The House has just passed the Health Care Reform bill by a vote of 220-215. Democrats voted 219-39 in favor Republicans voted 176-1 against. Lots of cheering on the Democratic side. However I wouldn’t get so excited yet. Assuming for the sake of argument the same proportions held up in the Senate then the vote on cloture would be: Democrats 50-10 in favor Republicans 40-0 against The vote would fail with just 50 votes, ten short of the required 60. Indeed it would be barely enough to pass...

For those who *still* need a reason to watch Glee, check out this amazing 80’s retro.

The founder of the ultimate international nerd fest aka Comic Con has died at the age of 76. Speaking as a grade AAA nerd and someone who would seriously consider going to Comic Con, I still have to say there is something oddly fitting that the founder of the event is named Dorf.

I had planned to publish a more detailed review of the elections but I ended up spending two hours in the dental chair today getting a filling replaced. I’ve got one more filling to go plus a deep cleaning so I was pretty distracted today getting ahead on work. As a result  I’ll post my more technical analysis this weekend, for those who are geeky enough to enjoy. However in the meantime I thought I’d offer a few comments. I certainly agree that there is a large degree of history...

A note of caution, I am not an expert on Maine politics and the way the results are being tallied make it a bit harder for me to analyze things. However with 76% of the vote counted  the Yes vote is leading by a 52-48 margin which means that once again loving couples are denied basic human rights.

Not a huge shock given that CA-10 is heavily Democratic but Lt. Governor John Garamendi is headed to Washington. This means that Governor Arnold will get to nominate a successor to the Lt. Governor post but the nominee must be approved by both houses of the heavily Democratic legislature. Obviously the GOP would like a strong candidate in statewide office while the Democrats would like to avoid it. So look for some fun in coming weeks and months.

It’s time to call the race for Democrat Bill Owens. With 84% of the votes counted the tally is as follows Bill Owens (D): 57,845 or 49.2% Doug Hoffman (C): 53,603 or 45.5% That’s a margin of 4,200 votes and based on the trend we only have about 20,000 votes left. For Hoffman to win he would need to beat Owens by 20 points with the remaining voters. As one of my favorite readers, Elrod, has pointed out this is a surprising defeat given that this district has been Republican since the 1870’s...

UPDATE #5:  Looking increasingly likely that Owens will win. Almost 80% counted and he leads by 3,600 votes. For Hoffman to pull it he will need to pick up about 4,000 votes and based on current returns there are about 33,000 left to count. It looks like a big loss for the hard right in New York. UPDATE #4: With 71% in Owens still leads 49.1-45.2 or 3.9%. Getting closer to the point that Owens is called the winner. I’m guessing the Democrats will dismiss NJ and VA as meaningless and call this...

UPDATE: All the major networks are also calling it for Christie, guess they were waiting for Hudson too. Now that Hudson County has finally pulled the trigger and turned in the vote we can project Chris Christie the winner of the race for New Jersey Governor. It’s somewhat comic really that they waited at 57% for more than an hour before jumping in an instant to 97% of the vote. With 81% of the vote in the tally is as follows Christie: 951,009 or 49.38% Corzizne: 852,203 or 44.25% Daggett:...

UPDATE #6: Now up to 71% of the vote and Christie leads 49.8 to 43.9 or about 105,000 votes. Based on these figures Corzine now needs an edge of 14.41% among the remaining 29% of the vote. If you assume those voters casts the same 6.25% of their votes for the other candidates that leaves 93.75% of the vote. So Corzine would need about 54% of the tremaining vote. Obviously nothing is impossible and Hudson county remains stuck at 57% of the vote counted. Plus we do have the absentees to consider. But...

UPDATE: NY Times projects Bloomberg the winner. No decision yet in NY-23 Polls just closing. Bloomberg should win easily but NY 23rd between Owens and Hoffman could take time

UPDATE #6: CNN, Fox, AP and NBC all project the sweep for the GOP. Only remaining issue is margins in the State House of Representatives but the GOP should retain control. UPDATE #5: Initial returns show McDonnell winning the trio of Loudoun, Prince William and Fairfax counties though it’s just 10% or so of returns. But it this holds up it would be a huge switch. It’s looking like the GOP may sweep all three races (Governor, Lt. Governor and Attorney General, something they’ve...

