What They Fought For

From EE's cousin Joyce, age 80

Namecalling 101

Grampy and Vampy.

Happy Halloween From The Beagles

Hockey Mom Against Sarah

Are Polls Tightening?

(As virtually everyone said they would)
Depends on what you look at, says Josh in his daily tutorial.

Action Item: Preserve Pubic Airwaves For Public Use

Go here to send your opinion to the FCC.

Colbert Endorses Obama

Why not, so many other conservatives are doing it.

Here's The Infomercial

In case you missed it.

Polls Mean Nothing Dept.

TPM is telling us the latest CNN polls in Bush states look so good for Obama that they're now predicting an Electoral College landslide. He's even cometitive in Arizona.

The House

From Josh, I am sooo bored. But it matters.
Did I link this already? Glogging while drinkingl.

Voter Suppression

TPM has a roundup. I can't bear to look. Today I talked to a woman whose son, a lawyer, registered to vote online in this state, Washington, and was told he wasn't registered when he arrived to drop off his absentee ballot. He had to go back a second day. Wassup!?

OMG! There's Another Contrarienne

and she's much better than I am. But then, she's also much older.

I will stop calling George Bush a jackass when he stops calling me a terrorist: Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.
I will stop calling John McCain an ass when he stops calling Barack Obama a socialist at every dog and pony show on the Straight Talk Express tour.
I will stop calling Sarah Palin a bitch when she stops calling Obama a terrorist sympathizer.  And I will stop calling Sarah Palin a bitch when she stops calling the parts of the country where I don’t live more Pro-American than the part of the country where I do live.    And I will definitely stop calling Sarah Palin a bitch when she stops acting like a bitch.

Okay, so maybe she doesn't exactly seem 82. So, maybe she's not real. Long live the Intertubes!

Socialists At The Gate

Quick, they're coming for your guns God daughters property money. And dogs and cats sleeping together!
Hertzberg at his best.

There hasn’t been so much talk of socialism in an American election since 1920, when Eugene Victor Debs, candidate of the Socialist Party, made his fifth run for President from a cell in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, where he was serving a ten-year sentence for opposing the First World War. (Debs got a million votes and was freed the following year by the new Republican President, Warren G. Harding, who immediately invited him to the White House for a friendly visit.)

So Socialistic

Jon Taplin reports on the newest income inequality numbers and remarks, "We cannot continue the fantasy that we are a first world nation if we have a wealth gap that looks like a second world oligarchy."

Palinized!

Wonderful site. Updated daily.

Other Campaigns

The Senate, from Josh

Polls Mean Nothing Dept.

Except when they do, of course. TPM did some battleground research and learned:

Obama is winning by sizable margins in Colorado, Iowa, New Mexico, Ohio, and Wisconsin, all states Bush led in four years ago. He's winning by slimmer margins in Florida, Missouri, and Nevada, also states where Bush led.

Nine thousand people in the pouring rain today in Chester, PA

Quote O' Teh Day

From Virginia Heffernan at her NYT blog, on an entirely different topic.

There’s an excerpt from George Eliot’s “Middlemarch” currently posted on ads in some subway cars in New York; it perfectly expresses my squeamishness about perceiving the world too closely. “If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life,” Eliot wrote, “it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.”

This reminds me for some reason of the fairly recent discovery of the human canabanoid system, which produces THC-like substances to help us forget, else we would go mad from all the sensory input. (It's also there for childbirth.)

Into The Wild With Sarah

$10,000 No-Sex Contest Has, Surprise, No Takers

From Feministing via Dkos:

The contest is sponsored by the Marriage Appreciation Training Uplifting Relationship Education (MATURE) project in Georgia, a federally-funded abstinence program. The group is set to receive $455,510 a year until 2011; the money for the contest was to come from those funds. In an economic crisis, it's pretty awesome to see our federal dollars being so entirely wasted.

Obama has said he'll audit the federal budget with the intention of axing programs that don't work. Let's start here and let the Christianists cry as loud and long as they like.

Best Electoral Map O' Teh Season

The NYT has it and I especially like my state's "fed up with the whole mess, switched over to Canada" designation.

I Miss Bella

From Judith Warner in the NYT today:

In 1977, Bella Abzug, the former congresswoman and outspoken feminist, said, “Our struggle today is not to have a female Einstein get appointed as an assistant professor. It is for a woman schlemiel to get as quickly promoted as a male schlemiel.”
In other words: women will truly have arrived when the most mediocre among us will be able to do just as well as the most mediocre of men.
By this standard, the watershed event for women this year was not Hillary Clinton’s near ascendancy to the top of the Democratic ticket, but Sarah Palin’s nomination as the Republicans’ No. 2.

Eight Ways

To Survive the Next Eight Days Without Losing Your Frigging Mind

Meanwhile, Back in My Home State

Washington Gov. Christine Grlegoire (D) is pulling ahead of Dino Rossi in the last two polls. Whew! I hope this holds.

And in other good news for Gregoire, she's leading in the most recent Washington Poll, 51-45. The poll was conducted over six days, 10/18-26, which makes it a little questionable, but it's the second public poll of the race to suggest Gregoire is pulling away. Hopefully Dino's little brush with the legal system on Wednesday will finish him off.

Best Story Of The Campaign Season

From TPM:

Dozens Of Call Center Workers Walk Off Job In Protest Rather Than Read McCain Script Attacking Obama

Wow, Uncle Ted Goes Down

Republican Sen. Ted Stevens, the grandaddy of Alaskans'  corrupt tradition, was convicted today as guilty on all seven counts of making false statements on his financial disclosure forms. Guess he'll probably resign from the Senate and lose his bid fore re-election this year. Hope so, anyway.

