As we've mentioned, Illinois' Senate candidates, Mark Kirk and Alexi Giannoulias, have taken very different positions on the DREAM Act.

Today, America’s Voice and Illinois Immigrant Action have teamed up to release a humorous new online video to encourage young Latinos in the state to vote in the toss-up US Senate election on November 2nd.  Latino voters could make the difference in this too-close-to-call race.  The video will be distributed to a wide range of online activists and youth, immigrant and Latino networks around the state.

Watch the video, spread the word, and sign the pledge to vote on Nov. 2nd!

(Warning: requires sense of humor)

Democratic State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias strongly supports the DREAM Act and comprehensive immigration reform.  Immigrant advocacy organizations had pressed Congressman Kirk, who voted for the notorious “Sensenbrenner bill” in 2005 that set off million-person marches in Chicago and other cities, to declare his position on the DREAM Act.  After intense questioning by Giannoulias and the debate moderator, Kirk said that the border should be closed and that he would not vote for the DREAM Act.

According to Illinois Immigrant Action's Executive Director, Lawrence Benito:

“The Latino community cares deeply about the DREAM Act. The senatorial race is very close and the immigrant vote can make the difference on Election Day. This video will help mobilize Latino youth to the polls by connecting this important issue with this growing, energetic and tech savvy constituency.”

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Apparently Fox's Greta Van Susteren and Griff Jenkins find no irony in trying to paint the "Tea Party" movement, a.k.a. the Republican astroturf rebranding effort, as some "leaderless" group during a segment which features all of those corporate funded Republicans who are running the show. Van Susteren and Jenkins have been some of the biggest cheerleaders on Fox with endless promotion of this "movement" and this segment was no exception.

For a reminder of who's funding the "Tea Party", here's Karoli's post from yesterday -- Tea Party, Inc: The Illustrated Guide

VAN SUSTEREN: Who is the Tea Party? Why was it formed? And what does it want to do? Well, FOX News's Griff Jenkins has been hitting the road to bring you a comprehensive look at the powerful national political movement that's been the talk of the town.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SARAH PALIN (R-AK), FMR. GOV., FOX CONTRIBUTOR: And it's the Tea Party Americans have been bold enough, courageous enough to start telling the truth.

MATT KIBBE, FREEDOM WORKS: When this started fomenting, you saw this energy that we had never seen before. You saw this uprising of citizens who had never been involved before.

JENNY BETH MARTIN, TEA PARTY PATRIOTS: I am one of thousands, if not millions, of Tea Party leaders. There's not one single person. Anyone can be a Tea Party leader.

KARL ROVE, FMR. BUSH SR. ADVISER, FOX CONTRIBUTOR: Four years ago, 82 million people voted in races for the U.S. House of Representatives. I think this Tea Party sentiment that is driving all this activity is likely to drive that turn-out above 86 -- 85, 86, 87 million. I would not be shocked if it didn't make it all the way to 80 -- to 90 million people.

GRIFF JENKINS, FOX CORRESPONDENT: Regardless of the outcome of the mid-term elections, history will note that this was the year of the Tea Party. They've had an undeniable impact in this year's election cycle, most notably winning major victories in Republican primaries in places like Alaska, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Nevada and Utah.

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Instaputz: Tea Partiers are very patriotic and libertarian.

Whiskey Fire: Why don't you just drive away.

Sadly, No: If you don't say good things about yourself, who will?

A Tiny Revolution: 10,000 ways for the banks to say F.U.

Killing the Buddha: Becoming Thoreau.

Guest post by Batocchio. E-mail tips to batocchio9 AT yahoo DOT com.

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Credit: Strange Maps

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Credit: Strange Maps

The BP / Deepwater Horizon oil spill from Google Maps, and the same area imposed over London. More at Strange Maps.

Open thread below....

Because there are days when only being a Flintstone will do.....

Whatcha listening to tonight?

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	Artist: Screaming Blue Messiahs Price: $6.81 (As of 10/26/10 07:58 pm details)

Here's Ron Johnson at the Green Bay Press-Gazette editorial board meeting on his plan, or lack thereof, to create jobs:

The disastrous meeting overall is, it's said, likely to have thrown the Press-Gazette endorsement to Feingold- along with, as of this past Sunday, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the Capital Times in Madison, the Oshkosh Northwestern, and the La Crosse Tribune.

