With record total turnout of over 275,000, Ned Lamont defeated incumbent Joe Lieberman in this week's Democratic Party Primary for Senator in Connecticut. The margin of victory was 3.8%, a tight race. Exit polling reveals that voters under the age of 30 were the critical difference for Lamont:

Graphic from politicalarithmetik. The break for the 18 - 29 bracket is 63% Lamont.

Without the big break from millennial Nutmeg-staters, the power of incumbency would have kept Holy Joe in office.

Just watching SF Chronicle publisher make a direct comparison between the Plame investigation and Judith Miller getting jail time and the recent emergence of Mark Felt as the identity of Deep Throat.

I can sort of see his point in light of the beating Felt took from the Republican Noise Machine when he emerged, but in real terms it seems like the two cases are light night and day.

I've got a question for y'all; do you use drugs? If so, what? If not, why? Any favorites? Horror stories?

I'm less up for a debate on legalization than I am for some good old fashined storytelling. I've met people who are much further into chemical living, and I've met people who have felt like "bad liberals" beause they never used marijuana. I'm curious about all this. What's your story?

My own revelations below the fold.

Are Civil Unions really analagous to Jim Crow?

Poll and a few thoughts below the jump.

When Freepers sing Krugman's praises, and the king of righty bloggers comes down against the every Republican in the Senate there's something going on.

Oh, and the fact that Credit Card Debt (and that payday/title loan stuff) constitute nothing less than 21st-Century sharecropping make reforming consumer credit the right thing to do. It's not just an electorial winner, it's consistent with your principles to boot. This wedge has your name written all over it, Democrats. Do you want to pick up seats in 2006 or not?

Choice quotes below the jump.

Until today. Eyesonthescreen.com is a project of Downhill Battle, the copyright-reform activist group, to distribute the miniseries online and organize screenings on February 8th.

I think this is genius. If you agree, just click the link. If you need a little convincing, it's below the jump.

I'm trying to find someone who's basically got most of my skills to help out with a series of thororughly awesome ventures. I need a self-starter with strong website coding skills, a head for strategy, and good interpersonal mojo. If you've got that and you want to work for the revolution on a full-time basis, check the job description. If that sounds like your neice, kid brother, or disgruntled office comrade, pass the link along:

http://civicspacelabs.org/spwjob

My first-degree network has been exhausted on this one, so I'm going to the blogs before I do a cattle call. I'm looking to try and find someone to start asap in the new year. The sooner we can bring someone onboard, the more good we can do. Thank you for your support.

I'm one of the honky masters of the universe, a straight white male American with a college education. I grew up in Oregon, still one of the whitest states in the union, and though I lived in lower Manhattan and Brooklyn for about 7 years, I'm probably still on some level racially ignorant. I'll still use the "we," though, because I think we're all in this together. So there's that upfront.

When it comes to Ohio, I never seriously considered the racial angle. "Folks Don't Get It" challenged my thinking. Cheers for that.

I find that I kind of agree, though I also think it's naive to expect the Democratic party as currently constituted to do anything meaningful. But this sparks new lines of thought.

How do I get from there to calling for a return of Black Power? Well, you'll have to click the extended entry to find out...

The national scene is important, but the path back to power starts closer to home. While we can -- and should -- gnash our teeth over the cabenet and lobby the living daylights out of our senators on SCOTUS vacancies, the places we're most likely to make real impacts in the next 365 days are on the city/county level, and possibly with some ballot initaitives.

There's a lot of planning going on. Local efforts are stronger when they're networked, interlinked, part of a national agenda. Where do you think we should focus and on what?

Just a note to anyone who's been buying the "kids didn't show up" spin. It's bull:

People under the age of 30 turned out at the highest rate in more than 30 years, and we voted for change. In battlegrounds -- where my organization and a host of others did the bulk of their work -- turnout was above 60%, and broke for Kerry by an average of almost 20 points.

Florida? Ours.
Ohio? Ours.
Colorado? Ours.
Virgina? Missouri? Arkansas? Ours.

Our generation did it's part and then some, and most of us will stick with it. If it were up to us, it would be Kerry by a landslide. The future belongs to us, not the moral minority.

Check below the jump for the map. It'll make you happy.

That's what's so good about Internet Vets For Truth, a site put together by some of real players in the online world. It's a "best of" video site with direct Qicktime and Bittorrent links for everything from the new Eminem video to John Stewart's Crossfire Smackdown to clips from F9/11 and Going Upriver.

Ready for the punchline? It's hosted on more than 10 dedicated servers with 100Mbit/sec transfer each, all arranged through donation. That's a gigabit/second of High Quality video-pushing power.

Check it out: the design is nice, the content is the cream of the crop, and the download speeds will not dissapoint.
Internet Vets For Truth. Recommend this diary to help get the word out!

Of course, I tacked on a logo from my own org, Music for America but this poll is from the ohio poll, which has been run since 1981 by the U. of Cincinnati.

If cellphone-using kids match this profile -- which is a big "if," but my gut tells me kids who are reachable by landline may trend more conservative -- youth will carry Ohio for Kerry. Pass the word.

WARNING: WORK-SAFE (all text) BUT VERY DISTURBING

And there's also this, which seems to be funny:

http://www.falaphilia.com/

I'm going to have to put off dinner though.

Pell Grant Bait And Switch

Bis attitude towards Osama Bin Laden wasn't the only instance of a fuzzy memory. His statements on Pell Grants are similarly revealing. Bush seems to think he's expanded the grant system, and in a certain sense this is true. More students do access them than before, but Bush also cut funding from these core higher-ed grants.

But wait, you might say, this year he kicked in $33M. That's true, but what's also true is that previously he cut $270M, for a net cut of $237M. Music for America's own Mike Connery was on this back in January.

Talk about your bait and switch: Bush slashes $270 Million, then gives back $33 (probably because it's an election year), has more kids divvy up this diminished stash of aid, and goes off crowing about how he's "expanded" the Pell Grant program. Chant it with me now: "Bull-shit. Bull-shit. Bush-it..."

Bush on Health Care: Let Them Eat Cake

One of the most spectacularly unsatisfying moments in the debate was when Bush attacked Kerry's health care plan.

Sometimes though (oddly enough) I have trouble communicating exactly why the Bush administration is so hubristic. Well, they say a picture is worth a thousand words, and this blast from the past fits the bill nicely:

I think this pretty much sums it up. This issue is February 2003, meaning it hit the newsstands sometime in mid Jan, ahead of the protests and the war.

Bush is supposed to be the CEO president, right? Tell me if you blew it this badly in the private sector you wouldn't be fired.

Hosting courtesy Music for America. Feel free to spread that one far and wide. Hopefully I can get the cover to a flatbed scanner sometime soon.

Also, if anyone knows of good professors and/or student groups to hit up on the UMich campus; that would be awesome.

Suggested new motto for Bush/Cheney '04: Ummm. Are you fucking kidding me?

The average quarterly income from ebay is $78 dollars. That's about $300 a year, which is less than the per-capita GDP everywhere except the congo.

Yeah, and economic stats don't take garage sales into account either.

Special treat after the jump

I'll give you a hint: it start's with a 9, ends with an 11, and it's coming back to haunt him.

Bush rode national tragedy to the highest single approval ratings in modern history, and in that moment of pride a series of decisions were made -- from unilaterally invading Iraq to the scheduling of his convention -- that are all now contributing to drag his approbal below 50%.

Any chances the mainstream media will make the connection?