Tag Archives: Politics

Franken Lead Increases in Minnesota Senate Race

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According to news reports, the Minnesota Election Contest Judicial Panel finished their review of votes, counting just under 400 absentee ballots that were previous excluded. These votes were included as the result of Former Senator Norm Coleman’s legal challenge to the election. With Senator Al Franken’s lead over Former Senator Norm Coleman rising from 225 at the start of the process to 312 as of a few moments ago, it would appear that Coleman’s challenge has backfired.

The judicial panel still has a few more issues to rule on.

One of the issues os the ca 130 votes that were lost in a Minneapolis precinct. It was previously decided that the machine count, rather than the hand recount, stand in for this set of votes. Even if the votes were thrown out, it would only change the current count by a small amount.

Another outstanding issue is the assertion by the Coleman challenge that some votes were double counted. Again, if this ruling went in favor of Coleman, it would not change the total count too much.

It is estimated that if these two rulings both went Coleman’s way, he would gain fewer than 100 votes.

Coleman is planning to appeal the outcome of the 3 judge panel’s decision in the Minnesota Supreme Court. In that appeal he is expected to argue that many more absentee votes be counted. Even if that were to occur, it is not expected to change the outcome of the election, but it will delay the seating of Senator Franken in Washington. It is now widely accepted that the Coleman challenge and subsequent appeals are nothing more than a bald faced attempt to delay the seating of Democratic Senator Franken, as an overall Republican effort to block the Obama Agenda.

Sources: NPR, WCCO

Minnesota Recount Update

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The three judge panel convened for the purpose of addressing the Coleman challenge of the Minnesota Senate Election won by Al Franken (after a detailed recount) will meet today to examine ballots they had asked brought to the court. The panel had asked for four hundred ballots, but a small number of these (just over a dozen) had already been included in the recount and thus will not be examined.

The panel will examine the 387 or so ballots today, and decide which should be counted. Tomorrow, in a two step process the ballots will be opened by the judged (step one) and counted by court officials (step two).

It seems to be presumed that this is the final act of this panel, and that the panel will adjust the current vote count (from the recount) based by adding this new set of numbers. It is further presumed that candidate Al Franken will maintain his lead after his adjustment. That is a reasonable assumption given that it is statistically almost impossible for Coleman to erase and surpass Franken’s lead with this small number of ballots being considered. The presumption, then, is that this panel will conclude its business right after this adjustment, some time tomorrow.

I keep using the word “presumption” because I don’t believe the court has actually indicated that it is finished with this process. I’m expecting the court to take a few more days to produce a ruling, and possibly even allow additional arguments. The Coleman campaign, sensing defeat, has vowed to take this contest to the next level … the Minnesota Supreme Court. I’m certain that the election contest panel intends to send that court a decision that is as un-reversible as possible, and that is exactly what they should be doing. A little extra adjudicating around now may save a great deal of trouble later.

O’Reilly on Letterman

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Highlights:

Part I:

The first couple of minutes is Letterman making numerous jokes at O’Reilly’s expense. Nicely done.

1min 30 sec. Rush Limbaugh as new face of the Republican Party. O’Reilly takes credit for Limbaugh’s success.

3 min 50 sec. This is Letterman throwing out phrases he had apparently practiced earlier in the show (“Oh yea?” “Whatever!” and so on) much to the amusement of the audience.

4 min 50 sec: Letterman lays out the fact that O’Reilly lies. Regarding Sean Penn. Linbaugh, I mean O’Reilly starts to take it up a notch.

6 min 30 sec: O’Reilly claims to have had a conversation with Hugo Chavez.

7 min 45 sec: O’Reilly claims to be a journalist. The country does a spit take.

8 min 55 sec: Letterman compares O’Reilly, Limbaugh, etc. to Championship Wrestling.

Continue reading O’Reilly on Letterman →

Sudden movement in the Franken-Coleman Senate Race Recount

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The judicial panel that has been off somewhere deciding what to do about the Coleman election challenge has ordered 400 additional ballots opened and counted on April 7th.

If (and we do not know this for a fact) these are THE remaining ballots to count, them Coleman would have to get a statistically unlikely majority to overtake Franken’s lead of 225 votes. I suppose this is possible. So I suppose we’ll be sitting on the edges of our respective seats for the next week.

There does not seem to be any systematic meaningful bias in which candidate is likely to come out ahead in this group. The mix of 400 ballots includes both Coleman-supported and Franken supported absentee ballots.

I understand that there is a news conference being held right now, and I’m checking on that … will report back if anything new developes.

UPDATE: From the Franken Lawyer’s news conference: It turns out that the court intends to look at a subset of the ballots and THEN determine which will be opened. We do now know what percentage of the ballots make up this subset, or what their characteristics might be.

This is important: There are at least two other issues that have not addressed by the court and that the court may still chose to address. So this may be complicated.

Added:

What do these 400 votes have to look like for Coleman to win? If we assume that they represent a random subset of votes, we can guess that 60 are Barkely votes (the third party candidate). This leaves 340 votes.

Then, Coleman has to get 225 votes, which is about 66 percent. Coleman would have to win this tiny mini election by a landslide.

So, if he does win it by a landslide, that would pretty much mean that he cheated.

We’ll see how this goes…

sources: MN progressive, Strib

What do we do about Michele Bachmann????

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Well, I suppose we could go get guns and knives and bludgeons and just go KILL HER. That certainly would be a kind of ironic justice. But since we are all peace loving non violent types, I suppose we are going to have to make sure she does not win the next election. Whatever. But clearly, one way or another, we have to figure out a way to

REPLACE MICHELE BACHMANN!!!!

Which is what the Replace Michele Bachmann Web Carnival is all about. The new, revived edition of this carnival is up and it is known as:

Revenge of Daughter of the Replace Michele Bachmann Blog Carnival

Submit your posts for future editions here or email them here.

The Bachmann Effect

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“The Bachmann Effect” is now officially a phenomenon.

Danny Thomas made the spit take famous, in his TV show Make Room for Daddy. He’s always be drinking a cup of coffee when someone would say something to which he would react with such great and sudden incredulity as to suffer a visceral reaction making it impossible for him to do anything other than spit the coffee out in an impressive atomized spray. An excellent example of a spit take is in the following video, which is a promo form the re-make of Make Room for Daddy, called Make Room for Granddaddy. It’s at 30 to 32 seconds, and it is not Danny Thomas who pulls the spit take. Which in this case, makes it even better for various reasons.

The Dump Michele Bachmann web site documents Eric Kleefeld’s description of the Minnesota version of the Danny Thomas Spit Take. This is now called The Bachmann Effect, and it is different for two reasons. First, it is not Bachmann that does the take, but rather, Bachmann induces the take in another person. Second, only sometimes does coffee or some other liquid get atomized into the atmosphere. Usually, the person being Bachmanned is not taking a drink at the moment, so the spit take is something we see in the eyes and other aspects of facial expression.

This is so regular that I think it may in fact be a freshly discovered limbic response … a new emotion, as it were.

Check out the following video. First we have Michele Bachmann questioning Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. It is rather amazing that they would let her in the same room with actual cabinet officials, but they did. Watch Geithner’s facial expression when he realizes what she is really asking. This is the eyebrow drop at 24.5 to 25 seconds. Geithner is quick.

Then, we have the classic moment during a public discussion of immigration during the last election campaign. At 59 Seconds, El Tinklenberg, the Democratic Candidate running against Bachmann, gives us one of the greatest spit-takes ever seen in a national-level election, in reaction to Michele Bachmann’s statement characterizing Tinklenberg’s position in the exact opposite way he had characterized it moments earlier.

Now, to be fair, this is an edited tape. The truth is that Tinklenberg had articulated his position several minutes, not several seconds, earlier. We may be asking too much for Congresswoman Bachmann to remember that far into the past.

In the next bit, it is hard to pinpoint exactly when James Carville’s brain gets around the fact that Michele Bachmann is telling him that he ought to start supporting women who are running for office. But it does, seemingly in stages. Actually, it might be the case that the Bachmann Effect kicks in 1:38 and the rest of the facial contortions are minor strokes.

The Bachmann Effect.

The Replace Michele Bachmann Web Carnival is Back

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Back before the election in November, Stephanie Zvan and I had dinner to discuss the idea of forming a community of like minded bloggers to exchange resources and information. Mike Haurbrich was part of that conversation as well, but not at dinner that particular evening, which was at The Blue Nile. During that conversation, and in subsequent email conversations and over a pizza here and a Martguerita there, two projects developed, neither one of which was the blogger community resource that we had envisioned.

One of those projects was our joint blog, Quiche Moraine, which has been goin for a few weeks now and is starting to develop a regular readership (if you have not visited Quiche Moraine the please go have a look!!!).

The other project, which started up and went public almost instantly but then went into hiatus at election time, was the Replace Michele Bachmann Web Carnival

Of the three of us, none lives in Michele Bachmann’s congressional district, but we all live near it and we see her as a pox on our our otherwise very lovely state. We are the state of Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale, Arnie Carlson, Jesse Ventura, Harold Stassen, Gus Hall, Paul Wellstone, Amy Klobuchar, Keith Ellison, and Al Franken, to name a few. That is quite a diverse group, including Republicans, Democrats, Indies, Communists, Machine Politicians, Populists, Hard Core Liberals, and everything in between. You may hate or love any of these individuals (or something in between). But no mater what, everyone must admit that Michele Bachmann is does not hold a candle to, is not in the same league as, does not measure up to … fails, indeed, with every possible metaphor to come near …. any person in this panoply of pols.

We, and others in this state including the Dump Bachmann Web Site, were on top of this problem way before Michele Bachmann became uberfamous by insisting that a McCarthy like probe be carried out against all congressional democrats. Just thought I’d mention that.

Now, Bachmann has called for a violent insurrection against the “Obama Government.”

Clearly the time has come for her to be censured by her colleagues in congress, and possibly an election recall if such a thing is possible.

Or, at the very least, we intend to blog her sorry ass. Starting with the Replace Michele Bachmann Web Carnival.

The first carnival will be this Friday. By that time we’ll have decided if this is to be weekly, monthly, or what. In the mean time, SUBMIT YOUR BACHMANN BLOG POSTS HERE. or email them to this address.

Minnesota Senate Recount: Refining the prediction on how it ends

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In conversation with reporters earlier today Coleman noted that he does not anticipate this case going to the US Supreme Court, though he did apparently say this in his usual smarmy way so he can change his mind later. He did indicate that he DOES anticipate bringing the case to the Minnesota Supreme Court if the judicial panel now considering the case rules against his claim.

source

Michele Bachmann: Time for a censure. Seriously

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I live next to this crazy person’s congressional district and I do not want the yahoos who live there pouring over the border of My Fair City with their guns and rabid dogs, mullets and swastika-bearing pickups. Michele Bachmann barely makes it to Winged Monkey level, and this is well demonstrated here:



More details here.

More details and important request below the fold:
Continue reading Michele Bachmann: Time for a censure. Seriously →

Let Academic Freedom Ring

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As long as we understand exactly what it really is…

Debbitage has an excellent post responding to a piece in Higher Ed about critique v. objectivity in the classroom. The comparison is between “Objectivist” teaching and “Criticism Based” teaching…

An important aspect of criticism-based teaching is that if done right, it is able to correct the teacher’s own flaws. Objectivist teaching depends on the teacher to correctly draw the fact-opinion border, and to select the correct facts to teach. A criticism-based approach, done correctly, enables students (particularly those coming from a different perspective than the teacher) to challenge the teacher’s unexamined assumptions — and, crucially, to give both sides the tools to work through the dispute to see to what extent evidence and reason support one side or the other…

Go read this post, it is dead on. The important thing is to give students, even the ones you would never have a beer with or support politically in any way, as much safety as possible in the context where the conversation can go wherever it needs to go, respectfully but relentlessly. My gender and race classes have often included students with diametrically opposing views, and it usually turns out that the more conservative, sometimes even ‘homophobic’ views are in the minority, yet present. This is where the call for objectivist rhetoric often comes from, because objectivist rhetoric is the hobgoblin of the neoconservative academic freedom movement. It usually turns out that a thorough critical discussion, again, done respectfully (this is a classroom we are talking about) reaches a stage of thoughtful discussion, meaningful change in student’s perspectives, and true scholarly progress, while objectivist thinking usually reaches stalemate.

Anyway, go have a look at this blog post, it is quite impressive.

Minnesota Recount End Is In Sight

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So, my friend Phil was in the Air Force up near Grand forks (where the flooding is happening now). He told me today they use to use a super tall radio tower to spot weather, and this tower was something like 70 miles away. So it was in sight, but almost unbelievably so.

Similarly, there is an end in sight for the Minnesota Senate Recount…
Continue reading Minnesota Recount End Is In Sight →