Beto for Speaker

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Tuesday November 06, 2018 · 11:21 PM PST

2018/11/06 · 23:21

I’m a great admirer of Nancy Pelosi. I loved her as Minority Leader, as Speaker, and as Minority Leader again. And I’d love to see her as Majority Leader. These times, though, demand unprecedented, bold moves, and that’s why I’d like to see the Democrats do what the Constitution allows, and elect a Speaker who is not currently a member of the House: Beto O’Rourke.

For some time I was a Beto skeptic, but I think now it’s obvious to everyone that he’s emerged as one of our clearest expositors of Democratic values, while setting himself above the impasses of endless culture war strife. He’s shown extraordinary judgment and integrity, not least in foregoing PAC money and negative ads in his Senate campaign. As Speaker, Beto would command an autonomous national platform befitting the official second in line for the Presidency, and do so as a leader in whom a broad range of people want to believe.

Doing this job well would take Beto out of the running in the Presidential race, but I it would also help the Party regroup and reboot ahead of 2020. Beto’s time for a Presidential run will come, but I think his moment to shine as a national leader may actually be now. Who agrees?

"9/11 a Jewish Conspiracy!" the latest word at lefty coffee shops

Ottoe

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Sunday September 04, 2016 · 7:01 AM PDT

2016/09/04 · 07:01

Screenshot-2016-09-03-09.59.49.png — This gets you banned from DailyKos ... but apparently welcomed at posh lefty cafés!

So you probably heard that 9-11 was a Jewish / Zionist / Israeli conspiracy, right? And … you probably dismissed that conspiracy theory as the crazy talk that it is.

But hey, it’s 2016 and crazy conspiracy theories are back again! And … not just on the right. Here’s a nutty dude who’s doing an East Coast tour of “progressive” venues: meet Christopher Bollyn.

It will be interesting to see how progressives at Jacobin and WBAI react to this guy spouting off in the café next to their work space … interesting, and, probably kind of sad.

Oh yeah, if you can’t catch him in New York, he’s apparently also booked in at Busboys and Poets in DC! Yikes.

For reals, anyone thinking that Trump, or the right in general, has a monopoly on the sick right now is fooling themselves … obviously the right is the worst but there’s plenty of madness to go around. Which makes it important that, say, event bookers pay attention to what they’re giving a platform.

Ottoe

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Tuesday March 02, 2010 · 7:28 PM PST

2010/03/02 · 19:28

Hi Kossacks, most of you will remember the flurry of stories in the MSM and diaries here a few weeks ago about the nefarious Texas School Board and its crazy chairman's plans to force textbook manufacturers to cater to Fundamentalist dogma in order to have their texts adopted by the State.

Most articles on the topic took note of the fact that a fairly sane Republican, Thomas Ratliff, was mounting a campaign against McLeroy in the primary. Well primary night is here, and Ratliff currently leads by 800 votes with 40% of the vote in.

Yep, it's a nailbiter ... you can follow it down the page here, as well as the other school board battles and, oh yeah, what looks to be the ignominious end of KBH's political career.

I took a Republican ballot to try to help KBH prolong the bloodletting session with Perry and to vote for the relatively sane Republican in my own local race; she's losing, because the evil Fundamentalist in that race ran a fembot against her to confuse people and split the vote. Glad that McLeroy was too stupid to try a similar tactic.

Ok, that's all, just wanted to call your attention to what might be some big news brewing down here in Texas!

Massachusetts Massively Misunderstood, to Dems Peril

Ottoe

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Wednesday January 13, 2010 · 10:42 AM PST

2010/01/13 · 10:42

In his latest front page remarks on the Massachusetts Senate race, Kos writes, "The only reason [Brown and the Republicans] are in this game is because of the quirks and unpredictability of the special election electorate."

I think that's wrong--dangerously wrong--and I hope that someone somewhere in Democratic politics (maybe even in the Coakley campaign, although sadly I doubt it) understands why.

Details below ...

Ottoe

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Monday November 03, 2008 · 7:27 PM PST

2008/11/03 · 19:27

I know that the dkos election interface is going to be awesome, and other sites will have lots of fantastic updates as well.

But when it comes to live feeds of breaking news, and especially of the concession and victory speeches, where does the hive mind think one should turn?

I ask this since like many others I was disappointed not to find the Obama commercial streaming ... the convention speeches and the debates were live online through various venues, but I wonder if election coverage will be as well.

Has anyone looked into this yet?

Ottoe

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Monday October 20, 2008 · 10:16 AM PDT

2008/10/20 · 10:16

So, go to RCP and click the links to the gallup polls, which as of this diary are still to yesterday's polls (I say polls because of the well known bifurcation into traditional and new lv screen models), and you'll get some good news: Obama picking up 2 points over yesterday in the traditional model, 3 points in the new model.

http://www.gallup.com/...

& of course since these are tracking polls we can infer that he got a real jump in the nightly numbers from Sunday evening's (post-Powell) responses.

Some more random thoughts on the mediation of polling on the flip.

Ottoe

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Friday September 26, 2008 · 8:34 PM PDT

2008/09/26 · 20:34

You're confused. You're a progressive, a liberal, a kossack. But the debate had you cringing more than you'd like to admit.

Why won't Barack take it to McSame? Call him out on his lies? Stop saying I agree?

Sure, there were moments when you could take pride in Barack's forcefulness, and moments when you could be sure that McCain was over the top even for Mr and Mrs Palooka.

Still ... it made you uncomfortable. And now you're surprised to find that Barack owned the focus groups ... that the debate turns out to have been an EPIC FAIL for McCain with independents.

What is going on? I'll explain on the flip.

Ottoe

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Sunday September 07, 2008 · 6:12 AM PDT

2008/09/07 · 06:12

A quick, early Sunday morning version of my Tracking Poll Crack diary that I've been doing the past few days.

Well Rasmussen is out this morning and the news is not good, folks. McCain has pulled into a tie with Obama, with a great night of polling that represents his highest number since the eve of the Democratic convention, and that (more significicantly) finally breaks through his ceiling of 46 points, where he'd been stalled for weeks.

Obama meanwhile holds steady at 48, just off his peak.

Some ideas about what this could mean, and forecasts about the Gallup, on the flip.

Ottoe

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Saturday September 06, 2008 · 2:56 PM PDT

2008/09/06 · 14:56

A quick hit and run diary on the tracking polls, following up on my diary yesterday that set out to crack the nightly numbers of the Rassmussen and Gallup tracking polls.

I would have skipped a day today, what with the Ellis Hollow Fair this afternoon and then Man on Wire tonight, but the geniuses at http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/ have done a couple of entries on the tracking polls since my last effort--and much as I love their work (hey, without Baseball Prospectus, would I win every fantasy baseball league I ever enter?) I just have different numbers than they do, and mine seem to be holding up well.

What's more, my numbers look slighly better for the Big BO. Details after the jump, although I won't go into the comparison--you can work that out for yourselves. I'll just give what I have, fwiw.

Ottoe

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Friday September 05, 2008 · 9:26 AM PDT

2008/09/05 · 09:26

Hello and welcome to what will be an intermittent series of diaries published daily after the Gallup tracking poll comes out, depending on whether or not I am by my computer and ready to publish.

These diaries will be devoted to breaking down the day's Rassmussen and Gallup three-day tracking polls into daily numbers and putting those numbers into some perspective.

On the face of it this is a useless enterprise, since the very reason these polls are aggregated is that the daily samples are unreliably small.

That said however when one is watching an election unfold as closely as we are one is in a position to use small daily numbers responsibly. Right? And that is what we will try to do.

Now, there are all kinds of errors I court in trying to break apart these numbers. The numbers on the basis of which we are reverse-engineering the nightly totals have not just been aggregated, they have been rounded and weighted, by formulae that vary. Some nights have bigger samples than other nights. What I am doing here is very imprecise.

Nevertheless it can be done, and there IS information to be gleaned by doing it. On the flip I'll present what I have to offer in the way of breakdowns.

Ottoe

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Wednesday September 03, 2008 · 8:48 PM PDT

2008/09/03 · 20:48

A quick diary but one that I hope will be helpful in framing some memes moving forward from that speech.

I think we can all agree that it started unsteadily, lingered too long on cutesy biography, got rolling with some punchy sneers at Obama, and ended in a bathetic paean to MCCAIN our LEADER.

What will most people remember about it tomorrow, or the next day? How can we frame that memory for them to help them find the essence of the politician they met on TV tonight?

Ottoe

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday December 17, 2007 · 7:07 PM PST

2007/12/17 · 19:07

Ya know, there are so many WATBs on the other side that it is easy to forget that not only were all of us humans once WATBs, but we Kossacks can become so ourselves at the drop of a hat.

Big meanie Bob Kerrey has given rise to the latest outbreak of WATBism (WAIT I HEARD THAT THAT SOUNDS LIKE WAHABIISM YOU CALLED ME A WAHABI AL QUADA I CALL BULLSHIT) by trying, pretty inelegantly, obviously, to compliment Barack Obama on the diversity he embodies in his name, experience, and outlook.

C'mon people. Let's leave aside the question of Kerrey's intentions. Or better yet's say that he DID mean to raise the question of whether Obama has ties to Islam.

So what?

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