Hope you voted.

[hrothgar]

>2) Some of the above posted comments that seem to say you want to win just for the >power? You want Casey to run as prolife but then vote the opposite?

 

I'm very happy that "Man on Dog" lost his Senate race. However, I regret that the Democrats weren't able to win with a pro-choice candidate. For what its worth, Casey has stated that he is personally anti-choice. However, no one seems to know exactly what this means in terms of voting.

 

>3) I see Rummy is out today?

 

Yeap. And Bush is on the record as saying that he lies when he's talking to the press.

[akhare]

2) Some of the above posted comments that seem to say you want to win just for the power? You want Casey to run as prolife but then vote the opposite?

Actually, it slightly more subtle than that. Casey / Ford can vote which ever way they want, but it's probably a safe bet that adominable issues like the constitutional amendment won't be on the agenda in the first place as long as the Dems are in power.

 

As I see it, if keeping the wolves at bay involves dressing some of your own in wolves' clothing, so be it, as long as you don't eat your own.

[mike777]

looks like Webb is up by 7,000 votes. This may be a long fight

[keylime]

Rummy's gone...and a fine American tossed under the bus.

[hrothgar]

I guess this means we won't be running any more threads on voting machine malfunctions?

My understanding is that the electronic voting machines performed quite poorly. There we're all sorts of problems documented across the US. I sincerely hope that we spend the next couple years working to get some decent machinery in place. Equally significant, I think that we need much a much more uniform system to avoid voter suppression.

 

I've been following the discussions about electronic voting machines pretty carefully. Here's a brief discussion of the best sounding electronic voting system.

 

End users cast votes using an electronic voting machine. These machines generate a paper ballot.

 

End users are able to verify that the paper ballot accurately reflects their voting prefer. The paper ballot is feed into an electronic scanner that records the vote.

 

The advantage of this type of system is that is is much easier to verify what's going on. End users are able to double-check that the voting machine generated the right ballot.

 

The electronic scanner is a very simple machine. Its relatively easy to validate all of the code. Furthermore, individual voting machines can be tested by feeding them a 10,000 ballots and ensuring that they are recording votes properly.

 

The paper ballots can saved in case a manual recount is necessary.

[cherdano]

Mike, where's that blue wave they were hyping up in the media?

 

All I see is a very calm ripple instead.  :P

What would look like a wave to you?

 

The Democratic Party has taken control of the House. The have picked up a minimum of four seats in the Senate. The last two seats are too close to call, however, there is a very real chance that the Republicans are going to lose in both Virginia and Montana. (As of 2:00 AM, Allen was down by 8,000 seats in Virginia. Tester is ahead by 2,000 votes in Montana)

 

This isn't the victory that I dreamed of. Lieberman winning re-election really soured the night for me. More significant, I'm have mixed feelings whether a pro-life, anti-gay rights "Democrat" is really all that much of an improvement over a moderate Republican. From what I can tell, this election boiled down to over-sight on the White House rather than any real political realignment. However, I consider that over-sight absolutely essential. Also, capturing the Governorship in Ohio is going to be very significant for the 2008 election cycle.

 

Finally, I hope that the extremely poor showing by the electronic voting machines demonstrates that a we need to invest some significant resources in overhauling this part of our electoral system.

It is certainly a blue wave, but is it a victory? If it is a victory, a victory for what (as opposed to a victory for whom)?

 

In a political climate where

- McCain is considered a moderate,

- liberals have to hope Harold Ford wins a senate seat,

- "liberals" can be used as a pejorative term, but there is no similar term for conservatives, despite 6 years of the country being run by a bunch of ideologically guided Neocons whose perception of reality has been remarkably decoupled from reality several times,

- pretty much any leading Democrat is careful not to out himself as supporting gay rights too much,

- the GOP is still confident (probably correctly so) that adding an anti-gay marriage referendum to a ballot will increase the turnout in their favor,

- Democrats can't stand up against going to a misguided war in the first place, can only do hindsight-criticism of the way a war was handled,

- an outraging law circumventing the Geneva convention is called a "compromise", because "moderates" stood up against it, only because the president started with an even more radical position,

- etc.,

I sort of agree with keylime: this seems more like an exchange of red vs blue than a reversal of the process in the last decade or so of America becoming more conservative.

