still watching this

http://www.iowacaucusresults.com/

True ------

As obvious as it is that HuckabeeRy Hound is nothing more than just another Rethug "crackpot" with twisted agenda issues , he (as is with any other Rethug) can't be underestimated. As has been seen time and again over the last 7 years , the Rethugs will stop at absolutely "nothing" to retain 'power'. Even if the Dems don't self-destruct (as usually happens --- damnit) , the Rethugs will pull out the Rove playbook to again , steal the election ---- laws and the Constitution be damned.

Play smart --- play to win --- its too damned important.

In 'combatting' Huckabee, it is absolutely necessary to attack religious fundamentalism as not only being a 'source for terrorists' but antithetical to our Constitution and the basis upon which this nation was founded.

Am I the only one expecting Huckabee to pull off the wig and reveal himself to be Lex Luthor?

gop in iowa been sniffing the hog manure too long . . .

For such a small amount of precincts left, it's amazing how much Hillary is coming up while Edwards keeps dropping.

Drops .02 for Edwards at the last precinct.

I say it was rigged, and they shaved 10 off Edwards to keep Hillary in the news.

But I have no evidence.

This whole electronic voting thing is such shit.

Democrats (1,781/1,781 reporting)
candidate ----- state del. percentage

Biden ----- 0.93%
Clinton ----- 29.47%
Dodd ----- 0.02%
Edwards ----- 29.75%
Kucinich ----- 0%
Obama ----- 37.58%
Richardson ----- 2.11%

These are the final numbers from TPM... so Edwards nudged out Hillary....

Huck Darwin!!

http://www.cafepress.com/huckingkidding
http://www.yougottabehuckingkiddingme.com/

I think if Huckabee wins, he will be torn to shreds by the Dem nominee, for mixing church & state too much.

IE: I hope he wins!

huckabee's think in terms of David slew Goliath literary and figuratively.

Jon in Iowa said:

Am I the only one expecting Huckabee to pull off the wig and reveal himself to be Lex Luthor?

High-larious! Though I believe that's what many Dems are hoping! Don't think it'll come to pass, however. They should be very concerned about that, if he wins the nom.

Big Dan

You're one of the folks I'm referring to above!

Phil

I concur. There's no way to tell what the hell those numbers *should* be. At least not from the site you pointed to. I'll look forward to seeing what is available in the morning. At this rate. I'm nearing 22 hours without sleep, so I better stop soon or fall over

The pro and con of not 'misunderestimating' Huck v Dems presupposes a fair electronic voting machine election in '08 doesn't it?

If the election can be rigged to result in a particular candidate's victory regardless of the candidate's views, then the merits of any candidate's political philosophy is rendered moot or irrelevant!

What is relevant in such premises, after all, is the power to rig the results behind the scenes isn't it?

The EI movement has not concluded maturely IMO whether or not the '06 election was rigged has it? Are we now back to valid and fair elections according to the doctrines of the EI movement?

In terms of absolutes at this time, about all the EI movement has concluded is that we don't like electronic voting machines because they suck. But do they Huck?

This type back and forth without a sustainable premise is not a coherent ideology IMO.

Assuming the election were to be fair, Huck would loose to any of the three top dems IMO, but do better against some.

In a fair election McCain is a greater threat than Huck IMO, but McCain can't win either. The people are pissed and will vote radically for a change candidate, not a goofy form of more of the same IMO.

Can't vote for a change candidate if they just flush their support down the toilet b4 any real fight has happened. Or if the mind controlled tv public will never hear of them.

Only one real question should be asked, What are You going to do when the election gets stolen this time?

Debate for months, get it out of your system, but how much evidence do you need? If you are convinced that it is rigged then we need to be talking strategy not news.

This extra little url might help study the situation http://s3.amazonaws.com/...uspublic/index_live.html

well, when you wake up again.. ;o)

Dredd,
"The EI movement has not concluded maturely IMO whether or not the '06 election was rigged has it?"

It's like this IMO, we're all burned out. And with electronic tabulation, we will never know. I mean hey you're never going to know the shit that happened in OHIO now...I hope I made my point. This is because of the slowness of getting to the bottom of shit and the slowness of punishment for the corruption and the blackout from the media. What do you want from us? We can't take over the corporate media!!!

