Socialism On Trial

The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.

This really is a delightful video. It highlights the fight of the Liverpool Labor Councilors fighting to defend Labor socialism in Liverpool in the mid-1980's during Thatcherism. What I found so heartwarming about it was seeing the majority of the White working class in this city rallying in the streets with red flags and signs saying socialism.

Here in the US, that sight is almost incomprehensible. No way will any group of White working class Americans anywhere march in the streets with red flags defending any kind of socialism. The interviews were also very uplifting. These working class Whites defended the Labour Party and its socialist project.

Why? Because they lived in a totalitarian Communist state and had to say that? No, because the socialist Labourites on the council had actually been making their lives better in real and tangible ways for decades.

This didn't happen by accident. The Labourites finally started winning big after WW2, possibly because the Right in the UK was discredited by the defeat of fascism.

Over 60 years, a very strong socialist movement, in the Labour Party, built its own Gramscian cultural hegemony in the UK. This succeeded to the point where your average Brit is a social democrat. There are large papers such as the Guardian, run by corporations, that are pro social democrat. Publicly financed broadcasting in the BBC is also probably pro-social democrat.

It is hard for non-Americans to understand how incomprehensible this is. The notion of huge broadcasting stations and newspapers supporting social democracy in the US is comical. The notion of your average American supporting socialist anything is a product of science fiction. The White working class in particular is irredeemable hostile to anything with the word socialist in it.

But this video shows that it is possible in the West for a socialist political party to win the hearts of White working class people. That notion right there shows that there is hope after all.

This interesting website highlights something else about US culture. Since Reagan in 1980, we have had almost 30 years of hardcore Gramscian cultural hegemony working like madmen to inculcate the market virus in our brains and make us hate anything government with Pavlovian unthinkingness.

In particular, an effort has somehow emerged, apparently cultivated by the Republican Party, that Democrats are fags, wussies, sissies or metrosexuals, and only Republicans and conservatives are real men. The Democrats are for the niggers, the Mexicans and the faggots*.

In White working class communities in rural and suburban California, it seems most of the young men vote Republican. If you're White, working class and say you vote Democrat, people will say, "Well you're not Black or Mexican, so what is your problem? Are you a queer?"

If you're a real man, you're a conservative. You love capitalism, you hate environmentalism, you hate towelheads, Islam, Europeans (especially France) and foreigners in general. You love global warming and plans to stop it are a Democrat socialist faggot plot against capitalism.

If you're a Democrat, your masculinity is suspect. If you're not a queer, at least you're not much of a man. Maybe you're a metrosexual. Reagan was real man. Jimmy Carter was a wuss. Bill Clinton, despite all the bimbos, was some sort of faggy not real man type. George Bush is a man. His father was supposedly a man too, but Bush Sr. actually has a pretty wimpy voice and mannerisms.

Basically, any Republican is automatically a big man and any Democrat is automatically a wussy metrosexual possible faggot.

You love globalization because it's capitalism on steroids, but say buy American (don't ask for coherence). You hate Palestinians for being dirty fighters and love Israel for fighting like real men. You love imperialism and colonialism for their manliness and cynical, real-world hardened views of the globe. And it's very manly and studly to be a neoconservative. You hate health food and love meat, especially red meat.

Socialism of any type, either in health care or social security, is for pussies and fags.

The love of capitalism is because all real men can supposedly become "successful" and "make good money" in the US, or, I guess, anywhere. Assuming 100% of US men decided to become he-men and make it to the upper middle class, how all 100% of them could somehow manage to squeeze into the top 20% is not explained.

If you're a liberal or a Democrat, you're not only a queer, but you're also a loser. If you're a liberal or a Democrat and you have some money, you're considered to be an insane person, working against your own interests.

Money is very much tied in with masculinity in our culture. American women, despite all the feminism, continue to judge a man's masculinity on his earnings. Somehow feminism managed to push equal pay for women while still winking at "take the man for everything he's got" game, giving "oppressed" women the best of both worlds.

An American woman's contemptuous, snarky, "You don't make enough money" is another way for her to call you a faggot or a pussy. So in addition to being called a loser, a low-income man is also told he's not a man. No wonder so many guys go postal.

Since money is equated with masculinity, the new conservative White guy does the same. He may not make much, but some day he will. Or he envies the guys who do. Or something. Or whatever.

It's interesting that in other parts of the world, particularly Europe, China, Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, the Arab World, the Muslim World, and Asia in general, an identity has been constructed in which a socialist man can be as real of a he-man that ever existed.

The ultra rightwing macho man is very much a US invention, but US politics cannot be understood these days without taking it into account.

*used sardonically

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A Voice of Sanity on Hamas

From the Zionist Time Magazine, of all places.

Well, you know, Time is still an intellectual rag when it isn't imitating US News and World Report, and I guess the mass outbreak of stupidity called a US election even sticks in their craw.

Americans being Americans, the MSM being what is, the political parties being what they are, and the Israeli Lobby being an actually existing entity, don't anyone expect any outbreaks of sanity anytime soon. Sadly, McCain beats all Democrats in keeping us safe from terrorists. I guess as long you don't have a uniform on in McCain's 100 Years War in Iraq, maybe he keeps you safer. Maybe. But I doubt it.

The worst terror attack on US soil ever happened on George Bush's watch, and he was rewarded for that "achievement" by consistently receiving sky-high ratings for "keeping us safe from terror". Are you laughing yet? Maybe you ought to be. That's the way US Idiot-Politics works. The MSM and both parties work to keep us as idiotic and ignorant as possible, and in return we voice our stupidity in the ballot box every couple years.

None of it makes sense to any halfway intelligent person, but most Americans aren't halfway intelligent anyway. They are not supposed to be, and they probably don't even want to be. That the Ruling Class of society deliberately conspires to keep them as stupid as possible is particularly infuriating, though not unexpected.

Study shows that ruling elites have opposed educating the masses for centuries if not millenia. Keeping the people as stupid as possible is a core principle of conservatism itself, and an excellent reason to oppose it outright on principle. That America continues on in the footsteps of the Medieval indulgence-buying priests saying Latin Masses is poignant and infuriating, yet makes a sort of sickening sense.

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In the Shining Path of Ann Dunham

The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.

Updated April 12:

It's a lie that Sendero Luminoso never had much support. Simon Strong's 1992 book gives the lie to that quite well. In the 18 months following Fujimori's seizure of power, an unbelievable 1.5 million Peruvians were arrested on charges of being members of or collaborating with the Shining Path.

Surveys done at the height of their power indicated that they had the passive support of about 50% of the very poorest in society, with the full support of 16%. Really, to win any revolution you probably need 30% support, but the Bolsheviks did it with a lot less.

In the American Revolution, few Americans know that only 1/3 of Americans support George Washington's bands, another 1/3 were basically traitors supporting the English crown and another 1/3 were pragmatic fence-sitters waiting to see which side was going to win before they decided who to support.

Most people don't realize that in most civil wars you have a huge percentage of fence-sitters who are mostly just trying to stay alive.

Sendero had support even in the churches and in the military. They completely blew it in a lot of ways though, and though they still operate, they are a shadow of what they formerly were.

In my post, Sendero Fades and FARC Rises in Peru, I elaborate how Sendero has faded in Peru only to be replaced by the FARC of Colombia, who have been moving far down into Peru for some time now, and have been doing well with peasants fed up with Sendero's mad violence.

The remains of the MRTA (yes, they still exist also) are up in the far north of Peru in San Martin Province where they always had their main base. Many former rebels from Sendero and the MRTA have basically left those groups and marched off to Colombia for retraining as members of the FARC.

This is part of a FARC regional strategy to expand into the countries surrounding it - there is the FARE in Ecuador, the FARV in Venezuela (which may have 2-3,000 members), the FARB that operates in the Dog's Head region on the Brazilian border of Colombia and I believe the FARP that operates in Peru.

This article from La Rouche Publications (no, I do not endorse them) while a bit over the top, has an excellent roundup and analysis of the Sendero phenomenon. Particularly interesting is the huge support they had in the Peruvian diaspora in Europe, the US and Mexico, with a mind-numbing array of organizations.

In the US, the support was run by the Maoists in the RCP, a large US Maoist group. RCP's homepage is here, and they actually run some decent articles, though I don't support Communism in the US or anywhere else in the First World at the moment - I support some variety of socialism instead, and that can even mean social democracy.
El Diario International is the international paper of Sendero, or at least what remains of it. What is amazing is that this Belgium-based paper still prints a lot of issues, at least on the Net. It's chock full of brand-new raving articles all the time.

I don't read Spanish very well, but maybe someone who does could check it out and come back and report to us in the comments. El Diario del Hoy was Sendero's paper in Peru, but it's long been shut down. I think it reappears clandestinely from time to time.

