Well, Paul Hackett lost the battle

But, boy, did he change the rules of the game. He lost by a 52% - 48% margin.

Clermont County went to Schmidt by a 58 - 42.

If the GOP can't win by a romp in Ohio's Second District, they are in big trouble. And four points in this district is big trouble.

Let's just hope that the Democratic Brain Trust here in DC learned something from this election. You have to play to win. You have to fight to win.

Great job by Paul Hackett...he has started the campaign for 2006 and has given us all great hope. Read More......

Open Thread while we wait

Let me just say one thing: GOP candidate for Governor and Tom Noe pal, Ken Blackwell, is still the Secretary of State in Ohio and as his official state web site proclaims, "The Secretary of State oversees the election process in each of Ohio`s 88 counties." Read More......

Latest Update - so close

So close....662 precincts of 753 precincts: JEAN SCHMIDT 49,681 50% PAUL HACKETT 48,811 50%

Whatever happens in the next hour or so, a lot of GOPers are freaking out.

UPDATE 10:29 pm. Still holding at 662 precincts. I am instant messaging with my very smart -- and plugged in -- political pal in Ohio. All the still outstanding precincts are in Clermont, which is a rural county. It's Schmidt's home base, but also has two UAW plants. So, let's hope it's her people who already voted.

UPDATE via MyDD: "The reason the 91 precints have not been reported has to do with problems with the voting machines. They are being counted by hand. Stand by...." Read More......

Results are trickling in

Some of the vote count web sites seem really bogged down....this one seems to be working.

Been at 56 of 753 precincts reporting for a few minutes, but it's 51% for Hackett to 49% for Schmidt.

Update: With 175 of 753 precincts reporting,it's still 51% for Hackett to 49% for Schmidt. Not sure where these votes are from.

Update 9:15 p.m: With 305 of 753 precincts reporting, it's still 51% for Hackett to 49% for Schmidt.

UGH.Update 9:31 p.m: With 580 of 753 precincts reporting, it's 52% for Schmidt 48% for Hackett. Read More......

Polls are closed in Ohio

Atrios has links for voting results. Swing State Project has an Election Projection War Room.

Rush Limbaugh, the drug addict/chickenhawk, was bad-mouthing Paul Hackett today. Those right-wingers are shameless.

And, kudos to the Swing State Guys, the Kossacks, Atrios and the rest of the liberal bloggers who made this race a fun one to watch.

Let's see where it leads.

UPDATE (8:05 pm): Swing State Project has absentee results. Read More......

Amazing, Truly Amazing

John and I were i.m.'ing earlier today, watching video of the Air France plane crash on CNN -- a very scary scene. Looks like no one was killed. 297 passengers and 12 crew all survived. Now that is amazing. Read More......

Open Thread

Polls close in Ohio at 7:30 pm.

What else? Read More......

George Bush's Culture of Death

George Bush pretends he supports a "culture of life." But he launched an unnecessary war (denounced by the Pope as "unjust") and did it on a lie. 1800 US soldiers are dead. Many thousands more are wounded. Bush also turns his back on the slaughter of people in Darfur; he calls it genocide but refuses to act. Millions are starving to death in Niger, but Bush did nothing six months or a year ago when helping to save lives would have been much cheaper and easier. When the rest of the civilized world got together to try and put Africa on the right track by encouraging capitalism, lowering the debt burden for countries that are fighting corruption, and overseeing the spending of their own money on mosquito netting and basic medical supplies, Bush dragged his feet and didn't increase spending by a single penny. Bush could provide access to clean drinking water to the one billion people of the world who are literally dying of thirst for just $1.7 billion a year. And he won't.

George Bush = culture of death. Read More......

US Dead In Iraq: 1800 and counting

Success! declares Bush. Time to come home. So remember:

Number of US soldiers killed in Iraq: 1800 and counting
Number of military funerals Bush has attended: 0 Read More......

DoD denies Gitmo trials are a sham

Yeah, right. Read More......

I just sat on the cat

I think I'm going to be killed in my sleep. I just sat down for dinner and sat on the cat. Jesus. What is it with these animals? It was sleeping on a dining room chair. I grew up with dogs. You don't have to check your chair before you sit down for dinner, with dogs at least. The look in that thing's eyes. I am a dead man.

I just had to share.

UPDATE: Even in sleep, Sushi's claw taunts me...

Read More......

Open thread - Ignore that absurd story about Bush and Cheney being indicted

Sorry gang, but I just had to mass delete a bunch of comments linking to a ridiculous conspiratorial story about RoveGate that said Bush and Cheney were indicted, or something bizarre like that. The story is absurd - it even said Fitzgerald was investigating Bush and Clinton for drug-running, or something like that. I simply won't have that kind of garbage on this blog because people will read it and believe it, and that's not fair to them or to me (as I surely don't want to be the "source" for garbage like that).

Unfortunately, the easiest way to avoid someone else reading the links to the story and thinking it's real - I'm already getting emails from people asking if it's real - was to delete the links then tell folks about it here. So here you are. Ignore that story. Read More......

