Midday open thread

post from Daily Kos on 15 September 2008 04:30:23 PM. © Daily Kos

My Houston appearance next week has been cancelled for obvious reasons. I wish the best to everyone in that city as they work to clean up after Hurricane Ike.

Right-wingers have the most bizarre fantasies.

Nebraska Senate candidate Scott Kleeb is on a fundraising swing through the country. Catch him at a small-dollar fundraiser near you. Click on link to RSVP.

Chicago, Wednesday, September 17th, 7 to 10pm
The Billygoat Tavern, 430 North Michigan Avenue

New York, Thursday, September 18th, 7 to 10pm
Rudy's Bar & Grill, 627 Ninth Avenue

San Francisco, Monday, September 22nd, 7 to 10pm
Etiquette, 1108 Market St.

Boston, Thursday, September 25th
Time & Location TBD, see www.ScottKleeb.com for details

Washington D.C., Friday, September 26th, 5:30 to 7:30pm
Stetson's, 1610 U Street NW

Graeme Frost, tougher than the original mavericks.

I don't know about you, but the Paralympics look tougher than anything the Olympians had to do. For example, there's Goalball:

Participants compete in teams of three, and try to throw a ball that has bells embedded in it, into the opponents' goal. They must use the sound of the bell to judge the position and movement of the ball. Games consist of two 10 minute halves. Blindfolds allow partially sighted players to compete on an equal footing with blind players.

Pretty amazing stuff. Too bad this isn't televised in the U.S. I'd be more interested in seeing this than I was the real Olympics.

(Via Kottke.)

The Freeway Blogger strikes up around my neck of the woods.

Iowa Lt. Gov. Patty Judge (D):

Sarah knows how to field-dress a moose. I know how to castrate a calf. Neither of those things has anything at all to do with this election. But since we know so much about Sarah’s special skills, I wanted to make sure you knew about mine too.

Sean Quinn over at 538 visits Reno, NV.

During the summer, John McCain’s Reno office was struggling to attract volunteers. After he selected Sarah Palin as his running mate, there was a line of volunteers waiting outside the campaign office the following morning. Since then, they’ve gotten a solid 20 volunteers a night, though only four were there the night I stopped into the office. I was willing to believe the 20 figure, given the re-energized party since Palin entered the race.

By contrast, Barack Obama’s Reno office has been humming for months. Though John Kerry won the city of Reno in 2004, he lost neighboring Sparks and Washoe County as a whole by 4.21%, or 6,704 votes. That represents just over 31% of his total losing margin (21,500), despite the fact that Washoe contributes only about 19% of Nevada’s statewide voting total.

In just the last year, Washoe County’s R-D voter registration gap has dropped from R +16,000 to R +5,000.

How about those Cubs? And the Brewers, finally losing some games, appear to be dramatically overreacting.

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Obama's Jews

post from TPMCafe on 15 September 2008 04:28:00 PM. © TPMCafe

Barack Obama is still leading among Jews 2 to 1, and pundits are still telling us that this is a sign of weakness: that historic levels of support among Jews, 3 (or even 4) to 1, are needed to win Florida and Pennsylvania; and that Obama's not going to get there unless he's willing to be as "Zionist" as McCain.

There are too many misconceptions in this analysis to be dealt with here. (I try to lay them out more fully in the current Harper's.) But it is meanwhile worth having another look at this penetrating Gerstein-Agne poll, conducted for the rising J Street Lobby. It suggests that Jews are seriously divided: that the vast majority, around 70%, are more or less liberal, opposed the Iraq war, and want to see the US pressure Israelis and Palestinians into a peace deal; while our most prominent Jewish leaders, in AIPAC, the Council of Presidents, and the World Jewish Congress, tend to promote the agenda of the 20-25% who identify with conservative politics, and would never vote for Obama no matter what he does.

The poll suggests, in other words, that Jews will have less of an impact on the Obama campaign than it will have on them. For its raises the question of why, and how long, American Jews will continue to tolerate its own leadership.

And the question is the more intriguing since the most progressive Jews seem most generous to both Jewish community organizations and political campaigns. I asked Jim Gerstein, who conducted the J Street poll, to run the relevant numbers. He wrote me back, generously: "Among 'liberals,' 51% contribute to Jewish organizations and charities no different from the overall sample; 50% contribute to political campaigns, 8 pts. higher than the overall sample. Among 'progressives,' however, 56% contribute to Jewish organizations and charities (4 pts. higher than the overall sample); while 63 percent contribute to political campaigns, a remarkable 21 pts. higher than the overall sample."