NASCAR Dads For Obama

Junior Johnson, pretty good get.

Junior Johnson is one of the founding fathers of NASCAR.  Tom Wolfe's story, Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamlined Baby was about Junior.  He was a convicted Moonshiner and when they talk about how NASCAR grew from the high speed cars of the moonshine era, Junior is one of those guys.  He was also one of the biggest and best cheaters in NASCAR. Even late in his car owner career (early 90's) he got caught cheating with one of his cars and they suspended him for a month.  His wife ran the team for him until he came back. As a car owner in the sport, guys Like Darrel Waltrip and Bill Eliott drove for him.  As his legend has grown he has become rather beloved by the race fans. I never saw him race but I have watched him working the pits in Charlotte when he was still active in the sport. 

From this Kos diary.

Pick Up That Phone

I got these two emails today. They say they still need and want help. Think how good you'll feel if you put in a few hours for this historic campaign. Yeah, you get bragging rights, too. The Gore link puts you in touch with your closest campaign office, where they have phone banks. The True Majority trains you to do it from home, on Wednesday.

Dear
Elect Barack Obama

Sign up to make calls Wednesday to voters in North Dakota.





Talk about a history-making election -- how about turning North Dakota blue for the first time in *forty-four years*?

In a last-minute surprise, Obama and McCain are within single digits of each other there, with plenty of folks still undecided. And over 25% of the state is under the age of 30 - young voters who will support Sen. Obama if they get a reminder from YOU.

    CLICK HERE TO MAKE CALLS TO ELECT BARACK OBAMA

The Obama campaign pulled out of North Dakota weeks ago to focus on other states, but independent volunteers have soldiered on. Now if we can help pick up the slack a once-in-a-generation opportunity is within reach.

Join me and take two hours this Wednesday, October 29th, to talk to voters in the new swing state of North Dakota about why we need to elect Sen. Obama.

    CLICK HERE TO MAKE CALLS TO ELECT BARACK OBAMA


We'll begin with a quick training call at 6 PM Eastern if you're in the Eastern half of the country and 5:30 PM Pacific if you're in the West. Then, we'll start talking to these voters about Sen. Obama's plan to expand health care and restore the economy.

We're using a computer program that gets rid of most of the bad numbers so we can maximize the amount of time you spend actually talking to voters. All you need to do is sign up right now, and be ready Wednesday, October 29th, with a phone and computer.

Thanks for all you're doing,

-Matt

Matt Holland, Online Director
USAction Fund for a TrueMajority PAC
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Dear MoveOn member,

I know something about what can happen in close elections. And we've only got 8 days left to make sure this isn't one of them.

We are witnessing history in the making. Millions of young people are getting involved in politics for the first time. A leader named Barack Obama is rising up to unite America behind his vision of progressive change. Yet we know from 2000 that progress is not inevitable. Victory can fall just out of reach. And the difference of a few thousand votes can put our country on a decidedly different path.

That's why I'm writing to you today to personally ask you to volunteer with the Obama campaign to help get out the vote this week. Everything we've worked for together hangs in the balance in these next few days. The Obama office in Silverdale still needs more volunteers and I'm hoping you can help. Click here to sign up:



I know that MoveOn members have the power to swing elections. In 2006, you made over 7 million calls—I made some myself—and together we won back both houses of Congress. And already this year, nearly 120,000 of you have signed up to volunteer for Obama in battleground states.

But the stakes this year are too great for any of us to sit it out.  We're facing two wars and an economic meltdown. The climate crisis, in particular, is worsening more quickly than predicted and without strong leadership from the next president, we could face consequences right out of a science fiction movie.

Barack Obama will provide that leadership. But only if we all make sure he wins. Please sign up to volunteer today.



Yes we can,

Al Gore

Want to support our work? We're entirely funded by our 4.2 million members—no corporate contributions, no big checks from CEOs. And our tiny staff ensures that small contributions go a long way. Chip in here.

For Us Sedentaries

Huffpo has a new weekly "give yourself a break" series that started with some very gentle and simple yoga moves to restore circulation and flexibility. The video is about five minutes. You can sign up for a weekly email reminder when a new one publishes.

Something New Every Day

One way corporations avoid taxes, from Jason Linkins' as usual stellar liveblog of the Sunday talking heads so we don't have to watch.

McCain says that American businesses pay high tax rates. One of his examples: "Ask John Chambers, CEO is Cisco," and he'll tell you that he pays 35%. KNOW WHAT JOHN MCCAIN? If you ask, here's what you'll find out (via Dan Ancona):

Cisco Systems, the second-most valuable company in America, paid no federal income taxes for its latest fiscal year thanks to a little-known corporate tax break on employee stock options.


Microsoft, which ranks No. 4 in market value, did not pay any federal taxes either, it seems.

Like many high-tech firms, Cisco and Microsoft are allowed to take a tax deduction for money their employees earn when they ``exercise'' options and buy stock in the company at a preset price.

These options have become an increasingly popular way for businesses to reward employees, but they also have huge benefits to the companies themselves.

The tax break was established decades ago, when companies doled out stock options to only a handful of top executives and the tax benefit they generated was minimal.

But now that many companies -- including Cisco, Microsoft and most other new-economy firms -- give options to everyone, the tax break is becoming enormous.

In Cisco's case, this benefit wiped out $1.8 billion in federal taxes, and probably more than twice that for Microsoft.

Some people, even those who oppose taxes, think it is unfair that wealthy companies paid none to Uncle Sam.

For the fiscal year ended July 31, Cisco had $23 billion in sales last year, $2.7 billion in net income, and its almost $400 billion market value is exceeded only by General Electric's.

``For a company that makes that kind of money not to pay taxes raises serious tax-equity questions,'' said Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers