Tuesday’s Mini-Report

October 31, 2006

Today’s edition of quick hits.

* When a very large “shredding services” truck shows up at the Vice President’s house, I get a little nervous.

* Rep. Jim Gibbons (R-Nev.) — you know, the guy who allegedly accosted a cocktail waitress in a Las Vegas parking lot — is now officially under a criminal investigation. I know Nevada is generally a “red” state, but voters couldn’t still elect this guy, could they?

* Just in time for Halloween, a new Gallup poll reveals that a little more than 1 in 10 Americans object to Halloween “on religious grounds.” That number, 11%, climbs to 27% among those who attend religious services weekly. Additionally, more than 1 in 4 evangelicals object to Halloween.

* South Dakota’s ballot measure to ban abortions doesn’t appear to be doing very well. Good.

* I’ve seen goyim give Jewish voters the hard-sell before, particularly in Florida, but I’ve never seen anyone go quite as far as Katherine Harris.

* My friend Cliff Schecter has a terrific piece on AlterNet today about Joe Lieberman’s “evolving” opinions on almost everything, including the war in Iraq. After reading it, one wonders how anyone could take Lieberman seriously anymore.

* Speaking of must-read pieces, Will Evans did a fantastic job for Salon about federal judges who gave financial contributions to Bush and other Republicans who helped place them on the bench. Amazing.

* Republican Reps. Joy Padgett, Rick O’Donnell, and Curt Weldon are supposed to be candidates the GOP is committed to protecting this year. Today, however, the Republicans started backing away from all three of them.

* I’m kind of amazed reporters don’t care about the timing of the Saddam Hussein verdict. I’m even more amazed CNN would mock those of us who think it’s a legitimate question.

* Wait, the Dem establishment thinks the netroots aren’t ambitious enough to find for every seat? Don’t they realize they have that backwards?

* John Dickerson is right; the GOP’s new push polls seem to misunderstand the whole point of push-polling. The idea is to fool people into thinking it’s a legitimate survey. If the script includes all kinds of absurd claims that the voter doesn’t believe, the whole project is useless.

* How’s that GOP outreach to African Americans coming along? Not very well.

* When statewide Republican candidates start apologizing for their party affiliation in TV ads, you know the party is having a rough cycle. Wow.

* You TimesSelect subscribers will definitely enjoy Tom Schaller’s piece today on the myths of the 2004 election. It’s amazing so many professional pundits get so many facts wrong about an election that just happened two years ago.

* It’s scary to think that Katrina is the “forgotten disaster,” but I’m afraid it’s clearly the case.

* And in case we needed any more reasons to question the efficacy of the no-fly list, Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D), a five-term lawmaker from California, was denied access to a United Airlines flight last week, and a United employee told her she was on the terrorist watch list. “I handed over my congressional ID and he started laughing and said, ‘I’m going to need an ID that has your birthday on it,'” Sanchez said in a phone interview with the Associated Press.

If none of these particular items are of interest, consider this an end-of-the-day open thread.

Loretta Sanchez. Is this the same Loretta Sanchez who called out Tan Nyguen for his voter intimidation scam?

Do you think this could be a coincidence?

Or perhaps this is a preview of how Shrub will keep Dems out of Congress even if they do win a majority.

  • Yeah, I don’t agree with the idea that a shredding truck is a worrisome thing, unless it’s a brand new development. Lots and lost of companies use large shredding services, mainly because the shredding trucks take the paper off-site, and because they leave a signed paper trail documenting the shredding and the amount. It’s a great way to ensure security protocols are met.

    I dislike Cheney as much as anyone, but I think this is no big deal. Those big shredding trucks come and go everywhere.

  • Boliver – I can see businesses having a need for a commercial shredding service, but, how many people need one at their home? Seems like a bit of overkill to me.

  • Gibbons under criminal investigation…”but voters couldn’t still elect this guy, could they?”

    –You’re not from around these parts, are ya, boy?

  • In the land of thugs, crooks and morons (the thugs being the politicians, the crooks being the businessmen, and the morons being everyone else), aka Nevada, it’s entirely possible that Gibbons will be elected.