[mike777]

Defining or trying to define liberal or conservative can be fun. :P

 

For those from other countries please keep in mind how much the 30 year ongoing abortion debate here in the USA really moves people on both sides or maybe I should say the many many sides of this discussion.

 

For the the latest google the Kansas doctor who is under investigation. There are so many issues involved and passions such as privacy rights, medical rights, parental rights, women rights issues, rape issues, and many many more.

 

 

As for the War, what war are we talking about, how are we defining victory and do we want to win :P Geez do not forget many think there is no war out there..it is just about Bush trying to get himself rich and his oil buddies?

[cherdano]

As for the War, what war are we talking about, how are we defining victory and do we want to win :) Geez do not forget many think there is no war out there..it is just about Bush trying to get himself rich and his oil buddies?

It seems everybody thinks there is a war. Group 1 thinks there is a war on terror. Group 2 thinks there is civil war in Iraq.

[hrothgar]

It is certainly a blue wave, but is it a victory? If it is a victory, a victory for what (as opposed to a victory for whom)?

 

In a political climate where

- McCain is considered a moderate,

- liberals have to hope Harold Ford wins a senate seat,

- "liberals" can be used as a pejorative term, but there is no similar term for conservatives, despite 6 years of the country being run by a bunch of ideologically guided Neocons whose perception of reality has been remarkably decoupled from reality several times,

- pretty much any leading Democrat is careful not to out himself as supporting gay rights too much,

- the GOP is still confident (probably correctly so) that adding an anti-gay marriage referendum to a ballot will increase the turnout in their favor,

- Democrats can't stand up against going to a misguided war in the first place, can only do hindsight-criticism of the way a war was handled,

- an outraging law circumventing the Geneva convention is called a "compromise", because "moderates" stood up against it, only because the president started with an even more radical position,

- etc.,

I sort of agree with keylime: this seems more like an exchange of red vs blue than a reversal of the process in the last decade or so of America becoming more conservative.

There's a lot of debate going on within the Democratic party about what this election actually means.

 

The DLC and Rahm Emanuel are claiming that the Democratic Party won because the Democrats ran relatively centrist / conservative candidates.

 

The left wing of the party is point to the fact that there doesn't seem to be a correlation between policy positionss and winning seats. Many of Emanuel's conservative superstars lost their elections. Many of the more liberal/progressive candidates who were winning scored quite unexpected victories. There's a very good debate going on at the New Republic. (Registration required) http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=w061106&s=perlstein110806

 

In particular, there is some very interesting discussion regarding whether the GOP has over played Nixon's "Southern Strategy". The GOP has been destroyed in New England and was just butchered in the Midwest. Much of the far West is also gone. The base of the GOP - its most reactionary and conservative members - are still there, but they're no longer tempered by any moderates. Some folks are arguing that the GOP has just been reduced to a regional party...

 

Personally, I think that this election boiled down to a question of competance. I think that candidates that were able to articulate strong, principled, internally consistent positions did well regardless of whether they were liberals or conservatives, which gives me some faint hope.

[keylime]

Richard,

 

You hit the nail on the head - the GOP in the Northeast is a shell in the best of cases, and in the Midwest got hammered.

 

I'd be interested to see the red vs. blue nation map on the voting.

[Winstonm]

Rummy's gone...and a fine American tossed under the bus.

The choice in this election was between honest crooks and low-down thieves and the only change in Washington will be in the direction of the spin. But at least for a night, we all get to feel like it actually mattered.

 

Rumsfeld had best stay away from Germany - I understand an independent group is bringing war crime charges against him there.

[mike777]

Germany has its hands full with all the very young women who are sold into marriage and slavery there from around the world. Germany so far chooses to only take on a very few high profile cases and ingores thousands and thousands of young women in bondage. Not that Germany is the only country this happens in.

[akhare]

Rummy's gone...and a fine American tossed under the bus.

