When “other” isn’t an acceptable choice

Talk about your rigged polls — here’s one that’s up at the PiPress this morning:

 

Except, if you try to vote for “other” as I just did, you get this Java message:

And note that the three choices offered are the three most conservative options available. No mention of Sebellius, Edwards, or any of the other more liberal names out there.

Worse, if you pick “other” in the Republican veepstakes poll right beneath it, the poll works properly. (And appears to be getting freeped on Mittster’s behalf — or maybe Pawlenty isn’t that popular in his home state?

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Katharine Seelye says Clinton lost because she couldn’t hold on to the votes of one very key group: party insiders like herself.

And, if critics of Clinton like myself were right, who better to know her flaws than the people who’ve worked most closely with her. 

On the presidential side, I’ve never worked harder for any candidate than I did for Ted Kennedy. Clinton should look to the example Ted set in the U.S. Senate, and try spending some time working to make this a better country instead of just positioning herself on vote after vote like John Kerry and all the other professional candidates did.

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A new generation of Udalls is moving their way through Congress. That’s a very good thing.

I’ve always thought that recent history might have been very different if Mo Udall had won the ‘76 nomination over that peanut farmer.

Very different.

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No one’s even digging, but every time you turn around more Bush administration corruption has been uncovered.

For the last three years, Daniel Gonzalez has been the loyal lieutenant and gatekeeper to Kevin J. Martin, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission….

Hoping to pursue a career in an entirely different field from telecommunications, Mr. Gonzalez invested in a small energy company three years ago and then joined the company’s board in 2006. The company, law enforcement officials say, turns out to have been a fraudulent venture that took more than $54 million from investors.

There is no evidence that Mr. Gonzalez committed a crime or violated federal ethics rules. But many of the company’s lenders say in lawsuits that he, along with other board members, personally guaranteed millions of dollars in outstanding loans to the energy company, even though his financial disclosure statement indicated that his net worth was only in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Mr. Gonzalez has denied the lenders’ accusations. But commission officials said they were baffled by how one of the most important telecommunications regulators in Washington — one known to be a cautious lawyer leading a seemingly modest lifestyle — could be accused of being so careless.

 

Federal authorities say that the company, MCube Petroleum, is largely a $54 million Ponzi scheme that used the newer investors to pay previous ones. The lawsuits say that during his seven months as a director, Mr. Gonzalez personally guaranteed more than $7 million in promissory notes from lenders who have not been repaid. They also say that he and others violated state law by overseeing a company that sold unregistered securities.

Stephen Labaton

Thieves or chumps, damned near every one of them. If not a Ponzi scam, it’s a cover-up of good science at the behest of corporate thugs, or still more tawdry sex stories.

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Toles is particularly sarcastic today, and not a bad companion image to Bob Novak dishing on Hillary. After reading Novak, you may have less trouble understanding why the superdelegates left Clinton in droves.

Me? I’d just love to know how Novak found a poll that showed McCain beating Obama among women 49-38. Were they only polling in Utah, or just among Hillary supporters?

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“Deranged narcissism of the Clintons”? Jeffrey Toobin just burned a few bridges. No crueler than some of what Maha just said, but still. Especially after the nice welcome the Hillaryites got at Xcel Center.

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McCain wants weekly townhall meetings with Obama. 

I wonder if our Top P.O.W. knows that townhalls aren’t quite the same when your campaign doesn’t handpick ALL the attendees.

 

Laura Brod is shocked — shocked! — to learn that Al Franken tells lesbian jokes. MinnMon wonders why Al wasn’t at the Xcel Center Tuesday night?

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Aftershock in China. You know, when you think about it, the USA’s been very, very lucky. Just as Germany was poised to eat our lunch, they reunified with the impoverished East Germany. And now, just as China is becoming a world player, they get hit with massive earthquakes.

If I thought our government was the least bit competent, I might have some suspicions.

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Apparently the crowd outside Obama’s venue didn’t go home, although they are pretty hard to see in this video.

Kudos though to Bob Collins and MPR, Minnesota Monitor, the PiPress, MinnPost and The UpTake for great coverage of Obama’s “acceptance” speech. 

The Strib? I think they’re resting up for the RNC.

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In Vegas, construction workers are fed up and on strike over Perini Building Company’s horrible safety record. Six workers have died on just this one Perini project, and that’s the kind of abysmal tally I haven’t heard of since before the ’30s.

Mick has more.

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Vick’s got stories from the big book convention in L.A. You might also want to read this great Elmore Leonard post from Nancy Nall.

Books. They’re still around. Who’d a thunk it?

 

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