predictions

I hope you are right Sam. I am going to go phone bank today regardless.

________________________________

“The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.” –Helen Keller

I was watching the VODs over @ MvSLive.com & wondering when Sam & Marc are gonna get Tracy Gold on again as a guest? I'll always remember the long-ago, on-air discussion w/her about the 'Jew-y Jew Show'...

Good morning Sedernistas all over the world.

It's a beautiful day across the land and the polls are looking good with the rational right quite glum & resigned and the unamerican radical extremist right in big denial.

~ ~ ~

Obama takes largest lead(10%) yet in Gallup poll of likely voters

John Byrne - Saturday November 1, 2008

Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) has taken the largest lead yet among likely voters against Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) in the national Gallup poll released Saturday. Obama expanded his lead to ten percent from nine percent on Friday.

Obama's lead is a dramatic rise from the 49-47 percent margin that Gallup registered just four days ago.

Gallup added, "This is the first time since Gallup began estimating likely voters in early October that there is no difference between Gallup's two likely voter models. Obama's lead of 52% to 42% using Gallup's traditional estimate of likely voting criteria takes into account past voting as well as current intentions. Obama's identical lead using the expanded model takes into account only current voting intentions."

"Both of these likely voter estimates in turn are almost identical to Gallup's 52% to 41% registered voter estimate.

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Obama_takes_largest_lead_in_Gallup_1101.ht...

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RealClearPolitics Electoral College(270 Electoral Votes Needed To Win)

Obama/Biden 291 238 Solid 53 Leaning

McCain/Palin 132 118 Solid 14 Leaning

Toss Up 115

In addition to the RealClearPolitics Obama Electoral Lead Growing over the last few months, the former Bush States of Indiana, Montana, Arizona & Georgia have moved to being toss up states.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/maps/obama_vs_mccain/?map=5

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Anyone want to do the poll? I'll email it to you.

best place to hang out on election day, that's a no brainer sam

hope you're right with the rest of your predictions as well

after what you said about the last election, I'm surprised you are going out on a limb...here's something hopeful I just happen to be reading at the moment...

How Did You Select Your Political Party?

by Ruth McGill (the curious sojourner)

The two party system does not offer enough options for excellence to a free people.

email maugusto at cox dot net

Thanks Alice,

Could you please post a long article just once.

I'll do one better...and cut it down to a link...

with the beautiful stamps, thanks - if you happen to talk to kevin you can mention i am surprised he even remembers me from the blog, he must have a better memory than i have, all i remember from his postings on this blog is his quirky humor and jokes, coming through as a good person

Somehow, in Sarah Palin's brain, it's a threat to the First Amendment when newspapers criticize her negative attacks on Barack Obama. This is actually so dumb that it hurts:

In a conservative radio interview that aired in Washington, D.C. Friday morning, Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin said she fears her First Amendment rights may be threatened by "attacks" from reporters who suggest she is engaging in a negative campaign against Barack Obama.

Palin told WMAL-AM that her criticism of Obama's associations, like those with 1960s radical Bill Ayers and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, should not be considered negative attacks. Rather, for reporters or columnists to suggest that it is going negative may constitute an attack that threatens a candidate's free speech rights under the Constitution, Palin said.

"If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations," Palin told host Chris Plante, "then I don't know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media"
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/10/31/palin/index.html

at an Obama rally off his iPhone.

to enjoy some of this awesome sunshine

precious daylight getting a little scarcer as of today, will make the most of it

and your pirate patch argh made me laugh this morning.. :)

Five questions about America this election may answer

By Peter S. Canellos, Globe Staff | November 2, 2008

While Barack Obama enters the final days of the presidential campaign with a clear lead in the polls - but not so big as to rule out a surprise victory for John McCain - the impact of the 2008 presidential campaign will depend not only on who wins but also on whether the results signify a deeper realignment in American politics.

"We like to tell the election story through the candidates," said Thomas Patterson, a professor at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. "But this time there are larger forces in play."

And while Obama's lead, between three and seven percentage points in most national polls, is big enough to make him the favorite going into Tuesday, the other big questions of the election are all too close to call.

* Is The "Reagan Revolution" Over? *
Going down the stretch, McCain is campaigning heavily on Obama's comment that he wants to "spread the wealth." And McCain has even discovered a seven-year-old radio interview suggesting that Obama may believe in "redistributive" economics.

During the heyday of the Democrats' New Deal coalition, which dominated politics from 1932 until 1980, the idea of spreading the wealth around was hardly political poison - it was the backbone of the party's economic philosophy. Since 1980 and the "Reagan Revolution," however, using tax policies to redistribute income has been widely viewed as an outmoded approach that chokes off economic growth.

Obama hasn't fully embraced '60s-style tax-and-spend liberalism, but he hasn't run away from it as much as other Democratic presidential nominees since 1984 have done. Bill Clinton, the most successful Democratic vote-getter of that period, went out of his way to declare that "the era of big government is over," and assure voters that he is a "pro-growth" Democrat who favors "third way" policies.

Obama also touts his policies as pro-growth, but has emphasized that he believes people earning more than $250,000 should bear the brunt of tax increases to cover social initiatives that would disproportionately benefit lower-income people. To the extent that such a mechanism "spreads the wealth," he's in favor of it.

Many observers have noted that Americans want more economic security in their lives, including guaranteed healthcare, pensions, disaster relief, and improvements to public infrastructure. And the McCain campaign, in a break with Ronald Reagan's creed of smaller government, has called for the government to pay up to $300 billion to buy up home mortgages and chop the monthly payments to reflect diminished home values.

In addition, the McCain proposal that follows the Reagan creed most closely - his call for extending the Bush tax cuts and adding new cuts of business taxes - seems to be falling on deaf ears; in recent weeks, the GOP nominee has concentrated more on warning of tax hikes under Obama than touting the benefits of his own tax-cut plan.

David Brooks, the conservative New York Times columnist, has predicted that the economic uncertainty will lead to a Democratic sweep followed by an intensive return to tax-and-spend liberalism. "What we're going to see, in short, is the Gingrich revolution in reverse and on steroids," Brooks wrote last month.

McCain believes that voters still fear the kind of overreach that Brooks predicts. A modest victory for Obama could easily be ascribed to a simple desire for a change, benefiting a candidate who tried to present his policies in modest terms.

A big Obama win, however, could be read as a mandate for just the kind of liberalism that Brooks fears. And it could signal a much longer-term political realignment. The New Deal era and the Reagan Revolution each followed failed presidencies that, fairly or not, are still invoked as cautionary tales - the Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter administrations. George W. Bush's administration, with record-low approval ratings, may join the list.

* Is America prepared to move beyond its racial divisions? *
On the day of Obama's Democratic nomination acceptance speech, tens of thousands of African-Americans, most with children in tow, waited for hours in security lines to enter Denver's football stadium to celebrate the crowning of the nation's first black presidential nominee.

Despite the football setting, it was more of a church crowd - uplifted, generous, and full of faith. While some black voters would express concerns for Obama's safety and nervousness about his campaign, many others have remained quietly confident, even when polls narrowed and other Democrats worried that Obama wasn't as far ahead as he should be, given the country's problems.

Much of black voters' faith is in Obama himself. But there is also a quiet recognition among many that, whatever the extent of racial divisions, they don't preclude a majority-white country from electing a black president.

That by itself could change racial pathologies that have existed throughout American history.

Since George Washington, the president has been the symbol of the nation, as much as European monarchs once embodied their nations' identity. Having a black president just four decades after the end of legal segregation would force a reconsideration of almost all assumptions about race relations in America.

But if Obama were to lose - and if white resistance to a black nominee were cited as a major factor - black hopes would be dashed in a way that could increase racial tensions, at least in the short term.

Still, the legacy of the Obama campaign, win or lose, on race relations probably won't be clear until long after Tuesday.

* Are young people becoming a driving force in American politics? *
Back in the '60s, the emerging Baby Boom generation pushed American politics leftward. But through the '80s and '90s, voters under 30 see-sawed between backing Democrats and Republicans, while turning out in smaller numbers overall. Their strongest sentiment seemed to be their indifference.

In the 2000 race between Al Gore and George W. Bush, only 40 percent of registered voters from ages 18 to 29 bothered to vote, compared with 65 percent of voters over 30, according to a survey by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.

In 2004, the turnout of voters under 30 jumped by nine percentage points, to 49 percent, while that of older voters increased by only three. And those younger voters supported Democrat John Kerry over Bush by a seven-point margin, 48 to 41 percent.

This year, voters between 18 and 29 are backing Obama by a whopping 29 points - 61 to 32, according to a Pew survey. And while more young voters showed up for this year's Democratic primaries than in 2004, no one is sure whether turnout of young voters will take another big leap in the general election.

"We're expecting them to at least match their turnout level of 2004, if not increase it," said Scott Keeter, Pew's director of survey research. "Given the enormous lead Obama has among young voters, they'll be a key to whether he wins or not."

* How much do Americans care about their image in the world? *
Arguably, the opinions of foreigners have never counted for anything in US politics. Some of the most unpopular American presidents in the outside world - such as Reagan - were hugely popular at home, while those most concerned with the world - like Hoover and Carter - were domestic flops.

But the latest plunge in America's standing in the world, spurred by the policies of the Bush administration, has gotten some political attention at home, especially when linked to the administration's failure to persuade enough allies to share the costs of intervention in Iraq.

Obama has cited his own racial background and time spent in Indonesia as a reason why "the world will look at America differently when I'm president."

That argument drew voters to Obama during his primary race against Hillary Clinton. And he reinforced just how much his election could do to improve relations with US allies by staging a campaign-style rally in Berlin, attended by hundreds of thousands of adoring Germans.

Elsewhere in the world, from Europe to Asia, there has been intense scrutiny of the American election - and excitement over the Obama campaign. The global interest suggests that millions of foreigners might be prepared to change their opinions of the United States under a President Obama.

But in recent weeks, foreign policy has taken a back seat in the election, so it will be hard to judge how much an Obama victory would be a mandate to be more attentive to US allies. And it remains to be seen whether a President Obama would be able to meet the high expectations that American allies seem to have for him.

* What does it mean to be a conservative? *
The Republican coalition has been compared to a stool with three legs - strong national defense, low taxes, and conservative social values. It's never been a secret that many Republicans buy into only one or another of the three legs, but they've bought in strongly enough that their disagreements with the others haven't mattered. Recently, though, the stool has been wobbling.

Back in Easter of 2005, the president and both houses of Congress rushed back to Washington to intervene in the case of Terri Schiavo, a brain-damaged woman whose husband had chosen to remove her from a respirator. Polls showed vast majorities of Americans opposed to government intervention, but Bush and GOP congressional leaders pushed legislation through anyway.

That weekend was a triumph for abortion foes, but may have driven other Republicans away. Likewise, the unexpected toll in Iraq has sparked concerns among evangelicals, and the recent Wall Street meltdown has made many middle-class Republicans question their party's economic policies.

McCain is mostly aligned with the defense wing, but also has credibility as a budget cutter. He has tried to hold together all three conservative constituencies, even wooing social conservatives - who have long resisted him - with his pick of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his vice presidential nominee.

Still, his presidency, compared with Bush's, would probably reduce the impact of the religious right. And if McCain is defeated, the three branches of the GOP will have to decide whether to hang together - or go their own ways.

"They may choose to dampen down the role of social conservatives, a bit like the Democrats after the '80s really pushed down as much as they could on the African-American agenda," says Patterson. But in the short term, he said, much will depend on events outside the party's control, like the economy.

"If the economy's weak, they'll gain seats in Congress in two years," assuming that Democrats, as expected, maintain control of the House and the Senate, Patterson said. "They'll declare that the party's back."

But in what form will remain to be seen.

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2008/articles/2008/11/02/five_questi...

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business, mire...we had this one man who sent REALLY OLD stamps on his mail..but not just that, they were in such low denominations that the majority of the envelope was stamps...

Kevin and I are like online room-mates...or 'cellies' in Chubbs new lingo.. ;) and so we have spent a lot of time online together...we've discussed a lot of our communications with people online together...In fact, you guys should thank him because he has stopped me from saying a LOT more stupid things here than I have actually posted...he is a good talker-downer.. :)

Alice, thanks for all your help with Kevin and also with keeping this blog posted about how he is doing.

A Surge on One Channel, a Tight Race on Another
By JIM RUTENBERG
WASHINGTON — It was a lousy day to be Senator John McCain, Keith Olbermann informed his viewers on MSNBC on Thursday.

Senator Barack Obama’s surge in the polls was so strong he was competitive in Mr. McCain’s home state, Arizona. The everyman hero of Mr. McCain’s campaign, “Joe the Plumber,” failed to make an expected appearance at a morning rally in Defiance, Ohio, and the senator’s efforts to highlight Mr. Obama’s association with a professor tied to the P.L.O. were amounting to nothing.

Wait a minute ... not so fast. Click.

Things were looking up for Mr. McCain, Sean Hannity and Greta Van Susteren told their viewers on Fox News Channel on Thursday. He got a boost at an afternoon rally in Sandusky, Ohio, from none other than Joe the Plumber, who announced his intention to vote for “a real American, John McCain”; he was gaining new ground in ever-tightening polls, despite the overwhelming bias against him in the mainstream news media; and Mr. Obama’s association with a professor sympathetic to the P.L.O. was now at “the center of the election.”

On any given night, there are two distinctly, even extremely, different views of the presidential campaign offered on two of the three big cable news networks, Fox News Channel and MSNBC, a dual reality that is reflected on the Internet as well.

On one, polls that are “tightening” are emphasized over those that are not, and the rest of the news media is portrayed as papering over questions about Mr. Obama’s past associations with people who have purportedly anti-American tendencies that he has not answered. (“I feel like we are talking to the Germans after Hitler comes to power, saying, ‘Oh, well, I didn’t know,’ ” Ann Coulter, the conservative commentator, told Mr. Hannity on Thursday.)

On the other, polls that show tightening are largely ignored, and the race is cast as one between an angry and erratic Mr. McCain, whose desperate, misleading campaign has as low as a 4 percent chance of beating a cool, confident and deserving Democratic nominee in Mr. Obama. (“He’s been a good father, a good citizen, he’s paid attention to his country,” Chris Matthews, the MSNBC host, said Wednesday night in addressing those who might be leaning against Mr. Obama based on race. “Give the guy a break and think about voting for him.”)

And, perhaps unsurprisingly, each campaign is often at war against its television antagonist, just as the networks are at war with each other.

It is a political division of news that harks back to the way American journalism was through the first half of the 20th century, when newspapers had more open political affiliations. But it has never been so apparent in such a clear-cut way on television, a result of market forces and partisan sensibilities that are further chipping away at the post-Watergate pre-eminence of a more dispassionate approach.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/02/us/politics/02tube.html?_r=1&partner=r...

Don't get me started.. :)

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

GOP pollster: 'I cannot foresee' scenario where McCain wins

Filed by David Edwards and Andrew McLemore, 11/02/2008

It doesn't look good for Sen. John McCain.

Both campaigns have pushed polls that show their candidate in a position to win the presidential race, but a Republican pollster said it is highly unlikely McCain will triumph on Tuesday.

"I cannot foresee a scenario that John McCain is elected the President of the United States," pollster Frank Luntz said.

Luntz said the economic crisis was the downfall of McCain's campaign, which enjoyed a 10-day lead over Sen. Barack Obama that "collapsed" with the stock market in mid-September.

McCain told voters he can guarantee a win in the election, though it will be a close race, Radio Australia reported.

But polls show McCain continues to trail behind Obama in key states like Ohio.

"We are very competitive in those areas and we're going to have to just get out our vote and work very hard over the next nine days," McCain said.

Supporters of the GOP hopeful tend to agree with his disregard for the pre-election predictions based on the polls, Reuters reported.

"I don't care about the polls. I think they're designed to affect people's emotions," said photographer Jan Ogle.

But a confident Obama asked voters to be his "ambassadors" and "close the deal," CNN reported.

"In these last three days, we can't afford to slow down or sit back or let up ... not now, not when there's so much at stake," Obama said at a late rally in Springfield, Missouri, his third stop on Saturday.

The following audio is from BBC, broadcast on November 1, 2008...

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Frank_Luntz_I_cannot_foresee_scenario_1102...

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measures are in store for a lot more people...It's hard to separate ourselves from our finances...but a 'holiday' that allowed for such a thing would be really cool...livelihood is as important as money I guess..but hard to see in this country...and when neither is readily accessible...well...

Just another reason why I like you,alot ! ! :)

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

will be on MSNBC shortly.

CNN-Zakaria has a good show on now.

...
All the little chicks with their chrimson lips
Go "Cleveland rocks!", "Cleveland rocks!"
Livin' in sin with a safety pin
Go "Cleveland rocks!", "Cleveland rocks!"
"Cleveland rocks!", "Cleveland rocks!"
"Cleveland rocks!", "Cleveland rocks!"
"Cleveland rocks!", "Cleveland rocks!"

I've got some records from World War II
I play 'em just like me grandad do
He was a rocker and I am too
Go "Cleeeveland rocks!"
"Yeah Cleeeveland rocks!"

Cleveland rocks!, Cleveland rocks!

DICK CHENEY endorsed McCain.

-Submitted by MMRules on Sun, 11/02/2008 - 2:21pm.

Just another reason why I like you,alot ! ! ;)-

Wonder if they sold many..
Came out last year,too..I did not know that..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTxdKi77G20&eurl

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

to blatent...?

He should tell...

Cheney stars in new Obama campaign ad

By NEDRA PICKLER - Nov 2, 2008

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama highlights Vice President Dick Cheney's support for Republican nominee John McCain in a new ad out Sunday.

The ad opens by touting Obama's recent endorsements from investor Warren Buffett and former Secretary of State Colin Powell, then cuts to video of Cheney from an event Saturday in Wyoming.

"I'm delighted to support John McCain," Cheney says. "I'm pleased that he's chosen a running mate with executive talent, toughness and common sense, our next vice president Sarah Palin."

An announcer says McCain earned Cheney's support by voting with the White House 90 percent of the time. "That's not the change we need," he says.

The praise from Cheney, who routinely has some of the lowest approval ratings of any national political figure, came as Obama argues that McCain is too closely tied to the policies of the Bush administration.

Obama's campaign said the 30-second spot would run nationally on cable channels.

McCain's campaign responded by noting the issues on which McCain disagreed with the administration.

"It was John McCain who fought Vice President Cheney on Big Oil's energy bill, the administration's wasteful spending and argued for a different, successful course in Iraq, not Barack Obama," said McCain campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds.

---

On the Net:

http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/delighted_ad/

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Cheif of Staff for Ronald Reagan, just endorsed Obama on Fareed Zakaria's show.

He was asked by Zakaria "Clin Powell has endorsed Barak Obama, may I ask who you will vote for?"

Ken said "Colin Pwell gave his Seal of Approval to Obama and I think that was a wise choice."

Zakaria - "So you will vote for Obama?"

Ken - "Yes I will."

Obama campaign manager sees many paths to victory

Nov 2, 9:54 AM (ET)

WASHINGTON (AP) - Barack Obama's campaign manager says the Democrat has many routes to victory in Tuesday's presidential election. Republicans predicted predicted a historic comeback for John McCain.

Campaign manager David Plouffe said Sunday that Obama has expanded the electoral map by aggressively campaigning in traditional Republican states like Virginia, Colorado and Nevada. Plouffe said he did not want to wake up on Election Day with only one way to win.

He told "Fox News Sunday" that they "wanted a lot of different ways to win this election."

With McCain down in the polls, his campaign manager, Rick Davis, says Pennsylvania is the most important state to watch Tuesday. The state is leaning toward Obama in pre-election polls.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20081102/D946S0BO0.html

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that's for damn sure....

celebrating quite yet folks.Remember the last 2 elections.

They aren't just going to give it away without trying their best to cheat.

