Electoral map is red, blue and almost true

Talk about a toxic environment for Republicans in this presidential election year. Between gas prices and the sour economy, Iraq and President Bush's dismal ratings, it seems a tuna sandwich could win the White House back for Democrats. Don't bank on it.

Twenty weeks before Election Day, the electoral map is pointing to the potential for another general election decided by a razor-thin margin. For all the GOP woes and Democratic optimism, that map shows Republican Sen. John McCain well-positioned in enough key states to win the necessary 270 electoral votes.

Most political analysts say Barack Obama is more likely to pick off Ohio than Florida. But Democratic pollster David Beattie sees the Sunshine State as possibly more fertile for Obama than the Buckeye State. Florida has a bigger African-American population, he noted, and as more of a growth state offers far more educated suburban voters who often don't vote. (full story here)

Comments

[Toxic Liberals---Beware of Democrats as they will be the death of us all.]

Justice Scalia and then Chief Justice Roberts, via Powerline weigh in on a decision which seems to the layman as pretty much the opposite of the thinking that went into ex parte Quirin, though we are obviously not clever enough to understand the rarefied logic of the majority of today’s Supreme Court:

Today, for the first time in our Nation’s history, the Court confers a constitutional right to habeas corpus on alien enemies detained abroad by our military forces in the course of an ongoing war…

Today the Court strikes down as inadequate the most generous set of procedural protections ever afforded aliens detained by this country as enemy combatants. The political branches crafted these procedures amidst an ongoing military conflict, after much careful investigation and thorough debate. The Court rejects them today out of hand, without bothering to say what due process rights the detainees possess, without explaining how the statute fails to vindicate those rights, and before a single petitioner has even attempted to avail himself of the law’s operation. And to what effect? The majority merely replaces a review system designed by the people’s representatives with a set of shapeless procedures to be defined by federal courts at some future date. One cannot help but think, after surveying the modest practical results of the majority’s ambitious opinion, that this decision is not really about the detainees at all, but about control of federal policy regarding enemy combatants.

And now the fine lawyers defending these men, who believe they have a religious duty to kill Americans, are preparing to ask that their clients be freed because they have been denied their constitutional right to a speedy trial. What a country.

What the article doesn't mention: Republicans won the presidency twice by election fraud and disenfranchisement in swing states Florida and Ohio. In a fair election, Obama wins with ease.

9:53 - give it up nobody reads your rants!

9:54 -

Get over it.

10:09 Stop doing it, and I'll get over it, fascist.

I'm holding my nose and voting McCain - not that I'm voting for him, I'm simply voting against Obama - his marxist rhetoric scares the poop out of me.

9:54 -

You need proof before you make an accusation like that. If you have definitive proof, show it...otherwise shut your pie hole and get over it.

Talk about toxic unobjective spin from the St Pete Times. Good Grief.

Here's a great article below

More on President Bush
from Ann Coulter

Bush's America: 100 Percent Al-Qaida Free Since 2001
by Ann Coulter

Posted: 06/12/2008
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=26979

10:09 I'm personally satisfied that enough evidence for cheating exists and should be investigated by an impartial body. In Ohio, Republicans used caging lists and in Florida they used the infamous "people with names the same as felons" to disefranchise primarily black voters, the majority of whom would have voted Democrat. Read any of Palast's books on the subject if you're curious, but I'd be willing to bet you'd rather I shut my pie hole and you can keep the whole thing swept under the rug.

[Cheating occurred in Washington State]

Go read up on the last Senate campgaign. Lots of unregistered votes and dead people voting. yeah the democrats have it cornered on fraud at the polls

[Washington was Guv's race. I see dead people voting.]

Washington state has supplanted Florida as the leading example of the need for election reform. The Evergreen State's voting system is so sloppy that you can't tell where incompetence ends and actual fraud might begin. Three Washington counties just discovered 110 uncounted absentee ballots--including 93 from Seattle's King County--in a governor's race that occurred more than five months ago and was decided by only 129 votes. Officials in Seattle's King County admit they may find yet more ballots before a court hearing next month on whether a new election should be called. Last Friday, they reported finding a 111th ballot.

