This one was not even close. Cynthia McKinney had her clock cleaned in a big way by challenger Hank Johnson in Georgia. Although the poll results are not final as of this writing, the lead is insurmounable.
In suburban Atlanta, Rep. Cynthia McKinney trailed former DeKalb County commissioner Hank Johnson by 61 percent to 39 percent, with 35 percent of the votes counted in their Democratic runoff election in the 4th District. Voters went to the polls with memories of McKinney's scuffle with a Capitol Police officer still fresh; many showed signs of tiring of the controversy that has long followed McKinney, who was trying not to lose her second Democratic primary in the past three elections.
Photoshoppers everywhere are crying. I know I am.
So, after much uproar, after all the storm and fury after all the money, time and talent spent the Kos Kids have their very first scalp.
And the scalp belonged to a Democrat.
The party they have chosen to support has become the main course at a banquet. I believe it was the very first post I wrote about this whole Connecticut primary that I titled 'Cannibals". And the feast is on.
For all the effort, the Kos folks were able to squeak in with less than 4% of the votes. Enough for the win, sure. But not enough to keep Lieberman out of the general election. And so more political blood and literal treasure will now be spent contesting what was, and still should have been, a safe seat. Instead of trying to expand the Democratic party held seats in Congress, they'll now be fighting to hold the one seat they think they can take. From a Democrat.
I've said all along that this was appallingly bad strategic thinking, I have seen nothing to change that opinion. This was and will continue to be a foolish battle at a foolish time. I suspect that Lieberman will make this a brutal fight for Lamont and his supporters. The fury of the left will increase and we'll be treated to even worse thoughtful satirical images than the Hamsher blackface item. Oh and the tasteful gay porn themed things.
Meanwhile, the rest of the Democratic party will shudder at what has happened to them. I happened to catch a little bit of an interview on Fox News with Susan Estridge (actually the first time I have watched the channel in months now). She said something about the party needing to embrace the anti-war left. I'm on the record as saying that is a recipe for disaster for the Democrats as a national party.
I still think so.
The Associated Press has Lamont winning out on the wires now. Joe Lieberman was beaten by around 4% and announced in his concession speech that he WILL run as an independent. His campaign will file the petitions tomorrow. The AP flash neglects to mention that little point.
UPDATE: Washington Post report here. They call it "stunning".
HARTFORD, Conn., Aug . 8 — In a stunning repudiation, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) lost the Democratic Senate primary here Tuesday night, falling to antiwar candidate Ned Lamont in a campaign that became a referendum on the incumbent's support for the Iraq war and what opponents charged was his failure to challenge President Bush's war policies.
Lieberman conceded the race to Lamont late Tuesday, but vowed to run in the general election in November as an independent.
The three-term senator lost his bid for renomination exactly six years after he was chosen as Al Gore's vice presidential running mate, marking a fall from grace among his fellow Democrats that came with brutal swiftness and that signaled the growing strength of the antiwar movement inside the Democratic Party.
With nearly all precincts reporting, Lamont had about 52 percent of the vote to Lieberman's 48 percent. The Connecticut secretary of state's office reported strong turnout in a campaign that built in intensity over the summer.
As the votes came in from around the state, Lieberman's advisers said he was encouraged that the margin was narrower than pre-election polls had indicated and that there was no change in his thinking about running as an independent, despite what is likely to be pressure from party leaders to bow out of the general election for the sake of Democratic unity. Lieberman's campaign been gathering the necessary signatures to qualify for the November ballot.
They are also calling it a potential barometer of anti-war sentiment.
UPDATE: Sister Toldjah has a lot of links to various reactions.
Hot Air is liveblogging the returns in the Connecticut and Georgia primaries. As of this post it has become a real nailbiter with Lamont, Ned 89,814 51.60% and Lieberman, Joe (i) 84,231 48.40%. (64% reporting).
UPDATE: 9:39CDT. Lamont ahead by under 4% with around 87% of precincts reporting.
UPDATE: Drudge calls it for Lamont with 95% reporting and just under a 4% lead. It was not the blowout Lamont's folks wanted, or probably needed, to stop Lieberman from running independent.
UPDATE: 10:07 CDT, Lieberman is on TV right now and has conceded - and will file the petitions tomorrow to run as an independent candidate. This is not over yet.
25 hardened criminal penguins made a daring attempt at escaping. The truck they were being transported in overturned, freeing the felonious flightless waterfowl, but they were unable to complete the escape when their leaders got squashed by passing motorists. The news reports say this was a routine transfer, but the truth is that these penguins were being transported by a disguised truck that was actually part of the US Marshal service's Penguin Penal Transport group, affectionately known as "Pen Air".