Do exit polling,look for voting iregularities and call your voter hotline.

We can start the party when the vote is official.

The whole planet is holding its breath

Good photo of Obama shaking hands with US servicemen in this story:
___________________________________________

McCain and Obama race to "slam-bang finish"

By John Whitesides, Political Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain hunted for support in the key industrial states of Ohio and Pennsylvania on Sunday in the final 48 hours of a White House race that appeared to be tilting to Obama.

The Illinois senator planned rallies in the three biggest cities in the showdown state of Ohio, and launched a new advertisement emphasizing ties between McCain and unpopular Vice President Dick Cheney.

"I'm delighted to support John McCain," Cheney says in the ad, shot at a campaign event on Saturday in Wyoming. He also praises McCain's running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. "That's not the change we need," the ad's announcer said.

McCain trails Obama in every national opinion poll and in many crucial battleground states ahead of Tuesday's vote, but aides said he was closing the gap at the end of a campaign that has lasted nearly two years and cost more than $2 billion.

"What we're in for is a slam-bang finish," McCain campaign manager Rick Davis said on "Fox News Sunday."

"He's been counted out before and won these kinds of states, and we're in the process of winning them right now," Davis said of big battleground states like Ohio, Florida and Virginia that are the focus of the race's final days as each candidate searches for the 270 electoral votes needed to win.

Opinion polls offer few signs to back up Davis's claim. McCain is struggling to defend about a dozen states won by Republican President George W. Bush in 2004, and polls show Obama ahead or running even in key states like Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Colorado, Indiana, North Carolina and Nevada.

A new poll in Ohio showed McCain with a 2-point advantage, although other surveys gave Obama a narrow edge.

McCain's prime hope of a breakthrough in a Democratic-leaning state is Pennsylvania, won by Democrats in the last four presidential elections. Obama has led in every opinion poll in the state this month, although his edge has narrowed from double digits to 4 to 7 points.

"I think that could be one of the bellwether states of this election," Davis said on ABC's "This Week."

"We were there yesterday. We're going back. It's a state that I think we can snatch from the Democrats and really be a part of our coalition for the election," he said.

'HUGE SURGE'

Davis also said McCain had seen a "huge surge" in support in recent days in three Western battlegrounds -- Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada -- and declared each of those states dead even.

Public polls in the last week show Obama ahead in all three by a minimum of 4 percentage points. Obama is playing offense in the last two days of the campaign, hitting Ohio, Florida, North Carolina and Virginia -- all won by Bush in 2004.

As Obama boarded his campaign plane for Ohio on Sunday morning in Missouri, a reporter asked how he would structure the $700 billion bailout of U.S. financial firms recently approved by Congress.

"We're on a tarmac," Obama replied. When the reporter asked why he would not hold a news conference, Obama said: "I will. On Wednesday."

A Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll on Sunday puts Obama's national lead at 6 percentage points. Other recent national polls put the advantage for Obama at between 4 points and 13 points with the race holding steady.

Obama's chief strategist, David Axelrod, noted Democrats have had an advantage in early voting in key states like Colorado and Florida.

"In Colorado last time, the Republicans had an 8-point edge in early voting. We have an edge now," Axelrod said on ABC's "This Week."

"In Florida, they finished early voting and absentee voting 40,000 votes ahead. We think we're going to have a 350,000 vote edge," he said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081102/pl_nm/us_usa_politics1

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Do you know why there was no mention of cheating in elections in 06? That freaked me out...

CNN Poll: Obama Keeps National Lead
A new CNN/Opinion Research poll shows Sen. Barack Obama maintains a seven point national lead over Sen. John McCain, 53% to 46%.

Said pollster Keating Holland: "Keep in mind that this is not a prediction of the final outcome. That's not an easy task with two full days of campaigning to go in a country in which roughly one in ten voters tend to make up their minds in the last few days."

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/11/02/obama-seven-points-ahead...

...
George Washington's Farewell address warned against the danger of political parties. Nevertheless, the two party system was formed during the administration of his successor, John Adams.

What do you think? Was George Washington correct in warning against political parties?

Is it time to end the current parties and open a free election with more choices?

"Between two stools lies the fall" - John Gower

"There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it." - Oscar Wilde

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977484081

They cheated in 06' but the turnout was too big and obvious

Lets hope it is on tue. also.

Or.they wanted to lose so they could blame everything on the dems. and they knew that they had Pelosi and Reed in their pockets

Has to go.I hope sheehan beats her but good.

I cant wait to say the words Sen Al Franken and Pres. Obama

But i wont get ahead of myself.

God I cant wait till this is over

English Townsfolk destroy Palin effigy with explosives
Submitted by gbasin on Sun, 11/02/2008 - 1:15pm.
BATTLE, England (CNN)

*******

Hee..
And,A Good Time Was Had By All ! ;)

(That's a joke,NSA man..) :)

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

From ABC News this morning,

Obama's senior strategist David Axelrod talks about the campaigns final days and the early voting:

http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/?rn=3906861&cl=10497513&ch=...

Does anyone have any solid statistics to verify that almost one third of the votes have already been cast in early voting??

~ ~ ~

Starting at about 38 minutes. Geraldine Ferraro at Regents University endorses Barack Obama!!!!!

WOW!!!!!!!!! I haven't read this anywhere. But she implied it plain as day on October 24th.

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Meanwhile in other world news

Soup kitchen opens for dogs, wardog strictly prohibited

Fri Oct 31, 2008

BERLIN (Reuters) – A soup kitchen exclusively for dogs has opened its doors in Berlin providing pets of the homeless and unemployed with a free meal, the director of the establishment said on Friday.

Despite the looming financial crisis, director Claudia Hollm dismissed criticism that it may be more sensible to collect money for humans than for dogs.

"Nowadays people underestimate dogs. They are incredibly important for those who lack social contact with other humans," Hollm told Reuters.

"Making sure dogs don't go hungry is just as important as making sure that people don't starve," she added.

Hollm, and her company "Animal Board," gets sponsorship from companies, including animal food manufacturers.

One woman who uses the free service said she had two dogs, four cats, a rabbit and some guinea pigs.

"Without this animal bread line, I'd probably starve to death," the 20-year old told German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

Also, because this is strictly an humanitarian effort, aggressive ignorant wardogs will be strictly prohibited.

The opening of the soup kitchen follows last month's launch of a new bus service in Berlin for dogs, which shuttles their furry friends to a luxury dog day-care center.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081031/od_nm/us_dogs;_ylt=AsZEEBmnMmlPi9Obl...

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Naked pumpkin runners ticketed in Colorado

Sun Nov 2, 2008

BOULDER, Colo. – Boulder police have ticketed about a dozen people running naked on the street while sporting freshly gutted pumpkins on their heads as part of an annual Halloween event.

The citations for indecent exposure Friday night came as dozens of other costumed revelers, including a man with a red cape and a sword, chanted to police officers to let go of the streakers and "find real criminals."

The event known in Boulder as the Naked Pumpkin Run has been held for 10 years. This year it drew a huge crowd, prompting concern from police.

Boulder police Chief Mark Beckner says officers "wanted to do something before (the event) got out of hand."
___

Information from: Daily Camera, http://www.dailycamera.com/

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081102/ap_on_fe_st/odd_naked_pumpkin_run;_y...

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PA GOP Ad Hits Obama Over Wright
The Pennsylvania GOP is up with a new ad highlighting Obama's association with Rev. Wright, complete with "God damn America" footage.

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/11/pennsylvania_gop...

Amid gloom, young see vote as act of hope

By JULIANA BARBASSA, Nov 2, 2008

Getting ready to cast her first vote, 19-year-old Elizabeth Jimenez considers all that's at stake in her choice of president: the tanking economy in which she'll start her career. The dwindling medical benefits that support her bedridden sister. The failed promise of immigration reform to help her Mexican-born father.

"It's so much bigger than myself," said the sophomore at College of the Sequoias, in Visalia, Calif.

Newspaper headlines promise layoffs and record the death toll in wars where Jimenez has friends and a cousin. The pressure of keeping her 10-person household afloat threatens her goal of becoming a doctor. The din in the living room where she sleeps and studies makes it hard to do homework.

But in spite of the deep uncertainty facing those just starting out in life, young, first-time voters interviewed around the country are eager to participate. Yes, times are tough, they say, but casting a ballot is an act of hope, a bet on a better future.

"America's always been the place where dreams come true," says Jimenez, who will become the first in her immigrant family to hang hopes on a ballot. "Our votes can add up, make sure it stays that way."

Halfway across the country, 21-year-old Sahar Meghani is also upbeat and pragmatic despite the country's gloomy outlook.

"You just have to go after your own opportunities. They won't come to you," said the University of Houston finance major, whose dark pantsuit and pearls telegraphed her drive to find a job.

Saying students should "study the candidates just like we study for a test," she notes that soon "we'll be the ones in control of the economy."

The political debut Tuesday for young voters like these comes in an election already marked by historical firsts.

Young voters broke turnout records. They doubled and in some cases tripled their presence in caucuses like Iowa, energized by the heated contest deciding whether, for the first time, a woman or a black candidate became the Democratic nominee. They responded to intensive youth outreach from Republican and Democratic campaigns by volunteering, and used social networks to amplify their own opinions.

In cafes, dorm rooms and at work, they dissected candidates' positions on the economy, the wars, and everything else. In 2008, building on trends in the last two election cycles, the potent mix of personally relevant issues and charismatic candidates could mark the under-25 crowd's breakthrough as political players with clout, experts said.

"We have factors that will likely result in the highest youth vote on record," said John Della Volpe, director of polling at Harvard University's Institute of Politics. Its survey of political attitudes among 18- to 24-year-olds found nearly seven in 10 saw political engagement as an effective way of solving the country's problems...

YOUTH VOTING STORY CONTINUES:

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20081102/D946UA000.html

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Still More Polls Show Obama And McCain Splitting Key Red States -- But Obama Winning Overall
By Eric Kleefeld - November 2, 2008, 1:35PM
Still another round of battleground state polling -- this one from Mason-Dixon -- shows Barack Obama and John McCain splitting seven key Bush states by narrow margins.

If these numbers hold up, it would mean an overall victory for Obama:

• Colorado: Obama 49%, McCain 44%.

• Florida: Obama 47%, McCain 45%.

• Missouri: McCain 47%, Obama 46%.

• Nevada: Obama 47%, McCain 43%.

• North Carolina: McCain 49%, Obama 46%.

• Ohio: McCain 47%, Obama 45%.

• Virginia: Obama 47%, McCain 43%.

All these polls have a margin of error of ±4%. The four states where Obama is ahead add up to 54 electoral votes, with another 46 votes in the states where McCain is ahead. And all 100 of those electoral votes went to Bush last time. If Obama holds the Kerry states, and tacks on those 46 -- heck, if he tacks on another 18 -- he's the next President.

Mason-Dixon has tended to paint a rosier picture for McCain than other pollsters out there, and even they are in effect forecasting a McCain loss.

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/11/still_more_polls...

Dems hold big edge in Florida in early and absentee voting

Rob Barry, Marc Caputo and Scott Hiaasen | Miami Herald, November 01, 2008

A huge increase in early voting has given Democrats a decided advantage over Republicans in Florida -- a major departure from statewide voting trends four years ago, according to a Miami Herald analysis of early and absentee ballots cast so far this year.

Through Thursday, Democrats cast 46 percent of the 3.4 million early and absentee votes in Florida, while Republicans cast 38 percent.

That's a big shift since 2004, when Democrats were outvoted 44 percent to 41 percent by Republicans in early and absentee ballots, according to a study of Florida voting data.

The recent Democratic gains have been most pronounced in early voting, where Democrats have outnumbered Republicans by 432,000 out of nearly two million voters.

Black voters have made the difference, accounting for 16 percent of the early and absentee voters so far -- with 86 percent of them registered Democrats. In 2004, black turnout for early and absentee voting was a bit more than 10 percent of the total.

Black turnout has been especially high in the state's urban areas. In Broward County, blacks accounted for 39 percent of all early voters at the polls through Thursday; in Miami-Dade County, it was 30 percent. In Orange County, 30 percent of all voters were black; in Duval County, it was 36 percent.

GOP STRONGHOLD

Party affiliations do not necessarily predict voter behavior, particularly in North Florida, where many registered Democrats are philosophically aligned with the GOP. But Democratic Party leaders say the early-voting trends show that they have shaved away the Republican Party's advantages in the state.

By Thursday, early-voting numbers for the state already had smashed the total 2004 turnout by nearly 38 percent. Absentee ballots so far have also exceeded the total cast four years ago.

Already, nearly one-third of all registered Democrats and Republicans in Florida have cast a ballot. Duval elections supervisor Jerry Holland said he expects as many as 45 percent of the state's votes could be in before Election Day.

With similar turnout booms around the country, observers say the election could be historic.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/104/story/55125.html

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Title: RUSSIAN STUFFED PUMPKIN
Categories: Desserts, Russian
Yield: 8 Servings

4 lb Pumpkin
1 1/2 c Long-grain rice
2 lg Tart cooking apples (like
-Granny Smith), peeled,
-cored and diced
1/2 c Golden raisins
1/2 c Dried sour cherries
-(available in specialty
-food stores)
8 tb (1 stick) unsalted butter,
-melted
1 tb Sugar or more to taste
3/4 ts Ground cinnamon
Salt to taste
1/4 c Hot water

This spectacular stuffed pumpkin can be the centerpiece of your
Thanksgiving table. Pumpkin is stuffed with rice, apples, raisins
and sour cherries, then baked.

Cut the stem end of the pumpkin as if you were about to carve a jack
o'lantern. Set aside "lid". Remove insides of pumpkin and discard
(or save to roast and munch on). Using a grapefruit knife or melon
baller, scoop out the flesh of the pumpkin as much as you can without
piercing the skin. Chop flesh and set aside.

In lg saucepan, bring 3 qts of salted water to boil and dump in the
rice. Cook over high heat, covered until still a bit hard to the
bite...about 15 minutes. Drain well.

Meanwhile, preheat oven to 325 degrees.

In large bowl, combine, pumpkin, partially cooked rice, raisins,
dried sour cherries and melted butter. Season with sugar, salt and
cinamon. Spoon stuffing loosely into pumpkin, sprinkle with the hot
water and put "lid" on tightly. Place on baking sheet and bake till
pumpkin is tender to a point of a knife...about 2 hrs. Cut into
wedges and serve.

Serves 8

I got it from here.

Has anyone tried it?

are saying that they will believe the young voters when they see them. Obama signed up a bunch of new young voters but so far there is no evidence they are voting.

I wish I could find an article to dispute this.

Amid 'godless' ad furor, polls find Dole running behind in North Carolina

Lisa Zagaroli | McClatchy Newspapers, October 31, 2008

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — U.S. Senate candidate Kay Hagan launched legal action against Sen. Elizabeth Dole's "godless" attack ad Thursday as a chorus of critics joined her in accusing Dole of crossing the line with the controversial TV spot.

Democratic challenger Hagan, in a new ad of her own, accused the Republican incumbent of "bearing false witness against fellow Christians" when Dole suggested she was affiliated with a group of atheists who want to remove references to God from the public arena.

Dole continued to defend the ad, saying it "in no way attacks her faith, it questions her agenda."

But even Republicans — including strategists Ed Rollins and Carter Wrenn — roundly criticized Dole's eleventh-hour strategy for winning re-election to her Senate seat.

"When you're making ads that say, 'There is no God,' it usually means your campaign doesn't have a prayer,” said Alex Castellanos, a GOP consultant speaking Thursday on CNN. He's familiar with controversial ads — he created former Sen. Jesse Helms' infamous "white hands" ad suggesting opponent Harvey Gantt supported racial quotas that would take away jobs from white people.

Rollins, a longtime GOP political adviser, told CNN: "They did something desperate, which is so despicable and so un-like Elizabeth Dole that she should be ashamed of herself. "

Hagan Thursday filed notice of her intent to sue in Wake Superior Court, claiming statements in the ad are false and defamatory.

The court document highlights the ad's ending, which shows Hagan's photo but uses another woman's voice saying "There is no God."

Hagan, a Sunday school teacher and elder at her Presbyterian church in Greensboro, also aired a rebuttal ad Thursday, charging that Dole "faked my voice…to make you think I don't believe in God."

A new Rasmussen poll, taken Wednesday after the Dole ad began airing, showed Hagan ahead of Dole 52-46. A new survey by Civitas, taken Monday through Wednesday, showed Hagan up by a smaller margin.

Dole's ad focuses on Hagan's attendance at a Boston fundraiser hosted by 35 people aiming to maintain a Democratic majority in the Senate. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., headlined the printed invitation.

The fundraiser was held at the home of Woody Kaplan, an adviser to the Godless Americans PAC, a group that wants to remove references to God from U.S. currency and the Pledge of Allegiance, among other things. Kaplan said the group had no connection to the reception he held.

Dole's ad airs video footage, shot by the National Republican Senatorial Committee, of Hagan standing beside a man at the fundraiser, as the announcer talks about a leader of the Godless Americans hosting a fundraiser.

Ironically, the man standing with her is actually her former Bible teacher, Rick Stone, who moved to Boston after retiring as a religion professor from Guilford and Greensboro Christian colleges.

"The idea that Kay Hagan is an atheist or promoting an atheist agenda is false," said Stone, who is now studying at the Harvard divinity school.

A Dole spokesman said Thursday the campaign has received positive feedback from folks appalled to learn that Hagan attended the fundraiser even though Dole had publicized in advance that it was being held at the home of a Godless Americans adviser.

Dole, who is on a bus tour of North Carolina, said in a phone interview that Hagan made the ad fair game by attacking her for attending a fundraiser at the home of a Bush supporter, and also by accusing Dole of being "in the pocket of Big Oil" because some of her contributors work for energy companies.

The ad "turns the table on her," Dole said, asking "why in the world" Hagan would attend knowing the host's affiliation.

Campaigning at a Raleigh early voting site, Hagan called the ad "despicable."

Her rebuttal ad, which began airing Thursday, features Hagan saying: "My faith guides my life and Senator Dole knows it…My campaign is about creating jobs and fixing our economy, not bearing false witness against fellow Christians."

Hagan has 20 days to file a full lawsuit, but defamation suits are hard to win, legal experts say.

"There are a host of reasons this is not likely to be viable," said Amanda Martin, a Raleigh lawyer specializing in First Amendment law. "Political speech is at the very heart of what is protected by the First Amendment."

But such suits can take years to resolve: North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper is still defending himself from a defamation suit stemming from an ad in his 2000 election.

While Dole's ad aims to motivate the GOP's conservative Christian base, longtime GOP strategist Wrenn says the ad could backfire if respected Hagan supporters argue in their own ads that Dole "crosses the line of decency."

Wrenn wrote: "My guess is the next sound you may hear will be the roof falling in on Liddy Dole."

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/100/story/55053.html

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Conservative Columnist Robert Novak:

Obama bound for huge Electoral College win

ROBERT D. NOVAK, novakevans@aol.com - November 2, 2008

WASHINGTON -- The biennial state-by-state, district-by-district rundown of Tuesday's election by the Evans-Novak Political Report points to a huge Electoral College victory by Sen. Barack Obama, though short of the total blowout that some have predicted, with Democrats significantly increasing their majorities in the Senate and House.

If the election were held today, Tim Carney, senior reporter for the Evans-Novak Political Report, sees formerly Republican states such as Virginia and Colorado moving into the Democratic column.

Carney's latest rundown shows an Electoral College victory for Obama of 286-252 -- a landslide, but not of 1936 proportions.

The rundown also shows Democrats either at or close to the filibuster-proof Senate total of 60 seats.

We see Democrats winning 58 Senate seats and 254 House seats, with Sen. Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina among the Republican victims.

The appeal of Obama has been enhanced by the economic crisis and the federal bailout, which have caused problems for Republican candidates.

