About the Bullshit Team of Rivals Meme.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have not read Doris Kearn Goodwin's Team of Rivals, nor do I intend to, simply because I find the whole notion that Lincoln built this team of political opponents and molded them into an effective cabinet to be so laughable on its face that I'm not particularly interested in how Goodwin is going to try to convince me Lincoln's cabinet was particularly effective, when I've read numerous works that convince me otherwise.

Here are a few inconvenient truths that the media needs to figure before continuing to peddle its Team of Rivals bullshit:

1. The Republican Party was formed in 1854, in the wake of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, just 6 years before Lincoln was first elected. It was built out of anti-slavery elements of the old Whig Party, which basically collapsed after a fatal split over abolition, and mostly northern, liberal Democrats who opposed slavery. So it would have not been all that shocking to find members of the Republican party who had been Democrats as recently as 6 years before.

2. Lincoln's first cabinet (which is what Obama is picking right now), contained no Democrats at all. While Lincoln did replace a couple of his first cabinet members with War Democrats turned members of the rechristened National Union Party (the banner Republicans ran under in 1864) later, the bullshit that Lincoln appointed tons of Democrats to his cabinet in 18641 is pure fiction.

3. Lincoln's cabinet throughout the war was a very dysfunctional bunch. His clashes with Secretary of State William Seward, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton (who referred to his boss as the original gorilla, a nickname that General and later Linoln Presidential opponent George McClellan adopted from Stanton) and Salmon P Chase are the stuff of legend. Of his first cabinet, about the only one Lincoln could count on as a true ally was Montgomery Blair, his first postmaster general. It is a measure of Lincoln's gifts as arguably the best pure politician to hold the office prior to FDR that he managed to hold it together at all.

4. What Lincoln's first cabinet did have was a whole lot of Republicans in it who had been rivals for the Republican nomination in 1860. These included Stanton, Seward, and Chase. All three of them went into Lincoln's cabinet convinced they were better suited for Lincoln's role than he was, which led to many of the more famous clashes.

To bring this back to the latter day Obama Cabinet, Obama's cabinet outdoes Goodwin's and particularly the media's Team of Rivals meme. With the announcement of Bill Richardson as Commerce Secretary, assuming Obama's cabinet picks are confirmed, it will contain 4 of the people that ran against Obama for the Democratic Nomination. Unlike Lincoln, Obama's cabinet will contain two Republicans, Marine General Jim Jones as National Security Adviser, and Robert Gates will remain as Secretary of Defense. While true that Jones was an Obama adviser prior to the election, he is still nominally a Republican. Gates' Republican ties are beyond question.

So in effect, Obama out-Team of Rivals Lincoln's Team of Rivalscabinet on points. Will it work as well as Lincoln's? Frankly, for the sake of the country, it had better run better than Lincoln's.

So to sum up, Team of Rivals as a media meme is beyond stupid. It's a lazy construct from our lazy media. I'm sure Goodwin, and particularly her publisher, don't mind all the books the media has sold for her in the last few weeks though.

Give It Up, David.

If I'm ever elected US Dictator for a Day, I will ban the use of the following terms from political life:

game-changer.
race card.
Bradley Effect.

As well as all of the other clichés on this list.

Finally, my inner film geek will immediately pass a law providing for life imprisonment, without parole, and forbidding television privileges for any political idiot, left or right, who uses a basically non-political film to make a tortured, shit-stupid political point, like say, this gibberish from David Sirota, who has pretty much gone around the bend since Obama won the election, because Obama hasn't given him a job, or hasn't passed some arcane ideological purity test of David's with his appointee for White House janitor or some such.

I watched one of the two Best Worst Movies in film history this weekend - Big Trouble in Little China (the other Best Worst Movie is Army of Darkness). Whether brought on by the natural high of a leftover-filled stomach, or the artificial high of Thanksgiving night Maker's Mark, I had an epiphany that this movie is a highly accurate - if artistically absurd - portrayal of a deeply important aspect of how America sees itself in the world.

Funny me, I just thought it was a silly, B-Grade film that possesses enough of a quirky charm in its characters to hold up 20 years later. And blaming the Maker's Mark would have been a valid excuse, if just about every other post by David Sirota since November 4 wasn't equally incoherent.

The main character, Jack Burton (Kurt Russell), is obviously cast as America. Indeed, director John Carpenter pretty overtly wants him to be something of a Western cowboy (for instance, though a truck driver, Burton carries his belongings in a saddle bag). As the Toronto Star praised Russell in its review, "He does a great John Wayne imitation." Meanwhile, David Lo Pan and his gang are the Rest of the World, and more specifically, the Non-Aligned Countries, otherwise known as the Axis of Evil.

No, that's the funny part. Actually, he's a millenia old Chinese Warlord who got his ass-kicked by another Chinese Warlord, who's trying to put together another army in Chinatown in San Francisco. What the hell movie was Sirota watching?

The plot casts these Foreigners as having created a terrorist cell in San Francisco's Chinatown

Terrorist cell, Chinese street gang, same difference.

In fact, every Chinese person in the movie - good guy or bad guy - is made to seem like their first and foremost loyalty is not to the United States, but to China ("China is here, Mr Burton!") - a key fear propagated by American pop culture, from the McCarthy witchhunts for communist infiltrators to George W. Bush's domestic "war on terror."

That would include the other main protagonist, Wang Chi, who at one point proclaims his love of America, in pretty stark flag-waving relief, early in the film. Clearly David passed out early in this film, and recalls the rest from a hazy, alcoholic dream state.

Let's read on though. Maybe he'll be more coherent in the next paragraph.

So how does Burton/America deal with Lo Pan/Foreign Terrorists? He has no plan at all, other than to head to their headquarters and bust in guns blazing. The lack of planning is not an accident or something looked down on - it's how he rolls and he's proud of it, as evidenced by his repeated refrain that he doesn't need to plan because "it's all in the reflexes." And everytime he says this line, we're supposed to laugh and cheer with him, because this is how we roll.

Then again, maybe he won't be any more coherent.

This takes things to a whole different level of stupid. As pointed out by one of the commenters in the thread, and the director's commentary, the point of Jack's character, the main driving force, is he thinks he's the big hero, when he's really the sidekick. Reading anything more into this just shows David to be looking for a message that isn't there.

We don't plan when dealing with foreigners who have different customs and cultures and who threaten our interests - we don't need to plan because planning is for pussies. We're fellow truck-driver cowboys with daggers in pocket of the boots we're wearing over our acid wash jeans - and dammit, "it's all in the reflexes."

You know, it almost hurts to think about the pretzel-like contortions Sirota had to get himself in so he could try to extract deep political thinking out of a B-Grade Comedic Action-Adventure Flick.

While Burton stumbles a lot and makes an idiot out of himself, his lack of planning ultimately works. He defeats the evil foreigners, saves the day and gets the girl (who he's too cool to keep around). The moral of the story is that while America might make some blockheaded mistakes, they're honest ones and because we're the "good guys" we'll end up winning the day. There may be "big trouble" but it's manageable because compared to American power, everything is little (in the movie's case what's little is China, but it could be anything - Iraq, Al Qaeda, etc.).

Um, actually, his Chinese-American comrades do most of the heavy lifting, while Jack pours bullets in the ceiling, knocking himself unconscious. Knocking myself unconscious after reading this is sounding increasingly tempting, by the way.

Big Trouble in Little China debuted in 1986 - arguably the peak of American world supremacy. The Soviet Union was on its heels about to collapse and there were no other superpowers, or emerging superpowers. So, in that sense, the movie was a vaguely accurate metaphorical depiction of the United States at the moment. We could kick some ass without really having to think about it.

Wha? This paragraph hurts my brain.

