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...

Just a couple of stories that came across my desk that I thought were interesting. In Northern California near the town of Fort Bragg a dead blue whale has come ashore. Sadly it appears that the noble creature was struck by a ship that was mapping the ocean floor. It does not appear that the ship was to blame, the odds of such a collision happening are pretty small and it is sadly just something that happens. The whale normally lives much further off the coast and so this kind of incident is luckily...

This stems from a discussion I was having with a friend of mine. Obviously the ideal concept is for all people to live in free and democratic societies. But we have enough trouble managing one here, where we’ve had centuries of democratic concepts both in the US and in the UK. Even there it took centuries of effort to transition from the absolute monarchy system to various forms of representative government. But some places (yes I am mostly thinking of the Middle East) have no such traditions...

I am not saying this is that big of a  deal, the script said Al Sharpton and I can easily see where when you are used to reading the words on the page you can make a mistake. We’re all human and I’ve certainly been looking at a friend and for no reason in particular called them by the wrong name. But imagine if this happened on Fox, how would the left have reacted ?

During the whole dustup over the Olympics the only thing that really caused me to scratch my head was wondering why Obama would spend 9 hours out and 9 hours back flying time to get 2 hours on the ground at the Olympic committee. Today I heard another story that made me wonder. Last night the President was in New York City for a Democratic fundraiser. (Let me make it clear here I’m not debating the whole ‘how much time should a politician spend at fundraisers versus doing the job issue). He...

As some of you may know there is a story circulating around the internet about an election in a 3rd grade class in Nashville, Tennessee. Because of the way things end up on the net, I am not going to swear to the veracity of the story itself but I am pretty sure something like this happened and it is certainly a great analogy for what is wrong with society. The story takes place in fall 2008 and involves a class where the students were becoming interested in the Presidential election. So the teacher...

I am not a huge fan of Dr. Laura but she does come on one of the radio stations I listen to and today she made a comment that prompted some thinking for me. One of her callers was asking how to resolve an issue she was having with her 17 year old son. At the time her son was born the caller was, in her own words, ‘not exactly the most responsible person’ and the father was no better. He had pretty much abandoned her and the child the moment he learned of the pregnancy. Luckily she had...

Living in California has many benefits: good weather (except the summer), nice surroundings, fun places to visit, a generally laid back lifestyle. But there are some serious negatives, the most notable of which is wondering just how long it will be before the entire system collapses. Rising debt, rising taxes, crumbling infrastructure and utterly inept politicians are just a few of the many problems we must deal with. Whenever this topic is up for discussion the speaker frequently refers to the...

The sheriff of Larimer County Colorado has just held a press conference in which he has confirmed that this was a hoax and a publicity stunt. The father did stage this, it turns out he was an actor in California before he moved to Colorado and this is part of a plot to promote a new TV show. There have been two former 911 calls to this location. The first was determined to be an accident when a child called the number, the second was a possible domestic violence case but no charges were filed. In...

Word is coming out that there will be charges filed in the balloon boy case. This would certainly suggest that it was a hoax, although it could also relate to putting the child in danger (however since he wasn’t in the balloon that would seem to be unlikely). It also seems there has been some serious side damage, a family may have lost their livelihood because rescuers rushed to the balloon and in doing so destroyed their wheat crop.