We can sure make it hell on them though if we organized and protested consistently.

ONEGUY, part of my thought is the place to protest ain't at the capitol.

It's at the corporate media network headquarters and local stations. this has to happen, if it don't then dredd is right.

I have to admit that I think Huckabee is a real gentleman among Republicans and he has good populist ideas in SOME areas. Of course Obama has shown himself consistently to be a gentleman with the smears directed against him by Clinton and her supporters. Neither Huckabee nor Obama will ever stoop to hit below the belt so I think if it comes down to them, we will see an historic return to the well-fought but civil campaign. We need that.

I do think that Obama would prevail, however, because it would be a campaign of reason vs. faith being the cornerstone of our country. Huckabee can count on the truly religious in America, the so-called 26% base of the Republican party, but independents like myself who number at least 1/3 of the electorate now will vote with the Democrats. No candidate can win a general election anymore without having a majority of independent votes on his side.

There's a lot of shit going on here. We know some elections are rigged, yet current ones we can not prove....YET.

Part of this problem is the shit that happens electronically, part of this shit is the problems that happen between that electronic tabulation and the time delay that seems to happen between that and the corporate media. If electronics are to make this all happen so fast, then why the hell are we waiting hours for a god damned precinct still? It should be light speed. (Invisible to the human eye) but for some fucking reason it ain't. That's because the human interface is still fucking with it in between. Meanwhile the corporate media can easily round up or down numbers. I ain't blaming it all on them but this electronic part of the equation is shit.

In this race I don't see OBAMA as a question. Too many personal oversight's for that this time, BUT....

I do see how points COULD be shaved from edwards, added to hilary, and take from richardson, then again it could be coincidence. but again with electronic tabulation and wireless networks who knows.

YOU CAN NOT VALIDATE IT WITHOUT PAPER. and if the paper is too late, IT becomes irrelevant.

If these are the candidates the election is already stolen.

Huck-->I went to Catholic school for 13 years...I'm not Catholic anymore, 'nuf said.

Obama-->is he calling for Impeachment? Who is he funded by? (i really don't like banking cartels, do you)

I also just missed foreclosure by the skin of my teeth, so tell me what candidate has any clue about dealing with peak oil and the resulting inflation and collapse of the economy.

It's all about perception.

Btw - We're getting hit by nice rain and wind, the power has fluctuated several times, so far my UPS has kept it from re-booting things, but I might go out in a bit if something cracks the grid.

OFF THE GRID.

I don't think these are strictly the candidates. Sure like everyone predicted some dropped out. (one of my predictions)

Have I got this right? Caucuses are used in some States instead of primaries but are one and the same? Can someone , such as Gore, still enter the race after caucuses are run?

GWN,

I only hope my predictions are wrong.

What has happened is the COCK-US'S have now been used to scare off anyone that can't get in the corporate mainstream media. Gore could easily get in there don't you agree?

I only thought the hillary vs. edwards was important. that was my perception. That was stolen from me in the fact that the corporate mainstream media took away the VOICE of Kucinich.

At least for me.

I hope your following me here, I don't claim to be the smartest fucker.

And to get exactly back on topic of this thread, Sure Huckabee can cause problems for democrats.

It's all about perception. Albeit perception by corporate media.

I hope nobody is disagree with me on that now.

I think I am gonna crash like Brad...

NEXT . . .

Thanks Phil. I found a primer on the primaries...but still don't know if someone new can still enter the race.
My personal choice was Kucinich (wish he hadn't asked his supporters to vote Obama in Iowa though) but I am Canadian so have no say.

In my imaginary world I think bush should be forced to stay on as President and clean up his mess, but have a Democratic VP , Democratically controlled Congress and Senate and he would have to do everything they demanded.

Whip him till he's done!

Seems to me that Huckabee's win is an unwelcome development to the GOP. Rush and others have been slamming him, saying Huck's not a "true" conservative. Which is obvious BS. It's Rush and his greedy neocon overlords who are the poseurs, the interlopers of traditional conservatism, the fake conservatives who love the evangelical vote as long as they don't ask for anything.

