No, not wedgie issue. Pay attention.

Eric Sapp sees the potential:

And what issue might do that? Why, pr0n, of course:

I've regulated streaming video on my cell phone: I've got a phone that won't receive it.

But Sapp has a point: when the big-bucks and the Dr. Dobson segments of the GOP base are in conflict, bet on Mr. Moneybags to win out.

This came in as a Google search last night: member of congress senile or sickness.

Nice to know we have a choice.

News item:

Shorter National Republican Senatorial Committee: "If we're going to have a Democrat in this seat, we might as well have a Democrat who will caucus with us."

I'm waiting for a reaction from Joe Lieberman.

Sean Gleeson searches for a word that fits people who don't identify as either liberal or conservative, and neither "centrist" nor "moderate" will do:

"Moderate" never did impress Chris Lawrence much:

I noted at that time that I was "definitely for liberty and equality, and violently opposed to hard work."

But this doesn't make the lexicographer's task any easier. Once again, Sean Gleeson shoulders the burden:

But since some of these seem to lack quantifiability or seriousness or curb appeal, here's the term of choice: Hybrid.

Me, I think I like "goulash," but this may be because I skipped breakfast.

I grumbled back in July that Dana Orwig, Democratic candidate for House District 87, didn't have a Web site, and when she dropped by the palatial Surlywood estate, I asked her about that.

Now she does, which puts her one up on her opponent this fall. (VoteWorthen.com comes up 404 at this writing.) Issues she's supporting are here.

One political pitch I'm seeing more of these days runs something like this:

There's an unspoken assumption behind this to the effect that if you're not just like our candidate, well, you're weird, and we don't want your stinking vote anyway, you weirdo. (Well, actually, we do, but we'd prefer you didn't tell your wacky friends about it.)

Burrage is a Democrat, but this ploy can also be found in the Republicans' toolbox. I got one today from Trebor Worthen, House District 87 incumbent, with the following shibboleth: "He Shares Our Values." Some of them, maybe; some of us, maybe.

Do I want someone like me in the Legislature? Let's see: cheap so-and-so, check; principle before expediency, check; vicious, nasty demeanor, check and check again. Hmmm. When's the filing date for 2010?

Rep. Dan Boren is the lone Democrat in the state's Congressional delegation, and his voting record is not exactly typical of Democrats in Congress; after speculation at The Hill that Boren might jump to the Republican side of the aisle, the Oklahoman revealed today Boren had told them last week he had no such plans.

"There's not a chance that I would ever change parties," said Boren, though he admitted that he had registered as an Independent during a period when he was working for Corporation Commissioner Denise Bode, a Republican who sought a Congressional seat of her own this year.

I feel for the guy. I twitch at some of the things national Democrats come up with, but I have no reason to think I'd feel any more comfortable were I to throw in my lot with the GOP.

Last year I was the recipient of a flyer from the mysterious "Citizens Against Corporate Welfare," which took Rep. Trebor Worthen to task for supporting a couple of bills which they (and, for that matter, I) didn't much like.

The Citizens, whoever they may be, are now cranking out material as "Citizens for Corrupt-Free Government," which sounds a little awkward — "corrupt" works better as an adjective or a verb, I think, than as a noun — but while they may have changed their name, they haven't changed their target.

Worthen, says their new flyer, was one of 32 Republicans running for the Oklahoma House who got money from Ernest Istook's First Freedom Fund PAC; what's more, the first contribution to said PAC came from your friend and his, disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

I'm just jaded enough to wonder if this is a first: Istook bestowing funds on something actually in Oklahoma.

Elton Gallegly represents California's 24th Congressional District, and if you're a constituent of his, here's how to reach him by email:

I am, of course, gratified that he made sure you were supposed to write your e-mail message using your keyboard.

"Surely our Oklahoma Congressmen don't inflict this on us," I mused, and sure enough, they don't; at least our pack of pols assumes we can read actual forms and can fill them in without pages and pages of exposition. Lucas, Cole and Istook (3/4/5) send you through the ZIP+4 check, after which they have their own contact forms; Sullivan and Boren (1/2) take you right to their forms, although they will ask you for ZIP+4 thereupon. (The ZIP check, of course, is to make sure you really, truly live in their district.) Of course, if you have no idea who your Representative is, the generic "Write Your Representative" page to which Gallegly sends everyone is useful; if, however, you know you're in Gallegly's district — and why else would you be using an email contact form to reach him? — by the time you've completed all this you're going to wish he'd stuck with his decision to step down after this term.

(Via Doc Searls, who lives in California's 23rd District. "A pile of email instructions," he says of the Gallegly page, "that are only a little less complicated than those for, say, operating a zero-gravity toilet.")

Chris Casteel of the Oklahoman's Washington bureau (I mention this in case some of you had no idea the Oklahoman even had a Washington bureau) talked to the state's Congressional delegation about the possibility of a Democratic resurgence sufficient to regain the majority.

Dan Boren, the lone Democrat in the bunch, took a collective view:

Those who consider Boren a DINO, I suspect, will continue to do so.

John Sullivan echoed Boren's concerns about clout, but was confident the Democrats would come up just short of winning control. Tom Cole worries about seniority: the average House member, he says, has 11 years in, and with Ernest Istook departing, only Frank Lucas comes even close to that.

And Lucas admits he enjoys his chairmanship of an Agriculture subcommittee:

Meanwhile, in the Senate, Tom Coburn, Scourge of Pork, isn't worried about losing his subcommittee:

The Big Spenders are herewith put on notice.

Predictions from yours truly, as posted New Year's Day: Republicans lose 13 seats in the House, two in the Senate, but retain a (thinner) majority.

Slate presents: The George Allen Insult Generator!

And even better, Allen explains himself at the push of a button. It's like Real Life, only slightly less three-dimensional.

(Found at Wonkette.)

Press release, Wednesday: The Republican National Committee today announced that its Site Selection Committee has voted to recommend Minneapolis-St. Paul to host the 2008 Republican National Convention.

The following somehow missed the cut:

• Babylon
  
• Pleasantville
  
• Pluto
  
• New Orleans
  
• Pottersville
  
• Baghdad
  
• Talos IV
  
• Guantánamo
  
• West Hollywood
  
• Truth or Consequences
  

The Democrats are reportedly split; their top choices include Caracas, the Gaza Strip, and Noam Chomsky's back yard.

British TV chef Jamie Oliver has been on a crusade to encourage healthier eating by children. And he's being heard: last year Her Majesty's Government agreed to put up £280 million toward the improvement of school meals.

Friday night Oliver appeared on Jonathan Ross's talk show on BBC One, and Ross suggested, perhaps tongue-in-cheek, that maybe people who live in council estates ought to refrain from spawning:

The BBC reported 61 complaints about the Ross remark.

This idea does not strike me as feasible. If people in council housing need lead, there's always a paint chip or two nearby, and it wouldn't achieve the desired results anyway. And I don't think it would fly Stateside, either: while the minions of the Nanny State are generally happy to impose goofy rules, most of them would consider it beyond the pale even to suggest that public-housing tenants — or, indeed, anybody — ought to screw less. Not even Bloomberg would go that far.

(Via Fark.com.)

The Governator issued a flurry of vetoes at the end of September, including a bill which will have to be killed in lots of other places:

Muses Laura:

If he does, and if it should actually get on the ballot, I think we in the other 49 states should be allowed to vote on it. It would, after all, be consistent with Umberg's [lack of] logic.

The big story around here at the moment is that "Wild Bill" Kerr of Passionate America tracked one of Mark Foley's IM "buddies" and found him working for the Ernest Istook gubernatorial campaign here in Oklahoma City. (How big? A chap from the Oklahoman called me, hoping I had Bill's phone number. I don't.)

I guess the good thing about this is that the Foley experience didn't sour the poor lad on the sport of politics.

Update, 5 October: The Oklahoman's take.

These guys at Penn:

Now that's what we need: student inactivism.

(Via Jonah Goldberg.)

"Some businesses, things and people," says Miriam, "just seem to naturally belong to one political party or the other." A few of her examples:

Obviously none of this is graven in stone, and I expect protests on some of them — since when is mayonnaise Republican? — but there is some sense to it, perhaps.

My own thinking:

Democratic: Volvo, Panera Bread, TJ Maxx, Lifetime.

Republican: Buick, Burger King, JCPenney, ESPN.

Green: Segway, Whole Foods, Goodwill, C-SPAN.

Libertarians, of course, buy what they damn well please.

Lileks explains one way to make your campaign ad more effective:

Of course, There Is No Cabal.

As you all know, the lesser of two evils would still be lesser.

(Darth Rove snickers in the Eighth Circle.)

Last year, stewardesses stripped for a calendar to protest the increasing uncertainty of ostensibly-guaranteed pensions.

They're doing it again:

I'm not entirely sure that taking your clothes off for a calendar is exactly the way to do this — it may raise something other than "awareness," if you get my drift — but I bought last year's version, and I intend to get this year's as well. For purely political reasons, of course.

Oh, and last year they said that "one of us is a grandmother." This year it's three of them.

This editorial in The Week baffles me:

Because women, of course, would never stoop so low.

I have received the official state endorsement list from the National Rifle Association. Then again, I'm a member; you can see the same list here.

Noteworthy:

• When two candidates get the same legislative rating from the organization, they tend to endorse the incumbent: Brad Henry over Ernest Istook (governor), Cliff Branan over Pat Potts (Senate 40), Drew Edmondson over James Dunn (AG). But "tend to" doesn't mean "always"; they made no endorsement for lieutenant governor. (All these folks, including Jari Askins and Todd Hiett, got A's from NRA.) And in House 44, incumbent Bill Nations (B-plus) was preferred over challenger Gary Caissie (A).

• For some inscrutable reason, they list Mary Fallin's opponent for the 5th District as "Mike Erickson," who is running for the 5th District in Oregon.

• Only two candidates rate an actual F from the organization: Cory Spocogee (House 69) and Dana Orwig (House 87). Since both are political neophytes, I have to assume that their questionnaire responses were deemed unsatisfactory. (There are rather a lot of question marks, which presumably go to candidates who don't respond.) Still, this is inconsistent with their definition of an F: "True enemy of gun owners’ rights. A vehement anti-gun candidate who always opposes gun owners’ rights and/or actively leads anti-gun legislative efforts, or sponsors anti-gun legislation." A check of their Web sites reveals that neither of them mentions guns as an issue at all, so "actively" seems at best premature.
  

