I have a new grandbaby girl. Molly was born weighing in at 7 lbs 14 oz over the weekend. Mom and baby are home and doing well. As is the case with most of the babes born in my family,she's a hairy little thing,lol. She's sporting quite the punk rock do at the moment. What sucks is that Miss Molly is in Ohio and I'm in Georgia so I can't love on her and kiss her and stuff. I love new babies,all that human potential for great things is right there in a little squirmy(and usually gassy)bundle. The best thing ever(for me at least)is a baby asleep on my shoulder,I could do that all day long.
This makes grandbaby number 3 for me,Molly has a brother who is 4 and a sister who is almost 2. I am entirely too young to have this many grandchildren.
So,get out and VOTE today folks,if you haven't done it early. Do it for Molly,her brother and her sister. And cross your fingers for Ohio today,they need to be a blue state up there,it's pretty critical. All these years of GOP corruption have really cost the poorest folks in rural Ohio alot. My daughter and the babies live in Bob Ney's old district,which is as corrupt as the year is long. Ney's resignation is the tip of the iceberg. Throw the bums OUT.
Tuesday, November 7, 2006
Election Day
If you do nothing else today:
VOTE
We've said all we can by this point; it's up to you the People now. If you're sick and tired of what's gone on over the past 6 years, you have no excuse not to go to the polls today. My wonderful staff and I have given you all the info you need to make an informed decision and now you have the ball. We can't go to the polls and pull the lever for you. Get up and do the right thing.
My day will be pretty crazy. I'm leaving in a couple minutes to take the Mrs. to the airport, yes she voted via absentee ballot, and then I'm off to vote before I go to work. Dave Mejias will be campaigning on Long Island's north shore today and I extended the invitation for them to make an appearance at the shop. I can drum up a crowd in seconds so I'm on a 2 minute warning for that. Tonight, I'll be with the Mejias camp as the election results come in. Don't know about liveblogging, I haven't determined what kind of Internet access I'll have, but I'll have details one way or another.
Remember:
VOTE
I'll see you when I can.
We've said all we can by this point; it's up to you the People now. If you're sick and tired of what's gone on over the past 6 years, you have no excuse not to go to the polls today. My wonderful staff and I have given you all the info you need to make an informed decision and now you have the ball. We can't go to the polls and pull the lever for you. Get up and do the right thing.
My day will be pretty crazy. I'm leaving in a couple minutes to take the Mrs. to the airport, yes she voted via absentee ballot, and then I'm off to vote before I go to work. Dave Mejias will be campaigning on Long Island's north shore today and I extended the invitation for them to make an appearance at the shop. I can drum up a crowd in seconds so I'm on a 2 minute warning for that. Tonight, I'll be with the Mejias camp as the election results come in. Don't know about liveblogging, I haven't determined what kind of Internet access I'll have, but I'll have details one way or another.
Remember:
I'll see you when I can.
Monday, November 6, 2006
Borat, Repuglican Operative
Don Davis
Awful close to truth these days.
In light of the polls showing the loss of at least the House of Representatives in tomorrow's midterms, the GOP has decided to throw the ultimate "Hail Mary" - a last minute campaign blitz with Borat.
As RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman put it, "who better than Borat to appeal to all of the red-meat issues that rile up our base: hatred of Jews, hatred of gays, hatred of women, and hatred of the Enlightenment."
"And the fact that he's been married to his half-sister," Mehlman added, "is bound to solidify our hold in the South."
Awful close to truth these days.
Hell Yes! on CO 44
Go see the best reasons ever to legalize reefer at Safer Colorado.
Under no circumstances should you miss the audio 'Tequila' ad! Note: Liquid Alert. Forego the Herradura shooters for a minute. Unless, of course, you like distilled cactus juice and oysters shooting back out yer nose.
Under no circumstances should you miss the audio 'Tequila' ad! Note: Liquid Alert. Forego the Herradura shooters for a minute. Unless, of course, you like distilled cactus juice and oysters shooting back out yer nose.
