Akkam’s Razor

From the Department of Karma (KDKA via Keystone Politics):

Former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum’s right to vote in Penn Hills has been challenged — and election officials will not count his absentee ballot (or that of his wife) until the matter is resolved, Allegheny County Elections Department director Mark Wolosik confirmed.Erin Vecchio, chairman of the Penn Hills School Board and chair of the Penn Hills Democratic Party, says she challenged the Santorums’ right to vote in Pennsylvania this morning because they really live in Virginia. …

Vecchio, who has had a long-running dispute with Santorum over his residency, says the former senator and his family live in “an undisclosed location” in northern Virginia and that his attempt to vote here is “voter fraud.”

Voter fraud.  It’s not just for brown people.  ACORN had no comment.   I wonder if he’s registered and voted in VA?

Pony.  Not yours.

Slate:

[As] a crowd bludgeon in modern political speechmaking, “my friends” can be laid at the feet of one man: William Jennings Bryan. His famed 1896 “Cross of Gold” speech at the Democratic National Convention invoked the phrase a mind-crushing 10 times. Inveighing against “those who believe that, if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below,” Bryan declared, “My friends, the question we are to decide is: Upon which side will the Democratic party fight; upon the side of the idle holders of idle capital or upon the side of the struggling masses?” Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” is historically considered to be among the most viscerally powerful speeches ever made by an American politician, with one New York World journalist reporting the crowd’s reaction as “tumult—hills and valleys of shrieking men and women.” The temptation to bottle that kind of lightning again is alluring.

What does the primary mean? What learnings can be taken away? Did Hillary really win? Did Barack really lose? And what about John McCain?

There are two things to take away - the primary means NOTHING, and the primary means EVERYTHING.

John Stauber has a post at PR Watch that is sourced from Matt Bai's book, The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics, where former NY Governor Mario Cuomo speaks to a group of wealthy Democratic activists:

Shortly after the November 2006 election the Democracy Alliance, an exclusive group of about 100 Democratic Party millionaire activists, met in Miami, Florida. Members and their guests heard their keynote speaker and liberal legend Mario Cuomo analyze the Democratic Party in the wake of its stunning electoral victories that had given Democrats control of the US Congress. Cuomo criticized the Democratic Party for lacking vision, big ideas and a winning political argument. His recipe for future Democratic victories was simple: "You seize the biggest idea you can, the biggest idea you can understand. And this is what moves elections."

Cuomo then dared to voice an inconvenient truth: "Now it's 2006 and we're all rejoicing. Why? Because of Iraq. A GIFT. A gift to the Democrats. A lot of whom voted for the war anyway." The former New York governor challenged his partisan audience, "If Iraq is not an issue, then what issues do we have to talk about? … Where does that leave you? It leaves you in the same position you were in in 2004 – without an issue. Because you have no big idea."

Stauber goes on to illustrate why Iraq is a "gift":

The Argument is an important book but Bai muffed the title. He should have titled it “The Gift,” because as Cuomo points out it was primarily the political gift of voter anger and revulsion over a horrific, continuing war that caused them to oust Republicans.

He then goes on to lament how the current Democratic Congressional Leadership is failing to deliver on the voting public's wishes (he is, of course, correct, but that's a whole-another-post).

It's simply too easy to beat the administration over the head with their incompetence regarding Iraq, and that's even if totally ignoring the deceptions and ideology driven mechanisms that created, sold, and marketed this war.  Strangely, most pundits choose to look at the war in isolation, as though it were a unique creature born of unique circumstances.

The Village (established DC beltway insiders) despises the bloggers, aka the netroots, and will take any chance to cut them down, especially since every word of Brooks, Broder, Cohen, Freidman, and the rest, gets eviscerated with each publishing of their latest sage advice. 

Let's examine Brook's latest (9/25):

Now it's evident that if you want to understand the future of the Democratic Party you can learn almost nothing from the bloggers, billionaires and activists on the left who make up the "netroots." You can learn most of what you need to know by paying attention to two different groups - high school educated women in the Midwest, and the old Clinton establishment in Washington.

All emphasis below (bolded) are mine.

• The Raw Story | White House Power Point slides target 20 Democrats for 2008 defeat
  Here it is…the races where Rove feels the GOP needs to focus on defending seats they already hold and seats held by Democrats that they seek to win, via the illegal political PowerPoint presentation shown to the GSA.
  (tags: corruption Rove scandal)
• PingMag - The Tokyo-based magazine about “Design and Making Things” » Archive » Infosthetics: the beauty of data visualization
  (tags: visualization design data infographics information art guiltypleasure)