What the hell happened in Alaska?

This from Americablog yesterday.

Quoting pollster Nate Silver:

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[s], 9,000 early voting ballots, and an undetermined number of questionable ballots".

Indeed, it seems possible that the number of "questionable" ballots could be quite high. So far, about 220 thousand votes have been processed in Alaska. This compares with 313 thousand votes cast in 2004. After adding back in the roughly 50,000 absentee and early ballots that Roll Call accounts for, that would get us to 270 thousand ballots, or about a 14 percent drop from 2004. It seems unlikely that turnout would drop by 14 percent in Alaska given the presence of both a high-profile senate race and Sarah Palin at the top of the ticket."


The Anchorage Daily News has also weighed in, offering comments from around the country on this weird phenomenon. One of the best came from "Homer blogger Shannyn Moore."

Not only is Ms. Moore "raising the specter of a 'stolen election' for Stevens ... She's suspicious of an apparent drop in voter participation from the 2004 presidential elections - from 66 percent then to 55 percent this week - even with Sarah Palin on the Republicans' national ticket.

[Note that her percentages differ a bit from Silver's]

"That's a decrease of more than 11% in voter turnout even though passions ran high for and against Obama, as well as for and against Sarah Palin! This year, early voters set a new record. As of last Thursday, with 4 days left for early voting, 15,000 Alaskans showed up - shattering the old record set in 2004 by 28%! Consider the most popular governor in history-and now the most polarizing-was on the Republican ticket. Consider the historic nature of this race; the first African-American presidential candidate EVER! The second woman to ever make a presidential ticket; and she's one of our own. Despite that, we're supposed to believe that overall participation DECREASED by 11%. Not only that, but his historic election ... HAD THE LOWEST ALASKA TURNOUT FOR A PRESIDENTIAL RACE EVER!!! That makes sense. REALLY??? Something stinks."

Yup!


Could it possibly be that the Republican Party in Alaska, not known for its ethics or morals, and afraid that Alaska might vote Democratic (which would be a huge embarrassment what with their guv running with J. McCain!), somehow arranged for enough votes to disappear to keep Alaska in the Republican column?

Yup!

Hey, they did it in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004!

The education of Tom Brokaw

Frankly, I never gave Tom Brokaw much thought. He was an anchor on NBC News and seemed to do his job fairly well, and he wrote a book about how great people were during WWII, and, well, he was a TV fixture...

...who I thought was "fair and balanced," unlike, say, those folks at FOX News...


Then John McCain ran for president. And I realized that Tom Brokaw really liked John McCain. When he interviewed McCain, Brokaw fawned all over him, lobbed him easy questions, and neglected to challenge McCain on his falsehoods. Brokaw wanted McCain to be president!


Then this from Eric Alterman at Altercation:

"Brokaw is back at it -- he said on Morning Joe that America is a center-right country because a majority of land area in the United States, if you measure it on the county level, voted for McCain."

Huh?

Alterman asks, incredulously: "When do they name that replacement?"

And, "Did he really say that? Does land vote? Is it possible for someone in Tom Brokaw's position to be that stupid? Of perhaps a better question is, 'Is it necessary?'"

Fundamentalist Christian rancor and hate, Part III

James L. Lambert is the author of something called "Porn in America," and "a licensed nationwide real-estate mortgage loan sales agent." Wow.

He writes for OneNewsNow, too.

Lambert says if you voted for Obama, you put Obama before Christ! "...it seemsthat many people who claim the Christian faith are casting their religious values to the curb in favor of being able to claim a role in 'a historic event.'"

Yep. That's what he said!

But how could that be? Well, it's all about abortion and those pesky homosexuals.

Lambert quotes one Rev. Adlai E. Mack, "senior pastor and founder of Christians United Church in San Diego: "If you're willing to sacrifice your babies, your children, and your business for Mr. Obama, you have that choice...

"If Obama wins, the babies lose. If Obama wins, your children will be discipled by homosexual [activists] in the public schools. If Obama wins, small businesses will suffer. Raising taxes would be the worst remedy during an economic downturn."

And not to forget, Obama is really, really "liberal." And he's pro-choice! And he thinks gays should be allowed to be married!


Most of this is horseshit, but nevertheless, this ethically-challenged "Christian" poses the question to his fellow "Christians" -- "Are you willing to put Obama before Christ?"

Argh!

P.S. I talked to Jesus today, and he told me that those who voted against Obama voted against him, and obviously don't love him anymore. He's going to cast them in the fiery pit! Hey, that's what he said!

Why Andrew Sullivan is voting for Obama

Andrew Sullivan, erstwhile writer for The Atlantic and author of the delightful "The Daily Dish," has written an essay detailing why he is voting for Barack Obama. The particulars involving the sins of the Bush administration and the details as to our country's present perilous condition are well-known. But Sullivan succinctly ties them together in all their gory perversity to argue that McCain offers more of the same.

Sulllivan speaks of 9/11 and the "war on terror" as that has taken shape in Iraq and Afghanistan. It isn't merely that most of the U.S. military has been trapped "in an unending counter-insurgency in one country [Iraq] where al-Qaeda was weak before 2002," or that "Islamist factions in Pakistan's government are horrifyingly close to nuclear technology," or that "Iran has gained in power and influence in the Middle East..." but that all these things derive from the incompetence and mistakes of our leaders.

"These mistakes," writes Sullivan, "were compounded - and in large part created - by what I believe will one day be seen as the core event of the last eight years: the collapse of constitutional order and the rule of law fomented in a mixture of hubris and laziness by the president himself. It is now indisputable that the president and vice-president of the United States engineered a de facto coup against the constitution after 9/11, declaring themselves above any law, any treaty, and any basic moral norm in their misguided mission to rid the world of evil. ...

"Cheney and Bush, unlike any presidency in American history, have dangerously pushed constitutional government to the brink of collapse. ...

"No economic mismanagement can compare with this attack on the basic institutions of our democracy and the constitution. No incompetence in conducting an occupation can be deemed comparable with this level of criminality and indecency. No reaction to a natural disaster, however hapless and negligent, is as grave as this crime. No financial crisis eclipses it in gravity. The president's oath is to protect the constitution from enemies foreign and domestic. Instead, the president himself became an enemy to the constitution he swore to uphold."

McCain won't do, says Sullivan, for "...in the end, McCain [...] when push came to shove ... acquiesced to the legalization of America's use of the very same torture techniques once used against him. And in this campaign, we have seen how no Republican candidate can escape the logic of bigotry, fanaticism and xenophobia that now grips and motivates the Republican party base."

McCain, says Sullivan, will follow the same road as Bush/Cheney. While in some ways, Obama's policies "are too liberal" for Sullivan, he believes "McCain is not serious on spending. But he is deadly serious on not touching taxes. So, on the core question of debt, on bringing America back to fiscal reason, Obama is still better than McCain."

But, the "task of restoring the rule of law and Constitutional balance" is the most vital thing. "Unlike McCain, Obama has never wavered on torture or habeas corpus or on keeping the executive branch under the law. His deep understanding and awareness of the Constitution eclipses McCain's."

After a long section of why Barack Obama offers a kind of last "hope" for our country, Sullivan concludes with this:

"I endorse Barack Obama because I will not give up on America, because I believe in America, and in her constitution and decency and character and strength."


This is a superb article. Please read it in its entirety here.