At the End of the Day - Super Tuesday Edition, February 5, 2007

Well! It appears that the two strongest presidential candidates that have run for the Democratic nomination in ages have fought to a draw tonight. Hillary Clinton took the big states, and Obama took several smaller states, many with surprising margins. The only certainty to come out of this is the secure knowledge that the populace is fired up and ready to throw the current cabal out on their collective kiester.

Now, for the news...

The BBC is reporting that the southern regions of Afghanistan will have a bumper-crop of opium poppies. I guess that it isn't enough to screw up shooting wars, the Bush administration has to go ahead and decisively lose the (utterly ridiculous) war on drugs.

Doom & gloom on the economic front: The Dow tumbled about 3% on Tuesday, following a severe contraction of the service sector, and a warning by Standard & Poors that they might cut banks credit ratings. The fallout reached across the globe and Asian stocks plummeted on Wednesday. The Nikkei dropped four percent.

Repair ships arrived in the Mediterranean to repair cables that provide the internet service to the Middle East and India. Four cables were cut in the span of just a few days, and it's a mystery what happened to them.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who introduced trancendental meditation to the west and served as a spiritual advisor to the Beatles has died at his home in the Netherlands. His age was uncertain, but he is believed to have been in his 90's.

As Pakistan gets ready for parliamentary elections on February 18th, the country seems resigned to the fact that widespread vote-rigging will simply be a given, and Nawaz Sharif is not only not campaigning, he has has left the country.

Bush has nominated Lt. General Raymond Odierno for a fourth star and the position of vice chief of staff, which would put him in charge of the Army's day-to-day operations. Congress must approve the promotion. Here is hoping he doesn't face a cake-walk. I will take this opportunity to do a bit of crystal-ball gazing: Between November of this year and the end of February next year, the services will see a massive exodus of O-6 and above officers. Too many have been too worthless, and the sooner they shuffle off to San Diego and Tucson, the better off the military I have loved my entire life will be. General Yingling has a nice ring to it...

And finally - while America was absorbed with election returns, tornadoes ripped through Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee, leaving destruction in their wake and nineteen dead. If you are a person of faith, you might think about beseeching your deity on behalf of those affected.

[That's all - no more after the jump]

There's more: "At the End of the Day - Super Tuesday Edition, February 5, 2007" >>

Super Tuesday Open Thread...to be updated throughout the evening

Well, I went and cast my (secret) ballot a couple of hours ago. It was my first vote from this abode, so I went to a new polling place - which is, ironically farther from my current home than the polling place on Hospital Hill where I cast my first ballot in KC.

I asked the poll workers if the turnout was higher than expected, and she gestured to all of the signatures on the pre-printed sign-in sheets provided to the polling stations by the election board. Missouri is officially non-partisan, you request a party's ballot when you present yourself at the polling station. I asked the person who handled my section of the alphabet how Democrats were doing in relation to Republicans, and when I said "two to one?" she gave me a thumbs up and said "way higher," then told me that people were requesting Democratic ballots in that precinct at a rate of four or five to one.

While at the polling place, my husband and I had the privilege of helping a woman cast her first ballot in her entire 65 years on this planet, and she was very vocally supporting Hillary. She wanted to make sure her ballot was properly marked and fed into the scanner and registered.

Then we hopped on the bus to return home - and I was confronted with something I thought I had already successfully dealt with - these gawd-awful voter disenfranchisement signs:

Now - I have not seen one of these on a Max, a 57 or a 51 since I called and complained last summer. I also have an archived email where I corresponded with the mayors wife about this issue. (I knew that Gloria was in over her head when she responded that the placement of the signs was strange, since the KCATA wouldn't sell them advertising for the mayoral campaign - not realizing the difference between political advertising and public service announcements.)

But I digress - today, there it was on a 35, big as life. The 35 runs through the east side of Kansas City - and like it or not, Kansas City is segregated. Very few white people live east of Troost. That is reality in Kansas City. Another bit of uncomfortable reality: we are a city with a horrible track record where racial issues are concerned.