I have read tons of Sendero propaganda and position statements. These people are completely off the deep end. All existing Communist states are "revisionist" (not real Communists but instead reformist traitors to the movement), and that includes North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos and of course China. They despise both Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Evo Morales of Bolivia. Chavez is pegged as some sort of "corporatist fascist".

Sendero does support other armed Maoists like the revolutionaries in the Philippines, Nepal and India (but their most recent editorial condemns the Nepalese Maoists for "capitulation"). The Nepalese revolutionaries have done very well, the NPA in the Philippines is a vast organization, and the Indian Maoists are expanding like mad in the east. I don't have a problem with any of these three movements.

Their position statements, and regular publications of their Red Sun Magazine (both here) are some of the rantingest, ravingest Commie stuff out there (Red Sun (Sol Rojo) 29 in Spanish, Red Sun 29 English supplement). As Peruvian society is evil and the system is a pile of garbage, Peruvian reality drove Senderistas insane. The crazier and more wicked the society, the crazier and more wicked the guerrilla reaction.

The La Rouche link (forget the nonsense about how Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch support Sendero, and forget anything about the UK - LaRouchies have always been insane on the subject of the Crown) makes clear the link between Sendero and radical anthropologists and academics, in particular psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, historians, teachers and agronomists.

The role of anthropologists, both Peruvian and even foreign, as essentially the brainchildren of Sendero is especially glaring.

Just for the record, this blog supports the ELN and FARC in Colombia, and supported the MRTA in Peru, but cannot support the project of Sendero.

The link with anthropologists is especially interesting in that Obama's mother was an anthro, and she has been decried as an America-hater, and this America-hatred of hers can be seen supposedly in both Obama and his wife.

Though I do not care about whether or not Obama and his wife hate America, I think these latest America-hating charges may well be fatal for his campaign, especially with White ethnic working class types (Reagan Democrats), independents and Republicans who were voting for Obama for some bizarre reason.

This Asia Times piece by Spengler is worth reading along those lines. Though I am not a big fan of Spengler, he is definitely worth reading. He tells it like it is all right.

I'm for whichever Dem, the Black or the woman, can beat the Republican clown. At this point it's starting to look like the lady. Women all over the country are fired up and hopping mad about the sexist BS directed at Hillary all through this whole campaign. A bunch of yahoo alpha male dogs showed up at one of Hilary's appearances in New Hampshire and yelped, "Iron my shirts!"

Jeez.

Good for American women for standing up to this sexist crap. Everyone should stand up for their rights, and I applaud my sisters. This blog will never attack Hilary on sexist grounds.

The Israeli Lobby and American Society

The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.

Updated February 13, 2008:

Joachim Martillo has posted a lengthy and excellent opus, Judonia Rising: The Israeli Lobby and American Society, on one of his websites, an encyclopedic analysis of the US Israeli Lobby and its effects on US society. Noam Chomsky offered a critique (see the first comment at the end of the post for details), and afterwards, Joachim rewrote several pages. I have also been asked to offer a critique.

This is a very important work that ought to be read in full by anyone interested in the subject. It deserves to be widely disseminated and commented on, dissected and analyzed.

First of all, I agree with much of what he has written so there is no need to comment on what I agree on. If I don't mention it in what follows, that probably means I agree.

I do disagree with certain things.

Obviously, as a Commie, I have serious issues with the whole Bolshevik Jew killers thing. It's hard to argue that people who reduced the death rate by 70% in Russia were the worst killers to ever set foot in Russia. I'm so tired of debating the Bolshevik Jew killer thing that I don't even want to get into it anymore.

Now, for the rest.

It is incorrect to say that Jewish values include early age of sexual initiation and serial polygamy. Kevin MacDonald notes that US Jews have sex at the latest age of any ethnic group. They also have some of the most stable marriages last time I checked.

It's difficult to lump Abigail Thornton, a rightwing Jewish Republican opposed to civil rights, in with a US Jewish agenda that relentlessly promotes civil rights. Martillo fails to note that the Jewish neocons are actually opposed to civil rights law in the US, either by promoting Supreme Court justices sworn to dismantle it or by cheering on Republicans who have been refusing to enforce civil rights laws for almost 30 years now.

It's very hard to say that Friedmanite freemarketeer neoliberalism is part of the US Jewish agenda, as most US Jewish organizations are agnostic on economics and if anything, promote more state intervention, regulation of business, socialist redistribution programs, socialized medicine and education, etc.

Friedmanism is part of the agenda of the neocons, but the neocon agenda in whole is embraced by only at most 20% of US Jews who vote Republican. This is where the equation of Jewish neoconservatives with US Jews gets dangerous and wrong. US Jews vote up to 80% Dem in recent years.

Neocons are best seen as a rightwing split-off of Republican Jews whose views in whole are rejected by the overwhelming majority of US Jews. However, on Israel, many liberal US Jews are becoming neocons in whole or in part, but the average US Jew is still pretty diverse on Israel. It is better to say that the large US Jewish organizations have gone over to neoconservatism on Israel.

I am still not sure that the US media can be painted as 100% Jewish owned, as there are large media firms still run by old WASP money. Murdoch is apparently Jewish, but that goes way back. Here is a summary from the web on Murdoch's Jewish connection. It sounds reasonable:

Rupert (actually Keith Rupert) Murdoch's father was Keith Murdoch (died 1952), his mother Elisabeth Joy (nee Greene) and yes her mother, Marie Grace de Lancey Forth was born from a Jewish mother.

Rupert's paternal grandfather, Patrick John, was a reverend, the maternal grandmother was Marie Grace de Lancey Forth, who was born in Warnambool, Victoria (Australia), HER mother Caroline Jemima (nee Sherson) was born to a Jewish family, hence by "Jewish law", making Rupert Jewish.

Also for the record, it was not unheard of "way back then" for Protestants or Catholics to marry Jews, and I know this as my grandparents are prime example. My grandfather, born in Ireland in 1895 to a prominent protestant family, married a Jewish woman, making my father and all his siblings Jews.

The Jewish ancestry comes purely from the MATERNAL line and has squat to do with the paternal.

It should also be noted that many Jewish families settled in Australia post 1788.

It's downright bizarre the way so many ethnocentric voraciously attack the notion that Murdoch is Jewish. You would think they want to claim him.

Martillo fails to discuss the theory of the Jewified US Gentile, as Albert Lindemann coined the term in his book Esau's Tears, Anti-Semitism and the Rise of the Jews. This is also a theme of Yuri Slezkine's Jewish Century, the theme of which is best described as "we are all Jews now". Many US Gentiles are Jewified via marriage to or deep friendship with ethnocentric Jews.

This aspect of US politics is overlooked in folks trying to "blame it all on the Jew". Americans support Jews and support Israel. We are Jewified. I believe Karl Marx said that in 100 years the US would be a Jewish country. He was correct.

How those Gentiles got Jewified is open to debate.Perhaps they became Judeophiles and Zionists by brainwashing. Well, so what? Most of our political views are due to propaganda of some sort. Any analysis of US Jewry, the Lobby, etc, that does not take into account all of the Gentile support for Israel is bound to fail.

US Jews have plenty of money, but it is mostly in certain parts of economy. They were run out of the banks long ago and the Holocaust finished off the rest of Jewish banking power. Banks are now run by international corporations out of Japan, Hong Kong, Europe and the US. The ones in the US are not noticeably Jewish-owned.

It is true that Jews are important in investment banking. They made serious gains in this area in 1910-1920 but the effort to take over the regular banks was resisted by Gentile ethnic warfare. Jews also tried to take over the stock market at that time but were rebuffed similarly.

All of this is documented extensively in Henry Ford's The International Jew, an excellent book that is often not really anti-Semitic in any way, and at any rate is essential reading for documentation of US Jewish ethnic warfare in the US from 1900-1920. It was during this period that the Jewish Hollywood and media dominances were created.

I do not believe that the US financial or high tech industries are run by Jews at all. US Jews are huge in retail department stores, especially clothing, and also in jewelry, furs and a few other things. They don't really dominate real estate at all.

I also disagree that a US Jewish or Zionist elite is set to take over a rather democratically diminished US. There will be some Jews in such a setup, mostly neoconservatives, but most will be White Gentiles like Bush, Rumsfeld, Rove and Cheney, with some Blacks like Condoleeza Rice and the Powells and some Latinos like Alberto Gonzales.

Increasingly, the US is becoming a caste society based on income alone, and members of any race may join these hard rightwingers in their elitist project. It's all about money, not race, religion or ethnicity.

