The Sacramento Bee (the largest and most influential paper in the district) has finally weighed in on the race for CA-11 - and not only did they pick the right guy, they framed the race just right.

Richard Pombo is in trouble. He had to drop big dollars to fight a primary challenger, his campaign has been 100% negative, the last poll released showed that 52% of voters would vote for a generic opponent, and his opponent is steadily catching up in funding, despite a lack of enthusiasm from the national party.

The NRCC is worried. They spent $10K to poll the district on September 6th. Not only did they not release the results, they saw something that made them drop another $150,000 on a negative mailing campaign.

In desperation, Pombo has made a move that may seal his fate: he asked President Bush to a breakfast fundraiser inside his district.

Here's my LTE re Brett Kavanaugh, the latest incarnation of Harriet Miers.

Editor:

As the venue for suits against federal agencies such as EPA, the DC Circuit Court has an extraordinary influence on the effectiveness of our environmental laws and regulations. Given Mr. Kavanaugh's personal efforts to advance partisan judges and his shockingly
short legal resume, it is clear that he will not be able to hear such cases with either the impartiality or the commitment to legal coherence they deserve.

Without intellectually responsible federal judges our environmental laws will continue to be difficult to understand, comply with, and enforce - a lose-lose situation that both raises costs for business and fails to protect our natural resources. This lifetime appointment shouldn't go to a legal lightweight who will make the problem worse.

This story almost has me in tears:

http://www.chron.com/...

Musharraf is a dictator. His government has serious human rights problems, a mind-blowing amount of corruption and patronage, and a major attitude problem regarding its eastern neighbor.

But even with a nuclear neighbor breathing down his neck, Musharraf got his priorities straight and did the right thing for his citizens: he put off buying the military hardware so he could save some more lives before winter.

I've posted in a few threads about how angry I felt when I read the bit about Karl Rove trying to blame his failures on environmental groups. I've been searching for ways to channel that fury into productive (or at least not self-destructive) activities. And I'm still looking, but I guess some of it has already converted into horror and sadness and lethargy, so I've started musing.

What browser do you use? Can you use it to see the long threads or does it crash?

I'm finally so fed up with Mozilla and (shudder) IE crashing on the big threads that I am paging tech support. Please believe me that it takes a lot of frustration for a professional web nerd like me to admit I can't solve the problem. But I want my dkos, and for months now I've really only been able to see it on Windows machines.

Here's my system details:
OS X 10.2.8
896 MB of (old-school) DRAM
ancient 450-MHz G4 processor

Zilla 1.7.10, tried with HTTP pipelining on and off, no difference

I've also tried IE 5.2, the last IE we'll see for MacOS, and the latest Firefox. They all hang on big threads.

Help, please...you don't want to see me without my dkos...

Okay, Cali Kossacks...I come to you with a plea for help in deciphering the latest in byzantine ballot initiatives. I've got my absentee ballot over there on the coffee table, all filled out except for 1A and 65, which I just can't get my head around. I normally consult the Alameda County Green Voter Guide for both progressive policy and fiscal sanity (yes, they're both in there, it's a great resource). But this time it just says one or the other ought to pass and probably 65 is less bad.

Do any of my fellow progressives have words of wisdom about this?

Incidentally I'm voting absentee both because I don't trust the touch screens and I'll be Election Protecting in Phoenix on the big day. Anybody else here going to Phoenix?

Hey Kossacks,

Call 202-737-0002 and tell CSPAN why you think Kerry won (if, of course, you do think so). Right now Bush's supporters are getting more calls through! Go to!

And have an "important moment" to share. I'm gonna go with his answer on abortion and his discussion of his faith.

Incertus provides us with another Fox atrocity here.

I wrote a rather long LTE asking for coverage of this abomination, and rather than hijack his diary I chose to post it here. Please, troops, let's raise some hell about this. Imagine what the Right would do if someone claiming to be a reporter did this to Bush.

Please, steal anything you want from the letter (below the fold). If you don't like it, write your own. Let 'em have it.

Here's the story:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/10/01/debate1.analysis/index.html

I guess he didn't watch the same debate we did. To his credit, he's trying to analyze the debate on its substance, rather than on style and image. But he gives Kerry a B+ and Bush a B, and I really don't see how he could think they were that close. The Bush I saw was incoherent and repetitious, though I must admit he did better on substance than I thought he would.

