BlogPulse Top News Stories for Oct 30, 2008

Un camion carico di spranghe e in piazza Navona è stato il caos – Scuola&Giovani – Repubblica.it (citations)

Found in a rundown Boston estate: Barack Obama’s aunt Zeituni Onyango – Times Online (citations)

Erica Jong Tells Italians Obama Loss ‘Will Spark the Second American Civil War. Blood Will Run in the Streets’ | The New York Observer (citations)

Growing Doubts on Palin Take a Toll, Poll Finds – NYTimes.com (citations)

http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displayStory.cfm?story_id=12516666&source=features_box_main (citations)

Poll finds 23% of Texans think Obama is Muslim | Front page | Chron.com – Houston Chronicle (citations)

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2008/10/29/joe30.html?sid=101 (citations)

Qaeda wants Republicans, Bush humiliated: Web video | Reuters (citations)

Women Buying Health Policies Pay a Penalty – NYTimes.com (citations)

George F. Will – Call Him John the Careless – washingtonpost.com (citations)

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BlogPulse Top Videos for Oct 30, 2008

YouTube – American Stories, American Solutions: 30 Minute Special (citations)

YouTube – Michael Jackson – Thriller (citations)

YouTube – CNN Rick Sanchez Catches McCain Spokesman Mike Goldfarb Lying (citations)

MySpaceTV Videos: 5 More Friends by 5 Friends (citations)

YouTube – Dear Mr. Obama (citations)

YouTube – 5 More Friends uncensored (citations)

YouTube – Wassup 2008 (citations)

YouTube – Obama Bombshell Redistribution of Wealth Audio Uncovered (citations)

http://media1.clubpenguin.com/play/v2/content/local/en/news/20081030.swf (citations)

http://www.cubpack81.com/images/carve_pumpkin.swf (citations)

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Open Thread for Night Owls, Early Birds & Ex-Pats

It’s hilarious to hear people who speak in flat Midwestern English tones argue that they “don’t have an accent” just because they sound so much like nomadic television newscasters everywhere.  In fact, everybody has an accent. But, as any 6th grader or architect transplanted from Alabama to Michigan or from Texas to Oregon can tell you, some accents have more cachet than others on the playground and at the office. Until I purged my drawl in junior high, I was seen by most of my classmates and more than a few teachers as having a brain as drowsy as my speech.

On “Fresh Air,” a couple of weeks ago, Geoff Nunberg remarked that we live in an era when politicians’ speech and accents have been under the microscope. Senator Clinton got roasted for “Kentucky Fried Hillary.  John Edwards was critiqued for his “carefully maintained Southern accent.” And Senator Obama was tsk-tsked for using a “’blackcent’ that his upbringing didn’t entitle him to. And even Michelle Obama was accused of pandering when she said ‘There ain’t no blacks in Iowa.’ …”

If authenticity is a matter of heeding your true inner voice, then it probably isn’t surprising that people listen for signs of it in the way you speak. And our idea of an authentic accent reflects our idea of the authentic self. It’s the natural speech you sucked up from the surroundings you grew up in, unfiltered and uncorrected. It’s how you’re supposed to sound when you’re talking to yourself.

It’s also a delusion. Or at least if your speech is like yourself, it’s because both are a work in progress. … [I]t doesn’t make sense to ask what part of that is my “authentic” voice. You grow up, you meet new people, you change the way you talk. If you still sound the same way you did when you were 15, you haven’t been getting out enough.

So what if George W. Bush came relatively late in life to west Texas and its g-dropping ways? It’s part of who he is now, and I’d bet it’s how he sounds when somebody wakes him up in the middle of the night.

So like Bill Clinton, [Sarah] Palin can signal authenticity simply by refashioning her original accent, rather than acquiring a new one. You can actually hear how this developed if you pull up the Youtube video of Palin as a 24-year-old Anchorage sportscaster fresh from her broadcasting classes in college. She wasn’t in control of her accent back then: she scattered the desk with dropped g’s: “Purdue was killin’ Michigan”; “Look what they’re doin’ to Chicago.”

It’s strikingly different from the way she talks now in her public appearances, not just because she’s much more poised, but because she’s learned how to work it. When she talks about policy, her g’s are decorously in place – she never says “reducin’ taxes” or “cuttin’ spendin.’”

Now there are clearly a lot of people who find this engaging, but I can’t imagine that anybody really supposes it’s artless. What it is is a stone-washed impersonation of a Mat-Su Valley girl. I wouldn’t be surprised if Palin and her friends perfected this way back in high school. There’s no group that’s so unselfconscious that its members don’t get a kick out of parodying their own speech: most Brooklynites do a very creditable Brooklyn, and every Valley girl can do a dead-on Valley girl.