If nothing else, this little exposition explains why I'd make a truly lousy single-issue voter.

If this catches on — well, read it yourself:

(Note: Not this Philip Nolan. Via Tinkerty Tonk.)

Not gonna happen, you say? This guy thinks otherwise:

According to Berry Gordy, it was Diana Ross. (And if she runs as a Democrat against John McCain, I'll vote for her.)

Seriously, this has about as much chance of standing up as Christopher Reeve, and he's dead. (In case John Edwards is reading.)

I missed this in this morning's Oklahoman, probably because I didn't actually read it until I got home from work, about twelve hours after it arrived.

Anyway:

I think it's a safe bet that Orwig indeed had nothing to do with this; I got my first flier from the mysterious "Citizens" last year, and apparently they're selective and/or haphazard about their distribution, since I got the flier with the Abramoff story a month ago.

Then there's this:

Right on schedule. This is just about the point in 2004 when Worthen dropped a reference to an endorsement of opponent John Morgan by GayOKC.com into his flood of mailings. I suspected at the time (since I know John Morgan; he's a neighbor) that they weren't so much pro-Morgan as anti-Worthen, but there are still pockets of this district where a little gay-bashing scores political points.

(If you're looking for reasons to vote for Orwig, Kurt Hochenauer lays out the case in her favor.)

Around Spokane, and some other locations in Washington state, they've gone to balloting by mail, and, says Terry, it's just not the same:

If turnout happens to go up, they'll claim that it was so worth it.

And there's one further objection to the concept, noted by Stefan Sharkansky:

Yeah, I could vote absentee and save myself a trip to church. (Yes, children, my polling place is in a House of Worship. The ACLU presumably knows about it.) But geez, it's not like the country is asking me to do a whole heck of a lot else — other than fork over several thousand bucks in taxes every year, of course.

It doesn't look good for the Republicans, says Chad the Elder:

This, I surmise, is something of an exaggeration. For one thing, Coeur d'Alene dogcatcher isn't an elective position.

"Senator, did you or did you not burn ants with a magnifying glass on your mom's porch?"

Addendum: "And have you ever done anything which would motivate someone to recreate you as an action figure?" (Hat tip: Thad.)

Try as I may, I can't get worked up over James Webb's fictional sex scenes. George Allen's people, who apparently didn't have to try, came up with this:

Inasmuch as no one is actually talking about Webb's non-fiction, the Allen campaign apparently threw that in as part of the standard late-October kitchen-sink approach. As for the fiction, it can be dismissed simply because it's fiction. The idea that responsible people just don't think things like this is a crock: every last one of us has a Dark Side, a repository for the things that cross our minds no matter how much they may conflict with what we've been taught or with what we profess. (Good old Original Sin. Where would we be without it?)

Based on what I've read — and I can't think of any good reason to spend money on the actual books — if I'm going to fault Jim Webb for anything, it's for being an uninteresting, repetitive writer. The idea that this disqualifies him for the Senate is ludicrous: if anything, it suggests that he'd fit right in with the rest of the microcephalics. The fact that George Allen would come up with an attack this absurd, however, demonstrates that he is no less qualified. In a world where karma was both perfect and timely, both these guys would lose and we'd end up with Meryl Yourish in the Senate. Poor Virginia. The Birthplace of Presidents seems to be turning into a breeding ground for schmucks.

5th Congressional District

In years past, this was an easy choice: pick whoever wasn't Ernest Istook. This election, however, presents a dilemma: what with Congressional Republicans being generally feckless and Congressional Democrats being generally insane, the choice isn't exactly obvious. Mary Fallin's positions are closer to my own, but the GOP, bedeviled by voter revolt elsewhere, can't possibly pump enough money into this race to buy her a clue, and besides, I'm tired of this being written off as a safe-Republican seat, so I'm giving the nod to Dr. Hunter. He won't win, of course, but he's bound to do better than the sacrificial lambs the Democrats have sent up in years past, and perhaps he'll blaze a trail for whoever faces Fallin in 2008 — assuming she hasn't messed up by then, which is a lot to assume. (Yes, there's an independent in this race, one Matthew Horton Woodson; the mere fact that he's pushing the Loose Change crockumentary takes him out of consideration.)

Governor

Applying the "whoever isn't Ernest Istook" rule, supra, I find myself backing Brad Henry. I am, admittedly, not crazy about the Bradster, but he's an effective advocate for the Goldilocks principle: nothing too hot, nothing too cold. Besides, a Henry victory will free up Istook to take the position he really wants: on Washington's K Street, as a sort of Abramoff Lite — minus indictments, I presume. It's a win/win all around.

Lieutenant Governor

Jari Askins gets the nod over Todd Hiett for two reasons: (1) she's an old-school Democrat with a fair amount of accumulated smarts and (2) she's not Todd Hiett, whose Johnny-One-Note calls for tax cuts started to wear thin after we actually got some tax cuts, and who, I expect, would take credit for the sunrise if he thought he could get away with it. I still haven't come up with a good reason to support E. Z. Million, though Tom Elmore has.

Corporation Commission

Bob Anthony has been on the Commission since 1989, and were it possible to keep him there until 2089, it would be just fine with me. The Corp Comm has always been a hotbed of temptation; Bob Anthony has always been the man who resists. Michael Bates has background.

