Interesting Election Maps

and analysis HERE. Remember these crazy maps after 2004?

Newsclippings of the Day :: I am Very Thankful for Obama

Today over lunch I read two very good pieces that are worthy reads in this day and age.

First, my friend Dawn in Atlanta sent THIS from Judith Warner in the New York Times. It is about how we are at the start of a new era with Obama.

“To those who would tear the world down: we will defeat you. This is our moment. This is our time.”

--From Obama's Victory Speech in Grant Park

Second, THIS from my heroine, Naomi Klein, writing in the Rolling Stone about our so called bailout of Wall Street. Here's a couple of choice quotes:

"See if any of this sounds familiar: As soon as the bailout was announced, it became clear that Treasury officials would hire outsiders to perform their jobs for them — at a profit. Private companies wanting to help manage the bailout were given just two days to apply for massive, multiyear contracts. Since it was such a mad rush — after all, the entire economy was about to implode — there was no time for an open bidding process. Nor was there time to draft rigorous rules to make sure that those applying don't have serious conflicts of interest. Instead, applicants were asked to disclose their conflicts and to explain — and this is not a joke — their "philosophy in fulfilling your duty to the Treasury and the U.S. taxpayer in light of your proprietary interests and those of other clients." In other words, an open invitation to bullshit about how much they love their country and how they can be trusted to regulate themselves."

"...Has the Treasury partially nationalized the private banks, as we have been told? Or is it the other way around? Is it Treasury that has been partially privatized by Wall Street, its massive rescue plan now entirely in the hands of a private bank it is directly subsidizing?"

I hope this financial "crisis" and the ill-conceived solutions aren't going to cripple Obama's ability to deal with our deficit.

Wouldn't it be great if Klein could become an advisor to Obama?

President-Elect Barack Obama

I'm so glad this is done. This man is going to do great things. We will all be proud of the restorative effect he has on our world.



I am so disappointed that gay marriage BANS passed in Arizona and Florida...and are too close to call in California. Thanks Republicans, for the toxicity you have injected into our political discourse, our government, our people. Yours is a negative legacy none of us will soon forget. And some of you who managed to barely hold on to your seats (I'm talking to YOU Michelle Baumann) have some serious atoning and soul searching to do.

You Know What To Do

But here's a hint:

Palin as President

HERE is an incredibly fun what if interactive regarding Ms. Palin's potential impact on life, love, the world. Be sure to click on everything in the scene, multiple times. And turn your sound up.

Don't Speak for Me Sarah Palin!

Oh my, this is wonderful. Whoever this woman is, you need a publicist honey!

More Republican Lemmings Jumping

More high-profile Republican lemmings seem to be jumping ship these days. A wave o them. Colin Powell, of course, being the highest profile defection to the Obama camp, has done a tremendous amount to show citizens how it is possible to be sane in our choices. This is not football. When people do not perform in ways that are good for you, you must fire them, even if they are on your "team."

Anyhoo, former Senator Pressler, and former Chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, is the latest.

"...Pressler said he had concerns about his party's fiscal policy, particularly the war in Iraq, that went beyond the presidential campaign.

"We have to be a moderate party. We can't be for all these foreign military adventures. We have to stop spending so much money. My God, the deficit is so high!" he said. "The Republican Party I knew in the 1970s is just all gone."

Despite his support for Obama, however, Pressler emphasized that he intended to stay in the GOP and described himself as a "moderate conservative."

"I'm not leaving the Republican Party. We're going to reform it," he said, but added: "In the general election, if you have disagreements, you should not vote the party line."

The Republicans Are Looking More and More Like a Lynch Mob

THIS MUTILATION HOAX is really so unbelievable. The McCain campaign is looking so incredibly desperate, out of control, grasping at straws. I think we are going to see a lot of anger this week. And i bet an explosion of dubious volunteers like this Ashley Todd, doing what they can to "help."

Newsclipping of the Day :: Homespun Wisdom from Garrison Keillor

"We Americans are a stalwart and stouthearted people, and never more so than in hard times.

People weep in the dark and arise in the morning and go to work. The waves crash on your nest egg and a chunk is swept away and you put your salami sandwich in the brown bag and get on the bus.