At this point, let me interject a personal gripe of mine, the blasting of Mister Bush for saying nu-kuu-lar. Since arriving at the White House, he has received repeated har-de-hars from all the sophisticates who would never think of trashing Ted Kennedy for pronouncing Cuba Kyu-ber.

Nu-kuu-lar is a pronunciation widely but not exclusively used among Southerners, nuclear scientists, and people in the military. Guess who else besides Mister Bush and Governor Palin say or said nu-kuu-lar: Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, John F. Kennedy, Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Not to mention Homer Simpson.

That’s because of what linguists call metathesis, a shifting of nearby sounds. It happens in every language. And, although many people may think they’d personally never engage in this sort of thing, they’d be wrong. English and other languages are filled with words whose pronunciations have been PERMANENTLY changed by metathesis.

Linguist Nunberg has argued elsewhere that many people – like Mister Bush – may know the “correct” pronunciation but say nu-kuu-lar anyway as a way to thumb their noses at their critics and/or to sound “folksy.” In any case, far better to spend energy criticizing nuclear policy than its pronunciation.

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The Overnight News Digest is posted and includes the story: Why Big Banks May End up Buying Your City’s Public Water System..

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Tonight is the fifth and final asking of the same question. The previous polls were on September 4, September 19, October 3 and October 31.

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Open Thread and Diary Rescue

Tonight’s Rescue Rangers, Got A Grip, YatPundit, a synthetic cubist, dadanation, mem from somerville, Avila and grog, sit atop the fence on this All Hallowes Eve

to bring you a goody bag full of chocolatey, sweet diaries that are calorie free and progressive friendly.

itzik shpitzik offers charming memories of a patriotic parent’s entreaty to her descendants in An immigrant’s legacy to her children: did you vote yet? (mem from somerville)

BobboSphere poignantly describes growing up in Maryland in the Days of Jim Crow. (a synthetic cubist)

Winter Rabbit walks us through an historical landscape to discover that It’s Always About The Land, Isn’t It? (Got a Grip)

Casual Wednesday provides an intriguing comparison about tackling the economics of health insurance in Health Care and Centralia: An Analogy. (mem from somerville)

Thanks to Troutfishing’s incredibly exhaustive diary, we now know that the name of yet another one of Palin’s Spiritual Warfare Network Partner: Homeland Security. (dadanation)

histopresto received a nice postcard from a stranger and is sharing the reply in Message in a virtual bottle, shoutout to Bonnie in VA. (Got a Grip)

Liberal Youth predicts The Coming Blue Dog Wars and lays out a plan of attack. (a synthetic cubist)

While tonight is a festive night for tricks and treats, Eternal Hope appropriately reminds us as we move into next week to stay vigilant and Don’t fall for Rove’s propaganda. (dadanation)

dogemperor will give you the fright of your life with A true Halloween horror: Sarah Palin’s extensive connections to Joel’s Army. (Avila)

Brainwrap offers up an adult tongue twister as nursery rhyme in Dr. Seuss meets No-Show Joe. (Got a Grip)

winkster brings us a missive from his father, who reminisces on the political heroes of his youth and wonders Where Have All Those Republicans Gone? (a synthetic cubist)

ItsJessMe highlights some issues where misunderstanding trumps logic for some in Powerful Jewish Perspective on Obama. (Got a Grip)

jotter gives us the day’s High Impact Diaries – October 30, 2008, while emeraldmaiden has Top Comments 10/31/08 – Spooky.

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Election Race Diary Roundup (10/31 – 4 Days to Change)

PLEASE NOTE – This is not an open thread and is intended for diaries and discussion of downticket races.

For all the introductory stuff and links to previous diaries in the series, please look below the fold…

This Rescue Diary covers the period from 12:00 Noon, Thursday, 10/30 to 12:00 Noon EDT, Friday, 10/31

Today’s Menu Includes :
71 Diaries Overall

– 29 On House races

- With 20 covering individual Districts in 16 states

– 16 On Senate races

- Representing 6 different states

– 24 On Various election races and ballot issues

- Encompassing Governor, Secretary of State, Local, and more

– 2 General election-related diaries

***Special Notice***

If you want to be a part of FleetAdmiralJ’s Election Day Results Live Blog project, then check out this diary for more info. Those of us who followed this effort in ’06 will always remember it as an incredible part of an incredible night, and you can be a part of it!

This project still needs volunteers! If you’re free on Election Night and would like to participate, please comment in the diary linked above or send FAJ an email directly.

Follow us for more, come on in…………

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Orange to Blue: The Final Hours

This is the last fundraising push we’re doing for the cycle, barring any runoffs, for our Orange to Blue candidates.

We have ambitious goals; we want to get to 30,000 total contributors, and we want to get Orange to Blue candidate Dan Seals up to $75,000, to help enable him to run this fantastic ad from the next President of the United States.

