Friday Funday: Alternatives And Miracles

While we've written, drawn, and discussed positive news events over the last few months, we're willing to admit an ugly truth to you today. Like most people involved in the media - especially those of us in the political media - the last few months have been some of the most brutal, unceasing periods of constant information juggling we've experienced in many years. Because of this, we're aware that some of our recent Friday editions have seemed a bit more serious, and a bit less playful.

It's an easy habit to fall into. You look at the world and see all the horrible things going on, and you quickly find yourself becoming a real-life embodiment of Ebenezer Scrooge.

Thankfully, our Editor-in-Chief, Paul Fell has a generally positive outlook, and he's not usually one to mope about. So when he asked us for today's edition to consider the alternative of how things would be if President Obama hadn't been re-elected, we found ourselves thinking about things in a very different way.

For one thing, it reminded us that within less than two years, we won't have to worry about not having health insurance in America any more. That reminded us of a friend of one of our staffers, a radio DJ named Sparky, who recently beat bone marrow cancer, and returned to work at his radio station, 104.1 The Blaze, in our hometown of Lincoln, Nebraska.

That reminded us of The Blaze's annual event to help children who might not be as lucky, the annual Kampout For Kids in Lincoln - which is today. If you're looking to help, you can get the details on the event here, or feel free to donate here.

Thinking about helping needy kids led us to talk about a story we saw in Slate, about a friend of a friend, and her Down Syndrome child, Eurydice - who it turns out has been far more of a blessing then her mother ever expected.

We're well aware there is plenty to focus upon, both in the United States and around the world, where things we've thought were turning positive have twisted and gone in a bad direction once again.

For example, the entire internet went dark in Syria yesterday, including telephone communications - a very bad event in that war-torn nation. The nation of Burma, where President Obama just visited to help praise that nation's positive moves toward democracy had riot police beat up monks and villagers who were peacefully protesting on Thursday. Egypt's Constitution did pass out of its Assembly yesterday - except with newly inserted language that could push its recent secular history in a more theocratic direction. Of course, the debate over the 'fiscal cliff' continues to be more heated all the time.

For every dark story we saw though, we began to notice a corresponding bright spot, after Paul's request to see the alternatives.

For example, President Obama and Mitt Romney had lunch on Thursday, and from all reports it was a surprisingly pleasant meeting. After years of wrangling, the U.N. General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to recognize the state of Palestine and move it one step closer to full membership - a position that will likely force both Palestinians and Israelis to deal with each other more as equals. It may even lead to the 'two-state solution' that so many have talked about for years. There was even progress on U.S. troops leaving Afghanistan more rapidly, after Senator Jeff Merkley's amendment calling for early withdrawal passed with strong bipartisan support, in a 62-33 vote.

Closer to home, the Husker volleyball team swept its way to the second round of the NCAA tourney, and the Husker football team plays for the Big 10 Championship tomorrow.

The world still isn't perfect - and we don't expect it to be.

We've just considered the alternatives, as Paul suggested, and realized that everything isn't as serious or dark or as bad as it could be.

Call it the 'Ghost of Christmas Future' if you'd like.

We're calling it Friday.

Don't Stick A Fork In It – Yet

As we approach the holidays here in the United States, it's usually a difficult time for those of us in the political media. Political stories are often either ginned up hype - like the continued bogus and pathetic attacks on Ambassador Susan Rice - or inevitable procedural stories, like the "fiscal crisis/cliff" story.

For the record, our sources all say the same thing about the pending tax and budget deal. Either Congressional Republicans will wise up before the holidays - or their hand will be forced just after New Year, when the 113th Congress is sworn in. Either way, even the most committed conservatives are now admitting that taxes on rich Americans will have to go up, because that's really what Americans want.

The lack of substantive political news in 'The States' is one reason we've got our eyes trained on what's going on in Egypt. The other reason is that we simply don't trust Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi entirely, especially after his decrees last week. We've seen it happen far too often in history, in other nations around the world. People give up their lives fighting to reset their nation's political table for democracy, only to have the first person they elect steal democracy out from under the noses of the people.

If you only pay partial attention to U.S media coverage of Egypt, we can understand how you might get the wrong idea about what's happening there right now. You might think their relatively new President, Mohammed Morsi, is babbling incoherently about the 'Planet of the Apes' movies, that there's a 'second revolution' already underway, or that the Egyptian protests are turning into a cyberwar.

Frankly, if all of those things were true, we could understand some of the attitudes we've heard from our fellow Americans, that we should just "stick a fork" in Egypt's current government, that its days are numbered.

Thankfully, we have contacts in other parts of the world not subject to the U.S. media hype machine, who have a much better view of the situation.

To start with, what the Egyptian people are doing right now is something Americans went through over two hundred years ago - "learning to be free" as President Morsi told Bobby Ghosh in an interview on Wednesday.

While Egypt is still a key nation in stabilizing the Middle Eastern region, it's a nation that does not even have a Constitution right now. The assembly writing Egypt's constitution wrapped up its final draft on Wednesday, and will vote on their constitution today.

Yes, protests have erupted throughout Egypt, and the judges in Egypt's court system have even gone on an unprecedented strike, based on actions President Morsi recently took to temporarily expand the power of the Egyptian presidency.

Still, for all the apparent turmoil, many in the Middle East still see Egypt as a stable place. International investment is still being made in Egypt. It's still generally considered a safe country too, where refugees from war-torn nations like Syria continue fleeing for safety.

We agree that there is reason to be watchful and wary of what's going on in Egypt - and we will be watching carefully today as President Morsi addresses his nation. Hopefully, he'll present a new Egyptian Constitution to his people that may have just been ratified by the Assembly that nullifies any questions about his intensions.

As much as we might fear a power grab by Mr. Morsi, the Egyptian people don't seem to be completely ready to stick a fork in President Morsi or their fledgling democracy.

Yet.

Fairy Tales & Hot Air

As we've noted often over the years, if someone has a good tale to tell, we'll be some of the first people to pull up a chair and perk up our ears. We've also mentioned many times how we'd like to see more real compromise in our government, especially when it comes to the idea of taxes and budgets.

There's an interesting story working its way through the national media right now, that encompasses both of those things.

In case you missed the tale, Grover Norquist, the anti-tax lobbyist who has held a growing number of Republican legislators hostage over the last few years, is supposedly being laughed into irrelevance by Republicans eager to strike a tax and budget deal with Democrats before the end of the year. Norquist continues to blow hot air at the media about his own importance, while prominent Republicans keep saying they'll finally stand up to big, bad Grover.

The problem with this tale is that its key points are mostly hot air - and it almost completely misses the most important point of the 2012 elections.

The fact is, other than a few prominent Republicans making loud noises in front of journalists, few GOP Congressmembers appear to actually be willing make any serious compromises in the tax and budget discussions that have been quietly going on since the election.

