In the proud tradition of radio stations “flipping” in the most dickish of manners, we have this entrant: Clear Channel and KPOJ 620 AM.  Once word gets out, the scheduling of the change is moved upward to the middle of programming. Evidently a bit like this.

So, I log on about 4:20 PM. Somehow find this story at the WWeek announcing the change was two days out. Well. I turn on the radio, tuned to 620, of course, and there’s Randi Rhodes as clear as you please.
And then I read the update: just to be whoever it is that they are, they decided to move the changeover to Friday. Which was, at that point in the proceedings, right now.
And, five minute later I was listening to FOX Sports Talk 620.

I had the sense a few weeks’ ago that KPOJ wasn’t long for the world.  Just a sudden flash of a thought.  But I had a hard time figuring out what they could possibly put in its place.  Surely there isn’t anything that’d up the station’s mediocre ratings.  And there isn’t.  So it’s been replaced by (drum roll please) Fox Sports.  This figures.  I believe this follows the pattern of how Clear Channel has dispensed of its liberal radio stations in each of its markets — I’d just as soon that Clear Channel revert 620 to its perpetual Elvis loop of an oldies format that it had between its two talk formats before KPOJ.  There was the great question floated by media observers when a second sports radio station came in: can this market handle two sports radio stations?  And the answer was a solid: Ugh.  But at least “The Fan” has team broadcast rights they could log time behind.    The logic in Clear Channel’s move here seems a bit like: it’s cheap, and you can hold a spot on the dial down that would otherwise go to some other competition to our other stations — and maybe someone will trip over this and confuse it with the sports talk station nearly next to it on the dial.

After years of observing these matters of media company decisions, my guage has become along the lines of this … it’s not politics, it’s not the dollar, it is the logic of a kind of  big box cookie cutter one fits all stichery.

I can put any number of caveats on 620 AM.  Some of its broadcasting was unlistenable… in the same way I find Republican broadcasting stations unlistenable.  It becomes a solid block betwen noon and nine that I don’t have to bother with this dial spot.  The rest you can go in and out of as you please, I suppose.  I always found the old argument of “Conservatives have Limbaugh; Liberals NPR!” bemusing — there wasn’t really any way to get at its equivalence gag.  But maybe there’s truth therein — how can you go back in and bother with so much of congratulating one another for holding the same opinion, and coming in just a bit too solidly behind one of the two political parties?

So now where are we?  Carl Wolfson will probably be back somewhere, I’m guessing.  But radio is dead as a medium — and in some regard not really worth saving worth saving.  You have pandora for music; podcasts for this sort of news and commentary.  Stick in a fork in it; stick a dead bird on it.

It’s rare to see Romney bumper stickers in this sticker.  But I saw one.  A mini-van, if that says anything about the red state / blue state thingabajing and there’s this —

Young people may defer buying cars until the economy improves or they may live out their 20s in urban areas, but at some point they will have families, move to the suburbs and need vehicles, said Erich Merkle, Ford’s U.S. sales analyst.
“They might be able to hold off for a period of time,” said Merkle. “But Ford takes the long-term view — They are going to be around for a long time and they are going to purchase many, many new cars.”

The political fight is always fought in the realm of Suburbia fading out of blue Metro and into red exurbia.  Or you can do what Rick Scott and other governors do and find ways to gut the votes in the urban.

More pointedly, the sticker was under another sticker which read… “One Nation Under God”.  Any reason to assert such a premise?
I’ll be on the lookout to see if this is owned by a older guy (likely visiting) who was wearing a t-shirt of Commissar Obama, calling the President a Stalinist.  Probably not — his bumper sticker would probably be blunter in assailing the president.

A quote from Lindsey Graham
“If I hear anybody say it was because Romney wasn’t conservative enough I’m going to go nuts,” said Graham. “We’re not losing 95 percent of African-Americans and two-thirds of Hispanics and voters under 30 because we’re not being hard-ass enough.”

Sure enough, I see that the point people on Immigration Reform, the 2012 post Republican Party freak-out edition, are… Chuck Schumer and Lindsey Graham.  And I google Lindsey Graham — for the moment let’s ignore that the first clarion check listed in google is “Lindsey Graham gay” — and see that the news aggregator headlines with an article from a Conservative source saying “Graham about to sell out on immigration”.