That said, the tongue-in-cheek flavor of the film suggests Carpenter is using the Burton character to deliberately ridicule American hubris (and let's not forget the very end of the movie just before the credits roll: the crazy-eyed demon about to get his final revenge on Burton could be the world taking revenge on that hubris).

Or Carpenter might have just been trying to make a funny, action-adventure film on a shoestring budget. As at least one movie mogul was once quoted as saying, "If you want to send a message, try Western Union."

Look, Sirota's third-rate movie screed doesn't get any better. In fact, it could have only got worse if he'd shouted "Wolverines!" at the end of it.

Here's the deal. It's a point that a lot of highly politicized people on the left and right really miss about entertainment. It's stupid when the Laura Ingrahams, and Bill O'Reillys, and Jonah Goldbergs of the right do it, and it's equally stupid when David Sirota does it.

Excluding documentaries, probably a good 95% of the films released by the film industry are generally devoid of any great political meaning. 3-4% may make a point without trying to make a point. 1-2% may seek to actively make a political point.

Frankly, the films in that 1-2% are usually pretty dreadful films. Remember Syriana? An American Carol? Lions for Lambs? They all tried to say something deep. They were all pretty fucking awful.

And if you're trying to derive deep political meaning from any film in the collected works of John Carpenter, it's time to back away from the keyboard, swear off political blogging for a good month, and maybe go watch some films without viewing everything through political lenses. It will be good for you to see how a good 80% of the country lives everyday. You might actually learn something new that way as well.

Though I have to say that there was no more searing indictment of the Nixon Administration than Sorceror from Outer Space, and The Thing and Christine were a one-two punch of a takedown of the Reagan Administration.

Please shoot me now.

Requiem For A Maverick

Leave it to Matt Taibbi to write the ultimate postmortem on the dumbest Presidential campaign I've ever seen run by Republicans:

McCain's shtick wasn't exactly that, but it was close. He was a war hero who married an heiress to a beer distributorship and had been in the Senate since the Mesozoic Era. His greatest strength as a politician had up until this year been his ability to "reach across the aisle," a quality that in the modern Republican Party was normally about as popular as open bisexuality. His presence atop the ticket this year was evidence of profound anxiety within the party about its chances in the general election. After eight disastrous years of Bush, they thought they had lost the middle — so they picked a middling guy to get it back.

Which made sense, right up until the moment when they stuck him with Pinochet in heels for a running mate. Sarah Palin would have been a brilliant choice as a presidential nominee — and she will be, in 2012, when she leads the inevitable Republican counter-revolution against Obama's presidency. She's a classic divide-and-conquer politician, an unapologetic Witch Hunter and True Believer with a gift for whipping up the mob against the infidel. In a way that even George W. Bush never was, she is Karl Rove's wet dream, the Osama bin Laden of soccer moms, crusading against germs, communism, atheism and other such unclean elements strictly banned by American law.

Palin is exactly the kind of all-or-nothing fundamentalist to whom the career of John McCain had long existed as a kind of sneering counterargument. Up until this year, McCain had firmly rejected the emotional imperatives implicit in Bush-Rove-Gingrich conservatism, in which the relentless demonizing of liberals and liberalism was even more important than policy. While other Republicans were crusading against gay marriage in 2004, McCain bashed a proposed anti-gay-marriage amendment, calling it "antithetical in every way to the core philosophy of Republicans." While the president and other Republicans wrapped their arms around the Falwells of the world, McCain blasted those preachers as "agents of intolerance." He talked of seeing the hand of God when he hiked in the Grand Canyon, but insisted loudly that he believed in evolution. He even, for Christ's sake, supported a ban on commercial whaling. If there's anything that a decent Republican knows without being told, it's that whales are a liberal constituency.

But McCain didn't care. Back then, his political survival didn't depend on keeping voters artificially geeked up on fear and hatred for Mexicans or biology teachers or other such subversives. He was, after all, a war hero, and Sharon Stone's cousin.

In short, McCain entered this election season being the worst thing that anyone can be, in the eyes of the Rove-school Republicans: Different. Independent. His own man. He exited the campaign on his knees, all his dignity gone, having handed the White House to the hated liberals after spending the last months of the race with numb-nuts Sarah Palin on his arm and Karl Rove's cock in his mouth. Even if you wanted to vote for him, you didn't know who you were voting for. The old McCain? The new McCain? Neither? Both?

Ouch. That'll leave a mark.

(h/t John Cole)

RIP, Tanta.

Doris Dungey, AKA Tanta, from Calculated Risk passes away.

I knew nothing about her, but I loved her work on the Calculated Risk blog. And 47 is way, way too young to go.

Weekendish Random Ten

You know the rules. Grab your iPod (or your Zune or Zen, if you live one of those alternative lifestyles), shuffle the songs, and let the bad Led Zeppelin covers, and unfortunate BeeGees boxed sets fall where they may:

Good Mornin' Heartaches-Lightnin' Slim
And the Tide Rushes In-Moody Blues
That Voice Again-Peter Gabriel
Neurotica (Live)-King Crimson
Neon Lights-Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
All Blues-Miles Davis
American Idiot-Green Day
I Got the Feelin'-James Brown
When You're Not Around-Joe Jackson
Terminal Eyes-Al Stewart

And one more since this isn't a bad mix:
Liar-Sex Pistols

Bonus Music Video:
Electronic-Forbidden City

Time To Rethink

Not politics related, but it's time for some people out there to step away from the "Black Friday" sales and chill the fuck out.

(CNN) -- Three violent deaths in two stores marred the opening of the Christmas shopping season Friday.

In the first, a temporary Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death in a rush of thousands of early morning shoppers as he and other employees attempted to unlock the doors of a Long Island, New York, store at 5 a.m., police said.

In the second, unrelated incident, two men were shot dead in a Toys "R" Us in Palm Desert, California, after they argued in the store, police said.

The toy company and authorities said the California shootings had nothing to do with shopping on Black Friday, which is historically one of the year's busiest shopping days.

The Wal-Mart worker, whom authorities did not identify, was 34 and lived in Queens, said Nassau County police Detective Lt. Michael Fleming.

"This was utter chaos as these men tried to open the door this morning," Fleming said.

There are two things I hate with unbridled passion: talking to people on the phone (blame it on several years in call center jobs); and holiday shopping crowds.

We made precisely one stop yesterday at Costco, a couple of hours after the place opened. We picked up a couple of discounted iTunes gift cards and some grocery type items we needed anyways. It was busy, but not much worse than a weekend day.

We're talking my two sons out today, mostly to look for ideas, though if we find a deal for them, we'll pick it up at the time. The bulk of my shopping will be online.

I'll gladly pay a premium not to have to deal with nasty, passive-aggressive holiday shoppers. Also, since I will be out of town for the holiday, I'll order most of it and just ship it straight to where I'll be staying.

As for the deaths above, there is no holiday gift out there worth your life, or someone else's. It's amazing this even has to be explained to people, but that's where we're at.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving from the Rat Family to you and your family.

May you have a safe and happy holiday.

Points at Which It's Safe to Stop Reading.

From a blogger currently featured on the front page of Arizona's Shittiest Website^TM:

I may be my mother’s dumbest daughter

Oh, but wait, there's more...

I may be my mother’s dumbest daughter, but when I heard that the big 3 automaker CEO’s went to Congress to ask for money to bail out their automobile companies in private jet planes, I laughed my a** off.

Hmm. Actually, that just made me shake my head.

If just one of those executives, say the one from GM, put a generator in an SUV and had it follow him in a Chevy Volt all the way to Washington, they would have written him a blank check on the spot.

