I know I’m starting to sound like a broken record about Lieberman, but I don’t know how else to remind people how bad a choice he was in November 2006. So many people fell for his crap. He is a liar and a hypocrite and demonstrates a startling lack of judgement on all things foreign policy.

Look, there are rarely “right” or “wrong” answers when it comes to policy preferences. In other words, if you’re trying to solve a problem, you can often find good solutions whether you’re a fiscal conservative, a social conservative, a social liberal, or a leftist. The best debates are about which plans are the best.

On the other hand, there are politicians who are simply the wrong choice. These candidates lie about where they stand, what they believe in, and what their motivations are in running. Often, they are driven by ego more than anything else. Voting for George W. Bush in 2004 was wrong. It was a mistake, and our country is poorer for it. He remains a man who cannot admit mistakes. He believes Iraq is going GREAT and congratulated Mike Brown on a great job handling Katrina.

My fellow Connecticut residents who voted for Joe Lieberman have made a similar mistake. He lied to us, claiming he would work to end the war, that he would work with Democrats on other issues, and show leadership for the state. Instead, he’s spending 9/11 this year with Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity, is a fanatical supporter of the Iraq war, further military adventures in Iran, and is generally so far off the Democratic agenda on nearly everything else, I want him to switch parties. At least that would be honest.

He’s also taking lessons from Republicans on how to run government. According to a new GAO reports, DHS is a mess. While Sen. Lieberman is holding hearings, I doubt he will criticize the President. Anything but that, and anything but pinning the incompetence on the folks in charge for the bulk of the lifetime of DHS.

Democrats that voted for Lieberman, what the heck were you thinking?

This was going to just be a video post, but after watching the clips several times, a couple of thoughts seem worth sharing. First, the clips, found via Atrios’s blog and My Left Nutmeg.

First, Webb’s comments on the war:

Now the shouting match (and, as the folks at C&L said, Graham really looks like he overloaded on the caffeine this morning…):

Ugh. So, two U.S. Senators go on TV and the best we get is this bullshit. I will say again, I am tired of this type of news show. We need stronger moderators than someone like Russert who sits by and lets things degrade into a shouting match.

In particular, a couple of points stand out to me and are worth tying together with this video.

First, Graham’s question about whether Webb has been to Iraq is bull and should be called out as such. Graham goes to Iraq visiting troops selected to see him and he goes as part of a little traveling show. More importantly, Webb would never have had a chance to go because he wasn’t a Senator until quite recently. It’s not like they even let reporters go over there and interview soldiers as they want. This is not Vietnam, and the military is exerting more control over the presentation we get here.

Second, on the issue of re-enlistment. I would love to have Graham finish his thought. Why are they re-enlisting? Seriously, I would love to know that. I have seen numerous, varied reports putting the reasons all over the place, but political considerations haven’t really been on that list. After spending a few hours searching around, it’s clear to me that no one actually knows, or at least isn’t reporting about it. For example, going through Stars and Stripes, I found a lot of voices with differing opinions about re-enlistment. A story from 2003 with a re-enlistment NCO spells out his opinions on why people go back. I found a military wife who was proud her husband re-enlisted in 2003 even without a bonus because he believed in what he’s doing. Flipping through letters to the editor in Stars and Stripes shows a pretty wide array of opinions.

My point is that Graham brought that up as bait, as if the act of re-enlistment was an endorsement of policy and president. It is just as likely to be neither (enlistment bonuses are up, troops don’t want to let down their brothers-in-arms, etc.). Graham was simply using it as a debating tactic rather than a substantive point and that’s stupid.

This also goes toward the larger issue with information from Iraq. There is so much effort being expended criticizing sources of news out of Iraq, with right leaning folks like the one I linked to above only trusting the military, and with left leaning folks only trusting non-military and non-Fox sources (and barely, at that). Ultimately, we end up with little information that we (either side) can trust. Journalism out of the area is pretty bare, as well. Often, I wonder about whether it’s good we get our info from TV… in large part, TV news requires a filter of a face and voice we can understand (e.g. no major accent, etc.). At least with print, accents aren’t an issue and translations are understandable as long as the language is understood.