Treasurer

Scott Meacham took over when Robert Butkin retired; for the most part, he's followed Butkin's protocols, which were good ones. I like Howard Barnett, but he seems to think that the powers of the office should be enlarged — he's assailed Meacham for being a "part-time" Treasurer — and well, I'd rather that be left up to the electorate than to one fellow with ambition.

Superintendent of Public Instruction

This one I'm staying out of. I've seen quite enough of Sandy Garrett; on the other hand, Bill Crozier's prating about "bulletproof" textbooks makes him look like a complete and utter boob.

Commissioner of Labor

Last time out, I complained that Brenda Reneau always "rubbed me the wrong way," but didn't see any reason to prefer opponent Lloyd Fields. Reneau has been less of a disappointment than I expected, though, and in this slot, that might be good enough, especially since she's facing the same opponent.

Attorney General

Count me as a Drew Edmondson fan. The power structure is vaguely distrustful of him, which is always a good thing, and James Dunn hasn't made much of a case for himself.

Insurance Commissioner

Governor Henry appointed Kim Holland to succeed the ousted Carroll Fisher, and she did a pretty fair job of cleaning up the mess Fisher left behind. Of late she's been the target of some fairly nasty advertising, largely financed from out of state, which suggests to me that "pretty fair" might actually be an understatement: apparently she's ticked off some fat cats, which, to me, is another point in her favor.

State Auditor and Inspector

A rematch of 2002: Jeff McMahan and Gary Jones. McMahan won that one, and I'd just as soon he won this one too.

District Attorney

Wes Lane, I think, is following in the path of Bob Macy: he's starting to believe his own BS. For any politician, this is the beginning of the end. Better to retire him now, while he can still make something resembling a dignified exit. I'm not wild about David Prater, but he's still sane.

Senate District 40/House District 87

I have grouped these two together because they both have Republican incumbents who haven't annoyed me greatly, and because their Democratic challengers are making similar pitches. I've decided that Pat Potts' wealth of nonprofit experience is probably better left there, and will vote to keep Cliff Branan in the Senate; on the other hand, sensing that Trebor Worthen might be seeing himself as the second coming of Todd Hiett, an uncomfortable vision at best, I'm going with challenger Dana Orwig for the House.

County Assessor

Leonard Sullivan seems to have found his niche; an indifferent legislator, he's been a pretty decent assessor, and I see no reason to give him the boot.

County Commissioner, District 1

Despite the best (worst?) efforts of the other two Commissioners, Jim Roth has worked diligently to tend to the county's business without spending us into oblivion or getting embroiled in foolish side issues. With one of the two twits defeated in August, Roth's job will no doubt get easier; as far as I'm concerned, he's earned as many terms as we can give him.

I of course reserve the right to change my mind during the next nine days, but I don't really expect to have to do so.

In these last days before the election, I'm going to list all the political mailings and such that come to my door. (Phone polling and politicking will be mentioned only if they leave a message on my machine; I refuse to answer the phone for the next week.)

Today's batch:

• Cliff Branan sent out two copies (clean up your mailing list, guys) of an imitation four-page newspaper called "Conservative Capitol Report", including a spiel about education, a list of donors, a letter from Mrs Branan, and a collection of quotes.

• Leonard Sullivan's flyer today contains the interesting claim: "The only qualified person in the race!" Sullivan also takes a shot at the two County Commissioners who voted to disband the Budget Board back in 2005, one of whom is now out of office.

• The reclusive "Citizens Against Corruption" have a new anti-Trebor Worthen flyer, claiming he's declared "War on the Middle Class" and citing his votes on five bills. The most interesting might be HB 3040, which, say the Citizens, "protect[s] organizations that physically or sexually abuse children with developmental disabilities." More precisely, it would bar punitive damages in suits against 501(c)(3) organizations that work with such children. I interpret this as another shot across the trial lawyers' bow.
  

I figure there's a lot more yet to come, so watch this space in the evenings.

Two cards received today, both on behalf of Trebor Worthen, one mailed by his campaign committee (to someone who hasn't lived here in years), and one from the NRA, which has given him their endorsement. (I expected the latter, since I am a member.)

If you ask me just how it is I came to pick this particular set of candidates, and some of you might, I might just refer you to The Caustic Tart:

I haven't yet resorted to flipping a coin, but I'm not entirely ruling it out either.

Yesterday was all GOP; today the Democrats drop in.

• A card with a photo of all the statewide Democratic candidates, with the tag "Experienced Leaders You Can Trust." Brad Henry's in the middle; the tall guys at the ends are Cody Graves and Lloyd Fields.

• A letter from Dana Orwig, addressed to "Dear Neighbor," complains about Trebor Worthen's "misleading and untrue allegations," and says, "In view of the trend of Mr Worthen's mailings, I suspect his campaign has further plans to 'go negative'." (I've mentioned this tendency before.)
  

See the wire? That's what we're down to.

One oversized card today, on behalf of Jim Roth, asserting that he "has made Oklahoma County safer," a reference to road and bridge improvements in District 1.

Overall, I think I've gotten more mail from the Roth campaign than from any other this year.

