Doing little things well is a step toward doing big things better.
Harry F. Banks
Joe Miller: It's Time to Concede
I'm really starting to dislike Joe Miller, the Tea Party Express-candidate whom sniped incumbent Lisa Murkowski, the US senior senator from Alaska, in a close, unexpected GOP primary victory. Miller and Murkowski, who correctly perceived that she would retain her primary support and attract independent and moderates, were locked in tight polls with McAdams trailing. Four of the 7 polls in RC showed Miller and Murkowski in a dead heat (within 2 points, within the margin of error)--and that was before the revelation of a past misconduct charge surfaced within 10 days of the election. One of the polls taken around the time of the revelation showed Murkowski taking a big lead (10 points) over Miller.
Miller, who has a Yale law degree, had a private practice and also worked part-time for a few years for the Fairbanks North Star Borough (in this case, a county-equivalent). Miller, who had previously run and lost as a moderate Republican candidate to the Alaska state house, allied himself with the Palin faction of the GOP, against the party leadership. During a lunch hour he used, misleadingly and/or without permission, three different government PC's to vote in a political poll (which must have tracked by IP address); he was running for the state party chairman. He carefully hid his tracks by emptying PC cache and later denied the allegations. (His boss thought it was serious enough to suspend him.) I should note, for the layman, that use of government computers and related infrastructure (e.g., networking to the Internet) for personal or political purposes is not only unethical, but illegal. Some policies are more nuanced than others, allowing you the equivalent of an occasional call from home, (In fact, my last federal contractor assignment did not allow me even to access my external email account.) I remember once a few years back that one of my nieces sent out a group email and I responded with a 'reply all' without checking the email list. It turns out that my niece sent the original email to my sister's work email address. Almost immediately my sister flamed me for sending her an email at work (which I honestly didn't do knowingly), worrying that the PC security group would come after her for violating policy. There have been other issues raised as well, e.g., hiring his own wife, other conflicts of interest, etc.
There are so many things here that I've held my tongue to date; for example, Sarah Palin tried to spin the dozens of ethics complaints filed against her as baseless, as full "vindication" (absolutely not true with Troopergate); there were a lot of legitimate complaints against her, including using state-paid transportation for family use (which she repaid, after the issue surfaced), her use of an external email account for state business (versus her own state email account--mostly because she was looking for a workaround to the state email system, which is subject to state scrutiny), she was collecting money for a PAC while still governor, etc. [Note this blurb from this past June :"An investigator has determined that former Gov. Sarah Palin's legal defense fund broke ethics law and said Palin has agreed to settle the matter by having the trust return more than $386,000 to donors...Palin instead chose to follow the advice of another attorney [against the advice of her own personal lawyer] who recommended against seeking input from Palin's ethics supervisor, the attorney general, and instead to simply contest the "inevitable" ethics complaint when it came"]. Even if judges dismissed most of these complaints grading on a curve (some of them after Palin settled AFTER the fact), it doesn't exonerate Palin, and at minimum, the complaints undermined her so-called "reformist" credentials, if not by the letter of the law, certainly the spirit of the law. A legitimate reformer doesn't hide what he or she is doing on the people's business; like in the case of her PAC, she goes around trying to find a lawyer whom tells her what she wants to hear, and trying to get Palin to do the right thing is like trying to pull teeth. I think when you present yourself as a reformer and you engage in activities like these, including pressuring the DPS commissioner to fire a former brother-in-law directly and/or implicitly, charges of hypocrisy are inevitable.
This is about Joe Miller, not Sarah Palin, but let me point out the emperor is wearing no clothes: how can an Ivy League lawyer who knowingly padded a poll in his favor possibly have moral standing to object to Alaska election officials employing fuzzy rules (e.g., minor misspellings of Murkowski's name) in counting write-in ballots?
Joe Miller insists that he's just playing by the rules and the rules insist on exact spelling of names. We are not here talking about Gore's attempt to mine just enough votes in Democratic-controlled counties after two machine counts of the ballots showed Bush winning to overturn the results; we are not dealing with hanging chads, etc.