Lindsey Graham is, for the 2014 elections, Tea Party “RINO Hunters” target number one.  There are others on the list, I suppose — though it takes a kind of hear swirl to figure out what they did to earn Republican rank and file animus.  The one thing about the South Carolina picture is that there really is no Democratic Party — this is entirely the Mods versus Rads (as best epitomized by the state’s two Senators — Lindsey Graham here and Jim DeMint)… the last two Democratic Senate candidates were Alvin Greene and a John Bircher-ish figure named Bob Conley.  It is enough that a Democrat might as well hold his/her nose, re-register as a Republican and hold his/her nose and vote for Lindsey Graham in the primary, even though this largely enable the next candidate is along the lines of the last two.

The rumors of Lindsey Graham’s sexuality will probably slide into a subtext somewhere.  Lindsey Graham is so liberal because he’s gay or… he’s selling out because people have the goods on him.

While we wait to see if the Hispanic Tea Party figure of Texas, Ted Cruz, is absolving the strange racial nature of this problem…

Petitions for secession filed from Louisianaand Texas have already received well over 10,000 signatures. Per the website’s own rules, petitions that garner 25,000 signatures or more within 30 days require a response from the Obama administration.

Similar petitions from Alabama, Tennessee, and, interestingly, Oregon, are also gaining traction, with each receiving thousands of supporters over the weekend alone.

Other states in which residents have expressed an interest in going their own way include Kentucky, Montana, North Dakota, Mississippi, North Carolina, Florida, Georgia, New York, New Jersey, Colorado, Arkansas, South Carolina, and Missouri.

Interestingly, Puerto Rico wants in.  Kind of.  That’d make the nation a tad more Hispanic.
I’m a hypocrite if I don’t mention some affinity for a bit of some secessionist impulse of this… Glorious Cascadia and First Republic of Vermont and all … this slides a bit too far into the partisan nature of things (Obama wins re-election: Boo!), and the whiff of the old Confederacy. See:

 It was almost midnight, just minutes after President Barack Obama was re-elected Tuesday, when University of Mississippi police officers came across a large crowd of students “shouting racial slurs and taunting other students with chants about the recent presidential election.”

According to the University of Mississippi police report, a crowd of 550 “agitated and angry” students and spectators gathered to not only attack Obama’s policies but shout about race.

More than 700 miles away in Virginia at Hampden-Sydney College, about 40 students shouted racial slurs, threw bottles and set off fireworks outside the Minority Student Union within minutes of Obama’s re-election. The disturbance late Tuesday and early Wednesday also included threats of physical violence, College President Christopher Howard said in an e-mail to parents.

Well…

Slade Gorton, a moderate Republican in the Washington legislature , noticed a trend in the state’s party elections after 1976 that would hold important implications for the future.  In 1964, moderates had lost to  Goldwater supporters in the intra-party contests of that critical year, and the local and state organizations remained in the hands of conservatives even after Goldwater’s electoral wipeout.  But across the 1960s and 1970s, “the Goldwater people who were in the party organization became more pragmatic” as a consequence of governing and attempting to appeal to a broader constituency.  This lead conservative supporters of Reagan, who were energized by his presidential bids, to run against the Goldwaterites and turn them out of office.  The newly elected Reaganites in their turn were to become more pragmatic by the very act of attempting to govern and win reelection, until a dozen or so years later they would be deposed by people to their right in the 1994 elections, and the same cycle would repeat itself with the Tea Party Movement.  “The people who are in party organizations and want to win elections have to make certain compromises in order to win” Gorton condluded, and “then they get thrown out by true believers”.
This logic implied the Republican Party’s ability to govern would always be undercut by the demands of its most fervent supporters.  The same dynamic also implied that in some ways, each successive wave of grassroots activism would move the definition of movement conservatism further to the right, like a ratchet.

from “Rule and Ruin” page 350-351, Geoffrey Kabaservice …

……………………………

Outgoing Republicans
Olympia Snowe — Maine
Scott Brown — Massachusetts
Richard Lugar — Indiana
Kay Bailey Hutchinson — Texas
Jon Kyl — Arizona

Incoming Republicans
Deb Fischer — Nebraska
Ted Cruz — Texas
Jeff Flake — Arizona

What we have here are four of the more moderate or less conservative Republicans along with one figure who can be said to be on the conservative side of the party departing and being replaced by three “Tea Party” conservatives.

The Democratic picture …

Ben Nelson Nebraska  —- Joe Donnally Indiana
Kurt Conrad North Dakota —- Heid Heitkamp North Dakota
Joseph Lieberman Conncecticut — Angus King Maine

These three are pretty well analogous switches.  The next four are a step to the left by, for the most party, simple vitality of getting younger in the case of Hawaii, or moving from a culturally conservative Reaganite figure to a more liberal in Vivginia’s case, or low profile figure to higher profile figure liberal in Wisconsin and New Mexico’s case.

Jim Webb — Tim Kaine; Virginia
Herb Kohl — Tammy Baldwin; Wisconsin
Jeff Bingaman —  Martin Heinrich; New Mexico
Daniel Akaka — Mazie Hirino; Hawaii

Add to this the two Senators, both on the liberal side of the Democratic Party’s spectrum.

Chris Murphy — Connecticut
Elizabeth Warren — Massachusetts

On the House side, the Republicans maintained their majority for the 2012 election by some 2010 state election contests — namely Secretary of States governors in Ohio, Florida, and Texas.  It was why these contests were more important for partisan purposes than the Congressional landslide.  This is mainly in reference to redistricting.  I suppose it’s part of the continual process.

Behold!  David Ignatius offers advice to Barack Obama as he moves on into his second term.  And… um… good lord the world of Punditry is insipid at times.

First off, we get this citation of the genius strategizing of David Plouffe as an example of how Obama should pursue his policy course.

Plouffe’s genius was to decide early on that the race depended on nine battleground states; if he could deliver those states by a relentless and sometimes ruthless assault, he would win the larger victory.

Yes.  This is Romney’s campaign strategy as well.  I suppose you can argue that Obama had an “Expand the Map” dictum in 2008 where at teh end of the day he pursued Montana and North Dakota and Georgia for the Hell of it, and in 2012 he contracted the map and threw away his chances at Missouri and Indiana and int he end North Carolina, but we’re still left at the basic premise that this is so broad as to be pointless.

After chiding Obama on his battles over Health Care (which, policy wise he won… politics wise he — lost and then won?  As, I may as well mention with reference to his Lyndon Johnson fixation — Johnson ended up losing politically where he won in that brief sliver of time policy-wise)… and on Israel — Palestine (Yes!  Solve that now.  Just like Clinton did for his second term!)
And on the quote from Lyndon Johnson “What the Hell is the Presidency for?” his suggestion on what Obama should do

 Mitt Romney’s generous concession speech Tuesday night opened a possible door, and the president should follow up his statement that he will “look forward to sitting down with Governor Romney to talk about where we can work together to move this country forward.” The president and his new Treasury secretary (Jack Lew?) should take the next step and ask Romney to help close the budget deal the country needs.

What should he do with Mitt Romney now?  Question:  What the Hell is an Election for?

And on to foreign policy — where he will solve the Israel — Palestine problem (again — Good luck!  At least on the domestic front of the Health Care “five different president pursued it and failed” might be pulled off — that didn’t involve actual violence and people blowing people up if they didn’t get their way on things) — we have his Secretary of State pick…

John Kerry.  Who may or may not be a good pick, but the reasoning David Ignatius gives is … interesting.

John Kerry is an experienced man who thinks outside the box and is willing to take risks.

Granted, John Kerry did some interesting things during the Reagan years which can be called “taking risks” (spurred into the Iran Contra hearings). And he’s done things in the Obama Administration while most people weren’t looking which qualifies him … maybe… in that label.  But while he was in the spotlight in the 2004 campaign and just before that… it was kind of the exact opposite.  I’d think David Ignatius would have to clarify how Kerry fits the opposite mode of what his public persona came to be.

… And the Beat goes on.

Down goes Allen West.

We still have Michele Bachmann to kick around.

But they now have Alan Grayson to kick around.  (No, I’m not arguing an exact equivalency there.)

Syed Taj lost to Kerry Bentivolio.  Bah.

There’s a funny sad mixed funny ha ha twitter battle of fear and loathing between Ted Nugent and Donald Trump.  (More fun here.)

I had assumed that Mormon coat-tails of Mitt Romney would take down Jim Matheson in Utah, and brig in Mia Love — a “Tea Party” and the potential first black woman Republican in the House.  It didn’t.

Gay marriage passed in two, maybe three states.  That monkey is off the gay marriage back.  No longer do we have to hear that cry out of undemocratic process in “Every time it’s gone on the ballot, THE PEOPLE have rejected it.”

