Pennsylvania called for Obama the very moment the polls close. So much for that strategy.
Indiana
In every Indiana county where 100 percent of the votes have been counted thus far, Obama seems to be running strongly ahead of Kerry. Just saying.
Remnik Talks to Ayers
Bill Ayers talks to David Remnick and seems fairly reasonable. I think it’s to his credit that he waited ’till the election’s done before bothering to try to defend himself.
Warner Wins
No surprising, but Mark Warner will be Virginia’s next Senator. A lot of attention, rightly, has focused on the GOP’s objective headwinds in 2008. But the Virginia GOP knew that John Warner (a Republican) was retiring and that Mark Warner, a popular former governor, was going to run against him. They also knew that Tom Davis, a moderatish NOVA Republican congressman was their best chance of holding the seat. But instead of nominating him, they actually switched the nominating process to a caucus system rigged to favor his unelectable more rightwing opponent. Thus, they entered the election spotting the Democrats a Senate seat. And Davis, pissed off, resigned from the House thus handing his seat to the Democrats.
It was strange behavior.
Report: Pentagon to begin briefing president-elect’s transition team ‘almost immediately.’
NBC News reports that because “the upcoming political transition will be the first in wartime since Vietnam,” Pentagon officials are prepared to begin briefing the new president-elect’s transition team “almost immediately” after today’s elections. Officials tell NBC that “they intend to expedite the security-clearance process so that transition members would actually be able to sit alongside top Pentagon and military leaders during secure satellite briefings with combatant military commanders from Iraq and Afghanistan.” “We are undertaking Herculean efforts to ensure the transition goes as smoothly and seamlessly as possible,” said one official.
A Small Illustration
A small illustration of my it’s the progressive infrastructure, stupid thesis just happened on MSNBC. Chris Matthews was talking about Barack Obama and said offhandedly, not even as a slam, that Obama had “changed his mind” and rejected public financing. Keith Olbermann immediately challenged him pointing out that, in fact, Obama had never made any such commitment. That makes a difference.
Because of the new progressive infrastructure, the myth that Obama had promised to accept public financing and then flip-flopped and rejected it was never able to take hold the way it would have in 2000 or 2004. Someday, maybe MSNBC will decide that “hours of programming dedicated to shows with liberal hosts” should outnumber “hours of programming dedicated to shows with conservative hosts” and CNN and the broadcast networks will decide that “more than zero” is the right number of liberals to put on air. Then things’ll really be different.
On Election Day, King Coal Celebrates Public Relations ‘Landslide’
The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), the coal industry’s propaganda front group, is upbeat about this election day, as indicated by their press release today. ACCCE VP Joe Lucas claimed:
If “support for the use of coal for generating electricity” were on the ballot today, it would win by a landslide.
His choice of words is unfortunate, as landslides are only one of the many deadly hazards of coal mining, especially under the lax safety enforcement of the Bush administration.
ACCCE is celebrating a poll that showed their $50 million propaganda campaign influenced “adults with $80,000 or more in household income and a four-year college degree or more and a professional or managerial job title or a business owner and a high degree of involvement in politics and policy matters.”
However, all the PR spin in the world can’t affect scientific reality. America’s coal plants produce about 49 percent of U.S. electricity but account for 83 percent of power-sector emissions. And we need to reduce net emissions to zero as fast as humanly possible to preserve our civilization from catastrophic global warming.
The tobacco industry spent hundreds of millions of dollars to obscure the scientific fact that their product is an addictive, deadly drug. After decades of debate, after millions of Americans had their lives unnecessarily shortened, our government crafted policies that protected tobacco farmers and reduced the tobacco industry’s grip. Even so, the needless deaths continue, all to protect the profits of a very powerful few.
Our current situation with the coal industry is similar, but the stakes are even more grave. No matter what actions Washington D.C. takes, the 80,000 people in the coal mining industry — 0.02% of the U.S. population — should be taken care of. These workers deserve better than they are getting today, as the union-busting coal barons ignore safety regulations and cut benefits. But make no mistake — the burning of coal is burning up the planet.
The world is not going to stop using coal for decades, even if the United States were to move entirely to a fossil-free power grid. If we can develop the technology needed to economically capture the emissions of coal plants, and I hope we can, then the coal industry will have the opportunity to rake in billions of dollars in profits for a few more generations.
The saddest thing about the ACCCE campaign is not its facile dishonesty, but that we continue to have a political discourse that places more weight on perception than reality.
Oops — you can really live chat with me …
… But HuffingtonPost used a live chat platform I had never used before, so I didn’t know where to look for the comments. Now I get it. So, if you thought I was ignoring you, I wasn’t. I was merely confused. So I repeat, as of 5 pm, go to my live election blog at HuffingtonPost here and send questions or comments and I will try to answer in semi-real time.
Doocy mistakenly identifies a random black man as Obama.
This morning, the Fox and Friends crew was sitting around waiting for Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) to arrive at his polling place. “There he is, he just walked in,” Steve Doocy announced as another African-American man, wearing a casual tan jacket and a hat, walked in. Even Doocy’s co-hosts didn’t believe him. “Was that the back of his head?” asked Brian Kilmeade. “I don’t know,” said Gretchen Carlson. A few minutes later, the real Obama walked in, wearing a dark suit. Watch it:
(HT: HP Eat the Press)
Don’t Count on Joe
As everyone knows, Democrats can’t kick Joe Lieberman out of their caucus because they want his vote to reach 60 votes in the senate. But Satyam Khanna’s got the audio of Holy Joe saying that he fears America “would not survive” a 60 vote Democratic Party supermajority. First, Lieberman demonstrates that he has no decency or integrity by going on the odious Glenn Beck’s radio show, and then he says:
BECK: But do you agree that Senator Hatch said to me that if we don’t at least have the firewall of the filibuster in the Senate that in many ways America will not survive?
LIEBERMAN: Well, I hope it’s not like that, but I fear.
I’m sure he’ll be a loyal ally of the progressive agenda.