In the waning days, it's a GOP blitz. Here's what showed up today:

• A Trebor Worthen trifecta: three items from the Republican State Leadership Committee, all touting Worthen's tax stances — and all citing the same bill: HB 1172, which scissored the top end of the income tax and repealed the estate tax. The RSLC's mailer, Targeted Creative Communications, Inc., has yet to figure out that there have been three owners of this house since the one to which these items were addressed.

• Another RSLC card, magazine-sized: "Oklahoma State House Republicans: They did what they said they would do." See the previous item for address concerns.

• Two cards from Cliff Branan in what appears to be somebody's handwriting. (If it's a font, it's a good one; seldom do any two iterations of the same letter look alike.) One of these is actually addressed to me.
  

Question to the readership: Should I include items which due to mail delays didn't show up until Election Day or after? Or should I knock this off after Monday evening?

It's yet another GOP blitz, with basically the same mailing issues they've had before (see prior installments), and these items fall into three general categories:

• Cliff Branan (positive): "Why We Believe Cliff Branan is a Great State Senator," with paragraphs by seemingly everybody from David Boren to the owners of Bennett's Decal and Label. Two copies received.

• Trebor Worthen (positive): A handwritten card similar to the one I got from Branan yesterday. I don't think the text was machine-generated, and I note in passing that Worthen's penmanship is worse than Branan's, though still far better than mine.

• Trebor Worthen (negative): This was the first look I've had at the "misleading and untrue allegations" Dana Orwig says Worthen has made. The most obvious problem with the list is that Worthen provides a source for only one of four alleged Orwig statements, and makes an unwarranted extrapolation from that one: one's position on medical marijuana is not an infallible indication of one's position on other proscribed drugs. (And that source, incidentally, is the 2006 Libertarian Candidate Survey, which Worthen apparently couldn't be bothered to take himself.)
  

On these mailing matters: Assuming that these addresses are obtained from voter-registration records of some sort, I'm wondering if maybe Mrs T (not her real initial), who lived here until 1997 or so, is still listed on the rolls at this address. Maybe I'll ask a staffer at the polling place on Tuesday if she's still in the book. (Better yet, maybe I'll ask Don Danz to come down and vote on her behalf.)

Addendum, 1 pm: As the block captain for the Neighborhood Association, I deliver the monthly newsletter on my block, and as I made the rounds today, I noticed a couple of flyers that had beaten me to the front doors. Here's what I found:

• A card with Dana Orwig's photo and a sticker giving the location of the polling place.

• A pair of sheets from Dave Mehlhaff, the larger of which complains that Jim Roth is getting outside-the-area contributions from the Victory Fund, a national GLBT PAC, and plays the by-now-dogeared "radical homosexual agenda" card. The Fund is indeed taking contributions for Roth; as for the "agenda," well, I attended the United States Holocaust Museum's traveling exhibit of gay and lesbian Holocaust victims, which Roth helped to bring here, and which Mehlhaff presumably would have preferred to be kept under wraps.
  

I have one concern: that people will come home, find all this stuff on their doors, and suspect they are in some way connected. They aren't. Orwig and Mehlhaff are political opposites; what's more, the Mayfair Heights Neighborhood Association has endorsed no candidates for office, and the arrival of its newsletter on this date was timed to remind residents of the monthly meeting Tuesday night, at which Ward 2 Councilman Sam Bowman (not up for reelection this year) will speak.

I've already posted my endorsements, such as they are; regular readers may have ascertained the level of enthusiasm from the context, and have certainly noticed that I didn't mention any party connections.

So here's the Shorter Version, with party designation included, and 1 through 5 to indicate the firmness of my support. (Something about which I don't care in the slightest would score zero, but then it wouldn't get an endorsement, would it?)

5th Congressional District: David Hunter (D) (3)
Governor: Brad Henry (D) (4)
Lieutenant Governor: Jari Askins (D) (4)
Corporation Commission: Bob Anthony (R) (5)
Treasurer: Scott Meacham (D) (3)
Labor Commissioner: Brenda Reneau (R) (3)
Attorney General: Drew Edmondson (D) (3)
Insurance Commissioner: Kim Holland (D) (4)
State Auditor: Jeff McMahan (D) (2)
District Attorney: David Prater (D) (2)
Senate 40: Cliff Branan (R) (4)
House 87: Dana Orwig (D) (4)
Assessor: Leonard Sullivan (R) (5)
District 1 Commisioner: Jim Roth (D) (5)

Of people not on my ballot, I like Andrew Rice (D, Senate 46), Fred Jordan (R, House 69), Jennifer Seal (D, House 85), Lance Cargill (R, House 96), John Trebilcock (R, House 98), and J. M. Branum (I, House 99).

State questions:
724: Yes (5)
725: Yes (1)
733: Yes (5)
734: Yes (4)

I suspect they'd sound like Deb:

Or, as Jim Hightower used to say, "If the gods had meant us to vote they would have given us candidates."

Update, Election Day: Jenn*fer rec*mmends th*s sh*rt.

Further update: This is probably what Deb means by holding one's nose.

These constitute last-ditch attempts, and truth be told, I wouldn't be surprised to find some of these in the last ditch in the next couple of days.

Anyway, here's what we have:

• An expanded version — with family photos, yet! — of basically the same Leonard Sullivan flyer received last week.

