Even Kenya is more humane than us.
Kenya’s more than 4,000 death row inmates all will have their sentences commuted to life imprisonment, the president announced Monday, describing their wait to face execution as “undue mental anguish and suffering.”
Mother f**king Kenya, man. Good god. We should elect one of their people to be our President.
Your right to own a fighting breed ends where my balls begin.
Minnesota finally has their second Senator. And after all that, I got nuthin’. (Sorry, I’ve been a bit sick lately.) But the next 5.5 years look very entertaining.
As a final note, I have to note that Talking Points Memo’s TPMDC had the best coverage, and I have to thank that site for keeping me informed. I checked their MN Senate page several times a day over the last five months.
I’m all for life/
Until the bastard’s born/
After that/
He’s out on his own/
And if he does crime/
Trying to survive/
I’ll make damn sure/
He gets electrified/
Save the baby/
Kill the doctor/
…
I kill for you/
Little baby Jesus
- Mudhoney, “F.D.K. (Fearless Doctor Killers)”
So, you might remember that Al Franken beat Norm Coleman for one of Minnesota’s Senate seats. Thanks to funding from Washington Republicans, Franken still hasn’t been seated due to Coleman’s appeals.
To recap, Coleman was up by a mere 215 votes on election night, triggering an automatic recount. Coleman said that if we were in Franken’s shoes he would concede because “the healing process is so impoatant.” Screw that noise, Franken said. After the recount, during which Coleman tried to keep votes from being counted, Franken was up by 225 and declared the victor.
Then Coleman, despite his earlier rhetoric, appealed. And, naturally, during the court appeal reversed course and tried to get some 4,000+ rejected ballots counted. The court decided that 351 of them had been, indeed, improperly rejected. So they were opened and counted. The results? Franken 198, Coleman 111, Other 42 (there was a strong third-party candidate in this election, as there has been in most statewide elections in Minnesota since Ventura’s success). So now Franken leads by 312. Nice appeal there, Normie.
Of course, Coleman is taking the appeal to the state Supreme Court while 63% of Minnesotans say he should concede and newspapers that endorsed him during the campaign are calling on him to do the same.
To those ends, the DNC is asking supporters to post these fliers all over the state. Here’s my part:
Coleman has never done anything good. St. Paul was a miserable, miserable place under his reign as mayor, making its fantastic comebackas a place you would actually want to go only after he left. He lost in the gubenatorial race to Jesse Ventura, then served as Bush’s lap dog in the Senate for years. His accomplishments amount to zilch…how he has risen this far in life is beyond me. Thankfully he won’t be around much longer.
General Patton Vs. The X-ecutioners, a project between Mike Patton and The X-ecutioners, a group of three turntablists, is kind of a cross between the two Mike Patton releases on Ipecac that would follow it. As a predominantly hip-hip album, it serves as a bit of a forerunner to 2006’s Peeping Tom, though this isn’t nearly as accessible and the cohesion I raved about in that album’s review isn’t present here. Still, you can hear Patton experimenting with some of the things he would employ expertly the following year.
Unfortunately, early 2005 seemed to be a time when Patton had run out of ideas as well as the ability to concentrate for more than one minute, as this disc bears a lot in common with the Fantômas album that would be released six weeks later, Suspended Animation. Back then I wrote:
The fragments are too short and the intermittent samples are too long. Just when a groove starts to take hold, they cut it short in disorienting fashion. The album doesn’t flow and I don’t feel compelled to keep listening for what’s around the corner.
I could hardly describe this album better. It has its moments, great ones in fact, but those moments seem to be randomly scattered throughout bland, repetitive melodies, a constant shifting from one riff or noise to another, and the same vocal tricks by Patton that were brilliantly original from 1995 to 1999 but are just treading water now. “Chuck-a-loo, chuck-a-loo,” Patton percussively sings, and I drift back to the Clinton administration, when he was breaking new ground with how the voice was used as an instrument. Then, to really drive home that parts of this disc were just mailed in, we get the “This…is a journey…into sound” sample. I mean, really? Really? This sample was on just about every hip-hop album in the 90’s and you…I mean…what the…what on Earth made you think this was some effective way of demonstrating your sonic prowess in 2005? I don’t know, maybe if you were in a coma in the 90’s and wanted to hear Patton’s take on hip-hop, then maybe this would be a great listen.
As it is, it’s merely a good listen, as some of the great moments bring it up just high enough to clear that bar. “Battle Hymn Of The Technics Republic” is a Star Wars laser gunfight on Planet Hip-Hop and manages to out-do all but the first two movies on its own. About midway through, “¡Kamikaze! 0500 Hrs. (‘Take A Piece Of Me’)” is probably the highlight of the album, with its hard-hitting beats and big, encompassing sound…if the whole album could have been that good…well, if wishes was fishes, I guess. Instead it just makes me that much more appreciative that Patton came out of his 2005 funk to make Peeping Tom, which I think I’m going to go listen to now.
Rating:
Mixers: “¡Vaqueros Y Indios! (Joint Special Operations Task Force),” “Battle Hymn Of The Technics Republic,” “¡Fire In The Hole! 0400 Hrs. (Joint Special Operations Task Force),” “¡Kamikaze! 0500 Hrs. (‘Take A Piece Of Me’)”
Non-keepers: “Improvised Explosive Device 0300 Hrs.,” “Precision Guided Needle-Dropping And Larynx Munitions (PGNDLM),” “Convulsive Antidote For Nerve Agent Autoinjector (CANAA),” “Surprise Swing Insurgency/Tabla And Tongue Twist Counterattack/(‘Dragon Seeks Path’),” “Eastside Multichannel Tactical Scratch Communications (EMTSC),” “Warcry/Infrared R’n’B Hallucination/Jungle Operations Exfiltration System,” “L.O.L.—¡Loser On Line! (Hate The Player, Hate The Game)”
Filed Between: Gene (“Sleep Well Tonight”) and Gershwin (Complete Piano Works (perf. Dag Achatz))
So we’re pretty excited about Al Franken winning the recount of Minnesota’s Senate election by 225 votes. Of course, his asshole opponent Norm Coleman is tying things up in the courts, despite having no chance of winning, only to appease his higher-ups in DC, which is basically all he ever does anyway, so that there’s one less Democratic senator on key votes. Meanwhile, Minnesota goes unrepresented.
Still, we’re excited.
It’s been a couple of weeks, but here’s him gracefully declaring victory via TPM.
Daily Kos is kind enough to remind us that on November 5th when Coleman led by 215 votes (which, you’ll note, is fewer than the 225 he now trails by) he said that he would step aside if he were in Franken’s place and save the taxpayers the cost of a recount because he felt “the healing process [was] so impohtant.”
Of course, now that we’re on the other side of a thorough and transparent recount and he’s behind votes, he wants to deny Minnesota representation in the Senate because, as every blog entry on the subject will tell you, Minnesota law is unique in that they wait until legal challenges have run their course before the Secretary of State can sign the certificate to seat somebody. And all just because his Republican overlords in Washington want one less Democratic vote for the proposals Obama’s got coming down the pipeline. What a mensch.
Fivethirtyeight declares Coleman’s political career over. In my favorite line about the whole thing they reference his loss to Jesse Ventura and the tragic pre-election death of Paul Wellstone (but not Ventura’s histrionics over the memorial service which handed the election to Coleman when Walter Mondale stepped in for Wellstone in the last week) (emphasis mine):
Let’s be frank: Norm Coleman doesn’t have much of a future in electoral politics. Defeated Presidential candidates sometimes have nine lives, but defeated Senatorial candidates rarely do, and in his career running for statewide office, Coleman has lost to a professional wrestler, beaten a dead guy, and then tied a comedian.
Then there’s the frivolity of Coleman’s lawsuit. TPM analyzes it here…
The complaint ignores the existence of counter-evidence, employs one maneuver when it is self-benefiting and opposes the same maneuver when it goes against them….
Coleman claims that multiple precincts had “more votes than voters,” a potential irregularity if we understand that as being more ballots than people who signed in on the register. But Coleman has another definition: When the votes tallied in the recount were more than were counted on Election Night, with no reference to what was on the voter register. The whole point of a recount is to find votes that the machines failed to pick up at first.
…
Coleman says those Election Night numbers were bad, too, and wants even more votes for Franken thrown out from absentee ballots that he claims should never have been counted, based on errors on the envelopes. But the envelopes were separated from the enclosed ballots months ago, and he can’t prove whom these people voted for. He just wants to throw out Franken votes by fiat.
…
The Coleman complaint wants to force the review and inclusion of 654 absentee ballots that local officials in both blue and red counties say were properly rejected, and which come almost entirely from precincts that Coleman won. They also re-reject the 930 absentee ballots that were counted this past Saturday, which gave Franken a net gain of 176 votes, saying those ballots were wrongly deemed to be legal and erroneously opened.
But remember: Under the terms laid out by the state Supreme Court, the Coleman campaign is on the record saying that this past Saturday’s ballots were legal and should be counted. Now they want a do-over.
There’s much more and it’s all just as ridiculous. Here Fivethirtyeight looks a bit deeper at those 654 rejected absentee ballots re-re-counted:
To review, these are absentee ballots that had already been deemed by the counties to be invalid — once on Election Night, and then a second time upon the court-ordered re-evaluation of absentees in December. It is not surprising that their minds haven’t been changed the third time around.
This thing is over and Coleman’s stall tactics are only hurting the people of Minnesota, who will eventually be proudly represented by the man seen here via TPM doing a spot on impression of Mick Jagger.
Now that Saxby Chambliss has extended his reign of evil for six more years in Georgia, there’s one last Senate seat to be determined (besides this Illinois debacle and other appointees to newly-vacant seats, like in New York), and to say I am interested in it would be an understatement. In my home state of Minnesota, comedian Al Franken, a native of St. Louis Park (where I first lived with My Baby and proposed to her), is in a recount with the corrupt incumbent, Bush lapdog, and import from New York Norm “Nice Suits” Coleman. It’s the temperamental but noble Luke Skywalker against the Evil Empire, to be sure.
The remaining precincts have now finished verifying their counts, and Coleman’s lead has slimmed a touch from about 215 on election day to about 190 now, as reported by the Star Tribune. However, as fivethirtyeight.com has reported, we still have to go through the process of dealing with all the ballots that were challenged by campaigns, and that number is so high as to render any count at this point pretty much irrelevant.
Furthermore, ballots are challenged for any number of reasons, many quite frivolous. I recall reading that Coleman challenged one where the voter voted for McCain and Franken. So, we really don’t know what’s going on
Anyhoo, if you want to take a look at some of the challenged ballots and vote on who each vote should be counted on yourself, check out the thousands of them online at the Star Tribune’s site. It’s a great way to kill a few minutes or a few hours and a fascinating look inside democracy and one of the closest elections in the nation’s history
In the immediate aftermath of the election I took great joy in the circular firing squad the Republicans had convened, and had collected a bunch of damning information on Sarah Palin. I eventually decided to leave it alone, but since I actually got a request, let me compile some of the best post-election stuff I encountered.
The first big shocker was this video, via TPM, of Fox News reporter Carl Cameron telling us Palin didn’t know Africa was a continent, not a country, and that she couldn’t name the three countries in NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Despite my initial schaudenfreude, I eventually decided not to make too much of this. For one, Carl Cameron is the guy who made up the manicure comments about Kerry four years ago. Additionally, I just found it tough to believe that the governor of Alaska didn’t know Africa was a continent. Part of me wants to believe that this despicable woman didn’t know that, but the democratic idealist in me can’t stand to tolerate the thought that voters could elect someone so idiotic. Add in that this is pretty clearly one part of the Republican party trying to sink a person that sunk their chances this year, and it’s hard to know what’s true and what’s not.
Palin’s response to the report was interesting.
Palin, McCain’s running mate in their unsuccessful White House campaign, told CNN the allegation “is not true.” She said the leaks could have come from people who helped her with preparation for her debate against Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden.
[…]
“I think if there are allegations based on questions or comments that I made in debate prep about NAFTA or about the continent versus the country when we talk about Africa there, then those were taken out of context, and that is cruel and mean-spirited, it’s immature, it’s unprofessional, and those guys are jerks,” Palin said.
Most telling to me here is not the “jerks” comment, though that’s pretty amusing, but rather the fact that she claims it’s “not true,” then goes on to pin down the conversation forming the basis of the allegation, distinguishes “the continent versus the country when we talk about Africa there,” and says it was taken out of context. Despite my initial skepticism, that’s pretty damning. First of all, what country? Second, it’s hard for me to imagine the conversation where this could have been taken out of context and still not portray her in a crazy idiotic light. So I think her response here is suspicious, and probably lends the allegation more credence than it would have if she had just denied it…I mean, I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt just a few paragraphs ago…she should have kept her mouth shut.
Then, from Newsweek, via TPM, comes some interesting news that her spending spree was even more egregious than previously reported.
NEWSWEEK has also learned that Palin’s shopping spree at high-end department stores was more extensive than previously reported. …McCain’s top advisers privately fumed at what they regarded as her outrageous profligacy. One senior aide said that Nicolle Wallace had told Palin to buy three suits for the convention and hire a stylist. But instead, the vice presidential nominee began buying for herself and her family—clothes and accessories from top stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. According to two knowledgeable sources, a vast majority of the clothes were bought by a wealthy donor, who was shocked when he got the bill. Palin also used low-level staffers to buy some of the clothes on their credit cards. The McCain campaign found out last week when the aides sought reimbursement. One aide estimated that she spent “tens of thousands” more than the reported $150,000, and that $20,000 to $40,000 went to buy clothes for her husband. Some articles of clothing have apparently been lost. An angry aide…said the truth will eventually come out when the Republican Party audits its books.
Palin’s response?
She also described accusations that she spent exorbitant amounts of money on clothes for the campaign as “sexist.”
I think these reports, like the Africa thing, are probably half-true, half-hatchet job trying to kill her political career in 2008 and save the Republican party some headaches going forward. Complaining about spending gross amounts of money, which sharply contrasts with that stupid hockey mom image, is not sexist whether it’s true or not (though I’ll be the among the first to say that our media’s coverage of women politicians and their clothes is indeed sexist), and it just shows that she lives in some alternate universe.
Even with all this, and with the seemingly obvious reality that her national political career was dead dead dead, the media just can’t give her up, and she’s coming back to life. The media has a Palin addiction, does not know how to quit her, and will do whatever they can to revive that story for the next four years.
She’s eating it up, too, giving a “press conference” at the Republican Governors’ meeting this week. Via Daily Kos, here’s the video:
Well, if you needed any proof that her inability to talk and think at the same time was the result of her being incompetent and not that of being overly handled by the McCain campaign, I think you’ve got it right there. And we’ve learned one more thing: 2008 = hair up, 2012 = hair down. The new Sarah Palin, ladies and gentlemen, already coiffed for the next campaign.
In the end, though, I still feel bad about putting all of this together. Not because I feel sorry for her, Lord no. You run for office and all of this is fair game. Rather, I’m hesitant because I think her idiocy overshadows her evilness, and I’d much rather have her political career dead due to her abuses of power in office to satisfy personal vendettas than by her inability to talk, think, or do both at the same time.
So let’s never speak of her idiocy again, but wrap up the Palin stuff with this hilarious video, via My Baby via Daily Kos, of Russians singing about seeing Palin from their house.
Finally, in non-Palin post-election news, I went through quite a bit of depression in the four days after the election, figuratively unable to scrape myself off the couch. Just like Red Sox fans finding out their lives were meaningless when not defined by some external, uncontrollable event when their team won their first World Series in 2004, a lot of us Obama supporters found themselves wondering what was next after the election. For me it started even before the polls closed on the West Coast. I knew it would happen, and had prepared myself for it, but it was still a rough period through about that next Saturday. Here’s a funny video from The Onion, via TPM, that sums it up.