Yes indeed -- a fine American who not too long ago shook hands with the very tyrant whose execution is now being hailed:

 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15590729/site/...week/?nav=slate

 

But what about the Americans—the Republicans, in fact—who helped Saddam remain in power all those years and then, changing their minds when the monster proved beyond their control, launched the ill planned and shamefully executed war to eliminate him that continues to this day? The dictator killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, it is true. According to the most recent study by the British journal The Lancet hundreds of thousands more have died from combat, terror, crime and pestilence since the Bush administration brought him down.

 

It's hard to imagine a more striking example of two wrongs making for a worse—horribly worse—outcome. Is there a moral equivalency? Actually, there is. The Republicans asked to be judged for their intentions. They wanted … what was it they wanted to do? Find weapons of mass destruction? Stop terrorism? Assure oil supplies? Ah, yes. They said when they launched the war that petroleum played no part in their judgment. “Nonsense,” was Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s dismissive retort.

[hrothgar]

I guess this means we won't be running any more threads on voting machine malfunctions? :P

Actually, things might be getting VERY interesting down in FLorida

 

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001972.php

[Gerben42]

7,000 votes is an enormous amount, if the correct number of votes for a party changes more than about 50 you should already seriously consider disallowing people who cannot count from counting. I mean it.

 

On a total number of votes of say 5,000,000 an "error" of 50 votes is UNACCEPTABLE. An error of 1,000 or more is fraud.

[hrothgar]

Looks like Steele might lose, and frankly he and Santorum ran 2 great campaigns.

Looks like Steele has gotten himself embroiled in some rather ugly stuff...

 

Michael Steele's election organization "Steele for Maryland, Inc" got caught handing out some very misleading voter guides in heavily african american parts of Maryland the day of the election.

 

The "official voter guides" listed Bob Ehrlich and Michael Steele as the Democratic candidates. They also misrepresented endorsements by several leading local politicans including Kweisi Mfume.

 

A real "great" campaign. I hope that Steele and Ehrlich see jail time for this crap.

[inquiry]

well, I am not so sure about what Steele did the day of the election, but he made up thousands of bumper stickers which read Steele Demoncrat, as well as signs like this one...

 

Baltimore Sun photo

 

Here is a washington post article about the same topic

Washington post

 

His explaination of the Steele Democrat campaign was weak, at best. Then there was his ads on TV with his sister who sadly suffers from the same illness as Michael J. Fox. She says her brother loves her and supports stem cell research. I don't really care where he stands of stem cell research, but among the stem cell research community, his support is not consider "support". His views on stem cell research is adult lines and current lines allowed only. This is not what people who "support" stem cell research are fighting for, they want to allow fetal stem cell research which Mr. Steele is against.

 

I don't live in Maryland, but being in neighboring Virginia, I might have voted for Mr. Steele up until I discovered the deception associated with the Steele Demoncrat campaign and the false impression he portrayed on his commercial about his support for stem cell research. After all, he does love puppies.

[joshs]

I think the defining election was in Rhode Island. Rhode Island is about 75% democrats, but new englanders have always liked the fiscal conservative but socially liberal sorts. Hence many "liberal" republicans have been elected in new england. People like Lincoln Chafee whose politics are far closer to Howard Dean (also fiscally conservative and socially liberal) than to their republican colleagues. This election voters finally decided that even though they like Chafee (60% approval in polls of voters) they voted for Whitehorse anyway, since they felt (rightly so) that Chafee had no influence whatsoever on other republicans, but only served to give the Republicans control of key committees.

 

The voters wanted democrats back in because the moderate/liberal wing of the republican party was too marginalized. Its a sad day when Chafee has to lose, merely because his party sucks. (Jeffords just a few years ago left the republicans and became an independant voting with the democratic caucus for the same reasons as Chafee got voted out). I just hope that the republican party goes back to being the party of limited government instead of what it has become today- the party of government controling how we love, think, and prey, while at the same time being the most fiscally irresponsible rulers in history, borrowing like crazy (to pay for a war that we have no plan or ability to win, at least in the short run) and not paying its own bills. Then at least we can have a civil discorse about the size and role of government, instead of rhetoric from the biggest proponents of big government in history, who claim to be for small government. Oy....

