Lord Jesus, save me from your followers

From Wonkette:

Did you know that some Christian dingbat has dubbed today the “Day of Prayer for the World’s Economies?” The dingbat has explained, “We are going to intercede at the site of the statue of the bull on Wall Street to ask God to begin a shift from the bull and bear markets to what we feel will be the ‘Lion’s Market,’ or God’s control over the economic systems.”

In case you are failing to picture what it looks like when a bunch of Christians go pray at the site of the Wall St. bull, it looks a little something like this.

Irony is dead.

IN-02: Puckett's gonna get smoked

Tribune/WSBT poll:

Donnelly (D-inc) 54
Puckett (R) 40

The Puckett "campaign's" reply:

The Puckett campaign says the gap is not insurmountable.

Heh. Good one.

the daughter of a slave votes for Barack Obama

Awesome. I'm sure there are perfectly legitimate reasons not to vote for Obama, but I'm glad I won't have to tell my grandkids that I tried to stand in the way of this (potentially) historic moment.

Change.

an oldie but a goodie to take down a baddie

A brutally effective ad from last cycle is finally, finally being used against the vile Saxby Chambliss in Georgia:

Chambliss, you may remember, is the guy who beat former Senator Max Cleland by accusing him of being a coward and releasing an ad that slowly morphed Cleland's face into Osama bin Laden.

That would have been pretty low in itself, but Max Cleland gave both legs and an arm for his country in Vietnam.

Indiana politics: Rokita was part of Bush's 2000 election theft

Go figure. From TPM:

Yesterday we told you about an effort by Indiana's Republican secretary of state, Todd Rokita, to press federal and state authorities to prosecute ACORN for voter fraud. Rokita had said a review by his office of forms submitted by ACORN found "multiple criminal violations."

But it turns out that Rokita hardly has a reputation as a non-partisan public official. In October 2002, the South Bend Tribune reported (via nexis):

Working on his own time, [Rokita] also assisted George W. Bush's campaign during the infamous Florida election recount in 2000. Rokita is proud of that, especially because the U.S. Supreme Court cited Indiana election law when it decided the election in Bush's favor.

iPhone cutting into laptop use

Cyrus Farivar from Salon points out an interesting new development in the proliferation/evolution of smartphones: users get so much utility from them that they're leaving their laptops at home. From the Wall Street Journal:

These souped-up cousins of ordinary cellphones, with email and other Internet functions, have become much more powerful in the past year. So powerful, in fact, that they can handle nearly every computing chore that many business travelers need to do, from checking warehouse inventory levels to watching movies on airplanes. Best of all, users can do those tasks with a pocket-size gadget that weighs a few ounces, instead of a five-pound hunk of plastic that goes into a shoulder bag.

The result: Many travelers are now using smart phones the way they once used laptops -- and laptops the way they once used desktop computers. Mobile workers rely on their laptops to create PowerPoint presentations and do other heavy-duty computing. But then they leave the laptops in their offices, homes or hotel rooms and take their smart phones out into the world -- to client meetings, say, or factory visits.
...
...And it's clear that a sizable number of users already are starting to see their smart phone as a replacement for their laptop for at least some of their needs. In a survey of 460 iPhone users from March by Rubicon Consulting Inc., more than 28% of respondents strongly agreed and 29% mildly agreed when asked whether the iPhone was replacing their use of laptops.

I know there are at least 2 iPhone users who frequent this site and can comment on their experience. For my part, I've had a related, though very different experience as I rely entirely on a home assembled desktop. About a month ago, I decided to look around for some upgrades since my computer is about 2 1/2 years old now, and I was shocked at what I discovered: aside from RAM, PC desktop technology has hardly budged an inch. Nearly all of the components I bought as not-quite-top of the line in early 2006 are still upper-mid level quality, and several of them are still selling for the exact same price! Even most of the video games topping the sales lists are several years old, and one of them (World of Warcraft) is 4 years old, an eternity for, say, console games.

That was when I realized just how deeply laptops and smartphones are cutting into demand. It appears that the advantages desktops provide-- cheaper parts, more power, upgradability-- just aren't what people are looking for (or in the case of power, laptops are fast catching up). People don't need or want the savings of integrating their computing needs into one powerful device if it cuts into their portability, so they'd buy a laptop for their work and writing, a phone for their basic internet use, and a console for games, even if that means a huge rise in expenditures. Of course, if you're not a gamer or video editor, there's no need for a powerful computer, in which case desktops have only their slowly decreasing cost savings to offer you.

