Weekend Links

Things that caught my eye recently...

• Oh, Sarah Palin, why do you make me think of you and your horrible inadequacy?!? I don't deserve that (more here!).
• The world in lego!
• Sesame Street made a joke, the wingnuts freaked out and Colbert had some fun. Honestly, I have no use for Sesame Street or the muppets since that horrible Elmo made his debut, but cut the shaggy rags a break -- it was a freakin' rhyme.
• These photographers color outside of the lines.
• Islands seen from space.
• Al Gore (the thinner version!) visited The Daily Show last week.
• Where are you getting your Thanksgiving turkey and how much will you pay for it? Years ago, when Emmie was a bleeding-heart teenager, she announced that she would not be eating any Thanksgiving turkey unless it had been a happy bird who had lived a good life. I said ok, I'll give it a whirl, and picked up a free-range, organic bird (and took some long, deep breaths to get me past the sticker shock). I cooked it up and was amazed at how much more moist and delicious the turkey was that year, and have paid the premium prices ever since. It really is better meat.
• The History of Birth Control.
• Leviticus also said...
• US Exclaves.
• This link is a bit older, but I loves me some Sarah Vowell!
• Letters of Note.
• Al Franken has gotten to work (he's not funny (much) -- he's just really good).
• Feed the World!
• In America, people of all faiths are welcome here to worship Jesus in their own way.
• What's happening to American conservatism?!?
• A difficult goodbye.

But that's the URL!

(Sorry about the language.) This. Fucking. Election.

Another Tuesday Night!

Well, well, well! It's yet another primary night! Tonight we'll be serving beer and brats, and munch on macadamia nuts while sporting leis and cheesehead hats. Wisconsin's polls don't close until 9:00pm eastern time and we won't start hearing from Hawaii until midnight, so it will be a late night!

(UPDATE: But here are some early exit polling numbers.)

While we're waiting for the results, here are a few stories from the week so far... for the first time ever, oil closed at over $100 a barrel today... Al Gore thinks people should check their portfolios... The Clintons are getting fed up with those pesky voters... McCain is playing the system... Oliver offers us a peak at one possible future... Neil Young says it's time for time for science and physics and spirituality... Robert Creamer says we need to be inspired... a California judge does not approve of whistleblowers... there's chaos in Pennsylvania (or is it just with the Clinton campaign?)... Bush mocks himself...

... and finally, if Hillary fans really like her, why do they do things like this to us?

	Democrat	Republican
Tuesday Feb 19	Wisconsin
	Obama 58% Clinton 41%	McCain 55% Huckabee 37%
	Hawaii
	Obama 76% Clinton 24%	(May 18)

Note that in Wisconsin, Obama got 58% of the vote in the Democratic primary, and then compare that with the 55% of the vote that McCain -- the presumptive Republican nominee -- got in the Republican primary.

UPDATES:
-- So, Wisconsin joins the list of states that don't matter.
-- exit poll info!
-- Norah O'Donnell has an awesome laugh.
-- A note from Tom: "The magnitude of Obama's Wisconsin victory is slightly diminished because of the large numbers of white suburban Republicans in crossing over to vote for Clinton, according to former Madison Mayor Paul Soglin's analysis of initial precinct returns."
-- I suspect that maybe Hillary's campaign lost the nomination tonight, but she won't know it for two weeks. DH thinks that she's now the Huckabee on the Democratic side (the numbers just don't add up for her anymore).

And coming up: Austin, Texas debate this coming Thursday at 8pm (on CNN); Cleveland, OH debate next Tuesday at 8pm (on MSNBC); and primaries in Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas and Vermont on March 4th!

Sunday Roundup

Hillary Clinton: What's going on in the campaign? Where can one learn more about these dynamics? Is the press unfair to her? Are they biased?

Bill Clinton: He's baaack! Does he suck?

Barack Obama: Should he take the public money? McCain thinks he should, but he's about the only one. Maybe McCain's just jealous.

John McCain: Does he have any integrity? Can he control his temper?

Al Gore: is he still the dark horse? Or will he be a broker?

Texas: What is up with the crazy polling there?

New York City: Where are the votes? Who knows?

David Davis (R-TN 1st), is running for reelection to the US House and a blogger in our midst is (sorta) mounting a campaign to assure some opposition.

Charles Barkley is no longer a Republican.

Remember talking about campaign music? Here's more fodder for discussion (more artists have come forward to ask conservatives to stop using their music)!

I hate hearing about how stupid Americans are, but for some reason, I keep reading.

And finally, Lawrence King, our sad nation's latest hate crime victim, is remembered.

Tomorrow, Obama

You all have been getting my endorsement of Obama as a slow leak in the past week, so I'm only going to say a few words here to encourage you to get out and support him if you are in a state that caucuses or has a primary tomorrow.