Funny how the GOP can have control of all three branches of government and yet still be unable to to implement anything they promised the evangelicals. True to their nature, the fake conservative neocons only manage to pass laws that relate to money --- tax breaks for the super wealthy and sweetheart deals for corporations that blatantly squeeze everybody else for every last drop of blood left.

It sure seems to me that the GOP will do something to end the Huck-mentum, like a Dean Scream redux. It'll be hard to swift boat a former preacher, one would think, but they'll manage somehow.

Brad, I hate to bring up the "R" word, but I don't see that any other commenter has mentioned race.

In an Obama-Huckabee contest, race would be a powerful factor. Many white Southerners believe that this pairing would guarantee both a "Solid South" and ALL the border state (Missouri, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Indiana and possibly Ohio) electoral votes for the Republicans.

Race and religion are the two most reliable indicators of voting preference. Huckabee would score heavily among evangelicals, white Catholics, and white males.

Unfortunately, in the groups that Huckabee would appeal to, almost everybody agrees with him in preferring the Genesis creation myth to Darwinism, and almost nobody knows any more about foreign affairs and the Middle East than he does. So the 19th century orientation that Huckabee has in such matters - which disqualify him in the view of readers of this blog - would help him, not hurt him, with his natural constituencies!

I've lived most of my life in the South, so I may be more sensitive about the impact of race on voter preferences than observers in the North, West, etc. But I chose my username of "hardheaded liberal" because I think I am more realistic than many progressives - and I think the continuing malign influence of race is important enough in voting in the states I have mentioned to make the difference in an Obama-Huckabee election match-up.

GWN -

Nothing stops anybody from entering the race at any time. But whether they would be on time to get onto any particular party's ballot, in any particular state is a different matter. There are deadlines in each state for that.

Rather, the question is, can they still win enough delegates via the primary/caucus process to be given the nomination at the national convention.

Delegates chosen throughout the primary process don't necessarily have to stick with the candidate they are supposed to represent, once on the floor at the national convention (speaking generally here). If there is not the majority needed on the floor, then all bets are off, horse trading begins, and you have an open convention. That's the time someone like a Gore *could* come in and become a consensus drafted candidate. Or something.

That, or he could enter the race as an independent at any time and try his luck.

Dredd -

EI has little to do with a discussion about the horse race. One can determine that Candidate A wins hands down in a clean election. Doesn't mean they'll necessarily win at the ballot box. But it doesn't invalidate discussion of that candidates pluses and minuses against opponents, etc.

I don't pretend to speak for the EI movement, of course, but I don't believe I've ever said every race is rigged. I have, however, said that it can be, and that it can also be prone to out and out errors in tabulation, ability for folks to vote (when machines break down), etc.

And thus, transparency, and citizen oversight/participation are mandatory in hopes of seeing as much integrity as possible from each election.

Does that clear up your concerns?

DES -

The prob is, as I see it, that the GOP has boxed themselves in to an near-impossible corner. They've been using this whole "conservative" thing as a gimmick (since most of them aren't really conservative, or have only one or two conservative impulses).

So now that none of their viable-ish candidates meets the burden of being all three (Fiscal Con, Social Con and Neo-Con) they're lost.

They've put all of their eggs in the "conservative" and "no flip-floppers" gimmicks that now they can't find a candidate that meets their own previously-used, if phony, requirements!

Whoops!

O ~ Goodie . . .

Maybe I'ma dreamer ... when a quallified underdog

i have a different take on the results.
poor mr or mrs president

Brad is right, don't misunderestimate Huck and Chuck.
Watch this video in NH from the 48 minute mark.
The song that he thumps his bass guitar to at the end of his speech is...Fortunate Son.
We got us a (semi)populist R candidate here IMO.

Go to: Presidential candidate former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) attends a campaign rally with special guest Chuck Norris in Henniker, NH. Link

Someone was saying recently (I forget who, (on the radio?) not me though) that the south argument that Obama can't get elected in the south, is totally bogus, because in the south they won't support a democrat period.

