Comments on The Morning News

Karl Rove is back, and promising lots of surprises: http://www.newsweek.com/id/107568

Wow, the Clinton campaign just never quits. Now some more sleaze emerges in California. One of those misleading fake polls. The campaign's apparently not ready to own up to it:

Phil Singer, the spokesman for the Clinton campaign. was contacted by e-mail last night. He answered that he was there. He was asked if the Clinton campaign was behind the push-poll, knew who was behind it or had any other information on it. That was at 5:27 p.m. Pacific time Saturday. As of this item's posting time, exactly eight hours later, no reply had been received.

In the 1950's, the Union Pacific streamliner "City of Los Angeles" was stuck up in the Sierras for four days or so. That was before the days of retention tank toilets, so you can imagine how pleasant that must have been. Plus they ran out of food and one of the cooks went crazy.

You know that I live to provide you all with useless trivia. I hope I have not disappointed.

@3: In addition, when they got stuck, a doctor on the train ordered the staff to not serve any booze. Makes sense I guess, but I would have wanted a little brandy at least to survive.

I'm a little disappointed you could only find your way to explicitly posting the word "Obama" three times in your news summary. Kind of phoning it in at that rate, aren't you?

JTC, feeling a little cranky today, are we?

Obama.

Duopoly? Micrsoft bids for Yahoo! to give Google the finger.

I think it's really cute when the Stranger tries to do business news.

Cress-

Wow, the Clinton campaign just never quits

That much of your comment, we agree on.

What is it that you think Clinton did? You use the term "push polling". If this was an actual poll designed to test campaign messages, most consultants agree that it's a legitimate poll. Given that the questioner spent twenty minutes with the one call recipient, it's hard to imagine that if this is a push poll operation that's it's a particularly effective one- push polls are almost always quick.

Note also that the caller didn't actually say anything that was patently untrue. This hardly seems to rise to the level of "sleaze."

@9:

Hey, Big Sven, I admire how you leap to the defense of HRC. I would, too, but I've come to a couple conclusions:

* The Stranger has endorsed Obama, so they will pepper the Slog with "Obama"-this, "Obama"-that, and the commenters will go hog wild in support of that. Facts won't matter as much as emotion and excitement that their candidate might win. It would be the same if they'd endorsed HRC, and Slog and the commenters have every right to do so.

* The Obama campaign, for me, is exactly like the campaigns I have supported in the past and now, for the first time, am not. You know, the type of campaign that is about not just issues, but also healthy doses of emotion, the chance to make history, and, I reckon, a pinch of white liberal guilt. HRC's campaign, for me, is a cold, calculating decision based on what I perceive to be her issues and her electability...very little emotion in my decision nor sense of history, although there's certainly that if we elect a woman POTUS.

So all that said, I'm going to stop making fun of how many times the Sloggers can say "Obama" in a post, etc., etc., and just wait to see the election unfold.

I'll be ready to work hard for the Dem who wins, and that, I think, is the bottom line to which all of us should adhere.

Um, the link to the Hanging Chad story is dead.

Thanks, Brandon J. It's been revived.

If you read the Satterberg article, it's clear that he has a good reason for trying to block these records requests.

An arsonist imprisoned for firebombing the cars of two lawyers is using his remaining 19 years behind bars to dig up information on the judges, lawyers and corrections officers who helped put him there.

I don't really agree with Satterberg's way of going about this - trying to stop the guy from being able to file any more records requests - but the guy is obviously a creepy, vindictive, and violent bastard who's trying to intimidate the people that put him in prison.

His first trial ended in a mistrial because he was found to have personal information about the jurors.

While in prison, he has sought records — including addresses, photos, pay, schedules, professional histories and birth dates — of thousands of State Patrol troopers and state Department of Corrections staff, Satterberg wrote in court papers.

Several requests since October seek information about everyone in Satterberg's office, and, in particular, photos and personnel records of three deputy prosecutors who handled his cases. He's also seeking video or other electronic images of two Superior Court judges — including the one who sentenced him to 24 years — and two court commissioners.

In addition, he has asked the state Attorney General's Office for records including "working hours, schedules ... [and] photographs in color" of eight current and former assistant attorneys general.

In a phone conversation, Parmelee told one, Brian Maxey, he might send an associate to his house; another, Sara Olson, received a letter from Parmelee that referenced the firebombings and said she was acting "so unprofessionally [as] to invite some similar response."

So yeah. Fuck this guy and his public records requests.