Regardless of that aside, though, reporting is a big part of another of Graham’s assertions. He stated quite loudly that Iran is killing our men and women over there. Today, however, a report by the LA Times highlights that the U.S. has captured more Saudis among the foreign fighters in Iraq than any other nationality. More than Iran, Syria, Lebanon, etc. E&P has more on the story, but it puts some question marks onto why we don’t criticize Saudi Arabia in the same way we criticize Iran. The report, by the way, oddly leaves out the percentage of Iranian fighters captured, something that would seem to be relevant. Based on the percentages left over and assuming that a non-significant portion come from other places like Jordan, that means Iran would be second. Again, it’s unclear from the report, so that makes that a bit odd in my mind. Webb brought this up during the shouting match, though it was drowned out by Graham’s ranting.

Of course, the biggest issue I have with clips like these is that while they feel good to those of us debating the political realities of a withdrawal/redeployment vote, the fact is they’re quite useless to the debate. So, it’s unsurprising to me to see this clip getting a lot of play on blogs of both sides with headlines like “Sen. Webb (D-VA) levels the warmongers” (not to pick on MLN particularly). It might feel good, but it’s pretty useless on the debate at hand. The clip does make Graham look like a petulant child and that was surprising as well as disappointing, but it didn’t inform me at all. I think that’s true of the whole debate.

For what it’s worth, I am in favor of a redeployment of U.S. troops the way Murtha and company described a year or so ago. Draw down and maintain an over-the-horizon presence to help the Iraqis in limited ways. I have come to that position after considering two issues that get little actual discussion outside of a partisan frame. First, the President is unwilling to admit mistakes on any front beyond the sort of general hand-waving, “Mistakes have been made” sort of way. While I have faith in the abilities of our military generals, I don’t believe it’s honest to say that they’re defining the mission. They’re defining it within a pretty narrow set of guidelines imposed by the civilian leadership. I don’t have faith in this president or the judgement of his staff, and all the good intentions and nobility in the world can’t counteract stupidity at the top.

Second, no one has made a convincing case that what happens in Iraq will be more important to the national security of the United States than what happens in Afghanistan, the border region with Pakistan, and in Iran. There is little doubt in my mind that a draw down of U.S. troops in Iraq would allow us to put more troops on the ground in Afghanistan, and to apply more tactical resources to the real war on real terrorists. How anyone can look at Iraq as a “central front in the war on terror” after reading that al-Qaeda is at it’s strongest level since 2001 is amazing to me. They’re not there. The people that attacked us on 9/11 are not in Iraq. They never were, and the decision to open up a second front in Iraq was absurdly stupid. There’s not a nice way to say that.

That’s not to say that we won’t have to deal with the consequences of leaving Iraq, not the least of which will be the well being of those Iraqis who sided with the U.S. and assisted our troops there. Asylum and evacuation might be a requirement, and should be something that’s part of any redeployment decision.

Anyway, I’ve written enough ramble for today. My point simply is that we should be talking more about the last three paragraphs I’ve written above than counting how many times Graham and Joe Lieberman have visited the troops in Iraq, or why the troops are redeploying. Those are vapor debates meant to boost the standing of the politician uttering them rather than substantive points about the debate. Graham is right that what happens over the next 20-30 years will determine the value of the war, but he’s wrong to suggest that the only way to move forward is to stand by the President. I wish that would end up in the debate as well.

I’ll end with a slightly related topic, which is that local citizens are finally realizing that Joe Lieberman lied during the 2006 elections. He has no intention of following up on his promises during the campaign to help withdraw troops as early as possible and has, quite frankly, lost his connection to reality when it comes to Iraq policy. The editorial I linked above is worth reading in large part because the Courant endorsed Lieberman in 2006. They were wrong to do so, and I hope they realize that Lieberman is bad for our state.

The guy is so caught up in his own self-importance that he doesn’t even stop to understand what he, himself, is saying. This is a man who broke every promise he made to Democrats in CT during the last election. He has not taken one action to shorten the length of the war and has gone as far as spreading Republican propaganda from this administration about “progress” in Iraq. Now, he’s calling for bombing Iran which is fundamentally nuts.