This undemocratic, quasi-fascist project will be resisted by many, and I assure you that liberal US Jews will be leading the charge to oppose this nightmare. People see Jews leading contrary movements going head to head with each other and think it's all part of an exceptionally devious and convoluted Jewish plot.

The truth is so much more mundane: Jews simply lead movements, and are also disproportionately attracted to fanaticism and extremism in general, in part due to the nature of Judaism itself, as Kevin MacDonald points out.

In related news, Tom Lantos, longtime Congressman from San Mateo, is dead. A Hungarian Jew and a Holocaust survivor, he has been a longtime, very strong supporter of the Israeli government. He led the charge to invade Iraq and promised an Israeli legislator that the US would take out Saddam for the benefit of both countries in 2002.

He helped rally Congressional Democrats to go along with Bush's mad war. Lantos is a good example of some of the very liberal California Jews who represent us Californians. They are superb on most liberal issues and get high marks from most liberal organizations on their voting records.

But on Israel, they are often surprisingly hawkish. Barbara Boxer and Diane Feinstein are good examples, as is Brad Sherman. As a progressive, I would probably vote for them, as the Republican running against them would be just as pro-Israel, if not more, along with being wrong about all the domestic stuff. Politics is so complicated.

As'ad AbuKhalil of the Angry Arab blog has a great article up about George Habash of the PFLP in the Electronic Intifada, who we wrote about previously. The lead photo is really nice too; I would run it here but I'm unsure about rights issues. EI, run by Ali Abunimah, is a great publication with superb views on the conflict.

It's run by reasonable Palestinians, exemplified by Abunimah, and their supporters, and it's as far from Hamas and Islamic Jihad as it is from Zionism. Zionists, mostly Jews, have been running a vicious campaign against Abunimah for years calling him an anti-Semite (What else?) but there's nothing to it.

To what extent the views of EI represent those of the average Palestinian on the street is not known. My worry is that as this conflict festers idiots like Hamas and IJ and bigger idiots like Al Qaeda will gain increasing power in Palestine. They won't achieve their goals, and I would not want them to anyway, but a lot more people, mostly Palestinians, are going to die.

AbuKhalil is wrong about one thing in his piece - that the PFLP hardly exists anymore.

While dwarfed by Hamas and Fatah, it's still a large and powerful organization with at least 80,000 active supporters, plenty of money, a fully armed guerrilla force that carries out regular attacks, a busy propaganda faction with websites, a newspaper and magazines, and up to a dozen above-ground organizations for everything from youth to women to workers.

Islamic Jihad gets way more press, but they are not much bigger than the PFLP. As an example, the PFLP fired 7 missiles on February 5th and 2 rockets on February 6th, all from Gaza and aimed at Sderot and Ashkelon. I think shooting these rockets is idiotic, but it's kind of hard to understand how a nonexistent army can fire 7 rockets in 2 days. They also fought a battle with Israeli forces in Gaza on February 5th.

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Results and Analysis of Key US Races

Results and analysis of key state races in the US off-year election of 2006, with a strong pro-Democratic Party spin. I stayed up all night jonesing on election junkie fix, mostly writing this post. I finally went to bed at 10:30 AM. My eyes were aching.

I would like to extend my gratitude to the fantastic Political Cheat Sheet blog, without which this post could not have been written, as I borrowed heavily from its analysis.

New update! 6:44 AM, November 22.




THE US SENATE



The D's are up in the Senate, 51-49, because traitor and Israeli agent Joe Lieberman and Bernie Sanders, independent socialist from Vermont, are supposedly going to caucus to D's. Lieberman, dog and traitor that he is, is reportedly demanding a Congressional committee chair, specifically, Homeland Security, as a price for caucusing with D's.

He will get that and Israel will control our homeland security even more than they already do. The D's picked up an incredible 6 seats! Amazing!

Jim Webb barely won in Virginia, as George Allen waited a day or so to concede. The Dems have won the Senate!

The winners are in bold.



ARIZONA

Kyl (R - incumbent) vs Pederson (D)

D's had hoped that former AZ Democratic Party Chair Jim Pederson with his big bucks could pick up this seat. Kyl is a good campaigner and Pederson was not able to pull this one out and Kyl won easily 53-44.


CONNECTICUT

Schlesinger (R) vs Lamont (D) vs Lieberman (I - incumbent)

It’s hard to believe how Ned Lamont blew this race, but never underestimate the sheer sleaze of Joe Lieberman, Senator from Tel Aviv, who actually campaigned as an antiwar candidate.

Lieberman will probably caucus with the D's if the D's give him the Homeland Security chair that he craves. Lieberman was always more loyal to a s-y little country than either political party, Connecticut or America. R voters broke heavily for Lieberman, who ran as an independent after getting his ass whooped in the primary. 50-40-10 Lieberman Lamont Schlesinger (the Republican).


MARYLAND

Steele (R) vs Cardin (D) (Open seat)

Michael Steele is a black man who is way too conservative for Maryland, a state were D's outnumber R's 2-1. He is pro-Iraq War, anti-abortion, anti-gay rights, and anti-stem cell research. He campaigned for Black votes all over MD, where the Blacks were very friendly, but then marched off to vote against him, as they always do to any Black R. Cardin ended up winning handily 54-44.

Cardin ran Michael J Fox ads for stem cell research, and that seems to have given him the election, although Cardin was a terrible, wooden candidate.


MICHIGAN

Bouchard (R) vs Stabenow (D - incumbent)

This race was over from the beginning. Bouchard was a lousy candidate and Michigan is quite hostile to R's this year. The only chance the R's had here is the Governor's race (being run with Amway money), which, while up in the air, for a while, was pulled out by the not-so-popular Dem incumbent. Stabenow won 57-41.


MINNESOTA

Kennedy (R) vs Klobuchar (D)

Klobuchar slaughtered Kennedy for this open seat. R's had big hopes of grabbing this one. No way. Klobuchar creamed him, 58-38.


MISSOURI

Talent (R - incumbent) vs McCaskill (D)

McCaskill won this race, but it was very, very close. The rural White areas go totally R, and the 3 big Black cities - Springfield, St. Louis and Kansas City - all go D in a big way. Rural and suburban areas get counted first and big cities get counted last. With 60% counted, Talent was ahead, but later, McCaskill pulled ahead and in the end, she barely won the race 49-48 and Talent conceded.

Talent is actually a decent man, although he is a fundamentalist Christian. At least he is honest, unlike so many of these Republican criminals. This was the closest race in the country and it was mostly about stem-cell research (Talent oppose it and McCaskill favors it), if you can believe that. Rightwing Christians are a huge factor here, as is their turnout.

A stem cell ballot measure, which won by 20 points, and ads by Michael J Fox, along with Rush Limbaugh's horrible comments about them, hurt Talent. Elections here depend heavily on how many rural Whites come out to vote.


MONTANA

Burns (R - incumbent) vs Tester (D)

Conrad Burns is wrapped up in with many of the top R scandals, and on top of that, he blew it over and over in the race. Organic farmer Jon Tester was considered by D's to be too liberal for Montana. This one should have been an easy R win. Guess not. Tester ran a great campaign. Tester won by only 2,850 votes. Cliffhanger!


NEW JERSEY

Kean (R) vs Menendez (D - incumbent)

Cuban-American Menendez, an ethically challenged D, took this one from Kean, a popular former Governor, in this very D state. This state tends to break D at the end, and the D vote tends to surpass all polls. Kean appears to have gotten nailed over the Foley scandal.

The NJ Supreme Court ruled in favor of gay marriage, and it was thought that this would help Kean, but it was not enough. NJ conservatives don't like Kean, who they see as too liberal. Many probably stayed home. Menendez 53-45.


NEW YORK

Clinton (D-incumbent) vs Spencer (R)

Total wipe out by Hillary, 67-31. Ouch!


OHIO

DeWine (R - incumbent) vs Brown (D)

DeWine, linked to George Bush, Bob Ney, unpopular governor Bob Taft and the criminal gangster Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, got nailed by Sherwood Brown, who ran a great campaign. A couple of years ago, he had a 60% approval rating. Not anymore. Ohio was a total disaster for R's this year. Blackwell lost; all the Representatives lost and DeWine got pummeled. Brown won 56-44.


PENNSYLVANIA

Santorum (R - incumbent) vs Casey (D)

Casey is a conservative anti-abortion former Governor. Santorum got totally creamed in this election. He is an extreme rightwing Christian Taliban crazy who was always wrong for this state. He launched a bevy of desperate attacks at the end as the Titanic was going down. Casey won 59-41.


RHODE ISLAND

Chafee (R - incumbent) vs Whitehouse (D)

The most moderate Republican in the Senate went down to defeat. Whitehouse won 53-47. Moderate R's are now an endangered species in the Northeast.


