"Into Thy Hands" 2006
[Bumped to top all day long]
6:26 AM PST: Well, I'm up....
6:31 AM PST: ....hopefully to a high enough elevation that I don't drown. It's been pouring down rain for several days here at my branch office of Starfleet HQ and roads started flooding and washing out yesterday. My daughter just told me that the sinks are backing up in her science classroom at school. A co-worker with the same long commute (in the opposite direction) that I used to have was telling me her horror stories yesterday morning. I just smiled.
The upside-down frown won't last long, though, if I can't get to the polling place this morning. Or the office after that. Besides, it'll fill up awfully quickly itself. At least until the election returns start coming in later today, anyway.
Dean Barnett isn't shrinking from his irrational enthusiasm, though. Good for him. Though after watching the Democrats handle defeat the past six years, really have to wonder what it would look like if they, as DB and several other bloggers have recently postulated, have a "meltdown" if they fall short (again) today.
6:41PM PST: My daughter's school canceled classes today. At first I thought, "Lucky bugger"; then I thought about my election picks and thought better of it.
Still, at least she'll be dry....
6:47 PM PST: Here's more on what will be in store for us after Crazy Nancy arrives two heartbeats away from the Big Chair. Interesting that Michael Kinsley waited until the day of the election to call it an "embarrassment."
Gotta go get ready. Be back later.
8:18 PM PST: Sure enough, the road I usually take to my polling place was washed out. I did manage to get to my office, though the usual fifteen-minute drive took nearly an hour. Now I have to go out at lunch time, except that I also have to pick up my son from school, assuming he and my wife even made it there, and assuming they even HAVE school today, AND assuming that every OTHER road to my polling place isn't washed out as well.
Maybe God is telling me something. I'd like to think it's that the GOP is going to do so well today that my vote would be gravy.
That's what I'd like to think, anyway.
9:03 AM PST: Good news! I think an alternate route to my polling place is available!
Bad news - it's still raining buckets. And yesterday I heard about a guy driving his Ford Escort into a bottomless puddle.
I won't say what I drive, but it sure as heck ain't an SUV.
Jim Geraghty is a bit more of an optimist than I today. And Obi Wan even more so.
10:49 AM PST: There's vote suppression going on, alright - but it isn't being directed at Democrats.
10:56 AM PST: Mark Levin gives voice to my in-shower musings this morning:
What a political dynamic - both parties deserve to lose, but the Republicans keep winning because they're not psychopathic lunatics.
Leading to the obvious question - if the psychopathic lunatics finally break through this time, what does that say about the electorate or the GOP?
12:37 PM PST: Oh. My. God. What an absolute clusterbleep of fraud. We may not know who controls Congress for weeks.
Remember the old saying about "power corrupts...."? I'd amend that to read, "the lust for power corrupts...." because it looks (once again) as though the Donks will do ANYTHING to get their hands on it. Fits with the other side of their contemporary MO - if they can't rule America, they'll make American ungovernable.
Sure speaks to their true confidence level, though, doesn't it?
3:39 PM PST: Just got back from a lunch hour expedition that took twice as long as it should have. Had to go twenty miles out of my way and around the side of a small mountain in order to get to my polling place because of the randomness of the road washouts. And, of course, there were interminable traffic jams everywhere. Brought back traumatic memories of my old commute (Let's just say it was a lot longer than my current one).
There were, by my eyeball count, eight other voters connecting their ballot arrows whilst I did mine. Had to wait behind a couple of people to get my ballot. Not nearly as busy as 2004, but than I was there mid-afternoon rather than first thing in the morning. At any rate, I did my part to make Mike McGavick's margin of defeat respectable and send Dave Reichert back to Washington, D.C. for another two years, and lent my support to a rafter of center-right referenda and initiatives that, in this blue state, are all doomed.
Three words: Exit polling sucks. As in the quality, not the expectedly pro-Dem tilt it's trying to put over. Want some meaningful information instead? The Republicans are winning the turnout battle. Not overwhelmingly, but in all these neck & neck races, it could be the difference.
4:21 PM PST: Speaking of omens, since there isn't much else to speak about yet, after I voted, the torrential rains stopped and the sun came out.
I'm just sayin'....
4:32 PM PST: Just heard Gollyfornia Donk gubernatorial tomato can Phil Angelides claim that "by four o'clock" Crazy Nancy would be Speaker of the House. Heh.
True, he didn't specify whether he meant AM or PM, or which day, or in which quantum reality....
5:29 PM PST: Hostettler has gone down in Indiana-8 and DeWine in Ohio has been declared the first GOP Senate victim.
