Thought Puh-leeze

If one assumes that Obama will win California, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii, and their 77 electoral votes, and add them to the 175 Obama already has, we are within 18 EVs of electing Barack Obama the 44th President of the United States.

Polls don't close on the West coast until 11:00 pm.

Ohio has just been called for Barack Obama. IT IS OVER!!!!

Party Time!

Tom Udall defeats Steve Pierce in New Mexico, another pick-up for the Democrats.

A slew of states were just called for Obama, including New York, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Rhode Island. Georgia went for McCain, as did Oklahoma and Kansas. Obama is showing well in Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Indiana. Most of these states are going to eventually go to Obama. There's likely a good deal of vote flipping going on just to try to not make it look like as large a slaughter as it really is.

Arizona, McCain's home state, too close to call. Always a bad sign when you can't defend your home state.

Clean sweep for Obama in the Northeast and upper Midwest.

Obama 174, McCain 76.

ABC just called Kentucky for Mitch McConnell, but the margin was razor thin.

Another Republican Senate seat goes down. Hagan whips Dole in NC. Sununu (R) is also out in New Hampshire, beaten by Jeanne Shaheen on her second try.

This is looking more and more like an Obama avalanche. There's almost no doubt about it. They're calling for more than 1/2 million people in Grant's Park in Chicago where Barack Obama is expected to accept the Presidency later tonight.

New York closes within 10 minutes. Another 31 electoral votes for Obama, who only needs one more swing state to call it a night because he has the West coast (California, Oregon and Washington) in the bag.

McCain is facing a real uphill climb. It really looks like it's over. I'm on my fifth beer. The celebrations will begin shortly as it gets closer and closer to reality.

I can hardly believe that the eight year nightmare is almost over.

All networks confirming the Keystone State and its 21 electoral votes belong to Barack Obama. This is great news for Obama, but it brings Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada later. The networks want to keep us glued in until at least 10:00.

No raw numbers, still, anywhere. Very strange.

All the Northeastern states are falling in line for Obama. He'll probably maintain the lead from here on out.

Strange. At 7:20, PBS has Obama ahead 50-49, while ABC has McCain winning by the same percentage.

Polls in Georgia, Vermont, Indiana, Kentucky, Virginia, South Carolina and most Florida are already closed.

No raw numbers available just yet from most of the states.

Warner wins in Virginia. Daniels (R) takes Governorship in Indiana.

This is too close. These numbers aren't yet making any sense. McCain is leading nationally, but who knows from where they're getting their figures. Ohio, West Virginia and North Carolina closing at 7:30. We need to start getting some numbers.

ABC just released preliminary battleground state exit polling data. Stunningly, the economy was the #1 issue for 60% of voters. The War in Iraq was a distant second at 11%. Charlie Gibson said he had never seen such a dominant issue.

74% espressed dissatisfaction with president Bush.

If these trends holds up, it's going to be a rout for Democrats.

Which network has the best coverage? So far, I'm looking at ABC.

There are 35 Senate races this election year and a good number of them are close. There may also be some sizable unexpected outcomes, especially if Obama wins a number of the early swing states, Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio and Virginia key among them.

The races that are worth watching are, with incumbents listed first:

Minnesota: Norm Coleman (R) vs. Al Franken (D)
North Carolina: Elizabeth Dole (R) vs. Kay Hagan (D)
Kentucky: Mitch McConnell (R) vs. Bruce Lunsford (D)
Alaska: Ted Stevens (R) vs. Mark Begich (D)

Hagan has been well ahead in the polls in NC right through to the election. Franken is in a virtual dead heat. There's a third candidate taking votes from both in Minnesota. Stevens was convicted of taking gifts from constituents in return for legislative favors and should go down, or will Alaskans show their maverick tendency and return a convicted felon to Congress? McConnell is nothing less than the Republican leader in the Senate. His defeat would be huge. Even a close call would send an enormous message.

Network news is beginning. Let's see what the suits have to say.

Just posting some ideas...

