I think of so many things that have happened, especially since George Bush was president.
I am bitter when I think of the days after 911, when George & Co. started doing the hard-sell on the Iraq war. When I remember thinking, we can't really go to war with Iraq. Iraq had nothing to do with this. But we went to war anyway.
I am bitter when I remember Colin Powell and his charts and graphs trying to justify the war, the mushroom cloud argument especially.
I am bitter when I think of Dick Cheney and how he keeps repeating the lie, even today, linking Saddam Hussein to 911.
I am bitter when I remember... Cheney?... saying we'd be greeted as liberators with flowers in the streets of Iraq.
I am bitter when I remember Cheney or Rumsfeld saying we could be there six weeks, we could be there six days. When we've been there for years now.
I am bitter remembering BushCo saying (laughably, even then, and yet people bought it) that this war would Pay For Itself!
I am bitter every time I see a yellow ribbon on a giant SUV.

Kid Oakland says it's time to get involved. That someday, we'll want to tell our kids and grandchildren that in 2008, we helped elect Barack Obama President of the United States.

And I find a little friendly competition does wonders to get me moving. So, I'm hoping people will pledge, through the poll below, to help phone-bank for Obama on Super Tuesday.

It's easy, and you can do it from your home phone. You get a list of names through the web site and start calling, reminding them that it's election day and asking for their vote for Obama. Should be much easier to do Tuesday because with 22 states having primaries, the voters won't be inundated with calls and sick of them by the day of the actual vote.

You'll be calling Democrats and many of the people will have already been ID'd as Obama supporters. It's fast and easy.

And we'll make it a contest somehow to make it fun.

Spot checks of precincts indicate high voter turn-out in SC today, possibly shattering previous records for Democrats.

One big number didn't get much play last week from the South Carolina Republican primary results: 135,000. That's the number of voters who didn't show up to vote Republican last week. 440,000 did vote -- far fewer than the 575,000 who voted in the 2000 Republican Primary in SC.

Will those 135,000 people go to the polls today? (Or even more, given the fact that the state's population has grown rapidly in the past 7 years?)

State Party officials are expecting perhaps 350,000 voters today -- which would be a record -- compared to 290,000 who voted in the Democratic Primary in 2004. I couldn't find any reference to how many Independents and Republicans were expected to vote. (In SC's open primary, voters can participate in one or the other party's primary, voter's choice.)

Pollsters seem to have settled on about 24 percent Independent voters, but the numbers could be much higher, given the 135,000 people who seemed to be missing from the Republican Primary lat week.

How much of a move to Blue could SC make today? Can't wait to see.

   John Edwards poll numbers in South Carolina having been rising since the Myrtle Beach debate on Monday, and on Friday, The State newspaper of Columbia (biggest in the state) writes:
   "Watch John Edwards. With only a day left before Saturday’s S.C. Democratic presidential primary, the former U.S. senator from North Carolina and S.C. native is making a move, tracking polls suggest."
   The Reuters/Zogby poll found Edwards gaining 4 percentage points merely from Wednesday to Thursday. He's picking up white males from Hillary Clinton (an 8 point swing) and from next to nothing to 5 percent of African Americans from Obama.
   Pollster John Zobgy says of the SC race, "There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear." (Ain't? I didn't know Zogby was a Southerner."

   UPDATE: Big question mark on polls: An open primary state, with only 440,000 voting in last week's Republican Primary, compared to 575,000 voting in 2000. So there are 135,000 people who voted Republican in 2000 and didn't vote Republican last Saturday. That number doesn't even account for a growing population in the last 7 years. Tons of voters are probably not being polled at all in this race.

Unless they're using reverse psychology, in which case, maybe they fear Obama more.
I can't decide.
All I know is that the Greenville News had the audacity to endorse Barack Obama today.
Given the nastiness of the debate here right now, I doubt anyone will believe me when I say the Greenville News would never, ever, ever try to help the Democrats. As a Southerner might say, They wouldn't spit on us if we were on fire.
This is a "Surge-is-working," "we-love-George-Bush" "The economy-is-strong" paper.
They've dutifully run every possible Republican nominee up the flag pole in the last few months, hoping someone will get some traction and take off, and no one has.
Their inflated ideas about the wonders of Fred Thompson alone was worthy of becoming stand-up comedy, it was so funny.

