Speedkill

How we’ve gone from that statement to “Burns has been exonerated” is beyond me. Iverson informed us that Burns wasn’t a target of the investigation, so it wouldn’t seem like someone who wasn’t being pursued could be exonerated.

As I pointed out a while back, if Burns’ vote wasn’t for sale, he looks worse on the Marianas vote.

But, I suppose those non-limp-wristed, non-pussy, very manly Montana bloggers will have their day to get out pent up frustration over Burns’ loss (or just general partisan anger, I suppose). And some of the limp-wristed pussies of the Montana blogosphere who thought Burns was going to be indicted will have to eat their words. All in all, though, Burns lost for many good reasons and our new Senator is a major improvement.

Now we should all just move on and begin working together for a better future. We should put all this partisan sniping aside. Right? Hey, where are you going?

Well, Montana and the country have chosen: it’s the party of godless tax-raising sodomites. I mean, that’s what I was told the Democrats were.

Congrats to all the winning candidates and good riddance to the many who deserved to lose and did.

I predict sweeping losses for the Democrats tomorrow.

That’s right, the Democrats.

I say that so I won’t be disappointed if we lose.

In all seriousness, I predict Democrats win back the House by a slim margin, gain a couple seats in the Senate, Tester edges out Burns, and Rehberg trounces Lindeen.

Vagueness: another key to making good predictions.

Less than a week to the election. I haven’t talked about it much, I suppose. That’s because other MT blogs do an excellent job already. My contribution is unlikely to be original. Oh well.

I have to confess, I often vote against candidates rather than for them. I would rather not do this, but I’m apparently somewhat lazy. I have to say, though, I’m not worried about doing that in the Senate race this year. Burns is awful. There’s simply nothing to make me even consider voting for him. It’s not even ideology. He trades votes for money in the Senate and on the campaign trail. The man claims to be a conservative, but is running on pork. I’m not a conservative and my blood doesn’t boil when we get federal money, but come on. The man can’t even stick to a fundamental tenet of his claimed ideology. He then completely fails to realize that we have to pay for his pork and supports tax cuts for the rich. Say what you want about “tax and spend” Democrats, they at least realize they need to pay for their spending. Burns continues to support failed policies in Iraq and defend the Patriot Act. He claims he and the President has some secret plan for Iraq. The list goes on and on. There’s a impressive case just for voting against Burns. Actively against, not just abstaining.

The second reason is that Tester is actually a good candidate. He strikes me as smart and honest. I actually like him. I don’t honestly like many politicians, including Democrats. I try not to let that influence me and judge the candidates on their ideas and positions, but I’m not perfect. Tester’s against the Patriot Act, which while I’m not as against it as he is, we need people to push back and get it fixed. My position on what to do in Iraq is as on the fence as ever, but I think Tester’s assessment of the situation is basically correct and I can respect his position. He’s pro-choice and pro-stem cell research. He’s solid on health care issues. He’s not in favor on gun control, which I’ve become increasingly opposed to. Which is sort of odd, I guess, since I don’t own a gun nor do I ever plan to and I despise stereotypical “gun nuts” (and don’t understand non-stereotypical ones). Of course, he’s taken a hard line on meth, which I find ridiculous. Perhaps oddly, as I’ve never done a drug (other than alcohol, of course) in my entire life and generally despise drug use. I like to think I’m rising above my biases, but perhaps that’s just my ego. I’m not a fan of single issue voting, so I look past that. Tester says good things about the separation of church and state, but that’s a very muddled issue to some, so I’m always wary. I can’t find any actual positions he’s taken on the issue.

So that’s that. The other races are less interesting. I will probably vote for Lindeen, but I’m hardly enthusiastic about it. Rehberg makes my skin crawl, but Lindeen is a pretty bad candidate. Why oh why can’t we find someone good to run against Rehberg? The local races are not my cup of tea, but I like Lynea Seher and Mike Phillips. I wish I lived in HD 70 so I could vote for Vincent and get Koopman out of office. Actually, it’d be embarrassing to have Koopman as a rep, so maybe I don’t wish that.

So, make sure to get out and vote. Encourage others to do so. It’s an important election.

That was entertaining. Tester, Burns, and the blue man himself, Stan Jones, faced off tonight. Tester did an excellent job, perhaps without some of the better one liners from the Butte debate, but excellent nonetheless. Burns was his normal incoherently rambling self. Numerous times I had to to turn to Scott to make sure I heard his nonsensical comments correctly.

The real star of the debate was Mr. Jones. I remember watching him in the 2004 Bozeman governor’s debate and thinking of him as simply a slightly eccentric libertarian. Tonight, he was so much more. Global warming is natural! We’re turning into a police state! Fantastic stuff. His closing statement opened with “I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy theorist…” which you know is always the prelude to something bizarre. He told us we’re on the road to “one world communist government.” Our constitution is going to be replaced by one like the Soviet Union’s. We’re going to have a new currency called the “Amero.” Holy crap. In spite of all that, though, the real highlight was when Burns was responding to Jones’s criticisms of the Patriot Act. He said that only one kind of people should be worried about the Patriot Act – terrorists. Right as he says terrorists he turns and points at Jones. The place erupted with laughter. The highlight of the night.

Next up was the Lindeen-Rehberg-Fellows debate. Fellows seems like a nice enough guy, but he has voice problems and the charisma of a small house-plant. Still, he gets points for mentioning PERA. Lindeen did alright. She opened with a lot of personal stuff and didn’t get a chance to really say anything of substance. She sounded passionate about immigration (part of that was probably standing closer to the microphone) and her closing statement was solid. Rehberg was his usual slick self, which drives me nuts. As far as presentation, he probably won the debate. The contrast between him and Fellows couldn’t be greater. Sadly, at the end of the debate Rehberg clearly had the most support in the room.