Watching CNN coverage, repeatedly zooming into the maps of Florida and Ohio, is fascinating and hypnotic, but not good for you.  THERE IS NO NEW INFORMATION.  The coverage at the sites of polling places is just kind of silly… that stuff should be shown on CSPAN, or maybe CSPAN-4.

I decided to walk past Pioneer Square to compare and contrast with the scene from four years ago.  No, there was no soggy singing expedition like four years ago.  I can point to a couple random car honks with someone shouting out the window “OBAMA!!!”, and one random guy cursing Obama.  There is a sense of what I like about this election of Obama over the one from four years ago:  the attitude toward it from supporters is more realistic.

The famous red streak map — Leafing over state wide returns, I can suggest it will probably exist in the same form this time out.  Ie: West Virginia and Arizona’s totals have fallen further from Obama.

The Tea Party effect in the Senate is mixed.  On one hand, the Democrats picked up — all indications are 2, count them two seats — remarkable considering it was a map of 10 Democratic seats against 23 Republican seats, off of the 2006 landslide.  But if you consider the make-up of the Republican caucus — the departing Republicans are Richard Lugar in Indiana, Scott Brown in Massachusetts, Olympia Snowe in Maine, Kay Bailey Hutchinson in Texas — the least conservative members — along with Jeff Flake of Arizona.  The incoming members are Deb Fischer of Nebraska, Jeff Flake of Arizona and Ted Cruz in Texas.  The Tea Party did its job of defeating the Real Enemy, their supposed “RINO”s…
The Democratic side is more mixed in the “polarization” effect.  Outgoing it’s the most conservative members of Ben Nelson in Nebraska and Kurt Conrad in North Dakota… harder to peg Jim Webb in Virginia… everyone knows Joseph Lieberman in Connecticut, and there’s partyliners Herb Kohl in Wisconsin and whoever it is that fills New Mexico’s seat.  They’re replaced by blue dogs in terms of Heidi Kleitcamp in North Dakota and Joe Dannaly in Indiana, your strangely Liebrmanesque figure of Angus King in Maine, and the step to the left appears there with Chris Murphy in Connecticut, Tim Kaine in Virginia, Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin, Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts, and apparently Martin Heinrich in New Mexico.

Claire McCaskill’s strategy of nudging her opponent to a primary victory then leaving the stage and letting him talk worked brilliantly.  Joe Dannaly’s similar strategy worked as well.

Actually I think Albert Gore did quite well in Mississippi, with his 40 point 4 percent.  He bested Obama, right?

Preliminary third party results:
Johnson (Libertarian) 0 0 1,139,562 1.0%
Stein (Green) 0 0 396,684 0.3%
Barr (Peace&Freedom) 0 0 48,776 <0.1%
Anderson (Justice) 0 0 34,521 <0.1%
Goode (Constitution) 0 0 3,553 <0.1%
The Libertarians may just have snuck into single digits.

Nate Silver wins some weird pissing contest over stats versus “I don’t like your stats”.

Dateline Tennessee… Mark Clayton fires away at the national media…
The Tennessee Democrat running for U.S. Senate fired back Thursday at this week’s Washington Post story that said he may be “2012’s worst candidate.”
Mark Clayton, the surprise August primary winner who has been linked to a Virginia anti-gay group, told Nashville’s News 2 the newspaper is “not a credible news source.”

Wait.  This next line is what sells you on this candidate.

He went on to question the Post’s investigation of President Richard Nixon in the 1970s which led to his eventual resignation.
“We would call on the Washington Post to return their Pulitzers until we find out what really happened,” responded Clayton while sipping ice tea at a restaurant near his rural Nashville area home. 

Well… You can’t always win.

Clayton said he refused interviews with the Washington Post and claims the reporter from the newspaper recently “jumped out from behind a bush asking him if he would beat Bob Corker.” 
When asked the same question about beating the incumbent Republican senator, Clayton grinned saying, “of course, of course.”

See too:

In an email to reporters Saturday, Clayton said he’s planning to win Tuesday’s election.
“I’m expecting victory because we have reached four million Tennessee voters, and most Tennesseans know that Bob Corker betrayed them,” he wrote.
But Corker, traitor to the people or not, is welcome to stop by his old office on Capitol Hill and share a little advice. The Republican senator might even prove useful:
“I congratulate my opponent for a great race in advance.  Former Senator Bob Corker could be of assistance to our staff because of his institutional knowledge and be a great asset to help our senate office staff.  I will allow my staff to continue to consult with him throughout my tenure, and both he and his staff will be welcome to stop by any time.