TENNESSEE

Corker (R) vs Ford (D)

Corker won this race by 3%, 51-48. This should have been a Republican shoo-in. Corker is a moderate but he ran a horribly racist campaign against Harold Ford, who is a mulatto. Ford ran a great campaign but screwed up by crashing a Corker campaign rally to demand that Corker stop dissing his family.

This was the dirtiest campaign of all, and both candidates clearly hate each other. The racist ad the R's ran showing a blond bimbo saying she met Ford at a party at the Playboy Mansion turned White rural racists against Ford. It's really hard for any D to win Tennessee, especially a Black or mulatto D. Why the D's ran a mulatto here, I have no idea.


VIRGINIA

Allen (R - incumbent) vs Webb (D)

Webb barely won by 7,250 votes. Webb was down by 26,000 votes and at the end he turned it around with the votes from Black cities like Richmond and Arlington. This was a horribly dirty campaign. Twisted sadistic freak Allen was supposed to be a poster boy for a GOP run for President in 2008, but that is over. That means that the Dems take the Senate!


WASHINGTON

McGavick (R) vs Cantwell (D - incumbent)

The R's should have won this one. Safeco Executive Mike McGavick was supposed to be a good choice, and Maria Cantwell barely won in 2000. McGavick ran a lousy campaign, fighting dirty and having to confess to a drunk driving arrest. This is a Democratic state. In the end, Cantwell massacred McGavick, 58-39. Cantwell was said to be "the most vulnerable" D Senator. What a joke. She creamed McGavick.




HOUSE RACES



Dems have picked up 29 seats so far to take comfortable control over the House with 233 House votes, defying most reasonable expectations. A few races are still up for grabs. Moderate Republicans in general were almost driven to extinction in the Northeast and increasingly in the Rust Belt. They are becoming an endangered species everywhere.

The Deep South is actually getting more Republican with each election (especially Georgia), which is why Webb's beating Allen is all the more startling. Since the Dems won the Senate 51-49, picking up 6 seats, the Dems now control Congress. Yo! I am drinking wine right now as a type!


ARIZONA

1 Renzi (R - incumbent) vs Simon (D)

5 Hayworth (R - incumbent) vs Mitchell (D)

8 Graf (R) vs Giffords (D) (Open seat)

Rightwing extremist and former State Rep. Randy Graf won the Republican primary in AZ8, and the national party gave up after that. Gabby Giffords ran a great campaign against him. Graf made hay on immigration at the start but it was too little too late. Giffords won easily 54-42. Not even funny.

At first D's thought Mitchell, the D challenger, had a good chance against JD Hayworth, a far right winger. But initially, Mitchell was far behind. The Foley scandal turned the whole thing around. It ended up being down to the wire, with Hayworth set to win, but in a wild upset, Mitchell won, 51-46. Incredible.

But gangster Hayworth, true to his thuggish style, has actually had the gall to refuse to concede the election, although there is not a snowball's chance in Hell that he can win. What an ass!

Rick Renzi was supposed to have a safe seat but is all tied up in a corruption mess. He won anyway, but it was close, 51-44.

Amazingly, Arizonans defeated a measure to ban gay marriage! This has always been a fairly libertarian state though, and the Christian nutcases are not so popular here.


CALIFORNIA

4 Doolittle (R - incumbent) vs Brown (D)

11 Pombo (R - incumbent) vs McNerney (D)

50 Bilbray (R - incumbent) vs Busby (D)

Almost no races in gerrymandered California districts are competitive. None of these three races should have been close at all. Pombo and Doolittle are both long-term Congressmen who have always won handy victories.

Anti-environmental rancher and extreme right winger from the Modesto - Tracy area in Central CA's Central Valley Richard Pombo was in the most trouble and was deeply tied to Abramoff's scandals. Incredibly, McNerney beat Pombo 53-47! Unbelievable!

Doolittle, another very rightwing Californian, this time from northeastern CA where there are more antelope than people, was also tied into just about every Republican scandal out there. Doolittle barely won 49-46. It is unthinkable in this district that this race should have been this close district.

Francine Busby challenged Brian Bilbray to replace R felon and former Rep Duke Cunningham. Bilbray won 54-43, but that is way too close.


COLORADO

4 Musgrave (R - incumbent) vs Paccione (D)

5 Lamborn (R - incumbent) vs Fawcett (D)

7 O’Donnell (R - incumbent) vs Perlmutter (D)

Two of three of these seats were supposed to be safe. Guess not.

Ed Perlmutter always had the best chance, and he beat Rick O'Donnell 55-42. This campaign was very nasty and mostly centered around illegal immigration. Coloradans are hopping mad about illegals, who have recently invaded the state in a huge way.

Rightwing radical Marilyn Musgrave led an anti-gay crusade, but faced a serious challenge from former pro basketball player Angie Paccione in CO4. The scandal involving the gay prostitute and the head of the National Evangelical Association, headquartered in CO, hurt Musgrave badly.

Musgrave was closing the gap 2 weeks ago with Paccione but more recent polling showed her falling behind again. Somehow, Musgrave squeaked it out, 46-43. I guess her evangelical base did not stay home like we thought they would. Musgrave is increasingly regarded as out of touch with her district. Angie Paccione had money problems at the end and that may have done him in.

Doug Lamborn is in a reliably Republican district and he beat Jay Fawcett easily 59-41. He ran an incredibly sleazy and dishonest campaign in which during the primary, he labeled his conservative R opponents as tax-raising liberals in thrall the homosexual agenda. Fawcett was a great candidate - a retired Air Force officer. In any sane district, Fawcett would have won handily.

But Lamborn's district centers around Colorado Springs, Ground Zero for deranged Christian Dominionist lunatics. Lamborn's evil campaign accused Fawcett of being pro-gay marriage, pro-pornography, pro-illegal alien, pro-gun control and a tax and spend East Coast liberal. None of which, apparently, are true. In the end, Christian Taliban freaks gave the election to the rude, vicious and wicked Lamborn.


CONNECTICUT

2 Simmons (R - incumbent) vs Courtney (D)

4 Shays (R - incumbent) vs Farrell (D)

5 Johnson (R - incumbent) vs Murphy (D)

Joe Lieberman's independent race was helping all three of the R incumbents above.

Shays was losing early in the evening but he somehow squeaked it out 51-48, which doesn't make a lot of sense.

Shays almost wrote his own death sentence with stupid moves. He refused outside R party help, defended Denny Hastert by bringing up Chappaquiddick, then topped it all off by saying that there was no torture at Abu Ghraib. That kind of nonsense may not fly in CN anymore. This guy was born with his foot in his mouth.

Republican Nancy Johnson got nailed by her Democratic opponent, Chris Murphy, 56-44.

On Election Day, Joe Courtney was up only 167 votes over Rob Simmons! A recount over a 6-day period gave the race to Courtney by 91 votes. Cliffhanger!


FLORIDA

13 Buchanan (R - incumbent) vs Jennings (D)

16 Foley (R - incumbent) vs Mahoney (D)

22 Shaw (R - incumbent) vs Klein (D)

Buchanan and Foley's seats should have been secure, but due to Foley's gay scandal and Katherine Harris' idiocy, they were not. FL13 is Harris' seat that she vacated to insanely run for Senate, though her own party despises her and she got totaled anyway.

Clay Shaw, a hard right winger in a D district, went down to ignominious defeat in a major upset in Ron Klein, who ran a great campaign. Both he and Klein poured money into the race. Klein won in a close race 51-47.

Buchanan should have been a shoo-in here, with all of his cash, but instead, he was supposed to lose this race to Christine Jennings. Katherine Harris' old seat almost took down her replacement, Buchanan. She and Foley are dragging down FL R's with them. In the end, Buchanan beat Jennings by 373 votes.

A recount has been completed and Buchanan won it but there appears to be excellent evidence of some typical Florida-style voting machine fraud in one county here which recorded 18,000 votes that voted for other offices but did not vote for Representative.

This is the sort of thing we saw all the time during the Election of 2004 that George Bush stole by hacking the voting machines. The best way to describe these votes is to say that they have "gone missing".

Jennings is now filing a lawsuit over this apparently obvious fraud and is asking for a new election, a request that is certainly legitimate.

The Foley-Mahoney race was a toss-up, but Mahoney beat Foley (actually, his replacement) by 4,400 votes.


GEORGIA

8 Collins (R) vs Marshall (D - incumbent)

12 Burns (R) vs Barrow (D - incumbent)

The R's should have grabbed these seats. Georgia is becoming more and more of a red state, and R Governor Sonny Perdue won easy re-election. Bush was down in GA campaigning for Burns and Collins but to no avail.

Marshall won by 1,700 votes.