In Philly, a woman earns $10.30 per hour to care for a man brought down by cystic fibrosis. She bathes and dresses him in the morning, brings him meals, puts him to bed at night. It's hard work lifting him and she has suffered a painful hernia that, because she can't afford health insurance, she can't get fixed, but she still goes to work because he'd be helpless without her.

There are a lot of people like her. I know because I'm related to some of them.

Low dishonesty and craven cynicism sometimes win the day but not inevitably. The attempt to link Barack Obama to an old radical in his neighborhood has desperation and deceit written all over it.

Meanwhile, stunning acts of heroism stand out, such as the fidelity of military lawyers assigned to defend detainees at Guantánamo Bay - uniformed officers faithful to their lawyerly duty to offer a vigorous defense even though it means exposing the injustice of military justice that is rigged for conviction and the mendacity of a commander in chief who commits war crimes.

If your law school is looking for a name for its new library, instead of selling the honor to a fat cat alumnus, you should consider the names of Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift, Lieutenant Colonel Mark Bridges, Colonel Steven David, Lieutenant Colonel Sharon Shaffer, Lieutenant Commander Philip Sundel and Major Michael Mori.

It was dishonest, cynical men who put forward a clueless young woman for national office, hoping to juice up the ticket, hoping she could skate through two months of chaperoned campaigning, but the truth emerges: The lady is talking freely about matters she has never thought about. The American people have an ear for untruths. They can tell when someone's mouth is moving and the clutch is not engaged.

When she said, "One thing that Americans do at this time, also, though, is let's commit ourselves just every day, American people, Joe Six-Pack, hockey moms across the nation, I think we need to band together and say never again. Never will we be exploited and taken advantage of again by those who are managing our money and loaning us these dollars," people smelled gas.

Some Republicans adore her because they are pranksters at heart and love the consternation of grown-ups. The ne'er-do-well son of the old Republican family as president, the idea that you increase government revenue by cutting taxes, the idea that you cut social services and thereby drive the needy into the middle class, the idea that you overthrow a dictator with a show of force and achieve democracy at no cost to yourself - one stink bomb after another, and now Governor Sarah Palin.

She is a chatty sportscaster who lacks the guile to conceal her vacuity, and she was John McCain's first major decision as nominee. This troubles independent voters, and now she is a major drag on his candidacy. She will get a nice book deal from Regnery and a new career-making personal appearances for 40 grand a pop, and she'll become a trivia question, "What politician claimed foreign-policy expertise based on being able to see Russia from her house?" And the rest of us will have to pull ourselves out of the swamp of Republican economics.

Your broker kept saying, "Stay with the portfolio, don't jump ship," and you felt a strong urge to dump the stocks and get into the money market where at least you're not going to lose your shirt, but you didn't do it and didn't do it, and now you're holding a big bag of brown bananas. Me, too. But at least I know enough not to believe desperate people who are talking trash. Anybody who got whacked last week and still thinks McCain-Palin is going to lead America out of the swamp and not into a war with Iran is beyond persuasion in the English language. They'll need to lose their homes and be out on the street in a cold, hard rain before they connect the dots."

Campaign 2008 :: Unbelievable Advertising

Wow. The Obama Campaign has bought an entire channel on the dish network. I can't think of better use for television. I'm sure many conservatives and Republicans are pissed. But really, what a great idea; surely better than 30 second commercials. This will surely be a game changer.

The Republican Party is Looking More and More Like a Lynch Mob :: Part 2

MORE racist crap from the Republicans.

"through their own words
they will be exposed
they've got a sudden case of
the emperor's new clothes."

--Sinéad O'Connor, 1990

Run! The Liberals Are Coming! Run!

My friend Scott --a conservative with a functioning conscience and intellect, unlike some Republicans these days--sent me THIS tragic the-sky-is-falling oped piece from the Wall Street Journal. The Democrats might make sure we all have health insurance! Effective schools! Increase voting participation! Run for the hills!

Robert Borosage has a nice laugh about the terror of it all.