• A sort-of-amusing GOP flyer with a picture of a tombstone and the caption: "The Democrat Controlled State Senate. Where good bills go to die." Which may even be true, though some of the ones they cited didn't strike me as all that good, and a couple of them date all the way back to 2003, which is a long time to carry a grudge. (And, pace Dwayne, enough with the "pro-values" tag. If I ever am insane enough to run for office, I promise to run on an Anti-Values platform.)

• An actual phone call, which I did not answer and wouldn't have had I been here at the time it came in, from Sheriff John Whetsel, singing the praises of Jim Roth. It gets mentioned here because Whetsel was canny enough to make the entire spiel fit into the meager thirty seconds I allow on my machine.
  

The polls are open from 7 to 7 tomorrow. [Insert joke about "twelve-hour election" here.]

Way back in 1997, in the blessed days of gridlock (in Vent #63, in fact), I said this:

You might think from this that we may as well drop the damned veil and be partisan, and when we do, we'll find that Sean Gleeson is already there:

I'm not entirely convinced it's a "drift"; I believe it was a deliberate move in an effort to — well, God only knows what they were thinking.

And really, Mr Gleeson's stance is no different from that of the classic yellow-dog Democrat, except for the party affiliation; if you're willing to complain about him, but not about them, you might want to see about having your Consistency Meter recalibrated.

What could persuade Sean Gleeson to vote for a Democrat? It would have to be a truly exceptional Democrat indeed, and even then it's not a certainty.

I arrived at the polling place at 4:55. No lines, really — two, maybe three people deep at the table at most — and no waiting for a booth. I cast ballot #993 for the precinct, and I wouldn't be surprised to hear that the pollwatchers had side bets on when they'd hit a thousand. Elapsed time: five minutes, twenty seconds, and yes, I did both sides of the ballot. Not too shabby, if I say so myself.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the Oklahoma voting system: you mark your ballot — a substantial piece of card stock — by filling in the center of an arrow pointing to the candidate or choice provided. You then take the ballot to an optical reader, which scans both sides as you slide it in, and flashes a green light if it finds no anomalies. If something's wrong, you get a red light, they hand it back to you, and if necessary give you a new ballot. A four-digit counter ticks over once for each good ballot. When the polls close at 7:00, the reader is disconnected, and the plastic box underneath it, where all the ballots have fallen, is sent, along with the appropriate register tape, to the county election board, which in turn is responsible for getting it to the state election board. Results are posted here starting at 7 pm and updated as new boxes are received. Seldom will you hear any horror stories about Oklahoma voting: it's fast, there's an actual paper trail, and it's relatively hard to screw up. In Presidential years there are longer lines, of course, but some people only come out every four years.

Actually, it was a pretty good day to be an Oklahoma incumbent: of the statewide officeholders, only Labor Commissioner Brenda Reneau was sent packing. More interesting is the apparent 24-24 tie in the state Senate, in which case Lt. Governor-elect Jari Askins, a Democrat, will hold the balance of power. (Senator Nancy Riley, who switched to the Democrats earlier this year, might well congratulate herself on her prescience.) The GOP still holds the House, though.

All the State Questions passed, although the only one that was never in doubt was 724, which cuts off state pay to an officeholder in jail, and which passed with better than a 7-1 margin.

I've seen no recount requests yet. If there are no challenges, the State Election Board will certify the results (current totals here) next Wednesday.

All in all, I can't complain with any degree of conviction: most of the folks I voted for actually won, which is far better than my usual track record, and it looks like I can retire my Big Book of Thad Balkman Jokes.

(Oh, and my predictions? Not so close.)

Seen at the Instant Man's, and excerpted here:

I'll buy some of this, but not all of it. Clearly some voters, and not just in Blue-On-Blueland, have had it up to here with "conservative principles," and there's no point in denying it. On the other hand, it's equally clear that the GOP brought this on themselves — while they had no monopoly on either corruption or incompetence, they set the pace for both, and their complacency was utterly mind-boggling — and if it doesn't prove to be a learning experience for them, you can expect more Republicans to be turned out of office in 2008.

From 2005, Michael Bates explains Instant Runoff Voting:

This week, voters in Minneapolis chose to use IRV in municipal elections, the result of a campaign by a "grassroots coalition of political parties, social justice and environmental groups, religious institutions, and others." (List here.) Admittedly, on the red/blue continuum, Minneapolis is just this side of indigo, but I have to believe that some of the handful of conservatives in town liked the idea. (If nothing else, there's the appeal to taxpayers: it saves the cost of runoffs when one candidate fails to win a majority. Maybe Lileks will weigh in one of these days.)

It would admittedly be tricky to adopt IRV to the Oklahoma optical-scan voting system, but surely it's not impossible.

(Via Swirlspice.)

They buried Bülent Ecevit today, and after a couple of minutes, I remembered where I'd heard that name before.

Ecevit was the Prime Minister of Turkey when I arrived there for a twelve-month tour of duty in the spring of 1974. He was a staunch secularist in this mostly-Muslim nation, and was generally considered friendly toward the US.