Barrow barely pulled this one out after the results were certified on November 15, winning by 864 votes. Burns has conceded and will not seek a recount.

41% of voters here are Black, and the district contains heavily-black enclaves in Savannah. Barrow also somehow improved his performance in rural parts of the district. Curiously, this district was recently redrawn by the Republican Legislature, but Barrow won anyway.

Cliffhangers!


IDAHO

1 Sali (R - incumbent) vs Grant (D)

Bill Sali seemed to be a walking disaster. He was thought to be the only Idaho R to go down this year, but somehow, defying all expectations, Sali pulled this one out 50-45. Go figure. He is hated by many in his own party. The ultra-rightwing Club For Growth poured money into his campaign, seemingly sealing his doom. Grant is a moderate Dem.


ILLINOIS

6 Roskam (R - incumbent) vs Duckworth (D)

8 McSweeney (R) vs Bean (D - incumbent)

10 Kirk (R - incumbent) vs Seals (D)

14 Hastert (R - incumbent) vs Laesch (D)

Why was Hastert's seat even competitive? Hastert won 60-40, but he should have won a lot more than that. No way should that race have been close at all.

IL6 is the seat vacated by longtime R Henry Hyde (R). It is a conservative, wealthy district and this race went right down to the wire. Democrats ran a great candidate - disabled Iraq War vet Tammy Duckworth. Roskam vs Duckworth was back and forth all the way and right down to the finish line.

Clinton and Michael J Fox came in to work for Duckworth. The D Party poured $3 million into Duckworth's campaign at the end but Roskam won by 4,230 votes in a cliffhanger.

Melissa Bean was thought to be dead meat in this R-leaning district, but Bean moved to the center to keep her seat, 50-45.

Moderate R Mark Kirk, in a D-leaning district, was thought to be an easy winner but he has had to fight a hard race to keep his seat. Kirk is one of the few moderate R's surviving this 2006 R debacle, having won 53-47.


INDIANA

2 Chocola (R - incumbent) vs Donnelly (D)

3 Souder (R - incumbent) vs Hayhurst (D)

7 Dickerson (R) vs Carson (D - incumbent)

8 Hostettler (R - incumbent) vs Ellsworth (D)

9 Sodrel (R - incumbent) vs Hill (D)

The Republican governor here is really unpopular, and he is taking down many Indiana R's with him. This is a traditionally conservative state but the R's are getting creamed there this year.

Donnelly beat incumbent R Chocola 51-46.

Ellsworth massacred incumbent R Hostettler 61-39. That hurts!

Hill beat incumbent R Sodrel 49-46.

R incumbent Souder kept his seat 54-46.

Democratic incumbent Carson kept her seat 54-46.


IOWA

1 Whalen (R - incumbent) vs Braley (D)

2 Leach (R - incumbent) vs Loesback (D)

Whalen is history. Bradley beat the R 55-43.

Jim Leach, a moderate R who has been in trouble for a long time in this Democratic district, always seems to win. Loesback was not thought to be able to defeat incumbent R Leach this time, but he somehow won by less than 6,000 votes.


KENTUCKY

2 Lewis (R - incumbent) vs Weaver (D)

3 Northup (R - incumbent) vs Yarmouth (D)

4 Davis (R - incumbent) vs Lucas (D)

The R governor is suffering from scandals. Democrats made great gains in polls in recent weeks. Only Ken Lucas should have been in play here at all. Northrup and Lewis should have been shoo-ins, but this is a bad year for R's.

The Lucas-Davis race went back and forth in the polls but Davis won 51-44.

Conservative Democrat Col. Weaver fought incumbent R Lewis well but Lewis won handily 56-44.

Newspaper owner John Yarmouth kept moving up on incumbent R Ann Northup in the polls and amazingly squeaked past her 51-48.


LOUISIANA

3 Romero (R) vs Melancon (D - incumbent)

R's once thought they could pick up this seat. No way. Melancon won easily 55-40.

The crooked D Jefferson won in a crowded field with 30% of the vote. There will be a runoff between him and his closest challenger.


MINNESOTA

1 Gutknecht (R - incumbent) vs Walz (D)

6 Bachmann (R - incumbent) vs Wetterling (D)

The Foley scandal hurt ultra-rightwing Bachmann badly. Wetterling, a national child safety advocate, moved ahead of Bachmann a few weeks ago but Bachmann pulled it out at the end, 50-42.

R incumbent Gutknecht's race was supposed to be a safe seat. Nope. Walz won 53-47.


NEBRASKA

1 Fortenberry (R -incumbent) vs Moul (D)

3 Smith (R - incumbent) vs Kleeb (D)

It would have been hard for D's to pick up Fortenberry's seat. Lt. Gov. Maxine Moul ran a good campaign but went down badly 59-41.

Adrian Smith, backed by the reactionary Club For Growth, is an ultra-rightwing maniac. He seems to be too conservative even for this Republican district. Rancher Scott Kleeb ran a great campaign but Smith won 55-45.


NEW HAMPSHIRE

2 Bass (R - incumbent) vs Hodes (D)

Incumbent Charlie Bass is a popular moderate R who went down with the Foley scandal. It's simply incredible that he should lose to Hodes. Bass plummeted at the last minute, another moderate R biting the dust in the Northeast. This was supposed to be a safe seat. Hodes won 53-45.


NEW JERSEY

7 Ferguson (R - incumbent) vs Stender (D)

Stender was a liberal star who ran a great campaign. New Jersey is becoming a more D state these days but Ferguson fought for his life to hold onto his seat in a very close race. He should have won his seat easily. The NJ Supreme Court ruled in favor of gay marriage but this did not cause the damage to D's that everyone feared it would. Ferguson barely squeaked this one out by 2,240 votes.


NEW MEXICO

1 Wilson (R - incumbent) vs Madrid (D)

This is a D-leaning district but Heather Wilson has won a couple of races by now. It was thought she might lose this one, and Patsy Madrid, a good candidate but not such a good campaigner (big mouth) was favored to win.

On November 21, Wilson won the toughest campaign of her life, as Madrid finally conceded. Wilson won by 879 votes. Voting is not completely over, and Madrid may still ask for a partial recount.


NEW YORK

3 King (R - incumbent) vs Mejias (D)

19 Kelly (R - incumbent) vs Hall (D)

20 Sweeney (R - incumbent) vs Gillibrand (D)

24 Meier (R - incumbent) vs Acuri (D)

25 Walsh (R - incumbent) vs Maffei (D)

26 Reynolds (R - incumbent) vs Davis (D)

29 Kuhl (R - incumbent) vs Massa (D)

The NY GOP is imploding. Hillary Clinton creamed her Senate opponent and Eliot Spitzer creamed his Gubernatorial opponent.

Gillibrand nailed R incumbent John Sweeney 53-47. Sweeney lost in part due to a last-minute scandal where it came out that his wife recently called 9-11 on her because he was beating her.

Acuri beat R incumbent Meier, as predicted, 54-45.

Hall beat incumbent R Kelly in an upset by 3,500 votes.

Walsh, Kuhl and Reynolds, Republican incumbents, squeaked out victories:

Kuhl won 52-48.

Walsh won by less than 4,000 votes.

Reynolds won by less than 6,000 votes. Unfortunately, Democrat Jack Davis was a bizarre candidate against this highly vulnerable candidate.

Down to the wire, all three.

R incumbent King won more easily, 56-44.

Cliffhangers!


NEVADA

72 Heller (R - incumbent) vs Derby (D)

3 Porter (R - incumbent) vs Hafen (D)

These should be have been completely safe seats. There was a scandal involving R Congressman Gibbons, who ran for Governor, but the R's should won handily anyway. Instead, they were close races.

Heller won 51-46.

Porter barely won by less than 4,000 votes.


NORTH CAROLINA

8 Hayes (R - incumbent) vs Kissell (D) Too close to call!

11 Taylor (R - incumbent) vs Shuler (D)

Former NFL QB Heath Shuler took out R incumbent Charles Taylor (R) in NC11, 54-46. The D's have been after Taylor for a long time but Taylor has always had a knack for pulling out at the end. Taylor fought a dirty race and spent tons of money but went down anyway.

NC8 was a major D target, as it is a traditionally D district but their best candidate, Iraq War vet Tim Dunn, dropped out of the D primary. High school teacher Larry Kissell took his place but he never had any money.

Nevertheless, he polled well and he was ahead of R incumbent Robin Hayes going into the stretch. Then Kissell ran out of money at the end, and the national party did not step in help him. A recount is ongoing here, and Hayes' lead has shrunk to 339 votes.

Final results are expected soon. Hayes' lead has already shrunk by 120 votes after a number of provisional ballots were counted.