Don't panic people. We can and will survive a realignment of our priorities. Some who read the Wall Street Journal are going to have to carry their fare share, however.

The Republican Party's Looking More and More Like a Lynch Mob

READ all about it here. It's from California of all places. You'd think California Republicans would be a little more moderate than the foaming at the mouth simple bigot-leaning variety of the South.

Freath of Bresh Air

Thanks for naming it, Mohn JcCain. That's what you are all about.

What Do You Wish the Candidates Would Talk About?

HERE is what i wish Obama would steer the conversation to in tonight's debate. Silly me, assuming the conversation between our two potential Commanders-in-Chief is steerable:

"And after 9/11, in the wake of this massive failure, they started sweeping up everything. Everything in the entire world. They are recording everything, building a giant facility in Texas the size of the Alamodome to store all the data. The warrantless eavesdropping was authorized at the very top be Justice Department legal opinions so secret that the NSA's OWN LAWYERS were not allowed to look at them. They are getting this information by setting up big rooms at telecommunications facilities to tap the major switchers of the top companies (they have outsourced the tapping to a group of tiny companies, many from Israel), and they even built a large submarine to directly feed into the undersea cables which house overseas communications.

It is an unbelievable and infuriating story. What I am writing right now, what all of you are writing, every word you say on the phone, every text message, every email - the government has it. Locked up in a room in Texas. And the legality is so murky that it's basically indemnified.

An Obama Administration faces challenges in the economy at home and with failing occupations abroad. But there's the very real question of whether there's a functioning Constitution to begin with. If the government can sweep up the communications of every man, woman and child on the planet, if the government can sign off on torture and indefinite detention, and if the Congress can essentially indemnify the government for doing so, what is this state that Obama would inherit?

If this isn't discussed openly before the election, it becomes that much harder to actually reverse these policies, which have been growing through inertia for at least six years, if not longer, and which Congress has basically rubber-stamped. Obama has agreed to look at every executive order and throw out the ones that are unconstitutional. That is not a specific enough answer. Signals intelligence and the NSA needs to be addressed. Torture and rendition need to be addressed. We practically don't have a country to lead anymore, or at least one worth leading. The Constitution, the founding document, has become a non-issue in this election or really any election. No President has tarnished it as much as this one, and yet we continue on, muddling through, talking about tax cuts or who has the more comfortable demeanor. This election may repudiate conservatism but it's necessary to define terms. Is it a rollback of torture? A rollback of the surveillance state? A rollback of official secrecy and lost civil liberties? I don't think we know. And I think we need to have that conversation out in the open.

Are we ever going to talk about our loss of honor as a nation?"

What do YOU wish the Candidates would talk about in tonight's final debate? Tell me by leaving a comment.

Darn Right, You Betcha

Here's Why McSame is Unqualified to Steward our Economy

Newsclipping of the Day :: Naomi Klein Interview

If you haven't read Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism this is a really good INTERVIEW with her today.

VOTE TODAY!

Be sure to go HERE and vote in this NOW (Bill Moyers) poll on whether or not Sarah Palin is qualified to be veep.

Newsclipping of the Day :: Steinem on Palin and Change-Envy

Here are some words of wisdom from Gloria Steinem that a friend just emailed. It's nice to hear an articulate critique from a woman on this. I wish Susan Sontag were still around to weigh in on the perfect-storm surreality of the Palin phenomenon.

"Here's the good news: Women have become so politically powerful that even the anti-feminist right wing -- the folks with a headlock on the Republican Party -- are trying to appease the gender gap with a first-ever female vice president. We owe this to women -- and to many men, too -- who have picketed, gone on hunger strikes or confronted violence at the polls so women can vote.

We owe it to Shirley Chisholm, who first took the "white-male-only" sign off the White House, and to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who hung in there through ridicule and misogyny to win 18 million votes.

But here is even better news: It won't work. This isn't the first time a boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him and opposes everything most other women want and need. Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It's about making life more fair for women everywhere. It's not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It's about baking a new pie.

