Kyrsten Sinema is projected to win her Arizona Congressional race. This makes her the first openly bisexual member of Congress. I predict that the religious right will have oodles of 'fun' with her last name.

I'm just curious to know whether Rachel will be doing the show tonight or if we should expect a guest host. Depends on whether I DVR HER or something else. :)

"...The college-age daughters of many of my friends voted for Obama because they were completely turned off by Neanderthal comments like the suggestion of 'legitimate rape.'"..."

But the comments were made by Neanderthals which are dominating the republican party. It's not just the comments...it's the people, stupid. Ignorant extremists have taken control of your party...so stupid comments will always follow.

I love Karen Hughes, but I can think of a more important body for her to Bobbitize! I am a little tired of these people standing up for equality, after the election is over........

So CIA Director Petraeus, with the highest security clearance, responsible for gathering intelligence by sophisticated means including signals intercept, and keeping the nation's secrets, gets busted because he put sensitive and self-incriminating info in email messages.

Even if we don't care what he does with his private life, we should care about how little he understands about secret information and other basic principles of his job.

And former Bush adviser Karen Hughes reflects on her party's missteps:

"The college-age daughters of many of my friends voted for Obama because they were completely turned off by Neanderthal comments like the suggestion of 'legitimate rape.'"

Um, Karen, Ditch the TeaVangelicals. That'd be a start.

It's a shame that on veterans weekend the Gen. Petraeus story gets far more coverage than Veteran’s stories. It's understandable that this is a scandal and an important one that deserves coverage particularly because it involves the head of the CIA and a well-known general. However, there is no reason, on this weekend in particular, it should get more coverage than Veterans. They are both timely, but quite frankly in regards to the country as a whole, the lives and issues of our Veterans is a far more relevant story. Even if most news outlets decide that the Gen. Petraeus story deserves to be first in the lineup there is no reason they can't give equal time to Veterans in the very next story. Unfortunately, it's especially frustrating for everyone in the military to watch all of the coverage regarding Gen. Petraeus’s dishonor on a weekend when our central focus should be entirely on honoring the men and women who serve us every day. Like I said, this is a story that definitely deserves coverage but it should be balanced with equal interest in reporting on the lives of those who serve us and how we can better serve them.

http://disappearingromney.com/

This would be an interesting addition.

if no one has seen this its interesting.

http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/petraeus-rove-and-paula-broadwell-i-smell-r

the dots seem to disappear only to reappear for connecting purposes.

RE: Luntz on pollsters: He said, "... This is a bad day for establishment pollsters and it's something that they should be held accountable for." Uhmmm... No! It was a bad day for wacky, right-wing-nut pollsters. Establishment pollsters got it right, thank you very much.

I hope Republicans like Karen Hughes keep believing that all they have to do is adjust their message and tone, because the only way to actually reach a center left country, is by making an actual left turn. The old adage of hate the sin, not the sinner, will change nothing, no matter how compassionate you try and make it sound.

It doesn't matter how many ways you frame it or say it, if you're not giving women the freedom to make their own health care decisions, you're not getting more support from them or the men who support them. No matter how many times you put Marco Rubio out there, if Republicans don't move their immigration policies to the left, they won't move any Latino support their way. Republicans who continue to insist the government should control who we love, will continue to find no love. Republicans are still broadly speaking about how the President's reelection shows this country is made up of people who want handouts. Even if you end this blatantly obvious disrespectful distortion of reality, Republicans will continue to lose support until they embrace the fact that all of us need help at some point and the more help there is, the stronger all of us are.

If you don't actually move away from rejected right wing policies, no matter how you say it, if you're only saying it, you won't find anyone listening.

Veterans in Oregon can tap into a the Returning Veterans Project http://www.returningveterans.org/. This is remarkable program where many, many volunteers provide FREE services to returning vets. Includes mental health professionals, acupuncturists, naturopaths, chiropractors, massage therapists who donate their time to veterans and their families in Oregon and southwest Washington.

Every community should have something similar.

what's up with these "job creators" saying they're going to have to cut jobs because of obamacare? do they really have any financial basis for these claims or are they just greedy sore losers?