Will we get this one right? Or will be be subjected to the whims and wishes of a hidden power elite? Did enough people go out and cast votes in such an overwhelming majority that any egregious vote-fixing would be easily spotted? Will the majority be large enough to discourage the manipulators completely?

Probably not. There is sure to be a large degree of vote switching within the maze of computer networks and IT specialists across the nation. The sizable hope is that turnout exceeded even the greatest expectations.

Considering that there's still litigation in motion over the 2004 election, maybe expecting that there won't be tampering turns out to be a defective concept. There's always hope for a free and fair election. A certain large percentage of Americans will never stop trying to get elections to be fairly run, honestly administrated and completely non-partisan. It seems such a long shot.

Exit polling used to "call" states and races is once again being handled by the usual gang: Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International for the National Election Pool, a consortium of the networks and The Associated Press. Well, in a nation that also sports the BCS for picking a college football champion, what can we expect?

Exit polls and other early indicators are under tight security, especially since the 2004 election showed the early exit polls favoring Kerry before a sudden shift later in the evening by George W. Bush erased all of that. In the end, exit polls were eventually "adjusted" to match the figures on election web sites. No big deal there. We're just talking about some run-of-the-mill organizations like CNN, MSNBC, FOX and ABC.

Obviously, our glorious captains of industry and mind-controlling media moguls don't want little details like actual vote counts muddying the waters about which candidate is actually chosen. The small matter of who did the choosing need not be shared with the actual electorate.

For those reasons, in addition to the avalanche of litigation and reporting on questionable and, to a large degree, criminal, activity that took place in 2004, and after the debacle of 2000, the shapers of the universe are at odds with the general public. It's an unhealthy relationship in which the public at first mistrusts the government, and then mistrusts the people supposed to expose the misdeeds of government, project and protect the populace, the media.

Worse than promoting a stalemate, bad public-media relations foments more than just plain anger, it proceeds to survival instinctiveness and gets nasty on both sides, but especially in the public sphere, if only because there are so many individuals whose actions cannot be predicted or aganst which much of a defense can be erected.

So, here we are with no fireworks. Well, maybe it for the best that there are no early exit polls today. There has been enough incidental and anecdotal reporting already, via early voting polling, and it all points to the same thing - a Democratic landslide with Obama winning as many as 340 electoral votes at the top of the ticket.

The networks aren't going to call a race, or a state, until they're darned sure of what's out there. Quite a few stories are circulating on the consition of no early exit poll releases, The Chicago Tribune has a good story.

Labels: exit polls

Here's a quick and dirty look at what happened on Wall Street today. Some odd trading brought stocks and commodities higher as Americans went to the polls. Check out our commentary at Money Daily.

Labels: election, gold, Stocks

Live Blogging to Begin at 5:00 pm ET.

Well, I voted at 10:00 this morning, and was planning to start blogging while simultaneously hitting the bong and boilermakers around 1:00, but a nefarious click attack on my home site set back my plans by a couple of hours.

Naturally, I'm blaming Republicans for this, since they cannot win elections legally nor garner enough traffic to make a living from advertising, they resort to harming those who can and do. Reports of vote theft, flipping and disenfranchisement have been abundant the past few days, and most of us are gripping right about now, especially since Lion John (McCain) has been on the campaign trail insisting that he's going to win.

I have a some web housekeeping to attend to before the festivities can really get underway here, but in the meantime, readers can regale themselves with some of the work I did yesterday on my woefully incomplete but highly entertaining Election Guide. Click on the graphic below and you'll magically jump into a new window of wonder.

I'll be back shortly. Promise.

Labels: Live blogging election 2008

Somebody needs to crack a two-by-four over the heads of ABC's Round Table discussion participants. Claire Shipman, George Stephanopolous, George Will (the easiest conservative voice to debate) and the other participants discussed the potential running mates for Barack Obama this Sunday morning.

They are either serially misinformed or purposely stupid.

