ELECTION FORECAST: A Perfect Shitstorm

MOTHER JONES: The day before the election, pollsters are predicting that the Democratic wipeout could be even bigger than expected. There’s no question that the GOP will take the House, but Gallup suggests that Republican net gains could give their party a bigger House majority than any party has achieved before. […] The GOP needs to win just 39 Democratic seats to take the House, but projections are now up to 60 seats or more, with over 100 seats in play. And if Republicans end up on with an overwhelmingly majority, they will feel even more emboldened to find every conceivable […]

UP IN SMOKE: Pro-Legalization Leading In Cali Polls

ALTERNET: A few short months ago, California’s Proposition 19, the Regulate, Control, and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010, seemed likely to fade away in a puff of smoke. After more than three decades on the front lines of the disastrous “war on drugs,” I feared this best-hope-to-date chapter in the battle for sane drug laws was a lost cause. But something has changed in the public’s consciousness, and in its resolve. On September 30 the Public Policy Institute of California published the results of its new poll. It shows Proposition 19 winning, by a resounding 52-41 margin. Other polls are […]

NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t

FRESH AIR “[Jimmie Dale Gilmore‘s] voice would make even Hank Williams cry,” Nicholas Dawidoff once wrote in The New York Times Magazine. Gilmore, a singer from West Texas, writes songs that would be described as alternative country. But he sings honky-tonk country classics on his album Come on Back , which he discussed in a 2005 interview with Terry Gross. The album, a tribute to Gilmore’s late father, contains versions of his father’s favorite songs like “Walkin’ the Floor Over You” and “Pick Me Up on Your Way Down.” “[Pick Me Up] represents an entire style that I really associate […]

NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t

FRESH AIR Private equity firms buy undervalued or under-appreciated companies, impose short-term improvements and sell them for a fast profit. Some of the companies they’ve bought include Hertz, La Quinta, Dunkin Donuts, and Toys R Us. Josh Kosman, a private equity expert, says that the way the firms have been able to buy these businesses — through leveraged buyouts — means the majority of the money for the buyout has come from loans that the firms dump on the company they’re supposedly fixing. Now burdened with debt, many of those companies owned by private equity firms are in danger of […]

HEMP FOR VICTORY: Twenty-Seven States Currently Considering The Legalization Of Medical Marijuana

Alabama – Alabama Legislature Considers Medical Marijuana Reform California – Tax and Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol Connecticut – Connecticut Legislature Considers Medical Marijuana Reform Connecticut – Connecticut Legislature Considers Decriminalizing Marijuana Hawaii – Hawaii Legislature Considers Decriminalizing Marijuana Iowa – Iowa Legislature Considers Medical Marijuana Reform Illinois – Illinois Legislature Considers Medical Marijuana Reform Kentucky – Oppose Zero Tolerance ‘Drugged’ Driving Bill In Kentucky Maryland – Maryland Legislature Considers Medical Marijuana Task Force Maine – Maine Legislature Considers Expanding Decrim Law Minnesota – Minnesota Legislature Considers Medical Marijuana Reform Missouri – Missouri Legislature Considers Medical Marijuana Reform Montana – Montana […]

STAY GOLDEN PONY BOY: New Polls Say Obama More Popular Than Ever, Republicans Not So Much

MSNBC: After Barack Obama’s first six weeks as president, the American public’s attitudes about the two political parties couldn’t be more different, the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds. Despite the country’s struggling economy and vocal opposition to some of his policies, President Obama’s favorability rating is at an all-time high. Two-thirds feel hopeful about his leadership and six in 10 approve of the job he’s doing in the White House. “What is amazing here is how much political capital Obama has spent in the first six weeks,” said Democratic pollster Peter D. Hart, who conducted this survey with […]

HISTORY TURNS A PAGE: And So It Begins…

NEWSWEEK: Secrets Of The 2008 Campaign [HIGHLY RECOMMENDED] POLITICO: Critics said they were too nice, too vague on the issues, too obsessed with the youth vote and too dependent on all those penny-ante Internet donors. But Obama’s core group of Chicago advisers, led by former reporter David Axelrod, has created a new paradigm for post-Rove campaigning. Instead of exploiting wedge issues (as Rove did) or micro-targeting demographic niche groups (as the Clintons and their pollster, Mark Penn, did), they focused on exciting a new base of young people, educated whites and minority voters. Get-out-the-vote wizard Steve Hildebrand built a hyperdisciplined […]

EDITORIAL: Why Whitey Can’t Vote

BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER As a lifelong Caucasian, I am beginning to think the time has finally come to take the right to vote away from white people, at least until we come to our senses. Seriously, I just don’t think we can be trusted to exercise it responsibly anymore. I give you Exhibit A: The last eight years. In 2000, Bush-Cheney stole the election, got us attacked, and then got us into two no-exit wars. Four years later, white people reelected them. Is not the repetition of the same behavior over and over again with the expectation […]

TURNABOUT: McCain Needs To Come Clean About His Association With Convicted Felon Raffaello Follieri

ASSOCIATED PRESS:  Anne Hathaway’s former boyfriend was sentenced Thursday to 4 1/2 years in prison for cheating investors of millions of dollars by claiming he had Vatican connections that enabled him to buy Roman Catholic Church property at a discount. U.S. District Judge John G. Koeltl said Follieri had engaged in a significant fraud that hurt investors, will financially ruin him and will cause him to be deported after his prison term. The judge also cited Follieri’s “lavish personal expenditures,” which prosecutors have said were financed with his investors’ money. MORE THE NATION: The photograph substantiates reports that in late […]

NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t

FRESH AIR The New Yorker‘s chief political correspondent, Ryan Lizza, explains Joe Biden’s relationship with Barack Obama — and why taking on less often means doing more as vice president. Lizza’s article “Biden’s Brief,” about the Democratic vice presidential candidate, appears in the Oct. 16 issue of The New Yorker. ALSO, Emmy-winning director and producer Larry Charles has a penchant for the ridiculous — witness his credits, which include Borat, Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm. Now, Charles wants to turn his latest film, Religulous, into an HBO series. RADIO TIMES Hour 1 Analysis of last night’s third and final presidential […]

YES WE CAN: Winning The Battle For Pennsyltucky

HOPE IN THE RUINS: Obama in West Philly, Saturday ATLANTA JOURNAL CONSTITUTION: Democratic Sen. Barack Obama has nearly closed the deal in Pennsylvania, as anxiety over the economy overcomes lingering concerns about his inexperience and qualms about his race, according to more than three dozen political operatives, pollsters and analysts across the state. A surge in Democratic voter registration is also helping. Some Republicans in the state say privately it is all but impossible for Republican Sen. John McCain to win Pennsylvania. Others are hopeful but nervous. Still many remain optimistic, noting that the race has been marked by wild […]

MCCAIN: I Heart Cheney & Rumsfeld

It is all about judgment. SALON: Republicans are already starting to gird themselves for a Nov. 4 debacle. A front-page story in Sunday’s New York Times featured GOP leaders lamenting the disarray in the McCain campaign. More ominous for McCain are the results of a secret-ballot survey by National Journal magazine of roughly 100 prominent Republican campaign consultants. Freed from the demands of on-the-record spin, 80 percent of these operatives admitted that it was highly likely that Obama would win the White House. The other 20 percent — the cockeyed optimists of the GOP camp — predicted that the election […]

JUST A JELLO SHOT AWAY FROM THE PRESIDENCY: Sarah Palin To Watch Friday’s Debate At The Irish Pub

MYFOX: Palin will be at the Irish Pub on Walnut Street on Friday night for a public debate watching party, if the debate between John McCain and Barack Obama continues as planned. DEVELOPING… CITIZEN MOM: So, you know how I hate to be a contrarian, but it’s worth disagreeing with Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, who last week told City Paper’s Tom Namako that the upcoming election is “not about Sarah Palin.” I know what Dean meant, of course — that Democrats have to focus on running against John McCain, not the Moose Shootin’ Mama. Except it looks like […]