The infamous 2004 governor's race was finally decided seven weeks after the election, after King County officials found new unsecured ballots on nine separate occasions during two statewide recounts. After the new ballots were counted, Democrat Christine Gregoire won a 129-vote victory out of some three million ballots cast. Even as she was sworn in last January, King County election supervisor Dean Logan admitted it had been "a messy process."

He wasn't kidding. During the two recounts, Mr. Logan's office discovered 566 "erroneously rejected" absentee ballots, plus another 150 uncounted ones that turned up in a warehouse. Evidence surfaced that dead people had "exercised their right to vote"; documentation was presented that 900 felons in King County alone had illegally voted and that military ballots were sent out too late to be counted. A total of 700 provisional ballots had been fed into voting machines before officials had determined their validity. In the four previous November elections, King County workers had never mishandled more than nine provisional ballots in a single election.

Slade Gorton, a Republican former state attorney general and U.S. senator, has joined with six Republican members of the King County Council in calling for a Justice Department investigation of the county's handling of ballots. Records indicate that some election officials in King County knew that the absentee ballot report they filed in November was inaccurate because there was evidence at least 86 ballots had been misplaced. Ignoring the requirement that they count the number of ballots received, instead they simply added together the number counted and rejected.
"That's appalling," says Secretary of State Sam Reed, a Republican who has frequently drawn praise from Democrats for being evenhanded. "You just don't do those things." Even the office of Democratic County Executive Ron Sims admits that "an outside review is probably a good idea" if for no other reason than to address Republican suspicions about the 94 new King County ballots. GOP lawyers point out that two-thirds of the new votes were cast in King County precincts that Republican Dino Rossi won. Ms. Gregoire won seven in 10 King County precincts.

All of this means that the May 23 date set for a trial on a GOP lawsuit seeking to declare the election invalid and to hold a new one this November takes on added significance. Mr. Gorton points out that "a court [can] void any election where the number of illegal or mistaken votes exceeds the margin of victory." In the case of last year's race for governor the number of uncounted ballots unearthed just this April is fast approaching Ms. Gregoire's margin of victory.

You'd think the Democratic Legislature would be appalled at the rampant mistakes and move to fix them. Indeed, separate election reform packages passed by both the House and Senate contain such good ideas as changing the appearance of provisional ballots so they aren't as easily mixed in with regular ballots. But both chambers also want to expand the state's already generous use of mail-in ballots, the system that directly led to so many mishaps last November. The state House passed a bill that would mandate that every election be conducted with only mail-in ballots, as Oregon does now.
What's more, the state's current widespread use of mail-in ballots provided an excuse for Kathy Haigh, chairman of the House committee overseeing election laws, to strip the election reform bill of a requirement that voters show photo ID at the polls. "Sixty-eight percent of the people are voting by mail," she explained. "When do they have to show ID? They don't, they have to sign." Precisely, which is a reason that expanding mail-in elections would only increase the potential for fraud.

It's no wonder that election reformers have developed a kind of gallows humor over how Washington, once renowned for its clean government, now finds its election system compared to those in Louisiana or Philadelphia.

Stefan Sharkansky, a computer engineer who runs SoundPolitics.com, a comprehensive blog on the election debacle, uncovered the errors in King County's absentee voter report through a state Public Disclosure Act request. He has filed additional requests for the audit trail created by King County election officials to handle all the ballots. He was told he would have the records delivered by March 31, but that date has slipped to April 15. Mr. Sharkansky reports that date may now move again because "county officials are scrambling to explain their latest mistakes and say they may not have time to answer my request." Let's hope they do before next month's

[Bush = Traitor]

10:21 Read Former Governor Bob Graham's book "Intelligence Matters" and you will see how wrong the Bushbot ho Ann Coulter really is.