Maine:  I wonder what the future holds for Cynthia Dill, the Democratic candidate who the Democratic Party wasn’t running with?

Nevada:  Your classic “I know you all but what am I” defense to Ethics charges.

Missouri  Todd Akin:  Beheadings and Nazi Germany.  Oh My!
In summary of how this race is expected to turn out:  it took two flubs for Akin to sink himself and Claire McCaskill to hold on.  Also this will prove to be a source of acrimony in the coming Republican Party squabbles.
Bemusing comment:   As for the larger context, if Akin is elected tomorrow, he’ll have one of the more extensive criminal records of any U.S. senator in history.

Minnesota.  Kurt Bills doesn’t believe in Climate Change.  He’s also teaching our children stuff.  Be afraid.   Be very afraid.

Michigan 11: Stay classy, Republican Ron Paul acolyte.
 As the race enters its final days, the focus has been more on the candidates’ personal qualities than the issues. Democrats contend Bentivolio is a right-wing extremist and mentally unfit to serve, while Republicans say Taj is a radical leftist with suspicious foreign ties.
And…  we get this.
Politico.com reported Nov. 1 that the brother of Republican candidate Kerry Bentivolio told Michigan Information and Research Service (MIRS), a subscription-based news service, that his brother is “mentally unbalanced”. Phillip Bentivolio also claims his brother owes him $20,000; Politico.com quotes Kerry Bentivolio as saying his brother has “serious mental issues.”
The comments section vouches for and debates this point.
See more superpac ad fun here.
Corsi hits Taj with his patented brand of innuendo and outright lies, taking a quote in which Taj noted that his election would bring the total number of Muslims in Congress to three—thereby allowing them to form a caucus—as proof that Taj wants to “advance Muslim power in America.”
… to advance the cause of , if the spam allegations go forth… single payer health care.  Heil to Muslim Power, I suppose.

Washington –4:  The Comments section to the Yakima Herald Endorsement of Doc Hastings all come out against the endorsement.  It’s where you go when you are a frustrated constituency in a district that is sorely the other way, I suppose.

Oregon State Treasury.  The Willamette Week failed to mention him.  The Oregon only quickly brushed over him.  But Cameron Whitten is interviewed on Iran’s Press TV.

Presidential candidates who went to sleep Election night believing they’d won, only to wake up in the morning to find out the opposite.  Charles Hughes 1916 and Thomas Dewey 1948.  Dewey, when he woke up, cursed “that son of a bitch” Truman and later drank himself into a stupor — at least that’s how I remember the story.  The opponents — Woodrow Wilson and Harry Truman …

Truman, doing the opposite of his 1946 act where as the mid-term debacle played out on the radio had the radio turned down, disclaimed interest, and went back to his poker games… in 1948 he found the early returns he was looking for to indicate victory and ditched his residence… leaving his daughter to come out as the Media buzzed about on the coming stunning upset with the “Truman has left the Building” esque message.

Wilson  1916 and Roosevelt 1940 both came as America was not in a World War.  Wilson drew up a contingency plan where he would appoint Hughes Secretary of State and resign alongside his vice president, to forego his lame duck session.  This example was most recently cited in 2008 on what some commentators wished Bush were able to do (lines of succession have changed since then, and nobody is aching for a President Pelosi) — and I am guessing that if you look back you can see it cited in 1932, 1952, 1968, 1980, and 1992… maybe even in 1960 and 1988.

Franklin Roosevelt in 1940 saw some early returns that boded a likely defeat for him, and sequestered himself alone into an empty room to brood over the future of a world imperiled, with a Republican Party in the White House that whatever else was true of Willkie was still beholden to Isolationists.  He emerged buoyed and in good spirits when returns fleshed out that he would win.

The Drama of Election Night 1876 — and Hayes and Tilden were two other candidates who went to sleep believing one thing only to wake up to find out another — echoed through 2000 — remember Gore’s phone call concession retraction to Bush?  John Kerry waited the night in 2004 to concede defeat against the backdrop of provisional ballots –a perfect vehicle for electoral disenfranchisement as election prognoses kick in to shape popular conception.  Supposedly John Edwards held the hard line against conceding, but I suspect that this was an appeal for liberal votes going into the 2008 primary.  While these candidates shut down and disclaimed all grass-roots activism on this subject, Nixon in 1960 conceded carefully, and let his activists carry on in Illinois and Texas and nurse their grudges along with him.