Evening Update

post from DemConWatch - Front Page on 06 January 2009 11:41:54 PM. © DemConWatch - Front Page

As expected, Former Senator Norm Coleman filed suit in Minnesota to stop Senator-elect Al Franken from being certified as winner of the Senate election:

Republican Norm Coleman, who received 225 fewer votes than DFLer Al Franken in the U.S. Senate recount, will challenge the result in court. He told reporters at a state Capitol news conference that a lawsuit, known as an election contest, would proceed.

Coleman said he respects the process but added: "Let's take the time to get it right." He said every vote should be counted, but only once, and that uniform standards must be applied, previewing what are expected to be central themes of his court case.

Shortly before Coleman spoke, his campaign said the lawsuit would be filed in Ramsey County shortly after 3 p.m..

TPM Election Central summarizes the lawsuit:

The Coleman campaign's complaint shows that they intend to fight on: the allegations that absentee ballots in 25 selected precincts were counted twice to Franken's benefit; the decision of the state canvassing board to revert to election night totals in a pro-Franken precinct where they lost one of five numbered envelopes, containing 133 ballots; to work to get rejected absentee ballots counted that local officials from around Minnesota, in both blue and red counties, have re-examined and say were properly thrown out; and to contest the inclusion of those 930 absentee ballots that were counted this past weekend -- which their own campaign agreed to have counted under a careful bargain.

Elias did say, though, that there's one thing he hadn't heard before: The Coleman campaign wants to have ballots thrown out in cases where the election officials neglected to properly initial them.

(Tmess2 has more in his post)

While Illinois Senator-designee Roland Burris is meeting with Majority Leader Harry Reid on Wednesday, the first Democratic Senator has come out in favor of Burris being seated:

Sen. Dianne Feinstein rejected the reasoning that all of the chamber's Democrats, herself included, had cited in a letter last week — that corruption charges against Burris' patron, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, tainted his appointment.

"Does the governor have the power, under law, to make the appointment? And the answer is yes," said Feinstein, chairwoman of the Senate Rules Committee, which judges the credentials of senators.
...
"If you don't seat Mr. Burris, it has ramifications for gubernatorial appointments all over America," the California senator said. "Mr. Burris is a senior, experienced politician. He has been attorney general, he has been controller, and he is very well-respected. I am hopeful that this will be settled.

Jeb Bush will not run for the Senate in Florida in 2010.

Obama will be announcing a "Chief Performance Officer" on Wednesday. Sounds very Dilbertish to me.

And we finally found out why the Obama family couldn't stay in the Blair House before Jan 15.

UPDATE: Springsteen will be playing the National Mall event on Jan 18.

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http://www.Demconwatchblog.com/diary/372/evening-update

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Eagles have to fight for their right to par-tee

post from Firedoglake on 06 January 2009 11:40:32 PM. © Firedoglake

Republicans are beginning to eat their young as we watch Kathryn Jean Lopez get snippy with the RNC's Young Eagles: As the RNC looks for a new chairman, its voting members might want someone to pay attention to their Young Eagles program. This young[...]

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http://tbogg.firedoglake.com/2009/01/06/eagles-have-to-fight-for-their-right-to-p
ar-tee/

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Blessed Are the Gatekeepers

post from MyDD on 06 January 2009 11:32:52 PM. © MyDD

Blessed are the gatekeepers, for theirs is the power to getting things done. If President-elect Obama thought that changing the way Washington works was going to be a breeze, he got his first lesson in comeuppance with his selection of Leon Panetta to[...]

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/mydd/~3/PqLHibfLH1w/4014

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Open Thread

post from Crooks and Liars on 06 January 2009 11:30:02 PM. © Crooks and Liars

video details and more

My favorite John Lithgow role, Lord John Worfin from Buckaroo Banzai, which will celebrate its 25th anniversary this year. Gawd I'm old.

Thanks for voting for Crooks and Liars, Driftglass, and Suburban Guerrilla (Susie Madrak) at the Weblog Awards. (links point to the voting ballots and may have busy servers. Be persistent!)

Open Thread below....

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http://crooksandliars.com/node/25014

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Quin-essential cases: Re-nominating Keisler would
be change GOP can believe (Quin Hillyer/www.dcexaminer.com)

post from memeorandum on 06 January 2009 11:25:00 PM. © memeorandum

Quin Hillyer / www.dcexaminer.com:
Quin-essential cases: Re-nominating Keisler would be change GOP can believe — For all of Barack Obama's lofty talk about bipartisanship, the incoming president has yet to do anything of real substance on the domestic political front to lessen the Capitol's partisan toxicity.

Read The Full Article:
http://www.memeorandum.com/090106/p170#a090106p170

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Letters from Wingnuttia - New Deal Edition

post from Open Left - Front Page on 06 January 2009 11:22:56 PM. © Open Left - Front Page

I know the term "dittohead" has long been used to describe the unfathomably large number of[...]

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Rounding Up on Panetta

post from Talking Points Memo on 06 January 2009 11:22:00 PM. © Talking Points Memo

Here Fred Kaplan makes the case for the appointment in Slate. Elana Schor got an impromptu interview with Sen. Feinstein who seemed to soften her initial coolness toward the appointment and suggested she might be more receptive if Obama kept on the[...]