5:39 PM PST: Santorum has lost in Pennsylvania; Virginia is a dead heat; looks like the GOP is snagging a Georgia Dem House seat big and the other is too close to call; Menendez has held New Jersey.
5:51 PM PST: Snowe wins in Maine, Lugar in Indiana; Joe Negron is now ahead in the race to hold Mark Foley's Florida House seat. Corker winning Bill Frist's seat in a blowout.
6:24 PM PST: Hillary! wins in New York. Klobuchar holds Minnesota. Stabenow is re-elected in Michigan. Joe-mentum blows away Nedrenaline in Connecticut. So much for "people power".
6:36 PM PST: Linc Chafee in Rhode Island makes three Dem Senate pickups. Allen continues to lead narrowly in Virginia. CNN (natch) called Maryland for Ben Cardin with zero precincts reporting. Don't stick a fork in Michael Steele yet.
6:42 PM PST: According to Jim Geraghty:
However....
Overall, the House side feels like the muddle it figured to be. Donk expectations are deflating like the Hindenburg after the lightning bolt, and the fifteen-seat gain floor is rapidly approaching. Only question is whether impact or the buzzer will hit first.
6:58 PM PST: Chocola in Indiana-2 is gone. Ditto Sodrel in Indiana-9. Dickerson failed to pick up the Dem seat in Indiana-7. On the other hand, Double-H reports that a National Republican Congressional Committee source says the GOP will hold the House by a margin of three seats, or a net loss of only twelve seats.
7:11 PM PST: Debra Pryce is holding on in Ohio-15. That seat was supposed to be low-hanging Dem fruit.
7:17 PM PST: Roskam looks to be holding another GOP seat (Illinois-6) that was supposed to fall. The muddle continues.
7:36 PM PST: GOP has lost ten House seats overall so far before the two possible Georgia pickups. No returns from Montana yet. Allen maintains a 30,000 vote lead in Virginia. Talent was up early in Missouri last I heard.
7:50 PM PST: Fox has called Missouri for Jim Talent already. With Allen still leading by 27,000 in Virginia, it appears that the Senate may be safe. And that doesn't count the still existing possibility of Steele pulling out Maryland.
~ ~ ~
It's eight bells. Time for a dinner interlude.
One more update at 8:11 PM PST: GOP House losses are up to fourteen. That's before the two possible Georgia pickups. The edge of the buffer is approaching.
~ ~ ~
9:08 PM PST: GOP House losses up to sixteen before Georgia. The buffer is gone.
9:26 PM PST: And the House along with it. No point in following that anymore. Let's check the Senate side.
MARYLAND: Cardin 52%, Steele 46% (74% of precincts reporting)
VIRGINIA: Webb 50%, Allen 49% (final)
MISSOURI: Talent 50%, McCaskill 46% (64% of precincts reporting)
MONTANA: Tester 55%, Burns 43% (23% of precincts reporting)
Soooooo....looks like an even split after all, barring George Allen scrounging three thousand or so extra votes in the inevitable recount.
Don't feel much like doing any analysis tonight, and by the time I get a block of time to do so others will already have beaten me to it. Let's just leave it at the following for now.
Whether you attribute tonight's results to the "six year itch" or the war that President Bush said from the beginning would be a long one or any of the myriad of Democrat memes throughout the year, the bottom line is that the American electorate has made some profoundly foolish and short-sighted choices the consequences of which will not be long in manifesting themselves beginning in January. A huge tax increase is a certainty without any legislative action at all from the new House majority by virtue of letting the Bush tax cuts expire. Pulling the plug on the war, both through bitterly recriminatory hearings that feed Bush lieutenants backwards through the bunghole on everything from terrorist surveillance to "torture" of enemy "detainees" and outright defunding of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan is inevitable. And leave us not forget what will be the first order of business for Crazy Speaker Pelosi: the double impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney.
From the caves of the Afghan-Pakistan frontier to the salons of Tehran and Damascus to the underground bunker in Pyongyang, the Axis of Evil is smiling broadly tonight. They've outlasted the infidel Bush, who has now been formally emasculated. And their war against America, once again unopposed, can, and will, continue.
6:26 AM PST: Well, I'm up....
6:31 AM PST: ....hopefully to a high enough elevation that I don't drown. It's been pouring down rain for several days here at my branch office of Starfleet HQ and roads started flooding and washing out yesterday. My daughter just told me that the sinks are backing up in her science classroom at school. A co-worker with the same long commute (in the opposite direction) that I used to have was telling me her horror stories yesterday morning. I just smiled.
The upside-down frown won't last long, though, if I can't get to the polling place this morning. Or the office after that. Besides, it'll fill up awfully quickly itself. At least until the election returns start coming in later today, anyway.