Poor Huckabee. One moment, the queen of the right. The next, going broke.

His staff is working without pay. Others are simply leaving the campaign. There's no more chartered plane for reporters traveling with the campaign.

He told a University of Florida crowd today, "We are taking a look at everything daily. But we will be here every day in Florida until next week."

No money for TV ads on the big networks in Florida, just those on some cable stations.

Full story here: http://ap.google.com/...

Hi,
 This is a wonderfully blunt and I think truthful assessment of the Republican slate of candidates, and it's in The State newspaper of Columbia, SC, the capitol of our once very red state, predicting low turn-out in today's primary, and that was before the snow hit!

"But the main reason turnout might be lower than expected could be of greatest concern to Republicans everywhere: what many are calling a lackluster slate of candidates," the State reports.

 "There’s nobody out there who is wild for their candidate. In (1980), people would have walked through broken glass in their bare feet to vote (for Ronald Reagan). This might go the convention," said Neal Thigpen, a Republican analyst at Francis Marion University in Florence.

Full story at: http://www.thestate.com/...

I keep getting robo-called and push-polled for that crazy fried-squirrel-eater, Mike Huckabee.

The latest call today was caught by my answering machine, with a recorded voice saying, "Mike Huckabee can be trusted to always protect life. (Except squirrel life!)
"John McCain supports controversial scientific experimentation on unborn babies. (Wow, must have missed news of those.) John McCain sacrificed many pro-life judges by teaming with his liberal senator friends.
"Mitt Romney says he believes abortion should be legal. Mitt Romney opposes human life amendments. Mitt Romney has switched his position on abortion five times in the past fifteen years. (Poor Mitt, I understand that's true or at least partially true)
"A vote for Mike Huckabee tomorrow is a vote for life and much more. Visit trusthuckabee.com Paid for by Common Sense Issues and not authorized by or coordinated with any candidate or campaign committee. 719-306-2546."

Has to be quick. I'm going to bed.
New Clemson University poll of Republicans, done Jan 9-15, nearly 40 percent of respondents said they're not sure who they'll support in Saturday's SC Republican primary.
24 percent say they may make up their minds within the last 24 hours. (Good luck polling this one.)
Of those expressing a preference:

McCain: 29 percent
Huckabee: 21 percent
Romney: 13 percent
Thompson: 10 percent

John McCain's first mailer arrived at my house in South Carolina today -- a giant, full-color post card supposedly touting his pro-life record, but actually a preemptive strike against old lies that McCain fathered a child with a black woman.

In case anyone doesn't know the story, eight years ago McCain won New Hampshire, beating a little shit named George W. Bush, who we now know has no problem telling out-and-out lies.

Stories started circulating in South Carolina that McCain had a mixed-race child, which apparently doesn't go over well with good Republicans in the South and Bush ended up winning the South Carolina primary and the Republican nomination. (And we all suffered through the rest.)

McCain must feel like the lie could come back to hurt him because they dug out a photo of Cindy McCain holding a dark-skinned, dark-haired infant, standing beside an Indian nun in 1993.

Dear New Hampshire,
  As you go to the polls tomorrow, and we're all waiting excitedly for the results, please think about what comes afterward. A very compressed primary calendar.
  We test our candidates by fire through the primary season, in part to see how they'll hold up to the roaring inferno that is a Presidential race.
  NH might well be the coronation of Barack Obama as our nominee, and believe me I say, I have nothing against Obama. I'm thrilled for his beautiful way with words, his passion and ability to inspire people and most importantly, to get them out to vote. (In the end, winning an election is about getting people to the polls. He did that in a hugely impressive way in Iowa.)
  But I think, too, there should be more than one candidate left standing after NH, and the choices seem obvious. Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. That choice is yours tomorrow.

This little girl needed a trial lawyer.

She was four and went to preschool with my kids. Tiny for her age and quiet and a little shy, she'd been at my house to play recently. It had gotten really warm that afternoon, and I'd given her a little top and shorts of my 2-year-old daughter's to wear while she ran around outside in the sunshine. I'll call her Katie.

One of my best friends was picking Katie, her brother and my friend's own two children up from preschool one day. It was right before Easter. The kids had gone to see the Easter Bunny at the mall that day. Katie's face was painted with a little rabbit nose and whiskers. The kids all had their Easter baskets with them, one more thing to try to get in the car with the four little preschool kids.

Mothers know how hectic it is to try to herd four preschoolers and all their stuff safely into a car.

This is a trip. Mike Huckabee calls a press conference, saying he has dirt on Mitt Romney.
The corporate media obligingly shows up, and Huckabee says, Wait. Had a change of heart. Won't be airing my negative ad after all. Taking the high road.
Then proceeds to show the ad at the press conference that he will not be airing on TV, because he's such a good guy.

"The assembled media found the display hilarious and at several points laughed out loud," the NYTimes reported.
 
 (Would love to have seen Huckabee's response to that.)
 

The latest South Carolina poll shows Barack Obama within 3 points of Hillary Clinton, who is still leading but fading here -- mirroring results for the Democrats of a Clemson University poll released on Nov. 29.
Mike Huckabee is now leading Republicans in South Carolina, coming out of nowhere, as he had elsewhere recently. (Will the Republicans ever be able to find a candidate that sticks? I don't think so. Will Republicans hold their nose and vote for the least-offensive candidate in the primary? Or just stay home? I don't know. But I still see a remarkable lack of enthusiasm for any Republican candidates in the Upstate of South Carolina, which is prime Republican territory.)

   Clemson University released a poll yesterday that showed South Carolina voters souring on both Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani, with support dropping 7 points for Hillary and 9 points for Rudy since the previous Clemson poll in August.
   Hillary and Barack Obama are in a statistical dead-heat with the support of 19 percent for Hillary and 17 percent for Obama, but a full 49 percent of Democratic voters say they are still undecided. Margin of error on the poll is 4.5 percent.
   On the Republican side, Rudy and Fred Thompson led the August poll. Rudy's tanking with only 9 percent support in November. Freddy has 15 percent. Romney now leads with 17 percent and Huckabee is surging, going from 6 percent support in August to 13 percent in November. Among Republican voters, 28 percent are undecided (8 percent more undecided than in August.)

South Carolina really soured on Republicans in general in the 3rd quarter, donating a total of $50,000 less than they did in the 2nd quarter, while Democratic fund-raising numbers in total came in $100,000 higher in the 3rd quarter than the 2nd quarter.

(How the Greenville News could not make this lead and headline, I'll never understand... Okay, yeah. I do. It's the Greenville News!)

The totals were $399,362 for Rep. candidates, and $362,648 for Democrats. Getting close to even money-wise, which is amazing in this state.

On the Democratic side, Edwards raised $103,000, compared to what is to me, a really suprising number from Bill Richardson, $87,600. No idea where that came from. I don't think I've seen the first sign or bumper sticker for Richardson in Greenville. I haven't heard of anybody in the state getting behind him in a big way. I'm not seeing news coverage of him, so this is bizarre to me.

Having driven a number of Toyotas to more than 100,000 miles with little if any problems, and now driving a Hyundai Santa Fe with 104,000 miles and few, if any, problems, I used to wonder what was wrong with American car companies.

Why couldn't they build a car that lasted? That's engine ran as smoothly at 100,000 miles as it did when it was new? (And I'm telling you right now, the Hyundai, at 104,000 runs as smoothly and easily and quietly as it did new.)

Then I spent three weeks in a Ford Focus.

American car companies are doomed. They can't even make a decent cup holder.

Bob Jones III, of Bob Jones University fame, announced today this presidential race is "all about beating Hillary," and shudders thinking of the possibility of a Hilliary/Rudy Guiliani race, the sheer "disaster" of having to pick from two pro-choice candidates for President.

He told the Greenville (SC) News today, if his choice is between Hillary with her "lack of religion," Rudy and his pro-choice stance or the Mormon, Mitt Romney, he'll take the guy who practices the "erroneous religion."

(I gotta love that. From him claiming some kind of spiritual X-ray vision that sees inside Hillary and knows she's got no religion or him in all his spiritual wisdom proclaiming another religion erroneous. Never let it be said that we don't have fun in Greenville, SC. Maybe the X-ray vision thing is connected to the Gay-Dar that Bob Jones was going to use a few years back to stop homosexuals at the gates and not let them on campus. Maybe they've updated it in the past few years to spot those with no religion, too, and all the erroneous religions.)