Question - "What can you do, personally, to press both sides, the Israelis and the Palestinians, to reach an agreement this year?"
The President - "I can press when there needs to be pressed; I can hold hands when there needs to be -- hold hands." - The White House, January 6th, 2008
Fourteen more days; just fourteen more days. January 20th, 2009 will mark The End Of An Error.
Al Franken declared victory on the steps of his condo in downtown Minneapolis this afternoon. After a 62 days of what must have been a torturous recount process for him and his family (not to mention his supporters), Al said that he was going to go to Washingon, DC to "work for all Minnesotans."
"After 62 days, after the careful and painstaking hand inspection of nearly 3 million ballots, after hours and hours of hard work by elections officials and volunteers across the state, I am proud and humbled to stand before you as the next Senator from Minnesota."
"I know this is not an easy day for Norm Coleman and his family," Al said. "And I know that because Franni and I and the kids have had plenty of time over the past two months to contemplate the possibility that this election would turn out differently."
Al said he expects that Norm will file an election contest suit, but we will have to wait and see.
"There may still be additional legal proceedings related to our recount. But I'm now in the business of serving the people of Minnesota. And the best way I can serve the people of Minnesota right now is to focus all my attention and all my energies on getting to work for them on the issues we'll be facing together."
(One has to wonder at this point whether Coleman is hanging on simply to screw Franken out of seniority once he actually gets to Capitol Hill. Because get to Capitol Hill Franken will -- it's only a matter of how quickly Norm Coleman accepts the fact that his lawsuits have no merit, and he's already going back on his word with this little farce. - promoted by Joe Bodell)
For Sen.-Elect Franken, the Real Work is Just Beginning
Congratulations are in order for Al Franken, his staff, volunteers and supporters.
After one of the longest and most bruising political campaigns in our state's history, Franken has emerged as the winner of a very well-run, professional and fair recount of the 2.9 million ballots Minnesotans cast more than two months ago. Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and the countless others who helped this process deserve all the credit in the world, as well.
It would be easy to say that Franken's overcoming skeptical and hostile Democrats (like me), the right-wing attack machine, self-inflicted wounds and a media that pounced on every scandal (real and perceived) was a Herculean feat because, to a certain extent, it was.
But the real work, as Franken and his team know, is only beginning.
Via a tweet from the Uptake, the Minnesota Supreme Court has denied Norm Coleman's effort to get more than 650 correctly rejected absentee ballots from Coleman-leaning areas included in the recount.
Next question -- when do Coleman's cronies start trying to pin political gamesmanship on the Supreme Court?
Update (from The Big E)
Here's an AP article. Here's a statement from Mark Elias of the Franken Campaign (received via email):
"Today, the Supreme Court once again affirmed the validity of the rules under which this recount was conducted. Minnesotans have waited a long time for a winner to be declared in this race, and today, with the last attempt to halt the counting process now having failed, Al Franken will be declared the winner."
Update II
This means Norm's only recourse is a lawsuit to contest the election. This clears the way for the Canvassing Board to declare Al Franken the next Senator from Minnesota.
The Coleman campaign contends that there are 654 ballots, in addition to those identified by local election officials, that should be examined, but the Franken campaign disagrees. The Franken campaign has itself identified additional ballots that it contends may have been rejected in error, but the Coleman campaign disagrees. We [The MN Supreme Court] take no position on the merits of either campaign contentions. Because the parties and the respective counties have not agreed as to any of these additional ballots, the merits of this dispute (and any other disputes with respect to absentee ballots) are the proper subjects of an election contest under Minn. Stat. ch. 209.
(PDF of MN Supreme Court ruling on rejected absentee ballots, h/t Jason Barnett of The Uptake)
"Over 50 percent of our energy comes from overseas. Fortunately, a lot of it comes from Canada." -- George orWell Bush, Ontario, California, January 5th, 2002
While comedians and late-night talk show hosts will miss Boy Blunder, most of this great country - indeed, most of the world - will not. January 20th, 2009 will mark The End Of An Error.
(Our corporate news is so sanitized from the pain of real war on ordinary people, the consequences of power politics done at the highest level. Strange how movies have become more violent while news has removed all violent reality. Can you even look upon the pictures of war? Instead of Israel or Palestine, the question ought to be about the side of ordinary people, the path of peace. - promoted by Grace Kelly)
Remember Sara Thomsen, one of the musicians that sang at our Peace Island Picnic in September? Although she originally wrote this song years ago in response to the suffering of the children of Iraq, its lyrics are again so applicable, sadly enough, to the children who have been killed, wounded and starved in Gaza.
Is It For Freedom?
Rulers of the nations as you fuss and fight
Over who owns this or that and who has the right
To design, build, sell and store and fire
All the bombs and guns to defend your holy empire
There are children hungry, children sick and dying
There are mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers crying
They're only pawns in your play of power and corruption
Slowly starve them, your new weapon of mass destruction
Refrain:
And prove to me, America, that you care
And prove to me, America, that you're aware
Who's dying for your freedom in this land
Who pays the cost for the liberties you demand?
Is it for freedom, or our comfort and convenience
Is it to profit for big business we pledge our allegiance?
Are we prisoners in the land of the brave and the bold?
Held by indifference or hearts grown hard and cold?
Children of the world, you have the right
To sing and dance, run and play, let your dreams take flight
As the innocent die, you rulers carry the shame
And if we stand idly by, we share in the blame.
And oh America, do we care?
Oh, America, are we aware?
Who's dying for our comfort in this land?
Who pays the cost for the convenience we demand?
