Not Enough Katherine Harrises To Steal This One

I keep looking at the map and I just don't think there are enough Katherine Harrises or Ken Blackwells in America for McCain to win. Isn't doubting that McCain can steal this election un-democratic? Am I calling down the thunder? What makes me think that the force is with us now?

Let's go back and look at how the last two Predisential elections went down.

I have no doubt that in 2000, illegal voter suppression disenfranchised tens of thousands of Florida voters creating a contest that settled within hundreds of votes.

The results of the recount court battle led to the U.S. Supreme Court handing the election to George W. Bush. Despite the ridiculous logic applied to the imfamous case, the problem was not the decision of the court, but rather the narrow grounds on which Gore's legal team contested the vote. Only when the proper legal application of voter intent--which included overvotes, which were not included in Gore's challenge--was applied to the recount by a consortium of journalists did we finally have conclusive evidence that Gore really won. Many irregularities took place in other states, but the scene of the crime was in one state--Florida.

Four years later, in 2004, illegal voter suppression disenfranchised enough voters for George W. Bush to take Ohio's decisive electoral votes. Once again, the election came down to the state that everyone thought it would come down to for months ahead of the election.

So yes, when the last domino of the election happens to be the state where your brother is Governor and this person

is in charge of elections, then yes, you wind up with this:

And, four years later, if the person in charge of the vote in Ohio is throwing out votes based on the weight of the paper used for their registration, you get this:

again.

Imagine with me for one second that John McCain's team is every bit as good as Greg Palast says they are at suppressing votes. E-vote flipping has been evident as well. Still, in order for this to work, the McCain campiagn still needs to know which states' votes to suppress.

How can they do that when they face the reality of losing Georgia? Stealing Florida or Ohio or both will only mitigate the landslide, not bring victory.

By the way something, it even looks like the Supreme Court is not on their side anymore.

UPDATE: Just because I'm calling it doesn't mean anyone should get complacent. Remember, the goal is a complete shut out. Not one vote for McCain. Now get back to work.

Palin's Speech Just Wrapped

I know that Sarah Palin's dog sled just got in from the great frontier and all, but there's been an election going on here for some time, and clearly she has not been paying attention to it. Palin jumped right on, mocking Barack Obama's foreign policy credentials as if he didn't convincingly prove himself in seven thousand televised debates against Hillary Clinton and the rest of the democratic field, exposing himself to every question in the book.

Her lies about Obama's tax plan were galling and further proof that whatever politics she learned in Alaska, they sound an awful lot like Bush-Rove tactics here in the lower 48.

Palin, and Rudy before her, openly laughed at Barack Obama's community service in Chicago. Excuse me? If America had more people willing to do, or capable of doing, that kind of service our cities wouldn't be in the shape they're in right now. But what would she know about cities?

Jesse Taylor at Pandagon summed it up nicely, "This is a speech to Michelle Malkin’s fucking comments section."

Tyrannical Attitudes Hurt National Security

This is a bit dated, but last week John McCain referred to the Supreme Court's decision to allow detainees a right to request a hearing one of the worst decisions in history.

Paleo-Conservative George Will asks, really?

Does it rank with Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857), which concocted a constitutional right, unmentioned in the document, to own slaves and held that black people have no rights that white people are bound to respect? With Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which affirmed the constitutionality of legally enforced racial segregation? With Korematsu v. United States (1944), which affirmed the wartime right to sweep American citizens of Japanese ancestry into concentration camps?

(more)

Dissenting Justice Antonin Scalia says that we might lose a city because of this ruling. I read his ludicrous dissent in full. It didn't mention that investigative journalism conducted by McClatchy Newspapers uncovered that individuals that were wrongly detained in the Bush administration's post-9/11 panic to look like they were securing our nation once released actually became militants.

Using Scalia's logic, one could say that our unjust process that led to the creation of new militants could one day cost us a city. Why is this activist Supreme Court Justice working against national security?

A Long Time Ago, In a Campaign Far Far Away

I know that someone is going to turn this democratic primary into a movie, I just didn't think it would be Star Wars.


By the way something, the entire campaign from Obama's perspective is being filmed for a documentary by Edward Norton's production team. It'll be hard to top The War Room, a very raw, utterly gripping documentary about Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign.

In this clip, check out James Carville calling Ross Perot's $60 million dollar campaign, "The most expensive single act of masturbation in the history of the world." I guess Romney and now Senator Clinton have topped that.


Of course, campaign documentaries can come back to haunt you, as in this clip from the same movie, which shows Clinton supporter Micky Kantor telling Carville that the people of Indiana are "shit". Oops.

UPDATE: The makers of The War Room say Kantor didn't actually say what the clip claims he said.