So what is up with these voter-disenfranchisement signs? The law that the "public service announcement" promotes was struck down by Cole County Judge Richard Callahan in September of 2006, and upheld by the state Supreme Court in October, in a six-to-Limbaugh decision.

I hate that the current incarnation of the GOP makes me think like a conspiracy theorist, but when a pattern is established, well, let me dust off an old medical truism that I used to tell earnest, eager, young residents when they would bring specimens for exotic tests into my lab...if you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras.

If you live in the KC area, by all means, please call the KCATA at 816-221-0660 and tell them you are aware of the civil rights violations rolling through the black community on a daily basis.
...
UPDATE I - by Blue Girl

The first state is reporting - West Virginia went to Huckabee in the states GOP nominating convention. Interesting...

[Update below the fold...]
Update II - 7:20 p.m. - by Blue Girl

Missouri's polls closed less than a half hour ago, but on the Democratic side, CNN is reporting that Hillary Clinton leads Barack Obama by a wide margin - 58% to 24%. On the Republican side, Huckabee is leading McCain by a five-point margin - 33% to 28%.

Obama is the projected winner in Georgia and Illinois, while Oklahoma has been called for Hillary.

On the Republican side, Connecticut and Illinois have broken for McCain, while Romney squeaked out a victory in Massachusetts, where he used to be the governor.

UPDATE III - 8:50 p.m. CST - by Blue Girl

The Kennedy magic just didn't cast the spell they were hoping for in Massachusetts, did it? Mass broke for Hillary - decisively - Clinton 58%, Obama 39%.

Alabama went to Obama, with the exact same percentage breakdown - Just flipped. Obama 58% and Hillary 39%.

Obama carried Delaware with 53% to Clinton's 42%.

Senator Clinton carried New York with 60%, Obama carried a solid 37%. Across the river in New Jersey, Clinton took the lead, 55% to 43%. She also carried Arkansas, where she was the First Lady of the state for many years 72% to 24%.

Tennessee surprised me a little bit - I thought it would be closer - but Hillary took the state standing up - 61% to 31%.

On the Republican side, McCain took New York, Delaware, and New Jersey.

Huckabee took his home state of Arkansas and, as mentioned earlier, West Virginia.

Romney, apparently is going to be the Republican nominee for President of Massachusetts. Or Utah.

There's more: "Super Tuesday Open Thread...to be updated throughout the evening" >>

At the End of the Day - February 4, 2007

[Hey all - Blue Girl here, standing in for the inimitable Apollo 13 who is under the weather with the gawd-awful bug I had a couple of weeks ago. Besides that, everyone was great about keeping the lights on while I was off-line due to the second major hardware catastrophe in six months...so covering the End of the Day is the least I could do. Send Apollo good thoughts and I'll turn the reins back over as soon as the master is on the mend.]

CREW is calling for the Attorney General to appoint a Special Counsel to investigate the millions of missing emails that the White House failed to archive, in violation of the Presidential Records Act.

Why did Israel bomb Syria last September? Seymour Hersch probes that puzzler as only he can in the latest issue of the New Yorker. One of the conclusions he makes early on? The M$M proved to be useful idiots in promoting an improbably, if not impossible, meme.

Lo, and Behold! Another Bush administration in need of a criminal defense attorney! According to the Washington Post, HUD secretary Alfonso Jackson (he of the partisan litmus test for awarding contracts) tried to strongarm the housing authority of Philadelphia into giving a piece of publicly owned property to a crony.

Bush submitted his final budget today, and true top form, he is planning to spend $3.1 Trillion dollars, while steadfastly adhering to his theory of economics that, apparently, hinges on the premise that as taxes rates approach zero, receipts will approach infinity. In the Bush budget, military spending will be higher than at any point since World War II, while effectively freezing or eliminating 151 domestic programs. Democrats reacted angrily, and even some Republicans were unable to suspend disbelief and get on board. “They’ve obviously played an inordinate number of games to try to make it look better,” said Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee. The picture becomes even more surreal when we stop to think about the deficit spending that is financing aWol's excellent Iraqi misadventure.