I'm interested to hear that people are increasingly using their smartphones more than their laptops, though. We can already see the end of the road for the desktop computer: when laptop prices and power become comparable and consoles suck all the air out of the video game market. What effect will smartphones ultimately have on laptops, though? Will laptops keep getting smaller and smartphones bigger until the two merge? Will the transfer of information and your personal files/programs between the two become so seamless that you can drop your iPhone and sit down with your MacBook (or vice versa) picking up right where you left off without any active plugging in or file transferring on your part, as if your entire digital collection and all your actions exist in virtual space, and the two pieces of hardware are merely portals to it? Would people stop buying laptops if, say, Apple develops a little cloth foldout keyboard that you can use wirelessly with your iPhone?

home of anti-war congressmen and racist baseball teams

Going to Cleveland this weekend to see an interview and Q & A with Dennis Kucinich at the Ohio Theater. "But el ranchero," I'm sure you're asking, "I don't get it. Even if you were a huge fan of DK, which you really aren't, you don't live in his district. And why is the interview in a theater?" Well, when the interviewer is Eddie friggin' Izzard, you have an event on your hands!

Guest post: Closing arguments.

Obama's got a good sense of timing. He (along with David Axlerod) knows when to go positive, when to go negative, when to ignore stuff, and when to push back.

He's also got enough money and and a disciplined enough campaign to do all three simultaneously, while only shifting the elements of his campaign that he so chooses into the national spotlight at any given moment.

Obama's closing speech was good, but at this point in the campaign, I think it's worth revisiting this speech:



I hope that on inauguration day we get another taste of that one.

voted

Guess who for?

The line, by the way, was almost out the door at the County-City building in downtown South Bend at 2pm on a Saturday. The woman at the desk said it had been that way the day before as well.

Texas at Texas Tech

Don't look now, but for perhaps the first time ever, the Longhorns are coming to Lubbock as a top 10 team only to face another top 10 team. The national championship is still out of reach for the Red Raiders, as they just don't have the talent, but there is an outside chance they could land a BCS bid for the first time in school history. The problem is that the Big 12 is particularly strong this year, including the stoutest Texas team since Vince Young was at the helm, and a second team ahead of Tech in the rankings (Oklahoma), with Oklahoma State nipping at the Red Raiders' heels.

And Tech faces all 3 in the next 3 weeks.

Tech can still land a bowl game if Texas goes to the National Championship (or, alternatively, if Texas loses and Oklahoma goes to the dance, but who wants to see the Sooners get another chance to embarrass the Big 12 in January?), but it becomes far less likely if Tech becomes the 3rd Big 12 team in the polls. It's highly unlikely that Tech is going to survive the next 3 weeks without taking at least one loss, and two losses this late in the season will end their BCS hopes. It's more than a little ominous to consider that Tech ended Oklahoma's title hopes at the end of last season, and the team at the end of Tech's gauntlet? Oklahoma, of course. In Norman. Payback would, indeed, be a b**ch.

It goes without saying, then, that Tech has to knock out Oklahoma St. (something they haven't done in several years), and then they have to split the difference with Texas and Oklahoma in a squeaker to minimize the decline in the polls. I'm not sure USC or Georgia could pull off such a feat, but here we are, demanding it of the Texas Tech Red Raiders. Let's face it, kids, upsetting a serious contender is the price of admission to the BCS (if you're not Kansas, anyway). Tech has to prove it can play with the big dogs, and until then, the Holiday Bowl or Cotton Bowl is the ceiling.

Guest Post: I voted Yesterday!

Early Voting in Texas baby!

This is the second time this cycle I've cast a ballot for Barak Obama, and I really hoped to get a cell-phone picture of the event, but alas Texas state law forbids that sort of thing and I needed my vote to count for the sake of the down-ballot people I'm supporting.

I didn't have to wait in line at all, but the registration lady said that they had a brisk Saturday morning with lines all the way out the door. All of the early voting states are setting records this cycle, and Texas is no exception.