Four penguins and some exotic fish were killed in the accident, including three penguins that were hit by passing motorists, said Texas Department of Public Safety Trooper Richard Buchanan. "The rest of the penguins kind of stayed together in the ditch."
The lorry, also carrying an octopus that was uninjured, was bound for Moody Gardens, a tourist destination in Galveston, an hour south of Houston, a resort spokeswoman said.
The wildlife was being transported to Texas from the Indianapolis Zoo while the zoo's ocean exhibit is being remodeled, said Jerri Hamacheck of Moody Gardens.
The trooper said it was the oddest traffic accident he had ever handled.
"We've worked several wrecks involving cows, horses, pigs, even fish, but this is the first where the live animals were penguins."
He said he was glad the accident was not worse.
"There was another lorry full of snakes and alligators that was an hour ahead of them, so luckily we didn't have to deal with the alligators," Buchanan said.
We're all lucky these fowl creatures were not able to complete their nefarious plot. Their would have been no end to the reports of armed felonies involving penguins. Especially after the locals had been drinking heavily.
Jim at Gateway Pundit has caught the New York Times in a very, very egregious fraud. This one is really, really blatant and could not possibly have passed a competent editor - unless the editor allowed it. The sequence shows a guy moving into position to pretend to be a dead body. Dead man walking, indeed.
You flat out are not going to believe this one.
Curt over at Flopping Aces has a roundup of things that will surely help you sleep better in the coming days. Eleven missing Egyptian students is just the beginning of the fun.
August 8, 2006 — Eleven Egyptian students who were supposed to travel to a Montana university after flying to JFK airport late last month disappeared in New York, spurring federal authorities to issue a nationwide alert, officials said yesterday.
The students - who were traveling with six classmates from Mansoura University in Egypt - had their student visas revoked for failing to show up at Montana State University in Bozeman, the officials said.
The other six students made it to the college.
"The FBI and ICE [Immigration and Custom Enforcement] would like to locate these 11 students in order to speak with them," said FBI Special Agent Richard Kolko after the "be-on-the-lookout" alert was issued to all police in the United States.
Kolko said there is no reason to believe the missing students, all men around 20 years old, represent a threat.
"At this point, all they have done is not show up for a scheduled academic program, and their visas have been revoked," Kolko said.
"We do not know of any association with any terrorist or criminal groups. There is no threat associated with these men. We have simply asked law enforcement's assistance in locating them so that the FBI and ICE may interview them."
Rep. Peter King (R-L.I.), who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, said the situation "has to be taken very seriously."
I have not been able to find pictures of the missing men, but will update if the become available.
I have not been able to find pictures of the missing men, but will update if the become available.
The leftist loser of the Mexican presidential election and his supporters are getting more aggressive. Today, they blocked the Ministry of Agriculture and kept employees from getting in. Then they opened tollgates and let thousands of commuters drive through without paying tolls. They are destroying Mexico's economy in order to fulfill Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's blind lust for the presidency.
Demonstrators waving the yellow flags of Lopez Obrador's Party of the Democratic Revolution blocked the entrance to the agriculture ministry and stopped hundreds of employees from getting to work.
Other protesters swung open toll barriers across highways linking Mexico City with the cities of Cuernavaca, Pachuca and Queretaro and let tens of thousands of commuters drive through without paying during the morning rush hours.
"Don't pay. Keep going, keep going," leftists shouted as they waved smiling drivers past a toll point on the southern edge of Mexico City.
The leftist, who promises to lift millions out of poverty and end privileges for the rich, commands fierce loyalty from his supporters.
"Lopez Obrador represents hope that the country's resources reach every sector and not just a small group like now," said Ildelisa Gonzalez, 47, a teacher from the northern state of Sonora who was protesting outside the agriculture ministry.
Demonstrators there shouted slogans against a North American free trade deal which has hurt many Mexican farmers.
"ONE WAY OR ANOTHER"
Lopez Obrador, a former mayor of the capital, said on Monday that Mexico would cede more power to the poor "one way or another" but he has vowed protests will be peaceful.
They appear to be on the road to less peaceful protest. Who is paying for all this? Where is AMLO getting the funds to pay for these protests? Someone is feeding these people - they sure aren't working for a living.
Mark in Mexico has a lot of background on what is going on down there. It is lawlessness at this point with leftist elements completely out of control.
More people are weighing in on the scandal that exposed Reuters' use of faked photos. The obvious connection to Qana is also being made. Today it is Jack Kelly, writing at Real Clear Politics.