[cherdano]

Looks like Steele might lose, and frankly he and Santorum ran 2 great campaigns.

Looks like Steele has gotten himself embroiled in some rather ugly stuff...

 

Michael Steele's election organization "Steele for Maryland, Inc" got caught handing out some very misleading voter guides in heavily african american parts of Maryland the day of the election.

 

The "official voter guides" listed Bob Ehrlich and Michael Steele as the Democratic candidates. They also misrepresented endorsements by several leading local politicans including Kweisi Mfume.

 

A real "great" campaign. I hope that Steele and Ehrlich see jail time for this crap.

I don't think laws are the answer to these kind of dirty tricks. (Like the Republican party funding spam phone calls that seem to be coming from the Democratic party if you hangup soon.) The only answer are enough well-informed voters so that being caught with a dirty trick costs a lot more votes than could possibly be gained by a successful dirty trick.

 

Btw, all the dirty tricks I read about in this election came from the Republican side. Is this my flawed perception, or is it a different standard of ethics in the current campaigns? (No I don't care about dead voters 30 years ago.)

[luke warm]

i see where al-qaida in iraq applaud the recent elections

Al-Muhajir praised the American people for handing victory to the Democrats, saying: "They voted for something reasonable in the last elections."

sort of mixed blessings when an american political party gets close to 100% of the terrorist support... i hope they are as disappointed in these elected officials as most americans were with the last batch

[Winstonm]

Unplugging the automatic rubber stamp Congress can only be considered a success if there are meaningful investigations with supoena power.

 

For example, the President declared that his illegal wiretapping program was necessary due to the terrorist's attacks of 9-11; however, it turns out that the infrastructure to carry out that surveillance had been ordered 7 months before the attacks:

 

Spy Agency Sought U.S. Call Records Before 9/11

Bloomberg

June 30, 2006

June 30 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. National Security Agency asked AT&T Inc. to help it set up a domestic call monitoring site seven months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, lawyers claimed June 23 in court papers filed in New York federal court.

 

The allegation is part of a court filing adding AT&T, the nation's largest telephone company, as a defendant in a breach of privacy case filed earlier this month on behalf of Verizon Communications Inc. and BellSouth Corp. customers. The suit alleges that the three carriers, the NSA and President George W. Bush violated the Telecommunications Act of 1934 and the U.S. Constitution, and seeks money damages.

 

"The Bush Administration asserted this became necessary after 9/11," plaintiff's lawyer Carl Mayer said in a telephone interview. "This undermines that assertion."

 

Followed by this:

 

Specter: Cheney interfering with investigation

SouthCoastToday

By James Kuhnhenn , Knight Ridder Newspapers

June 7, 2006

WASHINGTON — In an unusually pointed letter, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, accused Vice President Dick Cheney of interfering with his panel's attempts to examine the National Security Agency's use of private phone records.

 

Specter, in a three-page letter yesterday to the vice president, said Cheney not only lobbied members of his committee behind Specter's back, but also blocked telephone companies from testifying before the Judiciary Committee about any relationship they may have with the NSA.

 

 

As has been the case, although reported initially there was no follow up and the information died. Surely, this has to be determined - if the Bush administration had been planning illegal surveillance for 7 months before the Sept. 11 attacks then the claim of using the wiretapping only due to 9-11 is a hollow shell.

 

If this new Congress is does its job, the next 2 years should see a challenge to Presidential powers that will make in comparison the Nixon era look like an episode of Ozzie and Harriet.

[luke warm]

winston, i think your zeal for these things causes you to overstate the case... for example, you say "...however, it turns out that the infrastructure to carry out that surveillance had been ordered 7 months before the attacks..."