After pretty much dismissing the possibility of an Obama-Clinton ticket, they went around talking about three Democrats in Virginia, including Senator Webb and former Governor Mark Warner. They even mentioned Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell. Not once was the name of the most obvious choice - New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson - who would both solidify the Hispanic base and add valuable experience to the ticket.

Maybe these geniuses are simply out-of-touch with Democratic politics. More likely, they are in denial that whomever Obama picks as his running mate, the race for the White House is going to resemble a Harlem Globetrotters basketball game with John McCain in the role of the inept, overmatched Washington Generals.

The networks - FOX, NBC, CBS and even the Mickey Mouse ABC network - needs to understand that fewer and fewer Americans are paying attention to their idle shibboleths and instead acting in their own self-interest. The glory days of the networks as mouthpieces for the corrupt Republican political machine are about to end... miserably and not a moment too soon.

Obama will choose either Hillary Clinton or Bill Richardson as his VP, and the election in November - unless Republican operatives conspire once again to steal it - will not be close. Obama will win by more than 100 electoral votes and the margin of victory will be something approaching 55-45%.

Get used to hearing the words, "President Obama." It has a nice ring to it.

Last night's nationally-televised debate between Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama could not have been more of a disgrace and misuse of public airwaves had it been aired on FOX.

In fact, the vacuous, gossipy questioning by the usually likable and intelligent George Stephanopoulos and Charles Gibson were more akin to the sound bite-baiting tactics of a Sean Hannity or Bill O'Reilly. In fact, Stephanopoulos had appeared on one of Hannity's shows just the day earlier, and must have been taking notes. Most of the two hours of "debate" concerned itself with Obama's minister, his recent statements about frustrated Americans and whether he was or was not patriotic for not wearing a US flag pin.

It seemed as though ABC wished to paint a portrait of the Democratic primary campaigns as a smarmy mess of accusations, cross talk and affiliations with unsavory people. In that regard, they did a bang-up job. As for presenting the candidates' views on the issues of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the economy, high gas prices, lost jobs, the mortgage and foreclosure disaster, foreign policy, the use of torture by the Bush administration and other important matters, ABC should pay a fine to the FCC.

Americans deserve better than what was offered by the network. They deserve a debate and primaries that present issues with which a prospective president will have to deal, not rehashed television-and-talk-show trash.

It was aggravating to have to watch and listen to question after dumbed-down question from the ABC interrogators. Both candidates tried to steer the debate away from the mundane to the real issues and should be praised for not losing their cool under such extremely stupid circumstances.

However, it would have been nice - as Obama nearly did to Stephanopoulos, saying one of his questions didn't "make sense" - to hear Obama answer with what was honestly on his mind. Something to the effect of, "If I thought wearing a US flag lapel pin everywhere I go would get me to the White House, I'd wear three of them."

Neither the candidates nor the voting public should have to be subjected to forums such the one ABC put forward last night. It was dull, moronic and trivial and has no place in American politics. We can only hope that ABC will learn a lesson from the commentaries which are certainly critical of their "debate" and get back to serious coverage of real issues affecting Americans.

Republican lawmakers in Washington, DC, did today what voters and citizens across the country have been trying to do for the better part of the last 8 years: they removed themselves from the House chamber of the Capitol.

Following an impassioned speech decrying "political grandstanding" by minority leader John Boehner, Republican members of the House of Representatives walked out of congress and onto the steps of the Capitol in a move oddly similar to "political grandstanding."

Many Americans cheered the move, but asked, "how can we keep them from coming back? Could they all just go home and stop bothering us?"

The Republicans supposedly walked out in protest that the Democratic members would not approve a Senate bill that granted blanket retroactive immunity to telecom companies involved in the Bush administration's "warrantless wiretapping" practices.

Strangely enough, since that measure was not going to come to a vote, the next item on the agenda, forwarded by Chairman of the Judiciary Committee John Conyers, was to hold administration officials Harriet Miers and Josh Bolton in contempt of Congress and authorized a civil contempt suit against the two by the House. When that issue came to a vote, there were no Republicans in the chamber and the measure passed, 223-32.