Sen. John McCain's desperate condition is shown by Carney's analysis, which bases an election victory on winning Pennsylvania, which seems to be firmly in Obama's hands.

Some projections of an Electoral College tie, which would create serious constitutional problems, are based on McCain winning both New Hampshire and Virginia, which seems unlikely.

The serious Republican problems have been enhanced by an adept Obama campaign and an inept McCain campaign, plus the difficulty of many Republican candidates dealing with the $700 billion financial bailout.

We have been forecasting election results since the 1968 election with a good degree of accuracy. The last time Carney did most of the analysis was 2004, when he called the returns almost perfectly.

Carney feels this year that a McCain victory is not absolutely out of the question if all of the cards fall correctly, but is still very unlikely, while big Democratic gains on Capitol Hill seem close to certain.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/novak/1254890,CST-NWS-novak02.article

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nail biting update
Submitted by Fernando on Sat, 11/01/2008 - 11:41pm.
Texas 33, Texas Tech 32.
4th Qtr 1:29 min left.

Tech getting the ball at the kick off.
*******
Tech wins
Submitted by Fernando on Sat, 11/01/2008 - 11:47pm.
oh the horror
*******
Where Nothing Makes Sense
Submitted by Crank Bait on Sun, 11/02/2008 - 12:00am.
Tech wins
Submitted by Fernando on Sat, 11/01/2008 - 11:47pm.
oh the horror.
-----
"Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown."
*******

Double Crap !

**
Don't mind me..
I'm in a time warp,as usual.. :)

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

sir overtone I have that uneasy feeling in the gut. I took my pro-biotics and I still don't trust the government that won't leave

W. Bush's political guru Karl Rove's latest electoral predictions:

Obama - 311

McCain - 160

Toss Ups - 67

His final predictions will be out tomorrow:

http://rove.com/election

-

sick2death of popups:

Reid Says Stevens Cannot Serve
By John Stanton
Roll Call Staff
November 2, 2008, 1:07 a.m.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) was forced into the middle of Sen. Ted Stevens’ (R-Alaska) re-election bid late Saturday night after a senior Senate Democrat endorsed Stevens and called on voters to disregard his seven-count felony conviction.

In a bluntly worded release from his office, Reid warned that Stevens would not only face an ethics investigation but also expulsion proceedings regardless of his efforts to appeal the convictions.

Reid’s decision to jump into the Alaska Senate race with both feet marks the first time a leading national Democrat has explicitly warned that Stevens’ ouster from the Senate would be sought. GOP leaders including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) have already called for him to step down or face expulsion.

Reid also rebuffed comments made by Sen. Daniel Inouye (Hawaii), one of the chamber’s senior Democrats who had previously endorsed Stevens, and who has reaffirmed that sentiment since his conviction last month.

In a statement released by the Stevens campaign, Inouye argues that his longtime friend will be seated as a Member of the Senate next year if re-elected and that he believes the felony convictions will be overturned.

“As the Senate has done in every other instance in its long 220-year history, I am absolutely confident that Ted Stevens will be sworn into the Senate while he appeals this unjust verdict, I am certain that this decision in Washington, D.C., will be overturned on appeal,” Inouye said.

But Reid rejected that reading of Senate history and chastised Stevens for using his friend in a political campaign.

“While I respect the opinion of Senator Daniel Inouye, the reality is that a convicted felon is not going to be able to serve in the United States Senate. And as precedent shows us, Senator Stevens will face an ethics committee investigation and expulsion, regardless of his appeals process,” Reid said.

“This is not a partisan issue and it is unfortunate that Senator Stevens has used his long time friendship with Senator Inouye for partisan political gain,” he added.

Stevens is locked in a tight race with Democratic Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich.

--30--

'SNL' Skewers Olbermann As A Pompous Dishonest Buffoon

"Saturday Night Live" absolutely skewered MSNBC's Keith Olbermann last night accurately depicting the "Countdown" host as a pompous, dishonest buffoon who regularly takes things completely out of context, or just plain makes things up, in order to lambast Republicans.

Frankly, it was shocking to see an NBC program so aggressively attack a fellow employee, and to watch the excessively liberal actor Ben Affleck, playing the part of Olbermann, participate in the skit.

This must-see video is embedded below the fold with a rough transcript:

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2008/11/02/snl-skewers-olberm...

KEITH OLBERMANN PLAYED BY BEN AFFLECK: Good evening. I'm Keith Olbermann. Our fifth story in the "Countdown," that he is the worst president in our nation's 220-year existence -- indeed, the worst president ever to head a government of any kind of the whole human history is beyond dispute. But even Mr. Bush's harshest critics had until this week credited him with a modicum of human decency -- a decency utterly belied by the tape you are presently to see, a tape at which a White House press conference, Mr. Bush abruptly launches into a stream of ugly racist invective that would embarrass even David Duke. We turn now to Michael Hilyard, board member of the New York/New Jersey branch of the NAACP. As always Michael, great thanks for your time.

MICHAEL HILYARD PLAYED BY KENAN THOMPSON: Happy to be here, Keith.

AFFLECK: Michael, given the vile nature of his racist tirade, should not Mr. Bush immediately resign?

THOMPSON: Well, Keith, I haven't really seen the tape. Is it really that bad?

AFFLECK: It is without question one of the most repellant displays of bigotry I have ever witnessed.

TAPE OF PRESIDENT BUSH: "...and to conduct a full-scale investigation to hunt down and find those folks who committed this act."

THOMPSON: I'm sorry. Is that the whole tape? I'll be honest, I'm not really seeing the racism there.

AFFLECK: "To find the folks."

THOMPSON: Folks?

AFFLECK: Well, he obviously meant African Americans.

[ Laughter]

THOMPSON: Really? Well, it didn't hit me that way.

AFFLECK: "We will find the folks."

THOMPSON: Yeah. Also in that clip he's talking about al Qaeda, whose members are entirely Middle Eastern and not black.

AFFLECK: So we have a president who is not only a racist, but also an imbecile.

THOMPSON: Well no, that's not what I meant.

AFFLECK: Michael Hilyard of the NAACP, it's always so great. Thanks for your time.

THOMPSON: No, no, that's not what I meant.

[Laughter]

AFFLECK: On our fourth story of the "Countdown" -- in his last and desperate moments, the McCain presidential campaign has decided to get its "Nazi" on. Asked at a Toledo rally yesterday to justify the invasion of Iraq, the Arizona senator said, "When a brutal dictator threatens his neighbors the responsible democratic government simply must act. Hitler is a good example." So let me get this straight, senator, Nazi Germany was a responsible democratic government and Hitler was not only good, but indeed in your words, "a good example"? We're joined now by our own Richard Wolffe, senior White House correspondent for "Newsweek" magazine. Good evening, Richard.

RICHARD WOLFFE PLAYED BY FRED ARMISON: Hi, Keith.

AFFLECK: Richard, as you know, throughout this campaign, I have frequently called for Senator McCain's arrest. But with this latest celebration of all things Nazi, has not McCain crossed the line, and for the good of the country, should he not straight away resign?

ARMISON: Keith, I too have been critical of Senator McCain. But to suggest that he has Nazi sympathies I think is rather outrageous.

AFFLECK: Courageous?

[Laughter]

I suppose. It's certainly not the first time I've been called that. That started in high school with my editorials for the school radio station, and my work as the equipment manager for the cross country team. Courageous? Sure. Guilty as charged.

ARMISON: No, no. Outrageous. Not courageous. Outrageous.

AFFLECK: Richard Wolffe, senior White House correspondent.

ARMISON: Keith, Keith, please don't cut me off.

AFFLECK: Thanks for your time.

ARMISON: I didn't mean it.

AFFLECK: Ahead on the "Countdown," my bid for a three-bedroom apartment on Manhattan's upper west side is rejected by the building's co-op board. Ostensibly because my cat is not allowed under its policy of banning pets. Tonight, my special comment. But first, on this date in 1903, Eric Blair was born under the pen name George Orwell. He wrote two of the 20th century's most consequential books -- "Animal Farm" and "1984," both of which I have read.

[Laughter]

The first when I was only 19. I have known his real name was Eric Blair since senior year at Cornell. As the leading visionary of his age, were he alive today, Orwell would no doubt admire me greatly. My eloquence, my passion, and perhaps most of all, my ferocious integrity.

And now "Countdown's" Worst Person in the World! To "Newsweek" senior correspondent Richard Wolffe once an actual journalist. Mr. Wolffe is now a full-time water carrier for the Nazi wing of the Republican Party! Hey, Richard, how much is Halliburton paying you? I hope it's not paying you in oil!

[ Laughter] Seriously, Richard, why not preserve what tiny scraps of dignity you still have left and resign? Richard Wolffe, McCain campaign butt boy today's "Worst Person in the World!"

And now as promised, a special comment. The letter was brief and to the point. "Dear Mr. Olbermann," it read. "The co-op board, having reviewed your request for an exception to its 'no pets' policy in order to accommodate your cat, Miss Precious Perfect, regretfully concludes that in consideration of the rights of the other co-op residents, such an exception is not possible at this time. Sincerely Richard Lieberstein, co-op president."

And there it was. All perfectly legal. Like the 1942 internment of more than 100,000 Japanese American citizens. Or the forced relocation of the Cherokee on the trail of tears. Or the monstrous injustice of our nation's Jim Crow laws. It was all perfectly legal, and every bit as wrong. If not indeed more so! Mr. Lieberstein, you speak of considerations of the rights of others. How dare you, sir? How dare you? Where, sir, in any of this were the rights of Miss Precious Perfect considered? Damn you Mr. Lieberstein, damn you to hell! No, Mr. Lieberstein -- your decision is not based on consideration but on fear. Fear of the carpets stained, of deliverymen clawed, of kitty litter, boxes tipped over, of hairballs coughed up! We have seen this fear before in Cambodia under Pol Pot. In Russia under Stalin. In Massachusetts under Mitt Romney. It is the fear, sir, and the tyranny of with which we dare no longer put. I pray thee, sir, let us have done with it. And what of the building's other residents? The Donnellys in 7a. The Gaspens in 4b. The gay guys in the garden apartment. Their silence is deafening. See they not that horror to which the Liebersteins have so willingly blinded themselves? This, sir, is a genocide! A feline genocide. And so the verdict is rendered, there is no appeal. Miss Precious Perfect, my mother and I, shall find another apartment. For me, the financial damage is negligible. For Miss Precious Perfect, the psychological damage, incalculable. Still, one imperative remains. Mr. Lieberstein, sir, if you yet retain any trace of honor, you must at once resign as president of this co-op, indeed, sir, justice and decency demands you so to do! Good night. Good luck.

I certainly don't agree with this blogger's spin on Oberman and Countdown, but I must thank him for transcribing the skit...
*
************
*************************

"The Once and Future Rajah of Bhong."

High black voter turnout could tip Georgia to Democrats

Matt Barnwell | McClatchy Newspapers - October 31, 2008

MACON, Ga. — Phillis Malone had never gotten involved in voter registration drives before.

But this summer, when the Macon chapter of the NAACP asked her to help sign up new voters through Habersham Music, the Pio Nono record store she owns, Malone couldn't say no.

"I just wanted to do it because there needs to be a change in this country," she said. "The only way you can change things is to vote."

Malone said she helped add about 100 voters to the Georgia rolls in a little less than two months. A few were white. Some were Hispanic. But most of them, she said, were black.

Malone played a small part in organized efforts across the state this year that have boosted the number of newly registered black voters to nearly 240,000, almost 30 percent more than were registered in the 10 months before the 2004 election. Black voters now make up close to a third of Georgia's registered voters. How they turn out in this election — where they're expected in substantial numbers — could decide the state's presidential pick and the U.S. Senate race.

As of Friday, 35 percent of more than 1.76 million Georgia voters who'd cast ballots early were black. That number is a good bit higher than the proportion of black voters in past presidential elections here, where they have made up less than a quarter of the electorate, according to political scientists.

"There's some room to grow there," said Mike Digby, chairman of the department of Government and Sociology at Georgia College & State University in Milledgeville. "I would expect the black voter turnout is going to wind up being higher."

That's important because black voters overwhelmingly pick Democrats — to the tune of more than 90 percent, political experts say. And Barack Obama's historic symbolism to African-Americans could push that percentage even higher this year. A surge in black voters could make Obama the first presidential candidate from his party to win Georgia since Bill Clinton eked out a plurality in 1992.

For many black voters, the impetus to participate has been excitement over Obama's candidacy. That's coupled with a more general dissatisfaction over the economy and Republican leadership during the past eight years. Together, that all fuels expectations of very high black-voter turnout — perhaps enough to decide the state.

Black turnout that boosts Obama likely would trickle down the ballot. That would be a boon for U.S. Rep. Jim Marshall, a conservative Democrat in a tight race with Republican challenger Rick Goddard. Although a poll conducted last weekend put Goddard within four points of Marshall, it also showed the congressman leading his opponent 9-1 among black voters. The implication: If more black residents vote, Marshall won't face so close a race.

If large numbers of black voters boost Obama and Marshall, they'll also undermine the re-election efforts of U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss. The Republican, whose re-election looked like a sure thing six months ago, is now trying to fend off a full court press from the national Democratic Party and his challenger, Jim Martin.

Conventional wisdom suggests an influx of black residents voting for Obama won't help the Republican Senate incumbent.

"It is really hard to imagine what the Obama-Chambliss voter looks like," Grant said.

If one in three Georgia voters who turn out is African-American, "it is a very good thing for the Democrats," said Chris Grant, a Mercer University political science professor. "You would go from under-performing to over-performing. And if it happens, Georgia will definitely be picked up for the Democrats."

There's a history of voters choosing candidates who share their ethnic or religious identity when they're on a major presidential ticket for the first time, Grant said. It happened for Catholic voters and John F. Kennedy in 1960, Italian-Americans and Geraldine Ferraro in 1984 and Jewish voters and Joe Lieberman in 2000.

Al Tillman, the president of the Macon chapter of the NAACP, has seen the increased interest among black voters. Local members worked over the summer to register new voters, a standard part of their mission.

However, Tillman said he was struck by the number of local "mom and pop" businesses — barber shops, Habersham's record store, day care centers — who for the first time also got in on the act. They signed up more new voters than his organization did, Tillman said.

"Everybody was interested in registering people to vote during this particular election," Tillman said. "It makes our job not as hard now. For the most part, we haven't found that many people that are not registered to vote."

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/55109.html

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Too socialist? I don't want to offend anyone.

Really?

Chuck Todd: If McCain Wins All Toss-Ups He Still Loses
John Aravosis (DC) · 11/02/2008 12:12:00 PM ET · Link
Make a comment · reddit · FARK · Digg It! · Stumble It!

Tom Brokaw with Chuck Todd on Meet the Press, 11/2/08. Video at link

Brokaw: And Chuck, what about voter turnout and especially the organization of the two campaigns getting their people to the polls?

Todd: Well, we're seeing a lot of the early voting, a lot of long lines that's made folks question whether Georgia, South Carolina could end up being much closer than people thought because of this surge among voters, particularly African-Americans. And of course we've watched everything that's been happening in Florida and North Carolina this weekend, Tom.

Brokaw: And why would John McCain be spending so much time in Pennsylvania and New Hampshire in the final weekend, Chuck?

Todd: Well, it's a simple math problem that he's got. Heres our columns here. Im going to put all of the current tossup states in McCain's column and watch his number as it grows right up here. If you move all of these states over, Indiana, North Dakota, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, Ohio, Florida, and Nevada -- you see the problem he's got. He's still at 252. 18 short. So what does that mean? If he pulls a Pennsylvania over, we see Obama goes down to 265, McCain gets his 273. Then you ask why New Hampshire? Thats the insurance policy. Nevada, a state that Obama right now has that narrow lead in, if that went to him, then McCain would need New Hampshire to get back over his 270. So it is the only path he's got left. They know this and that's why they had to figure out how to put Pennsylvania back in play. We don't know if it really is. We know he's spending a lot of time there and they had to figure out if New Hampshire, a state that's been incredibly kind to McCain's political career in the past, to see if it can resurrect him one more time.

http://www.americablog.com/2008/11/chuck-todd-if-mccain-wins-all-toss-up...

No one is counting Stevens out in his re-election campaign

Sean Cockerham | Anchorage Daily News, November 01, 2008

STERLING, Alaska — Days after a Washington D.C. jury found him guilty of seven felonies, U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens stood in the cold outside a senior center and rejected the possibility that a single Republican supporter in Alaska has turned against him.

"I don’t believe it," Stevens said. "Not one person has said that to me."

Alaska hasn't elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in nearly 30 years. Stevens himself joined the Senate in 1968, after Gov. Wally Hickel appointed him to the seat that opened when E.L. "Bob" Bartlett died after heart surgery in Cleveland. Stevens hasn't faced a close election since — until this year's battle with Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich.

Begich and Stevens are making a last minute push with just two days before the election. Stevens was on the Kenai Peninsula Friday and in Fairbanks Saturday, while Begich held his own rallies in Juneau and Homer. Both seemed to be targeting voters likely already sympathetic to them, rather than making a big push to change minds on the other side.

If anyone can get elected to the U.S. Senate after a guilty verdict, it's Stevens, said Gerald McBeath, political science professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. "He’s been there for years, he's delivered so much to the state and made so many people in the state indebted to him," McBeath said.

But the fact is some Republicans, such as state party central committee member Spike Jorgenson of Tok, say they've had enough and are voting for a third party candidate this year. Stevens has also lost the support of independent voters like Shannon Wyatt, who teaches at Soldotna Middle School.

Wyatt was in a Kaladi Brothers coffee shop in Soldotna on Friday when Stevens, a handful of campaign aides and Stevens’ daughter, Susan Covich, a substitute teacher in the Kenai public schools, stopped by on a campaign trip to the Peninsula. Wyatt, who has voted for Stevens in the past, said in an interview that people assume all politicians are corrupt.

"But for me, it can’t be proven they are and still expect me to vote for them," Wyatt said.

The 84-year-old Stevens walked up to the counter of the Kaladi Brothers and bought coffee for his staffers from the barista, a teenager dressed as an American Indian for Halloween. She seemed unfazed by the appearance of a senator who’s both an Alaska icon and, in recent weeks, has been portrayed nationally as a symbol of what’s wrong in Congress.

Stevens and his small entourage walked through the Peninsula Center mall. Some shoppers, like Dan Mason, bounded over to Stevens to shake his hand and wish him victory.

"I think he's a good man," Mason said later. "He ought to appeal and come out a little bit cleaner."

A couple of young women excitedly asked to have their picture taken with Stevens. But an older woman, selling homemade jams in the mall, gave Stevens a skeptical hello. "Not my favorite person," she muttered after the senator walked on.

Later that night in Kenai, children gathered for "trunk or treat," a local Halloween tradition where people fill their trunks with candy in the Boys and Girls Club parking lot and kids go from car to car. Stevens, famous for his temper in the U.S. Senate, put giant Incredible Hulk mitts on his hands and seemed to delight in play-boxing with some of the kids.

The mitts made sounds: "You're making me angry!" they declared. "You won’t like me when I’m angry!" Stevens passed out peppermint balls to kids dressed as "Star Wars" characters, witches and Power Rangers. One child was dressed as an FBI agent. He did not stop by Stevens' trunk for candy.

Stevens has received a hero's welcome at rallies since returning to Alaska last week following the verdict. Around 150 people jammed into small office space in a Soldotna strip mall Friday to support the senator. People hugged him, told him they loved him, urged him to keep up the fight. People had memories of something Stevens' office had done for them, or a local project he’d supported that got built.

"I think he's going to be re-elected, I really do," said Tom Bearup, a one-time mayor of Soldotna. "This man is a man who has paid the price. He probably hasn't done anything the rest of them haven't done."