OHIO

1 Chabot (R - incumbent) vs Cranley (D)

2 Schmidt (R - incumbent) vs Wulsin (D)

15 Pryce (R - incumbent) vs Kilroy (D) Too close to call!

18 Padgett (R - incumbent) vs Space (D)

The Ohio GOP is in terrible shape. There have been endless scandals and GOP Governor Bob Taft has abysmal approval ratings.

Deb Pryce (R-OH15), #4 ranking R in the House, was favored to lose to Mary Jo Kilroy, who ran a great campaign focusing on the Foley mess. Pryce said proudly that Foley was her best friend in Congress, even after the affair broke. Pryce was originally thought to have won early on election election night, but the race turned back to being too close to call.

Right now, Pryce is up by over 3,600 votes but 19,000 provisional and absentee ballots remain to be counted. Furthermore, 30 ballot machines with about 1,800 votes on them were just found to not have been counted because poll workers could not figure out how to shut them down properly.

OH18 is history. This was Bob Ney's seat, but he is going to prison. His replacement in OH18, Joy Padgett, has battled stories of her company going bankrupt. Space massacred Padgett 62-38.

Cranley was favored to beat Chabot, but Chabot saved his own ass in the end, 53-47.

Jean Schmidt, the rightwing freak who ludicrously called John Murtha a coward, has now been declared the winner by AP, though there are still votes remaining to be counted in a recount. Schmidt is up by 3,200 votes over Victoria Wulsin in her Southern Ohio district. Southern Ohio is more like the South than the rest of Ohio - it's very fundamentalist and the Whites are quite racist. Christian fundamentalism has been exploding in that region lately.

This is a formerly rural district that is now part-rural and part Suburban Republican due to some major industries moving in here. The Suburban Republicans are also heavily Christian fundamentalist, but they have been getting increasingly disgusted with Schmidt, who is regarded as one of the worst freaks in the Republican Crazy freak show. This is a very Republican district that is considered by some to be the "hillbilly" part of Ohio.

Kook Ken Blackwell got creamed in the Governor's race.

Ohio is Waterloo for the R's - a total disaster. They lost the Senate seat, the Governor’s race and most of the statewide races, while the 4 Reps have to fight for their lives. Wipeout.


PENNSYLVANIA

4 Hart (R - incumbent) vs Altmire (D)

6 Gerlach (R - incumbent) vs Murphy (D)

7 Weldon (R - incumbent) vs Sestak (D)

8 Fitzpatrick (R - incumbent) vs Murphy (D)

10 Sherwood (R - incumbent) vs Carney (D)

R's got seriously creamed in Pennsylvania, just like Indiana, Ohio, and Connecticut. Bad, bad, bad. Senator Santorum got destroyed and the R's lost the Governor’s race in a wipe out. All in all, it was a massacre!

At first only R Jim Gerlach in PA6 was considered at risk but he somehow pulled it out the hat at the last minute. But Curt Weldon (PA7) and Don Sherwood (PA10) got toasted too. Weldon was hit badly by scandals and Sherwood went broke.

R incumbent Gerlach ran a great campaign against D Lois Murphy, not the best campaigner. Gerlach was well ahead a while back until the Foley mess hit. Gerlach was so frightened of national R's that he canceled an event with House Majority Leader John Boehner. It originally looked like Gerlach was going to lose but he won by 3,000 votes.

Sestak beat incumbent R Weldon, seriously damaged by scandal, handily, 56-44.

Altmire beat R incumbent Hart 52-48.

Carney beat R incumbent Sherwood 53-47.

Patrick Murphy, decorated Iraq War veteran, beat R incumbent Mike Fitzpatrick by 1,500 votes.


SOUTH CAROLINA

5 Norman (R) vs Spratt (D - incumbent)

This should have been an easy R seat. All sorts of big name R's came down to here to campaign for Norman but it was all to no avail. George Bush dragged down R challenger Norman, and he lost to D incumbent Spratt 57-43.


TEXAS

17 Taylor (R) vs Edwards (D - incumbent)

22 Sekula-Gibbs (R - incumbent) vs Lampson (D)

Tom DeLay's scandals gave away TX22, an extremely safe R seat that reliably elected DeLay year after year. His replacement Sekula-Gibbs polled very well towards the end, but write-ins never win. D challenger Lampson won handily by 52-42.

The R's had high hopes for TX17, which is increasingly R, but D incumbent Edwards easily won 58-40. R challenger and Iraq War vet Van Taylor was a poor candidate.


VERMONT

Rainville (R) vs Welch (D - incumbent)

The R's should have been able to grab this seat with a great candidate like Rainville, but Vermont is very D, and Rainville drowned in the flood. This was part of the D wave swamping the Northeast. Welch won 53-45.


VIRGINIA

2 Drake (R - incumbent) vs Kellam (D)

10 Wolf (R - incumbent) vs Feder (D)

D's were optimistic about Kellam's race, their best chance here in years. Kellam was up by a few points until news came out that he assaulted a woman in college. This race was a dead heat all the way but incumbent R Drake barely won at the end by 6,500 votes. Kerry's bad joke in this very military district and the assault charge both hurt Kellam.

Judy Feder ran a tough campaign focusing on gas prices against incumbent R Wolf, but falling gas prices helped Wolf keep his lead, and he easily won 57-41.


WASHINGTON

8 Reichert (R - incumbent) vs Burner (D)

D challenger and Microsoft millionaire Darcy Burner gave R incumbent Dave Reichert the battle of his life. The last known vote count had Reichert winning by 3,500 votes with 75% of precincts in. They are having a terrible time counting ballots in Washington for some reason, apparently because the vast majority of voters voted absentee.

Now that all votes have been counted, Reichert has won. Burner raised a lot of money, but rubber-stamp Reichert ran a campaign deliberately distancing himself from Bush and emphasizing Burner's lack of political experience.
No Democrat has ever won Reichert's district.

Reichert is a former sheriff who is credited with catching the Green River killer. This is basically the only reason he won. The truth is that he screwed up the investigation so much that the guy got away for 18 years, but the voters never figured that out. Reichert is one of the worst anti-environmental Congressmen, and he is increasingly out of step with Western Washington, where being Green is a big deal.


WEST VIRGINIA

1 Wakim (R) vs Mollohan (D - incumbent)

The Republicans should have been able to pick up this seat. Mollohan is fighting corruption charges but Chris Wakim, the Republican challenger, never made use of it. Mollohan creamed him 64-36.


WISCONSIN

8 Gard (R - incumbent) vs Kagen (D)

Republican Mark Green is running for Governor, so we have this race. This is a Republican-leaning district, and Kagen recovered from a dumb comment he made when he arrived late to an event, referring to his tardiness as "Injun time". In the end, Kagen beat incumbent R Gard by 6,500 votes. Cliffhanger.


WYOMING

Cubin (R - incumbent) vs Trauner (D) Too close to call!

This is a Wyoming district that R's usually win, but Barbara Cubin, an extremely rightwing, Christian Taliban, insanely pro-gun and anti-environmental Western R, can't seem to get no respect. She has never campaigned well and this campaign was worse than usual. Gary Trauner ran a tough campaign and sought out R votes.

During the campaign, Cubin threatened to slap a wheelchair-bound Libertarian challenger in what may have been the single stupidest move of the year by any candidate but Wyomingans probably don't even care. Cubin is ahead right now by 970 votes in preliminary votes that are due to be certified on November 15. Cliffhanger! Trauner will have to request his own recount if he wants one and pay for it himself.

George Allen Spit on His Wife

The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here.

Updated January 18, 2008: In the final poll of the race, a new SurveyUSA poll shows Democrat Jim Webb breaking away from Republican Looks like George Allen and leading him by an amazing 7 points. I call this one for Webb, but it will be close.

Looks like Republican super-racist Senator George Allen from Virginia, locked in a tight race with conservative Democrat and former Republican Secretary of the Navy under Ronald Reagan Jim Webb, spit (possibly tobacco juice) on his first wife.

The woman is named Anne Waddell and she now lives in La Jolla, California. Originally Anne Rubel, she was an aspiring model and actress at the time of the marriage. She filed for divorce a few days after Allen's re-election to Congress in 1983,

In the proceedings, Waddell said that Allen spit at her when he disagreed with something she wanted to do. He was the stereotypical controlling husband who refused to let his wife have a life of her own.

Other, poorly documented rumors imply that he also beat Waddell, but these need confirmation. As we shall see below, this portrayal of Allen as a disgusting punk fits into a general pattern of Allen's bullying, domineering, sadistic character.

This allegation is in the couple's divorce proceedings, which have been sealed by court officials for no apparent reason. Sealed divorce papers are usually sign of bad news - a really nasty divorce, at least.Court proceedings are usually sealed for two reasons - to protect the kids and to protect large financial fortunes. Neither is relevant in George Allen's case.

