Me: If you wanted to disrupt the elections, you assassinate Kerry… there’s already a succession for the president, there’s no succession for the challenger.

(Note: for the sake of the government — this is not an endorsement to kill or wound anyone, okay?)

Next guy: Hi Howie!
My take is that IF (not my suggestion at all!) Kerry is assasinated, Edwards would win as defacto proxie. What I mean is that after it all comes together in a few weeks, Edwards would be placed on the new ballot.
You are correct that there is no rule in regards to this.

I will stand by my first list with one major caveat . If pictures come out showing him with a bed full of dead boyscouts….
Before tonights debate…
AND Kerry is in bed with him…
Then all bets are off!

As per that:

As we keep hearing the Presidential Election of 2004 is being regarded as the most important election of our times.
Why?
Mainly because of the possibility of dire outcomes.
This is a tentative breakdown of possible outcomes based on current conditions. I have broken it down into discreet parts for the purpose of simplifying and clarifying the data.
These are numbered by my personal opinion of likelihood. From most likely to least.

This is only a partial list. All other outcomes are so unlikely that they are approaching impossibility.

AND

Another possibility is “none of the above.” How will this really impact daily life? Bush or Kerry wins, we will still laugh at them. At least I will. Perhaps I’m being mean spirited. I pray that we don’t have a despot on our hands.

AND

I actualy considered several other opptions to add to the list above. None of the above was in there! It pretty much tied with a massive alien landing or Ralph Nadar winning the election. This list is just what I view as likely at this time. Things may change before the election, though in truth, I feel we will still see some version of the above.
*sigh*
Can’t we all just get along?
Notice that many of the outcomes list “martial law” as a side effect. How would that effect daily life? I don’t really know! Maybe not very much for most people. (Of course those like me that keep saying anti-government things…)

AND

Heh. Here’s another:

Bush pulls OBL out of his hat the week before the election. Dems cry foul. It’s a big hit with the voters and Bush wins in a landslide. Then it comes out that they’ve been sitting on him for some time. Impeachment ensues. Bush is replaced by Cheney. 😛

Or, this is in the offing.

I’ll get to the questions in a moment.

U.S. security officials are investigating a recent intelligence report that 25 Chechen militants illegally entered the United States from Mexico in July.

The intelligence report was supplied to the U.S. government in late August or early September and was based on information from an intelligence source that has been proved reliable in other instances, one official was quoted as saying.

Never mind the veracity of the Washington Times.

Do the Chechan Separatists want to annex Arizona?

Perhaps a school sieze in Southwestern America would advance their cause in some way that I’m not seeing. (Or should I just lump them into the overall al Qaeda bag of Worldwide pre-millenial religious revival by gunpoint, and go from there.)

Or perhaps I demur to “Things that Make You Go Hm.”, the specific half of which proved to be a farce.

October 8, 2004:

KERRY: I’ve asked in my security briefings why that is, and I can’t go into all the answers, et cetera, but let me say this to you.

Folks, the test is not if you’ve added money; the test is that you’ve done everything possible to make America secure. He chose a tax cut for wealthy Americans over the things that I listed to you.

NY Times Magazine, October 10, 2004

Kerry: “We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they’re a nuisance. As a former law enforcement person, I know we’re never going to end prostitution. We’re never going to end illegal gambling. But we’re going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn’t on the rise. It isn’t threatening people’s lives every day, and fundamentally, it’s something that you continue to fight, but it’s not threatening the fabric of your life.”

August 26, 2004

Bush: “They’ve seen me make decisions, they’ve seen me under trying times, they’ve seen me weep, they’ve seen me laugh, they’ve seen me hug,”

August 30, 2004

George W Bush: When asked “Can we win?” the war on terror, Bush said, “I don’t think you can win it. But I think you can create conditions so that the — those who use terror as a tool are — less acceptable in parts of the world.”

(Later had to redefine the terms so that he could obliterate that damned “nuance” — the great enemy of human civilization — and “Be a He-Man”)

Some of it leaves me a little woozy.

(See also Mixed Signals

Looks like the “Special Righteousness Committee” has slapped down $500 (or however much a voter pamphlet argument costs these days) each for several pamphlet spots for more sarcastic gags against Oregon Measure 36.

They did this in 2000.

Here they are.

Read the first three. They always manage to get first dibs on these voters pamphlets…

Like in 2000…

When I overheard someone say, “I don’t get it. I open up the voters’ pamphlet and read the ‘For 9’ arguments and they’re all against the measure. I was like ‘whatever’.” (that’s a very accurate paraphrase, by the way.)