Stevens told his supporters he’ll be vindicated on appeal and legal scholars would study his case as an example of prosecutorial abuse of power, with the federal government giving the jury false information and manipulating evidence.

He compared it to the 2006 case of the Duke University lacrosse players wrongly accused by a local prosecutor of rape before the North Carolina state attorney's office concluded there was no credible evidence an attack occurred. Stevens' Washington D.C. lawyer, Brendan Sullivan, was one of the attorneys representing the lacrosse players.

"I don't think senators are entitled to special privilege, but if they can do this to a senator, what can they do to anybody!" Stevens said, to cheers. "You fought for us, we’ll fight for you!" somebody yelled.

Last week a federal jury found Stevens guilty of lying on financial disclosure forms about thousands of dollars of gifts and home renovations from the oilfield services company Veco. Stevens denies all wrongdoing, saying the only mistake he made was trusting then-Veco chief executive Bill Allen, a man who he thought was his friend but turned out to be the government’s star witness at his trial.

"It was an oversight," said Al Chong of Soldotna a retiree who attended the rally. "And with all the things he's done for the state of Alaska, we should stand by him. This is a minor thing blown out of proportion."

Begich, 46, had his own rally in Homer on Saturday, trailed by a CNN crew. He spoke to about 150 supporters at a local coffee shop. Most of those attending were Democrats, who were smiling like famine survivors sitting down to a big meal.

Begich gave a short speech, never mentioning Stevens. Afterwards, as people came up to talk, Begich was urged to speak more forcefully about Stevens' conviction. "We want to hear it from you," said Kim Smith, a retired juvenile probation supervisor. "He’s not going to be held accountable. What kind of example is that for our young people?"

Begich responded that he'd made strong statements to the press after their debate last week, in which Stevens said he has not been convicted of anything until a judge rules on his motions to set aside the verdict and to receive a new trial.

"I was shocked," Begich told her. "I think what he has not done is be willing to accept reality."

Law professors have said Stevens is technically correct, that he won’t legally be considered "convicted" until his sentencing. But Stevens' critics have piled on the statement.

One of the few fence sitters in the Begich crowd was Diane Warner, 28, who teaches civics at Homer High School. Warner, a two-year Alaskan, said she used to vote Republican and is still undecided on the presidential race. She had planned to vote for Stevens until his indictment. She pressed forward to ask Begich a few questions Saturday, and by the end of the rally was wearing a Begich sticker.

"He gave a great response about 'Why vote for me?' " Warner said. She cited his answers about generational change and bipartisan effort in the future delegation.

Stevens told Peninsula voters that Alaska needs his experience in the Senate, especially in these times of financial crisis.

"Really, some of us who have lived through the Depression should be in Congress during this," Stevens told a group at the senior center in Sterling. "I think it's highly important for us to continue my representation back there."

One man in the crowd asked Stevens about his boots. The senator said he bought them in 1955 in Fairbanks, and he remembered the name of the man he purchased them from. That's a Stevens gift as a campaigner — his deep roots in the history of Alaska. He ran into a man at the Trustworthy Hardware store in Soldotna who had been with Stevens on the first flight ever into St. George Island. Stevens recalled the great-grandparents of some kids who came up to him trick or treating.

Begich is connected to the history of the state as well. Larry Smith, 67, shook hands with Begich and pointed to an old campaign button on his weatherbeaten cap: "Proudly for Begich Congress." It was a button from a campaign of Begich's father, Nick, who represented Alaska for two years until his disappearance in a 1972 plane crash.

Smith said Nick Begich was his high school guidance counselor back in Anchorage. He said Nick's son appeared to do a good job as mayor and could learn what he didn't know about Congress.

“Everybody we sent to Congress learned their job, except Frank Murkowski and Ralph Rivers," said Smith, reaching back to recall the name of Alaska's first congressman, a Democrat.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/55122.html

-

Every pundit on ABC 's This Week says Obama and Senate Ds wins BIG
John Aravosis (DC) · 11/02/2008 11:13:00 AM ET · Link
Make a comment · reddit · FARK · Digg It! · Stumble It!

ABC's This Week:
Mark Halperin, Time Magazine:
Electoral Vote -- 349 Obama
Senate -- 59 Democratic seats
House -- Democrats net 28 House seats

Matthew Dowd, former Republican strategist:
Electoral Vote -- 338 plus Obama
Senate -- 8 plus pick up for Democrats
House -- 17 plus pickup for Democrats

George Will, ABC News contributor:
Electoral Vote -- 378 Obama
Senate -- 8 pickups for the Democrats
House -- 21 pickups for the Democrats

Donna Brazile, former Democratic strategist:
Electoral Vote -- Obama 343
Senate - Democrats 59 plus runoff
House - Democrats pickup 29

George Stephanopoulos:
Electoral Vote -- 353 Obama
Senate -- 58, or 59 if there's a run-off in Georgia.
House -- 264 House Democrats (+28)

http://blogs.abcnews.com/george/2008/11/predictions-ele.html

It's from a 527 GOP group.

But they bought on Cable national.

Nasty ad!

Miss Precious Perfect for President!

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"The Once and Future Rajah of Bhong."

sir overtone/ I am so tired of Lorne Michaels his white-bread penny loafer mtherflicker! GE is NBC Lorne has a lousy record of punk ass films .he doesn't have the balls to be jewish. Al Franken is a product of that environment and that's why we don't really like Big Al and the way they diss Randi or malloy! they are Liberman Democrats at best..you never see Dylan or Joni on SNL. just music product with no soul.

is a Pussy and who would never see Putin's head coming over the horizon Chubby Bubba.

Who's side are you on?

>>Who's side are you on?

What you say is just another rightwing smear attempt!

I must vote my conscience, outcomes be damned!

Miss Precious Perfect is the only one out there who represents my me!

If the mainstrem media gave her equal time, she'd be ahead in the polls!

just another example of her suffering injustices from `the man'...

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"The Once and Future Rajah of Bhong."

>>is a Pussy (...) who would never see Putin's head coming over the horizon Chubby Bubba.

I disagree!

they way I see it, she is a perfect candidate for the deadly game of cat and mouse we have w/ Putin.

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"The Once and Future Rajah of Bhong."

..should be forced to resign or impeached or both.

>>..should be forced to resign or impeached or both.

they should be arrested!

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"The Once and Future Rajah of Bhong."

Sen. Barack Obama kick off the final 48 hours of his presidential campaign in Columbus this afternoon.

Next Stop Cleveland

Miss Precious Perfect
Submitted by Fernando on Sun, 11/02/2008 - 4:22pm.
is a Pussy and who would never see Putin's head coming over the horizon Chubby Bubba.

cockatiel at first.. :)

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

wow that's a lot.

A lot that won't be voting Miss Pussy Perfect.

>>.I thought You Maroons were talking about Toni's cockatiel

are you kidding me?

that bird has NO executive experience!

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"The Once and Future Rajah of Bhong."

yum!

might try it today...

or a version thereoff.

meow...

She's very good at delegating duties!

She lets you know when she needs food and a clean cage and sends feathers flying by flapping her wings when she wants attention.

>>She's very good at delegating duties!

yes, but can she see Russia from her cage?

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"The Once and Future Rajah of Bhong."

...can you field dress a moose?

My wife made me canvas for Obama; here's what I learned... I learned in just those three hours that this election is not about what we think of as the "big things." I saw hope in the eyes and faces in those doorways. - Christian Science Monitor

My wife and I went out last weekend to knock on more doors. But this time, not because it was her idea. I don't know what it's going to do for the Obama campaign, but it's doing a lot for me.

would she want to field dress a moose.

Can't see Ruusia but how about the Mexican Market down the street?

Ye Olde Sarah Palin Primer

A candidate who appealeth only to D-bags.

You've heard it again and again. This election will be history in the making. And so, when deciding how best to fully inform our readers about GOP VP candidate Sarah Palin, we took a look back through history to learn from the texts of olde on which all good gentlemen and ladies were reared.

Thus, we're kicking it old school with our Sarah Palin Primer. Print it, read it, learn it, bring it into the booth with you. It's got the information that's essential to every voter of excellent breeding (elitist) and just heart (communist):

"The Once and Future Rajah of Bhong."

>>but how about the Mexican Market down the street?

OK, she has experience in regard to NAFTA...

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"The Once and Future Rajah of Bhong."

The Champs - Tequila

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

happy sunday

caller telling Bender Iraq is going well....demented.

By DEBORAH HASTINGS, AP National Writer.

In the hours before Election Day, as inevitable as winter, comes an onslaught of dirty tricks — confusing e-mails, disturbing phone calls and insinuating fliers left on doorsteps during the night.

The intent, almost always, is to keep folks from voting or to confuse them, usually through intimidation or misinformation. But in this presidential race, in which a black man leads most polls, some of the deceit has a decidedly racist bent.

Complaints have surfaced in predominantly African-American neighborhoods of Philadelphia where fliers have circulated, warning voters they could be arrested at the polls if they had unpaid parking tickets or if they had criminal convictions.

Over the weekend in Virginia, bogus fliers with an authentic-looking commonwealth seal said fears of high voter turnout had prompted election officials to hold two elections — one on Tuesday for Republicans and another on Wednesday for Democrats.

Con't

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

I'm used to messages being posted in my time.

(I have no idea if that's right. I'm at the mercy of the English to Spanish translator on the web...)

i really don 't believe this
Submitted by nightbird on Sun, 11/02/2008 - 5:38pm.
caller telling Bender Iraq is going well....demented.

*******

Emailed me about 4 months ago saying we had won in Iraq..

I emailed back: Sober Up ! !

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

i'm still concerned about last minute Rethug tricks..
this clique wants to hold onto power and they want absolute power.

^*
The two party system does not offer enough options for excellence to a free people. Imagine having five or six choices of candidates. Imagine having to choose between two or more candidates that are so accomplished that it's hard to decide. I believe that, without political parties, we would have a better chance for sincere, honest leaders. If each candidate is equally funded, there can be no unfair advantages.

George Washington's Farewell address warned against the danger of political parties. Nevertheless, the two party system was formed during the administration of his successor, John Adams.

What do you think? Was George Washington correct in warning against political parties?
[George Washington assumed rule by an economic elite.]
Is it time to end the current parties and open a free election with more choices?
=================================================
Does anyone believe that those who own the economy will allow the destruction of the two party system? Actually, the two dominant parties are shills for the Big Business Party.

Obama has on the ground in all 50 states, not to mention the battalion of lawyers he has lined up. Obama's beauty is he does talk softly but carries a big ass stick.

The Republicans are waving their twigs already.

so.... How is Biden not great? He's killing in Gainsville.

>>the two dominant parties are shills for the Big Business Party.

nothing that publicly funded elections could not fix.

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"The Once and Future Rajah of Bhong."

can Sarah Palin field dress a Russian Stuffed Pumpkin?

a mouse.
meow!

TrueVote.US

Please take action to urge the media to report the unadjusted exit polls for the 2008 election.

Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International will again conduct all exit polling in 2008 for the National Election Pool, comprised of ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX, NBC and the Associated Press. Exit polls will involve polling more than 100,000 actual voters, remove sources of polling error and can be extremely accurate. In 2004 John Kerry was showing a 7 point lead in the unadjusted exit polls, but then on election night the computers were down for several hours and when they came back on-line a flip had occurred and Bush now narrowly led. This was not because of a change in the actual polling but because the exit polls had been "adjusted," i.e. "corrected" so as to conform to the vote count assuming that count was correct. Investigations into the election in Ohio later raised serious doubts about the accuracy of the actual vote.

Voters should be provided with the unadjusted exit polls and if adjustments are made to the final polls they should be explained publicly. Major media outlets are urged to archive all of the interim exit poll results to allow independent analysis later. Election integrity advocates must push for greater transparency since large-sample exit polls can and should be used be used to audit vote totals.

Link - Please Read & Sign - Thank You

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

My first pet was a parakeet I called blinky because he blinked his eyes all the time. He was hardly ever in his cage, had the run of the house and could cuss in two languages.

My mother would let him out of his cage in the morning and he would fly into my bedroom and onto the pillow next to my face and say Toni get up! If i rolled over, he would walk across my face to the other side and bite my nose to wake me up.

>>the two dominant parties
Submitted by Chubby Bubba on Sun, 11/02/2008 - 5:54pm.
>>the two dominant parties are shills for the Big Business Party.

nothing that publicly funded elections could not fix.

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

Dear Friend,

It has been a long campaign, and a tough one. Norm Coleman has sunk to historic depths to smear Al Franken and make this election about something, anything other than his own record and the issues that affect the people of Minnesota.

But what Norm Coleman did yesterday was something else entirely, and you need to know the truth.

Here's the story: A Republican businessman in Texas by the name of Paul McKim filed a lawsuit this week against Nasser Kazeminy. Kazeminy is one of Norm Coleman's biggest donors and closest friends - he's the same man who flew Coleman on his private jet to vacations in the Bahamas and Paris.

Only a small portion of the lawsuit has anything to do with Norm Coleman - but the part that does is incredibly serious. McKim's sworn affidavit, since corroborated by a second lawsuit, describes an effort to funnel $100,000 to Senator Coleman.

So are the allegations true? We don't know. In fact, we at the campaign didn't know a thing about this lawsuit, had never heard of this company or Paul McKim, until we read about it in the newspaper.

Then came yesterday. Instead of answering these very serious allegations, Norm Coleman released the most dishonest ad of the year, blaming Al for the lawsuit.

That ad is up on TV right now. And it's a despicable lie. Al Franken had nothing to do with this lawsuit.

Norm Coleman, faced with sworn allegations of a conspiracy to funnel him improper payments, is trying to deflect blame by lying about Al Franken in a TV ad. No matter what candidate you support or what party you belong to, it is a sad day.

With just a couple of days left, the only way we can stop him is with the truth. After all, that's what Al's always been about: letting the truth carry the day.

But we need your help. Please forward this email to everyone you know. And please know that no matter what happens in this election, you can be proud that you were part of this campaign.

Thank you for all you do,

Andy Barr
Al Franken for Senate

P.S.: If all this has you pretty outraged, don't just sit there and take it. Our people-powered campaign needs your help. Please CLICK HERE: https://secure.alfranken.com/page/contribute/EM2008 to make a contribution today.

Obama is smart and good for him for being prepared.

I used to visit my grandmother during summers. She had finches and the neighbors had huge parrots. I learned to take after them at times and go out for wild flowers I knew they liked.

Later I learned that I like them but without the cages. They visit but I do nothing special to attract them. The creeks around here bring them. I really like the families that visit every year. I don't have any pet birds, just the squatters.

Dear Grischa,

This is the moment.

We hold in our hands the power to change the course of our nation and our world.

This is the moment we vanquish the legacy of wrongheaded, special-interest driven politics in Washington DC that has tarnished our Constitution, given hand-outs to those who don't need it, and divided America for partisan gain.

For my entire congressional career, I have seen so many critical needs squashed – first by the Gingrich/Delay GOP Congress, and then through Bush's stubborn vetoes:

Healthcare for children.
Mental health funding.
Alternative energy initiatives.
True Medicare and Social Security protection.
All blocked.

Bush's foreign policy led to an unnecessary war, a stronger Iran, and our global credibility – among even our allies – at an all time low. (Not to mention our failure to keep the fight focused on those who actually attacked us on 9/11.)

We abandoned global efforts on climate change and walked away from our human rights obligations under US and International law.

During it all, this Administration effectively sat idle as hundreds of thousands were killed in Northern Africa, and millions more displaced.

This is the moment when we finally change course.

This is the moment we build a stronger America - that lives up to our greatest ideals.

The America that we all believe in.

A country that can offer security without undue government intrusion.

A country that can combat terrorism and yet hold true to our principles and our humanity.

A country that holds our leaders accountable when they break the law and abuse the Constitution.

A country that takes care of its sick and elderly, and provides an education for our children that rivals any in the modern world.

With your vote, we move closer to that America with Barack Obama as President.

We don't need to imagine what a McCain or Palin Presidency would be like. We've already lived it for the last 8 years.

I am also up for re-election this year and I look forward to returning to Washington under President Barack Obama and Vice-President Joe Biden in order to initiate genuine positive change in the lives of all Americans.

Please vote for change. Let's not let this moment pass us by.

- Robert Wexler

Donate:
https://www.wexlerforcongress.com/contribute.asp

Paid for by "Wexler for Congress"
PO Box 810669
Boca Raton, FL 33481

the cleveland tv stations have clips but i haven't found any live streams yet.

maybe on youtube?

Sometimes you can live stream it on Obama's web site.

Hello, I wanted to make sure you had a chance to see this message from my friend Al Gore. It's incredibly important that we all do what we can this Tuesday, so volunteer if you possibly can, and pass this email on to anyone you think might be able to help. Thanks, John Kerry

Hello G,

By the narrowest of margins, we lost our chance to elect John Kerry president in 2004 and cut short the disastrous course of the past 4 years.

In 2000 and 2004, just a small difference in voter turnout would have made the difference. This time around, that difference could be you.

That's why I'm asking you to consider taking the day off to volunteer on Election Day -- Tuesday, November 4th -- to help carry Barack Obama to victory.

I know that this isn't possible for everyone, but if you can, I'd like for you to sign up to get out the vote on Election Day so that we can finally bring the change this country needs.

With so much at stake, your phone calls or door knocking could be the difference between setting our country back on the right path or another four years of dangerously irresponsible policies.

The passion and enthusiasm of Barack's movement for change is so exciting, and so important. But it will only count if we turn that passion into votes on Election Day.

And as strong as we are right now, it could still come down to a few votes in one or two battleground states.

It's up to each of us, right now, to commit to doing everything we can.

We're hoping you are able to give one day. You can help make history in this election, please go to http://my.barackobama.com/theday.

Thank you,
Al Gore

Cheney endorsing McCain - i had to laugh - - ummm.... do us a favor...don't help us, Mr. Cheney.

The Bailout Is A Truly Evil Disaster And Enabler Pelosi Must Go

We are hearing more and more reports of how badly the ill-advised
banker's bailout is being handled, multi-million dollar bonuses for
Paulson's old cronies at Goldman Sachs, billions going to finance the
takeover of rival banks, making the "too big to fail" even bigger,
and the taxpayer getting an otherwise rotten deal for their
investment. We even heard a Republic senator asking how fast they
could blow the money.

NONE of this could have happened without the fawning complicity of
Nancy Pelosi, who infamously said it was Bush's proposal, INSTEAD of
coming forward with a robust alternative plan. Just like Bush, she
believes she is immune, she believes she is unaccountable, and shame
on us if we don't do everything we can to defeat her this Tuesday,
and replace her with Cindy Sheehan.

Here is Cindy's last TV spot. Please make whatever donation you can
to put this ad on the air in these critical final days.

Last Cindy TV Spot Action Page:
http://www.usalone.com/cindy/donations_tv2.php

Marianne Faithfull - "Broken ENglish..." -grrrrrreeeeeeat song!!!!

A Message From Green Day about this Tuesday

This Tuesday we will elect the next President of the United States. The result will have great consequences for the nation.

This election offers a choice is between two men with dramatically different visions of the future. We have strong feelings about this choice. But we feel even more strongly that all Americans, regardless of political preference, have a stake in the outcome and should vote in this critical election.

This is likely to be a close election. Your vote matters. Please use it and make a difference.

greenday.com

even more now!

first, sedona is too hip for him (lol but true),
and as for his staying in the Senate - I think he will

I have read that McCain has health problems that will likely knock him off soon.

is a concern - - so far he seems to be okay, but he is older and that is a realyti, i'm not being ageist

The Mayor, Governor and Obama wanted everyone to know the Early Voting Center was open and only 2 blocks away from the event. Problem was when Obama asked who has already voted, almost everyone raised their hand.

