PSoTD

Is there any place where a blogger can find out the dollar value in taxes not collected for the U.S. Government for all the deductions listed in IRS Publication 529?

Apparently, it's North Dakota, sorta:

North Dakota voters Nov. 4 gave Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader his second highest percentage of votes in the nation, 1.3 percent.

If Obama wants the more progressive, more liberal, and less hawkish Democrats to coalesce more effectively to refocus the Democratic Party, there couldn't have been a better spark for that effort than to allow Joe Lieberman to keep his Senate chair. I kinda wonder if that's exactly why it happened.

If you have kids, this photo of a man grieving over his child killed in Iraq is going to hurt. Same if you don't have kids.

There's so much idiocy on so many levels going on in Iraq, blood idiocy. Blood idiocy. Flesh idiocy. Life idiocy. We convert this idiocy into statistics in an effort to measure the results, casualties and dead and dollars and time. It takes a photo to bring home the idiocy. It takes a photo to bring home the criminality of this war ON EVERYONE'S PART THAT CONTINUES IT. This is that photo.

We are still a stupid species. The sooner we realize this, the sooner we can work to become a little wiser. This photo is a shock reminder of how stupid we can be, all of us, our species, when we fail to remember how stupid we are.

Sometimes emotion is the wisdom, and logic is the haze. Look at this photo, not in anger at any one person but in sadness at what we ignorantly accept ourselves in being. Look at what we're all doing in our battle of idiocies, and cry.

Very, very smart. And useful.

"On Monday, President-elect Barack Obama and Senator John McCain will meet in Chicago at transition headquarters," Obama Transition spox Stephanie Cutter just announced. "It's well known that they share an important belief that Americans want and deserve a more effective and efficient government, and will discuss ways to work together to make that a reality."

I think he's playing an interesting politics with Lieberman. At least, I hope so...

Lieberman can still help Dems, Reid says

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Sunday he's still trying to keep Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman within the Democratic caucus despite anger over Lieberman's support of Republican presidential nominee John McCain.

Regardless of the headline, this praise from Reid is quite damning of Lieberman. If you go on the premise that the caucus wants to vote him out, particularly with his dance with the Republicans, then what Reid is saying publicly is likely to isolate Lieberman even further. Such praise as

"Joe Lieberman votes with me a lot more than a lot of my senators."

and

"Joe Lieberman is one of the most progressive people ever to come from the state of Connecticut."

makes it a lot less appetizing for the Republicans to throw in their lot with Lieberman. The truth will be told with the caucus vote, but this sure looks like compliments designed to smell like dog crap to the Republican Caucus to me. With the goal of leaving Lieberman with no real options but to take whatever meager subcommittee chairmanship the Democrats might offer him, and a warning to shut up or suffer further consequences.

A little Chuck Todd from last Tuesday...

*** When red states turn blue: The two red states that have lifted Obama over 270 in NBC’s current electoral map are Colorado and Virginia. What do they have in common? They happen to be the two lone states Bush carried in 2004 that rank in the Top 10 in education (bachelor’s degrees or higher) and in fewest senior citizens (i.e., they’re the youngest states). Virginia also was the sole state that Bush carried four years ago that ranks in the Top 10 in median household income. Demographically then, these two states were poised to be pick-up opportunities for the Democrats. And if Obama wins them tonight, the GOP’s challenge in future presidential elections will be to find a way to win them back -- or reach 270 without them. Republicans don't have any more states they can afford to slip into the tossup/battleground column. The Democratic base in the Electoral College is getting awfully large (CA, NY, IL, NJ, New England, the Agricultural Midwest). If CO, VA, PA and MI are added in, what does that leave the GOP? And then in four or eight years, Texas will begin slipping into competitive territory. Who says Democrats ought to be in favor of scrapping the Electoral College? This may become a Republican movement.

Texas is pretty much the straw of the Republican camel's back. State and Congressional seats in Texas currently being served by Republicans ought to be a top priority for targeting in 2010, with expectations of greater inroads in 2012.

Don't wait until he jumps. Boot Lieberman already, Senator Reid, keeping him in a chairmanship will just pay poisonous dividends throughout the next session.

As a man whose name begins with the letter W, I've been disappointed with how it has been hijacked for political purposes by one of, if not the most, unpopular President in American History. Even today, if I drive around for very long in our relatively conservative geographic area, I'll see a car with one of those stupid "W" oval stickers plastered on their rear window or bumper, as if it were a vacation destination for the politically imbecilic.

Well, now that we're entering hopefully a smarter political era, it's time to rehabilitate the letter "W". First of all - the scrubbing should begin in how we refer to the 43rd American President. It can be Bush II, or George W. Bush, or whatever, but he doesn't get a letter. He hasn't earned it, and the letter "W" doesn't deserve such a connotation. And anyone that refers to him as "W" is denigrating a whole family of words and names and destinations and sounds.

I'm not sure if those who still drive cars with the "W" stickers are smart enough to figure out how stupid they look, and I'm not recommending that people take it in their own hands to remove the stickers. What I am suggesting is that advertisers do their part to try to play up happier, more successful, more intelligent uses of words that begin with W, and promote the letter. It could be winter, or Wisconsin, or wine, or Wachtovia... okay, not Wachtovia... but you get the point. They could play up the "new era of W" angle. Whatever it is - we need a national media campaign to rehabilitate the letter. It is the one letter of the alphabet that has suffered as much as America the past eight years, and it's time to help.

Seriously, there has to be a way to tie in this Facebook group to GoogleMaps so that everyone can know how close of proximity they are to the biggest political imbeciles in the nation.

I'd like to see some news from the Obama transition team about a scheduled meeting to be held in just the next few weeks with Senator McCain. I'd like it be more than a polite formality as well - I'd like Obama to announce that he's going to work closely with Senator McCain to put together a plan to cut back pork barrel spending. I'd also like an effort to come up with a generally agreed-upon definition of what pork barrel spending is for the nation.

And now that we're finally through this election, I hope that most bloggers can see the true crackpot nature of blog posts such as this and this, and realize that reading and participating in such forums is the equivalent of wanking to stick figure art, obsessed to an end and grabbing at any scrawlings available. Clearly I'm not a fan of PajamasMedia, but even they aren't this irrational.

And I think that blogs that blogroll No Quarter or HillBuzz deserve to have their rationality for such questioned.

But now, in the spirit of reconciliation and progress, I am not going to carry my disgust for those two sites and the illogical writers that support it. Instead, as we move forward, I think the best course of action is to recognize the sad nature involved in both sites, and ignore it.

Congratulations, Barack, Joe, and America. Now the real work begins for us all.

It's not very good as far as results are concerned.

I've voted for one winner (Clinton, 1996) in 7 Presidential elections. My vote might be the seal of doom for a candidate. Especially if you consider that the only seal of doom greater than my vote is a Bob Dole national candidacy (0 for 2). Clinton won because Dole trumped me.

Or maybe Bob Dole was stopped by the write-in vote for Fig Bar Man...

So what does John McCain do after he loses on Tuesday?

I have a suggestion for Obama - offer McCain the administration's point person on finding "pork" and waste in government spending.

I think the Republicans are getting ready for a good cry.