As Dan Seals stands with the next President, his opponent Mark Kirk stands with the last:

Whose side are you on?

Of course you’re tired. Of course you’re tapped out, the economy being what it is. But as the next President himself says,

This is no ordinary time, and it shouldn’t be an ordinary election.

We’re on the verge of a historic moment – for the online activist community, for the Democratic Party, and for the United States itself. Every dollar you donate tonight goes to a brighter future, to bringing about the change we’ve dreamed of, hoped for, prayed for over the last eight years.

Leave it all on the field. Leave nothing in reserve. Wake up on November 5 with no regrets.

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WY-AL: Almost There

Gut check time, folks. We’re so, so close to our revised goal for Gary Trauner. We just need another few thousand bucks, and he’ll be able to air his ads through 5:00 Tuesday. Kos posted earlier about the latest polling in the race and the scary news that Lummis has pulled slightly ahead. He also had this reminder.

Factoid — the two last polls of this race in 2006 had Trauner trailing by four points (Wyoming Tribune-Eagle) and seven points (Mason-Dixon). Trauner lost to then-incumbent Barbara Cubin by 1,000 votes. This year will once again go down to the wire.

There are still undecided Republicans and independents out there who can be swayed. And they can be swayed by the reminder that if they really want change, they need new blood in Washington. Here’s one of Gary’s closing ads.

We are so close to the $100,000 goal. Just one more push and the fundraising is done for the 2008 cycle. If you want to make a statement, if you want to take Dick Cheney’s old seat and drive a stake through the heart of the Republican party, now is your last chance.

On the Web:
Gary Trauner for Congress
Orange to Blue ActBlue page

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Today’s polls

Today was such a crazy busy day, that you might have missed some of these polls. Here’s what our last batch of polls for the cycle looked like:

We’ll keep the Daily Tracking Poll going until Monday night, with final results reported Tuesday morning. Then we’ll have to go through poll withdrawal. Note we have run about 100 of these this year.

Assuming advertising revenue remains strong next year, I want to do another 100 polls in 2009. But that will remain in the hands of the economic climate.

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Listening to the Locals: North Dakota

(In the final days of an election, there is so much information from so many races, it’s difficult to stay on top of every story and understand the subtle dynamics often at play on the ground. Thankfully, we have an expansive 50-state blogosphere to match our 50-state strategy. Over the last two weeks of the campaign, we’ve asked leaders of the state blogospheres to provide insight into late developments and share the stories of their states in a series we’re calling “Listening to the Locals.” SusanG)

Greetings from the Peace Garden State!  I’m Adam Blomeke, a blogger at the site, North Decoder.  It’s exciting for North Dakota to finally be a player in the electoral college.  This has been quite a year for us, with the biggest convention we have ever seen, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both headlined the event, speaking before at least 17,000(probably closer to 20,000), Barack came again earlier this summer, and tomorrow Howard Dean is showing up to do two GOTV rallies.  We’re lucky to get anything usually, so this has really been unprecedented.

Democrats have been really embattled until recently around here.  Our state government is the definition of a supermajority.  The legislature has been dominated by Republicans to the point that until 2006, they could have overridden a veto(not that they needed to, the governor, John Hoeven is an extremely popular Republican, and short of a miracle, will handily win his reelection bid(unfortunately)).  Republicans also hold all but one of the statewide offices(Roger Johnson, our Agriculture Commissioner is a Democrat).  The lack of any accountability has resulted in some serious problems popping up. We have a workers compensation agency that is unaccountable to anyone other than themselves, and denies claims that are questionable. The evidence suggests that the excess money is going into kickbacks to businesses that important legislators have a stake in.  Workforce Safety and Insurance is the biggest problem in the state, but there’s a range of others that could be mentioned. Suffice to say, though, that much work needs to be done to return accountability to the state capitol.

Our congressional delegation is the bright spot of our state.  We, like Massachusetts, only send Democrats to Washington.  Since 1986, the delegation has been completely blue.  Kent Conrad, Byron Dorgan, and Earl Pomeroy have all been faithfully serving in their seats since 1992, and continue to sail to easy re-election, mainly because the Republicans can’t seem to nominate someone that has actually held elected office before.  It’s much easier to sit and run some office in Bismarck than it is to do the daunting work that our congressional delegation does, and it is a LOT of work.  Pomeroy sits on the Ways and Means Committee in the House, and is one of a select few that have a waiver to sit on another committee, Agriculture(kinda important for North Dakota’s farmers).  Konrad chairs the Senate Budget Committee, and Dorgan chairs the Democratic Policy committee.  Suffice to say that we have quite a bit of sway and our delegation has a lot of work that they do.  It’s much easier to be tax commissioner.