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panetta.php

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Credit Crisis claims another elite investor

post from AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth on 06 January 2009 11:16:00 PM. © AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth

This latest suicide related to the credit crisis reminded me of the general belief that in 1929, many stockbrokers jumped out of windows as they heard about their loses. As an econ professor friend recently told me, Galbraith had analyzed the suicide rates before and after the Crash and there was no noticeable change. There were some suicides around the US though stories of window jumping were mostly false. It's what many people wanted to hear but the facts were not there to support the common story. During this crisis, the Madoff scandal has claimed one investor and now the fifth wealthiest German, billionaire businessman and investor Adolf Merckle.

He seemed to be the epitome of the respectable German industrialist: a modest family man who strove to avoid publicity. But behind the scenes, the billionaire entrepreneur Adolf Merckle speculated and gambled away his fortune. On Monday, his body was pulled from under a train.

The 74-year-old pillar of Germany's business community and the country's fifth richest man committed suicide after losing millions in a high-risk stockmarket venture that backfired. Yesterday, his family blamed the credit crunch for his death.

His body was found on tracks 300 yards from his family's villa in Blaubeuren, near Ulm in south Germany. Police said he left a suicide note.

Mr Merckle became one of the most prominent victims of the financial crisis. In a statement, his family said he was broken by the struggle to salvage their business empire. The world's 94th-richest person in 2008, according to Forbes magazine, Mr Merckle spent his life building a business conglomerate with 100,000 employees.

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Open Thread and Diary Rescue

Tonight's Rescue Rangers are YatPundit, a synthetic cubist, HansScholl, Elise, mem from somerville, jlms qkw, and taylormattd as editor.

Please enjoy reading these outstanding, ranger-selected diaries:

In a report that may surprise you, Schoenke tells us that In 2008, NRA Shot Blanks. American Hunters and Shooters Hit the Target. (mem from somerville)

In an excellent first-diary, CentristandProud discusses Common sense or the lack thereof regarding drugs(war on) and the mentally ill. (YatPundit)

Frank Cocozzelli spells out how the Religious Right Turns a Blind Eye to a Real Life Issue with a personal perspective on crucial research. (mem from somerville)

it really is that important shares the why and how of coping techniques in Uncertainty, Fear, Anger....and Healing. (jlms qkw)

Avenging Angel reminds us that the merry-go-round is still spinning with Yoo, Bolton, Saltsman and the GOP Irony Machine. (mem from somerville)

Mrs W explains Why I won't teach without my union. (HansScholl)

ItsJessMe reminds us that personal actions can have downstream consequences in You never know when you make a difference. (mem from somerville)

jotter has High Impact Diaries: January 5, 2009.

brillig has Top Comments- 01/06/09 Tug Edition.

Please feel free to promote your favorite diaries in this open thread.

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/OmSk3RyGmvw/681007

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Late Night Music Club: RIP Ron Asheton of The
Stooges

(h/t Howie for letting us know)

From The Detroit Free Press:

Ron Asheton, the influential guitarist for legendary punk band the Stooges, was found dead early this morning at his home in Ann Arbor, police said.

I feel like I was punched in the stomach, so I'm going to have to lean on the late Lester Bangs, from his epic, two-part (here and here) Of Pop and Pies and Fun (a 1970 critique of The Stooges LP Funhouse) do the heavy lifting:

Well, a lot of changes have gone down since Hip first hit the heartland. There's a new culture shaping up, and while it's certainly an improvement on the repressive society now nervously aging, there is a strong element of sickness in our new, amorphous institutions. The cure bears viruses of its own. The Stooges also carry a strong element of sickness in their music, a crazed quaking uncertainty and errant foolishness that effectively mirrors the absurdity and desperation of the times, but I believe that they also carry a strong element of cure, of post-derangement sanity. And I also believe that their music is as important as the product of any rock group working today, although you better never call it art or you may wind up with a deluxe pie in the face. What it is, instead, is what rock and roll at heart is and always has been, beneath the stylistic distortions the last few years have wrought. The Stooges are not for the ages?nothing created now is?but they are most implicitly for today and tomorrow and the traditions of two decades of beautifully bopping, manic, simplistic jive...

...[T]he Stooges' music is like that. It comes out of a primal illiterate chaos gradually taking shape as a uniquely personal style, emerges from a tradition of American music that runs from the primordial wooly rags of backwoods bands up to the magic promise eternally made and occasionally fulfilled by rock: that a band can start out bone-primitive, untutored and uncertain, and evolve into a powerful and eloquent ensemble...

And a word of advice: If you're in the Ann Arbor-Ypsilanti area, and you feel the urge to light a candle, please do so outside of Ypsi's famed Stooges Wax Museum. The last time a Stooge died (Dave Alexander, in 1975), candles lit inside the museum did permanent damage to the original 15 feet-high wax-replica wah-wah pedal. The current 25 footer wasn't created until 1988. So please, be careful.

RIP, Ron.