There's no doubt - there has been a massive show put on by Republicans that they are done bowing and genuflecting to every whim of the unelected lobbyist Norquist. Many pundits and political sources have been cheered to hear Republicans publicly admit what The Daily Beast's Michael Tomasky put so clearly yesterday, that "The party that lost the election — lost the presidency, lost Senate seats, and yes, held on to the House, but lost seats there, too — doesn’t get to dictate terms" of any tax and budget deal.

As Tomasky also notes, it's only been a fairy tale though. Sure - ANY appearance of compromise by Republicans is a welcome change from the GOP's usual story of "My way or the highway." That's the problem - the extremism of those like Norquist has made even the fiction of compromise seem like a fairy tale come to life.

The fact is, as both House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader McConnell have made clear, the only kind of compromise this group of Congressional Republicans is willing to accept is the same old non-compromise - where everyone else is simply supposed to do what they say.

This tale may still have a happy ending, though.

For one thing, both Boehner and McConnell may be significantly more willing to change their tunes after the first of the year, when the newly elected Congressmembers are sworn in, and Republicans are at an even larger disadvantage.

The other point - the one most of our colleagues seem to have missed - is that Grover Norquist's days as the big bad anti-tax wolf may be over anyway.

If there's one thing the surviving Tea Party Republicans have made clear - especially off the record to some of our contacts in DC - is that no one is going to tell them what they can and cannot do. They may hate taxes - but no one is going to force them to do anything they don't choose to do themselves. Not their own political party's leadership, not their political donors, and surely not some unelected lobbyist with the name of a Muppet.

Though we're certainly glad to see a blowhard like Mr. Norquist is becoming irrelevant, that doesn't mean compromise is automatically coming back to Washington, DC.

If you believe it is, we've got a few more fairy tales we'd like to sell you.

Spoiling The Grinch's Christmas

As we noted on Monday, there are a whole lot of topics that deserve more attention than the non-scandal of Benghazi.

From the dishonesty some in Congress keep displaying about the 'fiscal cliff', to the Republican Party's civil war - including the battle for continued relevance by Grover Norquist -  to the continued attacks on and implementation of Obamacare, to the crafty and questionable decisions being made by the Supreme Court, nearly every direction we turned seemed to be haunted by negativity.

So, we did what many Americans were doing yesterday, and took a break to see what holiday deals were online and what holiday stories we might find. In retrospect, that may have been an even worse idea.

From stampedes by stupid 'Black Friday' shoppers, to shootings over parking spaces, to worries of holiday debt, our staff members felt like the Grinch himself had come to visit our computer screens - especially when articles like "5 tips to steer clear of debt in holiday shopping" or "Debt-free for the holidays: 6 steps to less stress" kept appearing.

The solution, of course, was to step back from our attempt to help a friend find Bert & Ernie dolls for a little tyke, and remember some key economic points about the holiday season.

As consumer credit giant Equifax pointed out early this month, total U.S. consumer debt actually fell in the third quarter, even as American consumers remained cautiously optimistic. In fact, as we've noted recently, the U.S. economic recovery appears to be picking up steam. As the recovery is gaining strength, the biggest share of debt for Americans - mortgage debt - has continued to shrink.

That isn't the case with non-mortgage debt, though - hence all the warnings.

Traditionally, the pattern is one that Americans have repeated many times. As the economy begins to recover, people feel like their own personal economy is better than it is - so instead of taking care of the mess they're still sitting in the middle of, they begin to spend again, beyond their means. As Annie Lowery pointed out in the New York Times recently, this time may be different, when it comes to U.S. consumer debt. Truthfully, there isn't enough economic data yet for economists - or journalists - to make any definitive claims about what our U.S. consumer debt levels reflect about the ongoing recovery.

With that in mind, we don't plan to play grinches ourselves this holiday season, so we'll only say this much: holidays aren't about the dollar value of the gifts. They're about the value of the thought you put into the gift. That may mean spending more time than money, or finding unusual methods of shopping - for example, searching E-bay with a pack of your friends to find old Bert & Ernie dolls at fair prices. The gift itself won't really be the dolls, but the time spent hunting as a group, which will bring you all closer together, even though you're separated by hundreds of miles.

What's even better about a gift of your time to a friend is that unlike going into severe debt, there won't be any strings attached.

We hope the holidays are good for the U.S. economy - and early signs say that's likely to be the case this year. That said, we also hope you stay smart, so the holidays are also good for your personal economy, in January, Februrary, and beyond.

Leftovers And Cleanup

The first day back from vacation is always one of the hardest.

Don't get us wrong - it was good to have a chance to get away from the rapid pace of our usual work schedules, and enjoy some time giving thanks for our family, friends, and other blessings. We kept an eye out on the news while we enjoyed our holiday break, including the tenuous cease-fire between the Palestinians and Israelis, and the public defense of her previous remarks by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice.

That last topic, sadly, is what the chattering TV politicos were still beating each other up about on the talking heads shows on Sunday. Like the dumbest, most annoying members of your family and friends, sent out on a Thanksgiving Day 'snipe hunt' to give everyone else a break, most of the babbling Sunday boob tubers took another swing at the non-existent Rice/Benghazi scandal and mostly ended up looking like fools.

While some Republicans seem now to be backing away from their partisan hype surrounding Ambassador Rice, it seems that not every Republican got their party's memo to back down. A good example of that was Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison's weaselly comments on CNN - and her well-deserved smackdown by Rep. Barney Frank. We'd be willing to bet our family holiday recipes that many of the more lazy, ignorant, members of the right-wing media, still turgid with the excesses of their own Thanksgiving feasts, will be jumping on the same bandwagon today as Sen. Hutchison did on Sunday.

Frankly, we're tired of this leftover non-controversy. So, like a pile of Thanksgiving dishes still soaking in the sink, we're going to clean up this topic once more - briefly - and hopefully not have to discuss it again.

As Ambassador Rice noted in her brief statement late last Wednesday afternoon, her early account of the Benghazi attack to the Sunday talking heads shows on September 16, 2012 was based on the initial intelligence community assessments. Those assessments were preliminary, as confirmed by CBS News nearly two weeks ago, when they obtained a copy of the talking points given to Ambassador Rice.

Any thought that there was some kind of cover-up, as Congressional Republicans like Sen. Hutchison continue to allege, has also been debunked, not only by the detailed timeline of the incident, but by public admissions from officials involved with preparing the talking points, and apparently by the testimony of former CIA Director Petraeus in the closed door Congressional hearings on Nov. 16.

All of this may make you wonder: why are some Republicans continuing to flail about with their bogus talking points on this issue, as they try - and fail - to insinuate some kind of scandal in the Obama White House?