    Raise your hands, everyone who thinks the “surveillance tapes” that “surfaced” after two weeks, and show neither party there despite the cameras being aimed at “the spot,” and though both said they were there originally (tho Gibbons now says he wasn’t), were actually made two weeks ago. Ahhh, nice to see the readership here is as intelligent as I expect.

    Nevada is not where honest people go to make their fortune.

  • In a NYT article about guide dogs for injured veterans… WTF????

    “In late 2001, President Bush signed a law authorizing the Veterans Administration to underwrite programs like Canines for Combat Veterans. But the Veterans Administration is still studying the matter, so Neads [New England Assistance Dog Services] must raise all the money for its program from private sources.”

    5 years – WTF?!!!

  • “Additionally, more than 1 in 4 evangelicals object to Halloween.”

    Garrison Keillor treated Halloween in his Writer’s Almanac today.

    If you didn’t hear it… it is must read.

    Here are few enticing tidbits:

    ~~~~~~~~snip~~~~~~~~~
    Today is Halloween, one of the oldest holidays in the Western European tradition.
    …
    In terms of dollars spent, it is the second most popular holiday of the year in this country, after Christmas.
    …
    It was Pope Gregory III in the eighth century A.D. who tried to turn Halloween into a Christian holiday.
    ~~~~~~end snip~~~~~~~

    No need to thank me for that incredible site.
    Consider it my going away present…

  • Koreyel, I just clicked on your site and found that the last post was from July of this year and it concerned a thought experiment about a cancer patient’s choice between science and god. Now you are talking about a going away present to us. I hope I am wrongly connecting these dots, but are you ok?

  • Didn’t I read that Ted Kennedy (!) was also hassled this way?

    Have any REPUBLICANS had this problem?

    Just askin’.

  • NPR news at 8 today, embarrasingly enough, led with the Kerry joke story…

    And they described it as, get this: Kerry and Bush “traded accusations.”

    Please, folks, say this slowly so it sinks in…

    Bush accused Kerry of mocking the intelligence of the troops, which he certainly knew was totally untrure.

    Kerry responded forcefully.

    Bush is lying. Kerry is telling the truth.

    Oy.

  • * I’ve seen goyim give Jewish voters the hard-sell before, particularly in Florida, but I’ve never seen anyone go quite as far as Katherine Harris.

    Think back to Alabama during the Fob James administration (were you with Americans United then?). Fob’s second inauguration (his republican one) had to be the only Governor’s inauguration in US history to have the national anthem of a foreign country- Israel- performed as part of the ceremony.
    His wife belonged to one of these pre-apocalypse christian sects that measured everything against how they treated the Jews. It was an interesting four years (which also brought us Roy Moore, but that’s another story).

  • I hope someone will pick up on the latest Kean ad in New Jersey. After running a fairly clean campaign so far, this one attempts to tie Menendez to a ‘cocaine smuggler’ he supposedly invite to his inauguration, and has a viciously racist tone described accurately as follows:
    (from http://www.bluejersey.net/showDiary.do?diaryId=3036)
    “Tom Kean Jr’s latest ad features dark, grainy footage of border-crossing illegal immigrants right next to dark, grainy footage of Bob Menendez. Then it flips over to his pasty white happy family strolling on the beach. It’s a simple compare and contrast.
    Get the message? Bob Menendez is like the scary, brown people that want to destroy our country, our economy and our families and he wants to give them your money. Tom Kean Jr is the exact opposite. He’ll keep you safe from those people. Pick a side.”

    (Of course, the ‘cocaine’ hit is also racist.)

    Why do I think that his father, who I still respect, vomited when he saw this?

    And this wasn’t an ‘independent’ ad, but one put up by Kean.

  • Just last Halloween I remember the media whining about how liberals wouldn’t let kids do Halloween in school any more, and I remember commenting that my impression was that it was Christian conservatives who were making it un-fun for the rest of us.

    If the Republicans try to float that “Merry Christmas” vs. “Happy Holidays” nonsense again this year, I’d like to see liberals come back with how our kids can’t do Halloween costumes at school any more.

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