Who would fill Senator Kerry's seat if he were to be appointed Secretary of Defense (or State)? See http://www.tomconroy.org/

Both Cenkc Uygur and Daily Kos had stories today about how Obama and Boehner struck a deal in 2011 to get a budget. It is supposedly "bad, really bad" for the American people. I'm concerned Obama won't play hardball with them even though he got a mandate from voters. Anything you can suggest or say to calm me down?

It's good to see we have the results from Florida since the election was last week. I could understand if it was a re-count but a first count? People waiting for hours? Rick Scott is an incompetent governor in administering elections. First the purge of voters which had legal voters due to be purged not even mentioning the fact the state had already missed its deadline to conduct such an activity now this?

But in fact I'll take some of that back Scott isn't incompetent, no this was the plan. The plan was to have people wait for hours so they would give up and thus shrink the electorate which has a positive effect for the GOP. The same party Scott is from, what a coincidence. The only hitch in the plan was that people stayed in line. They gotta get rid of that guy......

I think your assessment of why the Director General of the BBC resigned is somewhat over simplified. His resignation followed several errors that began with the suppression of a story revealing the sex-abuse scandal and then continued to implied accusation of a former conservative MP, in the wake of which, he resigned.

I worry that the statement on this blog doesn't accurately portray the most recent and most accurate circumstances of his departure.

Aside from that much love to the whole team, I hope you and your fellow citizens are safe and recovering after Sandy.

Oh, and your election coverage was superb!

I understand that 4 people died in Benghazi and that General Petraeus was the leader of the CIA...but...anyone working in the Middle East takes a chance, thousands are dying in nearly every country in the Middle East. Also Petraeus was caught with his pants down, 'nuff said.

My point is I don't see hearings being called to help people find jobs, or get their homes from foreclosure, or helping veterans find employment or helping people up and down the Eastern seaboard to rebuild homes destroyed by the storm. The Benghazi and Petraeus affairs are being looked into by the appropriate arms of government but NO ONE is looking into the poverty so many people have slipped into, no one seems to worry that our schools need books and computers not inane tests and teacher bashing, that our weather will continue to produce super-storms and droughts without major restraints on our part.

This country sees a new diversion every day to keep us from confronting the important problems we face. Until we grow a pair and confront these problems head on...and FORCE our leaders to confront these problems we'll just keep on looking for and finding shiny new scandals, masquerading as news, we can spend months wasting our time on.

PROOF: GOP Party Bosses Rigging Elections For Romney

2012/10/27 ….. By Nathaniel Downes

Internet has been abuzz since British website UK Progressive released a report on how a retired NSA Analyst Michael Duniho had gone over Arizona GOP Primary Results from earlier this year & discovered widespread GOP election fraud through what can be called an Electronic Fingerprint. He found that when you break down primary results in to their component precincts, & then compare % of each candidate & how much they gained per precinct, a pattern appeared:

Graph: Retired NSA Analyst Michael Duniho’s analysis, as reported by Denis G. Campbell & Charley James in UK Progressive

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/10/27/gop-rigging-elections-for-romney/

Larger district, larger Mitt Romney’s %, in a smooth line.

This is statistically improbable to occur even in One Election. What he discovered is that this is not a One Time Fluke at all. Instead, he found Tell-Tale Signature of Electronic Manipulation.

He took this data, & compared it to other Arizona elections. He found same signature, signaling a shifting of votes away from Multiple Candidates & towards One Particular Candidate, a Republican Candidate, or in this case, Republican leadership’s preferred candidate. Using this model, & comparing it, you find this same pattern happening in other elections. In this paper from Francois Choquette & James Johnson, they find same patterns in other races, such as Special Election to replace former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords:

Check article & Graphs on website:

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/10/27/gop-rigging-elections-for-romney/

Nov 8 2012

The Complete Guide Of What's To Blame For Our Debt Problem.
Brought To You By Math
Alvin Melathe

You've no doubt seen your fair share of apocalyptic hand-wringing about the U.S. national debt.
What you probably haven’t heard is an actual explanation of how we got here that assigns blame based on math and not the usual partisan verbal diarrhea.
{{gotta watch this video!!}}}
http://www.upworthy.com/the-complete-guide-of-what-to-blame-for-our-debt-problem-brought-to-you-by-math?g=2

Concerning voter fraud, voter suppression, and long lines at the polls....