It, along with several other refusals to detail his plans, have resulted in this fantastic TV ad from Camp Feingold out yesterday:

The ad is a simple yet brilliant mockery of Johnson's much-praised ads using whiteboards (an example of which can be found here). I've always thought taking a candidate's own words or images and using them against him/her- as we saw in Jerry Brown's devastating new ad demonstrating how Whitman is an "echo" of Schwarzenegger- hit the right buttons. And the closing line about who will stand up for Wisconsin is excellent. I'm not trying to play you or exaggerate when I say I really think this could be the game-changing ad of the campaign.

A few weeks ago I wrote a piece titled "The line between a mild headache and a severe hangover on November 3rd". As we approach the elections and forecasts are increasingly bleak, it may come down to- yes, a whiteboard. And so it's ever more important that Russ Feingold returns to stand tall. We're still 18 folks short of 100 supporters for Russ on our C&L ActBlue page. Surely we can do better. I've put mine in. Let's hit that goal and then some to make this ad the "closing argument" in Wisconsin.

Everyone who donates has their name put in a hat and the lucky winner gets a rare numbered Neil Young print (only a dozen were ever made).

This 60 Minutes episode on "The 99ers" was really difficult to watch, and not only because I'm in the same boat. (My benefits ran out in March after 72 weeks. If you're collecting the top of the scale, benefits run out faster.) Watching people who were making good wages picking through the trash for recyclables or eating in a soup kitchen is a very, very emotional experience:

"60 Minutes" and correspondent Scott Pelley went to several communities in search of the 99ers, but we didn't expect to find such a crisis in Silicon Valley, the high tech capital that many people hoped would be creating jobs.

If you want to understand why the economy is stalled, come to San Jose, Calif., and talk with 99ers like Marianne Rose. "I remember it coming close to like six months. I was saying, 'I can't believe I'm out of work this long.' Then the year mark hit. And I just started just panicking seriously. Now that it's over two years I can't believe it. I just, I can't believe it," she told Pelley.

Rose was a financial analyst at a real estate firm. Age 54, she's single with a grown daughter. After being laid off with about 100 co-workers, she spent her savings, lost her home and finally found herself sitting in a truck with her dog and all of her possessions.

She made a desperate call to a friend and found refuge upstairs in the home of strangers, her friend's brother and sister-in-law.

"How long did you think you would be in here?" Pelley asked.

"Two weeks really. That's all I thought," she replied.

But she told Pelley it has been six months. "And not really an end in sight, yet."

"What sort of things would you be willing to do at this point?" Pelley asked.

"Well, I can say that probably the lowest level position for me has been now to apply for a clerk, a county clerk and I just realized the competition is pretty stiff out there," she replied.

Asked what she meant by stiff competition, Rose explained, "There's a lot of people, speaking of the county. I had applied to those clerk positions. There's actually four positions that were open. I found there were over 2,000 people that applied for those four positions."

Rose is one of at least a million and a half Americans who've exhausted their unemployment checks.

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George Will downplayed the impact of corporations buying our elections by comparing the amount of money they're spending on political ads to what they spend advertising their products. I have to say I agree with Otherday at Daily Kos who after reading Will's column in the Washington Post where he said the same thing, Will just made the case for public funding of our elections.

Maybe he ate some sour stewed prunes, but George Will was off his game, again. His latest essay was meant to be the usual, over-the-top Obama-bashing exercise that swirved off course into making wonderful arguments why we should have publicly financed elections. George Will's argument for public campaign financing.

For example, Mr. Will tells us how inexpensive it would be to pay for such a national, public election program. To pay for a two-year cycle for all elections is about $4.2 billion, and he shows us how doable that is:

That is about what Americans spend in one year on yogurt but less than they spend on candy in two Halloween seasons.

George Will is exactly right: we can easily afford that!

Here's Will's hackery on This Week pretending that voters don't care about the issue, when actually they do. It's just the beltway Villagers who are desperately trying to convince everyone this doesn't matter:

GEORGE WILL: Two points about money. First of all, in this gusher of money we may spend this year in the two year cycle $4.2 billion, something like that. That's less than half of what Proctor & Gamble is going to spend advertising its products in one year. It is approximately what Americans will spend on yogurt this year. This is a rich country and the fact that we spend so little trying to influence the selection of those who will make and administer the laws is the amazing thing. Second, surely we're learning as we repeatedly do every two years the declining marginal utility of the last political dollar. There's just so much you can do in throwing stuff on television.

AMANPOUR: Well, explain that. Do these ads work? First of all, the issue of transparency is a big issue and a legitimate issue transparency.