As Paul Waldman pointed out nearly two weeks ago, the right-wing extremists in Congress have a form of ODS - Obama Derangement Syndrome - that Waldman called "Scandal Envy." In short, Republicans tried and failed multiple times during President Obama's first term to gin up a scandal, as they did with President Clinton. Each time they've tried, they've had to slink away empty-handed, like buffoons returning from a snipe hunt. As Waldman notes, "…they're going to keep trying to gin up a scandal, even if there's no there there."

If only to further prove our point, many Republicans - chief among them Senators McCain and Graham - are already pulling back on their criticism of the Ambassador, returning empty-handed after admitting to themselves their quest was futile. Sen. McCain has now even admitted he may be open to confirming Ambassador Rice, should the President choose to nominate her.

Hopefully, the retreat of Congressional Republicans along with brief recaps like ours will clean this topic up for everyone with a shred of sanity, once and for all. There are far more important things to be discussing and problems to solve during this 'Lame Duck' session of Congress.

A Slice Of Thanks

While the news today is a bit thinner than usual as half the nation's journalists and media members are all either headed out the door for Thanksgiving vacation or have already left, that doesn't mean there isn't anything happening today. There is news, and we'll have all the links to today's latest events in our full version, either available later today in your e-mail box, or in our archived edition.

Today is the beginning of our Thanksgiving holiday, however, so we're remaining focused on all the things that make us happy and thankful. As we sit around our offices, sharing our favorite local pizzas with our staff and friends, one of those things we're most thankful for is each other.

Of course, we're also pretty geeked up about our favorite local pizzas.

Whether you're grabbing a slice at John's on 44th near Times Square in New York City or in Nebraska at Valentino's, in the D.C. metro area at Paisano's or at Grimaldi's in West Palm Beach, we hope you're doing it with some of the people you care most about in your life. These are all local or regional pizzarias, that we've had either personal or professional ties with over the years, and they serve some of our favorite food.

As much lip-service as Republicans give to small businesses, the fact is, small operations are what every real business started as, in America and all around the world - something Democrats, sensible Republicans, and virtually everyone around the world acknowledges.

All of the restaurants we listed above are great examples of successful small businesses, made up of people who work long hard hours and are generally less concerned with making piles of dough and more concerned with making great pizzas. We've checked, and to our knowledge, all these different restaurants will also be closed tomorrow on Thanksgiving - unlike certain large-scale retailers we mentioned on Tuesday.

Part of this weekend should be spent by all Americans to give thanks and to celebrate our joyful moments in life - for example, joy that we don't live in parts of Israel or the Palestinian territories, where we bet it might be a bit tough to get a good slice of pizza right now, cease fire or not.

Another part of this upcoming weekend will also likely involve some shopping. We hope you'll follow our lead, and put your dough into local retailers, wherever you happen to be, as part of the Small Business Administration's 'Small Business Saturday'. Big business American Express has lent a huge hand to the SBA in this venture (since, as a large credit card company, they make lots of money from small business too), effectively putting it on the map - but we appreciate their efforts to help small business owners too.

In that vein, to help small businesses, we ask that if you shop this weekend, shop local. That counts online too, as many small local retailers these days also give you the ability to buy some of their goods or pay for services online.

We hope you'll get out this weekend and experience great local businesses of all kinds, no matter where you are. If, in the course of your shopping, you happen to be able to grab a slice with people you care about at Lou Malnati's in Chicago, or Miceli's in L.A., or any of the other great local pizza places we mentioned?

Consider it just another moment in your life to be thankful for.

Have a safe and happy Thanksgiving.

A Turkey Of An Idea

There are times when it's good to be a member of "the media."

After we and several other media outlets focused a light on the greedy and dishonest dealings of executives with the Hostess corporation on Monday, U.S. Federal Circuit Court Judge Robert Drain forced the executives and unions into a mediation session today, in a final attempt to stave off bankruptcy.

As we pointed out on Monday, the problem facing Hostess isn't due to the unions, but is traceable right back to the greed of the corporate executives and investment firms who care nothing about the workers, and only care about squeezing out more profit for themselves. In short, it's a teachable moment about the value of workers in America.

Sadly, it's not the only labor fight going on in America right now.

'Black Friday creep' as the practice is being called, will ruin Thanksgiving day this year for millions of Americans, who will have to eat their holiday meals with a few more empty chairs, while workers leave their families to prepare retail stores for the onslaught of impatient, overweight Americans fighting over cheap Chinese-made electronics a few hours earlier than normal.

In case you'd missed it in the news, 'Black Friday creep' is the practice that many of the nation's largest retailers are engaging in this holiday season, by starting their biggest sales day of the year not at the more traditional 12:01 AM on the Friday after Thanksgiving, but on Thanksgiving Day itself.

That creep is the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back for workers like Casey St. Clair, who began a petition at Change.org asking retailer Target to waive the Thanksgiving Day start times, and return them to their traditional midnight opening.

St. Clair isn't the only one fighting this kind of corporate creep.

Thousands of Wal-Mart workers nationwide look to be going on strike this Friday in an effort to get the giant retailer to understand that jobs are not just about fair wages, but also about fair working conditions - including the right to celebrate holidays with their families.

Thankfully, not every retailer is following the greed lead of Wal-Mart.

For its part, retailer Nordstrom will once again have all of its stores closed on Thanksgiving, and won't even be decorating their stores for the holidays until Thanksgiving night - starting at 12:01.

As PR Newser's James Thompson points out, this isn't a rebellion against capitalism. "Just because we hate greed does not mean we hate capitalism," says Thompson. "A lemonade stand is capitalism; cutting down the lemon tree to build a better lemonade stand is greed."

There are still two states in the U.S. where none of this will be a problem.

In both Massachusetts and Rhode Island, so-called 'Blue Laws' prevent retailers from opening on Thanksgiving - meaning that little Johnny might actually get to eat holiday turkey with both his parents if he lives in either state.

Maybe next year, after a few well-placed individuals notice the trend in places like Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and with retailers like Nordstrom, perhaps the idea of workers being treated like people might filter elsewhere in the country.

Something to hope for by Thanksgiving 2013.

Market Rates & Corporate Pigs: Who Killed The Twinkie?

As we head into this shorter than usual Thanksgiving week, our thoughts are with a few of our friends across the country who are the latest victims of corporate mismanagement, greed, and stupidity.

In case you missed the news at the end of last week, Hostess - the corporate owner of such iconic snack cakes as Twinkies, Ho-Hos, Dolly Madison, as well as comparatively healthier product lines like Nature's Pride and Wonder Breads - is going out of business, as of Friday.