There's kind of an interesting post-vote phenomenon going on around the Dallas area at least right now. I mentioned that I had voted (without mentioning who I voted for) to a couple of friends and even a couple of semi-strangers while at the Stars game. Almost by nature of the fact that I both had voted early and was proud of that fact, my audiences knew who I voted for. Now, this is probably predicated by the fact that the people I talked to had already voted themselves combined with the fact that my sample size was pretty small, but it was pretty refreshing nonetheless.

Texas won't swing to Obama. Noriega probably won't beat Cornyn (I've met both, and that's a flat out shame) but we may oust some more republicans from the state seats and from the other regins of power. People that voted Obama are proud of it. People voting McCain are really holding their noses right now.

trumpin' up stories the Aggie way

Only an Aggie. From Pittsburgh Channel 4 News:

PITTSBURGH -- Pittsburgh police are still questioning a 20-year-old woman who said she was robbed and assaulted at an ATM in Bloomfield because of her political views.

Ashley Todd, of College Station, Texas, said she was using an ATM at Liberty Avenue and Pearl Street just before 9 p.m. Wednesday when a man approached her and put a knife to her throat.

Police spokeswoman Diane Richard said the robber took $60 from Todd, then became angry when he saw a McCain bumper sticker on the victim's car. The attacker then punched and kicked the victim, before using a dull knife to scratch the letter "B" into her face, Richard said.

"She further stated that the male actor approached her from the back again and hit her in the back of her head with an object, she doesn't know what the object was, causing her to fall to the ground where he continued to punch her and kick her and threaten to 'teach her a lesson' for being a McCain supporter," Richard said.

To clarify: College Station is where Texas A&M is.

What did the man look like? You guessed it: a big, black guy. Imagine that!

I try not to dig into these stories, because in my experience bloggers end up way off the reservation when they try to go all "citizen journalist" on these stories, and end up making asses of themselves. "This smells fishy!" the blogger/gumshoe proclaims, generally reacting to their own cognitive dissonance, not to any actual inconsistencies in the story.

Judging from the rest of this particular story, however, it appears that the investigation has indeed hit a couple of glitches. She refused medical treatment despite claiming to have beaten, and now she's also added sexual assault to the charges. She's changed her story in a couple of different ways, first claiming she had a bumper sticker that set the guy off, then saying it was a campaign button. First she was conscious through the whole thing, but now she lost consciousness at one point.

All of these inconsistencies, however, I would normally shrug off. When people get rattled like this, their memory does funny things, and I don't know nearly enough about this story to be able to speculate on whether these gaps are plausible or whatever. Then I saw her picture. If you go to the link, you can see a video of the story, including a picture of this "B" that the big, nefarious black man carved into her face.

It's backwards. As in "obviously looked in a mirror and scratched a 'B' into her own cheek" backwards.

As of 2pm, she has officially admitted that she made up the whole thing.

Texas A&M: it's like the Harvard of the Southwest Texas Southeast Texas the Greater Bryan-College Station metropolitan area!

KY-Sen: the thief suing the victim

From the Louisville Courier-Journal:

GILBERTSVILLE, Ky. — A bizarre sequence of events after a debate in the U.S. Senate race led Republicans to file a criminal complaint today against Democrat Bruce Lunsford for snapping up a GOP staffer’s digital recording device as he left the podium.

According to Republicans, the contents of the device — hours of recordings — had been deleted before it was returned.
...
Bergmann said the recorder had been left on Lunsford’s podium before the debate.
He said the Lunsford campaign suspects the Republicans were trying to record things that Lunsford said under his breath during the debate.

So to recap, the Republican candidate has a staffer slip a tape recorder under a notebook on the Democrat's podium to catch what he says under his breath. The Democrat finds the tape recorder, takes it, and erases what it recorded. The Republican, instead of apologizing or denying it, accuses the Democrat of stealing his tape recorder!

That Republican, by the way: Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader. These guys are class acts, eh?

milestones

From Ben Smith:

Here's an early voting story from a medical student in Evansville, Ind.:

I squeaked in just before the 7pm deadline to find two very frustrated poll workers and a line of a couple dozen people, due to problems with the computerized voting system not accepting people's driver's licenses. It was taking about 7-10 minutes per person just to get the computer to accept them as valid and to print out their ballot, causing very long delays.

