The Nick Leibham for congress campaign (CA-50) has just wrapped up their week-long series of events honoring Memorial Day, which they called "Bring Our Troops Home Week." A summary of all the events is below the fold. It was my pleasure to join them for the highlight of the week, visiting patients at the VA hospital in La Jolla and delivering gift baskets. (Photo: Nick is center in the suit.)

Just thought this would be a fun distraction from all the candidate mania:

The Washington Post reports today on a bunch of college students hosting a SOTU drinking game. What's so special? First, these are Democrats at BYU. Second, of course, this is a non-alcoholic drinking game--sodas only. You'll remember these intrepid kids from their national-news-making protests against Dick Cheney coming to speak at their graduation last June. More fun over the flip!

Fresh of one of the most family-oriented holidays of the year, I'm sure all of you will know exactly what I'm talking about with the following scene:

Half a dozen extended family members crowded in a small living room trying to accomplish a task nobody really knows how to do. At least twice as many proposals as people. And somehow everybody gets to thinking that if they just repeat their idea often enough, at loud enough volume, it will become the best idea. Total chaos. "Too many cooks," as they say.

Except we're not arguing about how to tell if the turkey is done, or what the best route to the movie theater through holiday traffic jams. We're arguing about how you're supposed to put an I.V. into somebody's arm.

In response to news that Vice President Dick Cheney will be speaking at the Brigham Young University (BYU) graduation, 200-300+ (one news outlet reported 500) students organized by the BYU College Democrats went out in the open with their grievances against Cheney and this awful administration. Perhaps only those who have lived in Utah (and outside Salt Lake City even) can understand the courage it took for these students to do this today.

Check out the pictures and leave some encouraging comments. Your eyes would bleed if you saw some of the hate email they've been getting, give them some love!

The San Diego affiliate of ABC is running a crawl text over the top of PT911 saying they won't run part II tomorrow. The station is KGTV Channel 10. The text as well as I can remember it is to the effect of:

San Diego channel 10 will be showing the Chargers vs Raiders game live tomorrow evening. Path to 9/11 Part II will air Saturday at 9pm.

So the questions are:

1. Did they just make up the football game thing as an excuse?
2. When did they decide this, how long ago?
3. Is this WORSE for us, because now the Bush bad parts won't be shown?
4. Will people watch on Saturday? More or fewer than if it were tomorrow (probably up against more competition on Mon? but will people wait across such a gap?)
5. Any other stations doing the same thing??

Update 3: Several commenters have elucidated the bizzare and complicated workings of NFL broadcasting. Apparenlty ESPN = ABC, and there's blackout rules, and... Anyway looks like Channel 10 would just rather make a whole ton of cash on a football game than air a poorly made "docudrama." End of story.

Some of you are looking for an early excuse not to feel sorry for yourselves over CA-50. I'm trying to come up with a suitable reply here (ie not "Go Cheney yourselves!"). Here it is:

I STAND WITH FRANCINE.

With Prof. Carl Luna, a San Diego local politics guru, now predicting a Busby win, complete with brutal 10-item list of reasons why Bilbray is doomed, could we be looking at the long-awaited netroots victory?

Let's make sure it happens. If you live anywhere near CA-50, here are some volunteer opportunities that the campaign is looking to fill (from an email I just got):

Isn't it funny how ads and arguments that are supposedly attacks, often only give you more reasons to like a candidate (if you weren't the intended audience for the ad)? Case in point, some of Brian Bilbray's ads against Francine Busby.

They are all on his web page, lets take a look.

A dark cloud descended on San Diego today. And yes, it is true, the dark cloud always travels with an ambulance.

Pictures of the protesters below.

A new SUSA poll has Busby and Bilbray tied at 45%.

Recall that although this is a heavily Republican district, our congressman is now federal inmate 94405-198 (AKA Randy Cunningham, AKA Dukestir). And lets not forget that people are just now finding out about Watergategate/ Hookergate/ WatergateII (almost certainly that hasn't registered in this survey yet).

On the flip, checking out the poll's crosstabs details (there is great news for Busby), and CA-50 news wrap-up:

Confusion and fracturing continue on the GOP side in CA-50. Despite losing the April 11th primary to lobbyist Brian Bilbray, extremely wealthy Rancho Santa Fe Republican Eric Roach is showing even more signs that he will aggressively challenge the June primary (attempting a write-in candidacy in the runoff itself is also an option, though it seems less likely). Along with his new best buddy Howard Kaloogian, Roach has embarked on an ironically-named "conservative unity tour" of national conservative groups in Washington D.C., to gauge support for Roach's candidacy. (aside: do Republicans ever name anything non-ironically?)

Kaloogian has said he will endorse Roach if Roach runs in the June primary.

Jon Fleischman of Flashreport has posted the audio of a radio spot Republican Eric Roach has JUST produced and aired. Yes, that's right, he is not the Republican nominee for the June 6 CA-50 runoff against Francine Busby, and yes, that's right, it is AFTER the election that he has made and is running this ad.

It isn't a campaign ad--it is just a message "thanking" voters for their support and the great experience he had during the campaign. Yeah. Right. So, that can only mean one thing--Roach is in. As diaried by MJB, yesterday Roach obtained the endorsement of Howard Kaloogian--of "Baghdad is calm and stable" (or at least, Istanbul is) fame.

Was turnout low? Why was turnout low? What's next? How will Busby do in the runoff? My unvarnished opinions below the fold.

New poll (PDF) by Datamar has Busby at 40.7, however, Datamar has been showing Busby lower than other polls all along. They are sampling at 54% Republicans, 33% Democrats, however absentee ballots turnout so far gives a demographic mix of 46% and 37% (see this post at mydd analyzing the previous Datamar poll). So if that ratio holds, Busby will do better than indicated in this poll.

Other random news items below the fold.

The NRCC has dumped $330,000 into CA-50 at the last minute, apparently worried there is a chance she could win outright on Tuesday, avoiding the June runoff. Their ad accuses Busby of being hypocritical in her strong advocacy of tough ethics reform in congress. The ad claims she took money from "employees of compaines with government contracts." Turns out one of the companies NRCC is talking about is Qualcomm, a cell phone maker and one of the biggest companies in the San Diego area. A comment by AaronInSanDiego, where he 'fessed up to donating to Busby, even though he--gasp!--works at Qualcomm**, got me thinking, if NRCC uses this to implicate Busby, who else is implicated? Turns out the list is long and plenty of Republicans.

According to the North County Times, a local paper in CA-50, absentee voters will be the key to this special election. Luckily for us, as discussed in this article, Busby has been focusing on absentee strategy from the beginning.

Now that HAVA has made permanent absentee voting available in all 50 states, and with even the suggestion of a problem with Diebold (conspiracy theory or not), this is a good case study for those of you looking forward to November's GOTV strategy.

BAHHHH!!!! I'm quivering with excitement y'all!!!! Thanks everyone for pumping up Francine's ActBlue netroots account last week. She has $27K so far.

This is a special election, so any candidate that reaches 50% wins it outright, otherwise run-off of top candidate in each party in June. Busby, getting 45% in a SUSA poll last week, is the only candidate with a prayer of making 50% (the R's are splitting the vote and even the front-runners are around 12% each). Check out this summary of the candidates in chart form, or read on for a run-down.

Since we've been discussing lately the tendency of traditional media to rip off bloggers without even feeling bad about it, I thought it was worth calling extra attention to this coverage of the Kaloogian photo flap: at least the local paper for the Kaloogian story, the San Diego Union-Tribune, got it (almost all) right.