An Epistle of Shameless Schadenfreude
Thanks again to Jo Fish for this piece by Mrs. Betty Bowers, America's Best Christian. Note: Maximum Liquid Alert!
Go have fun.
In the sidebar is this somewhat related message, available on products:
I suspect that this will be a rather uncomfortable weekend at the Ted Haggard tax-free mansion. You see, Reverend Haggard is a vociferous spokesperson against gay marriage and, until yesterday, his wife probably had no idea she was actually in one.
Haggard is also claiming that he purchased a "first time customers only" introductory sample of crystal meth (meth dealers are notorious for their promotions). But threw it away. This must be our GOP version of the implausibility of "not inhaling," but, in typical Republican fashion, seems rather more blatantly wasteful. Did he not think of the consequences of this lie? Why, poor Nicole Richie is probably combing the side of every road out of Denver for that tiny baggie as I type this. But the talent-free waif searches in vain. Anyone who listens to Haggard's insistent voice messages can tell that this was someone jonesing for a fix, not a mildly curious man given to impromptu middle-age hard-drug experimentation like another 50 year-old might finally try a Mojito. Listen to the recordings: we're talking "Lindsay Lohan down to her last kilo" desperate here.
Go have fun.
In the sidebar is this somewhat related message, available on products:
The real Jesus forgives your Jesus for being a greedy Republican warmonger.
Hanging Judgments
Christopher Dickey in Newsweek:
G's Hot Wall Street Tip: buy rope stock.
A court has decided Saddam Hussein's fate. Now American voters have to decide what to do about his former collaborators, the Republicans.
G's Hot Wall Street Tip: buy rope stock.
"Y'all kin use that new-fangled shit if ya wanna..."
This is from the Nevada County, California, Voter Information Pamphlet and Sample Ballot under the heading "Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and Electronic Voting":
They apparently had to buy one of these things for every polling place, but they don't seem to be actively pushing for its use. Pretty smart for a buncha dumbass country fucks.
It's pretty hard to hack a #2 pencil.
I wouldn't doubt that the senior citizens who staff our polling place are probably hoping the damn thing breaks pretty quick so they don't have to deal with it.
To comply with federal law, Nevada County will deploy one touchscreen voting machine in every polling location. The touchscreen unit includes a voter verifiable paper audit trail. The paper audit trail created on the touchscreen will be used in the event of a recount. Paper ballots will be issued to voters at the polls and for absentees. Voters who wish to use the touchscreen voting machine instead of a paper ballot will need to ask to do so (my em).
They apparently had to buy one of these things for every polling place, but they don't seem to be actively pushing for its use. Pretty smart for a buncha dumbass country fucks.
It's pretty hard to hack a #2 pencil.
I wouldn't doubt that the senior citizens who staff our polling place are probably hoping the damn thing breaks pretty quick so they don't have to deal with it.
If you read anything ...
Before Election Day, read Wolcott.
And that's just the beginning.
If the blue states are sinkholes of moral decay, as right-wing pundits insist, how come red states lead the nation in violent crime, divorce, illegitimacy, and incarceration, among other evils? To a bus-riding innocent on Manhattan's stroller-filled Upper West Side, it looks like a case of hypocrisy meets stupidity.
...
And that's just the beginning.
Big tip o' the Brain to our brother Jo Fish.
Reminders at Arlington
NY Daily News
I have nothing that could add to that.
The ones who started this war do not want you to see the ceremonies that begin at Patton Circle or near McLellan Gate and make their way to section 60. They do not want you to hear the mournful sound of the bugle playing taps or the sound of the three-volley salute fired for Army men like Capt. Mark Paine. They would rather have Tuesday's elections be a referendum on anything except another young soldier ending up here.
