James Dobson, 38 mentions of homosexuality and the end of the Boy Scouts
October 28

I've started collecting bizarre predictions by conservatives of the results of an Obama presidency. I don't know that I'll have time to build much of a collection, but I'm getting a start. Mostly I've looked at comments to news site articles and blog entries, and the commenters are known just by handles. Still, the predictions are specific rather than the usual ranting, so I thought it might be fun to look back in a few years at the bizarre disconnection from reality. I'll share one now, though it's a bit of an exception since it isn't a comment by an anonymous loony, but a document put out by James Dobson. I found it in an article on Minnesota Independent on the recent raving of the religious right, and the article links to a document on the Focus on the Family site predicting what America will look like in 2012. For example, Dobson is seriously predicting, "The Boy Scouts no longer exist as an organization. They chose to disband rather than be forced to obey the Supreme Court decision that they would have to hire homosexual scoutmasters and allow them to sleep in tents with young boys." "Letter from 2012 in Obama's America" is 16 pages and has 38 mentions of homosexuality. Count them if you don't believe me. It sometimes seems religious fundamentalists spend more time thinking about homosexual sex than homosexuals do. Anyway, we will know in 2012 if the Boy Scouts are required to let homosexual scoutmasters sleep in tents with the boys or if they're disbanded. Will Dobson own up if he's wrong? Considerably how infrequently he gets anything right, I guess "no".

Good sign(s) for Obama
October 26

I've walked or driven through a lot of the Twin Cities this election year, either doorknocking or putting up lawn signs. I think today was the first time I've seen five consecutive houses with Obama signs, and I saw them while visiting my mother, not canvassing. You can't see them real well in the snap I took with my cell phone, but those are Obama signs, plus one Franken sign:

Speaking of Franken, his race is still neck and neck. Coleman picked up endorsements by the local dailies, whose editorial boards have moved right since their ownership changes, and who buy into Coleman's bipartisan rhetoric. Funny, he was staunchly with the acting president when he first took office, but his voting record has gotten steadily more left as Bush's popularity has plunged. At least he's more pragmatic than the real delusional conservatives. In fact, his positions are easily predicted by looking at the polls. Coleman's position will soon follow. Anyway, the dailes' editorial boards bought it. I don't know how much that affects opinion, probably not much, but anything can matter in a close race, especially with the Barkley factor. Barkely has some good positions, such as an intolerance for mounting debt that bothers Republicans only when they can blame Democrats. Unfortunately, he can't see that investments have to made. He dismisses Franken's ideas for improving access to higher education and health insurance as too expensive, without acknowledging that our medical system is one of the reason the economy is struggling, quite apart from compassion for people who can't get insurance at all, and that education is the best investment we can make. I'd rather he look for a way to get things done instead of saying they cost too much so let's not try.

So if you're a Democratic-leaning voter, it just makes sense to vote for the candidate most likely to vote like Wellstone. If you're undecided on the senate race but voting for Obama, consider the value of a senator who'll help rather than hinder a President Obama as he tackles the many problems the Republicans dumped on us.

No complacency in Minnesota on anniversary of Wellstone's death
October 25

It was six years ago today that Paul Wellstone died. I've been thinking a lot about Wellstone this past month as Obama has built a lead, and as Obama supporters have been warned against complacency. Some commenters on Salon said Wellstone was the only or the first politician they ever donated to or volunteered for. He was the first I ever cried for. Minnesota Democrats learned in a terrible way that an election can change completely in the time it takes a news announcer to say, "We've received reports that Sen Wellstone's plane has crashed." I recall hearing it when I left work early one day and had the radio tuned to Minnesota Public Radio. Wellstone was confirmed dead by the time I got home, where I woke my wife and told her what had happened. She had gotten to actually meet Wellstone maybe a couple weeks before, at an event where she walked up to him and gave him a hug, which he responded to as if he knew her. I still get teary when I recall how she wailed. I even had trouble writing this.

