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Geithner Inadvertently Signals Gold Going Much
Higher, What to Buy Now

post from Jutia Group on 03 November 2009 03:50:55 PM. © Jutia Group

The Obama administration dispatched high-level members back onto the Sunday morning talk show circuit following a few bits of positive economic news.

On Thursday, it…

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igher-what-to-buy-now/

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CO Board of Health Weakens Medical Marijuana
Caregiver Rule at Stealth Hearing

post from TalkLeft on 03 November 2009 03:48:00 PM. © TalkLeft

Bump and Update: The amendment to the rule defining "significant responsibility for managing the well-being of a patient" for marijuana caregivers, prompted by last week's Colorado Court of Appeals decision, passed unanimously just before noon, but not without a fight, when the Board refused to hear public comments. The old rule, 5 CCR 1006-2, passed in July and made effective in August, 2009, is here. It defines the responsibility of a caregiver as:

“Significant responsibility for managing the well-being of a patient” means assisting a patient with daily activities, including but not limited to transportation or housekeeping or meal preparation or shopping or making any necessary arrangement for access to medical care or services or provision of medical marijuana. (my emphasis)

Question: How long will it be good for? Colorado's State Administrative Procedures Act provides that resolutions passed at agency emergency hearings are generally only valid for three months. A copy of the revised rule passed today (and rule on emergency hearings) is here (pdf). A full public hearing will be held Dec. 16. When will the appeals (pdf) begin? [More...] What's the test for the validity of a rule change?

Rules adopted by an administrative or regulatory agency are presumed valid, and the challenging party has a heavy burden to establish a rule’s invalidity. Colo. Ground Water Comm’n v. Eagle Peak Farms, Ltd., 919 P.2d 212 (Colo. 1996). The invalidity of a rule may be established by demonstrating that a rulemaking body (1) acted in an unconstitutional manner; (2) exceeded its statutory authority; or (3) acted in a manner contrary to statutory rulemaking requirements. Section 24-4-106(7), C.R.S. 2006; Brown v. Colo. Ltd. Gaming Control Comm’n, 1 P.3d 175 (Colo. App. 1999).

Original Post: CO Board of Health to Hold Stealth Meeting on Medical Marijuana: Via Sensible Colorado:

EMERGENCY ALERT-- PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY**
CO Health Board to vote on Tuesday (11/3) to Weaken Medical Marijuana Law

In an underhanded move, the Colorado Board of Health will be voting to weaken the medical marijuana law at an "emergency" meeting on Tuesday, November 3 at 10:30am in Denver. At this stealth meeting the Board will be voting to redefine what a "caregiver" is to require such individuals to provide supplementary-- and often unnecessary-- services beyond simply providing sick patients with medical marijuana.

This meeting, which was announced in a late afternoon email to a small handful of patient advocates, is another example of the state engaging in underhanded tactics in their effort to undermine the medical marijuana law and the will of the Colorado voters. Please help hold them accountable.

Here's How You Can Help:

(1) Attend the Meeting. This meeting will occur at 10:30am on Tuesday, November 3 in the Snow Room, 1st Floor Building A of the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment, 4300 Cherry Creek Dr. South, Denver CO.

(2) Call-in to the Meeting. While we strongly prefer that you attend in person, you can also call-in at 1-866-899-5399, conference code 3529725

(3) Spread the Word. Please tell friends and family to attend the meeting and forward this alert widely!

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NY-23: Police Called To Polling Place

post from Daily Kos on 03 November 2009 03:46:02 PM. © Daily Kos

The crazies are out in force:

It's getting ugly out there.

I just got off the phone with former state Democratic Chairwoman June O'Neill, who informed me the police had been called to at least two polling sites in St. Lawrence County due to overzealous electioneering (O'Neill called it "voter intimidation") by Doug Hoffman supporters.

"We've gotten reports that people are standing there, covered with Hoffman stickers and yelling anti-choice stuff at voters," said O'Neill, a St. Lawrence native who has been running the party's GOTV effort for Bill Owens in NY-23.

"Apparently, there's some woman claiming to be a commissioner," O'Neill continued. "Commissioner of what, I don't know. She's from Texas, I think, and she won't leave."

"This is not the way we roll in the North Country."

That should give the undecided voters a moment's pause.