 

but your quote says, "The U.S. National Security Agency asked AT&T Inc. to help it set up a domestic call monitoring site seven months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, lawyers claimed ... "

 

this either is or is not true, but you seem to give an assertion the same weight as a fact... lawyers are advocates of a position, that's all... both sides have advocates... this has yet to be heard in a court, to my knowledge, much less proven... evidently this is a pending legal action... let's see how it comes out before declaring someone guilty

 

i'm on record as saying that i disagree with the direction our country seems to be heading viz privacy and personal freedoms, and i applaud anyone's efforts to stem that tide... but if you think changing the congress will do so, it's my belief that you are mistaken

[Winstonm]

winston, i think your zeal for these things causes you to overstate the case... for example, you say "...however, it turns out that the infrastructure to carry out that surveillance had been ordered 7 months before the attacks..."

 

but your quote says, "The U.S. National Security Agency asked AT&T Inc. to help it set up a domestic call monitoring site seven months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, lawyers claimed ... "

 

this either is or is not true, but you seem to give an assertion the same weight as a fact... lawyers are advocates of a position, that's all... both sides have advocates... this has yet to be heard in a court, to my knowledge, much less proven... evidently this is a pending legal action... let's see how it comes out before declaring someone guilty

 

i'm on record as saying that i disagree with the direction our country seems to be heading viz privacy and personal freedoms, and i applaud anyone's efforts to stem that tide... but if you think changing the congress will do so, it's my belief that you are mistaken

Jimmy you are right that it is only an assertion - what I find so odd is how immense would be the implications yet how little reported it was and still is.

 

I happen to agree with you that nothing will change - I still view the Democrats and Republicans as simply the left and right arm of the same body.

 

I also don't see this as just Bush - it reminds me of what the psychiatrist reported about the two killers Truman Capote wrote of "In Cold Blood", that alone neither was capable but together they formed a third personality.

 

I see Bush, Cheney, and the other neo-cons in much this same light - it is not so much any one person I have a problem with but the agenda for which they strive.

 

If there really were a difference between the parties, there would be an all-out investigation of the intelligence that led us into was in Iraq - Bush and Rumsfeld both stated absolutely that there were chemical weapons and WMD. It should be imperative to find out if this was purposeful deception to justify war.

 

This administration has shifted the balance of power into the executive branch unlike any other administarion in history - the Republicans rolled over with no oversight - if the Dems do not revisit this power grab and reassert Congressional strength and the concept of checks and balances, it will be as guilty as its predecessor in allowing it to happen.

 

I could show more quotes, but this time I'll paraphrase the American Bar Association as saying that Bush's use of signing statements and claims of the power of the "unitary executive" have shifted the balance of power and are a "violation of the constitution and a danger to democracy."

 

And then this: October 5, 2006

WASHINGTON -- President Bush's frequent use of signing statements to assert that he has the power to disobey newly enacted laws is "an integral part" of his "comprehensive strategy to strengthen and expand executive power" at the expense of the legislative branch, according to a report by the non partisan Congressional Research Service.

 

Again, I do not think this is Bush per se, but the entire administration pushing an agenda. In fact, it has probably been driven more by Cheney than Bush.

 

The next two years will be a total farce unless constitutional checks and balances are reinstated.

[pbleighton]

"Personally, I think that this election boiled down to a question of competance. I think that candidates that were able to articulate strong, principled, internally consistent positions did well regardless of whether they were liberals or conservatives, which gives me some faint hope."

 

The election was primarily about Iraq.

 

Without Iraq, the Democrats would have won in 2002 and 2004 (though probably narrowly in both cases). The Republicans used "soft on Saddam/terror" nonsense both times quite skillfully to win an election where other factors went against them.

 

Without Iraq, I think voters would have handed the Republicans back some of the seats they would have lost in 2002 and 2004, and sent President Kerry a message that he needs to do more to improve wages for working people - after all, that was the main issue of the 2004 campaign, wasn't it? ;)

 

Peter

[hrothgar]

i see where al-qaida in iraq applaud the recent elections

Al-Muhajir praised the American people for handing victory to the Democrats, saying: "They voted for something reasonable in the last elections."

sort of mixed blessings when an american political party gets close to 100% of the terrorist support... i hope they are as disappointed in these elected officials as most americans were with the last batch

Those terrorists are certainly a puzzling bunch.

 

They go arround blowing up airplanes and destroying skycrapers, yet they are honest enough citizens that we can unthinkly accept El Qaeda press releases at face value.