Probably everyone reading this knows how that election went. Those in other states might not know how viscerally Minnesota Democrats still feel it. At a recent fundraiser for a local candidate, a group of Democrats, strangers to each other, talked about the current election of course, but we inevitably turned to which of us still have our "Wellstone!" bumper stickers or yard sign. Our talk of the current election veered not a bit into what we should do with our certain win, because there was no sense of certainty. Hope, sure, but also a dread that something had to go wrong, as something has gone wrong so many elections before, something unforeseeable, uncontrollable, and devastating.

So I promise all Obama supporters, in Minnesota at least, there is no complacency. Anyone outside Minnesota who thinks the only question is the size of Obama's landslide, I have two words for you: Paul Wellstone. So keep working. Keep scrapping for every last vote.

Wellstone's final speech on the Senate floor, explaining his opposition to invading Iraq. Remember he was in tight race with an opponent (Norm Coleman) questioning his judgement, the election was about three weeks away, and the vote was forced then precisely to force Democrats to cast a tough vote right before the election with Americans gripped by war fever:

Actual organized registration fraud, and it's Republican of course
October 22

A good rule of thumb when Republicans make bizarre charges and repeat debunked assertions of corruption against Democrats: the Republicans are doing the same thing themselves. Another great example is the Republican who has been arrested for mass registration fraud. He tricked people into changing their party registrations to Republican, or switched it without their consent, a bit like how crooked telemarketers used to switch your long distance service and pretend it was your request. California is one of the states where voter registration includes a party preference. Mark Jacoby, working for the Republican party, got paid for each registration changed, which might have been his only motivation. However, Democratic voters would find themselves ineligible to vote in the Democratic primaries, and the Democrats would not have access to the voter's information to contact them for fundraising, volunteering, etc., while the voter would be left wondering why the party ignored them. This is radically different from what ACORN is accused of, where the employees made up names or had friends register multiple times, which wouldn't actually affect anyone trying to vote.

Don't bother Republicans with the facts however. They just ignore them and repeat the talking points over and over like the commenters on this story about the Nevada Republicans trying to purge urban voters who may have incomplete cards, even though the corrections are simple. Miss a checkbox, and the Republicans want you gone. Always remember, when registering or voting, you must follow the procedures exactly so, or you will be challenged and/or purged.

North Carolina has its own embarrassment
October 22

Though he didn't go on as long as Bachmann, Rep. Robin Hayes decided to get in on the act: "Liberals hate real Americans that work and achieve and believe in God." He's a Republican. Like you needed to ask. Bachmann's opponent, Elwyn Tinklenberg, received enormous amounts of contributions in a short time. He's been on a bunch of political interview shows this week. Maybe the same can happen for Hayes' opponent, Larry Kissell. I just sent some money, and you can too. Maybe with a sudden influx of cash, the media will take notice. In fact, I've posted on Air America blogs to ask them to give more air time to Democratic challengers like they did in 2006, and which I suspect helped. Sure didn't hurt. Unfortunately the fixation on the presidential race has pushed the congressional races to the background.

Speaking of Air America, in his programs yesterday and Monday, Thom Hartmann read letters from listeners in states with early voting who already see their votes being flipped by touchscreens machines, or they have difficulty getting their choices picked up and they can't be sure their vote ever got recorded. Just like 2004 and 2006, not one report of machines flipping votes from Republicans to Democrats. Hartmann also said the Ohio Secretary of State's site was being interferred with by a denial of service attack. This prevents Ohio voters checking that they got registered and didn't get purged for failing an exact match test. Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner has been fighting a tough battle with Republicans used to having the secretary of state lead voter suppression efforts, not protect voters.

Let's hope Minnesota's embarrassment took herself out
October 21

These two statements by Rep. Michelle Bachmann, and by now the whole country knows she's from Minnesota, came just a couple days apart:

"The news media should do a penetrating expose and take a look. I wish they would, I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out are they are pro-America or anti-America."