What is significant about Mr. Hajj is not the two photographs Reuters admits he doctored, but the doubt it casts on the veracity of the other images he's transmitted.
Mr. Hajj was among those whose dramatic photos of dead children being pulled from the wreckage of a building the Israelis bombed in the village of Qana July 30 helped turn world opinion against Israel. Dr. Richard North, a British Web logger (EU Referendum), thinks these photographs were staged, because rescue workers clearly carrying the same corpse are wearing different gear in different photographs. The time stamps on the photos suggest they were taken hours apart, he said.
Other Web loggers have noted that while some of corpses allegedly retrieved from the site were covered with dust (as one would expect from a collapsed building), others were not. Some apparently were in rigor mortis; others not.
There have been questions about Qana the news media have made little effort to answer….
Read the whole thing. To paraphrase Kelly, the media shouldn't be killing the truth.
In a case that adds a whole new dimension to the expression 'passing the bar exam', a Nevada judge has declared a mistrial in a kidnapping case. It seems the defense attorney took the term too literally.
LAS VEGAS - A judge ordered a blood-alcohol test for a defense lawyer whom she said smelled of alcohol, then declared a mistrial after declaring him too tipsy to argue a kidnapping case.
"I don't think you can tell a straight story because you are intoxicated," Clark County District Judge Michelle Leavitt told defense lawyer Joseph Caramango as she declared a mistrial for Caramango's client, Dale Jakuchunas.
Caramango told the Las Vegas Review-Journal for a Tuesday report that he was not drunk, and had been ready to go forward with witness testimony. Jakuchunas, 32, faces life in prison if convicted.
"I've always considered myself the consummate professional," Caramango said. "I take all my cases very personally."
He said he received a head injury in a rear-end car crash while driving to court on Thursday, but that police were not called. Caramango did not immediately respond Tuesday to a message seeking comment.
It seems one of those he said-she said things up to this point in the report, doesn't it? Except the next part says it wasn't:
Caramango also identified a woman who accompanied him to court as his ex-girlfriend, and called her Christine. Questioned by the judge, the woman identified herself as Josephine and said she just met Caramango about 20 minutes earlier at a nearby bar and grill.
Leavitt summoned Caramango and prosecutors into her chambers and ordered Caramango to be examined by a courthouse nurse.
The nurse told the judge that Caramango said he had shots of tequila hours before court. Caramango acknowledged in court that he was drinking the previous night, but maintained he was not drunk.
Leavitt ordered Caramango to take a breath test in court, then declared a mistrial.
"For the record," the judge said, "your blood-alcohol content is .075."
Or maybe we've got this backward. Maybe Caramango's problem was failing to pass the bar on the way to court. And just to throw in a gratuitous lawyer joke, it's 99% of lawyers who give the rest a bad name.
Is of course happening in Georgia where challenger Hank Johnson is apparently leading Cynthia "Slugger" McKinney going into today's voting.
Polls opened at 7:00 a.m. on Tuesday for Georgia’s primary runoff election. A number of statewide issues should be decided Tuesday, including the seat for the Fourth Congressional District, where incumbent Cynthia McKinney is running against challenger Hank Johnson.
According to InsiderAdvantage.com, as of Tuesday morning, Johnson led with 53 percent to McKinney’s 40 percent, with seven percent still undecided.
DeKalb election officials expected Tuesday’s race to double what is normally a low turnout.
“We’re pretty confident of victory,” said Johnson, “because we’ve been working hard for the last eight months”
“We’re doing great,” McKinney said enthusiastically. “We’re doing fine.”
Both McKinney and Johnson have spent the past several days making themselves visible all over the Fourth Congressional District.
McKinney said she “will never change. People need and respect my uncompromising voice, and I’m going to provide that to the people of the Fourth Congressional District, and to the people who like the idea that I am the number-one pain for the Bush Administration and the Republican majority in the state of Georgia.”
In recent days, the candidates have faced off with each other, fighting for the votes that will send one of them to Washington. Insider Advantage notes that the African American vote – thought to be the deciding factor in this race – is split between the two at 50-50.
Johnson claims McKinney is an ineffective leader; McKinney counters that she has done plenty for her district, including getting money for MARTA, greenspace, and nature trails.
Voters have heard a lot in recent weeks, and it’s been difficult to find someone in the Fourth District who doesn’t have an opinion about the candidates.
Michael Taylor, who supports Johnson, said, “I think she’s kind of a joke, really, to this whole community and the whole district she works in.”
Let's face it, McKinney was thrown out of office once before by the voters in the district. She got another chance and may very well have blown it by punching a Capitol Police officer. But if she loses, we here at Blue Crab Boulevard will be very sad. She was a lot of fun to photoshop…..
