Although a few political professionals were surprised that the Columbus Dispatch mail-in poll was so spectacularly wrong about RON, I took a lesson from the California referendum failure, which matched Ohio's, to be more instructive:

GOP strategist Ed Rollins, somewhat surprisingly, was surprised by "Arnold getting so blown away in California. The lesson is don't put everything 'your enemies don't want on the same ballot' so that they can turn it into a holy war.'

While the anti RON push centered around single amendments, mostly negative ads discrediting Issue 3, campaign finance reform, or fixating on Irssue 4, redistricting, the RON folks quite naturally pushed all four initiatives together -- and they failed together.

The pro-reform campaign framed the issues as a package, which like any chain with a weak link brought the whole contraption down when one of the links was sucessfully attacked.

More lessons on how democrats and progressives lose against determined, organized, well-funded, political professionals will be coming to a theater near you.

Did they really think nobody would notice?

Yesterday's Oct. 31, gaggle, according to the White House web site:

Q Whether there's a question of legality, we know for a fact that there was involvement. We know that Karl Rove, based on what he and his lawyer have said, did have a conversation about somebody who Patrick Fitzgerald said was a covert officer of the Central Intelligence Agency. We know that Scooter Libby also had conversations.

MR. McCLELLAN: I don't think that's accurate.

Yesterday'sOct. 31 gaggle, according to Wonkette (and verified by the video on the White House website):

Q: Whether there's a question of legality, we know for a fact that there was involvement. We know that Karl Rove, based on what he and his lawyer have said, did have a conversation about somebody who Patrick Fitzgerald said was a covert officer of the Central Intelligence Agency. We know that Scooter Libby also had conversations.

Mr. McClellan: That's accurate.

Nice catch by Firedoglake: Editing Reality One Press Conference At A Time

cleveland.com: NewsFlash - Neo-Nazis plan return to Toledo
11/9/2005, 11:14 a.m. ET
The Associated Press

TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) -- The neo-Nazi group whose visit last month touched off rioting said it plans to return to protest how the police and the city handled its visit.

Spokesman Bill White said the National Socialist Movement plans demonstrate downtown Dec. 10.

History Mike has detailed reporting, plus some propaganda by Mr. White himself in hie comments section, which Mike debunks here.

Mike also has some advice to our Mayor Elect, on just how to handle the Nazis this time around, so, you know, we don't start looking like France.

Me?  I'm hoping for a blizzard that day.  The hooligans will stay inside and the Nazis will be lost in the white-out.

Bill Moyer's speech last September for the Texas Observer is simply superb.

America is not yet a theocracy but Texas almost is and the Republican Party already is... .

* * *
The phenomenon of our time is how the religious, political, and corporate right, under the cloak of "moral values," has forged a mighty coalition for the looting of America. With one hand they stretch upward for the pearly gates, and with the other they reach down and behind your back to pick your pocket or your purse.

Their appointed poster boy is George W. Bush. Everything he knows, he learned here in Texas. Unfortunately.

No wonder the (now exposed and disgraced) neo-con operative recently in charge of PBS spent taxpayer dollars to monitor "anti-Bush," "anti-business" and "anti-Tom DeLay" guests on Moyers' show."  Moyers is a spot-on, effective and knowledgable critic of the charade of "compassionate conservativism."  A true danger to the money-changers and warmongers who have made Texas into Taliban Lite then incubated and promoted the vile spawn of "century of involvement in oil, armaments and global intrigue" to the highest office in the land.

An indifference to other people's reality remains the mark of the system of privilege and patronage that is Texas politics.

* * *
What the hurricane exposed is what the progressive advocate Robert Borrosage calls the "catastrophic conservatism" of the long right-wing crusade to denigrate government, ˜starve the beast," scorn its purposes and malign its officials.

We know now the results of their social ideal -- the "You get yours/I'll get mine" ethic as opposed to shared sacrifice and responsibility. It's as if they had scissored out of their Bible, "I am my brother's keeper."

(HT: The Left Coaster: Catastrophic Conservatism, VIA American Street)

REFORM OHIO NOW SOME DAY, MAYBE?

Too Much Legalese! Did you actually read the ballot language, all of it. Did anyone really finish both pages of each issue?

Look, I'm a lawyer and I thought the amendments were way too wordy, especially for a Constitution.

With almost 1 million votes counted statewide, we're getting hammered. Next time remember the KISS method -- Keep It Simple Stupid.

STATEWIDE AT 9:50
2 No-64% Yes-35%
3 No-67% Yes-32%
4 No 70% Yes-29%
5 No 71% Yes-28%

Remember the anti-gay marriage Amendment last year. Two devastating sentences. That's all.

When you have to turn a page to read an amendment is doesn't stand a chance. The things read more like statutes, not guiding principles like a Constitution should have.