Anyway, I urge a “Yes” vote on Measure 36. We don’t want Oregon to start looking like Eastern Oklahoma, where they can only have one girl go to the bathroom at a time… do we?

Don’t answer that.

I have just one thing to add to the controversy.

Feb 11: “Transcript of Bush’s WMD Speech. Feb 13: Of Course, (Take particular notice of the audio clip, if it is still working — I do not know.

Other things to look for: who was Bush talking to when he yelled out — out of the blue — “Let me finish!”? And when did the debate turn into an utter disaster for Bush (enough time for the thing to malfunction)?

Are we barking up absurdity? As absurd as the need for Cheney to accompany Bush for the 9/11 Commission interview.

Curiouser and curiouser.

1988 saw Oregon go into the Democratic hands. The ten states that went to Dukakis, along with the big state of California, served as the base to which Clinton operated to expand to a winning coalition. (The Democrats went into a major funk assembling any coherent electoral strategy from 1972 through 1984, unable to figure out how to handle the previously solidly Democratic South.)

Prior to that, Oregon had reliably gone to the Republican candidate. Indeed, here’s the map that Reagan was working with from 1976.

The Senate delegation has one Republican and one Democrat, who because they’ve agreed not to hurt each other politically end up buttressing the other candidate politically. Gordon Smith is considered a “moderate”, though it depends on which audience he’s speaking before… equally comfortable speaking before the Christian Coalition and with an endorsement from the biggest figure in Oregon’s Gay Community. The Democrat, Ron Wyden, is perhaps the Dweebiest member of Congress, and has high hopes of turning Oregon into a bastion of nano-technology, and whose major forays into the national spotlight have involved government – technology privacy concerns (“Total Information Awareness” and that whole “Terror Markets” things.) For his part, he voted for the Medicare Bill, saying only that he planned on working to “Reform the Reform Bill” later on.

The Congressional Delegation consists of one Republican — safely in control over a large swatch of Eastern Oregon, and four Democrats… two of them in districts where potentially a Republican might dislodge them, one of them just quirky enough to be safe, and the other firmly enscorched from the most Democratic parts of Portland.

Gore won Oregon in 2000 by a pittance — in large part because this was one of Nader’s stronger states. On the other hand, Oregon has a much stronger base for the Republican party than their neighbor to the North — their rural communities are a bit more rural than Washington’s and the state politics are a little more polarized. (Population ratio between the rural / urban divide being more one-sided in Washington.)

Once again, flip the colors– Red now equals Democrat and Blue equals Republican. I’m going backward from 2000 back to 1960. See if you can spot Portland, Astoria, Eugene, and manage to figure out what the shifting counties represent. (Apparently Ashland isn’t quite big enough to push aside Medford.)

Last week, Meet the Press broadcasted a debate between the Senate candidates for the great red state of Oklahoma. This week, they aired a debate between between the Senate Candidates — Ken Salazar and Pete Coors — of the great purple state of Colorado. Read the transcript here… I did.

What we really need to see is the great debate between Pete Coors and Gene Amondson or Earl Dodge, the presidential candidates of the splintered Prohibition Party. These two candidates have ballot access in Colorado (and one of them is on the ballot in Louisiana), and I guess their big foe would have to be Colorado’s beer magnate… who happens to be running for the Senate.

Nothing too notable, and you don’t want to hitch your wagon to either candidate as the Great Last Ditch Hope for American Democracy. But, here’s the quiz for the day: Which candidate ran this ad?

Announcer #1: Osama bin Laden: Should he face the death penalty for murdering 3,000 Americans? [Other candidate] says no. Unbelievable.

Ugh. While we’re at it, “Patty Murray has a different opinion of Osama Bin Laden.”

The answer, in case you’re curious: Ken Salazar.

We turn to this exchange, after Coors comes out full force against gay marriage and gay adoption, and I’ll take my leave there.:

MR. RUSSERT: Then let me ask you about that. You have a brochure that I’ve read through which you’ve put out and distributed around the state, and you quote this article. “Coors…talked about how his great-grandfather emigrated to the United States and founded the Golden brewery in 1873. `Our company’s values are our family’s values,’ he said. `And our family’s values are Colorado’s values; …These are the values that I will bring to the United States Senate.'”

MR. COORS: Look, this is a very–you know, people are going to have a lot of different ideas about what this is all about. But it is about recognizing that everybody–everyone in this country should be valued for what they are, and I believe that’s the way we recognize it at our company.

Gene Amondson would’ve nailed him.