Sadly, the Republicans returned to their offices and various hearings moments later, dashing the hopes of millions that once gone, they would stay away.

Hack N. Spend, an interested bystander, hoped the Republican lawmakers would make use of FEMA trailers that New Orleans hurricane victims have been living in for the past two years and now were being told by FEMA executives that they are unsafe for human habitation.

"The Republicans could camp right out here in those FEMA trailers since they're said to be not fit for regular people," said Spend. "Believe me, these Republicans are anything but regular," he added.

Tonight, the world will cheer President Bush's State of the Union address... because it will be his last. Personally, I intend to be already fairly hammered by the time the faux-presidente takes the podium, shortly after 9:00 pm Eastern time tonight.

Having painfully watched and listened to all seven of his previous SOTU addresses (sad, but true), I plan on celebrating this final assault on my sensibilities with unprecedented gusto.

George Bush... this ass-hole has brought the American people nothing but pure grief for seven long years and if he ends up hanging by the gallows in the Hague for his crimes, it won't be justification enough.

In my own way, I plan on reveling in this jerk's departure, beginning tonight, so I've devised a devilish drinking game designed to maximize my pleasure (always a good idea).

Here are the rules:

You take a drink of the beverage of your choice if Bush says any of the following (or any close variations):

• "hard work" - his trademark line of BS


• "Al Queda" or "terrorist" or "War on Terror"


• "stimulus"


• If he calls anyone "brave", drink


• any mention of "Iran", drink


• if he mentions "Crawford" or his "ranch", drink


• If he says "the surge is working" or "we're winning" related to Iraq, Afghanistan or the overall War on Terror, drink


• if he says anything about giving the economy a "shot in the arm" two drinks, plus a bong hit


• any time he "urges Congress" drink, bong hit and masturbate enthusiastically


• if he says the word "legacy" at all, immediately become addicted to heroin


• Any reference to Dick Cheney, DRINK hard!


• if he says the economy is "strong", "resilient" or "growing", drink, bong hit, shot of heroin, fornicate with anything in the room even if it's not human (cats count), snort cocaine, then go out for a drive.


• If he says he's sorry or has any regrets, drink as much as possible because you're either unconscious, dreaming or the nukes have already fallen, we're all dead and that is the rapture you're hearing

That should just about cover it. Make sure to get good and primed. If you can't keep up with all the drinking words, just drink throughout what figures to be about a 40-minute speech. Enjoy the beginning of the end of one of the worst eras in US history.

It's getting pretty stupid out there in Mainstream Medialand. Last night was the Republican version of the YouTube/CNN debate featuring the mental pygmies and of course, the scourge of the party, Ron Paul.

While most of the press focused on Rudy Giuliani (the adulterer) and Mitt Romney's (the moron Mormon) "heated" slugfest over immigration, the "debate" was poorly staged and arguably scripted. The two Republican leading candidates are both such empty suits when it really comes down to it. Both have hired illegals or had them work on their properties in the past, and neither will do a damn thing about immigration if it costs US businesses one single penny more in wages. Neither would make a suitable president of this country. Maybe some backwater nation like Slovakia or Burundi, but not America.

The most entertaining parts of the debate were taking place off camera, actually, in the crowd that somehow got invited. This particular goon squad cheered every time the "troops" were mentioned and booed at even a hint of the hated Hillary.

It was also interesting to witness the Grover Norquist sighting. The public was told that ordinary citizens would be asking the questions, not paid pro-Republican, loyalist lobbyists like Grover, but there he was, live and in almost-living color.

According to more than a handful of analysts, CNN hijacked the debte, cherry-picking the questions. There was no mention of health care, energy policy or the environment, though considerable time was spent talking about guns and abortion and immigration.

It was not worth watching, even with the paucity of original programming available due to the writer's strike. The Republican candidates are hollow and script-fed phonies. But, on the other side, the leading Democrats don't look much better.

Self-rule is the answer. Without followers, we wouldn't need empty leaders.