Rewriting them to only two or three clear, unambiguous sentences will level the playing field to the point where ads and further voter education will make a difference. These things didn't stand a chance no matter how fabulous the idea -- and they were.

And when we campaign, tell folks like Arnold "Thanks, but no thanks." He did more harm than good. We needed home grown talent, like John Glen who surely helped Issue One, but why wasn't he featured on any RON commercials? Where was Paul Hacket's face, Sherrod Brown? They needed to be FEATURED.

Remember, the republithugs will lie, and lie believably. Don't give them ammo like being able to take a grass roots, anti-establishment effort and paint is as some kind of out-of-state back room shenanigans.

And K.I.S.S.


CROSS-POSTED AT :
Swing State Project: Reform Ohio Now: Election Results

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UPDATE 11:30

It's official, and it's a shame, because if there ever was a State in desparate need of election reform, it's Ohio.

Voters reject election issues
11/8/2005, 10:18 p.m. ET
By ERICA RYAN
The Associated Press


COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Voters turned back four ballot proposals Tuesday to change Ohio election law, while a once-rejected high-tech research financing was comfortably ahead.

Issue 1 had 55 percent of the vote with 34 percent of the precincts reporting, according to unofficial returns compiled by The Associated Press. Backers combined the $500 million high-tech issue with a popular $1.5 billion highway maintenance bond issue after it lost two years ago.

The long statewide ballot issues confused some voters Tuesday in an off-year election with light turnout and few glitches from the use of new voting machines in about half of Ohio's 88 counties.

"I didn't understand a lot of them," said Cleveland voter Theo Bell, who skipped over the state questions. "I didn't want to put something down, not understand and vote for the wrong thing."

Yeah, like I was saying . . .

The election proposals — all constitutional amendments — would have opened absentee balloting to all voters, lowered the limit on individual campaign contributions, put a board in charge of drawing congressional and legislative districts instead of elected officials and switched election supervision from the secretary of state to another board.

I was also saying this . . .

The transition to new voting machines, mostly touch screens, went smoothly in most of the 44 counties that have them, election officials said. A handful of people left without voting because machines weren't running when polls opened in some precincts. A few polling places opened late.

At six precincts in Toledo, poll workers misplaced cards that the worker must insert to authorize the machine to turn on, said Carlo LoParo, spokesman for Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell. A handful of voters said they couldn't wait.

Paper ballots were being used within 10 minutes, and elections officials made new cards that were sent to the polling places by about an hour after polls opened, LoParo said.

I'm hearing quite a few reports on the local radio here in Toledo that our new voting machines giving the volunteers poll workers fits at various polling places all over Lucas County, Ohio, and one report from Wood County.

Machines slow to be ready and operational, workers resorting to giving out paper ballots (which may or may not be counted), memory cards/chips not available, some machines not usable at all, untrained workers unable to get them to work or be able to explain how they work to voters.

Developing . . .

UPDATE, 8:30:
Toledo has one of, if not the biggest mayoral race in Ohio, yet several reports of voters wishing to vote early before work had to leave their polling center without voting due to the problems.

Lucas County Board of Elections apologised for the inconvenience -- none of the machines were ready at 6:30 when the polls were supposed to open -- and asked those voters who were turned away to come back later today.

Secretary of State Ken Blackwell sais, "There will be problems and those problems will be solved."  Note to Kenny, timing is everything.

All rumours that the problems were some kind of Democratic Party conspiracy to embarrass Ken Blackwell and promote the necessity of the election reform initiatives on today's ballot are irresponsible and were started by WSPD's Bob Frantz, who reports that all the problems were "human error," and not technological, most poll stations are now working fine.

I just hope that I don't inadvertantly vote for Pat Buchanan or switch my phone company to Sprint when I go later this afternoon.

UPDATE 1:54
The Toledo Blade, of course, has more.

LAST UPDATE, 3:56 PM
I voted, and liked the new touch screens. It had a little printer where I could see my votes, quick and smooth.  Real low turnout in my precinct. I was the 50th voter at 2:45 pm.

Informed Comment notes not only the current allegations of war crimes directed at the US Government's for the use of incendiary phosphorous bombs against civilians in Fallujah, but documents some of the history of the allies use of the devices in Iraq as well as how we're going to weasel out of being criminally liable for this latest violation of international law.

The Italian press is calling the phosphorus bombs "chemical weapons" and alleging that they were used indiscriminately and against civilian populations.

My "informed guess" is that the world won't give a tinker's damn that we don't consider these devices "chemical weapons" or that we didn't enact all three parts of the 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons their use would appear to violate.  More at KOS

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The Boston Globe article reprinted in Common Dreams is an excellent primer on the nefarious career of Vice President Dick Cheney and the malignant cancer his existence has been on the body politic of the United States.  Plus Bonus Cheney "incite" on his thing for torture.