Dean Barnett isn't shrinking from his irrational enthusiasm, though. Good for him. Though after watching the Democrats handle defeat the past six years, really have to wonder what it would look like if they, as DB and several other bloggers have recently postulated, have a "meltdown" if they fall short (again) today.
6:41PM PST: My daughter's school canceled classes today. At first I thought, "Lucky bugger"; then I thought about my election picks and thought better of it.
Still, at least she'll be dry....
6:47 PM PST: Here's more on what will be in store for us after Crazy Nancy arrives two heartbeats away from the Big Chair. Interesting that Michael Kinsley waited until the day of the election to call it an "embarrassment."
Gotta go get ready. Be back later.
8:18 PM PST: Sure enough, the road I usually take to my polling place was washed out. I did manage to get to my office, though the usual fifteen-minute drive took nearly an hour. Now I have to go out at lunch time, except that I also have to pick up my son from school, assuming he and my wife even made it there, and assuming they even HAVE school today, AND assuming that every OTHER road to my polling place isn't washed out as well.
Maybe God is telling me something. I'd like to think it's that the GOP is going to do so well today that my vote would be gravy.
That's what I'd like to think, anyway.
9:03 AM PST: Good news! I think an alternate route to my polling place is available!
Bad news - it's still raining buckets. And yesterday I heard about a guy driving his Ford Escort into a bottomless puddle.
I won't say what I drive, but it sure as heck ain't an SUV.
Jim Geraghty is a bit more of an optimist than I today. And Obi Wan even more so.
10:49 AM PST: There's vote suppression going on, alright - but it isn't being directed at Democrats.
10:56 AM PST: Mark Levin gives voice to my in-shower musings this morning:
[M]y over-arching view is that voters aren't going to line-up at the polls in record numbers to hand Congress over to the hapless Democrats. The Democrats have given voters no reason to flock to them. Indeed, they may well have caused some voters to think twice about supporting them (Hello John Kerry).You know, if the Democrat party was still typified, much less led, by decent, patriotic people like Joe Lieberman - you know, the poor schlep who got vilified and ousted by his own party for his audacity in supporting the war on Islamic Fundamentalism and is now cruising to easy re-election to the Senate over the neoBolshevik Dem nominee in a state that is bluer than a Smurf - the Democrats probably would have regained the majority in Congress a long time ago.
What a political dynamic - both parties deserve to lose, but the Republicans keep winning because they're not psychopathic lunatics.
Leading to the obvious question - if the psychopathic lunatics finally break through this time, what does that say about the electorate or the GOP?
12:37 PM PST: Oh. My. God. What an absolute clusterbleep of fraud. We may not know who controls Congress for weeks.
Remember the old saying about "power corrupts...."? I'd amend that to read, "the lust for power corrupts...." because it looks (once again) as though the Donks will do ANYTHING to get their hands on it. Fits with the other side of their contemporary MO - if they can't rule America, they'll make American ungovernable.
Sure speaks to their true confidence level, though, doesn't it?
3:39 PM PST: Just got back from a lunch hour expedition that took twice as long as it should have. Had to go twenty miles out of my way and around the side of a small mountain in order to get to my polling place because of the randomness of the road washouts. And, of course, there were interminable traffic jams everywhere. Brought back traumatic memories of my old commute (Let's just say it was a lot longer than my current one).
There were, by my eyeball count, eight other voters connecting their ballot arrows whilst I did mine. Had to wait behind a couple of people to get my ballot. Not nearly as busy as 2004, but than I was there mid-afternoon rather than first thing in the morning. At any rate, I did my part to make Mike McGavick's margin of defeat respectable and send Dave Reichert back to Washington, D.C. for another two years, and lent my support to a rafter of center-right referenda and initiatives that, in this blue state, are all doomed.
Three words: Exit polling sucks. As in the quality, not the expectedly pro-Dem tilt it's trying to put over. Want some meaningful information instead? The Republicans are winning the turnout battle. Not overwhelmingly, but in all these neck & neck races, it could be the difference.
4:21 PM PST: Speaking of omens, since there isn't much else to speak about yet, after I voted, the torrential rains stopped and the sun came out.
I'm just sayin'....
4:32 PM PST: Just heard Gollyfornia Donk gubernatorial tomato can Phil Angelides claim that "by four o'clock" Crazy Nancy would be Speaker of the House. Heh.
True, he didn't specify whether he meant AM or PM, or which day, or in which quantum reality....
5:29 PM PST: Hostettler has gone down in Indiana-8 and DeWine in Ohio has been declared the first GOP Senate victim.