A Republican Elections Commissioner said that is was "a routine procedure" when there is electioneering within 100 feet of a polling place, while a spokeswoman for an anti-choice group that's up there campaigning for Hoffman went with a whine:

"At least three of our volunteers have been threatened with police when they're not doing anything wrong," Yearout said. "They haven't seen any Democrats. No one for Owens."

"So, apparently, the poll workers who are Owens supporters are doing the only thing they can do: Intimidate. And they're doing that by calling the police. Nobody's been arrested because nobody's doing anything wrong."

So, all of the poll workers are in the bag for Owens and are just harassing the ~~screaming, sticker-infested out-of-towners~~ patriots. And apparently it's an epidemic - of Hoffman supporters violating electioneering rules that is, not of sticker-covered nutcases. As far as we know.

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Don't Hold Your Breath

post from Talking Points Memo on 03 November 2009 03:42:00 PM. © Talking Points Memo

Gibbs says Obama decision on Afghanistan still "weeks" away. [...]

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Maine: OFA Not Big on Teh Gay

post from Firedoglake on 03 November 2009 03:40:52 PM. © Firedoglake

AmericaBlog:Joe wrote last night about how the DNC’s “Organizing for America” organization (formerly known as “Obama for America”) emailed Maine voters yesterday about today’s election, but failed to mention the[...]

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Down & Dirty

post from Talking Points Memo on 03 November 2009 03:40:00 PM. © Talking Points Memo

The Christie campaign is complaining to the state election commission and calling for an investigation of Democratic robocalls promoting independent candidate Chris Daggett in Republican friendly parts of the state. [...]

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Armey Meets With Author Of Town Hall Harassment
Strategy Memo To Plan Purge Of Moderates From GOP

post from Think Progress on 03 November 2009 03:40:00 PM. © Think Progress

In late July, ThinkProgress first reported on a memo detailing how conservative activists can successfully disrupt Democratic health care town halls. The memo, authored by a Tea Party Patriots volunteer named Bob MacGuffie, was distributed on a listserv controlled by FreedomWorks — the corporate front group run by Dick Armey that is dedicated to organizing tea parties and other anti-Obama efforts around the country. A member of the listserv, Jenny Beth Martin, blasted out the memo on June 13th, declaring, “We here in CT have developed a strategy for holding our elected officials accountable. We show up en mass at the ‘town hall’ meetings they have!” The tactics included:

– Artificially Inflate Your Numbers: ?Spread out in the hall and try to be in the front half. The objective is to put the Rep on the defensive with your questions and follow-up. The Rep should be made to feel that a majority, and if not, a significant portion of at least the audience, opposes the socialist agenda of Washington.?
– Be Disruptive Early And Often: ?You need to rock-the-boat early in the Rep?s presentation, Watch for an opportunity to yell out and challenge the Rep?s statements early.?
– Try To ?Rattle Him,? Not Have An Intelligent Debate: ?The goal is to rattle him, get him off his prepared script and agenda. If he says something outrageous, stand up and shout out and sit right back down. Look for these opportunities before he even takes questions.?

In town hall after town hall during August, the strategy was used to target members of Congress who are considering support of health care reform. Although Armey disputes his relation to the memo, both Rolling Stone and Talking Points Memo have verified that FreedomWorks staffers, like FreedomWorks Florida coordinator Tom Gaitens, control the Tea Party Patriots listserv which distributed the memo. Armey has gone so far as denying even knowing Gaitens, who has worked for FreedomWorks for years and can be seen in the last ten seconds of this ABC News segment handing a microphone to Armey.

Now, the Courant is reporting that Armey plans to go to Fairfield, CT on November 11th for a “strategy session” with conservative activists and MacGuffie, the original author of the town hall harassment strategy.

An announcement sent out by MacGuffie proclaimed that he, like Armey, has actively supported Doug Hoffman’s bid to rid the NY-23 special election of moderate Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava (R-NY). Now, both Armey and MacGuffie are planning to purge the Republican Party of more moderate politicians.

MacGuffie has declared that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) are RINOs (Republicans in name only) who “have routinely abandoned or betrayed us.” Similarly, the next step of Armey’s agenda appears to be an intensified crusade to challenge moderate Republicans in primaries. The Politico reports that Rep. Bob Inglis (R-SC), Gov. Charlie Crist (R-FL), former Rep. Rob Simmons (R-CT) and other Republicans who have strayed from rigid party-line positions face primaries from candidates inspired by the tea parties and town hall disruption type tactics.