If you are at least half aware of your world, you probably have tuned into PBS to view at least a couple episodes of Ken Burns' opus on World War II, simply titled, "The War." It's a lengthy examination of the "Great War" which took place in the 1940s between the Allies (the United States, Russia and Europe, generally) and the Axis (Germany, Italy and Japan).

What I've come away with so far is a better understanding of what actually took place in the decade preceding my birth, an understanding of what sculpted my parents' opinions and lifestyles, and, especially after viewing last night's episode with my father, an appreciation for his experience at the Battle of the Bulge.

I strongly suggest that everyone watch at least some of this series. It's extremely strong and the images are powerful. Most of us have no idea of the incredible suffering that people of the generation before the Baby Boom endured. It will also give you some perspective on our current bogus war in Iraq and how it doesn't really compare to the most serious conflict the world has ever seen.

If you watch "The War" for a couple of nights, you'll be convinced that President Bush's over-promoted "War on Terror" is a complete contrivance and that our current leaders have tried to fool us into thinking we're at war when we're really not.

Please, take a look around. We're at peace. Our leaders are lunatics.

Today, President Bush spoke to the General Assembly of the United Nations, and sadly, with three major issues - Global Warming, Iraq, and Iran - dominating all discussion, the president spoke about none of them. He chose instead to focus his remarks on freedom and the plight of the people of Burma.

In some small way, his expression for new sanctions against the repressive regime of Burma may have been an appropriate action, albeit about 20 years late. Recently, Buddhist monks have led marches of over 100,000 people in opposition to the military regime which has oppressed the nation for more than two decades.

The last time there were such large public movements, the military ruthlessly crushed them. Bush's new sanctions may only serve to fuel the outrageous autocratic rule to more oppressive measures.

Most Americans are unaware of the vicious human rights abuses in Burma because they are out of sight. While Bush may have overlooked the more pressing issues of the day, he may have opened some people's eyes to an ongoing tragedy.

Later today, Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, will announce some kind of cut in the Federal Funds rate, the base rate upon which the markets take their cue. Currently, it's at 5.25% and it's widely expected that the Fed will cut to 5% or even 4.75%.

What this means for the average American is actually not much on the surface, though what it means down the road and long into the future is important. If the Fed manages credit and risk properly, America generally has a well-functioning, robust economy. Bad management, such as what was committed by the previous Fed Chairman, Alan Greenspan, can cost dearly, as we're seeing today.

Greenspan, though he was revered in financial circles as a genius, was actually a credit pumper, ever ready to lower rates at the first sign of a bump in the economy. He's the major reason we have a credit crunch at major lending institutions today and why the housing market may not recover for years to come. Greenspan was far too loose with monetary policy and it's going to cost all of us and our kids, dearly.

Here's hoping that Ben Bernanke is a bit more circumspect and rational in his decision-making regarding not only interest rates, but te future of our country. Today will be a real test for him.

Well, the drinking only got me through one beer and the start of another. I am disappointed. Mr. Bush didn't say "we are winning", the terrorists would "follow us home", though he did say that they could "reach our cities and kill our people" so I took a drink on that.

Sadly, he didn't mention Osama or Uuuusama, the Sheik who died recently or mention the term, "bottomup." However, General Petraeus received five mentions and Iran came in a close second with four.

Due to the paucity of drinking potentialities, I had to fill in with some of my own. The president said "Al Queda" five times, used the phrase "one year ago" four times and the word "reconciliation" three times. Smashing, though not enough to get me smashed.

Thumbs down to Rachel Maddow on this one. She really misread the thrust of the message. Either that or she didn't want anyone to get too schnockered.

Kudos to the media, however. They managed to squeeze the whole speech, the Democrats' rebuttal and some of their own commentary into a half hour. NBC even thrrew in a preview for next season's "The Office." Fabulous. Gloss over the war in a half hour and throw in a promo. Move on. Nothing to see here. American politics at its absolute nadir. Lovely. Drink up. I have extras.