There is nothing at section 60 for the people who started this war, who still try to tell the country that it is somehow essential to the safety of this country. The President rolls up his sleeves, like a tough, regular guy, and says, "If we don't stop them there, they will follow us here," as if somehow his war in Iraq is essential to the future safety of Cedar Rapids. And then he is never near a coffin at Arlington National if he can help it, and he acts if a solemn outdoor cathedral like this, with a couple more military burials every week, does not exist.
He tries to act as if his party is still running on this war and runs away from it instead. George Bush wants this midterm election to be about anything except Iraq, and 100 more dead soldiers in the month of October, and no end in sight, even as his vice president, Dick Cheney, who set a world's record for draft deferments during Vietnam, surrounds himself with soldiers at a campaign stop in Colorado. Suddenly Bush and Cheney want everything to be about John Kerry all over again, now that Kerry sticks a foot in his mouth at a campaign stop of his own.
Only this election is not about Kerry. It is not about a peep show like Rep. Mark Foley's, or an Evangelical minister with a hunky boyfriend, or the cheap lie, peddled door to door by this administration, that opposition to Bush's war makes you some kind of weak, lousy traitor. No. Tuesday will be about this war, about coffins we aren't supposed to see at Arlington, about the back rows of section 60, about Capt. Mark Paine of the U.S. Army, who was proud to serve his country, who was supposed to come home from Iraq for good so he could be home for Christmas.
I have nothing that could add to that.
NYT Endorses No Republicans
NYTimes
About time, Gray Lady. You could have done a lot to prevent this war and occupation, but you promoted it. We won't forget that.
I hope as many people read the New York Times and value its opinion now as did then.
On Tuesday, when this page runs the list of people it has endorsed for election, we will include no Republican Congressional candidates for the first time in our memory. [...]
For us, the breaking point came over the Republicans' attempt to undermine the fundamental checks and balances that have safeguarded American democracy since its inception. The fact that the White House, House and Senate are all controlled by one party is not a threat to the balance of powers, as long as everyone understands the roles assigned to each by the Constitution. But over the past two years, the White House has made it clear that it claims sweeping powers that go well beyond any acceptable limits. Rather than doing their duty to curb these excesses, the Congressional Republicans have dedicated themselves to removing restraints on the president's ability to do whatever he wants. To paraphrase Tom DeLay, the Republicans feel you don't need to have oversight hearings if your party is in control of everything.
An administration convinced of its own perpetual rightness and a partisan Congress determined to deflect all criticism of the chief executive has been the recipe for what we live with today.
Congress, in particular the House, has failed to ask probing questions about the war in Iraq or hold the president accountable for his catastrophic bungling of the occupation. It also has allowed Mr. Bush to avoid answering any questions about whether his administration cooked the intelligence on weapons of mass destruction. Then, it quietly agreed to close down the one agency that has been riding herd on crooked and inept American contractors who have botched everything from construction work to the security of weapons.
This election is indeed about George W. Bush - and the Congressional majority's insistence on protecting him from the consequences of his mistakes and misdeeds. Mr. Bush lost the popular vote in 2000 and proceeded to govern as if he had an enormous mandate. After he actually beat his opponent in 2004, he announced he now had real political capital and intended to spend it. We have seen the results. It is frightening to contemplate the new excesses he could concoct if he woke up next Wednesday and found that his party had maintained its hold on the House and Senate.
About time, Gray Lady. You could have done a lot to prevent this war and occupation, but you promoted it. We won't forget that.
I hope as many people read the New York Times and value its opinion now as did then.
Limiting the Damage
This is a humdinger, folks. Paul Krugman from NYTimes "Read It For Free!" week:
At some points during his piece, Mr. Krugman actually criticizes Bush, more than the quotes might suggest. He's right on the money as usual. Go read.
President Bush isn't on the ballot tomorrow. But this election is, nonetheless, all about him. The question is whether voters will pry his fingers loose from at least some of the levers of power, thereby limiting the damage he can inflict in his two remaining years in office.
