcome to the Twilight Zone, I mean, Iowa

In Iowa, Mitt Romney has launched a campaign to, in the words of Chris Cillizza, "redefine former Gov. Mike Huckabee (Ark.) as too liberal for the voters of Iowa."

He has a shot. Conservatives like Bob Novak are already pointing to Huckabee's relatively liberal record on fiscal policy, and the new Romney ad campaign highlights some of Huckabee's positions on immigration as governor.

But what I think is really interesting about this ad is how it hides the threats to Romney's social-conservative credentials in plain sight. The ad points to conservative positions on abortion and gay marriage as two points of similarity between Romney and Huckabee, sweeping under the rug Romney's flip-flopping on choice and previous opposition to constitutional gay marriage bans for Massachusetts and for the U.S.

Your presidential match

This ABC News quiz will match you to presidential candidates based on your attitudes about the Iraq war, health care, and other issues.

My #1 match on the issues was Dennis Kucinich--our first vegan president!

Lesson for Ron Paul

The problem with historical resonance is historical baggage.

Presidential candidate Ron Paul has raised ungodly amounts of money through his website "ThisNovember5th.com." That's a heroic reference to Guy Fawkes' failed plot to blow up the British Parliament on November 5th, 1605, memorialized through a British holiday and referenced in V for Vendetta. Fortunately,

[A spokesman] clarified that Mr. Paul did not support blowing up government buildings. "He wants to demolish things like the Department of Education," Mr. Benton said, "but we can do that very peacefully, in a constructive manner."
(NYT)

No hablan

All the Democratic candidates, except Biden, appeared last night for a debate on Univision, the nationwide Spanish-language TV channel. (NYT)

The Republican presidential candidates, interestingly, all declined Univision's offer of a GOP candidate debate. You've gotta have a pretty good reason to blow off the nation's largest Latino TV audience when you're running for president of the United States. (A reason that begins with "I" and rhymes with "schmimmigration"?) Doesn't bode well for the R candidates long-term if they all made this choice.

Whoa. Read this now!

For decades, a team of psychologists has been investigating the connection between fear of death and political behavior. In this article, John Judis describes how it applies to the 2004 presidential election. (TNR) Pretty interesting stuff.

More 2008 ruminations

Have you ever sat down and thought--really thought--about what it would be like if Rudy Giuliani were president of the United States? Read Fred Kaplan's nice response to Giuliani's recent essay in Foreign Affairs, and really think about it.

Romney vs. the YouTube snowman

"I think the presidency ought to be held at a higher level than having to answer questions from a snowman."

Well, there are a lot of things that the presidency ought to be held at a higher level than.* But aren't we being a bit intolerant here, Mr. Romney? (WP)


*I tried to avoid ending that sentence with a preposition but it was totally beyond me how to do it.

Damn, did it again!

One of many Obama questions

I don't get it.

If elected president, Barack Obama could see invading Pakistan--a state that actually does have WMD, by the way--to root out terrorists.

...and Hillary Clinton is "Bush-Cheney light"?

The fascinating and the just plain weird

Like many of us, I am always wondering who is going to be the next Ross Perot. Might one of the also-rans in either party break off and make a run for it? Would it be someone sufficiently quirky to live up to the Perot legacy? For this reason, Ron Paul, Texas congressman and sometime Libertarian party presidential candidate, sort of fascinates me. He has some serious word-of-mouth support-building going on right now, to judge by the huge number of random people who call in to C-SPAN or comment on blogs in favor of his presidential candidacy. He was one of 2 Republicans to vote in favor of de-funding the Office of the Vice President.

But he does not fascinate me nearly as much as Mike Gravel.

The Man is dead. Long live The Man.

I was just realizing that my whole full-time working life (2001-now) has been spent under the boot of the Bush administration and most of it under an extreme right-wing Congressional majority. It's hard to break out of certain reactive ways of thinking, and not be completely bitter and paranoid all the time.

I think that all progressive organizer-type-people should be sent to some kind of detox-counseling-yogic ashram to release some of the tension, resentment and fear of the last six years. Not that our problems are over, but...it's kinda hard to do your thing when we have this national case of political PTSD.

Texas has officially been messed with

Check out the sweet House committee chairmanships that Texas Democrats would have held the the next Congress, had they not been redistricted out of their seats in 2003:

Rules: Martin Frost, D-Dallas
Agriculture: Charlie Stenholm, D-Abilene
Homeland Security: Jim Turner, D-Crockett

(As reported by the Dallas Morning News.)