Of course, an SUV with a generator would kind of make the Chevy Volt irrelevant...wait a second. I was giving this incoherent sentence thought, instead of realizing that this is Jamielynne's dadaist way of prove she is her mother's stupidest daughter...but I digress. Continue on, oh Missouri born airhead.

The same skewed thinking has put this country in our present position; paying millions of dollars to people who bankrupted their business, funding corporate foreign junkets for incompetent corporate executives, and enabling people without jobs, credit, or savings to get mortgages they can’t afford

Shorter JamieLynne McDumbfuck (Take Your Pick):

I have no fucking clue about economics.
or
All of those folks who bankrupted their businesses were probably Democrats anyway.
or
All of those people who borrowed money in the Bush years to buy a house were lazy (insert derogatory term for minority of your choice here), welfare queens.

If I wanted the government to ignore years of bad business decisions and give me the cash to bail out my company the last thing I would do is demonstrate that I don’t have the brains to put on a good show.

This is the point at which somebody needs to stage an intervention, and make JamieLynne step away from the keyboard until she swears never to write about economics again.

It is all well and good to say let the companies die in total ignorance of the economic consequences, without realizing that they won't die in isolation, and it won't be just the Rust Belt that suffers.

If GM, Ford, and Chrysler die, that amounts to 2 million jobs. Not only do the three automakers die, but so do whole industries that support them with steel, glass, plastics, parts, tires, radios, etc. So do aftermarket suppliers. And the dealers.

This is on top of an already shaky economy, where the Dow has already fallen as far on a percentage basis as during the Great Depression, and when the economy is already shedding jobs faster than one can keep track.

But, of course, like the conservative anti-intellectual JamieLynne whatsherface is, she's much more eager to do the thing that feels good to her little priviledged, nasty, me-first in the name of our Lord self, instead of actually devoting some serious thought to the problem, and how to create a solution that does the least to hurt the broader economy, which is, of course, the only reason an honest person would consider bailing out any company in a country in the first place.

If JamieLynne isn't her mother's dumbest daughter, it certainly isn't for lack of effort

From the Department of You Can't Make This Shit Up.

Can someone explain this phenomenon to me?

Eight teenagers have been sentenced to time in jail by a court in Israel for carrying out a series of neo-Nazi attacks that shocked the nation.

The eight, aged from 16 to 19, were found guilty of attacking religious Jews, gays and drug addicts, and the desecration of a synagogue.

The group, immigrants to Israel from the former Soviet Union, were sentenced to between one and seven years in jail.

Israel was founded in the wake of the Nazi Holocaust in which millions died.

One of those convicted was the grandson of a Holocaust survivor.

OK. I'm not a simpleton here. If I recall correctly, 6,000,000 Jews died in the Holocaust at the hands of, hold on, still wrapping my head around this, oh, that's right, Nazis.

By definition of the Nazis, anybody with a Jewish ancestor going back to great-grandparents was by their definition, Jewish, and therefore was subject to a one-way trip to Treblinka, or Auschwitz, or any of the other Nazi dens of evil, these morons are Jewish by origin, if not practicing religion.

And they are here, um, wait a minute, I'm having trouble handling this one, persecuting Jews? How does that work?

There was widespread revulsion in Israel when the existence of the neo-Nazi gang was revealed after their arrests in 2007.

Gee, you think?

If someone could explain this one to me, please help. Thanks.

30 Years Ago Tonight

The worst two hours of television in history aired. Just thought you should know...

And for the masochists who really wish to endure the two hour horror that was the Star Wars Holiday Special, here you go.

There's a reason it has never been aired again, and that George Lucas has said he'd like to track down every copy of it and destroy them. Don't say that you weren't warned.

Friday Random Ten

You know the rules, grab your IPod (or Zune, or Zen, if you swing that way), Hit the Shuffle, and let the much regretted Bananarama Greatest Hits compilations and Wang Chung cover bands fall where they may (and no skipping):

You Should Have Never Opened That Door-The Ramones
Lucifer-Alan Parsons Project
The Battle of Hoth-John Williams, Empire Strikes Back Soundtrack
Pegasus-Bear McCreary, Battlestar Galactica Season 2 Soundtrack
A Slow Song (Live)-Joe Jackson
Shake off the Ghosts-Simple Minds
Changes-David Bowie
On the Border-Al Stewart
Blush Response-Vangelis, Blade Runner Soundtrack
Piccadilliy Palare-Morrissey

Turning It Up To 11:
Belfast Child-Simple Minds

Bonus Video:
Klaus Nomi-Total Eclipse (From Urrgh: A Music War)

Black Hole...

more animals

Pictures of one or more of my own cats to come tomorrow.

A Parable for 2008

Once upon a time there was a horse, who along with a man, shared a dangerous enemy, a wolf.

Seeking a solution to the danger, the horse approached the man with a deal. "You may put a bridle and saddle on me if you will help me by hunting and killing a wolf." To the man, aware of the dangers of the wolf, this seemed like a good offer, and so the man agreed.

After saddling the horse, the man mounted it, armed with sword and bow. After a short hunt, the man on horseback caught and quickly slew the wolf.

Happy at being freed of the menace of the wolf, the horse said. "Thank you for your help in slaying the wolf. You may now remove my bridle and saddle."

"Remove your bridle and saddle?", the man laughed. "The hell you say. Giddy up, Dobbin." The man then spurred the horse on to return homeward.

What to do about the southern United States, that states that once formed the Confederacy, the states that invented the term of Southern Democrats, has been a vexing problem for this country for 232 years. The text of the Declaration of Independence was altered to appease the region, as Thomas Jefferson, a slave owner himself, was asked to delete a reference to the slave trade in order to avoid offending southern sensibilities by Benjamin Franklin and John Adams.

The Constitution, as originally written, of course, attempted to deal with the North's population preponderance in the union (and by definition, in the House of Representatives) by counting slaves as 3/5 of a citizen for census reasons.

The country of course, ultimate fighting a long and bloody civil war over the issue. But the problem didn't stop there. The Democrats came back to power briefly in the late 19th Century by appealing once again, to Southern Democrats. Eventually, of course, the Republican party defeated that coalition, and might have continued to, were it not for the Great Depression, and the utterly ineffective Hoover response to it.

FDR came to power in 1932, buoyed by an uneasy coalition of the working urban poor, the fundamentalist South, and impoverished farmers. It was a coalition that enabled FDR to win four terms, with Truman riding it into the Presidency upon FDR's death.

Ultimately, however, the country, and the Democratic Party could no longer ignore the elephant in the room, the country's original sin of racism. Changes in the 1948 Democratic platform, while modest, led to southern Democrats putting up their own champion, Strom Thurmond, and FDR's old Democratic coalition, while limping to reelection in 1948, came apart in the 1950's.

JFK's magic won election in 1960, and there was even a faint echo of FDR's coalition in Johnson's landslide against Goldwater. However, the passage of the 1965 Civil Rights Act destroyed the 100+ year old alignment of the Democratic Party with conservative, fundamentalist (and by extension racist and chauvinist) majorities in the South. By 1968, Nixon was openly courting these voters across the country, and would ensure Republican success, at least in Presidential elections, for the next 40 years.

So how does this relate to the parable above? For 40 years, the real base of the GOP, the CEOs, the hereditary rich, white power structure that has been the real base of the GOP since the 1850's, despairing of ever becoming a majority party again, cast about for an ally that could provide them with the manpower, the numbers, to win elections again.

Looking about for such a group, they fell upon the religious right. It was a convenient marriage. The religious right had no love for women's rights, the rights of minorities, labor unions, gays and lesbians, or any of the other groups which gravitated toward the Democratic Party in the 1960's and 1970's.

The GOP willingly co-opted the Religious Right, offering them the bridle and saddle. The trouble is, new members of coalitions, and particularly energized members, expect results. When the relatively moderate, pro-business GOP of the 1960's and 70's didn't deliver for them on abortion, or rolling back civil rights, or the rights of women in the workplace, they decided to take over. They mounted the horse. They began to run for office, and fund raise. And they began to win, first in primaries, and then more frequently, in general elections.

By the 1990's and the first decade of this century, the GOP had become an organ of the religious right (as well as the neocons, but that is a subject for another post).

Now, the pro-business right didn't really mind wearing the saddle, because the Religious Right was doing a tremendous job at slaying the Democratic wolf. Eventually, of course, the saddle began to chafe. Then in 2006, the wolf took a good bite out of the man and horse. Finally, this year, 2008, the wolf gravely wounded both.

So now, the pro-business right has found a new enemy, the very people they once courted. They realize that nobody in the 60-70% of the country that isn't a fundamentalist, a CEO, or a neocon finds their party unappealing. And it's not as though the business interests can really become Democrats. The scales have fallen from their eyes, and they realize that the kooks have taken over their party.

They don't like it, and they will do something about it. The result, what we're seeing in editorials, and in the pushback against Sarah Palin, is likely to be civil war, and a long time in exile as a minority party.

Who will win this fight in the GOP? It's hard to see anybody winning but Democrats in the short-term. In the long term? I suspect the rich base that owns the GOP will regain control of much of their party back. And the fundamentalists will crawl back under the rocks, much as they did after the demise of Huey Long in the 1930s.

And then, perhaps, the political process in the country will grow healthy again. Or not. Either way, it will be interesting, it will be bloody, and it will translate into a lot of lost elections for the GOP. Stay tuned.

Two Minute Arizona's Worst NewspaperTM

Reading Arizona's most widely circulated birdcage liner so you don't have to.

Shorter Doug "Gramps" MacEachern: Differences of opinion should be tolerated, but not if they're too diferent, then...they'd better... HEY! You kids get off my (expletive deleted) lawn or I'll tell you another pointless anecdote. Damn whippersnappers.

Shorter Dan Nowicki: If not for running a shitty campaign, choosing a shitty running mate, being a shitty candidate, and having no clue what to do about the biggest issue of the campaign, my BFF John McCain might have won. And monkeys may still fly out of my butt. Any second now. Just watch.

Shorter Robert Robb Like every good fake libertarian, I dislike gay marriage, abortion, and medical marijuana laws. And public attitudes on them will never change, because after all, the electorate is frozen in amber. Oh wait, they're not? Damn. So much for that talking point.

Lack of Perspective (or Drama Queens, Get the F*ck Out)

OK, fellow travellers on the Left. Let's talk about a few facts.

On November 6, returning to work after a well deserved day off, I had the opportunity to speak with several coworkers who are fellow Obama supporters and Democrats.

My first two sentences were this:

1. Now the real work begins.
2. Be prepared for Obama to break your heart.

Let's talk about both of those for a minute.

Now the real work begins.

FDR was widely considered one of our more progressive Presidents. He didn't run for reelection that way in 1932. Truth is, on a lot of policies, he ran by offering to out-Hoover Hoover.

Then, when in office, his first attempts at economic policy were so tepid they almost led to his undoing.

Let's relate that to the present day. There are still a lot of god-awful, corporate Democrats out there. Last I checked, totally useless gits like the Nelsons, Joe Lieberman and the Salazars are still in the House and Senate. There are still going to be somewhere between 43-40 Republican assholes like Jon Kyl in the Senate and even more GOoPer neanderthals in the House.

If we don't fight for it, we're going to get more of the same bullshit we've seen in the last 16 years. Corporate giveaways, brain-dead, one-sided "free" trade deals. Be prepared to ride your Congressmen (or women) and Senators like a jockey flogging a horse on the way to the Winner's Circle at the Kentucky Derby.

If you don't pester your Congressmen and Senators when Obama's trying to push something important through the SenateCongress, you didn't win a damn thing last Tuesday. It's that simple.

Obama will break your heart.

Here's the truth. During his first 100 days in office, Barack Obama will do something, or not do something, that is going to drive you up a fucking wall. He won't prioritize something that is THE MOST IMPORTANT THING EVER. Or he will prioritize something you couldn't give a shit about.

All Presidents do. Now mind you, he won't probably crush your spirit like Bush did. Who could? But he will do something that will bother you.

Here's a secret. There's only one person that will absolutely agree with every sacred cow, my way or the highway, policy position that is important to you. Trouble is, you weren't running for President.

As for the stupid highlighted here, all I can say is people ought to be a whole lot smarter than this.

Hideous Republican Chuds of the Week

That would be this bunch of assholes:

A billboard truck circulated around North High School on Monday morning showing graphic images of abortion as students walked to school.

The Center for Bio-ethical Reform, an Ohio-based group, is behind the billboards, which have circulated in other parts of the country, including towns in Ohio and in Fort Myers, Fla.

Parents were upset at the images, saying their children shouldn't be exposed to that on their way to school. Berenice Rivera said that kind of education needs to be done at home with the family, not as students are going to school.

Phoenix Union High School district leaders were also upset at the billboard and said they would be sending home a letter to parents. Craig Pletenik, a spokesperson for the district, said some parents wondered why North High, at 12th Street and Thomas Road, had been targeted specifically.

Targeting an urban high school, when there are plenty of high schools out in SnotsScottsdale that would be just as worthy a targets is incredibly curious. Of course, the fact that urban poor people can't raise the kind of legal stink that suburban high school parents can raise is one explanation. Or maybe it's simple classist or racist actions on their part.

In any case, it's one thing to warp your own kids minds with the failed strategy of abstinence only education. It's quite another to force it down the throat of the children of others.

Congratulations, drivers, workers, volunteers, and the creeps that fund the misleadingly named Center for Bioethical Reform. You've become Republican Chuds of the Week

If the United States ever needs an enema...

...Oklahoma would be the perfect orifice to do it through.

Sadly, I'm all too familiar with rural Oklahoma. Many of my relatives lived there, live there, or were born there. My mom moved back there for retirement, mainly because it's cheaper...something about not paying people living wages.

A little worn out, taking the night off.

I'll be back tomorrow.

Rahm Emanuel is Obama's first appointee as Chief of Staff. Not a bad choice.

A Little More Like Home...

Paul Campos of Lawyers, Guns & Money has a beautiful column in this morning's Rocky Mountain News.

Go read the whole thing.

Kick the Mo-Fo Out

Joe Lieberman, yesterday, in his never ending quest to become an irrelevant back bencher who is despised in both parties:

"Senator Hatch said to me that if we don't at least have the firewall of the filibuster in the Senate, that in many ways, America will not survive," said Beck on Tuesday.

"I hope it's not like that, but I fear," the Senator said. "I think the filibuster is key...It was really put there...somebody said to me when I first came to the Senate, '[to] stop the passions of a moment' among the people of America from sweeping across the Congress, the House, through the Senate, to a like-minded president and having us do things that will change America for a long time."

Look, I'm just fine with a big tent party. There is room, in our party, for conservative Democrats in conservative districts.

But the truth is, the primary voters of Connecticut, in their wisdom, kicked him out of the party two years ago. But I'd say with his speech at the RNC, his open support of the Republican nominee, and worst still his nasty rhetoric towards President-Elect Obama (man, do I love writing that), and now with his concern over the party he is still supposedly loyal to building a larger majority, I'd suggest that Leiberman has removed himself from that tent.

Thursday will be Senator Lieberman's "day of reckoning," according to a Capitol Hill paper.

"Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is scheduled to meet with Sen. Joe Lieberman (ID-Conn.) on Thursday to discuss his future in the Senate Democratic Conference, according to a Democratic Senate source," Tim Taylor reports for Roll Call.