Contrary to the hype you may have heard, most of the brands currently owned by Hostess will likely be back on store shelves within a couple of months. The shelf space on America's supermarkets and convenience stores is worth many, many millions per year, not to mention the brand names. There are already other companies looking to swoop in, and bring those brands back to life. Unfortunately, that business resurrection won't likely come before the end of the year - which means 18,500 American families are now facing the holiday season without jobs, thanks to the mismanagement of corporate America.

Whatever lies you've heard about the death of this company, we assure you - the facts surrounding the murder of Hostess this time are clear: The piggish, greedy corporate executives killed the company, not the unions.

Fortune magazine's David Kaplan had a brilliant and relatively thorough deconstruction of the whole sad Hostess tale back in July. Like Kaplan, we'd first noticed the troubling news coming out of Hostess several years ago.

It was the news coming out of Hostess over the past year that was the most troubling. According to the ever conservative Wall Street Journal, both the creditors and the unions began having serious problems with Hostess management after its executives boosted their own salaries, by as much 300% just before the company entered its latest bankruptcy filing - the company's second in less than a decade.

Multiple sources from inside the company, and across the country confirmed to us that over the past eight years different unions within Hostess had given back pay, benefits, and other concessions totaling hundreds of millions. Yet the corporate executives bleated and screamed this weekend it was the pension obligations to the unions that brought down the company.

Let's make something clear: Pensions are not "gifts" of the kind Mitt Romney whined about, and that smart Republicans are rebuking. Pensions - as well as health insurance, life insurance, and many other so-called benefits - are a legacy of corporate America trying to skip out on its obligations to pay workers a fair wage for a fair day's work.

As Forbes magazine's Adam Hartung points out perfectly, the biggest problem in corporate America today is the ignorance of the fact that, "Labor, like other suppliers, has a 'market rate.'" If Hostess' CEO had gone to their grain suppliers and demanded to pay 2/3 the market price for the same amount of grain, the suppliers would have laughed him out of their offices. Yet, by trying to get out of their responsibility to pay workers less than a fair rate of pay - a rate of pay, benefits, and pension olbigations that Hostess' management had agreed to not long ago - the corporate executives of Hostess were asking their workers to do the same work for only 2/3 of their market rate.

No one is saying pension obligations aren't a heavy lift for corporate America these days. Just as other business costs that can't be outsourced to China have gone up, the market rate of skilled labor in America has also gone up. Whether they like it or not, those costs are still part of the responsibilities of corporate executives, and of any stockholder who owns part of that company. If the standard operating procedures of corporate executives are to shirk their responsibilities to their workers whenever possible, how responsible have they ever been?

No matter how they want to cut the issue, if a company can't afford to pay its workers a fair wage, those workers will never buy its products - even if those products are just Twinkies.

Friday Funday: Secession Silliness

If you haven't been completely driven away from politics in the last week and a half since the election, it's likely that you've heard about the ridiculous secession petitions being filed by disgruntled right-wingers in many U.S. states.

When we first heard about this idiotic trend we were neither surprised or concerned. In fact, our initial response was quite simple: the rest of America survived eight years of Bush (barely), you fools will survive eight years of Obama. Of course, we also thought, "If you want to leave, go ahead! Get to steppin'!"

In truth, we couldn't really take the idea of secession seriously at first because the petitions were being filed using the "We The People" online petition tool − which is hosted on the White House's own website. Nothing says "We don't need you" like using the tools of the people you claim not to need.

Still, out of curiosity more than anything, we began to look into the issue a bit more closely, especially after reading an opinion piece by Dana Milbank of the Washington Post earlier this week.

After further review of the facts and numbers, we tend to agree with Mr. Milbank - AND the secessionists. If people like that want to leave, there are a whole host of reasons why we're more than willing to let them go.

There are just a few problems though.

For one thing, secession in the United States is illegal. It's an act of treason. For another, it's unconstitutional. We know - the Supreme Court already covered that back in 1869, in the Texas v. White case, the case that proved Texas may not secede from the union.

There's also the problem of money.

Most of the states leading the secession charge are "taker states", as Mr. Milbank pointed out in his piece. That means that for every dollar in taxes they pay to the U.S. federal government, they get back far more than a buck. Louisiana takes about $1.45 for every dollar they send to Washington, DC. Missouri takes $1.29 for each dollar. Nebraska doesn't mooch too badly, only taking $1.07 for every dollar we give.

Of course, all the people in those states that were leaving would have to give up their Social Security, Medicare, Medicare, and VA Benefits too.

The biggest problem with the idea of secession though isn't all the stuff.

It's the people.

We like Austin, Texas, home of The Derailers, among other things. We also like Corpus Christi. We have family and friends in Arizona and Indiana, in Nashville, Tennessee and rural Nebraska too. The feeling goes the other direction too, as we know many "red staters" that have family and friends in New York, Chicago, L.A. - and of course, Washington, DC.

There's no reason to unfriend all those people who disagree with you on Facebook, or stop shopping at retailers who don't share your political views. We are one country - with millions of different viewpoints.

As President Obama first noted in his 2004 speech, and as he echoed again in his victory speech last week, we are not just a collection of red states and blue states. We are the United States.

If you want to leave, that's up to you. But we'd rather you actually stayed. After all, that's how the melting pot concept is supposed to work.

Ill Communications

If there's one thing that's become blindingly obvious over the last week or so, it's how utterly bereft of purpose much of our national media machine is.

Sure, we've been following the embarrassing, tawdry, and effectively pointless "scandal" of the now-former head of the CIA, David Petraeus. What we know about the Petraeus incident so far is sad, and personally embarrassing to most of the primary actors in this real-life tragedy. Still, after the FBI spent months investigating parts of this case, and apparently gathered piles and piles of data what they found was salacious and sad - but not illegal.

What most of those in the major media outlets - who still have their hype generators on full-blast, after months of doing so during campaign season - haven't yet acknowledged is that there just doesn't appear to be any "there" there in this nontroversy. At least there's nothing important where most in the media are pointing.

The fact that over 20,000 pages of e-mails were exchanged by parties involved in the Petraeus scandal, and that the whole Petraeus affair was discovered by the FBI using surveillance powers in an ethically questionable, if not questionably legal manner? That's where the real story is.

It's well known that more and more companies are tracking what each of us do online, in an attempt to sell that information to advertisers who'd like a more accurate target for their ad dollars. Even games on your smartphone are collecting GPS data about where you are, and at what time of day.

That's because there are few if any serious and significant laws protecting the privacy of Americans online. We've known that fact for many years. The ECPA - the Electronic Communications Privacy Act  — was passed in 1986, long before the modern internet came into being, and has yet to be updated.

Like so many of our nation's infrastructure problems over the last 30 years, the legal infrastructure problem of protecting the privacy of Americans has been left to rot.

Until now.