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http://thinkprogress.org/2009/11/03/armey-disruption-memo/

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Isn't 2009 More About the GOP

post from FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right on 03 November 2009 03:36:00 PM. © FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right

Perhaps it's my imagination, but there seems to be a lot of media discussion of how the results today in two governor's races and one rather bizarre House race serve somehow as a referendum on Barack Obama, the Democrats, their majority, the Democratic agenda and platform, the bank bailout, the stimulus package, "HOPE," your haircut, my haircut, the undefeated New Orleans Saints, and just about anything else that can be piled on.

OK, OK, I'm exaggerating for effect. But if the 2009 cycle is a referendum on either party, isn't more of a referendum on the Republicans? Or perhaps, more precisely, a referendum for Republicans about the meaning of Republicanism?

Yes, elections are typically--and rightly--a referendum on the policy performance of the in-power majority party. But during an election cycle, and particularly in the primaries leading up to the general, it is the out party that is working out its issues and kinks, trying on its new or reconfigured identity. This was certainly the storyline when liberal Democrats were backing people like Ned Lamont back in 2006.

That said, consider that the GOP nominees in the three highest-profile races today--Virginia's Bob McDonnell, New Jersey's Chris Christie and New York 23's Dede Scozzafava--represent three variations on the question of what ails the GOP and how to fix it. Moving from center-right to right, lets' take a look at each model:

The McDonnell model: reform the establishment GOP from within as an insider and consensus-builder who moves to the middle. McDonnell is the most conventional and establishmentarian of the three. He came up through the normal channels as a law-and-order attorney general, touted his Fairfax roots in an effort to appeal to the key swing region of Northern Virginia, avoided culture war appeals and focused on meat-and-potato issues like taxes and transportation. Granted, his avoidance of culture war politics was as much a necessity as a choice, given the potentially toxic issue of his graduate thesis controversy. But he didn't run on a divide-and-conquer, base-oriented, Bush-era strategy. He proved able to appeal to the party's base and middle as well as independents.
The Christie model: reform the establishment GOP by running as a solid conservative. Next comes Christie, who also ran as a party man. He's not the non-traditional conservative firebrand that Steve Lonergan, whom he beat in the GOP primary, is. But Christie isn't Christine Todd Whitman either, and he doesn't strike me as any less conservative than McDonnell, although he's running in a more liberal state than McDonnell. Christie may still beat Corzine, whose background as a Goldman-Sachs millionaire is a tough sell right now. But Corzine may hold on.
The Hoffman model: revolt against the establishment GOP from the outside with a third-party candidate, consequences for the GOP be damned. Hoffman may win, too, but he ran outside the GOP. Defenders will say the party's choice of Dede Scozzafava gave him and his conservative backers no choice. But that's not entirely true: They could have supported her and worked to move her toward their positions to earn that support. Whatever the case, the establishment choice was viewed as such an affront--an apostate--that something radical had to be done...and if that meant doing it outside the confines of the party, so be it.

No matter what, because of the Hoffman-Scozzfava dustup, Republicans will not win all three of these races. And if Christie loses, the GOP will go 1 for 3. That may be the most telling lesson of all in terms of how the party needs to re-build. Whatever the results tonight, it seems to me that 2009 is the year of the Republicans almost by definition because these contests represent a broader, intramural contest to define GOP's future strategy and identity.

I'm not saying the the Democratic nominees, the way they ran their campaigns, or state and national issues are or were meaningless. They're not, of course. And I'm not saying voters in these elections have no opinions about the president, or are not voicing those opinions through their votes. But 2009 is about the GOP.

Read The Full Article:
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/11/isnt-2009-more-about-gop.html

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Expert: Provisional Ballots Less Vulnerable To
Voter Fraud, Not More

In our post from earlier today about the conservative efforts to gin up bogus voter fraud fears, one point we didn't go into -- but Adam Serwer at the American Prospect now has -- is the silliness of the notion that provisional ballots are particularly vulnerable to voter fraud.

A central component of the current right-wing freakout is the fact that there are likely to be a higher number of provisional ballots cast in New Jersey this year. That, so the thinking goes, makes fraud more likely.