Taylor notes that "a growing number of Senate Democrats have been pressuring Reid to penalize Lieberman for aggressively backing Republican Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) in this year’s presidential contest," and that his chairmanship of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and his place in the Democratic Conference are both "at stake."

About damn time. The fact that we will not get to 60 (with or without Leiberman), I'd say, frees Reid up to do this in a way he couldn't afford it before. Throw him out. Strip him of his chairmanship, and kick him to the curb. At this point, who gives a damn whether he caucuses with the Republicans or not.

Hey, I saw you on TV. What happened?

A brief story of my evening for those who care.

UPDATE: I accidentally published the post before I meant to, but I'm too pooped to write.

I'll pick it up tomorrow.

EVEN LATER UPDATE: It was disappointing to not pop up more on television. By 10:45 PM, when I did appear, I was tired. It was however a good evening. A great opportunity to follow the elections with three very smart people (even if I have little in common with two of them).

I'd also like to pass on congratulations to one of my co-bloggers, righty Greg Patterson of Espresso Pundit, who won his election rather handily last night.

Election Live Blogging II

7:28 PM. Welcome to the surreal world. I'm sitting next to somebody who works in the office of Andrew Thomas, and Kevin Hunt, KPNX Sports Anchor. Toto, you're definitely not in Kansas anymore.

Election Live Blogging I

6:06 PM Pennsylvania called for Obama Per CNN. Huge Blow for McCain, who probably spent too much time in the state over the last few weeks.

6:08 PM. Lots of calls as a bunch more states closed at the 6 PM Arizona Time Hour. Summarizing:

McCain: Oklahoma, Tennessee South Carolina
Obama: Maine (all 4 EVs), New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Pennsilvania, Illinois.

Obama already at 103 EVs.

6:13 PM: Accidentally omitted the District of Columbia, which was called for Obama at closing time as well.

6:15 PM: Elizabeth Dole in deep, deep trouble in North Carolina. MSNBC is apparently already calling it for Democrat Kay Hagan. The atheist attack ad Dole ran just destroyed her.

6:18 PM: FYI. Don't know what CNN knows that MSNBC doesn't (or vice versa), but CNN still hasn't projected either New Hampshire or Pennsylvania for Obama.

6:26 PM: I chose not to make a two-way (45 minutes each way) trek home after work, and am instead blogging from a Starbucks not far away. The buzz here is 100% Election, all the time. Not sure what that means, other than the spirit of Democracy is clearly alive and well in Downtown Phoenix. That's got to be good for something, right?

6:34 PM: Daily Kos's election tracker and CNN now calling New Hampshire for Obama. No word on Pennsylvania yet.

6:36 PM: I'm wrapping up from Starbucks. Will be back to life in KPNX-TV's studios shortly.

Calls Coming In

As the polls closed at 5 PM EST on a bunch more states, CNN & MSNBC called Kentucky for McCain, Vermont for Obama, no surprise in this case.

Three Non-competitive Senate Races Called as well

Mark Warner, Democrat Virginia
Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat New Jersey
Susan Collins, Republican, Maine.

As I post this, South Carolina has just been called for McCain, despite Obama having a lead amongst the votes counted.

Tonight's Forecast is Partly Cloudy, with Impending Gloom. The overall mood is Draconian

I begin an evening of liveblogging (or semi-live blogging), by telling you that security around the Arizona Biltmore Hotel is as tight or tighter than it was for many of President Bush's interminable visits.

Yep, it's 5 PM Arizona Time, 2 hours before the polls close, and time for the Overture to the Viking Funeral that is the John McCain for President Campaign.

The polls have closed in Kentucky, and most of Indiana. Neither state has been called, though it looks like McCain will probably roll to victory in Kentucky, while Obama currently has a slim lead in Indiana.

Indiana is one of those states where an Obama victory spells trouble for McCain. It's been a reliably Republican state Nixon beat Humphrey in 1968. Obama is looking to put an end to that tonight. Polls are about to close in a few more states, so keep your head down, it's going to be a bumpy ride.

Previews of Coming Distractions

May tomorrow night's election coverage be at least as entertaining as this:



Have a great night.

One Last Post.

I promised not to spill the beans about all that the moment will mean to me, when Obama makes a likely victory speech (after a McCain concession speech, needless to say), but I will say this.

McCain ran the worst campaign I've seen a Republican run in my lifetime. It wasn't even close. It was like the worst parts of the Kerry and Dukakis campaigns, mashed together, and then multiplied. Bad photo ops. Ineffective, bungled television advertising. Lack of a coherent message. Gawd-awful choice of a running mate. Inability to give a coherent reason why the candidate should be trusted with the keys to the country for four years. Stupid, incoherent media surrogates. Bad consultants and campaign leadership. Inability to build grassroots enthusiasm until it was too late. Inability to let go of Republican dogma at a time when Republican dogma, particularly on the economy, was a political loser with a capital "L." There are so many reasons I could go on for the rest of the night.

It doesn't matter. He was up against a stacked deck, in any case. I've believed, for a long time, that if a black man, or a woman, for that matter, was going to be the first person to break through and break up the 43 strong Old White Guys club that is the Office of the President of the United States, that that person would have to run a perfect, or at least nearly flawless campaign.

Obama's run to where he has got now, the night before the election, has been the best run Presidential campaign by a Democrat in my lifetime. It starts with the candidate's steady, unflappable demeanor and the brightness of his own voice and rhetoric. But it trickles down from there.

His campaign is disciplined. At no time, do I recall an Obama strategist criticizing their candidate, even off the record. There's been no infighting in his campaign. This campaign was just as steady, and disciplined, when they were trailing McCain in early September, as they are now up by 6-8%. His campaign has defended him rigorously, and has been willing to go on the attack, where necessary, to defend him from attacks.

The same was true throughout the primary. They've been methodical in terms of their approach to the election, to the brief crises, to how they've gone about building their organization, and how they've gone about building the political machine he has assembled in all 50 states.

A lot of groundwork was laid to get here. Howard Dean deserves credit for building a national party willing and capable of competing everywhere. Small dollar donors have given Obama the luxury to build this machine. The economic and political climate has given the Obama campaign strong tailwinds. But Obama's candidacy and campaign took advantage of, and built a foundation around all these things, tied them together, and made the thing work.

It's something I've never seen on the Democratic side. It's something we may never see again. And it is the reason he is where he is tonight, on the verge of making history, changing America, and changing the world. It's been amazing to watch, and occasionally be a peripheral part of.

What To Watch For Tomorrow Night

Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com has a great post from late yesterday, entitled "What A McCain Win Looks Like..." and an article in Newsweek about what to expect, hour by hour.

Each day, FiveThirtyEight runs 10,000 simulations using their computer model to calculate win probability of the candidates based on up to date polling data (at the time of this writing, they rate the probability of an Obama victory as 98.1%). Based on those results yesterday, Nate Silver paints a very bleak picture of McCain's chances (take a look at his article).

The early states to watch are Virginia, Indiana, and Florida. A McCain loss in either Virginia or Florida, along with an expected loss in Pennsylvania, which McCain has spent a lot of time working on trying to win, cooks McCain. From there, it likely only gets worse, as more states close.

In Arizona, a key thing will be the size of McCain's victory. If Obama fights him within 1 percent or so, or manages to pull off the upset, it will be great news for down ticket Congressional and State races.

On the brink of history.

TBogg wrote the post I wanted to write tonight, and I don't want to curse it, so I'll save mine for tomorrow night, presumably after my KPNX Blogging stint. Go read his in the meantime.

Toot

I was really hoping that she'd make it through election day. Nonetheless, I'm sure she died extremely proud of her grandson.

