The Caucus Blog: Of Eggs and Frogs
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Iowans often canât escape the campaigns these days, whether theyâre eating breakfast or being told how to avoid the ways of amphibians.
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Huckabee wins GOP caucuses in Iowa .... Giuliani relies on Sunshine State strategy ... NH doubts it will ID push poll culprits before vote ... Romney supports fellow Mormons by using their businesses ... Jesse Jackson and wife split over endorsements ... Judge won't delay Florida primary
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The discovery of intersex fish -- males with some female characteristics, including some carrying eggs -- in Washington's Potomac River is raising concerns about pollution from chemicals that can affect hormones.
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Don't count on freezing eggs to offset a ticking biological&#13;&#10;clock just yet
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Michael Markman asked his rep to support Senator Obama, because his district went for him in the Washington caucus last Saturday. The response he got is one we've heard frequently. What about Kennedy and Kerry, will they vote for Clinton because Massachusetts went for her? What I said: "They're independent questions. It's a rhetorical trick to try to invalidate your opinion or confuse you. You want your rep to support Obama. Period. Let's send emails to Kerry and Kennedy saying the same thing." In any case... I don't think it's going to be such a big issue.  The remaining primaries are a referendum on the two candidates. The voters of Virginia, Maryland, DC, Wisconsin, Vermont, Rhode Island, Ohio, Texas, Pennsylvania, et al, will decide. Whoever they choose will be the nominee. The super-delegates who invalidate that decision do so at considerable risk. In the age of the Internet, we have excellent communication tools. There will be no way to hide such a decision. That's what makes 2008 different.
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I think something pretty amazing may be happening with our political process that mirrors what's happening on the Internet, in the blogosphere. I've been talking about it on and off since the Howard Dean candidacy in 2003, which I think most people misread or misunderstood, seeing it only in the existing context of how it can be used to make a candidate more competitive in raising money to buy ads to run on TV. Perhaps that's what was going on from the candidates' point of view, but it was not what was going on from our side of the tube. What was happening was we were flexing our political muscles using a new tool for organizing, the Internet. We were waking up, saying Hello World to the candidates. One of them heard us, Dean, although he misunderstood what we were saying. It's as if we, collectively were tapping a microphone and tentatively asking "Is this thing on?" Anyway... Let's summarize what's happened so far in the 2008 political process. 1. We had a long run-up of a year or so, with candidate debates, lots of punditry, two front-runners, one in each party, Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani. 2. The Democrats outraised the Republicans for the first time in a long time. Obama actually raised more money than Clinton did. 3. Huckabee, a candidate who raised little money, and who was never considered a front-runner, won the Iowa caucus on the Republican side. Money didn't choose the winner in Iowa for the Republicans.  4. McCain, a candidate who in the end spent very little money and had almost no organization, who had long since been forgotten as a front-runner, won the Republican primary in New Hampshire. Again, money didn't choose the winner in NH for the Republicans. Now, in the aftermath of New Hampshire, the pundits on TV, most notoriously Chris Matthews on MSNBC, are quickly snapping back with new crazy theories on why what happened happened, but we shouldn't believe them or pay much attention, because they don't see what's happening in the electorate. Neither does Clinton, but the Republicans may be beginning to get a clue (and Clinton will soon too).  My belief: The electorate is waking up. Maybe it's just my hope speaking. Can't tell yet.  The electorate doesn't need messages, just as Doc says there is no market for messages. What the electorate needs is to hire someone to lead us for the four years between elections. It needs someone who will ground our collective behavior in something resembling reality, so we deal with the problems that are collectively in front of us: 1. The honor and prestige of our country (the equivalent of goodwill for companies, settle the wars we started, accept that we have to protect against terrorism, stop hyping it in terms of conventional warfare, that's insulting). 2. The integrity of our homes (everything from disaster response to changing behavior on a global level to respond to global warming). 3. Caring for ourselves (health, education, protecting the Constitution). We've gone crazy in the last seven years. The 2004 election was amazingly crazy. The candidates appeared to be running for President of Iraq, that's all they talked about, what was good for the people of Iraq. The lunacy of the electorate is that we didn't throw it back in their faces saying "Let us know when you have something to say about the USA." We need to communicate with each other and with the pols and pundits without going through the polling process. When they quote blogs on TV they're quoting people who used to be print columnists who now publish on the Internet. That changes nothing.  I'm not expecting very much from people who live "Inside the Beltway." I don't live there, never have, don't even like visiting the place. To me it's much like the arrogance of Silicon Valley. You can't pop out every four years get us to vote for you and then go back into your nest. Politics belongs to all of us, in this country, the people are the government. We really lost our way, now it's time to come back. It's the change that's happening in everything, decentralization, disintermediation. Obama speaks of a plurality, his campaign isn't about a mere election, it's about changing the way we do things.  My advice to candidates going back to Dean was and is to start implementing the change you seek before the election, while you have the full attention of the electorate. Ask us to give money, not to buy ads, but to buy health insurance for 50,000 uninsured people in a particular state, so we can see how powerful we are collectively, how we can do good, starting right now. We yearn for this, to feel our muscles flex collectively, and individually to make a difference, not just in your hype, but in real terms. Hillary Clinton could have gotten up yesterday and said "There's no time to waste. We can't wait until January 2009 to solve the problems. Let's start right now." Maybe she won't get elected, but getting us organized now would make it more likely. JFK: "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." See how that works??
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By Brad Shannon, The Olympian, Olympia, Wash.  Sep. 16--State Sen.
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I spent much of this afternoon in a mandatory (for poll workers) four hour training class on the Hart InterCivic eSlate voting system, soon to be in use in elections in my home county. (Hart InterCivic is a privately held firm out of Houston, specializing in election equipment and in software products for county records offices). Contrary to my previous impression, the machines are not touch screen machines, although they share some similarities.  I went into the class skeptical; I have been a critic of what I percieve as an unseemly rush to adopt insecure electronic voting systems. I emerged guardedly optimistic; the systems appear, from what I can tell, to be reasonably secure against vote manipulation by people who are not part of the election staff, and they appear to provide approximately the same level of security against election office malfeasance that paper ballots do. At the end of the day, if the election staff wants to tamper, they can; but that was true with paper ballots as well. That risk can be mitigated by election office procedures intended to mitigate it; in San Mateo County's case, those procedures have in some important regards not yet been established, as I will discuss below.
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By Mary Lane Gallagher, The Bellingham Herald, Wash.  Feb.
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Obama wins Wisconsin ... McCain inches closer to delegate goal ... Candidate wives' spar over remarks ... Candidates comment on Castro announcement ... ___
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Parasite eggs can sometimes be just the thing to bring families together.
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By Jim Camden, The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Wash.  Jun. 24--We have not yet reached the dog days of summer, when news mountains can be made from information mole hills, but the state political parties seem headed there faster than the rest of us.
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Checked your chicken lately? There's a lot of value in the coop.
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Researchers find a receptor they believe keeps eggs in arrested development until ready for fertilisation.
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By Jim Kershner, The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Wash.  Jun.
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The discovery of intersex fish --   males with some female characteristics, including some carrying   eggs -- in Washington's Potomac River is raising concerns about   pollution from chemicals that can affect hormones.
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Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) stood before the refrigerated section of the Safeway on Capitol Hill yesterday and looked longingly at the eggs.