Palestinian suicide bombers struck in Dimona, Israel today, killing one woman at an open-air mall. It was the first suicide attack in Israel in over a year. The attackers came from Gaza, and served to point up that Palestinian Authority President Mahmood Abbas, on whom the Bush administration is relying heavily to lead the Palestinian peace process, has little if any control over the Gaza Strip, which remains under Hamas control.

The United States military is blaming faulty communications between U.S. forces and Iraqi militia allies for a helicopter strike in which at least nine Iraqi civilians were killed.

Tomorrow the Senate is set to take up FISA and telecom immunity while they think we are distracted by Super Tuesday. Make your calls in the morning and remind your senators that you are watching and paying attention, and passing the buck to the taxpayers for damages won't cut it, either. No immunity. No how, no way. And if our Senators don't stand up for the Fourth Amendment, right now, when they come asking for our support for their reelection campaigns, they shall be met with the mantra "not one dime and not one moment of our time."

Wikileaks has posted a real mind-blower. Here is the link to the 2005 Rules of Engagement for Iraq. Paul Keil said it best: "At the very least, if the Bush Administration expires and we are still at war only in Iraq and Afghanistan, we can count ourselves lucky." (Cross border incursions, including into Iraq and Syria? Laos, anyone?)

But hey, you've still got Turkey throwing the chessboard in the air and attacking Kurdish terrorists in Iraq, with brutality and extreme prejudice. As a good friend said, this is exactly what we don't need right now. Says a whole helluva lot about Iraqi sovereignty, doesn't it?

Attention California Voters: If you are a "Decline to State" voter, you have to take a unique and unusual step in order for your vote to count! It is not enough to ask for and cast a Democratic ballot! There is a place on the ballot that you must mark "Democratic" in order for your vote to count. And the scan machines do not return your ballot for correction!

At the risk of starting a firestorm (I have not officially endorsed any primary candidate, although I have made up my mind who I will cast my secret ballot for tomorrow) I found an interesting post by Stanley Fish at the New York Times Blogs in which he peeks behind the curtain into the dark, dark psyches of the hard-core Hillary Haters - the ones who make Sully look silly and trifling by comparison.

[That's a wrap, folks - there's nothing below the fold.]

There's more: "At the End of the Day - February 4, 2007" >>

Looking ahead to Super Tuesday for the GOP

Actually seeing a bit of useful information on Faux News, it’s worth noting how many of the Feb. 5 primaries, on the Republican side only, are winner-take-all. The biggie here is California, but the list also includes Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Utah. In other words, about 80 percent or so of the GOP delegates on this date are on a winner-take-all basis, even with a plurality and not an absolute majority. (Tennessee is winner-take-all with a majority.)

So, on the GOP side, a run of the table is possible. That’s why even hapless old Rudy would be dumb to fold before then. If he can take populous New York and New Jersey, he’s clearly back in the race. Assuming he does at least reasonably well in Florida before that, this means California will be a bloodbath par excellence.

Hell, Mitt Romney will probably pledge to personally fund the entire state budget deficit if Ahhhnold will endorse him.

After that, most the remaining states that hold primaries are winner-take-all on the GOP side, including Texas March 4. Since Rudy has Gov. Rick Perry’s endorsement (for what it’s worth, coming from a guy re-elected with less than 40 percent of the vote), if Rudy has any pulse after the February Super Tuesday, well, then, he’ll stay in until March.

So, here’s hoping Rudy actually does do well in Florida — really well, since it, too, is winner-take-all. If he wins, we’ve got a four-man race through at least mid-March if not all the way to the GOP convention.

There's more: "Looking ahead to Super Tuesday for the GOP" >>