While we're fairly certain the ECPA 2.0 and Global Free Internet Act won't be passed in this lame duck session of Congress, Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California has made it a key goal of hers to get both bills passed in the 113th Congress.

As Lofgren explained in a recent TechCrunch article, the ECPA 2.0 bill modernizes our current U.S. electronic privacy laws to protect Americans from government intrusion. The new law would apply Fourth Amendment rights against illegal search and seizure to our online digital property much as it does our physical property now.

The second bill would protect Americans from corporate intrusion and international collusion that might suddenly put the internet out of the reach of everyday people. In other words, it would help keep the Internet free and accessible for everyone.

We know - these kinds of legislative battles aren't nearly as sexy as twins from Tampa sending sexy e-mails to top government and military officials while being involved in love triangles. The legislative battles, however, are exactly what the real responsibilities of our government should be - and where our focus should be too.

The long arm of the law can indeed get too long for its own good. It's up to "We the people" to keep those law enforcement officials at a proper arms' length.

The Biggest Problem Isn't The Fiscal Cliff

Whether you call it a cliff, curb, staircase, or even an austerity crisis, the fact is, time is running short for the President and Congress to deal with the tax and budget issues most in the media are calling the "fiscal cliff."

As Ezra Klein, Chris Hayes, Lawrence O'Donnell, and many others have noted, the metaphor of a "fiscal cliff" that Ben Bernanke coined back in February is less of an accurate description than a dramatic phrase. It's obvious that Bernanke chose the word to scare some of our less than brilliant members of Congress into actually working together to get something very serious accomplished.

To be clear, we are absolutely not in denial of the "fiscal cliff", like some kind of weird climate change denial nuts who've suddenly changed our focus to taxes and budgets. The need for a detailed plan and quick actions to avert a potential hit to our fragile American economic recovery is no hoax.

The solution behind preventing the crisis though, is much more simple when you understand what we're facing.

As our friend and colleague Rick Ungar explained for Forbes this past weekend, there are really three large pieces to the tax and budget problem facing Congress and the President.

The first big piece is the Bush Tax Cuts, that were initially scheduled to end in 2010. In case you've forgotten, those tax cuts were never meant to be permanent - and one look at the causes of our debt and deficit show the Bush Tax Cuts are a huge government giveaway we simply can't afford to continue in their entireity.

The second piece of the problem is an assorted group of expiring tax cuts, like the payroll tax cut President Obama pushed through in 2010 to help working families get through the Bush Recession. This piece of the problem also includes the return of the AMT, the Alternative Minimum Tax, which is yet another tax problem Congress has kept putting off fixing until the third Tuesday of never.

The final piece of this tax and budget fiscal disaster that is due to begin January 1, 2013 is the sequester, the massive across-the-board spending cuts that came from the Republicans' hostage taking negotiations on the debt ceiling in August of 2011. It should also be noted no one in Congress ever seriously intended the sequester to go into effect.

While there are many of our colleagues in the media who continue to be worked up about the danger of this tax and budget problem, there are many more - including Mr. Klein, Mr. Hayes, and even Paul Krugman - who have correctly pointed out; the fiscal cliff is not really a sharp disaster.

As Kevin Drum points out in his comprehensive Q&A on the subject, the reason this fiscal crisis is more like a fiscal staircase is simple.

If Congress does nothing, all the taxes we've talked about will go up on January 1, 2013. But not all of the $600 billion in new taxes will be due right away. That would be a cliff. Instead, only about $1.6 billion will be due every day - a hefty sum, yes, but an amount that's small, relative to our economy. Think of it as a $1.6 billion cattle prod that gets bigger everyday, in order to move obstructionists in Congress towards a compromise that matches up with the candidates and ideas that voters just put into office.

One of those ideas, in fact, is that more tax revenue needs to be collected from the rich and corporations, while the working and lower classes get to keep their tax holiday a little bit longer - at least until the economic recovery has reached poorer Americans too. In meetings on Tuesday with labor and progressive leaders, President Obama seemed to be highly aware of what the majority of American voters said they wanted, making it clear that while he's looking for compromise with Congressional Republicans, he's not going to back down on tax hikes for the rich.

You might think that would make a final deal tougher to reach, but as we already noted, the solution to this tax and budget problem pileup isn't the tough part.

The tough part is getting the obstructionists - who are still standing out on their ledge insisting taxes never be allowed to go up on anyone - to understand that they don't have the leverage of the American people behind them. In fact, they never did.

Taking Another Swing...

If you're a Nebraskan, by birth or choice, who's lived for any serious time in Nebraska over the last forty years, you likely know the two words that strike terror into the hearts of virtually every citizen of any political background who's ever been a Nebraska state senator: Ernie Chambers.

We say that humorously and with a great deal of respect for Sen. Chambers. In our combined knowledge of local, state, and federal legislators, we've rarely seen anyone as well-versed, legislatively, as Sen. Chambers and almost never anyone as devoted to his constituents.

The fact is, the words "Senator Ernie Chambers" will once again be uttered in the halls of the Nebraska Unicameral, after the 2012 elections, as Mr. Chambers won back the legislative seat he'd previously held for 38 years. Some media outlets are reporting that a number of Nebraska politicians - including Republican Gov. Dave Heineman - are embracing Chambers' return.

The truth is, there are more than a few less-then-astute Nebraska politicos who would like to take a swing at Sen. Chambers. However, as we've already noted, Chambers' ability to advocate for his constituents is something most legislators can't hold a candle to. His return will be a real wakeup to some, especially political neophytes.

What may be an even bigger wakeup though, is the fact that Nebraska Democrats didn't fare as badly in last week's election as we and others initially thought.

We're all aware that at the national level, the sorrow of Republican political operatives still seems to be everywhere. The losses of the GOP have induced all kinds of crazy actions from threatening secession, to GOP anti-tax lobbyist Grover Norquist calling Mitt Romney a "poopy-head" on live TV. At the state level though, things are different.

In the immediate wake of the election, we've been concerned about the lack of political representation for Nebraskans who aren't extremist conservative whackjobs. With the loss of Ben Nelson's seat, and the loss by former Sen. Kerrey, moderate Republicans, along with all Nebraska Democrats and Independents really have no federal representatives willing to advocate for their needs with the same fervor Sen. Chambers' constituents enjoy in Omaha.

After looking a bit deeper though, we are not as worried as we once were.

For one thing, while Republicans held onto their overall majority in the Nebraska Legislature, the new balance in the Nebraska Legislature will be 30-17 - meaning Democrats and Democratic-leaning politicos did not lose any seats this year at the state level.

Further, Sen. Brad Ashford - a former Republican who left his party because he could go along with his party's extremist ways - and Sen. Chambers are both technically registered Independents. Both will likely side with Democrats in Nebraska's so-called "non-partisan" legislature far more often than state Republican political leaders wish they would.