I think Barack Obama has the potential to be a great leader and has already proven that where many politicians use our divisions against us, Obama finds ways to bring us together. He's a brilliant man (and was right on the war), and is capable of surrounding himself with talented people and when it comes to electability, Obama is simply our best candidate.

But you've been hearing me go on about this stuff for a while. So I figure you might like to hear from some of the other people who have endorsed Obama -- in their own words, when I could find a good link (I'll be updating links for recent endorsers as they become available). To see a more complete list of Obama endorsements, click here.

Joe Lance
Caroline Kennedy
Susan Eisenhower
Senator Ted Kennedy
John Kerry (and Teresa)
Maria Shriver
Tricia Moseley (former Strom staffer)
moveon.org
DeadHeads
Oprah
Stevie Wonder
Joan Baez
Hulk Hogan
Robert DeNiro
Garrison Keillor
Toni Morrison
DHinMI

And then, of course, there are the Obamicans (like Susan Eisenhower and Tricia Moseley):

Former GOP congressman Joe Scarborough, who anchors MSNBC's "Morning Joe," says many conservative friends—including Bush officials and evangelical Christians—sent him enthusiastic e-mails after seeing Obama's post-election speeches in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. "He doesn't attack Republicans, he doesn't attack whites and he never seems to draw these dividing lines that Bill Clinton [does]," Scarborough told NEWSWEEK.

We're still waiting to hear from John Edwards and Al Gore, but the links I found suggest that they probably won't speak out until after tomorrow...

UPDATE: more here!

Endorsement News

UPDATE: Check out this awesome endorsement of Obama by Chattanooga's preeminent politics blogger (and a very stubborn independent)!

The Transport Workers Union and California's Service Employees International Union (with 650,000 members) have both endorsed Barack Obama now that John Edwards has suspended his campaign.
Several news outlets are reporting that moveon.org has endorsed Barack Obama. There is not yet any confirmation on the organization's web site, though.

And check out this tantalizing little tidbit, which I found while I was following up on the moveon story...   The Atlantic's Department of Wild Speculation wonders if Al Gore will reverse his decision not to endorse and voice his support for Obama.

A well-connected Tennesseean told me two things today that got me thinking about this. The first is that Obama and Gore have been speaking regularly, about every two weeks or so. The second is that, despite this, and despite Tennessee's primary on Tuesday, Obama has not visited the state since June. It may be simply that he does not plan on competing there. Or it may be that he's been waiting for a special occasion.

SC Tomorrow!

I'm still really torn in terms of who I might vote for when I finally have a chance to weigh in on February 5th. The Big Dog's snarling and sniping has put me off of casting a vote for Billary, but I honestly don't know if I will cast my ballot for Obama or Edwards.

On one hand, I'm tempted to support Obama (who would make a great president) just to spite the Clintons' efforts to make this race about race. I'm disgusted that Bill would go there, and do this to our party. If I were voting in South Carolina tomorrow, I'd probably vote for Obama, just to keep this from being a black voter vs. white voter thing.

On the other hand, Edwards is a good candidate in his own right (Trish made a case for Edwards after casting an early ballot in the Florida race). But beyond that, I think it's good for him to stay in the race and the longer he's a legitimate candidate, the better. He keeps the debate interesting (as soon as this becomes a Obama/Clinton battle, it's going to degenerate), but beyond that, if he's collecting delegates, he could keep either Clinton or Obama from getting the majority needed to be crowned the nominee before the convention. If this thing goes to a brokered convention, anything could happen (including the return of Al Gore, untouched by primary nastiness).

Obviously, a lot can still happen before Tennessee's primary in February 5th (this is why I won't vote early this time around), and I don't have to decide right now who will get my vote, but with two big races coming up in the next several days, it gets me to wondering what I'd do. And I'm certainly happy to have more than one great candidate tempting me in the primary! The tracking polls are all over the place, so there's no predicting what the outcome will be. It's going to be a fun week!

Gore received his Nobel Prize today in Oslo

Run, Al! Run!

Now, THIS would be a great occasion for Al to announce that he's running for president!

Gore Derangement Syndrome

From Paul Krugman:

What is it about Mr. Gore that drives right-wingers insane?

Partly it's a reaction to what happened in 2000, when the American people chose Mr. Gore but his opponent somehow ended up in the White House. Both the personality cult the right tried to build around President Bush and the often hysterical denigration of Mr. Gore were, I believe, largely motivated by the desire to expunge the stain of illegitimacy from the Bush administration.

And now that Mr. Bush has proved himself utterly the wrong man for the job — to be, in fact, the best president Al Qaeda's recruiters could have hoped for — the symptoms of Gore derangement syndrome have grown even more extreme.