Sen. Barack Obama's grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, has died following a bout with cancer, Obama and his sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, said Monday.

She was 86.

At a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, Monday night, the Illinois senator said "she has gone home and she died peacefully in her sleep with my sister at her side."

"I'm not going to talk about it long because it's hard to talk about," he added.

Obama remembered her as "one of those quiet heroes we have across America, who aren't famous ... but each and every day they work hard. They look after their families. They look after their children and their grandchildren."

I lost my last grandparent, my maternal grandmother, just a few weeks ago. From what I understand, Senator Obama's grandparents took a much more active role in raising him than my grandparents were able to (mainly due to the vagaries of geography). My sincere condolences to him and his family.

Hideous Republican Chud of the Week

Look, it's one thing to not be happy with how another adult votes (though how you judge them based on that says as much about YOU as it does them). It's another thing to treat children like you're Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS. Nice values, you hideous Republican toad.

Like it or not, November 5, these are still going to be your neighbors. You're going to have to live with that. Those neighbors, even the decent Republicans in the neighborhood, are going to remember this. The next time you might need a favor from one of them, they'll remember how you treated their daughter or son like garbage. It will suck to be you then.

Maybe you'll have car problems, or lock yourself out of the house, or need somebody to watch the house a bit while on vacation. You never know when it will happen. But you didn't think about that, did you, you nasty little troglodyte. I hope they remind you of this forever more. Heck, some day, 10 years from now, you might need one of these kids to mow your lawn. Good luck with that one.

Maybe, 10 years from now, you'll sit there wondering why it's always your front door that gets egged, or your trees that get TP'ed. Then again, self-awareness doesn't appear to be your bag, so I doubt it.

Why Journalists Can't Write About Economics...

The rest of the article has a few kernels of truth, but this may be one of the the stupidest paragraphs ever written on economics:

The U.S. economy, more so than other worldwide economies, is largely based on how investors and, ultimately, consumers, feel. Typically, we measure economic strength or weakness using the GDP, or Gross Domestic Product, which is historically thought of as the broadest measure of economic activity.

(Emphasis on the stupid is mine).

Consumer sentiment, of course, is one of the prime motivators of economic conditions in any economy. To pretend that the US economy is more sensitive than other economies to consumer sentiment is to profess not only an ignorance in economics, but an absence of common sense.

FAIL.

Weekendish, Sort of Random Ten Type Thing

You know the rules, grab your IPod or Zune, hit shuffle, and play along, OK:

Hound Dog-Eric Clapton
Winding Me Up-Alan Parsons Project
Primitive Notion-New Order
Jimmy Sharman's Boxers-Midnight Oil
We Gotta Get You A Woman-Todd Rundgren
Synchronicity II (Live)-The Police
Editions of You (Live)-Roxy Music
Short Memory-Midnight Oil
Message In A Bottle (Live)-The Police
That Was Then This Is Now-ABC

Bonus Music Video:
Love Song-Simple Minds

Nobody could have predicted...

...that if you put microphones in the hands of narrow-minded, bigoted morons, they might start to say stupid shit you'd want to run far, far away from:

First, there was the angry man who told John McCain to hit Barack Obama “where it hurts.”

Then came the woman who called the Democratic nominee “an Arab.”

And don’t forget the man who stood up before a packed crowd and said he was “scared” of an Obama presidency — nevermind the racially tinged cat calls and rounds of boos from McCain’s other gymnasium crowds.

The town hall format was supposed be the Republican nominee’s favorite campaign forum, highlighting his shoot-from-the-hip style, his broad knowledge on a slew of issues and his irreverent wit. He loved it so much that he challenged Obama to a string of town hall debates.

I'll just point out that in the one clown-hall style debate, when the format wasn't having a stake driven into its heart by Tom Brokaw's Gigantic Ego^TM, McCain came out looking second best. Just sayin'.

“The town hall format proved to be a little embarrassing for the campaign, and it built a negative picture about what this campaign is all about,” said Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University, adding that the encounters were “too costly.”

Too costly, in the sense that McCain's lame clown college of advisors were getting real tired of explaining away just how nasty his, and particularly Palin's supporters are.

(h/t AmericaBlog)

Tom Brokaw's Gigantic Ego is a trademark of RatTracks.

A New Hope

Looks a little familiar...


You can find this here. Also from there, find links for the poster and T-Shirt, if so inclined.

Not sure where I've seen this before, but what the hell.

How Not To Persuade An Undecided Voter

This, I'm guessing, probably wouldn't work.

Interesting anecdote and probably a testament to ground organization. I have no idea what this means. Friday night (which happens to be the start of our Sabbath) my wife answered the phone to hear a man stating he was from the McCain-Palin campaign. He asked who she was supporting. She replied that we will vote for Obama. He replied with "but he's a f-----g n---er!". Before I get to my wife's response I'll first have to say that I understand desperation and I also understand that this pitch may actually work for a few people. I also understand that there are people who are whack-jobs phone-banking for both sides. But here are some facts:

My wife and I are Black. Citing the fact that Obama is a f----g n---er as a way to sway our vote may not be a great idea. My wife and I live in Maryland... Baltimore, MD.... One of the most African American areas of Baltimore Maryland. How on earth did our phone numbers get on to a McCain volunteers phone bank list of potential voters to be calling at this stage in the game? We have never received a call from the Obama campaign.

The fact that the parties in question are black is really beside the point. It's one thing for people to be uncomfortable about race. It's something a lot of voters (and not just Republicans and Independents) have had to come to grips with during this campaign. It's another thing to be confronted with balls-to-the-wall, full blown hate.

What the McCain-Palin campaign has been generating in the past few weeks makes it easy and acceptable for many of their more zealous volunteers to get their (white) rage on. As I explained in a conversation with my 73 year old mother earlier today, they bring up the tenuous connection with Ayers, and ACORN, and Rev. Wright, and Marxist and Socialist because they can't call Obama what this phone banker called him. For they know, the moment the candidates, or their surrogates, do in front of a microphone or a television camera, the election is over.

But that doesn't mean their supporters are smart enough to make that connection. Increasingly, as Obama's lead hasn't budged, and it has become more and more apparent that this thing isn't likely to fall McCain's way, we've been seeing more of this. And for a large chunk of these people, on the right, the thought of losing to a black man is one of their worst nightmares.

You know its there. And it's going to be ugly until Tuesday. Then it will be ugly toward Inauguration Day. It will probably stay ugly from some quarters for 4 years.

To those who know me, the Drinking Liberally folks, my friends and immediately family, I've made it clear that Obama was not my first choice. I initially supported Dodd, whose campaign died in Iowa, flirted with Edwards, but ultimately went with Obama as what I thought was the one clear chance to stop Hillary Clinton. Mind you, I didn't hate Hillary, I just don't trust her on matters of war and peace. I also think she would have united the GOP in a way Obama (and McCain) haven't, as a polarizing figure.

But that's neither here or there. Since I came around to Obama, I have said, that the day he is elected (if he is), this country is forever changed, and changed for the better. If he governs well, it will again be changed, and changed for the better.

Part of that change, unfortunately, is shaking a lot of these sort of openly racist people out of the woodwork. If this country is ever going to deal with the rot that has been at its core since the Declaration of Independence, which is racism, racism has to be confronted straight ahead. That will happen for the next four years, ultimately for the betterment of the country. But it won't be pretty, or painless.

In the meantime, keep your heads down, and look out for each other. It's going to be ugly.

One Good Thing...

Whatever else, good or bad, may come out of this election, the tattered remnants of John Zogby's reputation after the 2004 campaign have now been shot, poisoned, drowned, drugged, and beaten more thoroughly than Rasputin. This can only be a good thing.