WILL: It is not a big issue for the voters of this country that when losing political movements such as the Democratic Party at this moment want to talk about process. No one cares about process.

George, I tell you what, if it doesn't matter and it's just fine to allow corporations to buy our politicians, lets make them all walk around like NASCAR drivers with all of their sponsors' logos on their jackets so we know who bought them.

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We all know that the wingnutosphere, particularly Andrew Breitbart, has been searching for evidence of liberal racism and anti-white bigotry on the part of President Obama and various liberal organizations for some time now. So far, the best they've come up with is Shirley Sherrod.

So here's how desperate they've become:

And Even STILL I Am Not Allowed To Make A Racial Slur About Our President? After THIS? AYFKM!?!?!?

I almost don’t have words…almost:

He said Republicans had driven the economy into a ditch and then stood by and criticized while Democrats pulled it out. Now that progress has been made, he said, “we can’t have special interests sitting shotgun. We gotta have middle class families up in front. We don’t mind the Republicans joining us. They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back.”

In the new post-racial America, brought to us by Barack “don’t call me black or white, just call me American” Obama, we have been told our differences are behind us now…just because he exists and… just because he is black. Yet, day by day and speech by speech, this President has done more damage to race relations than any combination of Presidents since Lyndon Johnson…and he, at least, tried to make things better with a sincere heart.

Were anyone else to have been caught on tape making these sorts of remarks, they’d have already been fired and given a 2 million dollar job contract with the competition. Oh wait.

The lack of outrage should surprise no one here. We were told to vote for him… not because he was black but… because he brought with him hope and change and the promise of a color blind society. He has delivered on none of these, instead making race relations worse today than they were before he was elected.

Excuse me, but ... WTF? Is this the first time this clown has heard Obama telling this story? Hell, he said nearly the exact same thing last week in Seattle, which is where we got the above video. And as we pointed out then, Obama has been telling this routine since at least May 14.

Suddenly now he has his noise out of joint? And over ... what, exactly? Somehow, the innate racism of Obama's remark eludes me. Is there some deeper racial connotation to sitting in the back seat we don't know about?

Besides, it's pretty clear that he's saying that Republicans have to sit in the back seat, isn't it? Or is Poff implying that the Republican Party equals white people? So just exactly who's being racist here?

BTW, I especially like Obama's closing bit here:

Obama: Have you ever noticed that when you want the car to go forward, you put it in 'D'. When you want it to go backward, you put it in 'R'.

Maybe that's racist too. We're sure Poff can explain to us how that is -- and how it now gives him permission to use racial slurs.

Indeed, given his headline, he sure seems as though he's just been bursting with withheld racial slurs against Obama. Dude, by all means, let it out. Better we know what you really think.

Though most of us can pretty much figure that out anyway.

[h/t Arinsaw and Captain Kangaroo]

There's a lot of pixels being devoted to the unwarranted, brutal assault on Lauren Valle yesterday at the Rand Paul/Jack Conway debate, and rightly so. But this behavior isn't new and is really part of a larger voter suppression effort.

This is video of a Rick Waugh supporter being arrested in Virginia after he and two others came to an Eric Cantor campaign event to ask Eric Cantor why he would not debate Waugh. Via Washington Post:

Cantor also has a tendency to surround himself with layers of defense, as was the case Monday when he appeared at a coffee shop in the small town of Louisa, supposedly to meet voters.

One man attending was John Taylor, a member of the Louisa County Democratic Committee and a backer of Rick Waugh, Cantor's Democratic opponent. Taylor and two others were asked to leave the coffee shop. County police then subdued Taylor, as can be seen in a video shot by his son with his cell phone.

Events like these raise questions about the decorum of the man who would be in such a powerful position on Capitol Hill. Violence at campaign stops, regardless of who may be at fault, is not something commonplace in Virginia politics.

Overreaction, much? Well, yes and no. There's a message carried in these episodes: If you're a Democrat, the cops aren't on your side, particularly in little towns where cronyism and bullying seems to be the order of the day.

In the same way throwing a MoveOn.org supporter to the ground and stomping on her head appears, it sends an intentional and clear message to less motivated and attentive voters: Politics can be hazardous to your health, especially if you happen to oppose the power players.

All the world's a stage

Yesterday's head-stomping debacle wasn't any kind of accident. The supporters rallying outside were all part of the campaign. It's a press event, after all, and theater is required, so they bring along their largest, most vocal groups. Yesterday's stomper has been identified as Rand Paul's [former] Bourbon County campaign coordinator, Tim Profitt, and he affirms it:

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