What a bummer for the good people of Texas, who can't possibly deserve Tom DeLay any more than the rest of us deserve W.

Taking bets on women in power

Let's take a moment to crow over a victory won for the cause of women's leadership last night: Nancy Pelosi is likely to become the first female speaker of the House. There was also a net gain in women in the Senate, thanks to Claire McCaskill's win in Missouri (as of January there will be 15)*.

Next question. Which will now come first, a woman president or a woman Senate majority leader? My prediction is president will be first. But I put this out more as a challenge to current and aspiring female senators.

*CORRECTION: How could I forget Klobuchar? Sorry, Minnesota! That brings the Senate female total to 16 for the 110th Congress.

Ding, dong...

Pombo Defeated (Tracy Press) "In a night that saw Democrats sweep to power in the House of Representatives, little-known challenger Jerry McNerney unseated Tracy's Rep. Richard Pombo from his perch as one of Congress' more powerful chairmen."

Just one of many reasons for joy over the last few hours.

By the way, Blogger® users may have noticed yesterday that Blogger was super slow. I'd guess that's because at least 99% of its bandwidth was being used at Tryst Coffeehouse in Adams Morgan, where CNN had set up an "E-lection Nite Blog Party." And quite a party it was, according to Wonkette.

"The day horror went into overdrive!"

Do you remember Maximum Overdrive, the awesomely bad 1986 Stephen King movie?

"Imagine your worst nightmare: machines take over the world!"
That's what I thought of as I read about what some Missourians might consider their true worst nightmare:

trying to vote for Clare McCaskill for Senator on a computerized voting machine, but instead having their votes recorded for GOP incumbent Jim Talent. (TPMcafe)

The slacker's guide to voting in DC

Perhaps, like me, you woke up this morning in a panic because you've been so busy checking the polls that you forgot to check on your voter registration status. Gasp! Did I remember to notify the Board of Elections and Ethics of my most recent address change? Am I even still registered? Where the hell do I go to vote?

Fear not, Washingtonian. The DCBOEE has you covered.

• Go here to check your registration status online.
• Go here to find out where your polling place is.
  
• If you are going to be traveling on election day, you can still vote TODAY by in-person absentee ballot. Go here.
• Perhaps you have discarded the "Voter's Guide," listing candidates and their positions, that the DCBOEE helpfully delivered to your home. No problem; you can see it online here.
  

RNC pulls ad money in Ohio

The money doesn't lie. Looks like Sen. DeWine is getting jettisoned. (The Fix) Who will be the next to get cut off?

What happens in Vegas

I am having a hard time believing this Jim Gibbons 911-call scandal just because it sounds like something I would make up if someone asked me to make up a story about a pre-election scandal. The fact that the legislator in question is a social conservative*, that it involves a cocktail waitress named Chrissy, that the evening began at a McCormick and Schmick's in Las Vegas. Truth will out, I suppose.

*Christian Coalition 90% score

[insert post about GOP imploding here]

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Here is a place where I could write about how Condi Rice does not take the best notes during meetings (SF Chron). Or about how some congressional Democrats and Republicans seem to be engaged in a breathless struggle to out-scandal each other ("We'll see your bribery and raise you one pedophile!"). Or about the potential for hard-right Republicans to get ousted by the conservative Christian vote that they have so carefully cultivated (WP). But I think the time has come to just sit back and watch Fate spin this one out as she desires.

PS: When did substance abuse stop being reason enough to question a lawmaker's fitness to serve and start being just an excuse for other, worse stuff?

For the record: this blogger has never used the N-word

This is getting ridiculous. So now James Webb is getting out front of George Allen by also denying that he has ever used the racial epithet beginning with N. (WP) So basically, the entire disussion of race and prejudice, which is an important one in Virginia, is getting boiled down to this parsing of words and questioning of childhood acquaintances.

Playing out the rope

Would it really be a problem for the Democrats if they were directionless going into the midterm elections this November?

In The New Republic this week, Peter Beinart postulates that the best strategy for the Dems is to keep any visionary agenda they may or may not have on the DL.

It makes sense. According to recent polling, an awful lot of Americans are pretty pissed at the Bush administration and/or the Republican led Congress right now. If you’re a Democrat, do you really want to complicate that equation? By pushing a bold national platform for voters to consider? (And bear in mind, it’s one thing to have a bold national platform, it’s another thing to push it aggressively.)

As Beinart writes, it seems quite possible that this is, in fact, the agreed-upon D strategy...and that the vagueness of their agenda is intentional.

Wishful thinking?