So if your an Obama supporter, I wouldn't worry about all that talk about changing your vote to a white guy.

Just to be fair, I am not supporting Obama because of the "MySpace website theft" snafu, Corporate interests, and also once I heard a speech that he sounded just a little too preacher like for my non-Christian tastes. If he did get elected as a president. I'd hope he'd do a good job, I'd hope he legalize pot (the compassionate health care plan v2.0), get the troops back, but I really haven't heard him specifically talk about the restoring or undoing of the crap Bush has done to the Constitution. Restoring that and end of this war are my main two things. If he did that I could get by with Obama as president. *ALL* the candidates are too late to preach to me about health care, at this point the damage is done.

If you want Obama for president, go ahead and support the corporate fascist mainstream media, they are the ones who know how to make you perceive there's no other choice but to vote for their candidate.

Although I do not HATE Obama, It's no secret I do hate corporate fascist media.

And no those words are not too strong!

Brad #30

Thanks for the commentary. Notice that I include myself in the EI movement, and thus when I criticize it, as I sure as hell do, I include myself because we have not succeeded and can't succeed under current conditions.

The jist of my position is that when we don't know something we should not talk as if we do know that something.

Wafting in and out of presumption upon presumption to discuss the merits of candidates, their base, and extrapolating that to election results is confusion posing as coherent dialogue.

If we don't know which elections were rigged sufficiently to throw them and therefore render them false, then we have no basis for a philosophical discussion of the merits of candidates in terms of why they won or lost!

Which means Amurkan politics is nothing more than a nightmare posing as a wonderful American dream.

One other thing about perceived diligence and just perception in general.

I am totally surprised that by now either a candidate, or someone hasn't passed a fake bill saying that there is no more domestic snooping by the NSA, meanwhile (in reality) keeping the FIOS splitters in place and still snooping.

That would make whoever did it, VERY POPULAR while still allowing unconstitutional dirty deeds to run rampant.

tin foil hat time..

Brad thanks for answering my questions.

Dredd, IMO, without the EI movement you would NOT have had the success you had in the 2006 elections. Without the EI movement the problems with the DRE machines would not have seen the light of day. I think under the circumstances, GOP run media , progressives blogs that won't even mention it etc., they do the best they can and are having success, slowly but surely.

I see progress, painfully slow, but progress all the same. IMO The blame lies mostly with the Democrats (I have not heard one presidential candidate talk about the problems with DRE's in debates.) and the MSM , not the EI movement.

GWN #37

Your comments have been made for some 40 years now but Bev Harris has said things are worse now because there is more of the same. Here is a post of mine from a year or so ago:

The electronic voting machine (EVM) watchdogs twenty years ago were saying what was said before the committee recently (1988 Article).

You can shock the hell out of the EVM audience with these quotes from a 1988 official report:

4.13 Summary Of Problem Types

4.13.1 Insufficient Pre-election Testing
4.13.2 Failure to Implement an Adequate Audit Trail
4.13.3 Failure to Provide for a Partial Manual Recount
4.13.4 Inadequate Ballots or Ballot-Reader Operation
4.13.5 Inadequate Security and Management Control
4.13.6 Inadequate Contingency Planning
4.13.7 Inadequate System Acceptance Procedures

...

Concern had been heightened by a series of articles published in the summer of 1985 in the New York Times. The articles cited statements by two computer experts reporting that a computer program widely used for vote-tallying was vulnerable to tampering. Several elections were identified in which losing candidates claimed that it would be possible to fraudulently alter the computer programs that were used in their contests.

(NIST Report 1988, bold added).

No one mentioned that twenty years is enough to have more than "suggested rules" which are admittedly inadequate ... which election war lords are ignoring anyway.

And who asked why one person certifies the machines no matter how many ITA companies claim to do the certification? Or who sets the standards of the lone ranger doing the testing (The Lone Tester)?

Doesn't it appear that either the voting rights movement related to the EVM world has failed ... or congress has failed ... or perhaps both?

Yep, Bev Harris said a while back things are worse now than they were then. She is right because more bad is worse than less bad.

There is nothing wrong with skepticism so long as it meets the facts, but there is something wrong with optimism when it does not.