McCain Feeling Heat

Apparently, the McCain shipwreck, er, campaign's internal polling numbers must be inline with Dr. Merrill's poll numbers, as this looks like an act of desperation in a state that really shouldn't be in doubt this late.

John McCain and the Republican National Committee are now running robocalls attacking Obama as weak on terrorism -- in McCain's home state of Arizona, according to multiple readers from the state.

The call signals genuine worry about McCain's home state at a time when several polls show the race to be much closer than expected there.

McCain's robocall, which was played to us over the phone by Mary Joe Bartel, a retiree who lives south of Tucson, attacks Obama as unprepared to defend the country from terrorism, singling out Joe Biden's recent remarks about the likelihood of Obama being tested by an international crisis early in his first term.

Go to Josh Marshall's link above to see the text, and hear the audio of the robocalls if you really have a penchant for self-abuse.

The bottom line is this is an utter disaster for McCain. He's already being outspent in battleground states. He's having to fight to defend states that Bush won handily four years ago. And now he's got to play defense on a state that should absolutely have been in the safe column.

Even if he wins Arizona, the fact that the race will finish close has to give a lot of hope to Bob Lord, Ann Kirkpatrick, Harry Mitchell, Gabrielle Giffords, and a ton of lower ticket Democrats that they won't have to count on quite as many cross ticket voters to vote for individual Democrats.

Make no mistake. McCain has no coattails, and may even be a drag on his party here on election night.

UPDATE: Raw Story has more, including local reaction from Don Bivens, State Democratic Party Chairman.

Bivens says they are asking the DNC & Obama for some reasons to help turn up the volume to 11. Rumor has it Barack has more money than he can use between now and November 4. It'd be nice to see some of the money, and maybe a campaign stop from one of the surrogates (I'm assuming Barack will have higher priorities between now and November 4). Nothing would say schadenfreude quite like McCain losing Arizona...particularly since he may have another statewide race against a tough candidate in two years.

The Audacity of Hope

I've uploaded my photograph. Or rather, my photograph with the sixth oldest of our seven cats.

He is a Siamese Lynx Point cat, an absolutely beautiful animal. He's about a year old. He was a pound cat, and just refused to let us out without adopting him. Mrs. Rat and I struggled with a name for three days.

He had the name Max previously. We tried various names. I can't remember them all. I'm absolutely convinced, in a way, that cats name themselves.

We finally settled on a name. Obama.

Yes, Senator, we're putting pressure on you. Our cat has your name. So you'd better win, or on November 5, we will be in search of a new name.

Election Night Blogging, Have Notebook, Will Travel

FYI. For reasons I'm still trying to fathom, KPNX TV, Channel 12 News-Phoenix, Arizona, is seeking yours truly to blog for their site from 8 PM to 11 PM.

While I suspect there's a strong possibility that the big race everybody's interested in may very well be settled more or less by that time, it will be a good time to be there.

In 2004, and 2006, Arizona results were just beginning to trickle in at 8 PM, and there is a lot of drama locally, with all of the ballot propositions, Shadegg vs. Lord in CD 3, and Ann Kirkpatrick's run for Renzi's old seat in CD 1 and Harry Mitchell's and Gabrielle Giffords defenses of their seats.

Then there's the other big questions of the night. Can Democrats flip the House and/or Senate in the State Capitol.

Finally, a question I never thought I'd be asking six days out. Can John McCain avoid the embarrassment of losing his home state?

Update: I should have mentioned this will of course, be on Tuesday, November 4, 2008, from 8 PM to 11 PM. Unless you all know of another upcoming election night I'm not aware of.

Poll Pr0n (Bruce Merrill/ASU)

From the press release:

TEMPE, Ariz. ––Republican John McCain leads Democrat Barack Obama by two points (46 percent to 44 percent) in Arizona, a margin that makes the race too close to call, according to a new Cronkite/Eight Poll. The poll of 1,019 registered voters in Arizona was conducted Oct. 23-26 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. According to poll director Dr. Bruce Merrill, “The race in Arizona is very close. Supporters of both candidates are highly committed to their candidates, with 94 percent of Obama’s supporters and 93 percent of McCain’s supporters indicating that they are firmly committed and won’t change their mind before Election Day. In addition, the undecided vote is very low, which means that there are few people remaining to be persuaded during the last week of the campaign. Obama has been closing the gap by attracting independents and women to his campaign. McCain does well among conservative Democrats and evangelicals. Still, a week is a long time in a political campaign and anything can happen. Who wins will be determined by which candidate gets their supporters out to the polls on Election Day.”

The statewide poll also found that a majority (62 percent) of all registered voters believes that Obama will win the presidency next Tuesday, while 20 percent think McCain will win. Thirty-eight percent of the Republicans in the state and 34 percent of those supporting McCain believe the Illinois senator will win. The poll also found that, by a two-to-one margin (46 percent to 22 percent), voters believe that McCain is running a more negative campaign than Obama.

This has been accomplished without campaigning on Obama's part, or locally targeted advertising (national cable advertising has been showing here).

I personally believe, at this moment in time, that McCain has the edge, but there's still a week to go, and it is nothing short of shocking that this race is this close in Arizona.

Whatever direction this one falls a week from today, one thing is sure. The game is changing in Arizona. It's not the GOP haven it was just a few years ago. Frankly, that's a lot more important than whether or not Barack pulls off an upset in Arizona next week.

Boo-Frickin-Hoo

Looks like a whole boatload of Republican trust fund babies might have to get real jobs in a couple of weeks:

A glance at the Republican job bank page on Texas Rep. John R. Carter’s website paints the whole, bleak picture with what it doesn’t show: real jobs.

..

It’s only going to get worse after the election, when a flood of GOP résumés will hit the streets, the result of retiring GOP lawmakers, election losers and an outgoing Republican administration.

Indeed, trying to find a job in a Republican congressional office is already beginning to approximate a rigged game of “Press Your Luck.” And finding comparable employment at the typical next-stop political shops off Capitol Hill has become increasingly gloomy for GOP-ers, as well.

..

“It’s a double-whammy,” said Brad Traverse, whose staffing website, www.bradtraverse.com, is a popular destination for job seekers on the Hill. “You have more firms who are both looking for Democrats and eliminating the Republican lobbyist positions. And from what I’ve heard talking to people is there’s a kind of a dearth of good, qualified Democrats to take some of these lobbying jobs.”

Younger staffers may have an easier time matching their $30,000 to $50,000 salaries elsewhere, but senior chiefs of staff making six-figure incomes will find it quite difficult to replicate that pay as Republican operatives in a Democratic town during an economic downturn.

Look. I have no love for the Modern Republican party and even less for the bulk of its representatives in Washington. Hateful, spiteful, greedy, and intolerant is no way to go through life.

Now that they've fucked up two wars, a great American city, used the Bill of Rights as toilet paper, and trashed the economy in a way that only another Republican could achieve, I have no pity for them. Perhaps for their families, but none whatsoever for these clowns. Stew in it, folks.

Real Courage

As somebody who used to work in, and manage in call centers, I can tell you that this is just all kinds of awesome.

Some three dozen workers at a telemarketing call center in Indiana walked off the job rather than read an incendiary McCain campaign script attacking Barack Obama, according to two workers at the center and one of their parents.

Nina Williams, a stay-at-home mom in Lake County, Indiana, tells us that her daughter recently called her from her job at the center, upset that she had been asked to read a script attacking Obama for being "dangerously weak on crime," "coddling criminals," and for voting against "protecting children from danger."

Williams' daughter told her that up to 40 of her co-workers had refused to read the script, and had left the call center after supervisors told them that they would have to either read the call or leave, Williams says. The call center is called Americall, and it's located in Hobart, IN.