Add to that a growing number of moderate Nebraska Republicans who are growing less afraid of the extremists in their party, and you can see the real reason politicians like Gov. Dave Heineman are saying nice things about someone like Ernie Chambers.

We still think the Nebraska Democratic Party is far weaker than it should ever have been allowed to become and those responsible for overseeing it's demise over the last two decades should be ashamed. That said, we are not as distressed about the future for Democrats in Nebraska as extremists at the national level like Mr. Norquist seem to be about the GOP.

Nebraska, like most states, may just be worth keeping in the Union after all.

Every Day Is Veterans Day

If you're planning on heading to a bank, major government office, or even a school in many areas of the United States today, we'd advise you to revise your plans, as Veterans Day is being federally recognized today - even though the official holiday was Sunday.

For nearly a century now, since the end of World War I, the first "war to end all wars", Americans and Europeans have celebrated Veterans Day - previously called "Armistice Day" - on the eleventh day of the eleventh month each year, pausing for a moment of remembrance at the eleventh hour. As we do every year, we're reminding you and all our readers about Veterans Day.

Even with all the commemorations and ceremonies across the nation, too many Americans still seem to see holidays like Veterans Day as just another excuse for government workers to have a Monday off. Today should not ever be thought of in that way. For all those Americans who have ever worn the uniform, and for those who still wear the uniform, most appreciate a note or a word of thanks any day - even though most (including our own webmaster) would never demand that recognition.

For most veterans, every day is Veterans Day, at least a little bit.

Veterans daily remember their friends, family, and co-workers who have served and been damaged - or perhaps never came back. Many veterans are involved in programs every day of the week, run through the VFW or the IAVA (Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America), or other outside programs like Operation Gratitude.

Contrary to what you may have heard, our government has done a lot for veterans over the last few years.

The V.A., while still dealing with a massive backlog of requests dating back at least five years, has made considerable progress in ending homelessness among veterans. President Obama forced the long-awaited overhaul of the military's civilian transition program this summer, and has pushed the Labor Department's program to streamline military to civilian skills certification, which also appears to be in higher gear these days.

There is at least one thing that makes Veterans Day 2012 unique.

As President Obama noted in his remarks on Sunday, after laying the wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery, "This is the first Veterans Day in a decade in which there are no American troops fighting and dying in Iraq." Hopefully in 2014 we can say the same thing about Afghanistan.

For now, we'd only ask you today to simply say "Thank you" to a veteran, for his or her willingness to serve.

If you miss your chance to say "Thanks" today?

You can - and should - still thank a veteran any day.

For them, every day is Veterans Day.

Friday Funday: Dinner With Friends

As our regular readers know, we usually enjoy using our commentary to celebrate a bit on Fridays. Today is a fantastic day to celebrate, whether your favored candidates and issues won or lost this week, because it's the first Friday after the election!

For those of us involved deeply in politics or political media, this is the first weekend in months (or, for some, years) when we can sleep in, not pick up the newspaper, leave the computers, tv, and phones off, - and not feel guilty or worried about our disconnecting from the world. We're even having a celebratory dinner tonight with other members of our staff - and we're turning off our cell phones for the night.

That moment of disconnection for us won't mean the world will stop. Already, the inauguration for the President is moving forward, and our plans for the new year are moving ahead with it.

President Obama and Congressional Democrats have their weekend schedules full of both domestic and foreign issues, including work on issues surrounding the "fiscal cliff." Congressional Republicans are getting back to work too - or as the rest of the world calls it, "being obstructionists".

Speaker Boehner is already claiming he's willing to be bipartisan about the fiscal cliff, but his partner in the House Republican leadership, Rep. Eric Cantor, is already threatening to hold the debt ceiling negotiations hostage in January - as Republicans did in the Summer of 2011.

To that kind of conduct, we simply say to Congressional Republicans, "Shut up and eat your peas."

That's the same message, by the way, that the President gave to Congressional Republicans during that summer of 2011, when Mr. Obama first offered the 'Grand Bargain' to Speaker Boehner on the debt ceiling. In case you've forgotten, the 'Grand Bargain' was an agreement that would have allowed for an increase in taxes - especially on the rich and corporations - while still forcing some sharp cuts to government programs.


As the CBO confirmed this week, a tax hike on the wealthy might actually be a positive sign, and it certainly won't kill America's slow but steady economic growth. In fact, if letting taxes on the rich go back up, as they are scheduled to do when the Bush tax cuts end, allows a compromise to be made in Congress, having the wealthy pick up their fiscal responsibility may actually prevent the economy from going over the so-called "fiscal cliff"

It was a lot easier for Republicans to get out of their responsibility to move the nation forward over the last two years when they held many of the political cards. Now, with the sweeping wins by progressive Democrats this week, and with the re-election of President Obama, it's the President and the political left that holds all the cards - and they will likely make those on the right "eat their peas" and take responsibility. That would be much like President Obama and Congressional Democrats did with ObamaCare during his first two years in office.

As we pointed out yesterday, thanks to this week's elections, there are a slew of moderate Republicans who finally seem to no longer to be afraid of stepping up and speaking out, now that so many Republican extremists have been defeated.

We know of more than a few locations this evening where some Republicans who've been afraid to be seen with their Democratic friends over the past few years will be getting together for the first time in a very long while, for dinner, drinks - and maybe even planning some real compromise.

If that's not a reason to celebrate, we don't know what is.

Coaching Advice For The Defeated

It's been an interesting day or so since the announcement that President Barack Obama was re-elected for his second term.

To start with, we've received some great praise from readers like you, both in writing and verbally, for our work guiding you and others through the tumultuous election period. We're proud that we can make you laugh with Paul's cartoons, while guiding you to the sage advice of our friends and media colleagues, like Nate Silver and his team at FiveThirtyEight. We are immensely humbled by your words of praise, and are even more motivated to deliver to you the best journalism that we can.

Motivating people to improve is a key ability of those in self-sacrificing jobs like politician or coach. The best coaches and politicians are usually those individuals who aren't in it for their own selfish benefit, and who aren't blinded by their own propaganda telling them how great they are.

For our friends in the Republican Party, they found that out the hard way on Tuesday night - so we've got a few important pieces of advice they may want to pay attention to, if they don't want their political party to become the next relic of history.

Our first nugget of wisdom is to look at the calendar. This is 2012, a dozen years into the 21st century. As writer Ta-Nehisi Coates pointedly noted this week, this isn't 1968 - the hippies punch back now. As conservative writer Ross Douthat admitted in a similar if stunned fashion, the age of Reagan is now officially over.