"It is amazing to me how the wind tunnel and spin can go around and around in an echo chamber. And this is simply a lie. I did not question Barack Obama's patriotism, I did not say he was anti-American. And the other accusation is that I was calling for members of Congress to be investigated on their anti-American views."

I can't put it better than a commenter on the Washington Times: "Does Representative Bachmann not know about YouTube?" If not YouTube, the Hardball clip already appeared on every news site and blog in Minnesota, and much national media too. See it in full context.

Miscommunication or partisan trap?
October 19

The report that the state Secretary of State's Office failed to use information from the Department of Public Safety to purge voter registration rolls of non-citizens has me wondering, was there miscommunication between the two offices, or is this a partisan trap? I just wonder because Republicans can't stand Mark Ritchie, presumably because he keeps trying to get more people to vote --- you know, the secretary of state's job --- after defeating Mary Kiffmeyer, who had the idea voting was supposed to be tougher, and competence in running the office seemed optional. Of course, incompetence and partisanship can be hard to distinguish, like when Kiffmeyer ruled that tribal IDs would not be acceptable for registering at the polls.

So in this case, DPS made drivers license information available starting in September 2006. Ritchie won the 2006 election and took office in January 2007. From then until a few weeks ago, neither the outgoing Kiffmeyer, her politically appointed subordinates, nor DPS bothered to tell Ritchie or his subordinates. Until right before the election. Right.

That could still be honest miscommunication. I can't prove otherwise. But how odd the Republicans, and remember that DPS reports to the Republican governor whereas Ritchie is elected, keep bringing up these these at the last moments. In Colorado, about a fifth of all voters were purged from the rolls 90 days before the election, and they won't know until they get to the polls and get turned away. Despite massive new registrations, the populous counties have fewer voters, not more. In Ohio, the Republicans recently brought suit to force the secretary of state to start purging anyone with a mismatch between the registration rolls and other databases, just like Colorado. So if a voter used a middle initial on one form and the full middle name on another, they could get purged. Fortunately, even if for some technical reason, the GOP lost. In Wisconsin, state Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen suddenly decided right before the election that all voters who registered since Jan. 1 2006 had to be compared to other databases and purged if there was a mismatch. What's been going on since Jan. 1 2006? Just like most states, lots of Democratic registrations. Why not go back further? My guess, too much chance of purging Republicans. None of that in Montana, where the state GOP tried to challenge large numbers of voters in Democratic leaning counties.

So with this Republican pattern of trying to screw up elections when there's not much time left to do things right, I find it a wee bit suspicious that, two years after starting to make the DPS data available, suddenly it's an issue. Given how it makes Ritchie look bad, and given that the GOP seems to have learned campaigning at the feet of Lee Atwater and Karl Rove, I suspect they waited until this long to screw over Ritchie and develop an issue to use against him, not to mention combining this with their mischaracterization of the registration fraud story around ACORN to undermine the legitimacy of the election results.

As a side note, but a big one, even though the point of this post was that the state GOP might have set up a trap specifically for Mark Ritchie, those examples I mentioned from other states are about the primary means of election fraud this year, the purging of registration rolls to remove huge numbers of voters who are eligible to vote, but won't be on the rolls, and with few states allowing election day registration, they won't be allowed to vote. Funny how so many of these purges and attempted purges were targeted at Democratic areas. According to the Brennan Center, maybe millions of eligible voters will be turned away from the polls or fobbed off with provisional ballots, which are called "placebo ballets" for a good reason. If we get a bunch of unexpected election results, this is the first place to look for the reasons why. This is how the theft of 2008 has already occured. We all must try to steal back our vote.

Sarvi speaks up for civil liberties
October 19

I just watched the end of a debate on KSTC between MN-02 incumbent John Kline and DFL (Minnesota Democratic) challenger Steve Sarvi. Sarvi responded to a question about when the candidates had disagreed with their parties by mentioning FISA and telecom immunity. It hadn't come up previously in the debate as much as I had heard. This is a Republican leaning district but it's looking winnable. Sarvi badly needs cash.