So the week started with Bush as the President of the USA and not much happening except getting ready for the inauguration. Then Tuesday happens, and it feels like a tornado is going through the government. In over 30 years of watching national politics, I do not remember this kind of change happening so quickly, in so many areas.

CNN is making a big deal about covering Obama’s first 100 days. But is seems that in his first 100 hours, he has already accomplished more than the Bush administration did in the last year. Just the first three days of Executive Orders shows the enormous difference between the former and present administrations.

Not everybody is happy of course. The Republicans have decided that their losses in the elections are proof they need to stand up and disagree with Obama more. I am not sure pushing back hard is a good idea at this time. It will probably be popular with their base, but not so much with the more moderate section of the population that they need to woo back. It does show a certain amount of chutzpah, which I wish some of the Democrats could learn to have. On the other hand, it may just be an inability to grasp reality.

And one very important Democrat understands exactly where the country is right now. And the President let the GOP know it during their meeting this morning.

But some progressives need to see about picking up some tin foil from their haberdasher. While the title of his article, Obama and Ted Kennedy See Plans Foiled as Caroline Withdraws? does end with a question mark, Steve Clemons writes it like he knows exactly what Obama and Ted Kennedy were planning. And what they were planning was a Machiavellian scheme to set up Caroline Kennedy for a run at the Presidency in 2016. His reliance on anonymous insiders and an inability to get simple facts straight (Senator Kirsten Gillibrand will have to run in 2010, then again in 2012 if she wins), as well as his apparent mind reading abilities, tend to count against his credibility.

And it is looking like the trial in Minnesota will not be too long. Coleman does not appear to be doing well even convincing judges appointed by Republicans that his legal arguments are correct. With luck, this might possibly be over by the end of next week. (Was that enough weasel words?)

I guess it all comes down to, right now it feels really good to be able to say President Barack Obama. I hope he continues as well as he has started.

If you are a conservative “journalist” there is no question mark at the end of that sentence. Instead it is an exclamation point. Or in l33t, !!!1!!1!.  For anyone else, that actually knows how to read and is honest about the facts, it is a question you ask with a disbelieving lilt to your voice.It is bad enough to see people complaining about the recount process in Minnesota, comparing it to the fiasco in Florida in 2000. It was nothing like that, it was a transparent recount, conducted by a non-partisan board, according to the laws of the state. And Coleman is contesting the election under those same laws.

It appears he is doing so with the backing of some high powered Republicans, possibly with the motive of keeping the Democrats from getting another vote for as long as possible. The fact that Coleman is stretching things out when he is very unlikely to win makes his claims about being concerned with his constituents not being represented very hard to believe.

That brings up the earlier mentioned “journalists” that are pushing the idea that Franken stole the election.  Media Matters reports on and debunks two of the usual suspects, Anne Coulter and Rush Limbaugh. But there are plenty of others out there, like O’Reilly (Cant imagine why he doesn't like Al.) and Dick Morris. As Joe Conason says in his Salon article, they need to put up or shut up. But they won’t follow that advice. If they did, they would have to shut up, since there is no evidence for them to put up.

No, I am not talking about the seating of the 111th session of the US Senate that convenes on January 6. Everybody knows about that, and it is much too mundane to compete with the rest of the news about Senators that is out there.  Or possible Senators anyway.

The Choice is Made? #1

First off, it looks like Caroline Kennedy will be getting the nod from New York Governor Patterson. It is still not official, with the official word from the Governor that he is still open for others. On the other hand, he has also said he will not appoint an caretaker senator until the required 2010 election. This really limits him, since if the appointee wins that election, they will have to run again in 2012 for the full term. 2 races for senate in less than 4 years will be realy hard to handle, both financially and physically.

Yes, members of the House have to run every 2 years. But they only have to run and win in their particular districts. Senators have to cover the entire state, trying to cover as much of it as possible, which takes its toll. The strain is eased somewhat in New York, since so much of the population is in New York City. But ignoring the upstate area is dangerous, at least some token attempt must be made to listen to their views and needs.

The Choice is made? #2

So the indicted Governor of Illinois made a decision about who will take Obama’s remaining term in the Senate. But nobody seems to be very happy about it. Especially the Democrats in the Senate.

Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com has been writing about it, with uneven success. His latest post dealing with the seating of Burris is much better, with links to consitutional scholars on both sides of the arguement about seating Burris. I am not a constitutional scholar, nor a lawyer in any way. But of course I have an opinion.

Blagojevich does have the authority to name someone to fill Obama’s term. He hasn’t been impeached or removed from office, and the Illinois legislature has not changed the law that gives him that power. So from my layman’s point of view, legally, Burris’ appointment seems aboveboard and he should be seated.

The big problem I see is that Blagojevich named Burris just to poke the Democratic leadership in the eye. He knows that with him under a cloud at present, any appointment he makes will be sharing that storm. The actual amounts that Burris and his firm have donated to various Blagojevich campaigns is miniscule in comparison to what Blagojevich was purportedly trying to sell the seat for. And the fact that Burris donated is not remarkable at all.

Blagojevich has shown that he does not really care for the future of the Democratic Party, the people of Illinois, or the country as a whole. He knew when he named Burris that it would create problems both in his state and in the US Senate. With the current problems facing the world, creating more when it could be avoided is something reveals either a lack of intelligence or morality. And Blagojevich is not someone that appears unintelligent.

Burris has also come across as much less honorable then he should be. He knew before he accepted the appointment that the Governor is under a cloud. And that both the President-elect and the Democrats in the Senate had asked Blagojevich to step down and not name a replacement. So Burris is going against the leadership of the party, knowingly doing something that will cause them problems. Apparently just because he finally sees a way of reaching a goal that has always been out of his reach, high power in an elected office.

I suppose the real reason I oppose seating Burris is that if he does become a Senator this way, it will be rewarding both him and Blagojevich for making choices that are, at best, of dubious morality.

Still Waiting

Meanwhile, in Minnesota, they still don’t know who will be showing up for work in the Senate. There was a proposal that whoever was in the lead at the end of counting should be seated provisionally until the court cases were finished. But it looks like the Republicans do not like that option, since Al Franken is up by 49. Which is kind of odd, since Republicans did allow Democrat Mary Landrieu to be seated in 1996 while an investigation into fraud was ongoing. I guess possible fraud is better than losing by 49 votes.

What is interesting is how Coleman’s lawyers are saying there will be a court battle after the recount is done. I guess he doesn’t feel that he should take his own advice about letting the healing process begin.

Update: And the Minnesota Supreme Court now wants more information from Franken concerning Coleman’s latest filing. But they won’t have new instructions for the Canvasing Board before the board starts counting Saturday morning. If the Court has done their job in the first place and set standards for which ballots to count, rather than telling the campaigns to agree on standards, this could have been avoided.

This is how to do it

Now in Colorado, they are doing it the right way. The governor has made a decision and it is not full of drama. Governor Bill Ritter will probably be naming Michael Bennet to fill Ken Salazar’s senate seat, assuming that Salazar is confirmed as Obama’s Secretary of the Interior. This is apparently somewhat surprising, since Bennet does not have extensive experience in legislature.

On the other hand, he managed to convince the teachers in the state to agree to merit pay, and filled his promises about improving the eduation system in Denver. That by itself makes him a good candidate for higher office. As long as he avoids making too many promises.

It looks like they might finally be slowly getting close to a decision in the Minnesota Senate race between Al Franken and Norm Coleman. (Yes, there are a lot of modifiers in there.) The canvasing board there has almost finished certifying the challenged ballots, which have put Franken in the lead for now.

This doesn’t mean that Franken will definitely win, although Nate Silver does think that the odds are looking up for that outcome. As he points out, Coleman’s challenge of the possible duplicate ballots, which are complete toss ups with regard to who they voted for, does show a certain amount of desperation on Coleman’s part. Especially since both campaigns and the Minnesota Secretary of State agreed on the method of handling them before the recount started.

But while Franked is in the lead now, by around 250 votes according to the Star-Tribune, that may not last. There are thousands of ballots that both campaigns challenged, then withdrew their challenges after the canvasing board asked them nicely. Those ballots have not been put back in the totals yet. And no one knows who will get how many of those votes.

I have to say, while I have seen many complaints about the process, especially from Republicans since Coleman’s lead has shrank and vanished, the entire process seems to be very well done.  There have been representatives from both sides present everywhere, the canvasing board has been very focused on making sure every vote gets counted that should (Not sure I agree with them on the Lizard People ballot, but they are the bosses.) and everything has been extremely transparent.

Not only can you watch the board on live streaming video, but all the ballots have been online, along with exactly how the board has decided each of them. The Star-Tribune has done a wonderful job keeping all the information available to the public. This is nothing like the fiasco in Florida in 2000.

They are still counting in Minnesota. All kinds of people, both on the web and on the news have made statements about the length of time it is taking. But everything I have seen seems to be showing that the election officials there are doing their best to be fair and unbiased. They want all the votes that should be counted, counted, no matter who they are for. That is the way things are supposed to work in elections in this country. And it is one reason I am against all electronic voting. Optical scan has some problems, but it does leave a ballot that the voter has marked, which can be physically looked at if there is a need. There is an election in Virginia’s 5th district, where most of the recount entails running the machines again to see what their memory cards say.

What happens if the number is different? How can it change if it is only an electronic record and no one has used the machine since the memory was read on election day? So the number on the DREs should be the exact same, with the only differences possible on the absentee or provisional ballots. Virginia has at least stopped buying those machines. Now they need to stop using the ones they have.

But back to Minnesota. Nate Silver, the wunderkind at FiveThirtyEight.com, has made a prediction about the election, Franken by 27 votes. I am not certain he is completely serious about that. But it does seem to be the number that his math leads to. Of course, he is a statistician, so there is a built in margin of error in his work. That just doesn’t sound as good as a post title. And probably wouldn’t get him mentioned on Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, or Huffington Post as often. Besides, what if he is right.

Right now, the Star Tribune is letting anybody that wants to get a look at what the Canvassing Board will have to go through when they start looking at things. Minnesota Senate Recount: Vote on the Franken-Coleman ballot challenges.

I didn’t get all the way through the original 599, but of the 100+ I did look at, most of them were challenged for pretty frivolous reasons. A large number were challenged for having an identifying mark, when the only mark that I could find was the presence of a write-in candidate. While a particular write-in could be used to identify a ballot (Lizard People anyone?) you can’t use that as a basis for not counting the ballot. Otherwise you nullify the entire concept of having a write-in. And these challenges were coming from both campaigns. They should both shut down that kind of thing and limit their challenges to things that actually make sense, like extra marks and unclear voter intent.

I understand the PR and political reasons for all the extra challenges, but it is really a wast of time and money, since the Canvassing Board will throw those challenges out. All it will really do is irritate them, when they should be the people you least want mad at you.