If You Are A Republican, Please Do Not Read This Post

I hate conservative columnist Kathleen Parker. Well, I actually like her -- in fact, she's one of my favorite political writers -- but I also hate her because there is a chance that the GOP might listen to her.

My hope is that Republicans won't listen to her and instead decide to let folks like Sarah Palin become the leaders of their party. If that happens, then the GOP is doomed, and that would make me happy.

Anyway, here is what Parker wrote recently about how religion is hurting the GOP:

As Republicans sort out the reasons for their defeat, they likely will overlook or dismiss the gorilla in the pulpit.

Three little letters, great big problem: G-O-D.

I'm bathing in holy water as I type.

To be more specific, the evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP is what ails the erstwhile conservative party and will continue to afflict and marginalize its constituents if reckoning doesn't soon cometh.

Simply put: Armband religion is killing the Republican Party. And, the truth -- as long as we're setting ourselves free -- is that if one were to eavesdrop on private conversations among the party intelligentsia, one would hear precisely that. * * *

Parker is right, of course. The question is whether the GOP will have the guts to tell Sarah Palin and all of the other Christo-Fascist religious types to take a hike. Something tells me that won't happen.

Palin/Huckabee 2012!

First Picture Of New Star Trek Crew (With Update)

More images and information can be found here.

UPDATE: Here's the new trailer.

An Election Season That Keeps On Giving (With Update)

Criminal Scumbag Ted Stevens might not win reelection after all (from the Anchorage Daily News):

The elections division still has over 10,000 ballots left to count today and thousands more through next week, but the latest numbers show Mark Begich leading Sen. Ted Stevens 125,019 to 125,016.

The new numbers, reflecting nearly 43,000 absentee ballots counted today, are from all over the state. Election night, Ted Stevens led the Democratic Begich by about 3,000 votes. * * *

UPDATE: Begich now leads Stevens by 814 votes with approximately 35,000 ballots left to count.

Quote Of The Week

Incompetence, by itself, is not entertaining. However, when the incompetent are supremely self-confident, full of certitude, and absent of insight, it’s absolutely compelling.

-- a viewer's response to Jack Cafferty yesterday with regard to Sarah Palin.

More Encouraging News From The Franken/Coleman Race (With Update)

From the Star-Tribune:

An Associated Press analysis of the nearly 25,000-vote difference in Minnesota presidential and U.S. Senate race tallies shows that most ballots lacking a recorded Senate vote were cast in counties won by Democrat Barack Obama.

The finding could have implications for Republican Sen. Norm Coleman and DFLer Al Franken, who are headed for a recount separated by the thinnest of margins -- 221 votes as of Friday, or about 0.01 percent.

Though some voters may have intentionally bypassed the race, others may have mismarked their ballot or optical scanning machines may have misread them. A recount to begin Nov. 19 will use manual inspection to detect such ballots.

Three counties -- Hennepin, Ramsey and St. Louis -- account for 10,540 votes in the dropoff. Each saw Obama win with 63 percent or more.

Ballots that showed a presidential vote but no Senate vote are called the "undervote." Statewide, more than 18,000 of those ballots came from counties won by Obama with more than half the vote. About 6,100 were in counties won by Republican John McCain with at least 50 percent. * * *

UPDATE: Franken now trails Coleman by a mere 206 votes.

And, with regard to the Chambliss/Martin run-off for the Georgia senate seat, I think Democrat Jim Martin should do the following three things: (1) go negative, (2) go negative, and (3) go negative. John McCain is scheduled to campaign for Republican Chambliss, who beat out Vietnam vet and triple amputee Max Cleland in 2002 by running ads featuring images of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein while criticizing Cleland's votes against homeland security measures. Back in 2002, McCain had this to say about the Chambliss ads:

"I'd never seen anything like that ad. Putting pictures of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden next to the picture of a man who left three limbs on the battlefield -- it's worse than disgraceful. It's reprehensible."

Needless to say, Jim Martin should prepare an ad featuring McCain's comments from 2002, and start running the ad to coincide with McCain's campaign stops in Georgia. Negative advertising seems to work very well in that state.

First Time For Everything

From the Omaha World-Herald:

For the first time ever, a blue circle will appear in Nebraska on national electoral maps.