Lisa Murkowski (or "write-in", but let me point out that 41% of write-in ballots is not usual in an Alaskan election, and the idea (see below) that a vote for "Lisa" or "Lisa M." refers some unknown Lisa M. Lackey whom entered the race in the closing days of the campaign as a gimmick meant to sabotage the senator's write-in is preposterous. (I suspect that Ms. Lackey voted for Joe Miller; I seriously doubt that people wanted to see the write-in list because they didn't know how to spell "Lackey".) As of late tonight, about two-thirds of absentee ballots have closed Murkowski's lead to 11,333, with most remaining votes from Murkowski-leaning rural areas; that's to be expected since there is a heavily motivated base that supports Miller, but Miller is running out of votes.
Miller, meanwhile, has made clear that he will contest every "Murklewski" in the bunch. Already, he has compiled a litany of wrongs in preparation for a legal fight, and he filed suit Tuesday in federal court, trying to block election officials from using their discretion in determining a voter's intent...This could also be important because 160 other write-in candidates jumped into the race, at least some of them at the urging of a conservative talk radio host who backed Miller. One of those candidates is a Lisa M. Lackey - which could complicate things if voters decided to simply write "Lisa," as Murkowski is known by many supporters, or "Lisa M."This is like the classic definition of pornography: I can't define it, but I know it when I see it. If Joe Miller tries to strike the vote of "Murkewski", it is manifestly a disenfranchisement of the voter. It's highly unlikely anyone writing in a candidate meant anyone other than Lisa.
Yes, have the count, but everyone in Alaska knows Murkowski won, and trying to strike Murkowski votes on even minor misspellings is unsportsmanlike. Stand down, Miller: be a man, and concede the election.
San Francisco Bans Happy Meal Toys: THUMBS DOWN!
What's next: are the progressives going to ban prizes in Cracker Jack? I understand that many nutritionists despise McDonald's offerings (although things have gotten healthier than when I was a kid--I mean, you can get milk, fruit slices, etc.) But this is totally wrong-headed. When I was a kid, a visit to McDonald's was a special treat, like when one of us made our First Communion. (I don't even think McDonald's had Happy Meals then or toy surprises. But the occasional milk shake, those burgers and tasty fries were a treat; they were sponsoring the now defunct afternoon kid's television show (with audiences, cartoons, etc.), and I was envious of the kids chowing down on burgers and fries... Listen, progressives, your real issue is not with McDonald's whom are simply providing one alternative in the restaurant business but with children's parents. As Pink Floyd says, "Leave those kids alone..."
Political Humor
"I do not understand the electorate. This country is hurting in a way we haven't since the Depression. People struggling all over this country, and they came out and voted for the party that says right up front they will suspend your unemployment benefits and repeal health care. To go against your self-interest more you'd have to literally go f*ck yourself." –Bill Maher
[Bill, calm down. I know things must be hard on you now that Proposition 19 went down to defeat... Congress has been controlled by the Democrats since BEFORE the recession started. Yeah, the voters in 2006 who hired Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House have finally decided to make the Dems accountable for failing to promote economic growth policies. Their tax-only-the-rich, spend-beyond-our-means, expand-entitlements-before-we-fund-the-existing-ones recipe has resulted in perpetual trillion dollar deficits, and that doesn't even count the fact the new health care entitlement has been justified on voodoo costs and benefits.
Yes, Bill, we know: you are one of the West Coast
"A special shout-out to the independent geniuses, who switched sides again because President Chocolate Jesus did not make it rain twenties in two years." –Bill Maher
[Well, Obama tried. Part of the massive stimulus went to Native American reservations, but when the tribes performed their traditional rain dance, it didn't even rain pennies from heaven...
Federal Reserve chairman Ben "Helicopter" Bernanke, whom Obama reappointed, has been working overtime, flying over the American economy, tossing money out as fast as he can print it.... Of course, there's no golden helicopter backing him up...
Here is Barack Obama whom journeyed to India to perform the traditional jobs dance:
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Musical Interlude: Instrumental/One-Hit Wonders
Booker T & the MG's, "Green Onions"