Among the other startling revelations:

President Bush classified 27 pages of Graham's bipartisan investigation in order to hide from the public evidence that there were up to several hundred sleeper Al-Quida agents still in the US after 9-11, and that they were receiving funding from Bush's best friends, the Saudi Royal Family.

These were the findings of a BIPARTISAN senate investigation, which Bush purposefully swept under the rug.

Graham also details a private coversation he had with General Tommy Franks at McDill AFB, in which Franks told him that Bush was diverting resources away from the hunt for Al-Quida in order to prepare for a war in Iraq, in which there were NO Terrorists at the time. All Predator drones were soon removed from the Afghan border and their hunt for Bin-landen and sent to Iraq.

10:38 Good! Let's make a it bi-partisan call for election reform!

Obama = Communist

[Michelle Obama's Patented Subject Changer]

You know, this whole discussion is not helping Michelle Obama's kids...

[Republicans Murdered the Middle Class]

McCain=Bush=McSame

4 more years of a declining economy and a withering middle class.

The middle class is going to be extinct thanks to the Bush economic policies of the last 8 years.

How much is gas? How much are groceries?

[DEMS FOR MCCAIN]

Join us to defeat Obama:

http://hillaryloyalistnowformccain.com/default.aspx

[Why does Obama hate poor people?]

Barry Obama=Jimmuh Carter

4 years of ridiculously high taxes.

The poor won't be able to find a job, thanks to Obama's marxist economic policies.

Think gas prices are high now? Wait until the Democrats impose their "windfall profits tax"...corporations don't pay taxes, they collect the taxes from the consumer in the form of higher prices and pass them off to the government.

Look at gas prices since the Democrats took over in 2006. Pelosi said the energy situation would be fixed in a year. So much for promises. No to Obama and no to the Democrats!

Wait until Pelosi imposes her windfall tax on most all of us who have 401-Ks or retirement plans. The Democrats are ruining our country.

[Michelle Obama's Patented Subject Changer]

You know, people, this whole discussion on "windfall profits taxes" is, like, not helping Michelle Obama's kids...

11:32

ever think that this insistence on ethanol subsidies and resistance to drilling our OWN DOMESTIC supply might have an effect on gas and grocery prices?

[Another bonehead mentally deficit Liberal decision. We are all gonna die with Liberals governing us]

President Kennedy
June 13, 2008; Page A14
Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy isn't known for his judicial modesty. But for sheer willfulness, yesterday's 5-4 majority opinion in Boumediene v. Bush may earn him a historic place among the likes of Harry Blackmun. In a stroke, he and four other unelected Justices have declared their war-making supremacy over both Congress and the White House.

Boumediene concerns habeas corpus – the right of Americans to challenge detention by the government. Justice Kennedy has now extended that right to non-American enemy combatants captured abroad trying to kill Americans in the war on terror. We can say with confident horror that more Americans are likely to die as a result.

An Algerian native, Lakhdar Boumediene was detained by U.S. troops in Bosnia in January 2002 and is currently held at Guantanamo Bay. The U.S. military heard the case for Boumediene's detention in 2004, and in the years since he has never appealed the finding that he is an enemy combatant, although he could under federal law. Instead, his lawyers asserted his "right" – as an alien held outside the United States – to a habeas hearing before a U.S. federal judge.

Justice Kennedy's opinion is remarkable in its sweeping disregard for the decisions of both political branches. In a pair of 2006 laws – the Detainee Treatment Act and the Military Commissions Act – Congress and the President had worked out painstaking and good-faith rules for handling enemy combatants during wartime. These rules came in response to previous Supreme Court decisions demanding such procedural care, and they are the most extensive ever granted to prisoners of war.

Yet as Justice Antonin Scalia notes in dissent, "Turns out" the same Justices "were just kidding." Mr. Kennedy now deems those efforts inadequate, based on only the most cursory analysis. As Chief Justice John Roberts makes clear in his dissent, the majority seems to dislike these procedures merely because a judge did not sanctify them. In their place, Justice Kennedy decrees that district court judges should derive their own ad hoc standards for judging habeas petitions. Make it up as you go!