Other than rich old, white men - and those white men who think that "someday" they'll be rich too - the Republican Party has driven everyone else away. That group of 'everyone else' includes women, gays and lesbians, minorities including blacks and latinos, and the working class - who all had a pretty incredible night on Tuesday.

If Republicans continue to focus on satisfying rich, old, extremist conservative white, men, they will be extinct as a political party in another dozen years. As Meghan McCain said again on Wednesday, the Republican Party must change or die.

The second big piece of advice we have to give to our friends on the right is that it's time to get rid of the right-wing media echo chamber.

On election night, the propaganda network that poses as news, Fox, had a complete meltdown. Karl Rove, the man once touted as George W. Bush's political brain literally could not face the facts of the election as they were being presented to him. Many of the other members of the Fox election team seemed to be having similar problems with reality. In short, the Republicans on Fox believed their own propaganda - and got humiliated with the facts. Conservative radio on the day after the election wasn't much better.

You cannot win the long-term political war by simply screaming louder, or simply throwing more money at the problem without actually changing your approach to it. If anything, the 2012 election proved that.

Our final piece of advice to those on the political right is a simple reality check, though nothing like the walloping Republicans received this year: If you're in the Republican Party, it's long past time for you to clean house.

We have said for years that not all Republicans are bad, just as all Democrats and Independents aren't good. There are bad Republicans though, and they have been leading your party. They are the kind of people sports coaches call "juicers." They get amped up on their own fake substances, lie to themselves, lie to everyone else, and do flashy things for a short time.

They are also the kinds of players who burn out easy - and get blown out of the game forever, when they're finally caught.

Take the advice we've offered here, Republicans: It's time you looked forward too.

Heavenly Outcome, For Some

Today, for the first time in almost a year-and-a-half, the business of politicking, for the most part, is done - at least for a little while. President Obama won his second term, soundly - and we are very grateful for that.

We're also grateful for these things: No more political rallies. No more campaign stops. No more robocalls, or calls from politicians and their surrogates. No more political ads in your newspaper, or on your television, radio, or online either - which we know is the one thing that all Americans, from every political background can agree on. The sound of no more political ads is, frankly, heavenly to all of us.

The final results last night were also heavenly to our staff, in the Presidential race, and in House and Senate races in many places across the country. Tea Party favorites fell like diseased trees in a storm. Some of the candidates we preferred didn't win - like Bob Kerrey. Sadly, the blind, stupid partisans in rural Nebraska continued to vote against their own best interests. At least the people in rural Indiana and rural Missouri showed more sense, voting in Joe Donnelly and returning Claire McCaskill to Congress, as they rejected the misogynists Richard Mourdock and Todd Akin.

Most of our favorite candidates and issues did win last night, and we were not all that much surprised.

That wasn't because of the exit polls. We weren't watching them much last night, as exit polls have a notorious history of inaccurately reflecting final results. Instead, on some sage advice from Nate Silver, we watched specific counties that votes were coming in from, in each state, and in what numbers.

As the results continued piling up, in state by state, it become increasingly clear that the state polls taken from before the election were matching the outcomes that were officially being released. What's more, poll aggregators like Nate Silver and his team at FiveThirtyEight.com appear to have been more accurate than most of the aggregators - which is the main reason we've relied on Nate's wisdom and insight for more than four years now.

Some of our favorite ballot measures also won in different places across the nation. In all four states where marriage equality issues were on the ballot - Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington - the people overwhelmingly voted in favor of the idea of letting Americans have the legal right to be with whomever they want. Many of our gay friends are now legally equal to every other American, as they should be - and we're already planning to attend a few of their weddings next spring.

In Colorado and Washington state, the use of recreational marijuana is now legal, as we believe it always should have been. While none of our staff currently uses the substance, we see no reason that its responsible use should be treated any differently from prescription drugs or in a similar fashion to alcohol. Marijuana can also be taxed now - and we hope Coloradans and Washingtonians are smart enough to do just that.

The overall story of the election may seem like an oversimplification - one we're certain that many in the political media will be hashing over the rest of the week - but it actually broke down very simply. In short, if you were already rich, white, old, male, and conservative, you probably voted for Romney and the Republicans. Virtually everyone else voted for President Obama and the Democratic candidates, to some degree.

This shouldn't surprise anyone either. While the Republicans did keep control of the House, the Democrats kept - and strengthened - their control of the Senate. In both the House and Senate, Democrats broadened the demographic nature of their coalition. In fact, this is now the first time in history that the House Democratic caucus has white males as a minority.

Our nation is maturing, changing, and growing. The future of America is as a melting pot - as it's always been. That at least one of our two major political parties continues to embrace this most fundamentally American idea remains music to our ears.

The Most Important Decision Ever

In the United States, today is officially Election Day 2012.

All the debates, all the commercials, all the campaign stops, the robocalls, the campaign visitors, and sadly the ugly voter suppression - all of that has led up to today. We can't vote for you, nor can we force you to vote one way or another, though we do have some recommendations, as always based on facts.

Our first recommendation is simple: Vote.

If you have to stand in line for hours? Stand in line - and vote. Bring a collapsable chair, if you want. Some voters in Florida waited until 2:30 AM on Monday to vote - and they began waiting on Sunday afternoon. Millions of Americans have fought, marched, and died for your right to vote, on battlefields around the world - and on the streets of American cities like Selma, Montgomery, and Seneca Falls. Don't make their sacrifices a waste.

Our second recommendation is not to vote for any candidate that supports making the exercise of your constitutional right to vote a task of herculean proportions. Frankly, we have no idea why anyone would vote for any candidate that has as the core of its modern philosophy, the idea that they do not want everyone to vote. That is - literally - the philosophy of the modern Republican Party, as voiced by the founder of the extremist wing of the GOP, Paul Weyrich. If a political party led by extremists like that will try to limit citizens' basic constitutional rights, history says there's likely no end to their crazy ambition.

Our candidate recommendations this year are simple - and no, we don't think you should just vote Democratic. Not all Republicans are like the crazy Mr. Weyrich. We simply want you to vote for the best candidates.

As President, Barack Obama has done an incredible job in the face of the intractable and disastrous Republicans in Congress - especially when we look at the economic and foreign policy disaster that was handed to him. President Obama is, in the opinion of our entire staff, the only HONEST and logical choice for President, a man who has proven he will always try to find common ground, and will do what is right - especially when doing so is hard.

Along the same lines, for U.S. Senate from Nebraska, we choose Bob Kerrey. Yes, he is a conservative Democrat, one of the last in existence in professional politics. He is also honest to a fault sometimes. It is the Kerrey standard that is so often referred to when Americans long for bipartisanship, the idea Mr. Kerrey became known for the first time he was in the U.S. Senate. His idea is often repeated in political circles, that if you're angering people on both sides of the aisle, you must be doing something right - but you're also probably getting something done.