Smooth skinny kid, very smooth.

mb!!!

its also on msnbc on the cable

..and too young to die.

ok everyone, check this out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fX40RsSLwF4

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/live-campaign-coverage

where campaign feeds normally show up

^*
http://billfisher.dreamhost.com/executive2.html

maggiesboy, you rock.

Hey, Obama controls feedback.

the link hangs...

Yet the blog is reflecting daylight savings....

Joe the Skinhead
When he was just the topic du jour because of his question to Barack Obama back in the neighborhood in Ohio, that was one thing. But "Joe the Plumber" is now actively campaigning with and for John McCain, appearing on stage with him at multiple events, etc. He has become a part of McCain's campaign, like any other surrogate.

So here "Joe" is on TV just about an hour ago saying that people shouldn't vote for Obama because he doubts Obama's "loyalty to America".

I guess saying Obama reminded him of Sammy Davis, Jr. wasn't bad enough. But isn't it time someone ask McCain whether he's really willing to associate with this extremist?

--Josh Marshall

(if you want to watch, there is a video at the link)

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/242050.php

A little self-indulgence:

My Blog @ www.myspace.com/judeeb

I am too young to remember John F. Kennedy's "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what YOU can do for your country" speech.

I was 8 years old when the Vietnam War protesters were arrested and eventually put on trial for "inciting a riot" outside of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

But today, less than two days before the November 4, 2008 US Presidential Election, I have an opportunity to take part in the most historic election of my lifetime.

And yours!

We will have the opportunity to elect the first US President of African American descent.

But before the new US President is named, me, you, everyone, has to VOTE!

And no excuses:

**Be sure you go to the correct official polling place. I was an election day volunteer in my former Chicago precinct, and you would be amazed at how many people don't know where their polling place is located.

**MapQuest the route to your polling place, and do a practice run, if possible, especially if it's your first time voting at this specific place.

**Allow enough time to travel to the polling place from your home or office. Include extra time for traffic and/or public transportation delays, for example.

I want to make a special plea to all young adults who took the time to register to vote for the first time:

VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE!

We've had eight long years of darkness, now is the time for the light, the hope to return to our lives!

Make the Commitment. Take the Responsibility. VOTE on Tuesday, November 4, 2008!

... Wants to be placed on the wait list for Obama's Chicago rally, you can email me @ judee_b@mac.com.

it just takes a moment to load.

^*

McCain-Palin set to hit 11 states in final push
Posted: 03:46 PM ET

From CNN Assignment Editor Katy Byron

McCain and Palin are set for a final campaign blitz.
NEW YORK (CNN) – Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin will campaign in grand total of 11 states on Monday in their last push in the race for the White House.

McCain will attend seven rallies across the country, coast-to-coast, starting the day in Tampa, Florida with a rally at 9:00 a.m. ET. He then travels to Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Indiana, New Mexico, and Nevada for Road to Victory rallies and ends the night in Arizona. The last rally of the night will be at midnight (local time) in Prescott, Arizona on the front steps of the Yavapai County Courthouse. It’s the same place where former Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater ended his presidential campaign in 1964.

Palin will hold rallies in Ohio, Missouri, Iowa, Colorado and Nevada. Following her rally in Elko, Nevada Monday night, Palin will fly to her home state of Alaska to vote on Tuesday morning in Wasilla.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/11/02/mccain-palin-set-to-hit-...

***No longer lost in the fog*** November 2nd, 2008 4:13 pm ET

Why don't they go to the 51st state and stay there?

Angel November 2nd, 2008 4:12 pm ET

I'd vote McCain but Palin scares me…she is so divisive..I don't think she understands the power of unity…. so it is Obama/Biden all the way

Maryann November 2nd, 2008 4:12 pm ET

Now the desperate Republican camp are using Hillary Clinton to bash Obama in these stupid robocalls? How desperate can these people be?

indy chris November 2nd, 2008 4:11 pm ET

Buried under a landslide. Good luck, good riddance. Neither of these two yahoos will be re-elected.

Fred from Tucson November 2nd, 2008 4:11 pm ET

The old man is desperate. He is shooting everywhere just like when he was a pilot and crashed 5 planes. This is probably why he crashed so many planes… he gets desperate.

Today, Barbara Anwine of the Election Protection Coalition (1-866-OUR-VOTE), a nonpartisan group, told MSNBC about voter suppression tactics they have witnessed around the country.

The group says it has received over 80,000 voter calls at the Election Protection Command Center.

Some emerging trends:

- Broward County leads Florida in voter requests for assistance.

- Registration-related problems rank #1 in nearly every battleground state - hundreds of calls focus on that problem, most often in Texas, New York, New Jersey, Georgia, Florida, Colorado, and California

- Georgia voters are reporting more incidents of voter intimidation than any other state. Other reports of voter intimidation, scams or misinformation are also emerging in Ohio and Missouri.

- Florida voters rank #1 in requests related to criminal status and voting.

- Early voting problems are also being noticed, particularly Ohio, Missouri, Georgia, Florida and California

watch:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/02/over-80000-have-complaine_n_140...

Happe Talk

^*

Obama's Lead Inching Up In TPM Track Composite
Sunday's TPM Track Composite -- a weighted average of six daily tracking polls -- has Obama at 51.5% and McCain at 44.2%, a 7.3-point lead for Obama. The lead has increased by small amounts in the last four consecutive Composites.

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/11/tpm_track_compos...

New Pew Poll Predicts Obama Will Win 52%-46%
By Eric Kleefeld - November 2, 2008, 4:12PM
A new national poll is going beyond saying Obama is ahead: It's predicting that Obama will win by six points.

The final Pew poll predicts that the outcome will be Obama 52%, McCain 46%, with the remainder split among third-party candidates. The top-line result among likely voters right now is Obama 49%, McCain 42%, with a ±2.5% margin of error. Last week, Obama had a much wider lead of 53%-38%.

In an interview, Pew's director of survey research Scott Keeter explained to us how they arrived at that 52%-46% predicted outcome. Pew performed a statistical analysis looking at the remaining undecideds on the basis of their demographics and their answers to issue questions, in order to project how they'll vote -- if they'll vote at all, that is.

"This is an unusual group of people, anybody who could get to this point in the campaign and not have made a decision," Keeter said. "So you have to think some of these people are not even going to vote."

Pew predicts a very narrow break of undecideds to McCain, and it won't be enough to overcome Obama's lead.

The same methodology was right on the money in 2004, predicting Bush at 51% of the vote to Kerry's 48%, and in the very-close 2000 election was slightly off in giving Bush 49% to Gore's 47%. But in an election that doesn't seem as close as close as it was in 2000, Keeter doesn't think any remaining uncertain factors will be enough to undo Obama's lead.

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/11/new_pew_poll_pre...

Dueling Tracking Polls Now Agree
The two Gallup tracking poll likely voter models -- with one that has consistently shown a close race and the other showing a likely Democratic blowout -- have converged, with both models now showing Sen. Barack Obama way ahead of Sen. John McCain, 52% to 43%, and 52% to 41%, respectively.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/111664/Gallup-Daily-Obama-Continues-Outpace-M...

Happe Talk

I just saw some people in my yard. usually don't get people back here, so I figgered they'd be knowcking on my door.

when they didn't I went out to see what was going on.

turns out the neighbor's grandkids (teenagers) were going to shoot arrows into the fence.

fine, the cats are in and it didn't seem too likely they would miss from 10 foot away and shoot over the 12 foot tall fence into the next yard.

after 1/2 dozen attempts to stick the arrow into the wooden fence failed, they've given up...

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"The Once and Future Rajah of Bhong."

And reveal that she is, and always has been a PUMA. She will do this three minutes after the networks announce that Barack Obama will be our 44th President. Barack will win with over 400 evs, and a six percent national lead.
(Al Franken is also going to win by four points.)

nobody was ever convicted of anything in those murders. Everybody walked away, scott free.

I wonder if our old friend Reefer Jello is in any of those pictures?

...stick the arrow into the wooden fence failed, they've given up...

they'll be back.

http://www.justiciers.tv/

If the video is too busy try this one

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JV_IphAIGPg

>>Sarah Palin Pranked on Québec TV

I couldn't believe how she just kept spewing her talking points without even listening to what was really going on.

and the thing is...the really big thing is...she should be able to see Canada just as well as she sees Russia from her house. maybe better!

She has NO excuse.

this was her first `international incident' and she failed miserably!

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"The Once and Future Rajah of Bhong."

California Golden Bears

November 1 No. 24 Oregon W 26-16 6-2 (4-1)

Next week:

November 8 at No. 5 USC 8:00 PM ET Tickets

win big. I don't know where such confidence is coming from. I am hoping he is correct but the game ain't been played.

I am positive that there WILL be an attempt to steal this election. I look at it like this. The United States has become a fascist nation. Fascism has a history and it is wicked. Fascists do NOT hand over power. Handing over power, especially by election, is not part of the fascist scheme.

There will be an attempt to steal the election. I am positive of this. It is really a matter of whether or not the attempted theft succeeds. I hold the opinion that it will succeed. I do not see this gang of thieves that is in power, merely walking away by loss of election.

need a hay bale for a proper target.

Steelers by six.

The Redskins, in fact, are an accurate barometer for presidential elections. According to Steve Hirdt of the Elias Sports Bureau, who coined the term "Redskins Rule" in 2000, the following bromide has held true for the past 17 presidential elections: If the Redskins win their last home game prior to Election Day, the party that won the popular vote in the previous election wins the White House; if the Redskins lose, the party that lost the popular vote in the previous election wins.

In this Monday's case, a Steelers win would forecast an Obama victory; a Redskins win would indicate a McCain win.
http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=3672799

(Winning Team: Pittsburgh Steelers Owner and Steelworkers on the Road for Obama

This weekend, the United Steelworkers "Steel Blitz for Barack" bus tour hits the road with Pittsburgh Steelers team owner Dan Rooney, former Steelers players, USW President Leo W. Gerard and Ohio Gov.)
http://www.topix.com/nfl/pittsburgh-steelers/2008/10/winning-team-pittsb...

Confidence comes from the electoral tally, which is pretty much a landslide. Whether or not there will be stealing remains to be seen. They will try to steal, yes. But they may still lose in spite of their best efforts. Similarly, they might also simply refuse to leave office. That would be something, wouldn't it?

________________________________

“The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.” –Helen Keller

>>need a hay bale for a proper target.

I think all they wanted to do was to stick the arow into the wood., they didn't seem to be aiming at anything.

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"The Once and Future Rajah of Bhong."

Tweety's giving him some shit. Blackwell is being the ass he is, has been and always will be. Won't answer a direct question on whether Obama is for or against America.

I have to get Tweety points for trying. I say he proved his point. Blackwell is a dick.

Calling North Carolina this afternoon at Obama HQ. Interesting. Pretty much left a bunch of messages. People say they are getting a lot of calls.

________________________________

“The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.” –Helen Keller

Blackwell is worse than a dick. He's a treasonous fucktard.

________________________________

“The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.” –Helen Keller

I sent the song to a lot of folks on my mailing list, particularly Republicans or Democrats who waver on value issues. I uploaded it again to my website and will leave it there until the election is over. Feel free to share it.

Obama on Torture

Didn't have much success stealing the '06 Congressional Race even though Rove kept promising that the Rethugs would keep control of the Congress.
As far as an attempt, they are already doing that all over the country. It ain't gunna be enough.

A treasonous fucktard dick? I think it takes 3 derogative words to describe him. He's just that bad.

I'm gonna stand by my words. There has been an incredible amount of scandal over the past 8 years. None of it has been resolved. Many asses are on the line. These are bad people. They will protect themselves. Something is going to go down. I can feel it.

Yes that's why I'm concerned that after the election there will be an "incident" to give Bush an excuse not to leave power.

It won't work, of course, but I won't be the least bit surprised if it happens. Bush has already said he'll bomb Iran if Obama wins. I dare him. I freakin' double dog dare him!

________________________________

“The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.” –Helen Keller

1. Many more registered voters

2. Many precincts went Democratic in '06, we are controlling the machines

3. The eyes of the world on on this election

4. We're sick and tired of living in a banana republic

5. Many machines have been replaced with paper.

6. We're on to their games.

7. We're still trying the '04 theft. Big news may come out of Columbus tomorrow regarding the routing of election data through Tenn. in the '04 election.

Sure they are gonna try, it's their only choice. But just like McCain's campaign has been sloppy, I predict the thieves can't pull it off this time. If they are gonna do it, it will be in the central tabulators, but that's the easiest place to catch the treasonous fucktard dicks. ;-)

Actually Québec is thousands of miles away and there is really no comparision between Nortwest Canada which is very very conservative and Québec which is very liberal.
English Canada and Québec are like two different countries who don't like each other much, kind of like England and Ireland. A few years ago when I was working in Buffalo some moron from CSA in Toronto was spewing some racist anti French stuff to a fellow engineer not realizing that I could hear from my office. One of the guys was a bit uneasy and mentioned that I was from Québec.
Later on he asked me "Are you Canadian?" My answer was "Insults will get you nowhere".
He had already signed the CSA approval so I didn't risk pissing off my boss.

Brits aren't much better either. We had a British Engineer who was visiting to learn why our products were better and cheaper than what could be produced at the home company in England. He was quite an asshole so when he started questioning about some of the reasons that our products were much better I said : "For starter we're not brits!"

Barack Obama is very popular in Canada, even more so in Québec.

http://www.lematin.ma/Actualite/Express/Article.asp?id=100871

Latest polls shows that 70% of Canadian would vote for Obama. Some in my family said that support in Québec is near 80%.

Most people don't like the new conservative leader at all and they don't want his ally McCain as the president of the USA. He was elected because the other party split the vote.
The conservative got around 11% of the vote in Québec slightly less than the other conservative party (liberal party). The bloc Québécois, a party who wants Québec's independance got a majority of the votes. They are social democrates with a few conservatives, it is a coalition of Québec patriots.

He had Kenneth Blackwell on. Blackwell being the lowlife that committed multiple felonies with the theft of the Ohio Election- is reintroducing Reverend Wright. So expect to hear the infamous " Goddamn America" for the next 24 hours.

Did I ever tell you how much I hate an Uncle Tom?

http://www.jimmycarlblack.com/

Jimmy passed away peacefully last night Saturday 11/01/08 at 11:00 o'clock pm. Jimmy says hi to everybody and he doesn't want anybody to be sad.

..for what he did here in '04.

Did you go to the rally eep?

..his speedtalking makes me dizzy.

Computers suspected of flipping
votes in presidential race

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Complaints first surfaced in West Virginia and have been repeated in Colorado, Tennessee and Texas. A number of voters in several Texas counties said that the machines flipped their votes from Democratic choices to Republican ones.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections...

Submitted by maggiesboy on Sun, 11/02/2008 - 8:38pm.
-----
Maggiesboy,

I think this guy Mike Connell is going to be deposed tomorrow. Let's hope he will squeal on Blackwell and Rove.

Excerpt:

The interest in Mike Connell stems from his association with a firm called GovTech, which he had spun off from his own New Media Communications under his wife Heather Connell’s name. GovTech was hired by Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell to set up an official election website at election.sos.state.oh.us to presented the 2004 presidential returns as they came in.

Connell is a long-time GOP operative, whose New Media Communications provided web services for the Bush-Cheney ’04 campaign, the US Chamber of Commerce, the Republican National Committee and many Republican candidates. This in itself might have raised questions about his involvement in creating Ohio’s official state election website.

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Republican_IT_consultant_subpoenaed_in_cas...

Obama leads by 13

USA today poll

Obama by 11

per MSNBC just now

It hurts me deeply to say this, but here goes: I’m not a real American.

Oh, I’m proud to live in America and grateful for all the opportunities I’ve been given in this great country. Also, I would probably seem pretty American to you: I was born and raised in Texas, I came up through public schools, I drive a made-in-America 1997 Ford, I own a modest house, I have a small business, I pay taxes and meet a payroll, I work hard, I’m a beer drinker, I love baseball… and so on.

But here’s where I fall down: I don’t live in a place that Sarah Palin likes.

Read the rest

...from what I've read the guy wants to unload, but what blows my mind is the M$M's refusal to run with this. Hell, even the teeny weeny tiny Liberal NOT Main Stream media, hasn't pushed this story hard enough.

CBS Poll: Obama Maintains 13 Point Lead
Posted by Brian Montopoli| 6

With two days left until the presidential election, Barack Obama continues to lead John McCain by 13 points among likely voters, 54 percent to 41 percent, a new CBS News poll finds. The margin in the new poll, released Sunday, is identical to that in a CBS News poll released Saturday.

As the number of undecided voters has dwindled, so has the number that says their minds can still change. More than nine in 10 of each candidate’s voters now say they have made up their minds about who to vote for and are not likely to change. Just seven percent of Obama voters and 8 percent of McCain voters say they still might change their minds.

With two days to go, only 8 percent of likely voters are uncommitted – either they have not yet chosen a candidate, or their minds could still change. Nearly all of these uncommitted voters say they plan to vote.

Today’s uncommitted voters are mostly white, and more than half are age 45 or older. Just over half are men, and most live in the Midwest and South. Half describe themselves as moderate, and many are not partisan - four in 10 are independents.

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2008/11/02/politics/horserace/entry4564135....

I was at the rally.

I had to leave a bit early.

But WOW!

6. We're on to their games.
This is their main problem now. This team can't even keep track of their own foreign policy expert, Joe the Plumber. But, somehow they can pull off election theft successfully in multiple counties all over the country. I don't think so. The whole world is on their games. Russia puffed and their phony Georgia war was gone.

On MSNBC now 53 obama - 42 McCain

NBC Electoral Map Obama 286 McCain 187

Legendary US rocker Bruce Springsteen wowed a crowd of 80,000 with a rousing set at a rally for Democrat Barack Obama here Sunday on the White House campaign's final stretch.

Obama took the stage with his wife Michelle and two young daughters when Springsteen was done, and said there were "a handful of people who enter into your lives through their music and tell the American people's story."

"Bruce Springsteen is one of those people," he said, before a heavy rainstorm erupted on the open-air crowd said by Cleveland's director of public safety to number 80,000.

Springsteen led the sea of people in a full-throated singalong of Woody Guthrie's folk classic "This Land is Your Land."

http://news.smh.com.au/world/springsteen-rocks-80000-for-obama-20081103-...

No. MSNBC keeps this massive line going 24/7. Its like Scarface. Every station break they're all back there snorting like hogs. Kieth, Gregory, Tweety, Scarborough-- even Pat.

...but I got stuck way over on the State St side. Obama was blocked by the teleprompter and it was a bit hard to hear. What was uplifting was the comments I heard all around me. Folks are better informed than I thought. Not as good as being a Sam Seder Show blogger but they know what's going down.

It was a perfect day for a rally.

I remember the day I went there to hear Greg Palast talk about the election theft. Froze my ass off that day!

I was hoping for 100k but I'll settle for 60, this is Columbus, OH after all, we have to keep it real.

ABC News' Matt Jaffe reports: Just 48 hours before Election Day, Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe
Biden's rally Sunday at Florida State University was disrupted by a raucous group of Republican opponents
just outside the event's gates.

About 30 supporters of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin blared sirens and chanted
so loudly that they even got Biden's attention.

"Maybe those McCain folks can hear this, they'd be interested back there," Biden said over the din of the
protesters just a hundred yards away. "They can hear this, I'll say it loudly as I can. I thought it was a siren,
but it's just a whine, I guess. It's gonna be OK, folks.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/11/bidens-florida.html

He's in worse shape than Palin for the backlash that's coming. When the Republicans rely on the counsel of a guy who says he "knows just enough to be dangerous" you know they got nuthin'.

Hell, now McCain has to get his crowd to cheer against Bush! Think about that? He voted with Bush 95% of the time, now he tells people he's against Bush. Uh, that logic won't work...even for an imbecile.

Another good one

I listened yesterday

Documentary film director David Modigliani will be joining us to talk about the myth of “small-town politics,” a myth that the Republicans are trying to push with Sarah Palin.

Bob Shavelson will be here to talk about the Ted Stevens verdict, and what it means for Alaska’s political makeup.

Dr. Ron Bronow will tell us the truth about John McCain’s
4 bouts of melanoma – a truth that they wanted to hide until after the election.

We’ll take a look back at the disastrous environmental policies that we’ve had to endure over the last 8 years with Wesley Warren from the NRDC.

And Roy Carter, candidate for North Carolina’s 5th District, will join us to talk about his campaign, and how important it is for him to unseat Republican incumbent Virginia Foxx.

Listen

WP/ABC Poll: Obama Opens 11 Point Lead
The latest Washington Post/ABC News tracking poll shows Sen. Barack Obama leads Sen. John McCain, 54% to 43%, among likely voters.

Key findings: "The ranks of persuadable voters has dwindled to 7% heading into the final day. One part of McCain's steep challenge is that more than a quarter of the probable electorate has already voted -- among these early birds, 59% said they voted for Obama, 40% for McCain."

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/behind-the-numbers/2008/11/wapo-abc_tra...

MaggiesBoy: That must have been great to be there!

I wish I could be in Two places at once.
I'd go Downtown on tuesday nite, and stay home
and watch/record the live coverage.

...how will you steal the votes already cast?

Huh?

I'm by no means religious but the following lyrics by Curtis Mayfield are stuck in my head and have to come out..

AP IMPACT: flood of wounded GIs swamps care units

FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. – In a rush to correct reports of substandard care for wounded soldiers, the Army flung open the doors of new specialized treatment centers so wide that up to half the soldiers currently enrolled do not have injuries serious enough to justify being there, The Associated Press has learned.

Army leaders are putting in place stricter screening procedures to stem the flood of patients overwhelming the units — a move that eventually will target some for closure.

According to interviews and data provided to the AP, the number of patients admitted to the 36 Warrior Transition Units and nine other community-based units jumped from about 5,000 in June 2007, when they began, to a peak of nearly 12,500 in June 2008.

The units provide coordinated medical and mental health care, track soldiers' recovery and provide broader legal, financial and other family counseling. They serve Army active duty and reserve soldiers.

Just 12 percent of the soldiers in the units had battlefield injuries while thousands of others had minor problems that did not require the complex new network of case managers, nurses and doctors, according to Brig. Gen. Gary H. Cheek, the director of the Army's warrior care office.

The overcrowding was a "self-inflicted wound," said Cheek, who also is an assistant surgeon general. "We're dedicating this kind of oversight and management where, truthfully, only half of those soldiers really needed this."

Cheek said it is difficult to tell how many patients eventually will be in the units. But he said soldiers currently admitted will not be tossed out if they do not meet the new standards. Instead, the tighter screening will weed out the population over time.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081102/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/wounded_warriors

You're lookin' in the wrong place, you lucky Illini bastaad you! ;-)

I'd say it's a no brainer if you could be at the victory bash downtown you should join in that historical event.

and Rasmussen is terrified:

Ras Just Polled Me! Guess What They Asked?

Senator Barack Obama has called for his supporters to take the day off from work or school on Tuesday to help with get out the vote efforts. Press 1 if you agree with this idea, press 2 if you disagree, or press 3 if you are not sure.

Will you be taking the day off from work or school on Tuesday? Press 1 if you agree with this, press 2 if you disagree, or press 3 if you are not sure.

Do you think that, in these challenging economic times, it is a good idea to tell people to take the day off from work or school? Press 1 if you agree with this, press 2 if you disagree, or press 3 if you are not sure.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/11/2/133315/705/952/649938

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OETwbVBPI1U

I've being doing some GOTV & poll watching at Veterans Memorial. Today, the line tripled around the parking lot. Early voting has been highly successful for the Democrats. However, this past week has been unbelievable. Some said it took up 4 hours to vote.

a Republican was angry at Obama today. He blamed him for the long lines. The GOP is not turning out many voters. The few that are showing up are pissed.

New report says McCain should have been expelled from Senate for Keating Five scandal
John Aravosis (DC) · 11/02/2008 04:52:00 PM ET · Link
Make a comment · reddit · FARK · Digg It! · Stumble It!

From Huff Post:
The New Republic published an explosive story Saturday evening detailing how John McCain, in all likelihood, leaked information to investigators of the Keating Five scandal that was designed to help his image at the expense of the other four Senators involved.

If the allegation is true -- and TNR makes a healthy case as to its veracity -- it would mean that McCain violated Senate rules and could have been expelled from that body.

"All five senators -- including McCain -- had testified under oath and under the U.S. penal code that the leaks did not come from their camps," Sahil Mahtani reports. "The leaks were also prohibited by rules of the Senate Ethics Committee; according to the rules of the Senate, anyone caught leaking such information could face expulsion from the body."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/02/mccain-did-not-disclose-k_n_140...

I love it! The long lines filled with Obama voters might be driving away the under motivated McCain/Palin voters.

Columbus is one of the pulse points of the country, that's why we're a national test market site. We just didn't have enough numbers to beat the cheats in '04. Now we do.

I just heard that stupid right wing Las Vegas DJ say "As goes Nevada, so goes the nation". What a stupid thing to say. Did Nevada vote for Clinton? Carter? Kennedy? Well maybe Kennedy.

I say there's a good chance the Reverse Bradley effect will give Ohio to Obama.

It's the economy you poor suffer[ers] from low information!!!! Your checkbook is telling you so!!!

>>the Reverse Bradley effect

I can envision may a redneck's wife secretly voting Obama...

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"The Once and Future Rajah of Bhong."

..playing under that www.progressivefuture.org ad on MSNBC?

learned a lot from him in the 60's and 70's.

a truly talented and interesting percussionist.

one of my favorite artists.

via con dios Jimmy!

(say hi to Frank!)

>>the Reverse Bradley
Submitted by Chubby Bubba on Sun, 11/02/2008 - 9:43pm.

I can envision many a redneck's wife secretly voting Obama...

Rachel's gonna do some of her reality reporting. Take a sip, chug,sniff, toke and steady yourselves. ;-)

---

..or deep breath, never underestimate the value of a deep breath.

what have I missed? Just tuned in...

And I don't know a soul who's not been battered
I don't have a friend who feels at ease
I don't know a dream that's not been shattered
or driven to its knees
but it's all right, it's all right
for we lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the
road we're traveling on
I wonder what's gone wrong
I can't help it, I wonder what's gone wrong

"The long lines filled with Obama voters might be driving away the under motivated McCain/Palin voters."

I've been saying the same thing this weekend. It's the enthusiasm gap that's gonna seal it for Obama.

Not only that, if this enthusiasm is televised, WHo do you think is more apt to stay home and not vote, a McCain voter or an Obama voter?

Never Forget: John McCain is also related to a lawbreaker

http://www.236.com/news/2008/11/01/like_obama_mccain_is_related_t_9964.p...

Barack Obama's aunt, a half-sister to his Kenyan father, is living in the United States illegally. Zeituni Onyango was denied asylum in 2004, but has been living in Boston anyway. While the right wing is screaming that Senator Obama's aunt has broken an immigration law, we'd like to remind everyone that John McCain's wife Cindy broke a drug law, and we all know those are way worse. At least the criminal in Barack Obama's family isn't introducing him at campaign events.

So, it is with joyful sense of schaudenfrade that we remind voters of Cindy McCain's dirty, filthy past.

Of all days, September 11th is the perfect day to remember that America's potential First Lady has a sad and shady past.


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"The Once and Future Rajah of Bhong."

eight or ten hour waits for early voting?

this is a disgrace!

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"The Once and Future Rajah of Bhong."

I saw that Starbucks will give a free cup of coffee to anyone who votes Tuesday.

All you have to do is tell them you voted.

great idea.

but the people who really need the coffee are standing in line for hours waiting to vote!

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"The Once and Future Rajah of Bhong."

it's a crime.

McCain's campaign is going to have it's final stop before the election will be in Prescott AZ, my Mom's home.

I'm pretty sure she won't attend, it is slated to start at midnight...

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"The Once and Future Rajah of Bhong."

>>it's a crime.

how about a shameful crime?

could we agree on that?

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"The Once and Future Rajah of Bhong."

I don't even care what it is. See how easy I am?

Rachel reminds of of when Fred Thompsom was looked at as a favorite...

were we ever so young?

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"The Once and Future Rajah of Bhong."

>>I don't even care what it is. See how easy I am?

good, we have to get rid of Bush's voter's bill, take the election out of partisan control...then we have to tell the local districts that they must estimate for maximum turn out and be prepared to deal with that.

and if they don't, if there are still lines over an hur, there will be fines involved.

or a public tar and feathering.

or maybe hangings?

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"The Once and Future Rajah of Bhong."

Yikes! Britons blew up giant Sarah Palin piñata.

The "Swear To God Dude, If McCain Wins I'm Gonna..." O-tron

http://www.236.com/news/2008/10/30/the_swear_to_god_dude_if_mccai_9896.p...

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"The Once and Future Rajah of Bhong."

I've been to Prescott AZ. Back in 1956. It was shortly after a forest fire that was very close to Prescott. It was the first time I went west and the first time I saw mountains.

Prescott, back then was a cute little town. A friend of my dad's lived there and he was in his 60s back then. He was a Greek man with quite an accent and they called him the poet of Prescott.

I thought McCain was going to Sedona.

I just got off the phone w/ my Mom in Prescott. I told her about `the Poet of Prescott', Toni.

She found that amusing for whatever reason....

I told her about the McCain event tomorrow, but she wasn't going to go because it is scheduled at midnight (?) she doesn't see well enough to drive at night.

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"The Once and Future Rajah of Bhong."

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"The Once and Future Rajah of Bhong."

I was eleven years old then and I can't remember his name. I wonder why she found that amusing. Maybe you can ask her.
I remember he had a restaurant or diner or something. That was a long time ago.

How old is she, Chubby?

Good lord, Heston was a civil rights activist?

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"The Once and Future Rajah of Bhong."

The prank on Sarah was on CKOI FM.

There is a fun chat on dailykos that started yesterday.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/11/1/151958/557/831/649050

You have to pay attention to the French part of the call which is the most hilarious part.

These are the same guys who played Bush in 2000 and fooled Sarkozy.

http://www.cyberpresse.ca/international/etats-unis/200811/02/01-35363-sa...

You could try using this site to translate http://babelfish.altavista.com/

The mention of the Hustler documentary on her should have been a clue that it was not for real.

Here is an english article on it
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/11/01/palin-ckoi.html

The interview is scheduled to air on CKOI tomorrow.

http://www.ckoi.com/
http://www.ckoi.com/webteles/audio.php

>>How old is she, Chubby?

She is in her eighties but didn't move to Prescott until the late 80s.

When I say she was amused, it means she sort of laughed and said `oh, my.' pretty much a stock answer for her.

sort of the way I say, `Good, good' when I talk to her.

I think she was intrigued by the idea of a man with a heavy accent being the `poet of Prescott.'

there are a few `cowboy poets' down there, writing about the old west, horses, etc...your dad's friend would have really stood out.

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"The Once and Future Rajah of Bhong."

He was playing with Eugene Chadbourne. Me and my brother asked Jim and Eugene to play a bunch of country songs to annoy all the hipsters in attendance, and they happily obliged. That was great fun. Sure gonna miss him.

http://www.myspace.com/thejackandjimshow

in The Mirage Casino Las Vegas during a McCain campaign ad that aired during a football game this afternoon:

"Fuck Joe the Plumber!!"

I heard it loud and clear during the Giants/Cowboys game.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_efvfxmJDGQ

The cream of Termite Terrace smile for the camera:

The cream of Termite Terrace smile for the camera:
Virgil Ross, Sid Sutherland, Tex Avery, Chuck Jones and Bob Clampett in 1935.
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"The Once and Future Rajah of Bhong."

Eclectic Pics

http://tsutpen.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_archive.html

Colonel Harlan Sanders and Joan Crawford

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"The Once and Future Rajah of Bhong."

Got up early today so I'm fading about now.

Have to get some sleep because of the coming long day on Tuesday.

Later

Good night, Toni.

Thanks for all you do!

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"The Once and Future Rajah of Bhong."

Here's an old photo for you. It's my mom from the late 1920s

Thankd Chubby

>>Here's an old photo for you. It's my mom from the late 1920s

thanks for the reminder, I still have to get a scanner and scan 2 boxes of family pictures.

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"The Once and Future Rajah of Bhong."

oh shucks i wish they would have stayed with the socialist smear, it would have made victory so much sweeter, seeing that the old boogaboo doesn't work, people might get the idea that socialism is not all that unpopular after all, or at least not scary; it might even give obama and the newly democratic elected congress some courage (balls i think they call them now) to tackle more liberal policies, go on,do it, what's the worst that can happen to you?

"Good night, Toni.

Thanks for all you do!"

it's only 10:20 over here - i think the blog clock didn't adjust to the time change

nice photo of your mom chubbs, lemme find a picture of mine

Thanks Cent, mmrules &mb
new
Submitted by gbasin on Sun, 11/02/2008 - 12:16pm.
The eye feels better this morning, but wearing the black eye patch looks like I'm still celebrating Halloween.
------
The thingy-in-the-eye thingy only happened to me once.

It was months after a hurricane. We removed the remaining entirety of a roof from a masonry house. I stood on the scaffolding with my eye at the height of the bond beam (the top of the masonry walls) to "sight" the level (or not level) of the bond beam throughout the house.

A tiny breeze blew concrete dust from the top of the wall. It was almost unnoticeable. I've been dusted much worse than I was that day.

I couldn't shake the "got something in my eye" feeling. I didn't sleep that night and wanted to do nothing more than find an eye doc the next day.

He drilled-out the concrete mot after using an eye-drop anesthetic (and after taking $75 in cash---no checks). He sent me home with antibiotic ointment, an eye patch and a small bottle of eyeball anesthetic drops.

It was an unusually pleasant and successful encounter with the medical world. In retrospect, if I had the little bottle of eyeball deadener, I probably could have tolerated the speck until my eyeball expelled it on its own.
------------------------------
Submitted by mire on Sun, 11/02/2008 - 1:10pm.
...I have snails in my backyard eating up all my potted plants and i remember discussing this on the blog and getting some recommendations which i was too lazy to follow...
----
Escargots. It's a win-win solution.

`You are old,’ said the youth, ‘and your jaws are too weak
For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak—
Pray how did you manage to do it?’

‘In my youth,’ said his father, ‘I took to the law,
And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength, which it gave to my jaw,
Has lasted the rest of my life.’
-- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865)

"The Once and Future Rajah of Bhong."

From the party I was at the other night...

haven't found any pictures with me as race-baiting McCain volunteer yet, if I do I'll post.

--------------------------------------------------
"I am A Great American Patriot !!!" - McCain Scroter
http://www.vodamusic.com/blog/

That's the image next to 50 state strategy on the DNC website.

Anyone else get this in their email?

On Monday, November 3rd DNC Chairman Howard Dean will spend the last full day of the 2008 presidential election helping to get out the vote for Democrats in John McCain's home state of Arizona. Dean will headline a Get Out the Vote Rally with local Democrats in Tucson, Arizona on the heels of Arizona being moved from "Leaning McCain" to "Toss Up" by Real Clear Politics.

Democrats are organized, motivated and ready to bring about the positive change our country needs. Recent polls in Arizona indicate that the election will be close and Gov. Dean is committed to Getting Out the Vote in support of Obama-Biden and Democrats up-and-down the ballot.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 3
Tucson, AZ
PIMA COUNTY GET OUT THE VOTE RALLY
Pima County Coordinated Campaign Office, Outdoor Parking Lot
4639 E 1st Street
Tucson, AZ
Event Time: 12:00 PM Local Time

Paid for and authorized by the Democratic National Committee, www.democrats.org.

Mire, to kill slugs with beer all you do is dilute the beer...snails aren't picky, they don't notice the beer is flat or watery...leave the bottle semi-buried with the opening at ground level so they can crawl in and drink the beer. they will get drunk and then dissolve.

you can also add salt to the mix.

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"The Once and Future Rajah of Bhong."

Even reliably red Montana in play as Election Day looms

by Paul Steinhauser, CNN Deputy Political Director

(CNN) -- Call it the battle for Big Sky country.
Sen. Barack Obama leads Sen. John McCain in CNN's latest Electoral College estimates.

George W. Bush won Montana by 20 points in his re-election victory four years ago. But it seems times have changed in the state.

CNN's new Electoral College map, updated Sunday morning, moves Montana from "leaning John McCain" to "tossup."

The move is partially based on the new CNN poll of polls in Montana, compiled Friday, which suggests that McCain has a 1-point lead over his Democratic rival, Barack Obama, 46 percent to 45 percent. Nine percent of voters are undecided.

"The fact that Montana is up for grabs has to be extremely unsettling for the McCain campaign," said CNN Senior Political Researcher Alan Silverleib.

"Montana's usually a reliably Republican state in presidential campaigns. It's been won by the Democrats only twice in the past half century. If you're a Republican and you're fighting for Montana in the last few days of the campaign, you're not in good shape."

Three electoral votes are at stake in Montana, a state Obama visited in late August. McCain, the Republican nominee, has not campaigned in Montana during the general election.

With Montana moving to "tossup," CNN estimates that if the election were held today, Obama would win states with 291 electoral votes -- more than enough to capture the White House.

McCain would take states with 157 electoral votes, while states with a combined total of 90 electoral votes would still be up for grabs. A candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win.

The CNN Electoral College map uses such factors as the most recent state polling, voting trends, campaign visits and campaign advertising to estimate how a state would vote if the election were held today. See the map

CNN is also moving Iowa, and its 7 electoral votes, from "leaning Obama" to "safe Obama." The latest poll of polls in Iowa, compiled Sunday morning, suggests Obama now has a lead of 14 percentage points in the state, 53 to 39 percent.

The state narrowly voted for Al Gore in the 2000 election and narrowly voted for Bush in the last presidential contest.

Iowa was the site of Obama's first major political triumph in this long presidential campaign. His victory in the Iowa caucuses at the start of this year propelled him towards the Democratic presidential nomination. On Friday, tens of thousands of supporters gathered in Des Moines, the state's largest city, to cheer on Obama at a rally.

But the state's a very different story for McCain.

"John McCain has always had a somewhat cool relationship with Iowa voters," Silverleib noted.

"He didn't seriously contest the Iowa caucuses in 2000 and 2008, and he's opposed ethanol subsidies -- a political kiss of death with Iowa voters. Combine those facts with the backdrop of a struggling economy, and it's not terribly surprising that Obama is pulling away at this point."

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/02/cnn.electoral.map/index.html?iref...

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zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Submitted by Chubby Bubba on Mon, 11/03/2008 - 12:35am.
...they will get drunk and then dissolve.
-----
If only I had a nickel for every time that's happened to me.

Palin costing McCain, poll suggests

by Paul Steinhauser, CNN Deputy Political Director

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A new national poll suggests Sarah Palin may be hurting Republican presidential nominee John McCain more than she's helping him.

A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Sunday indicates McCain's running mate is growing less popular among voters and may be costing him a few crucial percentage points in the race for the White House.

Fifty-seven percent of likely voters questioned in the poll said Palin does not have the personal qualities a president should have. That's up 8 points since September.

Fifty-three percent say she does not agree with them on important issues. That's also higher than September.

"Just after the GOP convention in early September, 53 percent said they would vote for Palin over Joe Biden if there were a separate vote for vice president. Now, Biden would beat Palin by 12 points if the running mates were chosen in a separate vote," said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

And what if voters were allowed to vote for president separately?

"It would be a 4-point edge for Barack Obama, 52 percent to 48 percent. Since the McCain-Palin ticket is currently getting 46 percent in a match-up against the Obama-Biden ticket, it looks like Palin's presence on the GOP ballot is taking 2 percentage points away from McCain. In a close race, that might represent the margin of victory," Holland said.

The unfavorable numbers for Palin, Alaska's governor, also have been growing. They are 8 points higher in the current poll than in early October, and they're twice as high as they were when McCain announced his running mate in late August.

"John McCain has also been suspect with conservatives, the base of the Republican Party, and they were never enthusiastic about his candidacy. Palin was a unusual pick. She was well known with conservative insiders but unknown outside. When she was named, there was a rush of enthusiasm among conservatives and everyone was impressed by McCain's unusual and unexpected choice," said Bill Schneider, CNN's senior political analyst .

"The more many Americans have found out about Palin, the less they like her."

Meanwhile, the poll also suggests Americans may not be as concerned as McCain about one-party rule if Obama is elected president.

One of McCain's closing arguments has been that the Democrats are poised to increase their majorities in Congress, and that Obama -- the Democratic presidential nominee -- is "working out the details" with Democratic leaders to raise taxes, increase spending and "concede defeat in Iraq."

But in the poll, 50 percent of likely voters said if Obama wins the White House, Congress should be controlled by Democrats, with 48 percent saying it should be controlled by Republicans.

Fifty-nine percent said if McCain wins the presidential election, Congress should be controlled by Democrats, with 39 percent saying Republicans should control it.

Democrats currently have a 235 to 199 majority in the House of Representatives and a 51 to 49 majority in the Senate -- the chamber's two independent senators are allied with the Democrats.

One of Obama's closing points is that McCain would carry out George Bush's policies if elected, saying the Arizona senator has "ridden shotgun" with the president on economic policy.

The poll suggests that 53 percent think McCain would mostly carry out Bush's policies, with 45 percent saying he would not.

Only 28 percent approve of the way Bush is handling his job as president.

Likely voters questioned in the poll were also asked whether Obama will win the election. VideoWatch more on the final days of campaigning »

"Nine in 10 think it's likely; nearly half say it is very likely. Only 1 in 10 say it is very likely that McCain will win, while half say a McCain victory is unlikely," Holland said.

How will Obama supporters react if he does not win on Tuesday? According to the poll, one in five will be angry; one in four will be upset but not angry. Most Obama supporters, however, say they will be disappointed but not angry or upset if McCain wins.

The poll also suggests the Democrats are much more excited about this election than Republicans. Forty-five percent of Democrats questioned said they are extremely enthusiastic about voting this year, compared to 28 percent of Republicans.

"The economy remains the No. 1 issue to most voters. But although 8 in 10 say that economic conditions are poor now, 62 percent say that the economy will be in good shape a year from now," Holland said. "The economy, which is already a strong issue, jumped even further in importance after the financial crisis hit in September.

"And since the public tends to blame the Republicans more than the Democrats for that crisis, that event provided a boost not just to Barack Obama but to Democratic candidates across the country. Democratic congressional candidates have a 9-point lead in the 'generic ballot' question."

The generic ballot asks voters their preference for U.S. House without naming the candidates running in each district.

The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll was conducted Thursday through Saturday, with 1,017 adult Americans, including 950 registered voters and 716 likely voters, questioned by telephone. The survey's sampling error ranges from plus or minus 3 percentage points to plus or minus 4.5 percentage points, depending on the question.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/02/poll.one.party/index.html?iref=mp...

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just don't want to waste my beer to find out you're just pulling my leg

I wonder if War Dog has been hospitalized with a debilitating depression?

To Studs: With Love and Memories

"Take it easy, but take it." -- Studs Terkel's sign-off on every WFMT radio show.

So there wasn't a World Series in Chicago, and Studs missed the 2008 Presidential election. Other than that, Louis (Studs) Terkel did everything possible in 96 years.

Was he the greatest Chicagoan? I cannot think of another. For me, he represented the joyous, scrappy, liberal, generous, wise-cracking heart of this city. If you met him, he was your friend. That happened to the hundreds and hundreds of people he interviewed for his radio show and 20 best-selling books. He wrote down the oral histories of those of his time who did not have a voice. In conversation he could draw up every single one of their names.

Studs said many times in these last years, "I'm ready to check out." He hadn't been in any hurry until a fall in late August slowed him down. At the time of his 93th birthday, we had dinner with him a few days before he was having a heart bypass. He was looking forward to it.

"The docs say the odds are 4-to-1 in my favor," he said, with the voice of a guy who studied the angles. "At age 93, those are pretty good odds. I'm gonna have a whack at it. Otherwise, I'm Dead Man Walking. If I don't have the operation, how long do I have? Six months, maybe. That's no way to live, waiting to die. I've had 93 years -- tumultuous years. That's a pretty good run."

It was a run during which his great mind never let him down. "This is ironic," he told me. "I'm not the one was has Alzheimer's. It's the country that has Alzheimer's. There was a survey the other day showing that most people think our best president was Reagan. Not Abraham Lincoln. FDR came in 10th. People don't pay attention any more. They don't read the news."

Studs read the news. He sang with Pete Seeger: "I sell the morning papers sir, my name is Jimmy Brown. Everybody knows that I'm the newsboy of the town. You can hear me yellin' Morning Star, runnin' along the street. Got no hat upon my head no shoes upon my feet."

Studs knew jazz inside out, gospel by heart, the blues as he learned them after being raised in the transient hotel run by his mother on Wells St. He wasn't the only man who had a going-away party when he left to fight in World War Two. He might have been the only one to have Billie Holiday sing at his party.

He was never a communist. He was a proud man of the Left. He was blacklisted by McCarthy, and as a result he lost one of the first national sitcoms in TV history. "I was happy to do it," he said. Every single day of his life he wore a red or red-checked shirt and bright red socks. Of course he smoked a cigar. He liked a drink, too, and loved to hang out in newspaper bars and in ethnic neighborhoods with his pals. I never saw him drunk, and believe me, I had plenty of opportunities to.

He visited me in the hospital more times than I visited him. We received bulletins from those who loved him and cared for him. This was the stunner, from his dear friend Sydney Lewis, on Sept. 11: "After hearing his very clear wishes, [his son] Dan called hospice. The admissions nurse, a lovely woman, said in her many years of doing this work she'd never seen a person more at peace over the decision. Really, all he wants is forJR [his caregiver JR Millares] and Dan to be around and never again to have to leave his house."

He had been in touch through the summer, by e-mail. He wasn't receiving a lot of visitors. He never mentioned his health. He was online encouraging me. That was so typical of him. After I broke my hip, he e-mailed me, but never mentioned the hip. He said: "You have added a NEW VOICE, a new sound, to your natural one. This -- what you write now -- is a richer one -- a new dimension. It's more than about movies. Yes, it's about movies but there is something added: A REFLECTION on life itself."

I thought twice about quoting that, because he says nice things about me. I hope you will understand why I did. It is the voice of Studs Terkel's love. Of Studs reaching outside his failing body and giving encouragement, as he has always done for me and countless others. He couldn't have written a shelf of books after listening to hundreds of people and writing down their words if his heart had not been unconditionally open to the world.

An e-mail on Sept. 15, from Sydney:

"When I got here today he was gloomy and hadn't eaten. He said he's half interested in leaving, half in staying. After I printed out the great Booklist review of his new book P.S. got, he perked up, we talked about the election, and before I knew it he'd polished off some meat loaf and grapes and was demanding more grapes! So it goes. I suggested he hang around for at least a few things: book publication, World Series, election, and Garry Wills's Terkel retrospective for NY Review of Books. He's agreed to try."

On Oct. 23, his friend Andrew Patner e-mailed:

"The man with the greatest spirit known to man is sitting up and taking nourishment. Swallow coaching, even some (cut-up) meat. Gained back a few pounds. Opining on the election (surprise!), the World Series (surprise!), how lousy his new book is being marketed (surprise!). He's looking now to New Year's Eve ("Why not?"), but pulling at least for Election Day ("I can't miss it!")."

He was the most widely and deeply loved man I ever hope to know. He was married for decades to Ida, whose heart filled a room. After the Freedom of Information Act was passed, he was devastated to find that Ida's FBI film was thicker than his own. J. Edgar Hoover thought he was a subversive. Hoover, he said, had a lifelong suspicion of those who thought the Constitution actually meant something.

Studs was a contented, not an outspoken, athiest. "When I go," he told us, "my ashes will be mixed with Ida's and scattered in Bughouse Square." In his next-to-last memoir, he remembered Ida's last words as they wheeled her away towards surgery: "Louis, what have you gotten me into now?" There will be no tombstone, although being Studs, he has written his epitaph: "Curiosity didn't kill this cat."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/roger-ebert/to-studs-with-love-and-me_b_13...

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chubby are you serious?
Submitted by mire on Mon, 11/03/2008 - 12:53am.
just don't want to waste my beer to find out you're just pulling my leg
-------
Don't give them the entire keg. A few cottage cheese container lids filled with beer is plenty.

the illegal aunt and ayers again
Submitted by mire on Mon, 11/03/2008 - 12:18am.
-------

Reverend Wright will be making a debut again also. Funny isn't it Mire? Anything that involves Obama's character requires a week or two of reporting. McCain's Pennsylvania campaign director was involved in pushing the Ashley Todd story. That story was shut down as soon as it was revealed as a fraud. Todd is now free- and no questions are asked.

The MSM will start this negative bull-shit tomorrow full throttle. This is what they did in 2004. ABC and its right-wing radio stations flooded the airwaves with right-wing propaganda. They get these talking points from the GOP.
CNN is nearly as bad as FOX. Not only will we have to do what we can to get out the vote, but be prepared to pounce on MSM.

>>just don't want to waste my beer to find out you're just pulling my leg

you don't need to use near that much. anymore than an inch's woth is wasted.

plus, the slugs don't care if the beer is `backwash'.

hell, they will even go for domestic beer!

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"The Once and Future Rajah of Bhong."

anyway, the point is you don't need much beer for the slugs.as long as they can crawl into it, they'll drink all they can.

is is a good idea to refresh the beer occasionally, cuz at some point it'll be more dissolved slug than beer.

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"The Once and Future Rajah of Bhong."

i have visions of big cockroaches crashing the snail party... i think i might have to rethink this beer tactic

another thing about slugs and beer....

the slugs aren't very picky. they don't have very refined tastes.

perhaps that is because they walk on their tongues?

they call the bottom part of a slug it's tongue because it breaks up whatever it is moving over for easy digestion.

so when a slug is moving, it is actually a very long lick.

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"The Once and Future Rajah of Bhong."

that's a slur, chubby, they're cute little things, they have a little shell-house, they're not the slimy homeless things you may be thinking about, and they're really tiny, probably why I never really see myself harming them, they're cute

if i could just get them to stop eating my plants I wouldn't mind them at all

on that note, i must say good night, it's really an hour later than it is and tomorrow is monday. yikes

so good night, sleep tight and don't let the slugs lick you!

that's right, seven inches long...

and they are all over the place up here!

btw: the reason they are called banana slugs is they taste just like bananas! ;)

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"The Once and Future Rajah of Bhong."

>>it's really an hour later than it is

but it is earlier than it was this time yesterday!

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"The Once and Future Rajah of Bhong."

they didn't like me borrowing their banana slug picture?

what a jerk...I can't even save the pic and then post it on my Oosah.com account...

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"The Once and Future Rajah of Bhong."

Bolivia halts US anti-drugs work

President Evo Morales has announced he is suspending "indefinitely" the operations of the US Drug Enforcement Administration in Bolivia.

Mr Morales accused the agency of having encouraged anti-government protests in the country in September.

He did not say whether its staff would be asked to leave the country, as coca- growers have been pressing him to do.

Bolivia's first indigenous president once served as the leader of the country's union of coca-growers.

Relations between Bolivia and the US have been strained since Evo Morales won presidential elections in January 2006.

Coca is the raw material used in the production of cocaine and is widely grown in Bolivia.

The country is a major producer of cocaine, but millions of Bolivians poorest people also chew coca leaves as part of their daily routine. Many believe the leaf offers health benefits.

"From today all the activities of the US DEA are suspended indefinitely," the Bolivian leader said in the coca-growing region of Chimore, in the central province of Chapare.

"Personnel from the DEA supported activities of the unsuccessful coup d'etat in Bolivia," he added, referring to the unrest in September which left 19 people dead.

"We have the obligation to defend the dignity and sovereignty of the Bolivian people."

US officials have denied any wrongdoing.

In recent months, a string of tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats and agencies increased tensions between both countries, the BBC's Andres Schipani reports from Bolivia.

Bolivia's government expelled the US international development agency and the US ambassador to La Paz.

Washington retaliated by expelling its Bolivian counterpart, while last month President George W Bush himself put the Andean country on an anti-narcotics blacklist that cuts trade preferences.

Making his announcement, Mr Morales also declared that his government had eradicated more than 5,000 hectares (12,300 acres) of illegally planted coca.

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"The Once and Future Rajah of Bhong."

Three bloody summers in Afghanistan

Three summers ago, Britain's war in Afghanistan began in earnest when 3,300 troops set up camp on a small, remote patch of desert in a little-known place called Helmand.

It's now a name most associate with war - a place where more than 100 British troops have died - and where efforts to bring stability and defeat a fierce insurgency have so far failed.

Some say there aren't enough troops, others say there are too many, and even commanders now admit this war won't be won by military force alone.

Based in Kabul, I have followed British troops over the last three years, and before leaving my posting in Afghanistan, went on one final trip to Helmand to try and answer the question of whether this mission is worthwhile.

In April 2006 it was sold, politically, as a peace-building mission.

"We'd be perfectly happy to leave in three years' time without firing one shot," the then Defence Secretary, John Reid, announced in Kabul.

But the following day the commander of British forces in Afghanistan, Brigadier Ed Butler gave another insight: "The greatest danger is we know very little about Helmand province, so it is a lack of information that will be the greatest challenge."

Just a few months later, troops were fighting for their lives, defending small isolated bases from wave after wave of attacks, dropping bombs on their doorsteps to keep insurgents at bay.

Since then, the nature of the fighting has changed, but the violence has continued.

We experienced first hand the violence again this year - a third bloody summer for British forces in Helmand and at a forward base on the fringes of the town of Sangin.

We were met by incoming fire, as rockets crashed down close to the camp and British forces scrambled to return fire.

The next day, out on patrol, troops were dropping mortar bombs just ahead of their own positions as the Taleban moved forward into battle.

One mortar fell short through some technical fault and a soldier was injured, and the troops scrambled back to base with the insurgents in hot pursuit.

The next day they did it all over again, and on that occasion a 24-year-old dog handler was killed.

Since 2001 more than 120 British servicemen and women have died in Afghanistan.

The Taleban have lost many more men in the fighting, among them key commanders. They may wear flip-flops and fight a guerrilla war with old-fashioned weapons, but they are still a force capable of taking on the world's finest armies and not losing.

The definition of "winning" or "losing" is vitally important when it comes to what British and other international forces want to achieve in Afghanistan.

Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, who commanded British forces in Helmand this summer, told Panorama: "There is no exclusively military solution to the nature of the insurgency in Afghanistan."

It's become clear over the months and years that this counter-insurgency campaign can't be won by fighting alone.

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"The Once and Future Rajah of Bhong."

The Quotable Palin

http://www.236.com/blog/w/chris_kelly/two_of_my_daughters_brick_9968.php

Chris Kelly

Two of my daughters, Brick and Chance, were perfectly nice things for Halloween but our eldest, Heavenly, wanted to be Sarah Palin. I was proud but annoyed. On the one hand, Sarah Palin seemed like a reasonably clever costume for a fifteen-year-old. (As it turned out, there was only one other pseudo-Palin in high school that day.) On the other hand, where was I supposed to get $150,000?

Heavenly was working on her accent and asked me for some hilarious Sarah Palin things to say. Because I'm a lot of fun I told her:
"Al-Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America...he's worried that someone won't read them their rights."

(...)

Sarah Palin is what you might call "intellectually incurious." I think when Joe the Plumber is talking to Sarah Palin he has to slow it down. So where'd she come up with such a fancy pants all-purpose bromide about measuring society by its treatment of whomever she's addressing at the time?

This is one of those quotes that seems to have gone rogue from whoever coined it, and now only exists in Rotary Club newsletters and after-dinner speeches at Operation Rescue. It has any number of original authors. According to the Yale Book of Quotations, Sarah Palin picked it up from her extensive reading of either:

Dostoyevsky
Pearl S. Buck
Hubert Humphrey
Ramsey Clark
Helen Keller
or
Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson

(This is a pretty demanding reading list. No wonder she had all that friction with the librarian.)

But the Yale Book of Quotations has still missed one.

It's a 1943 letter from Winston Churchill to Herbert Morrison. Because it's a funny old world, he's talking about prisoners' rights.

The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to law, and particularly to deny him judgment by his peers for an indefinite period, is in the highest degree odious, and is the foundation of all totalitarian Governments, whether Nazi or Communist. It is only when extreme danger to the State can be pleaded that this power may be temporarily assumed by the Executive, and even so its working must be interpreted with the utmost vigilance by a Free Parliament. As the danger passes, persons so imprisoned, against whom there is no charge which courts and juries would accept, should be released, as you have been steadily doing, until hardly any are left. Extraordinary powers assumed by the Executive with the consent of Parliament in emergencies should be yielded up when and as the emergency declines. Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization."

I wonder if Churchill would have enjoyed Sarah Palin's joke about reading prisoners their rights, or if he would have thought she was kind of an asshole.

I know this sounds nitpicky. But she's the one who keeps bringing it up.

*
************
*************************

"The Once and Future Rajah of Bhong."

The Curse of Cindy McCain

http://www.236.com/video/2008/the_curse_of_cindy_mccain_1_9924.php

*
************
*************************

"The Once and Future Rajah of Bhong."

^*

predictions
Submitted by SEDER on Sun, 11/02/2008 - 1:09pm.

I am glad that you haven't displayed the childlike devotion to Obama and cheerleading of him like .. say.. I don't know.. Bob Cesca.

I'm going to write about Cesca's slavish disciple-like devotion to Obama and why it's wrong in a blog tomorrow.

I'm glad that he will probably win, but let's face it folks: Obama is quite possibly to the right of Bill Clinton.

www.sigzone.blogspot.com

A GOPer in Charlottesville

A McCain-backing law student in Charlottesville emails, slightly demoralized:

I've been called by the Obama Campaign 20 times in the past week, along with at least one mailer on the door every day and several personal visits. Not a single thing from the McCain campaign.

I'm hoping that the law of diminishing returns means that the excess of GOTV'ing is having a net negative effect. ....

I'm as solid a McCain voter as one can be, but it's wearing to have to keep explaining to enthusiastic volunteers why I could possibly oppose Hope and Change — the repetition certainly creates an aura of inevitability. A single phone call or door knock from a Republican would be enormously encouraging.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1108/A_GOPer_in_Charlottesville.h...

ALSO: A very different experience from a McCain volunteer near Tampa, where she feels the GOP ground game is strong.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/jonathanmartin/1108/Mailbag_Quiet_McCain_s...

By Ben Smith 08:42 PM

Should we let AIG file for bankruptcy?
Chris in Paris · 11/03/2008 04:55:00 AM ET · Link
Make a comment · reddit · FARK · Digg It! · Stumble It!

After quickly burning through $143 billion - yes, billion - and eying much more, maybe bankruptcy will be a better alternative for American taxpayers. No sense throwing good money after bad, especially since the internal financials appear no better today than a few weeks ago. Something very wrong has happened there and for starters, the government needs to keep its hands on ever last penny AIG has including stock sales to current or former shareholders. Nothing here smells right.
A number of financial experts now fear that the federal government's $143 billion attempt to rescue troubled insurance giant American International Group may not work, and some argue that company shareholders and taxpayers would have been better served by a bankruptcy filing.

The Treasury Department leapt to keep AIG from going bankrupt on Sept. 16, and in the past seven weeks, AIG has drawn down $90 billion in federal bailout loans. But some key AIG players argue that bankruptcy would have offered more structure and greater protections during a time of intense market volatility.

AIG declined to comment on the matter.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/02/AR200811...

Bernanke Push for Lower Bank Borrowing Costs Drives Treasury Yields Higher Even as Ben S. Bernanke cuts borrowing costs to 50-year lows, taxpayers will likely be paying ever increasing interest rates on U.S. debt.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=akUo9OCJA3PI&refer=n...

but still.

http://www.voteforpresident.org/results

the angstiness (as alice put it) of this wait is strong here, too. there are election results watch parties around the world: afghanistan, australia, austria, belgium, brazil, canada, cambodia, costa rica, czech, denmark, france, germany, greece, guatemala, hong kong, india, indonesia, ireland, israel, italy, japan, korea, luxemburg, mexico, nepal, netherlands, new zealand, phillipines, poland, singapore, spain, sweden, switzerland, taiwan, thailand, turkey, UK, vietnam, zambia.

we've got people from amsterdam coming to our party in osaka. they rearranged their travel plans here to be in a place with BBC for this.

there's a democrats abroad guy in the antartic. don't know if he has satellite TV, though.

hey, tonid! will you be working the polls tomorrow?

I can't believe it's almost over. It seems like we've been living this election for not just 2 years, but eight years. Ever since Bush took office.

I'm an election judge again and the preparations for this election has been more extreme than elections past. The training has been much more extensive on dealing with possible problems at the polls. Customer service was a big part of training.

They are warning us of a huge turnout at the polls and also of poll watchers and reps from the State Atty General's office.

either way, it's going to be an intense and tense day. i can see customer service being important.

i've been calling from here to sign up volunteers for the obama campaign on election day. i've gotten quite a few people who can't volunteer because they'll be working as election judges that day. good to hear.

what happens if reps from the state atty general's office show up? what would they be doing?

And that is voting. I think early voting is a good thing.

I feel bad for the people standing in line and I also feel bad for the poll workers! The day is extremely long (5AM to 8 PM or 9 PM) and many times the poll workers (election judges) don't get breaks. We need more people working th polls or maybe 2 shifts because it's almost inhumane and most of the workers are Seniors.

The disabled were not thought of and some early voting places were hard to get to and made no provisions for the disabled. There are 50 million people that are disabled in this country.

There has to be a complete overhauling of the election system and election days should be a national holiday.

what happens if reps from the state atty general's office show up? what would they be doing?

They are there for poll problems with the equipment and also to make sure that there is no electioneering close to the polls and the judges are not trying to steer voting.

The computer voting has been a problem everywhere and I think they would be sent to polls with computer problems.

what are the election judges supposed to do if there are computer problems, tonid?

my father refuses to vote early. he thinks they won't count his vote if he does. i tried to convince him, but...

and they would send someone over to try to fix the problem.

In the meantime, we have the optical scanner which most people use anyway. It's better to have a paper backup.

The last election I worked, if we had 50 people that used the computer, that was alot.

Most of the early voting places just had the computer. You did not have the option of the optical scanner.

In his 103 years, Ernest Smith says, he never drank, smoked or voted.

Though he’s yet to sample tobacco or alcohol, on Thursday, Smith cast his first ballot —- for Democratic nominee Barack Obama.

“I voted, and I want to vote again,” said Smith, a testament to clean living. “It felt good.”

While the Lithonia man’s hearing is poor and his memory spotty, Smith moves without the aid of a walker and has few wrinkles.

“Loving the Lord,” he said, when asked his secret to longevity.

Born in 1905 in Pembroke, N.C., Smith lived most of his life there and was first eligible to vote in 1928 —- then the voting age was 21.

But for African-Americans like Smith, suffrage was far from universal. Literacy tests and poll taxes were enacted through much of the Jim Crow South to suppress black turnout.

Had Smith attempted to vote in 1928 —- he says he never tried to register —- his choices would have been Herbert Hoover, campaigning as a Republican maverick, and Democrat Al Smith who, like Obama, was a historic nominee.

http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/printedition/2008/11/03/firsttime.html

Submitted by Chubby Bubba on Mon, 11/03/2008 - 1:16am.
...when a slug is moving, it is actually a very long lick.
-----
(Kinda like a Jimi Hendrix solo but with a slower tempo.)

the long lines are ridiculous. just saw footage of ohio's early voting and it looks just like it did on election day in 2004.

but, i've long thought that the election should be more than one day. and it seems people are taking it upon themselves to use early voting as a way to make it longer than one day. which is a nice precedent.

i was hoping to change angstiness to angst before crank bait showed up!

(hey, crank. today's a national holiday here - culture day. don't know why, but i thought that might interest you.)

Submitted by Chubby Bubba on Thu, 10/30/2008 - 3:21pm.
...but I always revert to the old hunt and peck...even though I know I am more accurate touch typing.
------
[Actual quote:]

"...eben doh O know U an more affurate douche typing."

per CNN international: obama dumplings being sold in obama city, japan.

jenise,

Whose culture? Are there not many owing to the many islands?

Or is it: "The Jōmon period (縄文時代, Jōmon-jidai') is the time in Japanese prehistory from about 14,000 BC to 400 BC." (Jeez...14,400 years is quite a spread, don't you think?)

I found the following though I don't know if it applies:

http://www.answers.com/topic/japanese-cultural-festival

don't know if anyone actually knows whose culture is celebrated. mostly just everybody celebrating a three-day weekend. culture awards were given out to a bunch of people who have contributed to japanese culture. the usual suspects - seiji ozawa, the physicist who got a nobel prize. not sure who the others were.

speaking of, i had to write a statement for a grant application explaining why i should be considered a legitimate part of japanese society. now there's a moment tailored for an existential crisis.

the cultural festivals from your link are slightly different. a chance for students to go to other schools and "It is also intended to enrich people's lives by increasing social interaction." only with so many all-boys and all-girls schools here, i think it's pretty awkward at best. you remember. like our days at catholic school.

the qvc ad was good on so many levels. cindy played her part like she was a natural.

i thought the olbermann skit was funny and did a good job of lampooning him. its interesting that some other blogs (don't remember if it was huffpo or kos) wrote about it and the comments were mostly of the nature that the skit was bad because olbermann is too sacred to lampoon. all i can say is, bullshit. it doesn't mean i don't like olbermann, i watch him almost every night, i just don't believe in sacred cows.

hilarious and even though I totally agree that a lampooning is well deserved for anyone in the public eye, the olberman bit was too long and not funny enough. Lampooning is a form of admiration. THose who don't think so lack a funny bone imo.

Happe Talk

Submitted by dan on Mon, 11/03/2008 - 9:13am.
...the comments were mostly of the nature that the skit was bad because olbermann is too sacred to lampoon. all i can say is, bullshit...
----
I agree. When a person is over-the-top dramatic, it is an invitation to parody.
-----------------------------
An idea for a pre-Halloween McCain campaign slogan popped into my head. (I know...it's too late and it's a slogan for the wrong team...but humor knows no bounds.)

"Neither with a hatchet nor a scalpel: The taxes chainsaw massacre."

Plenty. A poll worker may say you aren't registered. Your voting machine could malfunction. Your meddling neighbor could say you aren't eligible to vote. Or maybe you are offered a provisional ballot -- and what is the difference between regular ballots, provisional ballots and emergency ballots, anyway?

There is a remedy for most of these problems, and a bit of advance preparation should ensure that they never come up. Here is a voter's guide on what could go wrong at the polls and what to do about it:

* You aren't on the voter rolls. This could happen for several reasons, and the remedies are different for each.

The huge number of new voters has caused registration backlogs in some states, and the voter rolls may not show your name if you registered just before the deadline. That "has the potential to be a significant problem," says Jonah Goldman of the nonpartisan Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

If that happens, you may have to file a provisional ballot. Elections judges open provisional ballots after Election Day and, on a case-by-case basis, decide which should be counted. Your voter-registration form will have been dated and time-stamped and will provide proof that you are eligible to vote.

Be sure you are in the right precinct and polling place. State laws differ -- in some states, a provisional ballot cast in the wrong precinct will be counted; in others, it won't. The Web site www.maps.google.com/vote can tell you where your voting location is and how to get there.

You also might not be on the voter rolls if you haven't voted in several elections and have been moved to the inactive list. Make sure poll workers have checked all of their voter lists for your name. Inactive voters are entitled to cast regular ballots, which are counted on the night of the election and aren't subject to the additional scrutiny of provisional ballots.

Elections offices also regularly purge their rolls to remove voters who have died, moved or been convicted of felonies. Federal law outlines when and how they can do that, however, and Colorado and Michigan recently were ordered by federal judges to reinstate voters who were unlawfully purged. If your name was removed from the rolls, you might have to file a provisional ballot.

* You don't have an ID. Only Georgia and Indiana require an identification with a current photo. Other states require some form of identification. And still others require an ID only of first-time voters who registered by mail. A map at New York University's Brennan Center for Justice Web site (www.brennancenter.org/content/section/category/voter_id) shows the ID requirements for each state.

Some states allow voters who don't have the required ID documents to file provisional ballots. Don't take a provisional ballot if you don't have to: State laws differ on how and when provisional ballots are counted, and there is a chance that yours will be excluded.

If poll workers ask for an ID even if one isn't required, you can appeal to the chief judge at your polling place or call the nonpartisan watchdog group Election Protection for guidance. Their number is 1-866-OUR-VOTE. Election Protection will operate 25 call centers, staffed by some 10,000 lawyers and other volunteers, and is expecting 100,000 calls on Election Day.

Probably the best solution to an ID problem, though, is to show your driver's license, whether it is legally required or not. "There's not a lot of time on Election Day to stand on principle," says Mr. Goldman.

* There are voting-equipment problems. There are different remedies for different problems.

Touch-screen voting machines may lose power or otherwise stop working. In that case, polling places will have emergency paper ballots on hand. An emergency ballot, unlike a provisional ballot, is counted on the night of the election and doesn't undergo a review by election judges. Make sure your emergency ballot isn't mingled with provisional ballots, or it might not get a timely count.

Votes may "flip" on an electronic voting system, showing that you cast your vote for Barack Obama, for example, even though you are sure you voted for John McCain. Flipping usually is caused by a calibration problem, says the Brennan Center -- that is, the voting machine isn't matching up the candidate's name on the screen with his name on an internal program.

Summon a poll worker to fix the error, make sure your vote is registered properly on the summary page of the electronic ballot and then call Election Protection, which is tracking machine problems.

Many states will keep their registration lists on electronic poll books this year. In some trial tests and primaries, those have crashed or been too slow to be of any use. If that happens, there is no way poll workers can verify your registration data, and you will have to file a provisional ballot.

* Your eligibility is challenged. The Republican Party has said it might challenge voters registered by activist groups like Acorn, whose field workers it has accused of signing up fictitious people, felons and others ineligible to vote. State laws vary widely about who can make challenges and under what conditions. In Ohio, only poll workers can challenge a voter; in Florida, any voter can challenge any other.

Be prepared for a challenge by bringing along proof of your age, identity and address. If those are in order and you are in the correct precinct, you must be offered a regular ballot. If they aren't, you may have to vote by provisional ballot.

* The lines are long. Tough luck.

A few jurisdictions require election workers to offer emergency ballots if lines are more than 45 minutes long. Everyone else can probably expect a long wait.

Voting hours vary by state, so check the Web site of your local elections board. Everyone in line at closing time will be allowed to vote, no matter how late the polls must stay open.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122567152289691823.html

Happe Talk

About that GOP 72 hour get out the vote plan, it's called Diebold, Sequoia and ES& S. Since working to get the vote out, I have not seen anyone from the Republican Party. At least not to assist their voters. I have not seen any Republican sample ballots or any kind of campaign literature. There are a few yard signs at the polling site. However, the only thing that they have attempted to do is harass Democratic voters. As I posted, about 3 weeks ago, they are photographing Democrats, writing down license plates and taking pictures of cars. The sheriff was sent out repeatedly- because the few Republicans were voting- often accused us of harassing them. This is nonsense of course.

I was notified last Spring that I was eligible for jury duty for the following ninety days...or sixty days...or some period of time. I have forgotten the details.

I hoped that I wouldn't be called to serve although I suspected that my Liberal views might cause me to be excluded by the prosecution in this Conservative county.

Anyway, it hasn't happened and I think that I am out of the woods for the time being.

But it has occurred to me that potential jurors are chosen from the registered voters, the total of which (whom?) has increased substantially. This should lessen the odds that any particular person will be tapped for jury duty.

McCain

Saturn now closes in on McCain's Venus, who represents women, money and social cause when considered politically. Women's choice issues, equal pay, federally sanctioned benefit plans and a solid economic platform must be presented. Actually if not evident by now, a disappointed Saturn assures popularity wanes further. In addition to these matters, given a female running mate and the track she takes, Palin remains a huge concern/liability/asset. Really at this point consensus catches up with what has been seeded. While some are quick to point to the polls that indicate McCain's rise in appeal, Saturn shrugs. It's too little, too late. Saturn in Virgo, McCain's birth sign, does not favor negative criticism. Saturn insists that person state one's own case irrespective of another's position. Since McCain's camp has not followed this protocol, it stands as a task impossible to offset the decline of the last weeks. Watch Sunday and Monday. The intense Sun in strongly emotional Scorpio forms a crisp, tense angle to McCain's planet of assertion/anger/aggression, Mars. There's still a remaining day or two to display that rumored anger instinct.

Obama

Riding the momentum of an uninterrupted half hour infomercial and given Saturn's approach to his Mars as the Sun presses his Sun, Obama says with confidence, "The time is now and I am the man for the job." While undergoing very similar patterns to McCain, Obama's spin takes the higher road. While energized to the point of sharpness in speech, Obama's message seems more lucid, easier to grasp and more likely to make a positive difference. His optimism and can-do confidence shadows the negative spewing of his opponent. Even if McCain closes in some polls, there's no need for panic. Keep doing what you're doing and give other undoing ample space to work itself out.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/03/huffpollstrology-candidat_n_140...

Happe Talk

Gibbons, a former Republican congressman, has been under investigation into whether he improperly received gifts from a software company that received military contracts while he was in Congress. Gibbons steadfastly denied any wrongdoing and said the Justice Department could look as hard as it wanted and wouldn't find anything inappropriate.

"Two years ago when this story broke I told my side of it, that I had nothing to do with it," Gibbons said. "Today I am exceedingly pleased that the FBI and the Justice Department have vindicated me from the allegations and claims of Mr. Montgomery."

"It's time we focus on the issues of the state," he added. "We need to work on making sure people can remain in their homes, that we can keep people employed and get our economy back on track."

Lowell said, "It should be crystal clear that the only persons who should be investigated or charged are those who made false allegations of wrongdoing and who tried to fuel this investigation for their own private purposes."

Gibbons met with the FBI two weeks ago in Washington to discuss the case, and said afterward that he hoped for "a positive outcome."

The conclusion of the FBI investigation eliminates one major distraction for Gibbons, whose first term has been beset by problems. He has seen his approval ratings drop following a budget crunch, a messy divorce and lawsuits involving his private and public activities.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081103/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/nevada_governor_5

Happe Talk

Happe Talk

Today's Democracy now.

Digs into vote fraud by Karl rove and others planned for tomorrow.

As well as Studs Turkell.

http://www.democracynow.org/

Last Updated: 8:51 am | Monday, November 3, 2008

ShareThisOhio Poll projects Obama win
By Howard Wilkinson • hwilkinson@enquirer.com • November 3, 2008

Barack Obama is likely to prevail over John McCain in the fierce battle for Ohio's 20 electoral votes, according to an Ohio Poll released Monday morning,

The poll by the University of Cincinnati's Institute for Policy Research - billed as a final projection of Tuesday's results by institute pollster Eric Rademacher -- shows Obama with 51.5 percent to 45.7 percent for McCain.

Obama's lead is well outside the poll's margin of error of plus-or-minus 2.7 percentage points.

• Get a reminder for our Election Day chat
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It shows a small bump for the Democrat over a poll Rademacher conducted almost two weeks ago for a consortium of Ohio newspapers, including the Enquirer. The Ohio Newspaper Poll showed Obama with a 3-point point lead and 49 percent support.

The Ohio Poll released this morning comes after a week in which McCain and his running mate, Alaska governor Sarah Palin, practically took up residence in the Buckeye State. Their campaigning included a rally by Palin Sunday night in Clermont County. The McCain-Palin campaigned increased its television ad buys in Ohio and other key states.

Ohio is considered a must-win state for McCain, who trails Obama not only in national polls but in state polls in hotly-contested battleground states such as Virginia, Pennsylvania, Colorado and New Mexico.

No Republican president has ever won the presidency without winning Ohio. President Bush won Ohio by a scant 118,000 votes out of 4.6 million cast in 2004. It was the final piece of the electoral map puzzle for Bush, putting him over the 270 needed for election.

The Ohio Poll released this morning was conducted between last Wednesday and Sunday. The poll interviewed 1,308 probable voters by telephone.

http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20081103/NEWS0106/311030030/1055/NEWS

Submitted by toniD on Sun, 11/02/2008 - 3:37pm.
Pundits on CNN
are saying that they will believe the young voters when they see them. Obama signed up a bunch of new young voters but so far there is no evidence they are voting.
-----------

Tonid, you posted this yesterday, but I've got to comment. Those pundits haven't got off of their flabby asses in years. They don't associate with the peasants in the fields. As I have posted, they get their talking points from the GOP. I can tell you ToniD that the youth vote is turning out, massively. It is something to see folks celebrating about casting a vote. I have never seen anything like it

The pundits suck!
Submitted by edna ellen poe on Mon, 11/03/2008 - 10:45am.
-----
edna,

You posted an uncharacteristically light and funny one-liner a few days ago although I can't remember it to cite it here and now.

Don't let my poor memory detract from the fact that it was funny. It's nice to know that your ire sometimes gives way to goofy quips.

Perpetual ire can be harmful to your health.

I'm glad to hear that! I was trying to find an article to disput thier claims but no luck.

We have a junior election judge working with us this year. A high school student. That gives me hope, also, that the young people are interested this time.

http://www.samsedershow.com/node/4025#comment-276722

Happe Talk

Quinnipiac polls just came out but aren't posted yet. MSNBC just announced them and Obama is ahead in most of the important state polls.

Here's Zogby:

Reuters/Zogby: Obama Leads in Most Battleground States
The final Reuters/Zogby surveys in eight battleground states show Sen. Barack Obama in a very strong position to be elected President on Tuesday.

Pennsylvania: Obama 54%, McCain 40%

Ohio: Obama 50%, McCain 44%

Virginia: Obama 51%, McCain 45%

Nevada: Obama 51%, McCain 43%

Florida: Obama 48%, McCain 46%

Missouri: Obama 47%, McCain 46%

North Carolina: McCain 49%, Obama 48%

Indiana: McCain 49%, Obama 44%

http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1628

Quinnipiac: Obama Leads In Key Swing States
The final Quinnipiac Swing State polls show Sen. Barack Obama leading Sen. John McCain in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. No one has been elected President since 1960 without taking two of these three largest swing states.

Florida: Obama 47%, McCain 45%

Ohio: Obama 50%, McCain 43%

Pennsylvania: Obama 52%, McCain 42%

Said pollster Peter Brown: "Sen. Obama appears headed for the best showing of any Democratic candidate among white voters in a generation, going back at least to Jimmy Carter in 1976 and perhaps even to Lyndon Johnson in 1964. Race has been an issue, but green, not black or white, appears to be the color that matters most. Voters overwhelmingly say the economy is the major issue that leads to their vote and they see Sen. Obama as better able to handle the nation's money problems."

http://www.quinnipiac.edu/x1284.xml?ReleaseID=1225&What=&strArea=;&strTi...