Justice Kennedy declines even to consider what those standards should be, or how they would protect national security over classified information or the sources and methods that led to the detentions. Eventually, as the lower courts work their will amid endless litigation, perhaps President Kennedy will vouchsafe more details in some future case. In the meantime, the likelihood grows that our soldiers will prematurely release combatants who will kill more Americans.

To reach yesterday's decision, Justice Kennedy also had to dissemble about Justice Robert Jackson's famous 1950 decision in Johnson v. Eisentrager. In that case, German nationals had been tried and convicted by military commissions for providing aid to the Japanese after Germany's surrender in World War II. Justice Jackson ruled that non-Americans held in a prison in the American occupation zone in Germany did not warrant habeas corpus. But rather than overrule Eisentrager, Mr. Kennedy misinterprets it to pretend that it was based on mere "procedural" concerns. This is plainly dishonest.

By the logic of Boumediene, members of al Qaeda will now be able to challenge their status in court in a way that uniformed military officers of a legitimate army cannot. And Justice Scalia points out that this was not a right afforded even to the 400,000 prisoners of war detained on American soil during World War II. It is difficult to understand why any terrorist held anywhere in the world – whether at Camp Cropper in Iraq or Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan – won't now have the same right to have their appeals heard in an American court.

Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution contains the so-called Suspension Clause, which says: "The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it." Justice Kennedy makes much of the fact that we are not currently under "invasion or rebellion." But he ignores that these exceptions don't include war abroad because the Framers never contemplated that a non-citizen, captured overseas and held outside the U.S., could claim the same right.

Justice Kennedy's opinion is full of self-applause about his defense of the "great Writ," and no doubt it will be widely praised as a triumph for civil liberties. But we hope it is not a tragedy for civil liberties in the long run. If there is another attack on U.S. soil – perhaps one enabled by a terrorist released under the Kennedy rules – the public demand for security will trample the Constitutional delicacies of Boumediene. Just last month, a former Gitmo detainee killed a group of Iraqi soldiers when he blew himself up in Mosul. And he was someone the military thought it was safe to release.

Justice Jackson once famously observed that the Constitution is "not a suicide pact." About Anthony Kennedy's Constitution, we're not so sure.

[Michelle O]

Shut yo mouth.

[White T.]

Blow me.

11:47-

Don't bother...liberals don't understand things "economics" and "supply and demand".

I am sure he or she was likely educated in a government school, where they don't teach such things.

[Your Boss - Grover Norquist]

McCain Troll at 11:40 - 11:47 (aka partner in treason) space the lies out a little more, it's getting too obvious. Otherwise, I'm going to have to start paying you Young Republicans by the hour again.

[Vote for Democrat is Vote for Jihadist. Long Live Obama and Osama!!!!!!!! Death to America.]

The Jihad Five
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, June 12, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Supreme Court: In a historic first, the right to habeas corpus has been bestowed upon prisoners of war — in wartime. Five justices gave terrorists a new weapon to kill more Americans with: our own Constitution.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Read More: Judges & Courts | Global War On Terror

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There are many reasons why this year's election may be the most consequential ever, but Thursday's Boumediene v. Bush 5-to-4 decision in the Supreme Court is the most chilling reminder yet of how much our national security is at stake.

The next president, with the advice and consent of the next U.S. Senate, will likely decide whether our highest judicial authority is a help or a hindrance in the global war on terror.

The outrageous Boumediene ruling shows that as of now, the slimmest of majorities of the justices do not understand that this nation is at war.

The court held that foreign enemy combatants at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. base in Cuba have the right to pursue habeas challenges to their detention in U.S. courts.

It is unprecedented in the history of U.S. law, and for all the soaring rhetoric in Justice Anthony Kennedy's opinion that "the laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times," the fact is that Gitmo detainees already had the equivalent of habeas corpus rights.

