One Week To Go

We mourn today the death of Paul the Octopus, that magnificent creation who successfully predicted the World Cup winners round by round. An amazing accomplishment. Paul had to endure death threats from German fans, who thought he was unpatriotic.

In Kentucky, Rand Paul's teabagger brownshirts stomped on the head of a Move-On female protestor. Unfortunately, it appears that Paul is beginning to pull away from Conway. If you watched the debate last night, you casn only shake your head. Paul was ill-informed, could not defend his own positions, and tried to avoid acknowledging his controversial stances on Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance.

Jerry Brown wins today's Best Ad. Open with Meg Whitman telling why she moved to California thirty years ago. "Everything seemed possible. There was so much innovation." Continue the superlatives. Cut to announcer "Who was Governor then?" Segue into what Jerry Brown did for California. Nicely done.

Mitch McConnell appealed to Americans to have patience because,Mitch Republicans can't do much in 2 years. (But Obama is supposed to save the country and create peace on earth in 20 months.) He said that the whole purpose of Republicans in Congress is to ensure that President Obama is a one-term President. He also said that the Republicans in Congress would be developing a platform for the Republican presidential nominee in 2012.

Think Progress is still on the American Chamber of Commerce ads like a dog on a bone. This time they documented over a dozen foreign oil companies, plus American branches of companies like BP, who are putting money in the till.

Washington is still weirdly oblivious as to the meaning of having secret money percolating in our electoral system. As we learned from Watergate, this leads to intimidation, blackmail and straight-up bribery. One commentator also wrote that it's also the money that's not spent that should be concerned--used as a threat against any politician who doesn't capitulate to the demands of the corporations. It does appear that the torrent of money is wearing some Democrats down and is forcing Democrats to practice triage on candidates.

Electoral-Vote has the House today Republicans 208, Democrats 206 with the rest tied. I wonder if they are just holding back until closer to election day. They also have Democrats up to 51 Senate seats. Chris Bowers over at Daily Kos still has Democrats at 52 in the Senate. Also, Bowers wrote why Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman will not change parties.

Nate the Great Silver is now a star on NPR. Yesterday, he said the Republicans look to win the House but then he went into numbers wonkland and said that their gains could be 20-60. Well, if it's below 40, it's tough luck. He also has Republican chances winning the Senate, close to none or about 11%.

Organizing for America plans to call 7 million people in the next 7 days. Strangely enough, the Alexandria site for this is the car dealership where my wife bought her car. It happens to be owned by a former college classmate of mine. ActBlue and other progressive websites are still burning candles for Democratic candidates.

On the other side, seven conservative (anonymous) astro-turf groups are trying to coordinate a GOTV drive. This is where the rubber meets the road. As I've written, Republican GOTV efforts this year are in disarray because the Republican party apparatus has collapsed.

The question I have are the Undecideds really undecided or are they like the Undecideds during Reagan first election. You were supposed to be too embarrassed by Reagan so you didn't tell anyone you would vote for him. Is this a portion of our population who knows that teabaggers are nutjobs but will vote for them? Or vice versa. Independents that can't reveal they are voting for a Democrat.

Election analyst Eric Rudenour wrote a blog yesterday where he recounted his own election success since the 1980s and predicted Democrats would lose 30 House seats and 5 Senate seats but retain control of both chambers. He has an excellent record and I wonder if he really is cheerleading.

Nate Silver said that nothing has happened in the elections since Labor Day. All the ads, all the Obama campaigning, all the debates have not changed any race so far. He also believes that Democratic "momentum" is Democrats coming home to the party and that accounts for the natural tightening of the races. It will be interesting to see what he thinks about the efforts by Howard Dean and David Plouffe in the GOTV department.

Things don't look good when the Washington Post does a positive profile of Chris Van Hollen and his role for the Democrats's House Committee. Van Hollen criticized Obama for starting too late in defining the election as a choice and that Obama did not focus on the positive points about Congress and the economy. Nancy Pelosi had been furious at the White House by its insistence on saying that Congress was broken, when the House passed more progressive legislation than any chamber since FDR. That it was the Republicans in the Senate, who were the obstacle. Otherwise, Congress was doing just fine, thank you.

If you want an economic illiterate, you will have one with John Boehner. Yesterday, he said he would push for a moratorium on all government regulation so as to create jobs. Food and Drugs? Mine safety? Oil drilling? What is this guy talking about? The other thing that Democrats did not make hay out of was Boehner's economic plan for the House. Analysts claim it will result in the loss of 1 million jobs. Then Boehner promises to cut some government program every week to reduce the deficit. He also promises to get government spending back to 2008 levels.