How Would You Spend $300 Billion?

An amusing op-ed in the NYT about the silliness of bottled water. (Personally, I'm wedded to those square Fiji bottles.) Towards the end, writer Tom Standage talks about the desperate plight of much of the world when it comes to water:

More than 2.6 billion people, or more than 40 percent of the world's population, lack basic sanitation, and more than one billion people lack reliable access to safe drinking water. The World Health Organization estimates that 80 percent of all illness in the world is due to water-borne diseases, and that at any given time, around half of the people in the developing world are suffering from diseases associated with inadequate water or sanitation, which kill around five million people a year.

Widespread illness also makes countries less productive, more dependent on outside aid, and less able to lift themselves out of poverty. One of the main reasons girls do not go to school in many parts of the developing world is that they have to spend so much time fetching water from distant wells.

And here's the kicker:

Clean water could be provided to everyone on earth for an outlay of $1.7 billion a year beyond current spending on water projects, according to the International Water Management Institute. Improving sanitation, which is just as important, would cost a further $9.3 billion per year.

Imagine, with the $300 billion (and counting) that Bush has spent on Iraq, he could have made certain that clean water was available to EVERYONE ON EARTH for the next 150 years! Clean water for the world until 2155. Or Bush could have provided clean water and massively improved sanitation to the poorest of the poor for the next 27 years -- he could have dramatically improved the health of the world until 2032...and of course many other major nations would have pitched in, making the cost to us much cheaper and the benefits last much longer.

Imagine: at every pump and spigot around the world that we sponsored, a small discrete plaque saying "Courtesy of the United States of America." How would you spend $300 billion? Read More......

Douchebag of Liberty meets Man-Whore of Liberty

I had a feeling Bob Novak and JeffJames GannonGuckert were going to eventually be associated with each other. Salon now shows that Novak appears to be using James Guckert's writing as a source for yesterday's Novak column, and they then show that Novak's attack on Ambassador Joe Wilson was a total lie.

I'm shocked, simply shocked.

Is it still too late to send Novak some soap on a rope? Read More......

Rove Very Much Still the Focus of Fitzgerald

Think Progress has the latest...via ABC's "the Note":

[Fitzgerald] continues to actively pursue the case and appears to be increasingly focused on Karl Rove.

From ABC’s The Note this morning:

Based on ABC News sources (and our own video camera) it appears that at least two witnesses testified before the grand jury last Friday, both close associates of Karl Rove.

ABC News has learned that one was Susan Ralston, Rove’s long-time right hand. The other, per ABC News’ Jake Tapper, was Israel “Izzy” Hernandez, Rove’s former left hand (and now a top Commerce Department official). It isn’t clear if either had been asked to testify before last week.

So at least someone in the MSM is focusing on this. Read More......

OH-2: "Republicans really get nothing out of it"

NBC's First Read talks to the inside-the-beltway pundits about the special election in Ohio today:

Political analysts doubt that Hackett can pull off the upset in this district in a special election, when only diehard voters tend to participate. Nevertheless, Stuart Rothenberg of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report argues that this race is a no-win situation for the Republicans -- if Schmidt wins, then she was always supposed to win, but if Hackett comes close, or even wins, then it becomes a significant victory for the Democrats. "Republicans really get nothing out of it," he says.

Amy Walter, who monitors House races for the Cook Political Report, says that if Hackett comes close, that will be another sign that the Ohio GOP is in disarray. "The real story is the collateral damage that Taft and 'Coingate' may have on the party in the state." Indeed, Walter says it's no coincidence that the ad being run by the Democratic House campaign committee tries to link Schmidt to GOP Gov. Bob Taft.

This race was supposed to be a ho-hum, no drama, slam-dunk for the GOP. It hasn't been. They have been forced to spend hundreds and hundreds of thousands to defend a GOP open seat in a traditional GOP area. Hackett -- with some help from his friends -- has taken the fight to them. Great work.

Check out Swing State Project for updates throughout the day. Read More......

Not politics, but an interesting story

About how a well-known DJ, Don Geronimo, is dealing with his wife's recent death. Read More......

Pataki and Romney: Lying To Get Ahead

Yesterday, we talked about the far right religious radicals who don't have the courage of their convictions -- instead of pushing to get their religious beliefs taught in school, they lie and dissemble and pretend that "intelligent design" is a science and that Bible study is just a non-partisan look at the Bible as a work of literature. In short, they lie.

Today, we see the same thing in two prominent politicians who don't deserve the support of either party.

First, Republican New York Gov. George Pataki backtracked on a long record of supporting reproductive rights to veto the availability of a morning-after pill without a prescription. Both sides are attacking him and no one believes Pataki's claim he just wants to protect the kids. It's clearly a cynical ploy to try and boost his standing among the arch conservatives who dominate the primaries.