As Chief Justice John Roberts noted in his dissent, those terrorist POWs enjoy "the most generous set of procedural protections ever afforded aliens detained by this country as enemy combatants."

The real issue, according to Roberts, writing also for Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, "is whether the system the political branches designed protects whatever rights the detainees may possess. If so, there is no need for any additional process, whether called 'habeas' or something else."

But it was left to Justice Scalia, in a separate dissent also joined by the other three 'no' votes, to describe Boumediene's disastrous real-world consequences: It "will make the war harder on us," Scalia declared, reading from the bench. "It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed."

Of detainees already released from Gitmo, Scalia pointed out that one "masterminded the kidnapping of two Chinese dam workers, one of whom was later shot to death when used as a human shield against Pakistani commandoes." Another "promptly resumed his post as a senior Taliban commander and murdered a United Nations engineer and three Afghan soldiers. . . . Still another murdered an Afghan judge." And last month came news that another detainee committed a suicide bombing against Iraqi soldiers in Mosul.

Boumediene will force military attorneys to release evidence against enemy combatants to the terrorists' own lawyers. It will likely see U.S. troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan be called as witnesses. And detainees will have a legal right of access to classified information.

The decision "sets our military commanders the impossible task of proving to a civilian court, under whatever standards this Court devises in the future, that evidence supports the confinement of each and every enemy prisoner." He concluded: "The Nation will live to regret what the Court has done today."

The nation has the power to undo such self-destructive court decisions — by electing a president and senators who will place jurists on the Supreme Court who respect wartime laws passed by elected representatives of an American people seeking to protect themselves. It's never been more imperative than after Wednesday's ruling that that happen in November.

Remind me which one was the lie again?

[Michelle O.]

Abortion on demand because I don't want to penalize my daughter for getting pregnant. Beath to Babies. Evil little buggers and they penalize young people.

[White T.]

Sho Nuff.

[Your Boss - Grover Norquist]

Troll Boy - We have a strict policy of dismissal for minions who succumb to Blog Derangement Syndrome. You're not fooling anyone - now get your act together. I know you're trying to accumulate some extra cash to attend the KKK rally this weekend, but now is not the time or place for it.

[White T.]

Dhyou belib in hauntin Grover. Cuz ah jest put uh hex on yo hide.

[Your Boss - Grover Norquist]

No problem White T. The master I server done cornered the market on that sht. How do you think I got where I am today?

Interesting article on CNN about world perception of the US Presidential race:

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/06/13/us.poll/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

As if anyone should care what the "world perception" is...i don't make my decision based on whether or not France or Saudi Arabia or China approves.

Idiots...

The Dems only field lawyers as presidents and most of the House and Senate. They live for litigation and love to make people THINK that there was election fraud. Not only was there no fraud but if there was then they are obviously INCOMPETENT in the legal process!

Idiots

BTW, the "Common Man's" party is full of royalty, i.e. Lawyers love to be called Esq (which stands for esquire or a royal title). They would love for our constitution to recognize them but they are BANNED.

The Common Man's Party needs to wake up and get rid of it's fascist, elitist leaders and back someone who improves humanity instead of leaching from it (like lawyers)!

For President I'm voting not so much for McCain as AGAINST Obama - I just can't afford the windfall profit taxes. I can't afford the taxes it is going to take to make every illegal alien eligible for all our entitlement programs and I can't afford the UN taxes on carbon.

But in every single local or state race I'm voting Democrat - the state Republicans have abandoned the middle class and have done their darnest to turn them into the working poor (very successfully, I might add).

Do I think the Democrats are going to do any better - not really - I'm just hoping that such a major loss to the state Republican Party will empower the moderate Republicans to wrest power from the hypocritical religious right who are really more intested in feathering their own nests than creating and promoting state policies that are supportive of families! Policies that support education, protection of kids, protection of the elderly, jobs that pay living wages, moderate property taxes, TAX REFORM, and reasonably priced property insurance rather than surcharges so rich people can insurance their vacation beach-front homes!!!

Remember in Novmember!