Here in Oregon we vote by mail. Every registered voter is sent a ballot two weeks before election day, and we can either mail it back or drop it off at one of several drop boxes - the ballot just has to arrive by election day.

No lines at the polls, for there are no polls, and all ballots are sent back in an envelope that is signed by the voter. If the signature does not match the voter's registration papers the voter is called into the clerk's office to verify the ballot. Once verified, the ballots are removed from the envelopes and the envelopes are discarded. The anonymous ballots are then tabulated.

Sure, there is a chance a few votes may be bought, for these are absentee ballots and that risk is always present with absentee ballots. But how many people cannot take 5-8 hours off to vote on a Tuesday? Is it right to prevent tens of thousands from voting to crack down on the potential for a few dozen bought votes?

Oregon has clean elections and voter turnout well above the national average -- why are the rest of you still standing in lines on election day?

people aren't burying the lead a bit when they ignore that the mistress made 'wild claims' that 9/11 benghazi attack was an effort to free libyan detainees being held by the CIA that would directly ignore a executive order?

that she had in her possession classified information, which was found not to be sourced from the petraeus? I would like to know that we don't have some kind of massive security leak that isn't petraeus though.

and it's comforting that it doesn't incriminate petraeus, but i'm sorta uncomfortable having any classified information in the possession of a crazy person, which her being some kind of crazy jealous mistress seems to indicate.

also, I understand this getting passed up to the FBI big desk... something to do with coercion and spies. apparently, when you hold a lot of power, you don't get as much leeway in terms of personal indiscretion or privacy, and i'm fine with that, it somehow reminds me of caesar's spouse... especially when you can say "director" and "blackmail" in the same phrase.

Does Karen Hughes actually mean that they should stop talking about abortion? Because that's what leads to talking about making rape victims have their rapists babies.

I recently read an observation from someone who sounds "inside" regarding Obama's second term, potential goals, and the missing solution to the Mid East Conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Here is an excerpt of that piece:

"Obama is the first U.S. president to declare the settlements illegal and even he refused to back a UN resolution condemning the settlements that essentially mirrored his own policy toward the settlements. Yes, a resolution to the conflict is a national security interest of the U.S. and the world. However, "reality" appears much different to the Obama administration today than it did at the start of Obama's presidency.

With all the changes in the Middle East (Arab Spring, Iran's nuclear progress, etc) and Asia (China's growing assertiveness, etc), not to mention Obama's personal preference to tackle domestic issues rather than foreign policy, Israel-Palestine is probably not nearly as high on Obama's priority list as it was at the start of his presidency.

As much as I would like to believe Obama will invest the great energy needed to push for a resolution of the conflict, unless he sees a true opening I don't think he will. A true opening might be along the lines of a centrist or left-leaning coalition being formed in Israel after the elections and/or the neutralization of the Iranian threat (whether via negotiation or militarily). Both of those scenarios seem unlikely."

To that sorry "kick-the-can-down-the-road" suggestion, I would like to reply:

It's a damn good thing that FDR didn't wait for Nazi Germany to elect a kinder, gentler, more-progressive government before acting. He knew time was of the essence, ethnic cleansing and genocide were on the table, and waiting would be a death sentence for thousands, if not hunderds of thousands of people.

Likewise, if Obama waits for Israel to elect a kinder, gentler, more-progressive government, he may KILL the very last opportunity for a two state solution. We cannot allow him to do that.

The election is out of the way. Nothing worth doing can be attained without risk of failure. The true test of a leader is that he TRIES, TRIES, and TRIES again, -not that he aims low and attains nothing with success. Seriously, what is it going to take to make Obama move on this? Like today?

You left out information. Israel fired once at the Syrians only after 3 times that mortars landed in Israel. They also did not aim at the Syrian soldiers because it was meat to send a message and apparently message recieved. Also, if discussing the middle east how do yu leave out that last count was 120 rockets fired from Gaza on Israeli civilians in southern Israel?!