Democrat Barack Obama won the Omaha-based 2nd Congressional District on Friday, scooping up one of the state's five electoral votes.

In the process, he made history and shone the spotlight on Nebraska's unusual electoral college system. * * *

And Nate over at fivethirtyeight.com continues to give us hope that notorious criminal Ted Stevens may actually get fewer votes than Begich when all the counting is over:

Although Ted Stevens currently holds a lead of approximately 3,200 votes in ballots counted to date in Alaska's senate contest, there is good reason to believe that the ballots yet to be counted -- the vast majority of which are early and absentee ballots -- will allow Mark Begich to mitigate his disadvantage with Stevens and quite possibly pull ahead of him.

The reasoning behind this is simple: some early ballots have been processed, and among those ballots Begich substantially leads Stevens. A tally of Alaska's 40 house districts as taken from Alaska's Division of Elections webpage suggests that Begich has won about 61% of the early ballots counted so far, as compared with 48% of ballots cast on Election Day itself. * * *

And here is a good op/ed by Hugh Bailey with regard to the election of Obama. Bailey effectively sums up the challenge now facing the GOP:

McCain won the vote among white people -- a not insubstantial percentage of the electorate. But it's also a shrinking percentage, a trend that's only going to gain speed in coming years.

The only age range that supported McCain was 65 and older. For obvious reasons, that's a tough group to base your future around.

Things are looking pretty bad right now for the Republicans, and there can be no doubt that Bush has crippled the GOP. But the political climate can change awfully fast. A mere four years ago, Republicans were saying stuff like this:

[Tom]DeLay himself drew the line sharply the day after the 2004 elections. "The Republican Party is a permanent majority for the future of this country," DeLay declared. "We're going to be able to lead this country in the direction we've been dreaming of for years."

Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform and a leading figure in both the DeLay and Bush political operations, chose more colorful post-election language to describe the future. "Once the minority of House and Senate are comfortable in their minority status, they will have no problem socializing with the Republicans," he told Richard Leiby of The Post. "Any farmer will tell you that certain animals run around and are unpleasant. But when they've been 'fixed,' then they are happy and sedate. They are contented and cheerful."

Democrats can now laugh at what DeLay and Norquist said four years ago, but those statements should also be viewed as a warning.

Minnesota Senate Race Update

Al Franken is now only 237 votes behind Norm Coleman in Minnesota, where nearly 3,000,000 votes were cast in that Senate race:

The margin in the tightest Senate race in the country bounced like the stock market throughout the day, with the difference between Coleman and Franken dropping, then rising briefly to 590 votes before shooting down to a razor-thin 237 as of 9:27 a.m.

In a reversal of the previous day, when Coleman had declared victory and suggested that Franken should waive a recount, Coleman kept to himself on Thursday, while Franken called reporters to talk about the prospects for a continued narrowing of the count.

The best part about all of this is that the mandatory statewide recount hasn't even started yet.

By the way, this is hilarious. And it is pretty hard to argue with this.

Ralph Nader Spoils Yet Another Election

This time the election he spoiled is the one in my home county of Deschutes:

Ralph Nader 699 (0.88%)
Cynthia McKinney 127 (0.16%)
John McCain 38,918 (49%)
Bob Barr 303 (0.38%)
Chuck Baldwin 259 (0.33%)
Barack Obama 38,612 (48.62%)
WRITE-IN 501 (0.63%)

Total: 79,419

Missed it by that much.

Today is kind of a sad day for me because my Dad died exactly one year ago. He was a real political junkie and would have truly enjoyed the 2008 election season. Sure, it was a long campaign and he got to see a lot of it, but he died believing that Hillary would get the Democratic nomination, which was what pretty much everyone thought last November.

Oh well -- at least he got to see the Democrats regain control of the House and Senate in 2006. And he was following politics right up to the end. He wasn't able to get out of bed for the last couple days of his life, but we were giving him updates on some of the stuff that was going on.

In fact, the last thing Dad read was an article we printed out for him stating that Donald Rumsfeld had to flee France out of fear that he might be arrested on civil charges related to the authorization of torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. The article put a smile on his face, and he died the next morning. Not a bad way to go.