Dan Riehl has some troubling questions about some video from Qana. Does the video and the captures prove anything? No. But they give some very clear idea of what needs to be looked at. Because there really does need to be a detailed investigation into Qana. Given the recent Reuters meltdown, these questions become even more urgent.
Joe Lieberman's campaign manager has contacted the state and Federal authorities and requested a criminal investigation in the hacking of the Lieberman web site and email systems. I think that's a good thing at this point. Again, I do not believe Lamont or his campaign staff have anything to do directly with this, but Lamont missed a huge opportunity to look Senatorial when he refused to call for whoever is doing the attack to stop.
Lieberman campaign manager Sean Smith said the campaign has contacted the Connecticut attorney general's office and asked for a criminal investigation by state and federal authorities.
"If Ned Lamont has a backbone in his body, he will call on these people to cease and desist," Smith said.
Lamont, campaigning early Tuesday afternoon in Bridgeport, said he knew nothing about the accusations. "It's just another scurrilous charge," he said.
A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office declined immediate comment. Calls placed to the FBI and the chief state's attorney's office seeking comment were not immediately returned.
Smith said the site began having problems Monday night and crashed for good at 7 a.m.
"Voters cannot go to our Web site. They cannot access information," Smith said. "It is a deliberate attempt to disenfranchise voters."
My guess is that whoever is doing this is likely involved in other attacks as well. If the authorities can catch the person, it may make this sort of thing occur less frequently than it has been of late. The attacks are always directed against bloggers or websites the left disagrees with, it seems.
UPDATE: TPM Muckraker has more from the Lieberman campaign.
over 150 artillery rockets were launched at civilians in Israel by Hezbollah terrorists today.
At least 150 Katyusha rockets fired by Hezbollah gunners in Lebanon slammed into northern Israel on Tuesday.
Two people were wounded, one moderately and one lightly, when a rocket hit a home in the Western Galilee town of Fasouta on Tuesday afternoon.
Most of the rockets landed in the northern cities of Acre, Nahariya, Safed and Tiberias.
At least 20 rockets slammed into the hard-hit Upper Galilee town of Kiryat Shmona earlier Tuesday, causing damages to structures and starting a number of fires.
Also on Tuesday, four rockets landed in open fields in the northern region of the Golan Heights. No casualties were reported as a result of the rocket fire.
Three rockets were fired at Ma'alot, one of which hit a residential building, and two rockets landed in open areas in Acre. No injuries were reported in the rocket strikes.
A number of residents were treated, one of them a pregnant woman, Channel 2 television reported.
Rockets also fell in open areas near Tiberias and Nahariya, causing neither damage nor injuries.
Residents of a wide area of the Galilee were ordered into bomb shelters prior to the barrages.
It is important to keep calling attention to Hezbollah's war crimes, I think. Especially since the international media keeps repeating Hezbollah propaganda as straight news. Pointing out the obvious then: Hezbollah is part of the Lebanese government. The Lebanese government is a signer of the Geneva Conventions. Hezbollah is bound by the Conventions that forbid intentional targeting of civilians.
And today they committed over 150 violations of that rule.
Well, just to add some fun speculation to world events right now, not only are Fidel Castro and his baby brother Raul missing at the moment, but the minimum leader is AWOL as well! That's right, Kim Jong Il has gone missing according to the South Korean government. We appear to be in need of a lost and found department for tyrants!
SEOUL, South Korea - North Korean leader Kim Jong Il hasn't appeared in public since his country test-fired missiles that drew international condemnation, leading to speculation of a possible sense of crisis inside the reclusive nation.
Kim attended a Russian art performance and visited a tire factory July 4, a day before the missile launches, and he hasn't appeared publicly since, according to South Korea's spy agency.
The North's propaganda machine hasn't reported on Kim's activities since the missile launches, but last week the country's official news agency said Kim sent a consolation message to ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
Kim usually visits military units a few times a month to bolster his "songun," or "military-first," policy that rewards the 1.1 million-member military with the country's scarce resources despite chronic food shortages.
Of Kim's 131 public activities last year, 70 events were military-related, according to South Korea's Unification Ministry. So far this year, 52 of 69 public activities were connected to the military, the backbone of Kim's totalitarian rule.
Some North Korea watchers have speculated that Kim might be in a bunker, since the country is believed to have imposed a quasi-war footing after the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution condemning the missile tests and calling for nations to stop any missile-related trade with it.
So with both el Maximo and el Minimo el Missing the question is: why?
Politics | Gaius Tuesday, 8 August , 2006 | 
Comments (2) 