It’s a crazy, crazy proposition, what Sen. Lieberman is calling for. Historical parallels abound. For example, when we were helping the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, what would a Soviet bombing run on our bases in Europe have accomplished? It would’ve made Americans more determined to defeat the Soviets and more likely to participate in the local conflict. A bombing run like that didn’t happen because the consequences and subsequent escalation would’ve outstripped it’s utility.

Sen. Lieberman is making these wild claims because he believes there won’t be any negative consequences of bombing Iranian bases in Iranian sovereign territory. Whether this is out of some macho appreciation of our military strength or a failure to recognize basic geopolitical reality is unclear, but it’s clear his judgement is flawed. He has no mention of the cost, and his appreciation of the consequences is weak at best:

“So what I’m saying is, if we knock out a base of theirs, if we have to do that, at which they’re training these terrorists, yes, they may respond. But look, they’re already on the move against us, and they’re killing people as a result of it. I hope this is not necessary.”

All of these comes at a time when the Iranian economy may be killing itself anyway, and where the repressive regime is beginning to further crack down on the local populace. These things could be used to drive a wedge in Iranian internal politics, to help boost the voices of those sympathetic with the interests of peace in the region. All Liebermans brash, uninformed, and fundamentally ignorant comments do is strengthen the position of the hard liners in the Iranian government.

There’s also this. When you’re on the side of Dick Cheney instead of Condoleezza Rice on any debate, you’re in the wrong, especially when it comes to a consideration of using force. What about Cheney’s demonstrated judgement in the last 6 years would leave you with any confidence? For that matter, what of Lieberman’s demonstrated judgement would inspire confidence at all?

She’s our state representative and neighbor, and she gave a very personal and touching testimony about what this act means to her. Take a look:

It baffles me how the basic, human side of this debate gets lost in high-minded rhetoric from the religious right. This is a simple situation, fairly common and obvious to those who know any gay people.

I just saw on CNN that Bush is now attacking Congress for delaying funding for the troops as they are sending him bills he claims he will certainly veto. In particular, he is apparently now counting the days since he submitted the supplemental funding request for the Iraq war. Oddly enough, the 57 days that have gone by are apparently a terrible delay now, but the 86 and 119 days the Republican-led 109th Congress took in 2005 and 2006 were worthy of praise.

Bush’s speech reeks of the politics he claims Democrats are bringing to the process. While his defense of his position is entirely framed in political considerations, mentioning Democrats in every sentence, the actions taken by Congress actually create policy. They have implemented a policy shift, a deadline for troop withdrawal with ways to extend if necessary. Let’s debate this. Let’s talk about why those conditions are bad or good.

The President isn’t making any arguments defending his veto plans. There’s no attempt to make an argument that actually makes sense. It’s the same fear-mongering he has relied on since he became President. Unspecified harm to soldiers, unspecified risk to the nation, which must be true simply because he has pronounced it so.

As usual, his arguments are dishonest. The troops have funding until mid-summer. They’re not waiting for anything, as our experiences in 2005 and 2006 show. Bush is a hypocrite and a liar of the worst sort. He makes these claims that are so transparently false. He knows people will catch it, so why does he keep doing it? And since he lies so transparently on these simple, obvious issues, why should we believe anything else he says?

If you had to rank the Presidents, where would President George W. Bush end up on the list? After looking at his domestic and foreign policy initiatives, there’s a strong case that he is the worst ever. Measured simply against his desired or stated outcomes, based on speeches or public comments, he has been particularly bad at delivering what he promises.

As a rough starting point, I’ve outlined the major policy initiatives of both Bush terms along with a grade from -5 to 5 where 5 is absolute success and -5 indicates he achieved the opposite result of his proposed aim. A score of 0 indicates he didn’t do anything (no cost and no benefit on this policy issue). I specifically am avoiding whether I think the policies constitute good policy or not. I’m also avoiding whether I agree with the policy or not.

I know this list isn’t complete, so I’d love to expand on it. Feel free to leave those ideas in the comments below as well.

Domestic Policy Agenda

Office of Faith-Based Initiatives – Score: 2 – Former insiders have claimed that the office is more a political prop and showpiece than an actual, functioning White House department. He gets points for creating this and not getting sued to oblivion and for inspiring state level departments in Republican states.

Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit – Score: 3 – This passed, though it seemed targeted at helping big pharma as much as senior citizens. Folks are finding the donut hole a rude surprise and many complained about the complexity of the plan. The combined effect has taken the shine off of this plan.

No Child Left Behind – Score: -1 – In terms of achieving it’s actual goals, little has actually changed for public schools. In fact, there’s little positive to report. On top of that, school takeovers and privatization have not yielded improved results. The costs to states has been high, especially since the federal funding has been insufficient or non-existent.

Social Security Reform – Score: -5 – Far from actually reforming anything, the President convinced the majority of Americans that doing nothing was preferable to doing something about Social Security. Further, it provided a rallying point for Democrats and showed the first signs of weakness in the Republican stronghold. All of this doesn’t actually matter for the score, though. It’s a -5 because the policy failed to address any recommendations of the various blue ribbon panels while his other spending agendas have raised the stakes for Social Security in the years to come.

Gay Marriage, Abortion, and Christian fundamentalism – Score: 2 – On gay marriage and abortion, Bush has continued to deliver nominal victories but little actual policy change. The most significant impact of his two terms will be the appointment of Alito and Roberts to the Supreme Court. Their impact on these issues has yet to be seen (I remain unconvinced that either will rule in any way that will eliminate Roe v. Wade), but these appointments will have lasting impacts upon many different issues. He’s passed precious few laws and merely maintained the status quo on both major issues beyond those appointments. DOMA was the law of the land from the Clinton years and gay marriage is still not recognized at the federal level and abortions are still free of federal interference. Large sums of money have been spent on abstinence-only sex ed programs with poor results. I can’t think of a success here, actually.

Foreign Policy

The Global War on Terror (or whatever it’s called now) – Score: -2 – Terrorism incidents are up over the last few years. Iraq is a mess and far from a beacon of stability in the Middle East. Osama bin Laden still runs free. Iran has not shifted from their support of terrorist organizations. Hezbollah and Hamas have won elections largely because the Bush administration doesn’t understand how these organizations become popular. Our foreign policy has helped those organizations become stronger and more popular. The Bush administrations prioritization prior to 9/11 significantly misjudged the world, and their actions since have hardly demonstrated any improved judgement.

North Korea – Score: -4 – Since declaring them to be part of the “Axis of Evil” North Korea has tested a nuclear device and largely ignored diplomatic overtures from Europe. Six party talks have been largely unsuccessful. Far from containing North Korea with strong rhetoric, North Korea has stood defiant. North Korea now could have an impact on negotiations with Iran.

Iran – Score: -4 – Inexplicably ignored until the Iraq invasion imploded, Iran has gained prestige on the world stage because of Bush administration policy. There’s really not a worse outcome for our Iran policy.

Etc.

Overall, he’s done a great job of message control and information management. Beyond that, I find little to be proud of. Have I missed anything? Leave it in the comments.

Glenn Greenwald provides a decent recap and summary of a controversy about a source used by AP when reporting an episode of sectarian violence. The story was remarkable because it quoted an Iraqi police captain who recounted that nearby Iraqi soldiers did not intervene to stop the Shiite militiamen. The captain was quoted by name. You can read more about the controversy at Greenwald’s blog, but the end result is that the right wing blogs were full of hot air. They were completely and totally wrong on this but refuse to apologize to AP or admit they were wrong.

As Greenwald points out, the episode is more telling about the way these blogs operate and how they integrate into the national media than most people realize. While Greenwald focuses on the bloggers who are not afraid to make stuff up, this is a larger issue that carries throughout all media platforms. From Michelle Malkin and others in the blogs to folks like Michael Savage and Rush Limbaugh on radio to Brit Hume and Bill O’Reilly, the entire right wing media establishment is rife with people like this and episodes like this.

The Greenwald post is long, but I urge you to read it. After you’re done, think back to every Clinton era scandal. Then remember that every single one of the Clinton’s supposed scandals led nowhere. Not one panned out. The scandal that eventually brought Clinton to impeachment was not one invented by the right wing media establishment…

These people are not afraid to make stuff up, and they leave a lasting impression.

