MPR: Challenged ballots: You be the judge
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2008/11/19_challenged_ballots/

This was really interesting to see how people messed up ballots. One has to wonder if somebody with OCD caused a few of these.

Representatives from the campaigns of Sen. Norm Coleman and Al Franken have been challenging ballots across the state. It's your turn to play election judge. Tell us how you would rule in the case of these challenged ballots.

Minnesota contest with Al Franken comes down to challenged ballots.

This half-meter resolution image of the United States Capitol, Washington D.C. was collected by the GeoEye-1 satellite on Jan. 20, 2009 to commemorate the Inauguration of President Barack Obama. The image, taken through high, wispy white clouds, shows the masses of people attending the Inaugural Celebration. (click to download)

Yeah, good to the point article. It's nice to hear someone plea for the waning party's success. Whatever the faults with a two part system it's better than one and no matter the way you lean there had better be something to lean against

Noonan sends Palin off in style

an even better article on palin

in fact rather proud of it: It was evidence of her authenticity. She experienced criticism as both partisan and cruel because she could see no truth in any of it. She wasn't thoughtful enough to know

Good WSJ article on Palin myths and the harm she did to the Republican party.

!!! [Palid is horrible, says Peggy Noonan] "She's not Ivy League, that's why her rise has been thwarted! She represented the democratic ideal that you don't have to go to Harvard or Brown to prosper, and her fall represents a failure of egalitarianism." This comes from intellectuals too. They need to be told something. Ronald Reagan went to Eureka College. Richard Nixon went to Whittier College, Joe Biden to the University of Delaware. Sarah Palin graduated in the end from the University of Idaho, a school that happily notes on its Web site that it's included in U.S. News & World Report's top national schools survey. They need to be told, too, that the first Republican president was named "Abe," and he went to Princeton and got a Fulbright. Oh wait, he was an impoverished backwoods autodidact!

Statistical findings from a Pew survey, showing the percentage of internet users that used online sources to get information on the 2008 election. The survey shows how many users shared information through blogs, watched political videos online, shared political content online through e-mail, and used social networking sites to get involved.

This research summary from the Pew Internet & American Life Project provides some interesting insights into who used the Internet during the 2008 presidential campaign and how they used it. In short, the researchers note a significant jump in the number of people seeking information about candidates online rather than from radio or print, not to mention the level of engagement (two-sided interaction with the information) these users demanded. The most intriguing part of the research is perhaps unwritten: The shift in methods of civic engagement highlighted by this report points to the importance of studying--and more importantly teaching--new media/literacies.

This article is an overview of internet usage patterns in relation to the 2008 US Election campaign. It statistically analyses who went online to get involved in the political process.

Tutkimustuloksia Internetin roolista USA:n vaalikampanjassa. Mistä kansalaiset hakivat tietoa jne.

The debates unnerved both candidates. When he was preparing for them during the Democratic primaries, Obama was recorded saying, "I don't consider this to be a good format for me, which makes me more cautious. I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, 'You know, this is a stupid question, but let me … answer it.' So when Brian Williams is asking me about what's a personal thing that you've done [that's green], and I say, you know, 'Well, I planted a bunch of trees.' And he says, 'I'm talking about personal.' What I'm thinking in my head is, 'Well, the truth is, Brian, we can't solve global warming because I f---ing changed light bulbs in my house. It's because of something collective'."

Project Houdini

'Well, the truth is, Brian, we can't solve global warming because I f---ing changed light bulbs in my house. It's because of something collective'

More info on the Houdini project from the Obama campaign

The disclosures are among many revealed in "How He Did It, 2008," the latest installment in NEWSWEEK's Special Election Project, which was first published in 1984. As in the previous editions, "How He Did It, 2008" is an inside, behind-the-scenes account of the presidential election produced by a special team of reporters working for more than a year on an embargoed basis and detached from the weekly magazine and Newsweek.com. Everything the project team learns is kept confidential until the day after the polls close.

The Obama campaign was provided with reports from the Secret Service showing a sharp and disturbing increase in threats to Obama in September and early October, at the same time that many crowds at Palin rallies became more frenzied. Michelle Obama was shaken by the vituperative crowds and the hot rhetoric from the GOP candidates. "Why would they try to make people hate us?" Michelle asked a top campaign aide.

Vettu, jeg begynner å like han her: "The debates unnerved both candidates. When he was preparing for them during the Democratic primaries, Obama was recorded saying, "I don't consider this to be a good format for me, which makes me more cautious. I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, 'You know, this is a stupid question, but let me … answer it.' So when Brian Williams is asking me about what's a personal thing that you've done [that's green], and I say, you know, 'Well, I planted a bunch of trees.' And he says, 'I'm talking about personal.' What I'm thinking in my head is, 'Well, the truth is, Brian, we can't solve global warming because I f---ing changed light bulbs in my house. It's because of something collective'."

this is good scary look at things and people hating obama hilary the CAMPAIGN

About as funny as God's facebook page!

"I see you staring at me from across the water"

Hey, at least they're calling her "diva", not "bitch".

Aide calls VP nominee a "diva" and says she's only looking out for herself.

More infighting is just helping the Obama campaign that much more (like they need it!), the RNC is going to need to pull another Watergate to get through this one.

"She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone," said this McCain adviser. "She does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else. "Her lack of fundamental understanding of some key issues was dramatic," said another McCain source with direct knowledge of the process to prepare Palin after she was picked. The source said it was probably the "hardest" to get her "up to speed than any candidate in history."

She's off the reservation!

Sara Palin: Even McCain is sick of her.

"Her lack of fundamental understanding of some key issues was dramatic," said another McCain source with direct knowledge of the process to prepare Palin after she was picked. The source said it was probably the "hardest" to get her "up to speed than any candidate in history."

McCain had to pay people to make calls for him...

"Some three dozen workers at a telemarketing call center in Indiana walked off the job rather than read an incendiary McCain campaign script attacking Barack Obama, according to two workers at the center and one of their parents."

Some three dozen workers at a telemarketing call center in Indiana walked off the job rather than read an incendiary McCain campaign script attacking Barack Obama, according to two workers at the center and one of their parents. Nina Williams, a stay-at-home mom in Lake County, Indiana, tells us that her daughter recently called her from her job at the center, upset that she had been asked to read a script attacking Obama for being "dangerously weak on crime," "coddling criminals," and for voting against "protecting children from danger." "They walked out," Williams says of her daughter and her co-workers, adding that they weren't fired but willingly sacrificed pay rather than read the lines. "They were told [by supervisors], `If you all leave, you're not gonna get paid for the rest of the day." The script coincided with this robo-slime call running in other states, but because robocalling is illegal in Indiana it was being read by call center workers.