The worst thing about Mr. Gore, from the conservative point of view, is that he keeps being right. In 1992, George H. W. Bush mocked him as the "ozone man," but three years later the scientists who discovered the threat to the ozone layer won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In 2002 he warned that if we invaded Iraq, "the resulting chaos could easily pose a far greater danger to the United States than we presently face from Saddam." And so it has proved.

Gore's Day

Al Gore is a winner. Al Gore was right. One of the best things for Al Gore about winning the Nobel Peace Prize is that the sound bites are finally all on his side. For decades the two-term vice president has been championing environmental causes and until recently often received public scorn and derision. Now he's been rewarded with one of the most coveted prizes on the planet.

This reversal in Gore's fortunes is extraordinary. He's not only seen a rolling vindication of his environmental activism as the world becomes more consumed with combating global climate change, but his prewar warnings about the conflict in Iraq now look prescient. Meanwhile, George Bush—the other political scion with whom Gore will forever be linked because of their bitter election fight in 2000—has followed almost exactly the opposite trajectory. Unpopular and increasingly criticized by many in his own party, Bush's legacy will be the broken war. While Gore is lauded for his prescience and insight, Bush will for some time—perhaps forever—be best known for lacking those same qualities.

Read the rest, including this gem:

For Gore's critics, today will be a day to rail, reiterating that global warming is a myth and the prize a purely political act. What did his actions have to do with peace? Is he really as great as Martin Luther King Jr., who also won the prize? The tide of popular sentiment will be against these naysayers. Some might have a point, but the majority of them will probably look lonely and bitter. They will be ridiculed for their obtuse views and maybe even parodied on Saturday Night Live as flat-earth wackos. They will, in short, have an opportunity to feel what it used to be like being Al Gore.

Gore Wins!

Run, Al! Run!

The Nobel Prize

The Nobel Peace Prize announcement is to come today (the only other 2007 prize that remains to be announced is econ), Friday, October 12, at 11:00am Oslo time, which, I think, is 5:00am here in Eastern time. So, by the time I finally roll out of bed (I'm not a morning person), we could maybe know if Al Gore is still entertaining the possibility of a presidential run.

I'm on the edge of my seat.

btw...

(Run, Al, Run!)

About the New Hampshire Debate Tonight...

After listening to Hillary say for over a year now that if she knew then what she knows now, she would not have voted to give Bush the authorization to go into Iraq, I am shocked -- seriously stunned -- to hear that she voted in favor of the Lieberman-Kyl Iran vote.

WTF, mate?

I'd love to see a woman become president, but this is not the woman.

(Come on, Al -- you're the only one who can stop her!)

UPDATE: more on the Lieberman-Kyl amendment here (along with some information about Tennessee's embarrassing senatorial delegation). And you can read the text of the amendment here.

Run, Al! Run!

Still waiting on Al...

TGW's egalia has the current wrapup.

His big goal was to have all the presidential candidates provoke an intense national debate about the urgency of the climate crisis. It's not happening. They seldom mention it.

Come on, Al. This is a singular moment in history -- you won't get another shot at it. Wait 'til after Labor Day, when the moment will be ripe. It's time to jump in and turn what George Will rightfully called "the endless purgatory of the misbegotten and misnamed 'debates'" into a substantive discussion.

Just do it.

7/7/7 (and 7/8/7!)

It's a busy weekend! I understand today was very competitive for nuptial bookings, with so many couples wanting to make their anniversary unforgettable. I'll be one of many people attending a wedding later in the day. In the meantime, I spent the morning with Breakfast at Wimbledon, while others (those with what a friend calls "the bourgeois cable") have already been blogging and watching LiveEarth. So little time, so much entertainment!

Congrats to Venus Williams, who captured her fourth Venus Rosewater Dish (and equal pay!) this morning. Venus was, as always, very gracious in victory, showing much admiration for her opponent, Marion Bartoli, and acknowledging Billie Jean King, who was in the champion's box (along with Björn Borg and Martina Navrátalová), for her numerous and great contributions to the sport.

Now on to the men's semis, and we have another Breakfast at Wimbledon to look forward to tomorrow morning, for the finals (go Rafa!)...

Oh, yeah! And not only is tomorrow my brother's birthday (Happy Birthday, Bro!), but it's also the promised deadline for announcing the winner of the Million Dollar Portfolio! Keep those fingers crossed! My cousin Mary Sue is still in the running!

Al Gore is a tease

The suspense is killing me (he is winning in New Hampshire and can be found in today's New York Times).

Gore team assembling in secret?

That's what the UK's Telegraph is claiming.

:-D