Courage Campaign

You know an election is coming up when the Republicans start looking for a way to throw it. This time they came up with the great idea of making California - the state with the most electoral votes, as they're allocated by population - give up a third of their electoral votes to the Greedy Old Perverts for showing up.

Sure, allocating electoral votes by Congressional district instead of by state would be fair if everyone did it, and if the Congressional districts weren't so gerrymandered that they were safe votes for one party or the other. That the GOP isn't pushing this in Texas and Florida tells me all I need to know about their motives: change the rules to favor themselves.

So what do we do about it? Head on over to the Courage Campaign and find out. They have a conference call coming up on Monday that specifically addresses this issue.

Oh, and Californians, when you see a paid signature gatherer with this petition - and they are out there - don't sign it. Unless there's a solid provision that it goes into effect when a majority of states vote for it - and not until - then all it would do is hand the Republicans another election they didn't earn and don't deserve.

Stunned

Yeah, another little hiatus - but now it's time to get back to work.

The Republicans haven't stolen the election - but our electoral system remains dangerously vulnerable. The Patriot Act still stands. The Military Commissions Act of 2006 still stands. We're still losing good soldiers in a bad occupation that the Administration lied to get us into. New Orleans is still a disaster area. There's still the NSA spying on American citizens in direct contravention of FISA. And they're still dealing with the Chimpster's idea of bipartisanship - renominating Bolton and trying to get himself off the hook for wiretapping.

Now we will see if the Democratic Party will pull us back from the brink - or if they're perfectly OK with the shiny new fascism the Republicans instituted. Less netroots candidates won than I would have liked, and more corporatist cronies slipped through than I would have preferred.

The work isn't done yet, in fact it has barely started. But I'm stunned that things have changed this much, this quickly. Perhaps I can allow myself to hope that it's enough.