Our other candidate recommendations follow directly from the idea of moving forward. From Bill Nelson and Patrick Murphy in Florida, to Wayne Powell and Tim Kaine in Virginia, to Bob Kerrey, John Ewing, and Jeff Fortenberry in Nebraska. While we do not love each of these candidates, one thread is common among all of them - they can work together and when pushed, they do not side with radicals. Even Republican Jeff Fortenberry, who told Grover Norquist to shove his "no tax pledge" is someone who we think can help drive our nation in the right direction.

We have one last recommendation, today.

While it's true that nearly all of the legitimate polls are strongly favoring most of our candidates and positions, in referendums and races across the nation, this isn't just another election. We are in firm disagreement with some of our colleagues in the greater media about what might happen, after today. If any candidate is allowed to take office through an illegitimate win, much as we had in 2000 when the Supreme Court picked the winner, we are not sure of either the future of U.S. elections, or possibly even the nation.

This is a big deal. So… don't let your opportunity go to waste today.

Make your voice count. Vote. Now.

No Time For Sitting Around

Today is the last day before the 2012 elections and, as we predicted on Friday, it was not a slow weekend.

No one who cares about the outcome of this election - or what happens to their fellow Americans still recovering from Sandy - was just sitting around this weekend, except for those few so-called "Independent" voters who are still hogging an oversized amount of attention from both the Democratic and Republican political players in most races.

This election is still being portrayed almost like a football game by many in the media, but make no mistake about it: the more accurate comparison for this election is warfare. Over the weekend, both sides engaged in heated battles - but only one side took the ethical high ground.

In Florida, Governor Rick Scott's unethical plan from 2011 to cut early voting days in half played out much as both local and national political and media figures thought it would. With less time for early voting, insanely long lines formed - reportedly up to nine hours in one Florida location, and more than six in at least one other.

The Florida Democratic Party had asked for an extension of early voting on Thursday on behalf of all Florida voters from any party, but they were effectively ignored by Gov. Rick Scott. After the insanely long lines, the Democratic Party decided they'd had enough and filed an emergency lawsuit late Saturday night seeking to extend early voting hours for all Florida voters - and they won, at least in Orange County.

In Miami-Dade County, the Elections Department was pushed by the Democrats' action and the large voter demand to open their doors Sunday and allow early voting. The Republican mayor of Miami effectively had a tantrum, because he hadn't directly been involved in the Elections Department decision - so, with several hundred voters waiting in line, the Republican mayor made a bad situation even worse and forced the doors closed again. After two hours of phone calls, legal threats, and hundreds of voters chanting and banging on the doors, not going away, the Elections Department in Miami-Dade opened the doors again - and all voters who were in line got to vote again. Not even potential bombs could stop Florida voters. In short, Republicans did not succeed in hijacking the fundamental right of Americans to vote - at least in Florida.

That may not be the case in Ohio.

A last-minute directive issued by Ohio's Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted seeks to invalidate fully legal provisional ballots by shoving some of the state's information verification responsibilities onto the voter - then penalizing the voter by not counting their ballot if the information provided by the voter is incorrect or filled in on the form incorrectly. Husted's action is not only in violation of Ohio's own laws and in violation of a recent court decision - it's exactly the opposite of what Husted claimed he would do. Not surprisingly, Husted is already being sued over this latest attempt at voter suppression.

That's not the end of the problems, either. According to the Columbus Dispatch, the extremist right-wing group known as "True The Vote" appears to have gotten its members into poll worker positions in Ohio, not just poll observer positions. The dual training of these ethically illegitimate poll workers appears to have gone outside the rules of the Ohio State Elections Board, which could lead to any ballot they touch being invalidated, or having to be re-checked manually by contacting each voter - which could lead to Ohio's elections not being finalized until sometime in December.

If you thought the Republican Party was going to be honest and play fair in the 2012 elections, you haven't been paying attention.

We only hope that these desperate attempts by the extremist wing of the Republican Party to steal the 2012 election backfire, and ultimately result in the nuts being shoved off the GOP's proverbial bench permanently once the election is over. Otherwise, we fear greatly for the legitimate future of free, fair and honest elections in the United States.

As we said earlier, the election isn't just a game this year.

Friday Funday: Dance With The One That Brought Ya

While today is the start to the weekend for some we know, we highly doubt most people around the nation will have an empty dance card for the next few days.

For us, it's the weekend before the national general election - so don't expect us to be sitting around watching DVR episodes of 'Dancing With The Stars' or pre-recorded football games. Ethically, because of our staff members' positions within the media, we can't be involved with any specific political campaign in the traditional volunteer sense. That doesn't mean we'll be on the sidelines. There are still a huge pile of tasks for us to choreograph before the election next Tuesday.

We won't be the only ones dancing around this weekend. Both presidential candidates and their campaigns will also be dancing all over the country. President Obama will be leaping from battleground state to battleground state all weekend. He'll be stopping at events located near both our DC and Florida offices, as he reminds America of his many first-term successes and his second term plans, and enjoys his latest endorsement from Independent centrist Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City.

Mr. Romney will also be dancing this weekend, though for him it will be mostly around the issues and his explosive lies - what Greg Sargent has termed "Romney's Kamikaze strategy". The Romney campaign's continued lies about the auto bailout, and Mitt's severe rebuke from the CEOs of both GM and Chrysler make him look even more ridiculous in the face of both GM's robust earnings report and Chrysler's new sales record. That Mr. Romney's schedule also oddly includes a couple of stops in states like Pennsylvania that experienced political hands say are far beyond his reach is yet another fact Romney will be dancing around.

There will also likely be dancing today about the final jobs numbers being released prior to election day. Private firm ADP released their better than expected U.S. jobs report on Thursday, as jobless claims went down again. Gallup also released their U.S. jobs survey numbers that continue the trend  of the U.S. unemployment rate going lower - down to 7.4% in October.

In other words, the economy is steadily and certainly growing again, a fact the political right can't ignore.

There will also be plenty of dancing at the state level, as Bob Kerrey received the strong positive endorsement of his former colleague from across the aisle, former GOP Senator Chuck Hagel. When a candidate has the backing of both fiscal hawks behind the Erskine-Bowles Commission, as well as the long-proven record of Chuck Hagel, we'd say there really isn't any comparison between Bob Kerrey and his opponent, Deb Fischer, who has the support of people like Sarah Palin and Karl Rove.

Of course, a few of our readers will be dancing for joy that they can finally get back to their homes in New York City - or that they've finally got power back to their homes too.

Last but not least, if you've got the option to vote early where you live, we highly advise you to boogie on down to your local Elections office today or this weekend, and make your mark now, so you don't get tripped up next Tuesday.

However you choose to spend your weekend, we hope you can put a little fun in your steps.