Category: Elections

OK, Google™ Adsense™ Has Me Confused

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So, I see an ad for Charles Loller.

He’s running for Congress in Maryland, as a Republican, in the 5th Congressional district.

Normally, this is the place where I would say, “What the f%$# is Google™ Adsense™ doing putting an ad for a Republican on my page?”

I know my reader(s) and they are NOT Republicans.

Only …………… The 5th Congressional district is Steny Hoyer’s district, and I have been consistently critical of him, so the Republican party running an ad for their sacrificial lamb,* in this district might actually meet the eyeballs of someone who is disgusted, as I am, with the distinguished gentleman from the 5th.

So, by the generally low standards of Google™ Adsense™, this actually appears to be a well done job, by virtue of being marginally competent.

Still, if I were running his campaign, I think that I might be a bit miffed that I was paying (fractions of a cent) for this.

Please note: once again, that I do not vet, nor do I endorse any ad that appears on my site, and I reserve the right to mock both the ads that appear on my site, as well as the advertisers.

Also, please note, this should be in no way construed as an inducement or a request for my reader(s) to click on any ad that they would not otherwise be inclined to investigate further. This would be a violation of the terms of service for Google™ Adsense™.

*No, I am not going to pivot off of the sacrificial lamb statement to make a “black sheep” joke, and I will note that if this race were at all competitive, this guy would not have gotten the Republican Party nomination, because the Republican Party does not want black candidates elected, the party sees them as nothing more than useful window dressing.

No, I Did Not See Obama’s Interview on The Daily Show…

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I haven’t had time, or the inclination, though I have read excerpts.

The excerpts do not impress me, but then again, I’m not in the “Impressed by Barack Obama,” demographics, and and have not been since late 2007 (scroll down). I held my nose to vote for him in the general in 2008.

I just don’t feel any need to see it, though I probably will when the election passes.

Call it my own ‘enthusiasm gap’.

Well, Alaska Just Got Weird

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With polls showing Lisa Murkowski in the lead, and the board of elections, in a transparent attempt to help her campaign, putting out a list of “registered write-in candidates,” for the first time in history, which is in court, but the Alaska Supreme Court is allowing the decision to stand for now pending arguments.

In response, Joe Miller and the Alaska Teabaggers have flooded the election office to register hundreds of write ins to be added to the list.

With Miller firmly in 3rd place in the latest polls, and these polls were before the release of his personnel files, I can understand why they want to move votes from Murkowski to him, but this would appear to move votes from Lisa Murkowski to Lisa Martini, or Lisa Murkin, or Lisa Murrow, which has the effect of boosting Democrat Scott Adams.

Pass the popcorn.

Heh.

I Don’t Know What to Make of This

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But it appears that someone in Yemen was attempting to send letter bombs to the United States:

Security officials in Britain and Dubai intercepted parcel bombs being sent from Yemen to the United States in a “credible terrorist threat,” President Barack Obama said on Friday.

He said the parcels were bound for “two places of Jewish worship in Chicago.”

Suspicion fell on al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, based in Yemen, which took responsibility for a failed plot to blow up a U.S. passenger jet on Christmas Day in 2009.

“Initial examinations of those packages has determined that they do apparently contain explosive material,” Obama told reporters in a televised briefing, calling it “a credible terrorist threat against our country.”

The White House said earlier that “both of these packages originated from Yemen” and that Obama was notified of the threat on Thursday night.

This is clearly an attempt at electioneering, even in Yemen, one would have to be blind, deaf, and dumb not to know of the election, but, unlike bin Laden’s statement just prior to the 2004 election, where he was clearly trying to throw the race to Bush, the intent here is unclear.

Some questions:

  • Is this an attempt to favor Democrats or Republicans?
  • Why were synagogues chosen?
  • Did the perps expect to succeed of fail?

Damned if I know.

What Will Obama Do if the Dems Lose Congress?

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John Quiggin Crooked Timber says that Obama will start engaging in zero-dimensional-chess:

Translation: Mr Obama and his aides plan a series of pre-emptive capitulations, after which the Republicans will demand the repeal of the healthcare act (or maybe abolition of Social Security). When/if that is refused, the Repugs will shut down the government, and this time they will hold their nerve until Obama folds.

That Republicans won’t work with him, even if he capitulates, is a certainty, if Republicans were to cooperate with him on sending the Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow to Gitmo, they would still be primaried by the teabaggers.

The supposition that he will lead with capitulation is almost certain, since this has been his modus operandi over the past 20 months.

Regardless of the outcome, Obama sill see it as an opportunity to do some serious hippie punching.

The zero-dimensional chess bon mot deserves a Pulitzer.