At this point, nobody should have any illusions about Mr. Bush's character. To put it bluntly, he's an insecure bully who believes that owning up to a mistake, any mistake, would undermine his manhood - and who therefore lives in a dream world in which all of his policies are succeeding and all of his officials are doing a heckuva job. Just last week he declared himself "pleased with the progress we're making" in Iraq.
In other words, he's the sort of man who should never have been put in a position of authority, let alone been given the kind of unquestioned power, free from normal checks and balances, that he was granted after 9/11. But he was, alas, given that power, as well as a prolonged free ride from much of the news media.
Just imagine, then, what he'll do if faced with demands for information from, say, Congressional Democrats investigating war profiteering, which seems to have been rampant. Actually, we don't have to imagine: a White House strategist has already told Time magazine that the administration plans a "cataclysmic fight to the death" if Democrats in Congress try to exercise their right to issue subpoenas - which is one heck of a metaphor, given Mr. Bush's history of getting American service members trapped in cataclysmic fights where the deaths are anything but metaphors.
But here's the thing: no matter how hard the Bush administration may try to ignore the constitutional division of power, Mr. Bush's ability to make deadly mistakes has rested in part on G.O.P. control of Congress. That's why many Americans, myself included, will breathe a lot easier if one-party rule ends tomorrow.
At some points during his piece, Mr. Krugman actually criticizes Bush, more than the quotes might suggest. He's right on the money as usual. Go read.
Sunday, November 5, 2006
Republicans? Fuck them.
Rude Pundit lays it out in his usual gentle politically correct style.
That was the last part. Go read the first part.
Sure is a lotta talk around the 'sphere about cleanin', oilin', and sightin' in...
Fuck them for...well, you know what? Just fuck them.
Fuck them all, all the Republicans in Congress, all members the conservative spooge-bucket brigade, all their corporate masters yanking on their nipple clips and shoving cold cash up their asses for their obeisance, all the liars and sinners and avaricious rats of the evangelical right, and especially all the wads of fuck in the White House. They all had their chance and they fucked it up. So fuck them.
When you walk into the voting booth on Tuesday, no matter where, with that rage burning in you, stab that motherfuckin' punch card, beat the shit out of that Diebold touch screen, and yell, "Fuck them" as you vote them into oblivion.
And if on Wednesday morning it turns out they've dicked us over one more time by hacking the vote, by screwing with the polls, then maybe we've reached a point in this America where it's time to fight or flee.
That was the last part. Go read the first part.
Sure is a lotta talk around the 'sphere about cleanin', oilin', and sightin' in...
Note to Jesus freaks:
Don't ever, ever, ever preach to me about morality again. If your leaders are such hypocritcal, lying bastids, I'd hate to see what the rank and file's morals are all about. Just STFU.
Your vote counts
Following up on Fixer's post, here's a personal example of just how much your vote can count.
I have not voted in exactly ONE election since 1968, and it was a mistake.
Several years ago in my small town there was a $1M local school bond issue on the ballot. As a general rule, I vote "No" on public indebtedness, because I'm the public and I can incur enough debt on my own, thank you very much.
On election day, Mrs. G and I decided we were tired after work, so we didn't go the polls and vote.
The bond measure passed by ONE vote. Had we done our civic duty, it would have lost by ONE vote. I am reminded of our lapse in citizenship every time I look at my property tax bill, where my part of the payment has been added on.
I'll never miss another election.
One more thing. I know some of our friends and readers are so disgusted by our political system that they have decided to vote for Green, or American Independent, or Peace, Love, Dope party candidates, or whatever.
Please don't. Not this time.
Look, I'm not too happy with the Democrats either, but this particular election is too important to throw your vote away. I'm going to vote a straight Democratic ticket because I'm voting against Repuglicans, and that's the only - I say again, only - way to get rid of them. We have good Democratic candidates in my district and Fixer's, but that's icing on the cake. Right now, I'd vote for a Dem ax murderer over a Repug Mother Theresa.