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As the Bush Administration claims that although "we do not torture," yesterday fresh formal abuse charges were filed against US Troops.   And in spite of troop levels at 160,000, with no plans for reduction anytime soon, mechanics are being used as security forces which really pisses off their commanding General.

No, we don't torture, but over 100 of our detainees have been killed by an administration that claims International Protocols against torture enacted under US law don't apply to us if we do it outside our own borders.  It's transparent legalese crap from our State Department, but not unexpected, actually.  Few things regarding the depravity of these criminals who hijacked our nation surprise me anymore.  But one thing is certain, The buck, no matter however long it takes to stop, will land at George W. Bush's feet.

Aren't you excited that SCOTUS is going to finally decide whether it's OK to use military tribunals for the occasional "enemy combatant" we admit we have in custody and deign to actually charge with something other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Tell you what, I'll buy into the whole "War on Terror" thing, accept that it isn't a lexigraphically challenged description of an assault on a particular tactic instead of a struggle against something like, um, an actual person or group.  I might even let of my profound belief that the invasion of Iraq was a distraction from that so called "War," of which Afghanistan was unquestionably a part and is still left unfinished; instead of calling our presence in Iraq nothing more than a simple power grab.  I might even give Rumsfeld a break in my critique of his complete mismanagement of the "War" -- if the administraiton calls the people we have captured in this so called "War" are called and treated as "Prisoners of War."

IOKIYAR

What's wrong with this picture?

The IRS is coming down on a church, threatening to revoke its tax-exempt status, because the minister gave an anti-war sermon.  (And after all, promoting peace is what the "Prince of Peace" himself advocated.)

But if you're a Republican strategist, using the church to bring out the religious "wackos" is fair game when it supports the neo-con agenda.

[On Oct. 31, 2004, Rev. George F.] Regas said that "good people of profound faith" could vote for either man, and did not tell parishioners whom to support.

But he criticized the war in Iraq, saying that Jesus would have told Bush, "Mr. President, your doctrine of preemptive war is a failed doctrine. Forcibly changing the regime of an enemy that posed no imminent threat has led to disaster."

That's all it takes to get an investigation started by the godless bureaucrats of the IRS.

WWJD?  Somebody needs to drop a dime on these "wackos."

When Bush apologists play the "Clinton Card," they ain't got nothin'.

Contrary to what my local Nazi promoting, Limbaugh wannabe, radio talker would have you believe, the Huffington Post is not the "wacko liberal KOS/MOVEON.ORG site" that he would have you believe.

Case in point, it features the ramblings of Carol Platt Liebau who quotes extensively from Stephen F. Hayes' Daily Standard piece.  She/He tries to explain away Sunday's NYT article about the tortured Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi   A-Libi gave the warmongers in the White House a ficticious Iraq/al Qaeda connection -- exactly what they wanted to hear.  That gave them the wild goose chase they wanted to sell us based on intelligence they knew was not credible.

As Marty Kaplan said, also at the Huff, If that isn't fixing the intelligence to fit the policy (as the Downing Street Memo put it), what is?

Ms. Liebau seizes on Hayes' thesis that the Times article ignores Some Relevant Facts.  Specifically, that the Bush administration officials did not make up stuff on their own, but kept to the letter of the made up crap they beat out of their captives.  Somehow, this "proves" their good intent, or at least gives plausibility to their later denials.

That, and Clinton officials still claim the asprin factory in Sudan was connected to al Qaeda.

After striking pharmaceutical factories in Sudan back in 1998, the Clinton Administration justified the strikes by asserting both that they were suspected chemical weapons facilities AND that there was an al Qaeda presence there. As Hayes puts it, "These facilities, according to both Clinton administration spokesmen and senior intelligence officials, were the result of a collaborative effort between Iraqi scientists, the Sudanese Military Industrial Corporation and al Qaeda terrorists. Clinton administration officials stand by those claims today."

So someone tell me: Was the Clinton national security team "lying" too?

Seriously, is that all they got?

They weren't dead wrong go to war, kill tens of thousands, maim hundreds of thousands, destroy another country, bankrupt our own, wreck out standing in the world and completely abandon the moral authority this nation has always stood for -- because Clinton bombed a suspected munitions factory on intelligence of similar merit?

Explain to me when the Clinton administration was ever accused of torture.  And while we're at it, tell me just how many wars did Clinton sell the American people based on lies?

For The Record the reason there were no WMD's in Iraq for Bush to find, was because Clinton's containment refime and bombing campaigns wiped them out.

From Kevin Drum, who puts the al-Libi thing together so much better than I.

If conservatives dislike Dick Durbin's comparison of American practices to those of Hitler and Stalin, they should make clear to Dick Cheney that America doesn't condone the practices of Hitler and Stalin. Because apparently, the vice president of the United States does condone them. Vigorously. It's enough to make any decent human being puke.