The allegation is reportedly coming not from Democratic Party operatives, but from people upset by Allen's disgusting attacks on his opponent, Jim Webb's Vietnam War novels (more on that below).

The spitting allegation got a lot of airplay last week when, on Halloween, Mike Stark, a liberal Virginia activist and blogger (Calling All Wingnuts is his blog), was assaulted as he approached Allen after a campaign rally and asked him some pointed questions.

First Stark asked if Allen would comment on his rumored arrest record from the 1970's. As Allen's thuggish redneck goon-aides grabbed Stark and maneuvered him towards the door, Stark hollered out, "Why did you spit on your first wife, George?" The Allen staffer then said, "Now you're getting personal", and tackled Stark to the floor.

This is clearly a pretty outrageous overreaction on the part of Allen's staff. Afterwards, Allen refused to apologize, saying, "These things happen". This incident reveals the thuggish mindset of Allen and his supporters that I will delve into in the rest of this post. It's not just a nasty political campaign, it's a whole cracker way of thinking.

According to Digby, Allen has always been a spitter. From the Washington Post:

Allen's personal style is similarly distinctive. He drinks beer mixed with orange juice and signs personal notes with the salutation, "Spit, George." Washington Post, Dec. 31, 1995

As noted below, while at the University of Virginia, he had a habit of spitting tobacco everywhere, including the walls and floors of the interior of buildings. There is additional circumstantial evidence that George Allen may well have spit on his ex-wife - he apparently has a habit of spitting on women just to be a sexist prick.

Swing State Project notes that five separate women have come forward and noted that Allen spit tobacco juice at their feet. So George Allen likes to spit at women's feet. I wonder what a psychoanalyst would do with ammo like that and Allen on his couch?

Here, a former reporter from a southwestern Virginia daily newspaper noted in her Daily Kos Diary that about 10 years ago then-Governor George Allen spit tobacco juice at her feet as she tried to interview him at a political rally. The New Republic's Ryan Liazza reports on an Allen campaign rally, where, at the end of the rally, a female fan approached Allen for an autograph and he spit tobacco juice at her shoes.

Another woman, Sarah Carter, granddaughter of Jimmy Carter, reported in her Daily Kos Diary that her little sister, just a child, went with her mother and a friend to a parade several years ago where Allen made an appearance. As her mother was talking to Allen, he spit tobacco juice on the girl's shoes. So, George Allen spits on little girls. Boo! Hiss! What's wrong with this guy anyway?

In the fourth case, a female Democratic Party worker reported in Bristol Herald Courier that Allen spit at her shoes when she and another worker went to one of his rallies several years ago.

Another man reports here that Allen spit on his wife at the opening of the notorious Red Onion State Prison which Allen opened. That prison would soon become one of the most racist and abusive in the US and was even written up by Human Rights Watch.

So there you have it, the guy is a bully who expresses his petty, disrespectful, contemptuous attitude towards women in part by spitting at them. Apparently, his own wife was the recipient of Allen's sexist expectoration assault.

Later on in this piece we will note that Allen is a bully and a racist. As you can see, he is also a sexist. A little-known fact is that racists are often sexists, and both tend to be bullies. The bullying mindset is the catalyst for the racist and sexist behavior towards the "inferior" sex and races.

As long as we are delving into skeletons in Allen's closet, how about asking about the two arrest warrants issued for George Allen in Albermale County, Virginia, in 1974 while he was a student at the University of Virginia?

The records have been purged and efforts to look into the matter are not leading anywhere. We need some enterprising bloggers and investigators to dig into this and put it out on the web for all to see.

Now, I normally do not delve into political sleaze, as that is the territory of sleazy, crooked Bush Republican criminals, liars and scoundrels. I'm not sure about an afterlife, but I still believe in playing fair, which is possibly why my income is $12,000/yr.

Furthermore, it pretty quickly turns you into a Bush Republican-style hypocrite, whereby one decries behavior in the other side and is silent or cheers the same behavior on one's own side. Personally, I would rather vote for a Democratic criminal than a Republican choirboy any day of the week, since I vote on ideology, not character.

Ideally, though, the Democratic Party should not run the scoundrel and ought to find another candidate instead. But negative campaigning works, and the Bush Republicans are diving into the mud puddle, so it's time to sling some mud ourselves.

Anyway, George Allen wants to play hardball.

He is bringing up Jim Webb's novels about the military in the Vietnam War, in which Jim tossed in plenty of salacious sex scenes, including a scene where a Cambodian man puts his 4-year-old son's penis in his mouth. Although this is child molestation in the US, it is normative behavior in Cambodian culture.

The novels are about the horrors of the Vietnam War, and the sex scenes are in the context of disturbing sex acts that soldiers witnessed while over in Nam. Novels endorsed by John McCain, no less, and the Commandant of the US Marine Corps, who has put Webb's Fields of Fire on the recommended reading list for Marine officers.

Let us note that Jim wrote those novels, intended for an audience of US military men, veterans and armchair warriors, while a highly-respected Republican war hero, a man who actually served in the Vietnam War.

At the time the novels were written by Republican Jim Webb, they were hailed by Republicans across the board. Nary a Republican peep was heard about how they might be pornographic, let alone child pornography.

Webb served in the Fifth Marine Regiment in Vietnam, where as a rifle platoon and company commander in the infamous An Hoa Basin west of Danang, he was wounded and was awarded the Navy Cross, the Silver Star Medal, two Bronze Star Medals, and two Purple Hearts. Webb's son is over in Iraq right now, even as Webb opposes the war.

Webb switched parties out of disgust for the Iraq War Fiasco and now suddenly the GOP, which knew of his novels all along and in fact hailed them, is suddenly outraged by them? Let us also note that George Allen, a typical Republican neoconservative chicken hawk, never served in any war.

Not that the Gay Old Party (GOP) ever cared about sex scenes anyway, whether involving Lynn Cheney's lesbian sex scenes in her novels or Scooter Libby's and Bill O'Reilly's disgusting sex scenes in their novels (similar to Webb's) or Mark Foley's real-life sex scenes with underage Congressional pages.

The press is noting that the Allen-Webb campaign is the nastiest in the country. Indeed it is.

George Allen says he wants to make this election about character? No problem, we can fight dirty too. Let's go smear for smear. Call out the swift boats. George Allen wants to fight dirty? Pound him to the ground and bloody his nose! Just like the child, high school and college bully he once was.

Yes, George Allen was a bully as a child, adolescent and young man.

As a child, George Allen was the prototypical child bully. When his siblings refused to go to bed on time, he attacked them with a furious sadism. He dragged his sister upstairs by her hair, he threw his brother Bruce through a sliding glass door and he broke his brother Gregory's collarbone. He slammed a pool cue on his sister's new boyfriend Flynn's head.

He dangled his sister over the railing at Niagara Falls, threatening to throw her over the falls, and leaving her with a permanent fear of heights. His sister, Jennifer (Allen) Richard even wrote a memoir of growing up in the ultra-dysfunctional, traditional-values, conservative Allen family, Fifth Quarter, The Scrimmage of a Football Coach's Daughter.

In the book, she discussed her childhood and portrayed her brutal treatment at the hands of her brother. The book quotes Allen says he wants to grow up to be a dentist so he can make people suffer.

While an upper-caste "lone cowboy" White student at uber-rich Palos Verdes High School, he spray-painted "Die Whitey" and "Burn, Baby Burn" on the walls before a football game with a black team.

His high school yearbook shows him and his best friend with Confederate flag pins in their lapels, he drove around with Confederate flag bumper stickers on his Mustang and plastered the school with Confederate flag bumper stickers.

What makes all of this even more bizarre is that Allen did not grow up in the South at all - in fact, he was born in Whittier, California, grew up in Chicago, and for the most part, Rancho Palos Verdes.

That a Southerner might have an obsession with Dixie is understandable if not commendable. That a native Southern California boy with no connection whatsoever to the South would develop such an obsession is strange and deeply disturbing.

Football was more than an obsession to star high school quarterback George. The Green Bay Packers fan lived near the Allen home in Rancho PV. Every morning, George and his brothers would drive by the Packers fan's home and smash down their mailbox with a baseball bat. The family would put the mailbox back up, and George and his brothers would smash it down again the next day.

After high school, the family moved to Virginia, where he enrolled at the University of Virginia, swaggered through hallways where fellow students reportedly "gave him a wide berth", spitting tobacco juice everywhere - on the walls, floors and elevators, and often shouldering other students aside.

While on the football team in college in Virginia, he used the word "nigger" habitually, thousands of times according to teammates, and once put a deer's head in the mailbox of a Black family.