Right now, Democrats have many once in a generation opportunities to take back North Dakota, and we are working our hardest to take advantage of each one.  In September, when the Palin bounce was registering heavily on everyone’s radar, McCain took a commanding lead of the polls here, Chicago decided to pull most of the campaign’s staffers out of the state to refocus their efforts on Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin.  A number of us decided that we were going to campaign for Obama anyway.  In Bismarck, the capitol, a group of seventy volunteers decided to organize under the banner of North Dakota Grassroots for Obama, or NDGO.  That network of volunteers has grown to 150-175 volunteers, and yard sign orders and literature requests have been coming in from all over the state, from cities like Strasburg, ND, Population: 449.  We didn’t even know that Democrats existed in some of these places.  Suffice to say that something is going on here in North Dakota, we’re excited for the result on Tuesday. We ain’t giving up until it’s over though.

Races to watch:

ND-Insurance
This is the hot one, As I said, our worker’s compensation bureau is unaccountable to anyone, not even the insurance Commissioner or the Governor, and while Republicans say they want to fix WSI, they have done nothing.  Something like 40 bills were proffered by the Democrats, they all fell on deaf Republican ears in the legislature.  The current insurance commissioner is Adam Hamm, and I’m ashamed that we have the same first name.  He is an appointee by the governor because the last commissioner had to quit to become a lobbyist.  Since then, Hamm has missed 8 out of the 10 meetings of the state investment board, which oversees the WSI and retirement funds for various state agencies.  It is one of the big parts of his job, and he missed 80% of the meetings.  He also has spent taxpayer money on Public Service Announcements that plastered his face all over TV 90 days before the election…all at taxpayer expense. It is ridiculous.

Enter Jasper Schneider, a personal injury lawyer that beat out the incumbent in the primary for her house seat only to see her run as a Republican.  He won and has risen to become a leader in the legislature.  He is poised to take this seat, and we’re excited to have a friend on our side in the Insurance Commissioner’s office.

Jasper Schneider for Insurance Commissioner

ND-Tres
This is another one sitting on the edge of our radar.  The current treasurer is Kelly Schmidt, a Republican that decided to take the money sitting in the Veterans Postwar Trust Fund, and gave it to a retail broker to invest into the stock market, instead of letting the State Investment Board(same group as above, advised by some of the best financial minds in the state) handle it.  The fund has lost about 20% of its value as of late.  There are some other antics that we’ve been keeping track of as well(catalogued here).  Democrats are running Mitch Vance, an experienced hand at financial issues that understands how to invest money properly.  Expect a tough fight on this one.

Mitch Vance for Treasurer

Other Races
Also watch the state senate.  We made significant gains in 2006 and are at the point of possibly taking this half of the legislature back.  We need only to flip 3 seats.  I wish the governor’s race was more competitive, because our candidate, Tim Mathern has a great platform to run on and would make an excellent governor, but John Hoeven is a master of low expectations.  He hasn’t screwed up, he’s the incumbent, and he’s a Republican.  That makes him governor.  Short of a miracle, we will have our do-nothing, take-credit-for-everything governor back in Bismarck.  

Overall, Democrats are poised to make gains, we will retain our Congressional delegation(Earl is the only one up for re-election and his opponent is as unformidable now as he was four years ago when he ran then and lost), add seats in the legislature(it’s just a question of how many), and take some statewide offices(two, maybe four, who knows?). With hard work, we may even cast 3 electoral votes for a democrat for the first time since 1968! We’re in the last stretch here, and are excited to see the fruits of our labor, but we aren’t there yet, and we take nothing for granted.

Throw ‘em an Anvil!

P.S. We called Sarah Palin and told her we want our accent back!  That’s totally a Fargo thing there, dontcha know.

Response from the McCain campaign:

Crickets

Read: North Decoder
Donate: ActBlue, Mitch Vance, Jasper Schneider, Tim Mathern, Daryl Splichal

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OR-Sen: Close to closing this one out

Research 2000 for Daily Kos. 10/27-29. Likely voters. MoE 4% (10/14-15 results)

The bulk of the undecideds — 8 percent of 11 percent still remaining — are Democrats. They’ve probably voted for Smith in the past, told he is a moderate, and are conflicted. All we need is half of them and we put this thing away.

Of those who have voted already in this sample (everyone votes by mail in Oregon), Merkley’s margin is well into the 50s. Clearly, those motivated to send in their ballots quickest are on our team. This looks real good.

At the presidential level, Obama crushes McCain in this former swing state 55-39, and 60-33 among those who have already voted. For comparison’s sake — this is a state Kerry won by only five points in 2004.

On the web:
Jeff Merkley for Senate

p.s. This is it, the last state poll of the cycle for us. The daily tracker will run until Monday, with final results Tuesday morning. This has been a blast, guys, and I certainly plan, if advertising holds up, to continue a heavy polling schedule in 2009.

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