Imagine for a moment that a segment of the Southern Baptist Church was supporting the idea of parents killing their teenage daughters for going out on dates. The public reaction would be swift and severe (and properly so). Media figures like Bill Maher would go ballistic, labeling the entire Christian Church with such behavior. And yet when this exact thing is happening within the Muslim community the reaction seems muted. In the United States today there are parents killing their children (usually...

A new study out this week says that there is a genetic variation in people which could be one of the causes of bad driving. The study was limited, involving 29 people of which 22 had the genetic quirk. The participants in the study drove 15 laps on a driving simulator then came back later and did the same test again. Those with the genetic quirk performed 20% worse on all of the tests. Obviously this is going to require some more substantial tests but scientists believe that the issue deals with...

I’m not one who buys into conspiracy theories and I’m not sure that this theory is much more than the musings of a windy Sunday afternoon. But I have been giving some thought to the news out of the election in New York’s 23rd district. The withdrawal of the Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava has led to a great deal of discussion about the war within the party and the split between moderates and conservatives. One of the more interesting aspects to this campaign was the fact that...

Former Congressional candidate Dede Scozzafava has endorsed Democrat Bill Owens over Conservative Doug Hoffman. Her statement read: “In Bill Owens, I see a sense of duty and integrity that will guide him beyond political partisanship. He will be an independent voice devoted to doing what is right for New York. Bill understands this district and its people, and when he represents us in Congress he will put our interests first. Please join me in voting for Bill Owens on Tuesday. To address the tough...

Presidential contender Abdullah Abdullah has announced he won’t participate in the upcoming runoff election, a move that insures a victory for incumbent Hamid Karzai. It is not clear at this point if he will formally withdraw or if he will simply stop campaigning. Abdullah has accused the vote counting commission of being biased in favor of Karzai and thus unable to run a fair election campaign. Most observers have indicated that Karzai would win the election whether Abdullah participated or...

It’s been a little while since we’ve tried this One of the hardest things is to determine your own political position because it is only natural to assume you are the mainstream/center and everyone else should be left or right of you. There are a number of political surveys out there, and they too have some bias, but this one is pretty good at offering evaluation, and if anything it gives us an idea of how we stand compared to each other. In this survey the higher the positive number...

News breaking that SF Mayor Gavin Newsom is dropping out of the California Governor’s race. This pretty much clears the field for former Governor and current AG Jerry Brown. Given the generally Democratic nature of the state it means we will be back in the 70’s again.

Just in the historian geek category. Today and tomorrow, the 28th and 29th, mark the 80th anniversary of the Great Crash. While things are certainly tight for a lot of us, perhaps a time for reflection on how much worse it was back then.

In the amusing if likely to be overturned category…. It seems that the company is being sued by Charles Joyce and James Voigt who claimed that the company had used information they supplied as a basis for the Aquafina bottle water product. The lawsuit was filed in April but according to Pepsi they did not get notice until September. A secretary says she set aside the letter because she was getting ready for a board meeting. As a consequence a default order was entered on September 30th for...

A leaked memo from the Democratic Whip’s office shows that they may have under 200 votes for the public option, so the issue of 60 Senate votes may be moot. See details at the Plumline.

Congress has passed and the President will sign a new hate crimes law named after Matthew Shepard. The law would broaden current laws to include attacks based on a victim’s sexual orientation, gender identity or mental or physical disability. Current laws already allow federal jurisdiction over crimes based on race, color, religion or national origin. The bill would also lift a requirement that a victim had to be attacked while engaged in a federally protected activity, like attending school,...

Note: I originally published this post about 6 months ago and hoped that perhaps as time passed it would become outdated. I don’t mean to suggest that anyone in the GOP or conservative movement leadership was going to listen to lil ol me, but that perhaps they’d change their minds after failures. With a decent chance for the GOP to lose two key races in NY and NJ next week I thought it was worth reposting, even though I wish it wasn’t. ******************************************************************************************************* Ever...

I’ve just finished listening to an absolutely fascinating audiobook, and one  that seems uniquely appropriate for listening to in the car. It’s called Horatio’s Drive and is based on a PBS program about the first man to drive a car across the country in the year 1903. The story was produced by Ken Burns and the audio version features Tom Hanks as Horatio Nelson Jackson and many other great voice talents to provide flavor. Just imagine what it was like, driving a 20 horsepower...