5:39 PM PST: Santorum has lost in Pennsylvania; Virginia is a dead heat; looks like the GOP is snagging a Georgia Dem House seat big and the other is too close to call; Menendez has held New Jersey.
5:51 PM PST: Snowe wins in Maine, Lugar in Indiana; Joe Negron is now ahead in the race to hold Mark Foley's Florida House seat. Corker winning Bill Frist's seat in a blowout.
6:24 PM PST: Hillary! wins in New York. Klobuchar holds Minnesota. Stabenow is re-elected in Michigan. Joe-mentum blows away Nedrenaline in Connecticut. So much for "people power".
6:36 PM PST: Linc Chafee in Rhode Island makes three Dem Senate pickups. Allen continues to lead narrowly in Virginia. CNN (natch) called Maryland for Ben Cardin with zero precincts reporting. Don't stick a fork in Michael Steele yet.
6:42 PM PST: According to Jim Geraghty:
Some good signs in Florida - Foley’s seat looks good to stay GOP; they may keep Katherine Harris’ seat, which looked like it might be in trouble earlier.
Some good early, very early numbers out of Georgia in those House races. One's tied, the other has the GOP up, but with only 16% in.
Illinois 08 still looks very close, about 1,000 votes between them with 14% in - that's another potential GOP pickup.Chocola is still in it in Indiana.
However....
[Ann] Northup [in Kentucky] looks like a loss, and that might be a sign of a bad night.That one wasn't even on my board.
Overall, the House side feels like the muddle it figured to be. Donk expectations are deflating like the Hindenburg after the lightning bolt, and the fifteen-seat gain floor is rapidly approaching. Only question is whether impact or the buzzer will hit first.
6:58 PM PST: Chocola in Indiana-2 is gone. Ditto Sodrel in Indiana-9. Dickerson failed to pick up the Dem seat in Indiana-7. On the other hand, Double-H reports that a National Republican Congressional Committee source says the GOP will hold the House by a margin of three seats, or a net loss of only twelve seats.
7:11 PM PST: Debra Pryce is holding on in Ohio-15. That seat was supposed to be low-hanging Dem fruit.
7:17 PM PST: Roskam looks to be holding another GOP seat (Illinois-6) that was supposed to fall. The muddle continues.
7:36 PM PST: GOP has lost ten House seats overall so far before the two possible Georgia pickups. No returns from Montana yet. Allen maintains a 30,000 vote lead in Virginia. Talent was up early in Missouri last I heard.
7:50 PM PST: Fox has called Missouri for Jim Talent already. With Allen still leading by 27,000 in Virginia, it appears that the Senate may be safe. And that doesn't count the still existing possibility of Steele pulling out Maryland.
~ ~ ~
It's eight bells. Time for a dinner interlude.
One more update at 8:11 PM PST: GOP House losses are up to fourteen. That's before the two possible Georgia pickups. The edge of the buffer is approaching.
~ ~ ~
9:08 PM PST: GOP House losses up to sixteen before Georgia. The buffer is gone.
9:26 PM PST: And the House along with it. No point in following that anymore. Let's check the Senate side.
MARYLAND: Cardin 52%, Steele 46% (74% of precincts reporting)
VIRGINIA: Webb 50%, Allen 49% (final)
MISSOURI: Talent 50%, McCaskill 46% (64% of precincts reporting)
MONTANA: Tester 55%, Burns 43% (23% of precincts reporting)
Soooooo....looks like an even split after all, barring George Allen scrounging three thousand or so extra votes in the inevitable recount.
Don't feel much like doing any analysis tonight, and by the time I get a block of time to do so others will already have beaten me to it. Let's just leave it at the following for now.
Whether you attribute tonight's results to the "six year itch" or the war that President Bush said from the beginning would be a long one or any of the myriad of Democrat memes throughout the year, the bottom line is that the American electorate has made some profoundly foolish and short-sighted choices the consequences of which will not be long in manifesting themselves beginning in January. A huge tax increase is a certainty without any legislative action at all from the new House majority by virtue of letting the Bush tax cuts expire. Pulling the plug on the war, both through bitterly recriminatory hearings that feed Bush lieutenants backwards through the bunghole on everything from terrorist surveillance to "torture" of enemy "detainees" and outright defunding of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan is inevitable. And leave us not forget what will be the first order of business for Crazy Speaker Pelosi: the double impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney.
From the caves of the Afghan-Pakistan frontier to the salons of Tehran and Damascus to the underground bunker in Pyongyang, the Axis of Evil is smiling broadly tonight. They've outlasted the infidel Bush, who has now been formally emasculated. And their war against America, once again unopposed, can, and will, continue.
posted by JASmius at 8:00 PM
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