Election Day

This is it folks, the day we have been waiting for, the day we take back our country from those who have stolen it from us and trashed our liberties, all the while decreasing our stature and making us less and less safe.

Go to the polls if you have not already, and cast your vote. Remember to use the optical scan machines and not the touch-screen vote-flippers. Optical scan ballots can be hand counted in the event of a recount. We have worked and networked, we got out the vote and we phone banked. I posted like a woman obsessed. Okay, I am a woman obsessed, but still...

It is so an election in a politically active household. Newspapers and pizza boxes are taking over the joint. The dumpster is handy, but being Democrats we recycle, so we are just dealing for now.

Today is the most significant election day of my lifetime. The day we finally get to issue a stinging rebuke to this president and his failed policies and pogroms. As he hit the campaign trail, limiting his appearances to supposed friendly territory, his popularity dropped and the opponents of the candidates he campaigned for got the post-presidential appearance bump.

Here in Missouri, it is going to be a long night. If the margin of victory is less than 10,000 in the senate race between Claire McCaskill and Jim Talent there will be a recount. It is possible that we will not know the outcome for a day or two. We may see lawsuits filed by noon.

I have never lived in the Kansas 02 a single day of my life. But I have issued a lot of units in the VA hospital in Leavenworth, and we are a military family. I want what is best for that district and I fervently believe that that is Nancy Boyda. That is a race I will be watching. The members of the military who have kids vote where they are stationed because they have kids in school. The military is ready for change. This is the biggest disention in the ranks that I have seen in my entire life. What is happening is historic. Both Leavenworth and Fort Riley are in the Kansas 02. (As to that dissent among officers...I told you so...months ago). There is also a blue wave washing over Kansas that is going to lift the Boyda boat.

Dennis Moore in the Kansas 03 and Kathleen Sebelius are sailing to reelection, and Phill Kline and Paul Morrison are set to switch jobs. Paul is going to win the Attorney Generals race, and he will have to vacate his position as Johnson County Prosecutor. Phill Kline will be able to secure that gig, and he lives in Shawnee. And he will fuck up there too and that will hopefully be the end of his political career. On Wednesday we start looking for a candidate to unseat that Bush appologist Pat Roberts. He has abused his spot on the intelligence committee and it is time for him to go. Slattery, you out there? Come home. Kansas needs you, because we want Dennis Moore to stay right the hell where he is. No other Democrat can hold the 03 so securely, we are not sacrificing a senior congressman for a senate seat, put that notion out of your mind right now! In 2010, Kathleen Sebelius is going to unseat Sam Brownback. But we'll get back to that in two years. Right now, we need a Democrat for 08. Anyone have any ideas besides Slattery? Yeah me neither. Jim, back to Kansas with you.

Here in Missouri we need a new governor. Jay Nixon is the leading Democratic contender, he has won statewide elective office consistently since 1993. He will unseat Matt Blunt, should Blunt survive the coming primary challenge by Sarah Steelman. She declared her intent to challenge him during his innaugural address. And more power to her. I can tolerate a Republican who isn't insane.

We need Robin Carnahan to stay where she is, in the Secretary of State's office. We have faced to many election problems in this state to risk that position to a Republican. So who is going to be our candidate for Attorney General? No Republicans. Never again, not after that damned Ashcroft. We learned our lesson.

Let's concentrate on holding the seats that matter to Missouri. If we hold the offices of Auditor, Secretary of State, Attorney General and quite possibly governor, we are grooming our candidate to knock Bond out on down the road, if not in 2010, then in 2016. Politics is a long-range game, my friends, and victory goes to those who look anead, not behind. Politics might be a zero-sum game, but it is also never ending. There is always another election to plan for and that planning starts tomorrow.

And can we please pretty please get somebody out of the Ozarks that it ain't just a cryin' damn shame they weren't strangled in their crib? Y'all gave us that gaggle of Blunts, Rod Jetton and John Ashcroft. C'mon. Give us a break up here! We were issued a limited number of Charles Wheelers, Ike Skeltons, Emmanuel Cleavers, Susan Montees and Claire McCaskills to counter them, and Dr. Wheeler is retiring. Dr. Dean has some battle plans to help you out with party building. Let's turn those red ridges purple by 2010, okay?

Cast your vote today. Continue your GOTV efforts. This one isn't over until the polls close this evening. Which is precisely when the game-clock starts running for the next election.

The Rules

The Publicans have a lot of nerve asking us for a "plan" and I am getting sick of being asked. Personally, my plan involves a Delorean, a Flux Capacitor and a few gigawatts of power. But I had nothing to do with the creation of this giant clusterfuck.