Now, we Christians believe in repentance. Some bullies (supposedly) repent from their bullying childhoods, though I am not sure if I have ever met one. George Allen has not repented.

In his first run for office, he stated proudly that he had supported the candidacy two years prior of a Democrat who had led Virginia's resistance to civil rights in the 1960's. In the same race, he stumped against a redistricting plan that aimed to elect the first Black Virginia Congressman. He lost in '79, but won in '82 by a razor-think 25 votes.

Most of the bills he sponsored dealt with "crime" and "welfare", code words for attacking Black people and rousing White racism against Blacks. The crime part of the equation was part of a deliberately White Racist anti-Black "War On Crime" strategy introduced by Richard Nixon.

As a Virginia state legislator in 1984, he was one of only 27 legislators to vote against making Martin Luther King Day a state holiday. He was also upset that the holiday would fall on the same day that Virgina sets aside to "honor" Confederate insurgent heroes Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.

Also as a legislator, he co-sponsored legislation to commemorate the passing of William Munford Tuck, a radical segregationist who opposed every civil rights bill while in Congress in the 1950's and promised "massive resistance" to the 1954 Supreme Court decision banning segregation.

In 1993, Allen decided to run for governor of Virginia. You can see it in his very first campaign ad. That flag again. Stars and bars, the Confederate flag.

As governor, he refused to join the NAACP when they asked him to join, called Martin Luther King an extremist, cut the number of Blacks on the governor's staff by 50% and proudly proclaimed Confederate Heritage Month. The text of the proclamation celebrated the South's violent insurgency against the United States but did not say one word about slavery.

He proudly accepted a membership in a Richmond social club with a reputation for discrimination - an invitation the previous three governors had refused. He replaced the only Black member on the University of Virginia Board of Visitors with a white member.

Shall we forget all the character stuff, and "campaign on the issues", as liar and fool Allen keeps insisting we do? Fine. George Allen votes with his fellow faux cowboy George Bush 97% of the time and has always supported the Iraq War unequivocally until a last minute (Death bed?) conversion in the waning days of this election.

Love George Bush and the Iraq War? Fine, vote for the gross pig, sick puppy, rich brat, bullyboy, hoodlum and snob George Felix Macaca. Excuse me, George Felix Macacawitz (he's Jewish, after all).

Disgusted by the war and Disaster in Chief George Bush? Maybe you should consider voting against George Allen, the living embodiment of the catastrophes of the war and Administration.

This year, he called an Indian-American Webb staffer, S.R. Siddath, who was filming an Allen campaign rally, a macaca, French North African slur for a Black person that Allen learned from his French-Tunisian Jewish mother (a very disturbing video of that incident is here).

The obscure lineage of macaca sent reporters scurrying and led to them digging into Allen's mother past, which led to the revelation that she was Jewish (more on that below). As an attorney in private practice, he kept a hangman's noose hanging on a ficus tree in his law office. At his home, he hung a Confederate flag in his living room, which he proudly displayed to visitors.

He continued his tobacco chawing and spitting habit while governor of Virginia, often missing the spitoon in his office and hitting the floor. Allen advocates tattooing homosexuals on the forehead, supposedly so they cannot spread AIDS to unsuspecting sex partners.

Recently it turned out that the redneck good ol' boy and fundamentalist Christian George Allen is actually Jewish by Jewish law (his Jewish mother, a child of Tunisian Jews, who tried to protect her children from racism by keeping their heritage from them).

Initially, Allen acted ashamed of his Jewish heritage and tried to either deny it or change the subject.

One of his first comments was to accuse those who asked if he was Jewish of "casting aspersions" on him. The definition of "casting aspersions" means to criticize a person or the person's character or to say that a person or their character is bad.

The disturbing conclusion is that Allen thinks that opponents who say Allen is Jewish are criticizing his character and saying he is a bad person. As if being Jewish in and of itself is a bad thing or a blot on one's identity! The next day, he admitted that he was Jewish, but then noted that he had just eaten a ham sandwich that day (not the most sensitive way to respond when you finally find out you are Jewish).

Allen recently made a cameo appearance in the lousy movie Gods and Generals, a Confederacy love memo about the heroic Confederate generals who led the war to keep niggaz as human pets. In the movie, Allen sings, "Hurrah, hurrah, for Southern Rights, hurrah!" Southern rights means the right to keep Black folks as human slaves.

In general, this cameo movie appearance means nothing. But put it all together and connect the dots, and you do the math.

George Allen is disgusting.

He is a disgrace to Virginia and to America. People who spit tobacco juice on others are disgusting. People who insult the race of others in public are disgusting. George Allen is disgusting. He was an embarrassment to Virginia as a Governor and he's an embarrassment as a Senator.

George Allen is an abuser and a sadist, imbued with a grotesque sense of entitlement to the point of having narcissistic and sociopathic tendencies.

Clearly, he is playing into the rampant, outrageous racism that continues to plague the US South.

We have already had eight years of a cowboy with a mean streak running our country. Do we really need to tolerate any more of them? One wonders why the Republican Party runs such obvious scoundrels with damaged goods as George Bush and George Allen for major offices as Southern faces of the Republican Party to grab the redneck vote.

Then the shocking realization becomes clear. Bush and Allen are typical Southern Republicans. Probably most of the decent Southerners are Democrats by now.

Allen is emblematic of the Republican Party as a whole, its politicians and its voters, and the sad, sick monstrosity that they have transformed into of late, especially since 1994. The Republicans were not always this way. A Nixon, Ford, Eisenhower, Romney, Jacob Javits, Lindsay or even Goldwater (hey, at least he had ethics) Republican would be manna from Heaven these days.

For my non-American readers, the Confederate flag is now a symbol of White racism against Blacks in the US. The Confederate flag represented the US Confederacy, a collection of Southern states who tried to split away from the US, principally so they could continue to keep Black people as slaves! If you can believe that.

Now, these Blacks gave Whitey down South every nickel he ever made. And White Southerners cared so much about these Blacks of theirs that they actually went to war and damn near tore this nation apart just so they could continue keeping them as human house pets and field animals. Then they had the audacity to hate these very human "animal companions" to whom they owned every dime they ever made!

Excuse me if I am not totally sympathetic with US White Southern racism against Blacks. Despite racist rhetoric, Blacks are not genetically defective and are capable of civilized behavior in modern Western society. Put a suit and tie on a Black man, give him a good job, treat him with respect and dignity, and watch him become a model citizen.

However, Blacks, as a group, have made some serious errors since Reconstruction, their one great chance to break free of tyranny and move into US society as full-fledged citizens. Granted, they were subjected to horrible institutionalized violence for over a century, but still...that's no excuse for the uncivilized behavior and rampant criminality of so many of the US Black underclass.

If, as a group, US Blacks behaved more like Chinese-Americans, I doubt if most people would hate them very much.

But the continuing irrational racism of the White cracker rednecks down South has not helped matters either.

For a fantastic article about the South after the Civil War until the Civil Rights era, with a focus on Black-White relations, carrying a general tone of "My God, how did these White Southerners ever get this way?", check out "Mississippi, The Past That Has Not Died" by Walter Lord from American Heritage Magazine in June 1965.

It's an engrossing article, great reading for any American, and essential reading for any non-American who wants to understand US race relations, the destruction of the South in the Civil War, post-Civil War Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Era, the subsequent rise of the Republican Party in the South, etc.

Non-Americans - understand now - when a Southern white man with racist tendencies hangs a hangman's noose in his office, the message is clear. This noose represents the nooses that were used to lynch Blacks in the US. Lynching in the US began in the South as means of frontier justice to hang Abolitionists (those opposed to slavery) and those assisting runaway slaves.

After the Civil War, when the US imposed a radical Reconstructionist government on the South in an effort to drag it away from caveman racism and White Supremacism into the norms of 19th Century America, it was used against the Whites sent down to the South to help civilize the Southern barbarians (called carpet-baggers by Southerners).

Reconstruction ended in 1876 and White Supremacists took back control over the South. Lynching gradually came back, and by the early 1900's, it was used by the Ku Klux Klan, a radical White Supremacist group who reformed in 1915 with a vengeance, to socially, economically and politically terrorize Blacks who "stepped out of line".

In Richmond, Virginia there is a street lined with statues of "Confederate traitors", the last being Arthur Ashe, a black tennis star from the 1970's. Ashe's statue has predictably been vandalized. For far too many White Southerners, their heritage means the Confederacy, its generals and soldiers. This is the South that the yahoo, smug thug and bad joke George Allen represents.

They tell us that the South has changed. In this election, we will see if it is true.

Meanwhile, pssst. George Allen spit on his first wife. Pass it around.