Things began to fall apart that year. In July, Archbishop Makarios, president of Cyprus, was deposed in a coup apparently sponsored by Greece; Turkey was opposed to the new Nikos Sampson regime, and Ecevit flew to London to enlist the help of the British, who had controlled the island before a treaty of independence was signed in 1959. The British declined to get involved, but the US, perhaps fearful for the future of NATO bases in Turkey, dispatched an envoy (Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Joseph J. Sisco) to the scene. Negotiations went nowhere, and Turkey invaded Cyprus, eventually gaining control over the northeastern third of the island. The US, upset, suspended arms shipments to Turkey; the Turks responded by curtailing US activities in Turkey that weren't specifically authorized by NATO. Our own base was covered by the NATO agreement, but some restrictions fell upon us anyway: we were barred from originating our own programming from our on-post radio station, and it seemed to take much longer to get approvals for surveillance flights. Ecevit suffered substantial political fallout from the invasion, and he was replaced as Prime Minister in November by Sadi Irmak.

Bülent Ecevit eventually returned to power, and in 1978 (I was long gone) Congress lifted the arms embargo. In 1979 he resigned again; following a coup in 1980 by the military, most political parties, including Ecevit's center-left Republican People's Party, were banned, and Ecevit was briefly imprisoned. In 1987, a referendum rescinded the ban, though Ecevit, then sixty-two, would never again have the influence he had had before.

Getting a grip on Ecevit's politics required a steady hand. While he favored greater participation in Western alliances and cultures, and firmly believed in the secular Turkey founded by Atatürk, his domestic policies tended toward the semi-socialist, occasionally perplexing Americans who were looking to open up Turkish markets. Some of us who were stationed in his country in those days tended to think rather highly of him, partly because he seemed to think rather highly of us, but perhaps also because we were overwhelmed by this utterly foreign yet somehow familiar land — the Turkish language, while obviously influenced by Arabic and Persian, is written, per Atatürk's instructions, in a Western-style alphabet — and we were inclined to cut everyone some slack.

Güle güle, sir.

Swiped from Better Living Through Blogging:

Of course not. Men, after all, are expendable, and they have no lessons to teach today; the important thing today is to minimize their baleful influence, which has perpetrated such blights on the landscape as NASCAR, Promise Keepers, and, um, Western civilization.

Four years ago, I titled an item "The last, dear God, the last Trent Lott entry." Obviously I spoke too soon.

Chris Lawrence says it better than I:

Not that either party is inclined to take advice from mere voters, after all.

Ten years ago in Vent #9, I listed Republican alternatives to Bob Dole in order of increasing implausibility level:

Mussolini is out, being dead and all, the sloth presumably can't be bothered, but apparently Bob Dornan is back, reports the Union-Leader's Drew Cline:

Cline doesn't think this will quite come off:

So ... anyone heard from Pat Buchanan lately?

(Via Wonkette.)

Is there sentiment for separating the northern counties of Virginia from the rest of the state? Kevin thinks there is:

If you have a sense of déjà vu about this, dating back to, oh, 1863 or so, well, you're not alone:

Which, of course, is very likely what Kevin and friends have in mind.

Personally, I think it makes more sense for Northern Virginia to be annexed by the District of Columbia, since it presumably prefers direction from Washington to direction from Richmond.

Senator Joseph Biden (D-DE) was speaking to the Columbia (SC) Rotary Club, and he came up with this sensible observation:

And no, I don't think he plagiarized this address, since it also contained this howler:

John Ray complains about said howler:

Which may well be true, but (1) South Carolinians, having lived with the likes of Strom Thurmond, know race-baiting when they see it, and this wasn't it, and (2) the Jesse Jackson wing of the party is busy these days complaining about comedians, fercrissake.

If nothing else, this indicates that Joe Biden isn't submitting his material for vetting by the Democratic groupthink committee, which must be considered a Good Thing.

Somebody among the Democrats will face James (he's just not a Jim to me) Inhofe for that Senate seat in 2008, and so far, all we know is that it won't be Brad Henry.

The McCarville Report Web site is surveying the possibilities, and as of yesterday, the front-runners — very close together — were State Senator Jay Paul Gumm, AG Drew Edmondson, and District 1 Representative Dan Boren. Fourth was Tulsa Mayor Kathy Taylor.

Political wiseguy Dick Morris says he'll leave the country if Senator Clinton is elected President.

Maybe he can borrow Alec Baldwin's vacation house.

So far, the possibility of a Frank Keating Presidential bid hasn't drawn much attention, though Sean Gleeson seems pleased with the prospect.

A former aide to Keating, from his gubernatorial days, sent this to the National Review folks:

Keating is in South Carolina today, testing the waters.

Persons of a libertarian stripe tend to define taxation as "legalized theft," a description that hasn't exactly caught on nationwide.

When the politicians start looking for methods of theft other than taxation, though, it's time to worry:

Um, Fred? This is theft. Period. And spare me the flapdoodle about schools, health care and/or roads: your moral compass doesn't have enough direction to lead your ass out of a paper bag.

(Via Hit & Run.)

Has the Secretary of State done enough? Perhaps not:

Addendum: For the curious, where this song came from.

(Via Princess Sparkle Pony.)

OK Blue Notes is polling state Democrats on their Presidential preference for 2008. At this writing, Wesley Clark (!) has the lead; John Edwards and Barack Obama follow; the rest (including my own current choice, which is subject to change) are way back. Unlike most of the online polls I've seen, this one can apparently take write-ins.

After yet another CNN blunder with a text overlay (though it pales by comparison to this one), Wonkette has a suggestion for Senator Obama:

Besides, you know Hillary and Rudy will, and Mitt probably won't.