In fact, as Serwer writes:

I spoke with Robert Giles, Director of the New Jersey Division of Elections this morning, who explained that each county in New Jersey has a review board, composed of four individuals, two Republicans and two Democrats, who review each provisional ballot before validating it. In fact, it's fair to say that provisional ballots in general are scrutinized more closely than regular ballots.
"[Provisional ballots] aren't subject to less scrutiny, they're more scrutinized in fact,"explained Gerry Hebert, a voting rights expert with the Campaign Legal Center who formerly worked in the voting rights section of the Justice Department. "Each one of them are generally reviewed by a verification board to make sure that the person who cast the ballot is in fact a registered voter or eligible to cast that ballot." Just generally speaking, provisional ballots are far more likely than regular ballots not to be counted. So relying on provisional ballots to steal an election--really stupid. But it doesn't sound that stupid if you don't know that they aren't (sic) carefully scrutinized.

And it's worth keeping one over-riding point in mind in thinking about all of this: There's far more evidence that valid voters are prevented from casting ballots by overly strict regulations than that invalid voters are casting fraudulent votes.

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lots_less_vulnerable_to_vote.php

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Midday open thread

You know how Fox (and its talking heads) keep claiming that their ratings spiked through the roof after the White House called them out for being the RNC's propaganda outlet? Lies.

As I mentioned, the two weeks prior to the White House dispute cover the dates from September 28-October 11. The two weeks after that cover the dates from October 12-October 25. But the tabulation used to come up with the 9 percent ratings gain (i.e. 1.2 million vs. 1.3 million) only measured Fox News' post-controversy ratings from October 12-October 23, which meant it was a 14-day comparison vs. a 12-day comparison. And which two days were left off the tabulation? Saturday, October 24 and Sunday, October 25. Traditionally, Saturday and Sunday, of course, are the two lowest-rated days of the cable news week.

What happened when you included October 24 and October 25 in the tabulation to make a true two-week-vs.-two-week comparison? Suddenly, that 9 percent gain in overall viewers evaporated into a barely-there 2 percent blip, while that 14 percent increase among viewers 25-54 shrunk to a much more modest 7 percent bump.

The real reason Republicans oppose health care reform.

Hatch asserted that the health bills, which he believes represent a "step-by-step approach to socialized medicine," will lead to Americans' dependence on Democrats for their health and other issues.

"And if they get there, of course, you're going to have a very rough time having a two-party system in this country, because almost everybody's going to say, 'All we ever were, all we ever are, all we ever hope to be depends on the Democratic Party,' " Hatch said during an interview with the conservative CNSNews.com.

"That's their goal," Hatch added. "That's what keeps Democrats in power."

Yup. If those "diabolical" (Hatch's word) Democrats implement a popular health insurance plan that everyone wants to use, Republicans are screwed. That's why the petulant Lieberman is making common cause with them.

GOP shouldn't worry, though. Enough Democrats have been bought off that a truly good plan won't happen this year. We'll have to baby step our way toward genuinely good policy.

Our own Bill in Portland Maine:

I've been through a bunch of these referendums and they never become any less insulting.

The rest of his post is more inspiring.

10 jokes about Joe Lieberman.

Knock, knock!
Who’s there?
Joe.
Joe who?
Joe Lieberman.
Get off my doorstep, you asshole [...]

What do you get when you cross Joe Lieberman with a frog? A fascinating, frog-voiced lump of wrinkles whose blood runs cold with reptilian contempt for those in need. And a frog.

So much for newspaper paywalls. Most newspaper publishers have apparently concluded the obvious -- people won't pay for commoditized online content.

ACORN is going to steal shit today. They're so good at stealing shit, that crazed conservatives can't point to a single stolen ACORN election. Impressive!

Organizing for America is finally getting substantively engaged in health care battle.

Obama’s political operation is about to unleash a wave of emails pressuring members of Congress, Democrats included, to vote for the House health care bill. And, notably, it explicitly singles out the bill’s provision containing a public option.

The move is interesting because Organizing for America — and Obama himself — have been criticized for not throwing enough weight behind the provision.

The new email, to go out from OFA chief Mitch Stewart, calls on Obama’s supporters to flood their members of Congress with calls in support of the House health care bill.