As a small gesture, if you are somebody who DOES CARE, please come out to the MN State Capitol, 75 Rev ML King Blvd, St Paul on Monday, January 5th at 1 pm, and wear all black to mourn the innocent lives lost in Gaza and urge the U.S. to support diplomacy instead of violence.
Let's not forget the quote (from Israeli historian Yahuda Bauer) that hangs on a wall of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.: "Thou shalt not be a victim. Thou shalt not be a perpetrator. Above all, thou shalt not be a bystander."
As we inch closer and closer to a conclusion to the Minnesota Senate (MN-SEN) race, as it seems that Al Franken will most likely replace Norm Coleman, why is it that I feel so optimistic?
Mainly, I feel optimistic because there is a tiny pool from which Norm needs to find 227 votes and the chances of them getting counted appear slim.
I also feel optimistic that Norm's chances in court are slim as he'll be asking the MN Supreme Court to rule against their previous rulings. When these legal avenues fail, he'll file an election suit to contest the entire recount process. A process that has been fair and transparent ... it'll be extremely difficult for him to prove his case.
"FEMA is an incredibly important part of a president's team. The person who runs FEMA is someone who must have the trust of the President. Because the person who runs FEMA is the first voice, often times, of someone whose life has been turned upside down hears from." -- George orWell Bush, Austin, Texas, January 4th, 2001
That's what Boy Blunder said, when announcing the appointment of two cronies that day; Joe Allbaugh to FEMA and Karl Rove to "Senior White House Advisor."
And Boy Blunder did/does trust his appointments/cronies to do his dirty work/bidding; no matter how incompetent and/or corrupt they may be.
Of course, as incompetent as "Heckuva Job, Brownie!" was, he did have one shining moment, when Brown made one of Boy Blunder's favorites look down"right" stupid. And which of Boy Blunder's favorites did Brownie make look down"right" stupid?
The 2009 legislative session begins this week -- what can we expect?
Other than legislative leaders and Governor Pawlenty making early noise about bipartisanship and slowly getting tougher and tougher with the partisanship as session goes on, my bet is that the single overriding issue will be closing the pending $5 billion budget deficit.
Tough guess to make, right?
Here's another guess: House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher and Senate Majority Leader Larry Pogemiller are going to make the first move toward compromise on closing the gap, and Governor Tim Pawlenty won't respond in kind, instead treating their overtures as a sign of weakness.
Another guess: without true compromise from both sides, the budget gap will not be closed by the end of this session.
Granted, these are all still guesses. Magically, everyone in St. Paul could come together and get the job done. To do that, we progressives will need to accept that some non-critical programs are going to have their budgets cut, and anti-tax cruaders are going to have to accept that high-stability taxes -- those levied on top wage-earners who are unlikely to be affected adversely by the recession -- may need to be increased incrementally to bring in more revenue. Gimmicks like fee increases on non-essential goods and services will not do the trick, nor will a wholesale attack on Local Government Aid, education, or transit funding.
So please, folks -- try to work together this session. Minnesota needs some solutions, and fast.
Even though the winner is not yet certified, I think we have enough information to begin breaking down what happened and why.
When looking to make comparisons I think it is more appropriate to compare last year's Senate race to the 2006 Governor's race than to the 2006 Senate race. The dynamics between the 2008 Senate and 2006 Governors race are similar while the dynamics of the two Senate races are quite different. First of all the 2006 Senate race was for an open seat previously held by the DFL and the race featured a successful, dynamic and generally well liked woman against a generic GOP white male. In both the 2006 Governor's race and the 2008 Senate race we had a GOP incumbent running against a white male DLFer.
I feel like I've written that headline about other Republican candidates before, but no matter -- Norm Coleman is taking the cheese as the Senate recount concludes with Al Franken leading by more than 200 votes. So says Marshall Helmberger's great editorial:
The Coleman campaign's legal argument will apparently center on the suggestion that approximately 130 ballots may have been counted twice. Duplicates of ballots are made occasionally, if the original ballot won't pass through a vote scanning machine. Coleman's campaign alleges that some of these duplicates may have been recounted along with the originals and he wanted local election officials to recount their ballots again, but only in 25 precincts, mostly in pro-Franken Minneapolis. Given that this was the exact same cherry-picking that Republicans accused Al Gore of committing in Florida, you might think the Coleman camp would have been a bit embarrassed to make such an argument, but there is apparently no shame amongst this gang. Nor is there apparently a need for evidence, since the voter tallies in the selected precincts reportedly matched those from election night. If duplicate ballots had been included in the recount, the number of votes and voters would presumably no longer match. The fact that they did suggests the Coleman camp may be grasping at straws.
In either case, as the Franken attorneys correctly argued, if the court were going to order a search for possible double-counted votes, it would need to order it statewide, which would have, in effect, required the recount to start all over again. Not surprisingly, it was another Coleman argument shot down in the courts.
But that won't prevent Coleman from recycling it in a formal election challenge, which could delay a final decision on the winner for weeks, and possibly for months.
In other words, the guy who wanted to spare the people of Minnesota the trouble and expense of a recount now appears poised to deny us full representation in the U.S. Senate, possibly for months, and add far more expense to the state's bill for the whole affair.
Pathetic, Norm. Just pathetic.
For a few minutes, once it became clear that Al Franken had a strong chance of coming out ahead in this process, I thought it was an opportunity for Norm Coleman to do the right thing and preserve some of his political image, for whatever it was worth. Now, I'm not so sure -- the scorched-earth legal tactics his people seem certain to employ in a losing attempt to steal this election generally don't play well in the court of public opinion. Now, with an incoming Democratic White House and few friends left on Capitol Hill, it's not just Coleman's Senate career that's over, it's likely his entire political career.