Bill Maher has some sage advice. First off, a new rule in two parts...A) You can't call yourself a "Think Tank" if all your ideas are stupid, and B) If you are someone from one of those "Think Tanks" that dreamed up the Iraq war and predicted we would be greeted as liberators, and that we wouldn't need a lot of troops, and that Iraqi oil would pay for the war, that the WMD's would be found, that the looting wasn't problematic, that the mission was accomplished, that the insurgency was in it's last throes; that things would get better after the people voted, after the government was formed, after we got Saddam, after we got his kids, after we got Zarqawi, and that the whole bloody mess wouldn't turn into a civil war...You have to STOP making predictions!!! You know, there is a name for people who are always wrong about everything all the time...husbands.

You know it's a shame what's happened to Think Tanks. They used to produce valuable apolitical analysis, but partisanship crept into many of them and the Bush administration doesn't just come up with something as stupid as 'if we leave now they'll follow us home. No, they have someone from a Think Tank say it first. It's a way to lend respectability, the same reason a titty-bar has food.

The Think Tanks that incubated the Iraq war have lofty names, like The Heritage Foundation, and The Project for a New American Century...Whatever. they've been wrong so often I'm surprised they're not my broker. Richard Perle thought we caould win Iraq with forty thousand troops. Paul Wolfowiths predicted that in 2003 the grateful people of Baghdad would name some fine square in their great city after President Bush, and he was right when he said they would be waiving American flags...they were on fire.

William Kristol poo-pooed the fears that Sunnis and Shi'ites would be at each others throats as the stuff of pop-psychology. Right. And having your head chopped off is just a quick way to drop eleven pounds. Kristol of course is revered by much of the right because he was Dan Quayle's Chief of Staff and he was known as "Quayle's brain." Which sounded impressive until I remembered Dan Quayle didn't have a brain. And now Mr. Kristol proposed immediate military action against Iran, predicting the Iranians will thank us for it. Hey, you know what Nostradamus, why don't you sit this one out. We'll get by using the Magic 8-Ball for a while because you guys have been so wrong about so much for so long people are actually turning to the Democrats.

So we can say that Iraq was a "noble experiment" if that helps you. Our intention was good; to penetrate iraq and bring it to a glorious, euphoric climax. But it's clear now that's just not going to happen. And yet we're still pounding away, causign the whole area to become painfully enflamed. And in that situation the kindest thing you can do is just pull out.

The election is [three] days away. I'm through dicking around with you. Here are the talking points:

1. When they say the Democrats will raise taxes, you say we have to because someone spent all the money in the world cutting Paris Hilton's taxes and not killing Osama bin Laden. In just six years the national debt has doubled. You can't keep spending money you don't take in. That's not even elementary economics, thats just called don't be Michael Jackson.

2. When they say the terrorists want the Democrats to win, you say "Are you insane? George Bush has been a terrorists wet dream." He inflames radical hatred against America and then cuts and runs on offerign to protect us from it. It's like a guy throwing shit on you and then offering to sell you relief from the flies.

3. When they say "cut and run" or "defeatocrat" you say "Bush lost the war. Period." All this nonsense about the violence is getting worse over there because they are trying to influence the election; No it's getting worse because you drew up the post-war plans on the back of a cocktail napkin at Applebees. And of course Democrats want to win, but that's impossible now that you've ethnically cleansed the place by making it unlivable. Just like you did with New Orleans.

4. When they say that actual combat veterans like John Kerry are denigrating the troops, You say "You are completely full of shit." Remember when Al Gore caught all that flack for sighing and moaning during that debate? yeah. Don't do that. Just say "You're full of shit." If I was a troop the support I would want back home would come in the form of people back home pressurign Washington to get me out of this pointless nightmare. That's how I would feel supported.

So when they say Democrats are obstructionists, you say "You're welcome." Sometimes good people have to intercede to prevent dire consequences. You wouldn't like to think of me as an obstructionist, but what if Roseanne had offered to sing? So I would be happy to frame this debate as a fight between the obstructionists and the enablers.

There is your "talking point." A vote for the Republicans is a vote to enable George Bush to keep ruling as an emperor. A retarded child emperor, but an emperor. So Democrats you've got [three] days to get out there and close. And it's not about slogans this time. Although when it comes to slogans, the only one I'm prepared to accept from the opposition is "The Republican Party. We're Sorry."

We have 52 hours Dems, from the time this posts until the polls open Tuesday. Get out the vote!