So, the lessons seem obvious here. Tester again showed that he’s the right man for the job. Burns makes us wonder what the hell he’s thinking. The Libertarian party will never become more popular unless they start field candidates with public speaking skills and general sanity.

A more substance filled debate review can be found by Shane at LitW.

Apparently Conrad Burns thinks you should be pissing yourself with fear over Tester’s calls to repeal the Patriot Act. What else explains this attempt to strike fear into your heart?

It’s also a nice example of confusing cause and correlation. The Patriot Act was passed and now every success in the war on terrorism is a because of it. Sorry folks, it doesn’t work like that.

Also, did you know most of the Montana Senate is soft on child molesters? According to Burns, it’s true. Granted, he’s only saying that about Tester, but that’s how the vote on that particular bill went.

In any case, on with Burns’s postive, accomplishments-focused campaign!

It never ends. The MT GOP E-brief seems to be stuck on one tactic: guilt by association. You see, arguing for Burns’s reelection is just too boring. They need to spice things up a bit. For a while they were smearing Tester for associating with Kos and company. Very scary, indeed. Then of course there’s your garden variety “OMG he’s appearing with liberals!” nonsense. Curiously, the current E-brief has a very specific “associate” in mind:

Hosted by Strategies 360, this fundraiser lets Jon grip and grin with some of Seattle’s liberal elite. It’s the type of place Jon can open his mouth and some of those liberals can open their wallets.

As the left’s new sweetheart Jon Tester might even get the chance to rub elbows with one of the Democrat’s finest Senators, the State of Washington’s Maria Cantwell. Make sure you take good notes Jon, she could probably give you a few pointers.

O…k. Why do we care about Maria Cantwell? Well, they don’t explain that. In fact, I have no idea why they devote most of the email to her. Apparently, she said recently that knowing what we know now, she wouldn’t have voted for the Iraq war. Sounds fine to me. The MT GOP doesn’t think so, I guess. It’s very strange. I don’t see any actual contradictions. For example:

Senator Cantwell Now: “If I knew then everything that I know today and the Republican leadership still brought it up for a vote, I would have voted no.” (Northwest Progressive Institute Weblog, “Sen. Cantwell Clarifies Her Position On Iraq ,” Posted August 15, 2006 )

Senator Cantwell Then: “Saddam Hussein is a global menace that we cannot simply wish away. By doing nothing the world is not only failing to enforce the terms of a cease-fire that we fought for; but it is allowing a dangerous threat to grow that deserves renewed immediacy.” (Senator Maria Cantwell, Congressional Record, October 10, 2002 )

Senator Cantwell Then: “But I have seen over the last 11 years, Saddam Hussein has consistently failed to live up to the 1991 cease-fire agreement, and his noncompliance is a dangerous failure that this body must address. This problem is not going away. If anything, it will grow increasingly more dangerous as Saddam Hussein increases his chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons stockpile.” (Senator Maria Cantwell, Congressional Record, October 10, 2002 )

Well, gee, considering that the reason we though Hussein was a threat was WMDs and he was quite lacking in those, I’d say she’s justified based on information gathered after the invasion. Seems sort of rational to change your mind in the face of that information, actually. Perhaps that explains the MT GOP’s problem.

So again, the MT GOP argument: you shouldn’t vote for Jon Tester because Maria Cantwell changed her mind. You can’t argue with that logic!

That’s my interpretation of Burns’s comments about his house painter. I don’t take them as racist as much as I see them as part of Burns’s back slappin’ good ol’ boy schtick. It strikes me as a redneck attitude, but not as racist. It’s embarrassing, coming from someone who’s supposed to represent my state.

Those are my thoughts, anyway. I have a feeling most people will see it that way, too.

You can watch George Allen call someone from the Webb campaign “macaca” here. Nice guy. His defense is that he’s a moron. Which seems rather silly. Is this something that’s just going to pop out of some normal adult’s mouth?

Perhaps Allen’s defense is strenghthed by the fact that he seems completely unaware of what he just uttered. Then again, maybe that just means it’s ingrained.

I haven’t said a word about that race, mainly because a) this is Montana, not Conneticut and b) its importance seems overblown. I’m all for Lamont winning. Lieberman isn’t a terrible Senator, but he’s not entitled to his seat, as he seems to think. I think Lamont will be better. But again, I haven’t given it a lot of thought, as Bozeman is not part of Conneticut. Lieberman, of course, will now throw a tantrum and run as an independent. He will lose, of course, and he will make it very difficult for Lamont to win. I don’t care about party loyalty, so I’m not going to say he’s betraying the Democratic (as a side note, that’s Democratic) party, but he has to know he’s helping someone he disagrees with much more than Lamont.

I said this is overblown. It is. This is hardly about centrist Democrats vs. far left Democrats. Lieberman supported and continues to support a war and a president that are unsupportable. That’s not a far left position. That’s the position of a large swath of the country and almost the entire Democratic party. Ideology has little to do with most of the opposition to the Iraq war at this point. The opposition is due to the constant mistakes, distortions of reality, and refusal to treat the issue as more than partisan politics. Left, right, top, or bottom, you can recognize that. Lieberman has failed to do so. Whether he agrees with me on other points or not, I would have problems supporting someone who fails to see something I find to be obvious.

UPDATE: Also, McKinney seems to have lost, too. Fantastic. What a whack job.