The Raven' s Blog, Web Log of Eric Ferguson: First Half of November Archive

The ballots in the car story is debunked
November 12

One almost-fact Republicans have pushed in their campaign to undermine the Minnesota Senate recount, and delegitimize both a possible Franken win and Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, is that 32 absentee ballots were mysteriously produced by a Minneapolis city employee after allegedly keeping the ballots in her car for several days. There was an employee, there were ballots, and there was a car, and that's all the truth in that story. Kudos to David Brauer of MinnPost, who did the outrageous thing and actually checked the story. Were there ballots in Elections Director Cindy Reichert's car? Yes. Absentee ballots arrive at city hall late into election day, and state law calls for those ballots to be counted at the precincts after the polls close. They get taken to the polling places in some election official's car. As Brauer puts it, "Since the 'Star Trek' teleporter has not yet been invented, these ballots are driven to the polling places." There were 28 ballots for precincts which had finished already. The number grew to 32 with four the precinct workers had missed in their counting. They were taken back to city hall to be locked up. They were in the car only a short time. They were all accounted for the whole time. All routine, and unnoticed without a nationally scrutinized recount going on. Nothing pernicious going on.

Fine Republicans, suspect all you want. That you suspect the opposing party might pull something is understandable and I don't resent you checking into things. The problem is that, judging by the comments on news articles, letters to the editor, and predictably the Wall Street Journal and Katherine Kersten, you refuse to acknowledge the facts once they've come out. You treat your suspicions as facts, and no countervailing evidence will move you. OK, ask all the skeptical questions you want, that's your right, but you don't have the right to pretend the facts are being hidden when they're presented to you. You don't have the right to remain ignorant of how elections work, and then cast aspersions on what you don't understand. I'm not suggesting Franken's supporters knew everything going in, but we've bothered to find out. If Gov. Tim Pawlenty is any indication, you either haven't bothered to learn or you're willing to mislead. Pawlenty couldn't even bother getting the Reichert's gender right. Anybody really believe a long time professional politician doesn't know legally mandated election procedures? Yet he makes them sound suspicious.

How to help Franken
November 9

The information on how to help Al Franken in the recount battle was a bit buried in the prior entry, so here it is again. The Franken campaign has established an e-mail address for anyone who has useful information to report, recount@alfranken.com. That's not a link, so spammers will have to do their harvesting manually. If you know of something that happened election day that shouldn't have, or you know that Coleman is trying to pull something else, send your information there. If you can spare some cash, donate to the recount fund. This is separate from the campaign fund, so you can donate even if you donated $2300 already.

Republicans pulling out the Florida playbook
November 9

Minnesota 2008 is not Florida 2000. We have a DFL secretary of state instead of Republican, and Mark Ritchie wasn't one campaign's state chair. He resisted Republican efforts to purge voter registration rolls instead being the one who found a phony excuse to purge tens of thousands of blacks. We have paper ballots, not dodgy punchcards. Ritchie made it plain the standard for counting a ballot would be whether the voter's intent could be discerned, so we won't have fights over which technical errors are allowed and which aren't. We also have registration at the polls, so people wrongly purged or never entered in the registration database weren't turned away like in Florida 2000, and shunted off with a provisional ballot which probably won't be counted.

On the other hand...

Norm Coleman, endorsed by most newspaper editorial boards because he talked about being bi-partisan, pragmatic, and responsible, showed his record was a better indicator. He tried Bush's tactic of declaring victory and calling on his opponent to stop dragging things out and concede. It worked for Bush. He established a media narrative that Bush had won and Gore was trying to overturn it, and that's exactly what Coleman was after. Fortunately, this time the Democratic side saw it and responded quickly so that a bunch of the same newspaper editorial boards that foolishly endorsed Coleman criticized the tactic. When even state GOP hack Sarah Janacek admitted it was a foolish declaration, that put paid to that tactic. The Republicans aren't done though. They're pretending routine corrections to the initial results canvass are mysterious and improbable. They asked a Ramsey County judge to prevent the counting of 32 absentee ballots in Minneapolis (for non-Minnesotans: Minneapolis isn't in Ramsey County). The judge turned them down. They gave no reason to suspect something funny with the ballots, they gave the Franken campaign only an hour's warning, and they wrote their request in such a way as to disallow any votes not counted by midnight on election night, when the initial counting was still in progress. Video of the Franken press conference here.

And of course, as the Republicans disrupt as much as possible, they accuse Democrats of, all together now, trying to disrupt the process. Their evidence? Repeated calls to count all the votes in accordance with the law. If you're wondering why Janacek would make such false comments about Franken, it could be the mention she got in his book, "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right". In a chapter on how conservatives twisted the Wellstone memorial, he called her out on her claim that the mourners were told by directions on the video screens when to cheer, laugh, and applaud. She was referring to the closed captioning, which clearly was behind the cheering or applauding, as would be expected from closed captioning. So I imagine Janacek has it out for Franken.

So what can we do to help? First, the Franken campaign has established an e-mail address for anyone who has useful information to report, recount@alfranken.com. That's not a link, so spammers will have to do their harvesting manually. If you know of something that happened election day that shouldn't have, or you know that Coleman is trying to pull something else, send your information there. If you can spare some cash, donate to the recount fund. This is separate from the campaign fund, so you can donate even if you donated $2300 already.

Sometimes it's better not to say anything
November 4

Sometimes it's better to not say anything, or maybe this is a sign of how snake-bit the Republicans are this year. Two press releases went out yesterday. One was from Barack Obama and his sister announcing that their grandmother had died. This is the same grandmother Obama dropped the campaign for to make one last visit late last month. The other press release: form the Republicans, announcing they filed an FEC complaint alleging Obama used campaign funds for personal use. The releases came out about the same time. Yes, these are the same Republicans who used campaign funds to buy $150,000 of makeup and clothes for Palin and her family. Need I say more? Oh yes, if you're still undecided on how to vote today....

And I repeat, TODAY.

Robo call uses "bailout" to describe school referendum
November 3

Earlier this evening I received a robo call from a group opposing the Minneapolis school referendum. I suspected this was a Paul Dorr operation, and apparently it is according to the local group.

Paul Dorr has made a career of opposing school referenda in his religious zeal to end public education, and local groups like Citizens for a Quality Education Minneapolis Committee have him assist in misleading campaigns. In the robo call, the referendum was referred to as a "school bailout", like failing schools should be allowed to fail. "Bailout" is completely the wrong word, but it's a loaded word, which strongly suggests they oppose public education in concept, as many Christian conservatives do. Those of you doing Get Out the vote tonight and tomorrow, which I hope is everyone, be prepared for misled people. On the web, get the Yes side of the issue at Strong Schools Strong City.

Coleman is hiding behind his family and lying about Franken's involvement
November 3

Coleman said something during last night's debate that neatly sums up his defense to the allegations made in two recent lawsuits: "What he doesn't get is that when you take the candidate's wife and you put a commercial up the same day this thing is filed defaming my wife -- she has a right to earn a living, she has a right to live a life. Al maybe you just don't know there are lines you don't cross. Maybe that's your career of not knowing there's a line to be crossed."

That defense that sounds good as long as no one notices that neither Al Franken nor anyone else is going after his wife, but after him. Hiding behind his family doesn't make the allegations true, but it doesn't look good. In fact, I have no problem admitting that no one yet knows if the allegations are true, but that isn't what Coleman is lying about. He's accusing Al Franken of being behind it. He did back off a bit when asked about it, admitting he had no evidence, but he made that claim earlier, and he accuses Franken of going after his family. Coleman lied when he accused Franken because he has no evidence --- and circumstances make it appear Franken knew nothing about it, let alone planned it. In fact, the second suit makes it appear the timing was forced not by the election, but by the desire of a defendant in the second suit to protect himself by filing his own suit first. Coleman also did something cheap by hiding behind his family, which is what he's doing by pretending they're being attacked, not him.

All other circumstances aside, if Franken was behind this, or the DFL, wouldn't they have brought this out earlier, when there's time for the story to build, and less suspicion due to the late timing? Well OK, suspect all you want, but just like the allegations against Coleman shouldn't be taken as proven without the evidence coming out, demand evidence that Franken or the DFL is behind this.

So as a human being, I could feel sympathy for Coleman and his family for how rough this whole experience must be, assuming he's innocent, just as I felt angry on his behalf after his house and the houses of other congressional incumbents in the Twin Cities were vandalized. However, that doesn't justify accusations at his opponent based on nothing but suspicion. Coleman could even say he "suspects" Franken and the DFL, as long as he admits he doesn't have proof, and he wouldn't be a liar. At least on that account --- if the allegations are true then he's lying about those, but we don't know that yet. What we do know is the senate race is tight at this point. The newest polls include some time since the lawsuit story broke, but not entirely and it's come out slowly, and suspicion about the timing might be greater than suspicion the allegations are true. Consider it neck and neck, and each vote being vital. Especially ticket splitters, Obama supporters voting for Coleman or Barkley, need to be encouraged to support Franken. Point out that only Franken is offering a universal health care plan. Coleman uses the phrase but clearly won't support anything but the free market, which hasn't exactly worked so far. Barkley would let individuals buy into Medicare at cost, but the problem is many can't afford the cost. If that doesn't persuade an Obama supporter, point out the need for Obama to have a supportive Congress if he's to get anything done. Coleman clearly will oppose him, and Barkley seems to have no ideas, just an insistence we can't afford anything, which means he won't be much improvement over Coleman when it comes to casting votes.

"To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."
US Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, who successfully prosecuted Nazis at Nuremberg for the crime of aggressive war, thereby establishing the precedent that starting a war is, in and of itself, a war crime.

"A refusal to look back inevitably means moving forward in blindness."
Philip Alston, the U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, on the resistance of the Obama administration to investigating human rights abuses by the Bush administration.

"Why is it that strong women are so often called bullies and ballbreakers, while strong, opinionated men are often called, simply, Justice Scalia."
Salon editor Joan Walsh, on the bigoted attacks on Sonia Sotomayor already on the day of her announcement.

"In Minnesota, Secretary of State Mark Ritchie has made military ballot protection a key priority of his Department. The result is that twice as many military ballots are actually cast, and half as many are rejected, as the national average in 2006."
The National Defense Committee, in an article on their web site praising Minnesota's efforts to encourage absentee voting by military personnel stationed overseas.

"We're seeing massive resistance to the cramdown proposal. That's a proposal to allow bankruptcy judges to reschedule a mortgage on a primary residence. They're fighting this thing tooth and nail. Now the fact is, the people fighting it are the last people who should get the ear of anyone. And it goes to show me they haven't really learned any lessons. A lot of these folks--large banks, Wall Street firms--they have the attitude that "Heads I win, tails you lose." No matter what happens, we always get ours."
Rep. Keith Ellison, on how the bailed out banks are fighting against bankruptcy reform.

''Scores of banks failed in the Great Depression as a result of unsound banking practices, and their failure only deepened the crisis,. Glass-Steagall was intended to protect our financial system by insulating commercial banking from other forms of risk. It was one of several stabilizers designed to keep a similar tragedy from recurring. Now Congress is about to repeal that economic stabilizer without putting any comparable safeguard in its place.''
The late --- and correct --- Paul Wellstone, expressing opposition to repealing the law that prevented financial corporations from entering other types of financial business, like preventing commercial banks from becoming investment banks. This repeal was a large part of making the (collapsing) conglomerates possible.

"The facts revealed reflect the way the U.S. government has consistently tried to cover up the truth of Binyam Mohamed's torture. He was being told he would never leave Guant�namo Bay unless he promised never to discuss his torture, and never sue either the Americans or the British to force disclosure of his mistreatment."
Reprieve Director Clive Stafford Smith, speaking about a British court's ruling that the Bush administration tried to get Mohamed to plead guilty to something, anything, and keep quiet about his treatment as a condition of release.

"We spend hours and hours and hours arguing over $10 million amendments on the floor of the Senate, but there has been no discussion about who has been receiving this $3 trillion."
Sen. Bernie Sanders. I-VT, on the mostly unreported spending by the Federal Reserve to prop up the big financial corporations.

"The AIG scandal is significant and has resonated so powerfully because it is a microscope that enables the public to see what and who has wreaked the destruction that threatens their security and future and, most important of all, to realize that these practices haven't ended and the perpetrators haven't been punished. The opposite is true: those who caused the crisis continue to exert control over what happens and continue to have huge amounts of public money transferred in order to enrich them."
Glenn Greenwald, explaining why the AIG bonus scandal is both symbolic and important.

"Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly."
Attorney General John Ashcroft, during a principals meeting about torture methods.

"There was no scientific consensus in the 1970s that the Earth was headed into an imminent ice age.

A review of the literature suggests that, to the contrary, greenhouse warming even then dominated scientists' thinking about the most important forces shaping Earth's climate on human time scales." Thomas Peterson of the National Climatic Data Center, who surveyed scientific research from 1965-1979 and showed that contrary to what climate change deniers keep asserting, there was no consensus on global cooling. That means the point that climate scientists must be wrong now because they were wrong then is itself based on a false assumption.

"We do not know where George Will is getting his information, but our data shows that on February 15, 1979, global sea ice area was 16.79 million sq. km and on February 15, 2009, global sea ice area was 15.45 million sq. km. Therefore, global sea ice levels are 1.34 million sq. km less in February 2009 than in February 1979. This decrease in sea ice area is roughly equal to the area of Texas, California, and Oklahoma combined.

It is disturbing that the Washington Post would publish such information without first checking the facts."
statement on the web site of University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center, responding to an assertion by global warming denier George Will that they said sea ice area is the same as 1979.

"It has often and confidently been asserted, that man's origin can never be known. But ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science."
Charles Darwin, whose 200th birthday is coming up on February 12.

"The thing I like most is it says you can get these complex traits evolving by a combination of unlikely events. That's just what creationists say can't happen."
evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne, commenting on an experiment that was able to observe a mutation that changed one species into another.

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