Jews, I need not add, have means: over a third earn $100,000 or more. So if you assume that the Obama campaign has the trappings of a liberal movement, you have to wonder if the Jewish majority is not on a collision course with the organizational leaders who purport to represent Jewish interests. This collision seems imminent if Obama wins, but seems the more inevitable if he loses--and loses in part because of the solidarity between McCain's forces and a deceptively prominent Jewish right.

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African American voter registration rising

post from Let's Talk Honestly on 15 September 2008 04:25:48 PM. © Let's Talk Honestly

As one who is giving a voter registration drive in my town this upcoming weekend this story made me smile. Although 8 million African Americans were said not to be registered in recent reports a lot is being done at a grassroots level to rectify that problem. A lot of that work is being done [...]

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The McCain Campaign's Dirty Record on Clean
Energy

post from Open Left - Front Page on 15 September 2008 04:25:38 PM. © Open Left - Front Page

Eating Liberally Food For Thoughtby Kerry TruemanImage by patriotundergroundIn part two of[...]

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ODE TO EDITORS.

post from Ezra Klein on 15 September 2008 04:21:00 PM. © Ezra Klein

This Kenyon Review essay takes on a lot of subjects: Rejection letters, marriage proposals, small magazines, honesty. It is the best written thing I've read today, and almost certainly the best written thing you'll read today, and you shouldn't take the[...]

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http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/ezraklein_archive?month=09&year=2008&base_name
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AIG asks for it's own Bridge to Nowhere

post from AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth on 15 September 2008 04:15:00 PM. © AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth

Why would taxpayers want to extend a $40 billion bridge loan to AIG? This company has been mismanaged and gambled, so good luck figuring out how to make ends meet like everyone else. Maybe AIG should have spent more time worrying about being a sound company instead of making sure their CEO was showered with riches.

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Hurricane Ike Is Not Over in Houston -- Will FEMA
Failure Overshadow the Storm, Again

post from BuzzFlash.org - Progressive News and Commentary with an Attitude | Fight Ignorance: Read BuzzFlash on 15 September 2008 04:14:51 PM. © BuzzFlash.org - Progressive News and Commentary with an Attitude | Fight Ignorance: Read BuzzFlash

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT
by Christine Bowman

Hurricane Ike just about blew away the city of Galveston. Evacuations had been ordered there, and recovery and rebuilding efforts are expected to take months or even years. But rescue and recovery is under way in Galveston.

In contrast, Houston's 4 million people were told to hunker down and stay in place. What now for them?

Millions have no power, going on 3 days later. No food supply. No ice. No water supply, no cell phone service, no land lines. Not many gas stations and grocery stores are up and running. There's no air conditioning. (The scorching summer in Houston lasts well into October). Roofs blew away, trees smashed homes and vehicles, flood waters and leaks have destroyed much.

^{Photos, Houston Chronicle}

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Faun Otter: McCain's Temper Caused his Keating
Five Scandal

post from BuzzFlash.org - Progressive News and Commentary with an Attitude | Fight Ignorance: Read BuzzFlash on 15 September 2008 04:13:04 PM. © BuzzFlash.org - Progressive News and Commentary with an Attitude | Fight Ignorance: Read BuzzFlash

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION
by Faun Otter

John McCain believes that his actions in the Keating Five scandal were probably the worst thing he has ever done and "will probably be on my tombstone." So why has the press hardly mentioned this outrageous behavior?

Maybe they don't think anyone cares that McCain accepted bribes and knowingly broke the law as a result of one of his famous temper tantrums.

Here's what you need to know about McCain's Keating Five scandal.

Charles Keating helped McCain's father-in-law buy McCain his seat in Congress in 1982. Keating and Cindy McCain were partners in a shopping mall venture that McCain only cashed out (at a million dollar profit) when Keating was jailed in the late 1990s. Keating was obsessed with obliterating pornography while he was using his corporation's money for wild drunken parties, at least one of which McCain attended.

McCain hid from Congress that he had taken 9 trips on Keating's jet. These included three vacations at Keating's mansion on Cat Cay in the Bahamas that McCain and his wife shared with Charlie Keating and his family. McCain got more money than any of the other four politicians at the heart of the Keating scandal. When asked if he was buying or influencing McCain with his gifts and money, Keating replied, "I want to say in the most forceful way I can, I certainly hope so!"
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LIVING FOREVER.

A friend of mine's wealth grandfather just had a five-figure portrait commissioned of himself. And fair enough: Make a bajillion dollars, wrest yourself a bit of posterity. But why did portrait's become the stock-in-trade for consumable immortality? A[...]

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John McCain: Make up your mind

It is really a bit sad when confusion starts setting in:Hours after calling the economy ?strong,? John McCain appeared to clarify the comment Monday afternoon, minutes after he was derided as “out of touch” by the Obama campaign. “My opponents may disagree, but those fundamentals of America are strong,” McCain said at a campaign event [...]

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