[Support Choice]

The gravest threat to American capitalism and democracy is what is currently happening in the government schools:

* Millions of children are not being adequately taught to read or write, and so enter society without the skills needed to become contributing members. This is one of the largest yet most overlooked roots of crime, drug abuse, domestic violence, and the many other problems that plague our society.

* Children are being indoctrinated with creeds and dogmas that are profoundly at odds with the values of their parents and with what is needed to genuinely understand the world as it really exists. Radical environmentalism, political correctness, and more have become standard elements of high school and even elementary school curricula.

* Children are being sold drugs, recruited into gangs, introduced to sex, and sometimes caught in the crossfire of gang wars while still on school property. Instead of being places of peace and safety in a community, many inner-city government schools resemble war zones and barely contained riots.

A recent understanding of the current system makes it plain that while the interests of the 12 percent of children in private schools and the 1 percent currently being homeschooled are important and must not be overlooked, it is cruel indeed to overlook the calamity facing the 87 percent now trapped in government schools. Our first concern should be saving the millions of children now put at grave risk in government schools. And once that becomes our first concern, we understand the need for a plan to get from here to there, and the vital role that vouchers play in the movement for complete separation of school and state.

Conclusion

Santayana defined a zealot as someone who, having forgotten his aim, redoubles his effort. That characterization unfortunately but aptly suits conservatives and libertarians who oppose efforts to begin the process of privatizing schools with vouchers. Decrying mere improvement as the enemy of the ideal, they do more to thwart the separation of school and state than to advance it.

Those who favor separation of school and state have every right to publicly declare their goals and debate the best strategies to achieve them. But if they want to change the status quo, they need to recognize the strength of those who oppose change and describe strategies that exploit their weaknesses. To actually change public policy, separationists must build coalitions with those whose goals, as Lord Acton wrote, may differ from our own. Careless words and criticism directed at members of such coalitions set back the movement toward separation.

School choice offers hope. It's politically possible now, not sometime in a romanticized future. It would set into motion the changes needed to make further privatization and separation possible. Libertarians and conservatives who are serious about the goal of complete separation of school and state ought to join those who are taking this bold first step

[You Fools]

The Republicans are losing because the became and love the federal bureaucracy. Remember Reagan said that even though he and his staff were in control of the fed bureaucracy, he made sure that it was still the enemy and it had to be pruned and reduceds at all cost. Give the power back to the local people. Long live America.

Barack Obama is a closet RACIST just like Rev Jeremiah Wright & Father Pfleger.

Every day people are judged by the friends you hang out with. Obama friends are just plain scary:

a terrorist & cop killer, a Chicago fraudster & money lauderer, two racist pastors

It looks like the BUZZ has become a hangout of GOP Trolls for McCain.

Republicans are totalitarians and cannot tolerate an independent free exchange of ideas.

[Ministry of Truth]

I guess the fascist Republicans have determined that the Buzz has too many free-minded readers and therefore must cease to exist. Their goal is to stifle independent thinking and paste their mindless Big Brother slogans everywhere.

Do you need any furher proof of the mindset of those who would allow John McCain to determine the furture of our democracy?

Ministry: No, quite the contrary. It is redolent of government emplopyed democrats blogging on taxpayers' time. (Hint, hint...)

4:30 - you forgot to mention the wife who hit her forties without once ever having been proud of her country.

Fool who thinks Obama has a better chance in Florida because of a large African American population: Felons still don't get the right to vote back automatically.

[bud tritschler]

The detainees at Guantanamo are always referred to as "enemy combatants." They may or may not be. That is yet to be determined by trails. Sure, Chaney called them "the worst of the worst" but that's only a personal indictment by a consistent liar. His pronouncements don't make them guilty - only a fair trial can decide guilt or innocence. The many who have been released as innocent after years of detention and torture are surely now our enemies.

Thanks, terrorist lover!!!!!

Did Barack Obama lied?

His brother said he was a Muslim:

http://web.israelinsider.com/Articles/Politics/12918.htm