I had someone make an Al Gore/Internet joke to me the other day. It still persists even though the guy never said he invented the Internet. That came from a Republican press release the day after and was mutated and mutilated by Rush and company until Leno and Letterman made it a national given.

It’s likely that the perception created by the made up scandals and the intentional misquotes cost Gore votes. Imagine a world where a man like Gore, who has more integrity and intelligence than Bush, was running foreign policy. Afghanistan would be a better place, a better effort would’ve been made to seal off Tora Bora when bin Laden tried to escape (maybe we’d have him), and we wouldn’t be in Iraq.

Who says correcting partisan bullshit doesn’t matter? It matters.

Nancy Pelosi isn’t wasting any time in trying to get Congress to be better behaved in 2007:

Democrats will adopt and then amend the House Rules package tomorrow to ban all travel paid for by lobbyists or organizations that employ lobbyists, require the ethics committee to pre-approve travel paid for by outside groups, enact a total gift ban, and require lawmakers to pay the market cost of flying on a corporate jet, said Democratic staffers and officials with government watchdog groups.

And, because they feel they lost the 2003 Medicare prescription drug benefit vote because GOP leaders held it open for three hours, during which they flipped opponents into the “yes” column, Democrats will include a provision in the rules to prevent any sort of repetition, said aides to incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

Democrats also will eliminate the practices of changing conference reports after members have signed them and excluding elected members from conference committees.

…

Democrats complained vociferously about the House GOP’s tactics during the past four years, such as preventing Democrats from offering amendments on the House floor, excluding them from conference committees, and holding votes open for much longer than the traditional 15 minutes.

…

In addition to revising ethics rules, the Democratic majority on Friday will debate and vote on procedural and budgetary reforms — measures to ensure that members have 24 hours to review legislation, earmark reforms and pay-as-you-go requirements — said senior Democratic aides.

There’s more, read the rest.

You’ll hear Republican whining about a “Minority Bill of Rights” which Nancy Pelosi introduced in 2004. The interesting thing is that it includes most of the same language as the Democrat’s larger ethics reform bill. We’ll see if the Republicans line up to support Pelosi’s larger, more comprehensive version this time. As it stands, they’re just whining about getting the same treatment they gave the Democrats without acknowledging their own duplicity in the matter.

I’m actually impressed and the cynic in me is surprised. I believe the Democrats will be better, but if they’re able to live up to the ideals expressed in this reform package, our government will be more open and our nation better for it.

The myth of a liberal bias in the media has been perpetuated so long that it’s become part of the conventional wisdom. Republicans have been crying foul and playing the victims in the media so long, it’s hard to believe that there’s not some truth to it. After all, would people go on TV and the radio day-after-day for so long lying?

The answer apparently is yes. From the sad saga of Mark Halperin to the reality-denying radio hosts, we’ve seen more and more evidence recently that the media does it’s best to perpetuate the Republican storyline of the day.

Eric Boehlert has a new piece up at Media Matters that details some of the reporting around the elections. From Time and Newsweek to ABCNews and MSNBC to, well, all talk radio that isn’t Air America, Republicans were on the march to come from behind last Tuesday. No evidence was given aside from the invincibility of Republicans. Post election coverage, not detailed in the Media Matters piece, hasn’t been any better. Hardly seems like a liberal media.

What’s worse is that this problem is caused by laziness more than anything else. No one wants to do any actual reporting, especially on the TV side. CNN, Fox, etc. all act as aggregators of stories from other media. Therefore, getting something printed once at a “reputable” media outlet can be enough to get wide play on all the major news nets. It is lazy reporting.

I’m not really sure how we go about fixing this, but it’s clearly reaching a critical point. We have a media that would rather cover scandal than debate and finds no value in informing the public. It’s a system that’s broken in some pretty fundamental ways.

Over at Belgravia Dispatch, Greg has written a piece on what Rumsfeld’s departure might mean for the next two years. Highly recommend reading the whole thing. He’s optimistic, which makes me a feel a little better. Of course, he also predicted, based on rumblings he was hearing inside the Beltway, that there would be a course change after 2004 (he voted for Bush, silly man). That obviously didn’t happen.

From the piece:

Regardless, what we saw yesterday was American democracy at its finest. We saw the public mount a critically needed intervention, because without it a President well beyond his depth would have likely continued to cast his lot with discredited cocksure ideologues and/or Jacksonian nationalists like Rumsfeld. In Gates, we have an anti-ideologue and a realist. In his role with the Baker-Hamilton commission (a welcome dose of bipartisan sanity in an increasingly moronic Washington, media and blogosphere), he will have had access and been influenced by distinguished peers grappling with what to do next in Iraq in a climate characterized by sober appraisal of the national interest, rather than the agenda-driven hysterical harrumphing afoot in all the usual quarters.

There is a final irony worth noting too, perhaps. With pragmatists and Bush 41 alum like Baker and Gates rising to the fore, the son who marched headstrong into Iraq (like the father wouldn’t after liberating Kuwait) is now being forced to lick his wounds and crawl back towards the protective umbrella of his father’s former advisors. Neo-con exuberances, faith-based adventurism, and utopian aspiration passing for persuasive policy are now necessarily going to be relegated to the back-seat, in favor of essentially needed sobriety and realism (Gates is far closer to Scowcroft, say, than ribald fraudster types spouting off endless inanities at NRO and the Standard). While it is true Cheney is still around (one of his father’s advisors too, but a changed man now no longer respected by his former colleagues in Bush 41), he is a much diminished figure who, to boot, just lost his main ally today.

It is, by far, the most interesting development of this week, that Rumsfeld got the boot after the election night “thumping.” Of course, the move, like everything else this administration does, was timed to shift media attention away from election night losses.

So let’s talk about election night for a bit. Atrios points to an article in the Providence Journal about Chafee’s reaction to his loss. I’ll excerpt the same portion Atrios did:

In his first interview since losing the Republican U.S. Senate seat that has been in his family for three decades, Lincoln D. Chafee yesterday said a lot of people had been coming up to him “and saying, ‘We’re sorry you lost, but glad the Congress switched’ ” from GOP to Democratic Party control.

Asked if deep down, despite his personal disappointment about the outcome of Tuesday’s election, he felt the same way, Chafee looked into the TV cameras and said: “To be honest, yes.”

“When you enact a divisive agenda, don’t talk to the other side, I don’t think that’s good for the country,” Chafee said. At least now, “I think the president is going to have to talk to the Democrats. I think that is going to be good for America.”

If you haven’t been following the race in Rhode Island (and who hasn’t, come on), read the full article. Chafee’s situation was similar to Joe Lieberman’s, in that he was challenged in his party primary. Of course, he was actually attacked on purely ideological grounds for not being “conservative” enough. Lieberman was challenged because he’s a stubborn, arrogant Senator who lost touch with the bulk of his party constituents back home.

That’s what was so interesting about this election cycle. While Ned Lamont lost, his campaign was one of the first big national stories that showed that talking about the war and talking about leaving was the right thing to do. The Democrats fielded strong candidates, among them war veterans (the Fighting Dems), and as the campaign season reached the home stretch, pounded the war message home. The Foley scandal pretty much pushed the rest of the undecideds the Democrats got.

The Lamont campaign showed people we could talk about the war and win elections, and while Lamont didn’t win, his campaign pushed that conversation forward. I wish I had been able to do more this summer to help, but with the wedding and football season back to back, it wasn’t meant to be.

I’m happy he ran, and happy to have supported him. He was a good candidate. A local editorial lays out why his candidacy was important, and this letter from a supports seems to summarize my view.

Now that the Democrats have taken control of the House and Senate, their leadership needs to pause before celebration.

I won’t argue that this change of power isn’t a good thing; it is a fantastic thing. Bush, and his attack on civil rights, will at least get more than a cursory evaluation. The shady dealings of the executive branch will finally see a spot light and maybe some of the secrecy of the administration will be lifted. The blindfolded driver of the Iraq war has quit and maybe someone will be able to steer the car out of the ditch. There in lies the rub.

I think it is quite clear this election was a referendum on the Iraq war. The voters spoke…Iraq is very unpopular. The problem is that the Democrats are now in control of the Iraq conflict…except they aren’t. Bush is still Commander in Chief and he believes in the war. Iraq is a mess of sectarian violence with multiple sides and multiple agendas. We can’t pull out without the whole thing erupting and we can’t stay without a huge cost in money and lives. The Dems have two years to “fix” Iraq. I’m not sure it is possible at this point, and certainly not without committing MORE troops to the conflict.

Domestically, Americans still have a fear of terrorism. The Bush administration has used the threat of terrorist attacks in the US as a powerful motivator to convince Americans to back the war. Even mentions of scaling back the War in Iraq yield accusations of being “soft on terror.” I fear that one domestic terrorism incident, something that is all too likely to occur eventually, regardless of Iraq war, will become a backlash against the Democrats in power, resulting in huge losses in Congress and worse, huges losses of civil liberties.

Finally with all the calls of “bipartisanship” I’ve heard over the last few days, I can’t help but laugh. Days ago there were accusations and name calling from both sides. Today, everyone just wants to get along. The problem for the Democratic leadership is that most of the Republicans who were replaced were moderate, left leaning Republicans. Some who replaced them were more conservative, right leaning Democrats…the so called “Blue Dog” Democrats. While the leadership may have the majority by the numbers, they may find that they don’t have the votes when push comes to shove. Not to mention that President Bush still has the golden power of veto.

These are interesting times and I hope, for the sake of our civil liberties, the Democrats are able to fulfill their agenda. I also hope that for the sake of bipartisanship and keeping a hold of Congress, they don’t fall in line behind President’s simple minded view of security and the world.

The Democrats need to take action. I just fear that there is no action that won’t spell disaster. I also hope that I’m just being pessimistic. Fortunately, world events change moment by moment. Tomorrow will likely bring some new event or issue that will be the hot button topic for the next election.

It’s done. The bar is set pretty high right now for the Democrats, and they’re going to have to figure out how to pass things without getting everything vetoed. Should be a fun ride.

AP is reporting that Webb has won Virginia and that Allen may concede tomorrow. No recount. Democratic majority in both houses. Oh Boy.

Right now it’s only AP and Reuters with the story, but there were no issues with the canvass so far, and Allen has said some things that might indivate a concession soon.

This puts the Senate in the 51-49 state that I mentioned in my Lieberman predictions. Will he or won’t he? Or will he get tapped for an Administration position which would allow Jodi Rell (R) to appoint the successor? Questions, questions, questions.

CNN, MSNBC, and NPR have all called the CT Senate race for Joe Lieberman, and while I’m extraordinarily disappointed, I’m not surprised. Polls as late as this weekend were showing a large lead for Lieberman and, as I found out today, many people come to the polls today knowing how they were going to vote.

Even with that disappointment, I’ve really enjoyed tonight. I’m writing this before the results are in for the Senate and House, so we’ll see how I feel in the morning. So far, though, it’s been a decent night.

I volunteered for the Ned Lamont campaign outside a local polling station. I was there to hold a sign and greet voters as they came in. I ended up being the volunteer that called in the final vote totals to the campaign so I stayed to watch them do the final counts for the precinct. It was really cool to see them go through the steps, making sure that two people read the counts from the machines, that the numbers were read aloud loudly and clearly to everyone in the room, and that the serial numbers and the records were kept correctly. Little actions and the hard work of a number of dedicated individuals. That’s what makes all of this work, and it was great being there during the counts.

Calling in the vote to the campaign was a bit of an adventure. The campaign was using phone system to tally the votes and it was clearly overwhelmed tonight. It took several tries to get the numbers in without the system hanging up on me. They used text messages as a backup which seemed to work.

I’m happy seeing people coming out to vote, especially those that are there super-early when Heidi and I go and those people who were running up at 7:50PM tonight doing what they could to get in. People take this seriously, and it’s awesome to see people voting.

So, even with the disappointment here with Lamont, I’m pretty happy tonight. I’m ecstatic that Nancy Johnson lost after seeing some of the horrible, untrue ads she was running here. While many of the local campaigns were run in a decent way, her campaign was my poster child for dishonesty. It looks, right now, like Shays and Simmons will hold on to their seats and that’s a disappointment.

Our local races have been going well. Beth Bye looks to have a lead right now with Avon and West Hartford completely counted (not sure about Farmington). I met the husband of her opponent today who seems like a nice guy. They were hopeful at 8PM. It will be interesting to see the precinct breakdowns for that one. The other Democrats were a lock, more or less, so no surprises there.

Nationally, things look decent right now. I can’t believe that Senator Allen is still neck and neck with Webb in Virginia. It seems like Virginia might be the last place that a racist could run and win a Senate race. I’m happy about the ones you’d expect, Casey Jr, Menendez, and Brown. I’ll have more to say later tonight.

So, six more years of stubborn Joe Lieberman. I still stand by the rest of my predictions, so we’ll see how this works out.

Unusually partisan title, perhaps, but this is an unusual election. In 2004, America went to the polls before the pure incompetence of this administration was laid bare for everyone to see. After Katrina, the surging violence in Iraq, and numerous debacles big and small, even the least politically savvy America realizes that this administration and this Congress are a complete and utter disaster.

Oversight is one of the fundamental requirements for our government to work. This Congress has failed in that duty, and so it’s up to us to put people into office that will challenge the Administration and force them to hear other voices, to provide a forum for military commanders to legally offer public comment, and to force the administration to make changes that will serve the country better.

In 2 years, you will have an option to consider again whether you want to vote for a Democrat, but this year, this time, there’s really only one viable choice. I usually don’t try to engage in this sort of partisan demagoguery, but as long as Republican candidates need the machine built by the current Republican party leadership to raise funds, they will not and can not be an effective oversight branch.

Whatever you do, and whoever you vote for:

GO VOTE!!

Update: I was disappointed that they didn’t have any stickers to give out at my polling place, so here’s a virtual one “borrowed” from Atrios.

I watched most of the new documentary Hacking Democracy on Friday. The documentary covers the poor state of our new electronic voting machines, specifically focused on how easy they are to manipulate. The film also goes through some of the recent recount efforts in 2004, showing how recount laws prevent effective recounts from happening.

The movie clearly features Gore and Kerry supporters, but they make a clear effort to explain that it’s only the Republicans this time because they are the ones in power in the two states most directly affected by these vote count issues (Florida and Ohio).

The most surprising thing to me was hearing about some of the irregularities in the 2000 election. It was either the first time, or I have forgotten the same thing. The biggest was the negative votes given to Gore in Volusia County, FL. While the correct count was discovered and used in the final tally, the movie emphasizes that the investigation into the root cause ended when the recount effort ended.

In fact, my biggest takeaway was the importance of real recount efforts. I didn’t realize how much money and effort is only available when an official recount is underway. When the recount effort ended in 2000, the investigation stopped. When Kerry conceded in 2004, little was done to follow through on a recount investigation. Even when a recount gets underway, the actual recount process presents several opportunities for people to “rig” the recount so that recounts don’t happen, whether out of malice or simple mistakes.

I’m happy to see more people talking about these things. Katrina Vanden Heuvel has a decent article listing some reforms that would benefit both parties (and even third parties). Most of them are pretty interesting, but at a minimum, I would love to see a federal requirement that recounts must be possible by hand using ballots that a voter has personally verified. In other words, you can have electronic machines as long as they output a receipt that shows your votes that you then deposit in a box. The paper ballots, not the computers, are used for recounts. Or, you can just go back to pen and paper. They still do that here in Canada (I’m in Montreal this weekend) and it seems to work well.

You can learn more about reform efforts, including what you can do this election to help, at VerifiedVoting.org and Black Box Voting. This is a non-partisan issue, and one that should be important to us all.

(found the Nation article via Atrios)

Just go read this post. It references this article in Vanity Fair which is built around an interview with two of the original advocates of going to war with Iraq. They are the original neoconservatives before it became a catch-all term for the hard right fools in the White House. The money quote:

Adelman tells Rose that when he wrote in 2002 that “liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk,” he “just presumed that what I considered to be the most competent national-security team since Truman was indeed going to be competent. They turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the postwar era. Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly, dysfunctional.”

Of course, these guys didn’t stand up BEFORE the election in 2004. Of course, after watching Hacking Democracy, I’m not sure the actual votes mattered in all cases.