Selecting Sarah Palin, who was touted all summer by Rush Limbaugh, is no way to attract most women, including die-hard Clinton supporters. Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton. Her down-home, divisive and deceptive speech did nothing to cosmeticize a Republican convention that has more than twice as many male delegates as female, a presidential candidate who is owned and operated by the right wing and a platform that opposes pretty much everything Clinton's candidacy stood for -- and that Barack Obama's still does. To vote in protest for McCain/Palin would be like saying, "Somebody stole my shoes, so I'll amputate my legs."

This is not to beat up on Palin. I defend her right to be wrong, even on issues that matter most to me. I regret that people say she can't do the job because she has children in need of care, especially if they wouldn't say the same about a father. I get no pleasure from imagining her in the spotlight on national and foreign-policy issues about which she has zero background, with one month to learn to compete with Sen. Joe Biden's 37 years' experience.

Palin has been honest about what she doesn't know. When asked last month about the vice presidency, she said, "I still can't answer that question until someone answers for me: What is it exactly that the VP does every day?" When asked about Iraq, she said, "I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq."

She was elected governor largely because the incumbent was unpopular, and she's won over Alaskans mostly by using unprecedented oil wealth to give a $1,200 rebate to every resident. Now she is being praised by McCain's campaign as a tax cutter, despite the fact that Alaska has no state income tax or sales tax. Perhaps McCain has opposed affirmative action for so long that he doesn't know it's about inviting more people to meet standards, not lowering them. Or perhaps McCain is following the Bush administration habit, as in the Justice Department, of putting a job candidate's views on "God, guns and gays" ahead of competence. The difference is that McCain is filling a job one 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency.

So let's be clear: The culprit is John McCain. He may have chosen Palin out of change-envy, or a belief that women can't tell the difference between form and content, but the main motive was to please right-wing ideologues; the same ones who nixed anyone who is now or ever has been a supporter of reproductive freedom. If that were not the case, McCain could have chosen a woman who knows what a vice president does and who has thought about Iraq; someone like Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison or Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine. McCain could have taken a baby step away from right-wing patriarchs who determine his actions, right down to opposing the Violence Against Women Act.

Palin's value to those patriarchs is clear: She opposes just about every issue that women support by a majority or plurality. She believes that creationism should be taught in public schools but disbelieves global warming; she opposes gun control but supports government control of women's wombs; she opposes stem cell research but approves "abstinence-only" programs, which increase unwanted births, sexually
transmitted diseases and abortions; she tried to use taxpayers' millions for a state program to shoot wolves from the air but didn't spend enough money to fix a state school system with the lowest high-school graduation rate in the nation; she runs with a candidate who opposes the Fair Pay Act but supports $500 million in subsidies for a natural gas pipeline across Alaska; she supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, although even McCain has opted for the lesser evil of offshore drilling. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.

I don't doubt her sincerity. As a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association, she doesn't just support killing animals from helicopters, she does it herself. She doesn't just talk about increasing the use of fossil fuels but puts a coal-burning power plant in her town. She doesn't just echo McCain's pledge to criminalize abortion by overturning Roe v. Wade, she says that if one of her daughters were impregnated by rape or incest, she should bear the child. She not only opposes reproductive freedom as a human right but implies that it dictates abortion, without saying that it also protects the right to have a child.

So far, the major new McCain supporter that Palin has attracted is James Dobson of Focus on the Family. Of course, for Dobson, "women are merely waiting for their husbands to assume leadership," so he may be voting for Palin's husband.

Being a hope-a-holic, however, I can see two long-term bipartisan gains from this contest.

Republicans may learn they can't appeal to right-wing patriarchs and most women at the same time. A loss in November could cause the GOP's centrist majority to take back their party, which was the first to support the Equal Rights Amendment and should be the last to want to invite government into women's wombs.

And American women, who suffer more because of having two full-time jobs than from any other single injustice, finally have support on a national stage from male leaders who know that women can't be equal outside the home until men are equal in it. Barack Obama and Joe Biden are campaigning on their belief that men should be, can be and want to be at home for their children.

This could be huge."

Steinem is an author, feminist organizer and co-founder of the Women's Media Center. She supported Hillary Rodham Clinton and is now supporting Barack Obama. This article originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.