Obama Wins North Carolina (With Update)

Sweet:

President-elect Barack Obama has won North Carolina, adding 15 electoral votes to his wide victory and a symbolic triumph in a state that hadn't voted for a Democrat in more than a generation.

The Associated Press declared Obama the winner Thursday after canvassing counties in North Carolina to determine the number of outstanding provisional ballots.

That survey found there are not enough remaining ballots for Republican candidate John McCain to close a 13,693 vote deficit.

North Carolina's 15 electoral votes brings Obama's total to 364 -- nearly 100 more than necessary to win the White House. Missouri is the only state that remains too close to call.

I must admit, though, that despite the big victory for Democrats on Tuesday, this whole Ted Stevens deal is really bumming me out. But Nate over at fivethirtyeight.com gave me some hope in that regard:

Although Ted Stevens holds a small lead in Alaska and is the favorite to retain his seat, the outcome is not as inevitable as it might appear to be. Stevens currently holds a lead of 3,353 votes, or about 1.5 percent of the votes tallied so far. But, there are quite a large number of ballots yet to count. According to Roll Call, these include "at least 40,000 absentee ballot, 9,000 early voting ballots, and an undetermined number of questionable ballots". * * *

But even if Begich were to make up ground and win a narrow victory, this would seem to represent a catastrophic failure of polling, as three polls conducted following the guilty verdict in Stevens' corruption trial had Begich leading by margins of 7, 8 and 22 points, respectively.

The emerging conventional wisdom is that there was some sort of a Bradley Effect in this contest -- voters told pollsters that they weren't about to vote for that rascal Ted Stevens, when in fact they were perfectly happy to. Convicted felons are the new black, it would seem.

And speaking of morons in Alaska, it is beginning to look like Sarah Palin is even a bigger idiot than most of us thought:

Aides to John McCain were shocked by the gaps in the Alaska Governor's knowledge at briefings after she was announced as his running mate, according to Fox News chief political correspondent Carl Cameron.

"She didn't understand, McCain aides told me, that Africa was a continent and not a country and actually asked them if South Africa wasn't just part of the country as opposed to a country in the continent," he said on The O'Reilly Factor programme.

Mrs Palin was also unable to name the countries involved in the North American Free Trade Agreement, which was "a major campaign issue", Cameron said.

OK, I can almost understand her lack of knowledge with regard to NAFTA countries, but she didn't know that Africa was a continent? Cameron also reported that Palin "became a nightmare to deal with and started to throw tantrums over negative press."

UPDATE: It looks like Robert Gibbs, the guy taking on Heil Hannity in this clip, will be Obama's Press Secretary. And, with regard to Sarah Palin, it looks like the GOP wants its clothes back (plus check out this must-read New York Times piece on Palin). Finally, there doesn't seem to be a lot of interest amongst publishers to produce George W. Bush's memoirs.

Greenwald's Three Reasons To Be Very Happy About Last Night's Result

Glenn's three reasons are Justice Stevens, Justice Ginsberg, and Justice Souter:

Court watchers almost unanimously believe that those first two Justices -- John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsberg -- are certain to leave the court at some point over the next four years, while the third -- David Souter -- is highly likely to do so. * * *

I couldn't agree more. The whole Supreme Court issue got very little play during the presidential election, which I found amazing given that a president's choices in that regard have an effect long after that president leaves office.

I asked Oregon Senate candidate Jeff Merkley a few months ago if he would filibuster an Alito-type appointment should Merkley beat Gordon Smith and McCain win the presidency. Merkley promised me he would, but it looks like he won't have to keep that promise (at least not in the next four years).

By the way, this is hugely disappointing:

Rep. Michele Bachmann won reelection early Wednesday, fending off a challenge from Democrat Elwyn Tinklenberg in a Sixth Congressional District race that came to symbolize the perilous position of Republican incumbents across the nation.

Bachmann held on to a narrow but significant lead over Tinklenberg with 8 of 10 precincts reporting and a dwindling number of areas where he could find enough votes to make up the difference. Bachmann said Tinklenberg called her and conceded shortly after midnight. * * *

Reeling from criticism for questioning the patriotism of other politicians, Bachmann scrambled in recent days to focus attention on her call to cut taxes, a theme that plays well in the conservative district. * * *

The Senate Races

I guess the Coleman/Franken race in Minnesota is not over yet:

The Associated Press is uncalling the Minnesota Senate race.