Biting the hand that feeds you, I've always believed, is one of the four basic food groups. Right Wing News proprietor John Hawkins enjoys a snack with The 20 Most Annoying People on the Right.

Oh, George W. Bush is on the list:

Also mentioned: Joseph Farah of WorldNetDaily; ex-House Speaker Dennis Hastert; and former Representative Katherine Harris, who ran "the worst campaign in America," which is going some considering the prodigious badness of George Allen's.

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) has introduced something she calls the "Football Fairness Act of 2007", S. 249, which would grant professional football a limited exemption to the antitrust laws: just enough of one to permit NFL owners to oppose the move of one of their teams, such as the San Francisco 49ers, who by sheerest coincidence are seeking a new stadium in Santa Clara.

This, of course, assumes that NFL owners, thus empowered, would vote to block any movement by the 49ers, an assumption which I think is unwarranted. This take by SFist seems most reasonable:

In other words, Feinstein is basically, as my father used to say, "blowing off head steam."

I'm waiting to see if anyone from Washington state introduces a similar bill to insure "fairness" for basketball teams.

Update, 3:30 pm: Brian J. Noggle sees down this slippery slope.

Uzi Amit-Kohn writes to Mark Steyn to ease one of the columnist's concerns:

Steyn responds:

What I'm waiting for, I guess, is a sub rosa video (which inevitably ends up on YouTube) in which the Speaker, thinking herself off-mike, complains that some Representative or other is acting like an effing baby. She will catch hell for it, of course, but she will almost certainly have been correct in her judgment.

Alan Sullivan looks in the ring and counts the hats:

Wait a minute. Sam Brownback is white? How are the Democrats supposed to complain about his putative hatred of brown people when his very name exudes brownness?

And they're not all niche candidates, but they have niches to fit:

This is right up there with my semi-classic description of Joe Lieberman as "a common scold, occasionally rising to the level of uncommon scold." And I actually voted for the guy, too. Perhaps this suggests something for 2008.

A thought from Kevin D. at Dean's World:

I don't think I've ever made an election choice based on this criterion, but on the off-chance that there might be some guys who do, I think I'll start talking up Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

Greg Gutfeld explains the Hollywood left:

There are, I should point out, anarchists who might almost qualify under the contemporary definition of "conservative": they're generally somewhere around the far edge of libertarianism. And I am not persuaded that every single person on the left is either (1) faking it or (2) covered by two coats of Sherwin-Williams Insincerity Enamel (Pat. Pending); I've met enough counterexamples over the years. Then again, I have never felt the overweening need to present myself as a Kind and Caring Person, and I have this weird idea that results are more important than process — cf. the ostensible War on Poverty, which costs at least as much as we spend perforating insurgents and has gone on for quite a bit longer without even the faintest suggestion of success. Or, for that matter, of an exit strategy.

Of course, I have no sense of entitlement:

Not that many of them are prepared to explain Y.

(Via Cold Fury.)

The Department of Homeland Security isn't the only source of bad government ideas, but they come up with some doozies, and one of the more egregious examples is the "Real ID" card, which, they insist, isn't really a national ID card. Oh, it's a card, it contains ID, and it's national, but somehow it's still not really a national ID card.

And it may not even be national, if Maine gets its way:

One could argue, I suppose, that the Feds already have pretty much all this data, but I fail to see the advantage of making it available in a single handy package — especially if, as rumored, they're going to outsource the database work.

Columnist Ron Hart considers a factor I hadn't thought of:

It's not quite so, you should pardon the expression, cut and dried. (And Nixon might have been hoisting a few in the Oval Office after all.) Still, I drank enough in my younger days to make me ever-so-slightly suspicious of teetotalers in positions of power, despite the fact that I hardly ever touch the stuff myself anymore. So if Hillary comes to town, consider this an offer to buy her a beer.

(Via Hit & Run.)

Is Bratislava positioning itself to become Berkeley East? Get a whiff of this:

"Whaddya mean "former"!?" asks Lemuel.

Petra Orogvanyiova puts this in perspective:

Insurance companies are hardly benevolent; then again, neither are politicians. In the best of all possible worlds, neither would be allowed anywhere near anyone's health care.

If you were to judge strictly by MySpace friend counts, the 2008 Presidential contenders would be Barack Obama and Ron Paul.

And Paul, despite leading all the GOP contenders, would come in fifth overall. This can be explained in one of two ways:

Wonkette describes the environment this way:

Surely the GOP ought to be able to get a few votes out of this bunch: they can't all be Democrats.

Professor Bainbridge has an idea:

It is indeed true that damned few Congressional seats are "truly competitive," but I suspect this is a case where the solution is at least as unpalatable as the problem to be solved: gerrymandering is gerrymandering, whether it's done for purely partisan purpose or some ostensibly "nonpartisan" purpose.

(Aside: Is anyone truly nonpartisan? Or, more precisely, can anyone be nonpartisan without being wholly apolitical?)

James Joyner raises an objection of his own:

Which, if nothing else, would have the advantage of eliminating redistricting issues altogether.

A perhaps-unexpected factor in the Presidential election, a mere twenty months away: HDTV. Jane Galt's thinking:

Incidentally, all analog TV is supposed to end in this country by 17 February 2009, a month after the inaugural address. I question the timing.

The children get an unexpected lesson in the natural order of things: