A hot new Field Poll shows Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom are unpopular statewide, and lag so far behind U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein that Di-Fi would sail into the California governor's post if she ran today.

This news after Gawker, based in Manhattan and usually more focused on New York and Washington, this week meticulously took Villaraigosa apart, manicured fingernail by manicured fingernail.

Newsom's popularity plunged after he became the poster boy for Yes on 8, and now even San Francisco progressives are pissed at him.

Villaraigosa has a different problem, beyond the fact that, like Newsom, his negatives are higher than his positives in the Field Poll.

After all of Antonio's ribbon-cutting and primping for the cameras (LA Weekly's Patrick McDonald recently revealed that Antonio spends only about 11 percent of his time on actual city business), a big chunk of California voters simply are not familiar with the guy. Does this portend even more travel outside Los Angeles, even more incessant fund-raising, and even less interest in his real job?

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By Tibby Rothman

My friends, if you have relatives that, even after Barack Obama’s election, are still cynical about party politics, go to them now and apologize. I was at the California Democratic Party’s election night celebration at the Century Plaza Hotel and left wanting to puke.

Though Californians placed 1.1 million telephone calls to voters as part of Obama’s get-out-the-vote drive during the final weekend of the 2008 presidential campaign, and experts have cited the candidate’s superlative ground game and grassroots base as key components behind his victory, not one volunteer was scheduled to speak at the California Democratic Party’s official election night bash… or even to be allowed onstage.

Read on...

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By Tibby Rothman

Many Southern Californians were mystified by this news from the Wall Street Journal and NBC's Firstread blog:

The often stumbling Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, whose city budget deficit has hit a historic high and who has based his economic plan in Los Angeles almost entirely on a single industry — development, emphasizing massive housing complexes, which left L.A. bad off when the housing bubble collapsed — was chosen by President-elect Barack Obama to be on an elite, 17-member economic advice team, including Warren Buffett, that is meeting Obama in Chicago today.

Rumors flew through City Hall that the "all-about-me" Villaraigosa must have worked even more than 16 hours per day to wangle a spot, much as he did when he lobbied hard to get a seat right behind Bill Clinton at the Democratic National Convention in Denver so that each time the national networks and cable TV cameras flitted to Clinton's face, viewers also saw the grinning Mayor of Los Angeles.

Here's the list of Barack Obama economic advisors:

Read on...

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Having held back just long enough to avoid voter fury against Sacramento legislators who might have been hurt on November 4 if they backed his plans for a massive tax increase, the anti-tax Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger today proposed a stiff hike in the cost of most things Californians buy, which critics immediately assailed as "instant inflation."

His sales tax increase amounts to a roughly 20 percent hike on the current California sales tax. It is being spun as quite small, with the governor insisting it is only 1.5 cents more on each dollar spent.

In fact, it is three times more than the brand new sales tax that voters appear to have approved in Los Angeles County on Tuesday to fund transit projects.

In fact, it would be one of the biggest sales tax hikes in California history.

The San Francisco Chronicle, consistently the best paper for coverage of Arnold, has the story here and angry comments are already pouring in.

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While much of the country and the world woke up on November 5 relieved or even joyful at the previous day's election results, the day dawned bittersweet for many others here in Los Angeles and across the state. "It's one of the most exciting days because of, clearly, Barack, and one of the most disappointing days because this thing happened and that's caused a deep, deep sadness," says Cara, a 31-year-old who was marching with her partner, 26-year-old Kelly, through the streets of West Hollywood on Wednesday night. "How do you realize that 50 percent of the population voted for this?"

Photo by Gillian Shure

This, of course, was the passage of Proposition 8, the ban on gay marriage in California. Cara and Kelly were among the thousands who took to the streets of West Hollywood to protest the measure's passage. "I'm angry, confused, but hopeful," adds Kelly. "Confused and surprised. I really didn't think it would pass."

The march began in the early evening on Santa Monica Boulevard and spanned from Highland to San Vicente. Protesters carried banners and chanted "Si se puede! Yes, we can!" "What do we want? Equal rights! When do we want them? Now!"

Read on...

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My friend and guest blogger, She Wants Revenge's Justin Warfield, recently posted -- to great response -- about his great anticipation of yesterday's election (see Election '08: The Night Before Christmas). Here's his follow up to how he and his family felt when it finally became clear yesterday was truly historic.

Very Old Tears: Musings On a Lefty With a Jump Shot Taking The White House
By Justin Warfield
Wednesday, November 5, 2008

It’s been a long hard road, but we’re finally free.
Today is a new day.
A day of hope, a day of relief… a day of freedom.

A weight has been lifted, an obsession removed -- because it’s finally over.

No longer will we juggle five browser windows, BlackBerry alerts, and four hours of cable news on the DVR. No longer will we angrily debate our few republican friends on Facebook about socialism, taxes, '60s radicals and Islam.

Now we can get on with our lives and use our computers for what they were intended -- iTunes, correct sticker placement for coffee shop viewing, and sending your friends links to disgusting shock sites.

Read on...

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According to a Los Angeles County press release issued moments ago, County Registrar Dean Logan is suspending his department's issuing of marriage licenses or civil marriages for same-sex couples, after reviewing California Secretary of State Debra Bowen's canvass results of Proposition 8.

Logan's office stated that Logan will maintain his current order unless he gets a court order or is required to act otherwise by a "state regulatory agency."

Statewide Semi-Official Election Night results (source: California Secretary of State):
08 - Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry
YES: 5,358,796 52.5%
NO: 4,866,831 47.5%

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In a real squeaker, a few thousand voters put the half-cent sales tax over the 66.67 percent line, as Los Angeles County Registrar of Voters' employees toiled in the predawn hours trying to gather up and count a few wayward voting precincts.

Los Angeles County will now have the highest sales tax in California, tied with much more upscale Alameda County, now that voters appear to have approved Proposition R.

But some precincts weren't counted for hours and hours, leaving the Los Angeles County vote total incomplete until about 3 a.m. Then, suddenly, at about 3:35 a.m., a few final totals from screwed-up precincts located inside the Los Angeles city limits (what a surprise), came rolling in.

While the new sales tax apparently passed, those final votes showed the problem with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa spending so much of his time flying out of state and raising money for his mayoral bid in the spring of 2009 instead of tending to city business.

Villaraigosa's gang tax, which he never really explained in serious detail to the public, and perhaps did not really understand himself, did not get the required 66.67 percent needed for a new tax. (It was intended to be a tax on each parcel of land in the city.)

He needed only a few thousand additional Angelenos to believe in his anti-gang plan and hand him $36 per piece of land. But they didn't believe.

Here are the final Measure A (some say Proposition A) Gang Tax numbers from L.A. County officials: YES: 567,560 or 66.12 percent. NO: 290,799 or 33.88 percent.

Meanwhile, propelled by huge numbers of Latino and black voters, L.A. County shifted into the Yes on Proposition 8 column early and stayed there, helping the effort to ban gay marriage, whose proponents claimed victory at a party in Orange County (although no official victory was announced during the long night by Secretary of State Debra Bowen).

Prop. 8's success in L.A. was a big surprise for many poll-watchers, because L.A. County is liberal on social issues. But when you woo all kinds of new people into the election process who don't normally vote, you never know what — or who — you're going to end up with.

The urban coalition of "hardly ever participate" voters who turned out in record numbers for Barack Obama included many thousands of black and Latino voters who also used that opportunity to mark the "yes" box for 8.

That will be grist for debate for weeks if Prop. 8 is officially declared a winner later this morning.

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Having voted with zero hassles at my precinct in Silver Lake, I took a walk in Elysian park at dusk with a friend, a little more anxious than probably I deserved to be about the election. However, as you know with bad dreams, there are often many false wake ups before you actually do wake up and realize it's really over. I wondered if this bad dream was really over. Was the prospect of a new, hopeful morning real?

As the sun set over Los Angeles, though, filling the sky with shades of red, purple and blue and a crescent moon rose over a downtown whose lights glowed warmly, an owl crossed overhead of the path we walked on and settled comfortably in a tree and called out its hoo-hoos. Coyotes yapped playfully in some dark recess of the park. It was a perfect Los Angeles evening and it all seemed like a good portend.

And, of course, as you know now, it was.

Obama's victory is fraught with so much symbolism, a symbolism that is being dissected left, right and black and white as I write. But the racial connotations, and even the political connotations have seemed oddly anachronistic to me for awhile now, or at least since I saw him speak in Denver accepting his party's nomination. Obama transcended race and notions of left and right almost preternaturally. He can't help but be symbolic, but the genius here is that the symbolism in many ways seems, literally, only skin deep, which is as deep as it ever should have been, and why it's such a bloody, tragic disgrace that it has been more for so long. Thank god that's over and we can move on together as men and women, like we've always been and always should have been. We chose -- clearly, soberly, and overwhelmingly -- the best man. He happened to be black. That speaks volumes.

So, we have awakened from not one, but two long nightmares. That was clear during Obama's gracious, moving and eloquent victory speech which in minutes snapped us out of the false and abominable construct of our racism, but also from the psychosis that has held us in its sway for so long. Of course, the psychosis was 9/11 and his speech, to me, heralded the end of the 9/11 era, one that turned so rapidly from unity to division to a form of mass hysteria over the past seven years. Finally, though, fear lost. Hope won.

I couldn't help but think that it didn't have to be this way, we could have done so much better, should have done so much better and would have done so much better had we chosen better eight years go. We chose well this day. We chose to shed our petty identifications and taxing fears and to step bravely to the huge tasks ahead. Somewhat lost in the shuffle is the quiet vindication of Howard Dean that this election also represents. Obama's campaign used the Dean playbook of youth, technology, viral marketing, grassroots fundraising and fight in every corned to win his landslide and redraw the electoral map.

On the stage in Grant Park in Chicago, it was clear in his presence and demeanor that we chose the man best suited for the daunting tasks that lay ahead of us. Not for a single second did Obama seem smaller than the huge job ahead of him. There is much to repair and we're all going to have to work together to do the repairing and I really believe he will be able to enlist even the doubters in the job ahead.

John McCain said as much in his gracious concession speech. If he had ran as this man instead of the Rovian Frankenstein's Monster he did run as, he would have been a more formidable opponent. Too bad his graciousness was met with such little grace by those in the crowd at his rally in Phoenix. They'll get onboard. They will wake up. They'll have to, or be left behind. The future is now, folks. You can't hold it off any longer.

Driving home, the blare of celebratory horns filled the air as did chants of "No on 8." The revelry and passion reminded me that this city is not asleep. Nearly 80 percent of eligible voters are expected to have cast ballots in the County of Los Angeles. Remarkable. Nearing midnight, though, the ban on gay marriage looked like it had a good chance to pass. It will be a bittersweet night if it does pass, a reminder that despite how far we've come, we still have a way to go.

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I have a special guest blogger today. His name is Justin Warfield. You may know him as the frontman and songwriter for the great band She Wants Revenge. He's a very cool guy who has an interesting and emotional take on this election. His post is below. Also, here's a link to my piece on socialism, or what we talk about when we talk about socialism. Happy election day! Hopefully, by the end of it, we will have awakened from the psychosis that has gripped us for the past eight years,

http://www.laweekly.com/2008-10-30/news/the-red-scare-and-average-joes/

Fear Of A Mulatto Planet, or, “What am I gonna do when the election is over?”
by Justin Warfield
Tuesday, November 4th, 2008 1:33 am

With only a few hours left before the polls open on what is widely being called the election of our lifetimes, I sit here awash in a heady mix of relief, exhaustion, and the sort of buzz that can only compare to Christmas eve, and it’s strange that with the job of leader of the free world, an economy near collapse, 2 un-winnable wars, and the future of race relations in America at stake, I actually have no fear.

Of course we could always see a re-run from the guys that brought you the last two stolen elections, but I have to say, I think the odds of that happening are as unlikely as Ari Gold being killed off of Entourage (though the shark-jumping would not surprise me).

No, this time I don’t think it’s going to happen. I mean, yes, voter suppression will occur, the right will scream Acorn, and hijinx will ensue like an episode of Three’s Company, but in the end, when all is said and done, when Palin’s smirked her last smirk, when Biden’s made his last gaffe, when The Maverick™ has cracked his last Bear DNA /Paternity joke, and when every last surrogate has screamed “Rev Wright” from their rooftops like Peter Finch on 20 Red Bulls, Barack Hussein Obama will emerge as President Of The United States.

Like all of you I’ve definitely succumb to the polls, the pundits, and the projections and turned my life over to a power greater than myself during this grueling haul of a campaign, and besides the odd hour or two of paid work I’ve managed to squeeze in, I’ve remained focus on my real work - obsessively looking for a vintage Triumph motorcycle on Craigslist, changing diapers, and hating Nancy Pfotenhauer and Nicole Wallace with the kind of venom usually reserved for people that try to turn me into vampires upon signing up with Facebook.

So, geezed up on Diet Coke I’ll stay up all night with the sound turned low, so as to not wake my beautiful wife, occasionally glancing over at my 13 month old as he dreams and smiles in his sleep, as I glance up at the flat screen to dream of Mika Brzezinski… or a life without GW… or a country where a mulatto kid from the middle class can come from modest means, work hard, and achieve the American dream.

A country where another mulatto kid from the middle class, albeit 2500 miles away can work hard and achieve his American dream, only instead of fronting a rock band and being the oldest guy at the skate park, this kid might be president.

Tomorrow.

Like many other black men in America (the term African American has always felt like a hyphenated term created for ease of use at the DMV) - I not only thought that it would never be possible in my lifetime, but when I first heard about the candidacy of Obama I shrugged it off as just another chance for white America to prove how far it hasn’t come in the last 40 years, and at least we’d have Hillary in the white house and not the guy with the stiff arms who voted against Martin Luther King day.

Going back a bit, the first time I ever heard the name Barack Obama was out of my mom’s mouth. My mother, a white, Jewish woman from Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, phoned me with the fervor of a woman who had just found a new low-fat fro-yo store in the valley, told me of a young black man she had just seen speak at the DNC, and that not only was he the most amazing speaker she had ever heard, but that this guy was going to be president.

Uh huh.

Immediately I flashed back to meeting Jesse (as in, run Jesse, run!) at the Montreaux Jazz Festival back in ‘92, and how even when we were shaking hands for the photograph, I was thinking, “what a putz”, and looking for the buffet.

Cut to a few years later, and I’m sitting in yet another church basement (cause I used to like the drinky), and discussing the primaries with a friend.

“Whaddya think, man?” he says, in a voice so unique in it’s whine and timbre that everyone who knows him has their own impression. “Dude, he’s black”, I replied.

Laughing, he said, “He’s about as black as you”.

Read on...

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By Daniel Heimpel, Max Taves and Jill Stewart

Statewide Measures

Proposition 1A

$10 billion bond. High Speed Passenger Train Bond Act. Total price tag with interest: About $19 million.

Proposition 1 would give the state the right to sell $10 billion in bonds to build an 800-mile high-speed train network connecting San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles and San Diego, which, if ever completed, could fundamentally alter lifestyles in California, bringing huge metropolises closer together.

PRO: Rail advocates, many environmental groups, big construction companies and their unions say the electric-powered trains will reduce dependence on foreign oil and emissions of global-warming-causing greenhouse gases from cars. They argue that trips on the high-speed train, including a jaunt from Los Angeles to San Francisco in about two and a half hours, could remove 70 million passenger trips per year from congested highways. They say the project, supported by California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, will create 160,000 construction jobs and 450,000 permanent jobs.

CON: Proponents have no proof that 70 million car trips, or even a fraction of that, will be removed from the highways, or that Californians will buy the pricey tickets, especially in an economic downturn. Opponents note that this is a half-measure that doesn’t begin to pay for the full line, and private investors would have to be found. Then there’s the $19.2 billion price tag with interest for taxpayers. Detractors include the fiscally conservative Orange County Register, which calls it a “Fast Track to Bankruptcy” and the liberal Oakland Tribune, which dubs it the “Boondoggle Express.” Fiscal watchdogs including the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association note that Californians will have to pay $640 million a year in interest, and voters’ grandchildren will be paying off these bonds nearly a generation from now.
RAND transportation expert Martin Wachs says the uncertainties could derail the benefits if airlines vigorously compete against the bullet trains, eating into the line’s touted ridership.
— Max Taves

Proposition 2

Standards for Confining Farm Animals

This measure would require California farms to provide bigger cages or living spaces for three specific animals: egg-laying hens, calves raised for veal and pregnant pigs. In practice, it will mostly apply to egg-laying chickens because California has minimal veal- and pig-breeding industries.

PRO: The Humane Society of the United States has put $3.6 million into this measure in the hope that it will spark a national movement if approved. Backers argue that it is cruel to confine hens and other animals in cages to small for them to freely turn around or fully extend their limbs. It is also backed by numerous environmental groups who point out that the California farms that may be forced to close contribute to water pollution.

CON: The only thing opponents agree with proponents on is that this measure sets up California as a launch pad for similar laws nationwide. The American Farm Bureau Federation predicts sharp new costs for eggs, as well as some meats and farm closures, if the measure is adopted in other states. Opposition money has poured in from midwestern and southern egg farms and national egg shippers.

Proposition 3

$980 Million Bond. Children’s Hospital Bond Act. Total price tag with interest: About $2 billion.

It would provide $980 million in bonds to fund “construction, expansion, remodeling, renovation, furnishing and equipping of children’s hospitals.”

PRO: The hospitals that treat serious children’s illnesses say they don’t have the capacity to serve the needs of California’s growing pediatric needs. The bond money would go toward increasing bed space and purchasing medical equipment. While the hospitals still have unspent money leftover from a 2004 bond measure, they say they are quickly running out due to skyrocketing construction and other costs. have not built or completed many of the projects they promised. They argue that the new round of investment will go to “pediatric centers of excellence” that perform the majority of the state’s heart surgeries, organ transplants and cancer treatment.

CON: Proposition 3’s description sounds like something Californians would normally want to spend money on. A successful proposition in 2004 used a similar bond scheme to raise $750 million for children’s hospitals. Now the same groups — dominated by private, not public state-owned hospitals by an 80-to-20-percent margin — are back, asking for a nearly identical infusion of additional state bond help even though there is nearly $350 million in unspent money from the last bond measure.

Detractors, including many newspapers and citizen groups who supported the 2004 bond measure, say that while improvements to acute care facilities that handle everything from leukemia to heart defects are important, this measure is poorly timed and too narrowly focused on a few lucky hospitals that already enjoy vast private and public resources.
— Daniel Heimpel

Read on...

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BY MARC COOPER

Yo via Blackberry!

I'm at McCain rally right now Monday nite in Henderson, Nevada on outskirts of Las Vegas.

A poor turnout my friends. I got here 3 hrs ago to beat the crowds. But my daughter just arrived as program is beginning and she got in.

This venue holds about 5k and is not full.

When Palin was here a few weeks ago folks tell me there were six thousand people in line 3 hrs before.

If u want to know why Mac has lost the great American Middle just come to one of these events.

The first 10 mins has been filled with an ultra-religious convocation about how America was made for God fearing folks. Now the speaker is an extreme right-wing radio host. She's vowing a big win for McCain.

Chants of USA! USA!

The person I'm with is laughing his rear off. He's a pro sports better and knows that Obama is now something like a 1 to 7 bet to win. About as good as odds as u waking up live tomorrow.

Don't want to emphasize the obvious but we counted three black people in the audience, though we might have missed a few. There's a smattering of Latinos but let's get real. This is a white crowd.

Now a local assemblyman is asking what's most important to you? And the crowd has shouted back "freedom!"

OK I'm good with that.

Now another speaker -- State Senator Joe Heck. Known as Joe the Senator

He just said something stunning: "The good news," he said, "is that the Democrats are running out of voters."

Um, yeah. Anecdotally it seems like every Dem in NV has indeed already voted early.

Wow, now ANOTHER state senator filling the void. And another one saying so many Dems have voted early that they have run out of voters. And, oh yes, up is down.

Don't think I'm going to blog Mac's speech cuz not sure it will be worth it. I'm sort of wondering Mac is doing in a state like this anyway on election eve. Anyone know?

Congressman John Porter just took the stage and claimed there were 11k people here tonite. Unfortunately all the reporters around me agree official capacity is 4k and place is NOT full.

Next speaker is...a female US Army Captain. Didn't catch her name, sorry. I'm trying to stay awake. She's telling her story now about her tour as an Army PR officer in Bosnia (which by the way McCain opposed). She's praising Walter Reed hospital that saved her from dying from a blood clot. And she says she is now supporting McCain. Huh? Why would anyone bring up Walter Reed at a GOP rally?

But this is what losing campaigns are all about... Listless, direction-less rallies with no sharp message.

This is unreal. Three-and-a-half hours after the doors opened no sign of McCain and an endless parade of little-league speakers.

OK Dead air. No one at the podium. Filling with a White Snake song while everyone wonders WTF?

Now another song. "Only in America" according to my daughter's cool iPhone app.

Oh thank God! An Elvis song! "A Little Less Conversation."

Read on...

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BY MARC COOPER

Some quick hits from the Bistro Buffet at the Palms Hotel in Las Vegas:

-- Never before I have ever seen so many people wearing political trappings at the gaming tables. More than 95% is Obama-Biden.

-- Both Michelle Obama and John McCain are buzzing through opposite ends of town. Sarah Palin is going to be up in Reno but that's too close to Alaska for my tastes.

-- Great piece in Sunday's always awesome Las Vegas Sun. The Democratic upsurge underway here in Nevada could redraw the state's political complexion an finally loosen the stranglehold exercised by the gambling industry. That is if the "gaming interests" don't financially collapse anyway before Xmas. This was a hollow Halloween for the mega-resorts. Room occupancy and gaming revenues continue to slump like, well, we're in the middle of a recession or something.

Check out The Sun piece. Here's an excerpt:

All the political and economic power rests on the Strip and with its paid political operatives and lobbyists.

For the most part, with the exception of some labor unions and a smattering of small do-gooder groups, the rest of the state mostly gawks like spectators at the governing process — and if your kid’s school isn’t good or you’re afraid to go to the local hospital because it’s substandard, well, what are you gonna do?

Nevada has long ranked in the bottom 10 of states in voter participation, let alone civic activism.

But that appears to be changing, quickly. The Silver State’s central role in this presidential election could fundamentally reshape the ways in which Nevadans view their community and what they can do to change it, say local activists, Nevada historians and political scientists.

Here’s why: The long campaign leading to the January presidential caucus culminated with a surprising turnout of more than 100,000 Democrats, which was followed by a general election campaign that has moved thousands of Democrats to volunteer for the presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama.

The result: The state is for the first time home to thousands of energetic liberal activists well trained in sophisticated techniques of political and community organizing.

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Just admit it, you have no idea who any of those judge-hopefuls are, and you're going to go ahead and vote anyway. It's the naughty private moment in a voting booth. The legal newspaper, Metropolitan News-Enterprise, has published a list of endorsements filled with hilarious details about these judge-hopefuls that only a legal mind could dig up.

My favorites tidbits: Office No. 82 Candidate Cynthia Loo can't even get a lowly appointment as a court commissioner, perhaps because she has a problem of "crying" on the bench. Office No. 84 candidate Pat Connolly is "pugnacious." C. Edward Mack, running for Office No. 94, has repeatedly tried to make it sound like he has 18 years of experience as a lawyer. He doesn't, and he's launched a war with Metropolitan News-Enterprise for repeatedly noting that fact. The newspaper doesn't have any good dirt on Office No. 154 candidate Rocky Crabb. But remember Judge Dzintra Janavs who L.A. County voters apparently ousted because of her unusual name, selecting instead a bagel shop owner for judge? Poor Rocky Crabb.

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Category: Desperate election moves. Check out the new deal between former Police Chief Bernard Parks, now an L.A. City Councilman, and Clear Channel, whose bad neighbor approach to doing business has helped plaster L.A. with illegal billboards (Clear Channel denies this). Clear Channel forced LA Weekly into court to get very public information contained in City Hall's so-called "List" — the secret, and long-repressed, locations of 4,000 illegal billboards that are draped across L.A.

Parks is running for L.A. County Board of Supervisors, Second District. Critics say the election is being bought by Big Labor, which is spending millions to elect Parks' rival, Mark Ridley-Thomas. To counteract the riches spent on Ridley-Thomas, Parks has tried some really odd moves to get media coverage of his race. Enter Clear Channel, which is suffering from a very tattered image for plastering L.A. neighborhoods with billboard clutter. Now, together, Clear Channel and Parks are going to find the Grim Sleeper serial killer.

It has nothing to do with finding the Grim Sleeper.

Read on...

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Election '08: Battleground Report -- Obama Blitzes Nevada Nov 2, 2008
Election '08: Will Obama Beat 325? Oct 31, 2008
Nov. 4, 2008 California Voters: A Jay Leno Man-in-the-Street Test Oct 31, 2008
Election '08: Spreading Around the Manure Oct 30, 2008
Election '08: Watch Christopher Hitchens Call McCain "Borderline Senile" Oct 25, 2008
Election '08: McCain's Neglected Veterans Oct 21, 2008
Election '08 Video: Keith Olbermann on Real Americans and Dressing Up Hatred Oct 20, 2008
Election '08: Arise, Ye Socialists! Oct 20, 2008
Delgadillo, Villaraigosa and L.A'.s 2008 Anti-Gang Tax Oct 20, 2008
Election '08: Powell's Shallow Endorsement Oct 19, 2008
Election '08: McCain Wins Oct 17, 2008
Election '08: The Final Debate -- You Don't Need a Weatherman.. Oct 16, 2008
Election '08: Obama Up by 14 Points Oct 15, 2008
Election '08: Joe On Jonesy's Jukebox Jury Oct 12, 2008
Election '08: McCain's Watermelon Strategy, Plus Palin's War on Verbs Oct 10, 2008
Election '08: Biden Does Tampa Oct 8, 2008
Los Angeles Measure B's Curious Fine Print Oct 7, 2008
Election '08: The Palin Power Girls Oct 7, 2008
Election '08: The Terrorists Strike, the Markets Crumble . . . Plus, McCain's Radical Dance Oct 6, 2008
Sheeple: Mob thinking on both sides at the Palin event in Carson Oct 6, 2008
Election '08: Sealing Reagan's Tomb Oct 5, 2008
Election '08: Palin Post-Mortem and Ifill's Failure Oct 2, 2008
Election '08: Let Sarah Be Sarah, But Don't Let her Wear That Sep 30, 2008
Election '08: Seven-Out -- McCain No Longer Serious Presidential Candidate Sep 30, 2008
Election '08: Contempt Sep 27, 2008
Election '08: A Day In The Life At The End Of The World Sep 26, 2008
Election '08: McFarce Sep 26, 2008
Election '08: Postcard From The End Of The World Sep 23, 2008
Election '08: MoDo Conjures New Obama Advisor: West Wing's President Bartlet Sep 22, 2008
Election '08: The McCain in Spain Fails Mostly to Explain Sep 19, 2008
Election '08: White Privilege Sep 17, 2008
Election '08: Happy Days Are Here Again! Sep 15, 2008
Election '08: Palin By Comparison Sep 12, 2008
Election '08: Remembering Kissinger and the Original September 11th Sep 11, 2008
Election '08: Who Change What? Sep 8, 2008
Election '08: Governor Gidget -- Sorry, Sarah Palin -- Speaks . . . Once I Was Blind Sep 4, 2008
Election '08: Beyond The Palin Sep 4, 2008
Election '08: Taking Down Amy Goodman and Donna Brazile Sep 3, 2008
Election '08: A Man, Not A Movement Aug 29, 2008
Election '08: Raging Against The Scene Aug 27, 2008
Election '08: Not Quite Recreating '68 Aug 26, 2008
Election '08: Hillary Hits A Home Run Aug 26, 2008
Election '08: All Dressed Up With No Riot To Go To Aug 25, 2008
Election '08: Penetrating the Matrix Aug 25, 2008
Election '08: Antonio Makes It to Denver With K-9 Unit Aug 25, 2008
Visions of Obamaland Aug 25, 2008