So Not the Next Sarah Palin

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Say what you will about Sarah Palin, but she does not currently get drunk and engage in one night stands:

Three years ago this week, an intoxicated Christine O’Donnell showed up at the apartment of a 25-year-old Philadelphian and ended up spending the night in his bed. Here’s his story—and photos—of his escapade with the would-be Delaware senator.

When one finds a public who makes their mark with sexual “morality,” it does appear that they are railing against what they want to do themselves.

I wil note that the source is Gawker, with all that that entails, and the account is fairly stomach churning, not because of anything that Ms. O’Donnell did or said, but because of the attitude of the source.

Lines like, “When her underwear came off, I immediately noticed that the waxing trend had completely passed her by,” do not make kindly disposed to whoever he is.

In fact, it makes me feel a bit, and only a it, of pity for Ms. O’Donnell.

Getting drunk on Halloween and getting to 2nd or 3rd base really should be nobody’s business …… Unless, of course, you are a very public campaigner against any form of sexual activity out of marriage under all circumstances.

Still, it reads like a bad letter to Penthouse forum.

I Hate The Onion

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Click for full size

Not only does the truth hurt, it leaves a nasty mark!

Their headline, “Democrats: ‘If We’re Gonna Lose, Let’s Go Down Running Away From Every Legislative Accomplishment We’ve Made’“:

WASHINGTON — Conceding almost certain Republican gains in next month’s crucial midterm elections, Democratic lawmakers vowed Tuesday not to give up without making one final push to ensure their party runs away from every major legislative victory of the past two years.

Party leaders told reporters that regardless of the ultimate outcome, they would do everything in their power from now until the polls closed to distance themselves from their hard-won passage of a historic health care overhaul, the toughest financial regulations since the 1930s, and a stimulus package most economists now credit with preventing a second Great Depression.

“There’s a great deal on the line, and we know it isn’t going to be easy for us,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), speaking from the steps of the Capitol. “But if we suffer defeat, we will do so knowing we cowered away from absolutely anything we produced that was even remotely progressive or valuable in any way.”

If you’ll excuse me, I will now hit myself in the head repeatedly with a hammer, because that is more pleasant than facing this reality.

Here is a hint for the Democrats: If The Onion is writing an article, and it describes your campaign strategy, you are being a f%$#ing moron.

Payback is a Bitch

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When you look at the Democratic Party Congressional caucus, the people who are most threatened with losing their jobs are the Blue Dogs:

More than half the members of the Blue Dog Coalition—the organization of moderate to conservative Democrats in the House—are in peril in next week’s election, a stark indicator of how the balloting could produce a Congress even more polarized than the current one.

The author of the article says that this is worrying because the Blue Dogs are, “a kind of human bridge, connecting left and right in the House,” but my take is rather more positive: It’s these rat f%$#s that were in large part for blocking and weakening every serious policy initiative that the Democratic party, and it is this perceived lack of accomplishment that has put off voters.

Truth be told, it’s not that payback is a bitch, it’s that payback is making them it’s bitch.

People don’t want to vote for Democrats because they are perceived as timid, and the people who forced this are reaping the whirlwind.

Heh.

Barack Obama Can “Shove It”

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So says Democratic candidate for Rhode Island governor, Frank Caprio will not get an endorsement from Barack Obama when he visits Rhode Island, because Obama appreciated the endorsement that Lincoln Chaffee, the Republican Senator turned independent candidate for governor, running against him.

What’s worse, the White House did not have the decency to tell him, and his campaign found out from a reporter who had been briefed on this:

President Obama will not endorse the Democratic candidate for governor, Frank T. Caprio, when he comes to Rhode Island to support other Democratic candidates, the White House said Sunday.

The president’s decision “is a victory for Linc Chafee,” the Republican-turned-independent who is Caprio’s opponent in the race for governor, said Chafee spokesman Mike Trainor, who said he was quoting Chafee’s own stated view. Former Republican Senator Chafee endorsed Mr. Obama for president in 2008.

Caprio was unaware that the president would not endorse him until his campaign was told by a news reporter, according to his campaign manager, Xay Khamsyvoravong. Khamsyvoravong said Caprio is not embarrassed that he did not get a courtesy call from the White House before the president’s decision was made public.

Caprio’s response, “He can take his endorsement and really shove it as far as I’m concerned.”

This is unbelievably stupid. It hurts the party and, in the long run, it hurts him, but because Lincoln is a “Friend of Barack”, party unity, and party morale, takes a back seat.

I have to invoke this when discussing the travails of anyone named “Kirk”.