Republican Sen. Norm Coleman finished ahead of Democrat Al Franken early Wednesday in the final vote count, but his 571-vote margin falls within the state's mandatory recount law. That law requires a recount any time the margin between the top two candidates is less than one-half of one percent.

The AP called the race prematurely.

Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie said the recount won't begin until mid-November at the earliest and will probably stretch into December. It will involve local election officials from around the state.

And it looks like convicted criminal Ted Stevens may actually pull out a win in the Alaska Senate race. Bummer. The pre-election polls were really off on that one.

And speaking of the polls being off:

Republican U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith gained a lead overnight in the race against Democratic challenger Jeff Merkley.

Preliminary results show Smith, a two-term incumbent, up by 11,491 votes. Constitution Party candidate David Brownlow was getting 6 percent. Multnomah County results were updated this morning but are not complete.

Smith tells supporters the winner won't be known until Wednesday; Merkley tells his hopeful backers the outcome won't be known tonight.

Despite the closeness of the count, expert number crunchers said they expect Merkley to win, perhaps handily. Portland pollster Tim Hibbitts, appearing as an analyst on Fox News(12), outright called the race for Merkley, based primarily on how many votes remain uncounted in Democrat-rich Multnomah County.

Go Jeff!

Joe Half-Rack Signing Off (Politically Speaking)

It's been fun, but my days as a political blogger have come to an end. I was going to continue doing political posts in the event the Republicans retained control of the Executive Branch, but that didn't happen, so my job here is done.

Many thanks to all my readers for their support. I'll continue to do the occasional post on fishing, backpacking, poker, travel, and perhaps a few other non-political pursuits, so tune in now and then if you have any interest in that stuff. And I wouldn't rule out the possibility of a very occasional politically-tinged post appearing here if something really major happens (e.g., Bush is charged with war crimes or something like that).

Obama obviously ran one of the best campaigns ever, and it'll be a long time before we see another presidential election as fascinating as this one. And I was very surprised with how quickly Pennsylvania was called tonight. Once that happened, this thing was pretty much over.

I will say this as I ride off into the sunset -- let's hope I'll have many more opportunities over the next couple of decades to give up political blogging.

Georgia?

The RNC must have seen something that scares them in Georgia, because they started doing robocalling in that state yesterday. Most recent polls show McCain at 50% there, but one poll from yesterday did show him under 50% and only one point ahead of Obama.

Kos thinks Obama will win Georgia, and former Georgia Congressman Bobb Barr is on the ballot there, so the chances are pretty good that Barr will take more votes away from McCain there than he would in any other state. All I can say is that if Obama wins Georgia, then it'll be a very big night for him overall.

My Final Predictions

I'm certainly enjoying all of the talk that Obama will win by an electoral landslide tomorrow. A couple of my friends think that Obama will get around 350 electoral votes, and I heard a guy on TV over the weekend say that Obama has a real shot at getting close to 400.

Although I hope these guys are right, I'm just not seeing it and I am definitely not expecting an early night on Tuesday. Presidential races usually tighten up near the end, and this one will be no different. Forget about the polls showing a double-digit lead for Obama nationally. There still remains a lot of undecided voters out there, and I'm pretty sure that those undecideds who actually vote will break in a big way for McCain.

Now I'm not saying that Obama is going to lose -- I'd obviously rather be in Obama's shoes right now than in McCain's -- but it will not be a huge blowout. States like North Carolina, Indiana, and Missouri will almost certainly go for McCain, and I think Florida will too, even though Obama currently leads by a slim margin in Florida and the final tally there will definitely be close.

Slic[k] thinks Florida is in the bag based on these early voting numbers. The early vote does look good for Obama, but I've analyzed the situation very carefully -- taking into consideration all of the recent polling -- and I don't think he'll win there.

Why do I think that way? Because it's f**king Florida! The polls need to have Obama ahead by at least six points in that state before he has a chance at winning it. I hope I'm wrong on this, but I won't be.

But I am starting to believe that Obama just might win Ohio, despite a recent NBC/Mason-Dixon poll which shows McCain taking a slight lead there. And Pennsylvania -- a state that McCain really needs to steal away from the blue column -- is looking pretty good for Obama right now, so good in fact that the Obama Camp decided that it didn't need to send Barack there in the final days of this election.