Second, Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney -- who somehow conned that bluest of states into thinking he was a moderate -- went even more extreme. Romney labeled the morning after pill an "abortion pill" and said abortion shouldn't be legal. However, to get elected in the first place, Romney pretended he believed abortion should be safe and legal and that he supported the "substance" of Roe v. Wade. The 58 year old governor wants us to believe his position on abortion has "evolved and deepened." Romney has also attacked equal rights for gays, turned his back on a gay relative and made political hay out of the fact that a relative died long ago from a botched abortion when they were illegal. Other things Romney once said:

In another 2002 survey, from the National Abortion Rights Action League Pro-Choice Massachusetts, Mr. Romney wrote: "I respect and will protect a woman's right to choose. This choice is a deeply personal one. Women should be free to choose based on their own beliefs, not mine and not the government's."

In the past, Mr. Romney has also voiced support for emergency contraception, telling The Boston Herald in 1994, "I think it would be a positive thing to have women have the choice of taking the morning-after pill."

I've been wondering how this guy was elected the governor of Massachusetts. Well, it's simple. He lied.

Don't these people have the courage of their convictions? No, they're liars. And think about what Romney and Pataki are trying to do to appeal to the far right. They're not just opposing abortion, they're opposing CONTRACEPTION. That's how radical the far right truly is.

Yes, people can change, but craven politicians who lie to get into office or lie to curry favor are pathetically obvious. Read More......

Open thread

Ok, phone update. My cell phone now works as a "local" French cell phone, which has its advantages and disadvantages. Advantage: Local calls here in France are cheaper than using my American cell phone plan to call France - France price 50 cents a minute, US price $1.25 a minute. But, as you can see, the French cell price per minute is insane. I now understand why the Europeans love text messaging, I believe my text message price is around 15 cents or so per message. But, RECEIVING calls on your cell in Europe is free, meaning the recipient doesn't pay when someone calls him. So that's pretty cool. Basically, it means I'll be using my Vonage phone, which is working perfectly over here, to call friends in France at 3 cents a minute, then leave my French cell phone number for them to call me back on. Weird stuff.

Anyway, off to write my RADAR piece.

Any news of the day? Read More......

Washington Post editorial says lying to Congress is no big deal

Big surprise that the newspaper that bought Bush's lies about WMD in Iraq hook, line and sinker is now arguing that Bolton having been caught lying to Congress is also no big deal:

Last week, Democrats pounced on an error in Mr. Bolton's Senate questionnaire, on which he said he had not been interviewed by administrative or criminal investigators in the past five years; he had, in fact, been interviewed at one point by the State Department's inspector general -- a fact the administration says slipped his mind. Like many aspects of Mr. Bolton, it's not flattering, but it doesn't justify denying the president a vote on his choice.

Yeah, I mean, lying to Congress "isn't flattering," kind of in the same way an oversized suit or a Panama shirt "isn't flattering," but hey, do you not hire someone for one of the most important jobs in the nation simply because he outright lied to you in order to get the job?

Wonder how the Washington Post would handle one of its own reporters who lied in order to get their job?

The new Washington Post: It isn't flattering. Read More......

Bush wants Creationism taught in Schools

Oh boy. Sure he calls it "Intelligent Design" but it's still creationism. And, hey, it's so well known how exceptional American students are at science anyway. This will really help them compete. So basically, Bush can undermine public education and science in one fell swoop. Read More......

Open thread

Off to lunch with a friend of Joe in DC. Gorgeous day here, 70s and sunny. Wearing my "close Gitmo" t-shirt, the one with the html. Read More......

Bolton booed at UN

Where was the French ambassador at that time? :-)

Booing Bolton should be a common practice for anyone who ever sees him anywhere in the future. And remember, all you other UN ambassadors, Bolton isn't legitimate. Feel free to ignore him. We will. Read More......

Black preachers embrace homosexuality as another of God's works

This is quite interesting. My read of the quotes below is, basically, that "intelligent design" includes gays. This is something I've said before, though not quite in that way. Basically, God doesn't make mistakes. But I love using the intelligent design framework to explain it - hey, maybe we can teach this in schools that include intelligent design? God made me gay and that's okay.

The Rev. James A. Forbes spoke with a joyous righteousness as a preached to a hall of black faces Sunday at a cathedral at the edge of Harlem, and the words he chose might have come straight from the civil rights struggles of the 1960s.

Discrimination, he said, has no place in this world, and he urged his audience to liberate themselves from the notion put forward by some that they are less favored by God.

"Your job is to get up every day and be grateful to God for your DNA," Forbes said. "It took an artist divine to make this design!"

What made his words stand out was that they were spoken to a roomful of gay and lesbian faithful, and the would-be oppressors he referred to during the spirited religious service weren't white segregationists, but the pastors of some black churches....

Other speakers included Manhattan Borough President and mayoral candidate C. Virginia Fields, who likened the treatment of homosexuals today to the discrimination she faced growing up black in the old South, and Arun Gandhi, a grandson of Mohandas Gandhi, who drew parallels to the repression once experienced by nonwhite citizens in South Africa.

Read More......