George W's memoirs are supposed to come out the end of election week. He had asked that they be postponed until then because he said some things would upset people in his party. Well, it can't be admissions about torture or that he knew Karzai was on the Iranian payroll. What it seems to me is his vigorous defense of TARP, which says saved the United States from a Greater Depression than the Great Depression. After all it was TARP and the Black President that created the Teahadists.

Our Alaska race is looking pretty dirty. Miller has admitted he committed ethical lapses at his job but, for unknown reasons, keeps avoiding why he is a disabled vet. He avoided this question in the debate and the follow-up question-and-answer period afterward. The reason for his discharge was " miscellaneous". Nobody has asked if while at Yale Law School did he join the Oathkeepers, the right-wing outfit of veterans, police and active duty military who will oppose any perceived infringement on the constitution. It was created at Yale by a libertarian activist.

Everybody is suing the state of Alaska for posting the write-in candidates in the voting booths because it would favor Lisa Murkowski. Lisa Murkowski has been up to some dirty tricks by reproducing endorsements from state Democrats and Washington Democratic Senator Patty Murray. Unfortunately, none of them are true. This race will take all night and it might be that no one will know the winner until next year like with Al Franken.

Colorado Republican teabagger candidate Ken Buck said yesterday that he does not believe in the separation of church and state. That's actually seen as a positive among the large Colorado radical right Christian crowd. In the campaign for the Conception starts with Ejaculation bill, pro-lifers are running ad that calls Barack Obama the "Angel of Death". Unrestrained by any laws on accuracy, they reproduced almost every falsehood about the President, the healthcare bill, funding abortions abroad, and end that a vote for this bill is a way to take "America back." Women's groups are finally waking up and running counter ads against both the bill, which would outlaw "non-barrier contraception" , and Ken Buck, who wouldn't prosecute a confessed rapist because the woman had had an abortion and he said it was a case of "buyer's remorse".

This Senate race is tied--if you want any indication about how far we have fallen.

Glenn Beck yesterday said that President Obama communicates with Satan. This seems to be a right-wing refrain nowadays. But consider this,Glenn Beck is a Mormon. President Obama and his family have been baptised by proxy by the Mormon Church. Mormons believe Jesus Christ is the brother of Lucifer. So does this make Barack Obama Jesus Christ? Inquiring minds want to know.

Jeff Sharlet has a piece in this month's Mother Jones on how C Street and the politicians involved in it have their own foreign policy and have used tax-payer funds for trips to proselytize foreign leaders. The piece demonstrates how the Christian Right has sunk their hooks into Uganda and how they plan to "convert" Muslims. Sharlet's story about C Street in Syria actually rings a bell with me because a conservative told me that Blackwater had been guarding missionaries in Muslim countries like Syria.

How many more ways can people trash President Obama? Torture King, Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen claims the "downfall of President Obama" came when he told the Republicans at a meeting on the stimulus that "he won". Thiessen is not honest enough to talk about the Republican leadership meeting a week before Obama took office where they gave orders that no one cooperate with the new President. Thiessen writes that it's Obama's fault that he didn't reach out to Republicans. If you read anything on the Left, they explode about all the times Obama tried to accomodate Republicans.

We are being conditioned for the interpretation of the election results. In the New York Times, President Obama mistook a protest vote, which brought him victory, for a mandate. We have the usual pundits say that Obama has governed too far on the Left and this is a reaction to that. We already hear from Democrats themselves that Obama should have emphasized job creation at the expense of healthcare. Paul Krugman grumps that the elections are a result of a failed economic policy. Of course, 15% of the teahadists say it is because of his race, not program.

What is so interesting to me is that during the first 20 months of Obama's presidency, the beltway pundits never wrote about how irrational the Republicans were. Now we are hearing about how the election results will force bipartisan cooperation. There is simply no evidence from any Republican that this is true. Jimmy Carter yesterday said the Democrats would lose the House but that would be good because President Obama can run like Harry Truman against the "Do-Nothing" Congress. Even Doug Schoen, former partner of Mark Penn, claims that having a Republican Congress would be the best thing for President Obama because they would give him an excellent foil. Democrats themselves invoke Clinton's comeback after the 1994 loss of Congress. David Broder continues to believe that John Boehner will act as a responsible Speaker of the House and actively negotiate with President Obama.

I don't believe any of them.

The Republicans are committed to the destruction of President Obama and returning to power in 2012 because they believe they are entitled to power and the presidency. Remember before President Obama, Republicans had the White House 20 out of 28 years.

Meanwhile, Pew has a poll out that says President Obama is in better shape than Reagan in his first term in so far as people wanting him to run again. About 47% want Obama to run again and 51% did not want Reagan to run again after the 1982 midterms.