I see a parallel in the Illinois Senate race, where Alexi Giannoulias is in a down-to-the-wire with Mark Kirk. …… In a state which is reliably Democratic …… Against a Congressman who has repeatedly lied about his biography …… And is the subject of ceredible allegations that he is a closeted gay …… who reliably opposed gay rights.

So, why is Alexi Giannoulias not running away with this? Well, it could be that he helped run his family bank which collapsed a few years later under the weight of its bad loans.

Of course, it has been know that the bank was in trouble since at least January of this year, when it entered into a consent decree with regulators, but Giannoulias got the nomination because he is Obama’s basketball buddy.

It is to be understood that a President will head his the party, and part of this is obviously rewarding allies, this is just politics, but there are limits, and this is little more than self-absorbed narcissism.

Needless to say, Mr. Caprio is now on my Act Blue page.

Pass the Popcorn

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A Judge in Alaska has ordered that the Fairbanks North Star Borough* personnel records of teabagger Senate candidate Joe Miller are to be released on Tuesday.

The judge set a Tuesday release date to allow an appeal to be filed on Monday:

A judge ruled Saturday that the Fairbanks North Star Borough must release personnel records of U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller.

In an unusual weekend hearing, retired Superior Court Judge Winston Burbank ruled that the public’s right to know about candidates outweighed Miller’s right to privacy.

“I hold that although Mr. Miller has a legitimate expectation of privacy in those documents, Mr. Miller’s right to privacy is indeed outweighed by the public’s significant interest in the background of a public figure who is running for the U.S. Senate,” the judge said. He noted that U.S. senator is among the highest elected offices in the nation.

Burbank ordered that nothing actually will be released until Tuesday afternoon, however, to allow for the ruling to be appealed to the Alaska Supreme Court.

Mr. Miller has been fighting this kicking and screaming, which implies that this his personnel file is packed with lots crunchy goodness.

If this is true, I would think that an appeal by Mr. Miller is likely though. All he has to do is delay the ruling by 7-8 days, and it becomes moot.

My sense is that he was not a model employee, since we have heard whispers from both the City of Fairbanks, as well as his old law firm, that they were not sad to see him go.

*A borough in Alaska is roughly equivalent to a county.

Why the Aqua Buddha Works

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I suggested that Rand Paul might be pushed into doing something stupid, but I missed an obvious point, one that Talking Points Memo‘s Josh Marshall got, which was that by making the attack, and by Paul responding with indignation, “How dare you,” rather than a strong denial and push-back, “My opponent is a liar,” he has shown himself to be weak, and the voters hate weakness.

He calls it the, “Bitch slap theory of electoral politics“:

Let’s call it the Republicans’ Bitch-Slap theory of electoral politics.

It goes something like this.

On one level, of course, the aim behind these attacks is to cast suspicion upon Kerry’s military service record and label him a liar. But that’s only part of what’s going on.

Consider for a moment what the big game is here. This is a battle between two candidates to demonstrate toughness on national security. Toughness is a unitary quality, really — a personal, characterological quality rather than one rooted in policy or divisible in any real way. So both sides are trying to prove to undecided voters either that they’re tougher than the other guy or at least tough enough for the job.

In a post-9/11 environment, obviously, this question of strength, toughness or resolve is particularly salient. That, of course, is why so much of this debate is about war and military service in the first place.

One way — perhaps the best way — to demonstrate someone’s lack of toughness or strength is to attack them and show they are either unwilling or unable to defend themselves — thus the rough slang I used above. And that I think is a big part of what is happening here. Someone who can’t or won’t defend themselves certainly isn’t someone you can depend upon to defend you.

Rand Paul was bitch slapped by Jack Conway, and now he’s acting like a bitch, not shaking hands and implying that he will skip the last debate.

Josh Green at The Atlantic notes, “The issue isn’t Paul’s Christianity, but his manhood,” and that his talk about skipping the final debate is all anyone is talking about.

I Just Voted

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Maryland has a week of early voting, and since I will not be in town on Nov 2, I voted.

I voted straight Democratic Party, except for Barbara Milulski, because of her vote on the telecom immunity bill. I wrote in my Congressman, John Cardin (D).

When I said that she would never get my vote again, I meant it.

As to various constitutional amendments, state and county:

  • I voted no on question 1, which would have required a constitutional convention every 20 years. This is a recipe for mischief and mayhem.
  • I voted no on question 2, which would have raised the bar for a jury in a civil trial from $10,000 to 15,000.
  • Voted against requiring that Orphans’ Court judges be members of the Maryland Bar. It’s a lay court, and has been for over 200 years, and the Maryland Bar is a private organization, and I do not believe that a private organization, particularly one as insular and secretive as the Bar should determine this.
    • As a corollary, I oppose the use of private bars for licensing of lawyers period. It should be public.
  • The county wants to change its charter to force binding arbitration and a no strike clause on its workers. I voted no. (It will probably win though, since arbitration sounds fair, and the no strike section is at the end, where people will not see it)

So I am not a bystander in the elections.

Here is a Big Surprise

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The astroturf group Concerned Taxpayers of America represents just two of said taxpayers:

A few weeks ago, a group called Concerned Taxpayers of America emerged out of nowhere and started to spend large sums of money attacking Rep. Peter DeFazio (D) in his re-election bid in Oregon. At the time, both DeFazio and his opponent, Tea Party favorite Art Robinson, claimed complete ignorance of the group, and DeFazio even tracked it to a townhouse in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington to demand that the group identify itself — but to no avail.

Friday’s FEC filings, however, finally reveal that the Concerned Taxpayers of America consists of exactly two concerned taxpayers:

………

This sh%$ really needs to stop.

This Election is Getting Weird

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First, Joe Miller says that the Berlin Wall is a good thing, and now he has his own merry band of Brownshirts

So, it appears that Alaska Republican Senate nominee has hired hired goons to harass the press in order to prevent them from asking him questions, and they just assaulted and handcuffed a journalist:

The editor of the Alaska Dispatch website was arrested by U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller’s private security guards Sunday as the editor attempted to interview Miller at the end of a public event in an Anchorage school.

Tony Hopfinger was handcuffed by the guards and detained in a hallway at Central Middle School until Anchorage police came and told the guards to release Hopfinger.

I keep expecting this crowd to burst into Tomorrow Belongs to Me.

Christine O’Donnell may be the sane one of this lot.

Our political culture is broken in some very profound ways, and I have no clue as to how to fix it.

Wasp

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Here is the windup


And here is the unforced error

For those of you who don’t know, Wasp is a book by Eric Frank Russell. It’s conceit is that a man is sent to infiltrate and subvert a planet held by the enemy.

Rather than conventional methods of espionage, like sabotage, the goal of the agents is to engender over-reactions from the authorities which would have them weakening themselves, much like a driver distracted by a wasp can kill himself and his passengers by driving into a bridge abutment.

Well, in the Kentucky Senate Race, Democrat Jack Conway ran an ad against Randroid nut job Republican Rand Paul bringing up his involvement in an anti-religious group at Baylor, and his frat hazing style “kidnapping” of a coed who he made to bow down to the “Aqua Buddha.”

I cannot claim to have a deep understanding of the politics, or the religiosity, of Kentucky, so I cannot speak to the direct effects of the advertisement (1st video), but I can speak to the secondary effects of the ad (2nd video) and it ain’t pretty.

Rand Paul is acting like a complete bitch, and his bit at the end where he huffily declares that he won’t shake hands at the end of the debate.

I’m with Theda Skocpol on the nervous Nellies who are wringing their hands over this:

One reason that Dems do not seem to be able to play hardball — in a viciously hardball political world — is that Dems often lack conviction or the will to be eloquently honest (for example, on taxes). But an equal problem is that when someone does play hardball, the rest of the prissy liberal Mugwumps tut-tut them about it.

The professional losing class can go Cheney themselves.

Honestly, I don’t care about Rand Paul’s religion. My guess is that his protestations of religion are a less than honest, since his idol Ayn Rand loathed religion, but politically, the important bit of electoral politics here here is that Rand Paul seriously lost his sh%$ on camera, and that was the real success of this ad.

BTW, if you wanted to use a cinematic reference rather than a literary reference, I would suggest that Jack Conway just Gaslighted Rand Paul.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? (The Good Kind)

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Is an odd data point.

Notwithstanding the poling showing an enthusiasm gap, Democrats are casting their ballot through early voting in greater numbers than Republicans:

But something special is going on in two Ohio Democratic strongholds: Cuyahoga and Franklin counties. I track on this handy web page that other places around the country — including other Ohio counties — are so far reporting low single digit early voting rates. In stark contrast, over 112,000 votes have already been cast in these two Ohio counties. As a comparison, this represents over ten percent of all ballots cast in the 2006 election in these counties, with still some time to go.

…

Something is afoot in Iowa. Not only have nearly 120,000 voters already cast their ballot, registered Democrats are returning their mail ballots at a higher rate than Republicans in nearly every Iowa county. This, in part, explains the approximately 5:3 partisan registration advantage Democrats have over Republicans among mail ballots returned so far in the Hawkeye state.

I still see the glass empty, and I stand by my analysis that, win or lose, the Dems don’t deserve to win, but this is heartening.