There is a greater principle in play here than the fact that you are not personally happy with the Democrats. The principle is that this is our country, not Bush's to do with as he pleases. Make no mistake about it, if you throw your vote away by voting for a fringe party, you are voting Republican. Idealism is fine, but the realpolitik here is we have to get as many of these Repug bastards out of office as we possibly can, and we have to do it by enough votes that it will be hard for them to steal the election, or at the very least that it will be blatantly obvious.
You can get back to your idealism later. This is WAR. Hold your nose if you have to, but vote Democrat. If you don't, there may not be any idealism to get back to.
I have not voted in exactly ONE election since 1968, and it was a mistake.
Several years ago in my small town there was a $1M local school bond issue on the ballot. As a general rule, I vote "No" on public indebtedness, because I'm the public and I can incur enough debt on my own, thank you very much.
On election day, Mrs. G and I decided we were tired after work, so we didn't go the polls and vote.
The bond measure passed by ONE vote. Had we done our civic duty, it would have lost by ONE vote. I am reminded of our lapse in citizenship every time I look at my property tax bill, where my part of the payment has been added on.
I'll never miss another election.
One more thing. I know some of our friends and readers are so disgusted by our political system that they have decided to vote for Green, or American Independent, or Peace, Love, Dope party candidates, or whatever.
Please don't. Not this time.
Look, I'm not too happy with the Democrats either, but this particular election is too important to throw your vote away. I'm going to vote a straight Democratic ticket because I'm voting against Repuglicans, and that's the only - I say again, only - way to get rid of them. We have good Democratic candidates in my district and Fixer's, but that's icing on the cake. Right now, I'd vote for a Dem ax murderer over a Repug Mother Theresa.
There is a greater principle in play here than the fact that you are not personally happy with the Democrats. The principle is that this is our country, not Bush's to do with as he pleases. Make no mistake about it, if you throw your vote away by voting for a fringe party, you are voting Republican. Idealism is fine, but the realpolitik here is we have to get as many of these Repug bastards out of office as we possibly can, and we have to do it by enough votes that it will be hard for them to steal the election, or at the very least that it will be blatantly obvious.
You can get back to your idealism later. This is WAR. Hold your nose if you have to, but vote Democrat. If you don't, there may not be any idealism to get back to.
Dave
It could have come sooner in my book, but:
More Rethug dirty tricks. Would have been nice if Schumer came out a month ago but at least he stepped up when he had to. Put an end to the Rethugs' corruption on Long Island:
Learn about the candidate and volunteer - Dave for America
Contribute - Dave's ActBlue page.
Vote for Dave Mejias. Do you live in NY-03?
FARMINGDALE - After Republican incumbent Peter King attempted to mislead voters in a recent campaign mailer, Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) set the record straight today by making his support of Nassau County Legislator Dave Mejias, the Democratic candidate for Congress in New York's Third Congressional district, loud and clear. By using misleading photos and quotes, Peter King is trying to associate himself with popular New York Democrats in a desperate attempt to distance himself from President Bush and the failed policies he rubber stamped.
...
"I whole heartedly support Dave Mejias for Congress in New York's Third Congressional District," said Senator Charles Schumer. "Our country is going in the wrong direction and new leadership in Washington starts with new representation at home on Long Island. Dave Mejias has proven himself an independent voice in the Nassau County Legislature and has always delivered for Long Island. We can reclaim American dream, receive our fair share of Homeland Security funding, and put America back on track with new leadership in Congress."
More Rethug dirty tricks. Would have been nice if Schumer came out a month ago but at least he stepped up when he had to. Put an end to the Rethugs' corruption on Long Island:
Learn about the candidate and volunteer - Dave for America
Contribute - Dave's ActBlue page.
Vote for Dave Mejias. Do you live in NY-03?
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