The Pennsylvania numbers, however, are definitely tightening. The most recent Survey USA poll shows Obama's lead has been cut down to seven, and the daily Morning Call/Muhlenberg College tracking poll now shows a six-point lead for Obama (maybe that's why Biden will be in Pennsylvania today). But Obama still polls over 50% in both Survey USA and Muhlenberg, and is even up 52%-46% in the most recent FoxNews/Rasmussen poll in Pennsylvania. If McCain does not win Pennsylvania, then this thing is over.

But the real reason I think Obama will win is because Dick Cheney endorsed McCain over the weekend. Talk about the kiss of death. How the hell did the GOP let something like that happen? Cheney shouldn't have been allowed anywhere near a microphone during these last two weeks, let alone be allowed to publicly endorse McCain. Obama is having a field day with this endorsement.

My electoral vote prediction: Obama -- 317 / McCain -- 221. With regard to the popular vote, Obama will get 51.5% and McCain will get 47%. The surprises for the night will be an Obama win in North Dakota, an Obama win in Montana (where both Bob Barr and Ron Paul are on the ballot), and a very close race in McCain's home state of Arizona.

I Forgot About This

Ron Paul is on the ballot in Montana:

It's been months since Ron Paul officially stopped campaigning. But the Texas congressman is right in the middle of the presidential race in Montana. Political observers say Paul will likely draw some votes away from Republican candidate John McCain. Paul is on the ballot as a third-party candidate. And if the race is close, he could be the difference.

In parts of western Montana, Paul attracts independent-minded voters who are drawn to a libertarian message. Only in Montana does Paul appear on the ballot as a Constitution Party candidate.

During the GOP primary, some of Paul's strongest support came in Montana. He received about a quarter of the vote in the state's June primary, even after it was clear McCain was the party's presumptive nominee. Now he could play spoiler to McCain, whose lead in the polls in Montana has diminished.

A recent MSU-Billings poll had the presidential race within the margin of error, with Paul drawing 4%.

Bob Barr is also on the ballot in Montana. Not good for McCain, obviously.

Recap Of Wine Country Trip

Our trip last week to Wine Country and the Bay Area was a blast. The weather was great, reaching into the 80s on each day we were there. Linda and I had never been to Napa Valley before. In fact, everything we knew about the area we learned from the movie Sideways, which meant that we didn't know anything because that particular movie was filmed in Santa Ynez Valley.

We stayed here, and it was very nice and extremely comfortable. Blade had a deck off of his room, and on both Thursday and Friday afternoons, we all met there to enjoy a bottle of wine with bread, cheese, and chocolate we purchased at Dean and Deluca's.

We visited three wineries on Thursday, two on Friday, and one on our way out of Napa Valley on Saturday morning. The wine tasting highlight of the trip was our Friday afternoon visit to the Hendry Winery in southwestern Napa Valley. We had to get a reservation, but we tasted ten different wines while there, and even got to pour for ourselves. And the wine was great -- our group left with three cases of it.

We enjoyed two excellent dinners while in St. Helena, one at Cindy's Backstreet Kitchen and one at the Culinary Institute of America. I'm looking forward to exploring other regions of Wine Country (e.g., Sonoma Valley and Russian River) on future trips.

On Saturday, we all made our way down to Palo Alto (along with Ray's friend, Julie, who arrived on Saturday morning) to catch Neil Young's Bridge School Concert, which was great. The line-up for the Saturday show was Band of Horses, Cat Power, Death Cab For Cutie, Wilco, Sarah McLachlan, Nora Jones, Jack Johnson, and, of course, Neil Young.

My favorite performances of the evening were Cat Power's cover of Fortunate Son with Neil on guitar and back-up vocals, Death Cab's Soul Meets Body, Wilco's performance of Late Greats (which they did not play when they were in Bend last August and which I had hoped they'd play at Bridge School), Nora Jones' cover of Wilco's Jesus, Etc, and Neil's kick-ass cover of A Day In The Life. I thought that Neil Young played a particularly great set.

Thanks to Amanda and JB for scoring the tickets to this show. And thanks for driving, JB -- we need to do more road trips like this one.