"They walked out," Williams says of her daughter and her co-workers, adding that they weren't fired but willingly sacrificed pay rather than read the lines. "They were told [by supervisors], `If you all leave, you're not gonna get paid for the rest of the day."

People working in call centers runs the gamut from college students, to former stay-at-home moms returning to the work force, to people working a second job, to people trying to build careers. Like most working people these days, it's not an easy conversation to explain that you're losing a day's pay.

I admire the courage of Ms. Williams, and all of the others for taking a stand, and calling bullshit. Sadly, some of them, once the spotlight is no longer on them, probably will lose their jobs over this. This isn't dressing up in a flightsuit, and pretending you're a hotshot pilot. This isn't being a chicken shit Republican Delegate and donning a band-aid with a purple heart on it.

This is real courage. It's rare. It's precious. And for a democratic (small d) government to survive, it is absolutely essential.

Prison Bars Are a Series of Tubes

Senator Ted Stevens guilty of 7 Counts of Lying on Senate Disclosure Forms

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens vowed to fight his Monday conviction on federal corruption charges, a verdict he attributed to "repeated instances of prosecutorial misconduct."

Sen. Ted Stevens leaves federal court Monday as the jury deliberated in his corruption trial.

"I will fight this unjust verdict with every ounce of energy I have," the 84-year-old Stevens, the Senate's longest-serving Republican, said in a written statement after the jury came back Monday afternoon. "I am innocent."

Stevens was convicted of seven counts of making false statements on Senate ethics forms to hide hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts and work on his Alaska home from an oilfield contractor at the center of a corruption investigation in the state."

"This verdict is the result of the unconscionable manner in which the Justice Department lawyers conducted this trial," he said.

Actually, this verdict is the result of the unconscionable manner in which Ted Stevens abused the public trust, taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from a corrupt oil service company so they could in turn steal millions from taxpayers.

And I'm guessing Ted Stevens is innocent...of the Kennedy assassination.

This leaves Sarah Palin as about the only member of the Alaska Republican Party not to go to jail. Then again, Troopergate isn't over yet.

PS. Of course, this is excellent news for John McCain. How stupid of me not to realize it immediately.

Shorter Doug MacEachern

Alaskan 'Provincial' Stirs Up Feminists, Celebrities

• Sarah Palin, blah blah, Feminazis, blah, blah, Hollywood Liberals, blah, blah. Try not to mention all of the Republicans who endorse Obama over Palin, blah, blah.

Poor guy. He really is just mailing it in at this point.

Dear Benevolent Supreme Being (On the off chance that you do exist)

Please, oh, please, oh please make this happen.

Watching Will Ferrell as George W. Bush on "Saturday Night Live" made me yearn for the real president on the road. His absence from the partisan political scene has left Ferrell's mocking sketch as the freshest impression we have of Bush in campaign mode.

Putting Bush on the campaign trail could be John McCain's final Hail Mary pass. The Republican nominee has done so little to distance himself from his party's president that he is stuck with him anyway. He's damned either way in the polls, with or without Bush speaking up for him, so McCain might as well gamble on Bush's campaigning skills among the Republican base.

Either Craig Crawford really wants to turn this race into a 10%+ landslide, or he has supplanted Doug Feith as the stupidest fucking guy on the face of the planet.

I'm doubting even Abraham Lincoln could win an election with Sarah Palin as his running mate, and George W Bush stumping for him. McCain certainly couldn't.

Shorter Laurie Roberts's Entire Journalism Career

Is this an election or an SNL Skit?

• I have nothing serious to say, so I'll instead ramble uselessly about a Shadegg staffer buying a Democratic bumper sticker, then equate it with Woman of the People Sarah Palin's practical, middle class wardrobe for a moment.

or alternately:

• You mean they pay me to babble incoherently in a column for 1000 words? Hell, I do this at home all the time for free.
  

Friday Night Funnies

When You've Lost the Fonz and Andy Griffith...

See more Ron Howard videos at Funny or Die

First, they came for the folksy comedians set in a fictitious southern town...

What Was I Thinking

In the interest of full disclosure, both I and the curvaceous and lovely Mrs. Rat voted a week and a half ago by mail.


Have you or will you?

Shorter Alan Greenspan

Greenspan Admits Errors to Hostile House Panel

• Nobody could have predicted that basing monetary policy on the economic ramblings of a mediocre novelist (Ayn Rand) would end badly.
  

Friday Random Ten

You know the rules. Grab your IPod or Zune and Play Along...

The Cutter-Echo & The Bunnymen
Lost Planes-The Fixx
Colonial Anthem "The Battlestar Galactica Theme"-Bear McCreary/Battlestar Galactica Season 2 Soundtrack
Love and Anger-Kate Bush
It's Over-Boz Scaggs
Fight Night-Bear McCreary/Battlestar Galactica Season 3 Soundtrack
Loisada-Joe Jackson
Notting Hill Blues-Aztec Camera
Book of Brilliant Things (Live)-Simple Minds
Going Nowhere-The Moody Blues

Bonus Music Video:
Go Now-The Moody Blues

Shorter Robert Robb

Republicans Deserve To Lose, But Democrats Don't Deserve to Win

• Are you sure McCain can't unshit the bed between now and November 4th? Can you check again?
  

Thursday Random Ten

You know the rules. Grab your IPod (or Zune, if you swing that way), Shuffle the Songs, and let the Suckitude fall where it may.

"Can't Let Go"-Roxy Music
"Brat In The Frat"-Dead Milkmen
"Second Hand Woman"-Steve Winwood
"Dimples"-John Lee Hooker
"City of Love"-Yes
"My Own Time"-Asia
"The Cylon Prisoner"-Bear McCreary (Battlestar Galactica Season 2 Soundtrack)
"Something to Fall Back On"-Todd Rundgren
"The Emperor Is Dead"- Klaus Bedelt and Lisa Gerrard (Gladiator Soundtrack)
"Tara"-Roxy Music

Turning it up to 11:
"The Lightsaber/The Ewok Battle (Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi Soundtrack)

Bonus Music Video:
Roxy Music-Angel Eyes

What is Rat Tracks?

And what the hell happened to Desert Rat Democrat?

Good question. Here's the deal. He's a die hard Democrat. But blogging about politics, exclusively, can be grindingly dull. Especially when a lot of people do that better (and in a more timely manner than he does).

So what is Rat Tracks about?

Oh, he'll still write a lot about politics, when something tickles his fancy, but this is a place for bloviating on a lot of topics: History; Economics; Geek Culture; Gaming; Politics; and anything else that fires him up.

Who is the subgenius behind Rat Tracks?

Rat Tracks is Stuart Dollar, an Arizona native. He's married (22 years and counting) to the most adorable, caring, funny, intelligent woman alive, and she has given him the gift of two sons who have developed their father's sense of humor, and their mother's loving nature.

In addition to his family, he shares his house with 7 cats, 22 tropical fish, and several shelves full of books and DVDs. You may see photographs of his cats and fish from time to time.

His current employer would prefer that their identity remain undisclosed. He has held a variety of jobs encompassing tabletop game design, call center management, administration, management, and sales across a number of industries, mostly concentrated in retail sales.

He is a graduate of the W P Carey School of Business at Arizona State University, a member of the first generation of his extended family to graduate from college.

His interests include gaming (video, and tabletop role-playing), photography (you may see his work here from time to time), British humor (Monty Python, Black Adder, Mr. Bean, just about anything of Ricky Gervais's), and film.

A former Republican, he saw the light during Reagan's first term and has gone from a Democrat who just went out and voted every two years to a dedicated, politically active Democrat (8 years under the worst President since Buchanan will do that to you).

He is still struggling with his annoying habit of referring to himself in the third-person. He promises he will get better.

First Post

Yes. I'll get something up here. Eventually.