Please read jillian's diary about overseas ISPs getting blocked from accessing the Federal Voting Assistance Program at fvap.gov.

Obviously the blocking is pretty much useless and can be defeated easily with anonymous proxies. But I'm wondering if we, the technoprogressives, could set up a temporary proxy that just reflects all requests and responses to fvap.gov and then get the link out to overseasvote.com and the other sites.

I don't have a permanent IP or a particularly fast connection or I would do it myself - is there someone out there? Please post here or email me at margaretmoser (at) yahoo (dot) com.

I had a couple of drinks in celebration of poll results today (and finally getting my car back from the shop - a two month saga I won't get into here). Now I'm entering the tipsy political speculation phase of the evening, and it occurred to me to wonder where we'd be in the presidential polls if there had never been an Iraq invasion. For hypothetical purposes, I'm just thinking about the version of events where Iraq was never on the radar, not other scenarios where a better job was done with diplomacy, etc.

...according to a MoveOn email that you probably got too, you Kos pinko. :)

Here's what I put in as my personal comment when I signed the petition (going to Congresswoman, senators, and Bush). God this whole thing makes me angry.

My close friends Bridget and Anne Michelle are having the best day of their lives today. They got married in Boston a few weeks ago and this afternoon Anne Michelle has delivered a beautiful and healthy daughter, Katherine Laura, who will be a happy, loved, ridiculously well-educated child.

But tomorrow may be the worst day of Bridget and Anne Michelle's life (and perhaps of Katherine Laura's too), because the US Congress is going to vote on whether to outlaw her parents' love for each other. I ask you as my representatives to consider what it would be like if someone passed a law declaring your parents' marriage and their unfaltering commitment illegal, void, unworthy of recognition. Can you even contemplate what it would feel like?

Katherine Laura is busy learning how to eat, wiggle her toes and focus her eyes on her loving parents. If Bridget has her way, baseball and particle physics will be coming up soon. Let's not make her learn about prejudice and election-year grandstanding too.

m3

if you're feeling as horrified and withdrawn as the main page posters, you might consider dropping by the HRC home page right now. They have a slide show of happy newlyweds from Massachusetts that might make you feel better.

Go check it out, and feel free to sign the Million for Marriage petition too so they can stay married.

I believe it was here on Kos that I read an insightful deconstruction of the "schools are open" idea, the main point of which was that the schools never closed until we started bombing them. I'm not writing any love letters to Baathist Iraq, but it was a hundred times more functional than reconstruction-era Iraq is now - open schools, consistent electricity, no mile-long lines for gasoline. So it really ought to be a given that the schools are open now, if we were doing anything like a competent job of occupation.

What really chaps my hide is what I think is the reason for the success of this meme: in the back of most of our heads, Iraq is secretly the same place as poor, forgotten Afghanistan, where the girls' and non-Islamic schools indeed were closed during Taliban rule and are still closed (or under constant threat) outside of Kabul. Funny how you don't hear about the schools in Kandahar though.

From: m3
Date: Tue Feb 24, 2004  12:15:46  PM US/Pacific
To: president@whitehouse.gov
Subject: Fwd: Big Baby News!

Dear Mr. Bush,

Below is an email I received today from close friends of mine who are having a baby. Their joyous news coincides with your announcement that you plan to attack their status and hopes as a family.

Marriage has been a lot of things throughout history, Mr. President - ask an anthropologist or a historian. It is an institution that both reflects and defines us as human beings. Right now, not through the actions of "a few" judges and local officials but through the commitment and love of hundreds of thousands of human beings, that institution is being redefined to include same-sex couples.

I've been thinking a lot about the comments I've seen, here and elsewhere (like on Talking Points Memo), about the timing of the gay marriage issue. I understand all the reservations people have about backlash, and I do worry about it too.

But part of me keeps wondering, why not just do something to change people's minds if you're worried that the issue will work against you? This is an issue that really is affected by education and exposure - the visceral response to the phrase 'gay marriage' is no, but when people see the warm and fuzzy pictures of newlyweds or hear the stories of hospital tragedies they will often change their minds.

Check it out - this is the best news since the Chandler race.

http://www.voanews.com/article.cfm?objectID=962CC8A6-5A56-4E5F-9BCBDCAAE4E0329A

I'm so excited I could do an end-zone dance.