For me the most moving moment came when the family in front of me, comprising probably 4 generations of voters (including an 18 year old girl voting for her first time and a 90-something hunched-over grandmother), got their turn to vote. When the old woman left the voting booth she made it about halfway to the door before collapsing in a nearby chair, where she began weeping uncontrollably. When we rushed over to help we realized that she wasn't in trouble at all but she had not truly believed, until she left the booth, that she would ever live long enough to cast a vote for an African-American for president.

McCain commercials, as shot by 3 famous directors

Hysterical and totally nonpartisan, so your McCain supporting friends/family can enjoy these, too:

I'm starting to believe

Marc Ambinder at the Atlantic lays out the McCain campaign's argument for how they're gonna win:

The Republican Party has built a presidential election machine that is tested and proven, the argument begins. Its voter database, Voter Vault, has 150 million potential Republican voters listed, each with dozens of psychographic datums appended.

The Party knows how to turn out Republican voters in red states. The Democratic Party has no record of turning out sporadic Democratic voters in presidential years in red states. It is not reasonable to assume, therefore, that Democrats can really turn out the voters they say they will, while Republicans have a record of turning out habitual Republican voters. How can Democrats build good and accurate voter lists in these red states?

Take Indiana: Gov. Mitch Daniels leads his Democratic opponent, Jill Long Thompson, by a healthy margin. Can you imagine Mitch Daniels voters choosing Obama?

Obama's in trouble in Pennsylvania. Why else is Ed Rendell begging Obama to return there?

In 2006, the Republican base was depressed after "Macaca" and Jim Webb still only barely managed a victory there.

The GOP will spend $70 million on GOTV in the next 13 days.

Obama isn't breaking 50% in Ohio and Florida. It's hard to imagine a big shift to him in the final ten days, when the mind is concentrated, when imponderables come into play.

Colorado is tough... but Pennsylvania is doable.

Virginia, North Carolina, Indiana and Missouri will all revert to partisan form. Already, McCain's campaign has factored in census + 1 turnout for African Americans, and there are plausible scenarios under which McCain wins.

Several polls -- including McCain's internal polls -- show that some white male voters who broke away from McCain [ed note: but did not support Obama] are coming back to McCain's fold.

Oh, and all this talk of Barack Obama leading in the early vote? So did John Kerry.

Wow, this is weak. The McCain campaign just knows that Pennsylvania is doable, that Daniels voters won't vote for Obama, that states enduring huge demographic shifts will continue to vote exactly as they had before, that late deciders can't possibly vote for Obama. And if those obviously true conclusions prove not to be such, there's always the Republican supercomputers, which have a supersecret file containing roughly 30 million more Republican voters than the total number of people that voted for either president candidate in 2004. And they can read minds, too!

By the way, the last argument, the one about John Kerry winning the early vote? Demonstrably false: Bush won the early voters 60-40.

Does this feel like b.s. spun to keep from admitting they're screwed to anyone else?

Obama at his best

Richmond, VA, on "pro-America parts of the country" and "real Virginia:"

in Oregon, a s**ty October Suprise

Wow. From Matt Stoller at OpenLeft, on Republican Senator Gordon Smith:

I just got a Sierra Club press release with some very gross information about Gordon Smith's company, Smith Frozen Foods. Apparently, Smith Frozen Foods started storing partially treated sewage from the town of Weston into his company's wastewater pond in the 1980s, when Smith was directly controlling the company. That's fine, it's what companies do when they have lots of land and the ability to handle partially treated sewage. Here's what's not fine.

This water is then used to irrigate cropland, in violation of Department of Environmental Quality regulations. A mutual agreement between Smith and the [Department of Environmental Quality] indicates that this irrigation likely violated state regulations... On more than one occasion, Smith Frozen Foods, the company owned by Gordon Smith, has violated Oregon's laws against having coliform bacteria in their drinking water. The presence of coliform bacteria may indicate environmental contamination, fecal contamination or E. coli bacteria.

Ladies and gentlemen, a true e. coli conservative!

If true, this is quite the coup that the Sierra Club has just pulled. Smith had already fallen slightly behind Democratic challenger Jeff Merkley, but what do you think his chances are now?

World of Pridecraft

Apparently, over the course of the last few years, one of the realms in World of Warcraft has become something of a safe haven for LGBT players. Here is an interview on the subject.