Mobile Sharing Nokia Sharing, Samsung Sharing, Sony Ericsson Sharing, Ipod Sharing, Shared Free Softwares, All Mobile Stuff…

Yesterday was primary day in Alaska. The biggest surprise was the narrowness of the Republican race between soon-to-be-indicted incumbent Don Young, thought by many to be the single most corrupt member of the U.S. House, and Lt. Governor Sean Parnell. With 429 of 438 precincts reporting the Anchorage Daily News shows Young ahead by a handful of votes.

Don Young… 42,461 (45%)
Sean Parnell… 42,316 (45%)
Gabrielle Ledoux… 8,589 (9%)

Most of the precincts that hadn’t reported election results as of midnight were from rural Alaska villages. Those are “typical Young strongholds,” Anderson said. But Parnell wasn’t convinced Young was going to clean up in the Bush, especially given many rural residents might choose to vote in Tuesday’s Democratic primary instead of Republican contest.

There are also the 16,000 absentee ballots the division of elections mailed out. It has received back 7,600 of them and Gail Fenumiai, director of the state division of elections, said she didn’t know how many of those have been counted. As long as the absentee ballots were postmarked Tuesday, the division will continue to count them for the next 10 days. Questioned ballots will be counted on Sept. 5.

…Parnell was helped by the fact that Young, Alaska’s lone member of the U.S. House since 1973, spent more than a million dollars of his campaign contributions on legal fees. Young refuses to say exactly what his legal fees have been paying for, but the congressman is connected to several federal investigations. They include the wide-ranging federal probe into corruption in Alaska politics, which has focused on the fundraising practices of Veco Corp.

Although Parnell, supported by the far right extremist group, Club for Growth, would be a weak candidate in November, Democrats are hoping Young will win the primary because it would be impossible for him to win the general election in November because of the mounting corruption scandal. Independent voters play a huge role in Alaska electoral politics and Young is dead meat to them.

On the Democratic side, progressive Diane Benson was swamped by institutional and Establishment money that flooded in for Rahm Emanuel crony Ethan Berkowitz. He took 53% of the vote, having reported raising (as of June 30th) $628,605 to Benson’s $194,327.

On the Senate side, indicted incumbent Ted Stevens won his race against David Cuddy with a whopping 63% of the vote, showing the world exactly what Alaska Republicans are. Stevens will face Blue America-endorsed Mark Begich in November, who took 84% in his primary. Democrats were celebrating Stevens’ primary win, who will be facing the voters just a few weeks after his criminal trial.

. via

There are 16 Republican extremists who have zero scores on the ProgressivePunch scale that measures the tough substantive votes in Congress. There are all people who would abandon the GOP in a second if the Nazi Party, or any other similar fascist entity, was viable. Nine are unreconstructed Confederates and the rest, from Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and Barbara Cubin (R-WY) to Dan Burton (R-IN) and Steve King (R-IA) mostly suffer from various mental afflictions. One half a baby step up the evolutionary ladder– members who have voted like humans, out of hundreds and hundreds of votes, one time– are 19 more lunatic fringe wingnuts. Just over half are another lot of unreconstructed Confederates, from North Carolina GOP closet queen Patrick McHenry to the odious John Kline (R-MN) and the recently dumped (in a primary) David Davis (R-TN). But the kook we want to look at today, after some excellent news, is one of the most detestable of all Republican freshman, neo-fascist Tim Walberg, who represents a moderate district in south-central Michigan from battle Creek to the suburbs around Ann Arbor.

Blue America has endorsed state Senator Mark Schauer of Battle Creek in this race so we were doubled excited to read in today’s Detroit News that, according to the newest poll, he has caught up to Walberg. What makes this doubly dismal for Walberg is that he has been unable to keep up with the popular grassroots Schauer in the fundraising department and he has been up on TV with ads for 3 weeks. In the quarter ending on June 30, Schauer out-raised the incumbent for the fourth straight filing period, something that is extremely rare under the current fundraising system which completely favors incumbents. Most of Walberg’s money comes from far right fringe organizations and PAC but he has also gotten a tremendous amount of cash infusion from the industries whose special interests he’s always happy to support, no matter how at odds those interests are with ordinary Michigan working families. Walberg, for examples, wholeheartedly supports the kinds of anti-regulatory agenda that has precipitated the mortgage crisis, while taking $59,045 from the real estate industry, $40,850 from the Investment industry, and $19,450 from commercial banks. But what is probably damaging him most of all is a clear voting record of kissing up to Big Oil– allowing them to drive up gasoline and heating oil prices– while scarfing up $21,950 from Big Oil & Gas. Here he is making up some kind of crazy claim that we’re buying oil from the Chinese who are stealing it by drilling under Florida from Cuba, some kind of urban legend that Republican Senator Mel Martinez said Walberg has all wrong on. He also wants to allow his contributors at Big Oil to drill in Lake Michigan.

Walberg is so worried that he is joining half the Michigan congressional delegation in avoiding the GOP HateFest in St Paul. Reps. Joe Knollenberg, Dave Camp, Candice Miller and Thaddeus McCotter already announced they’re staying away from the McCain disaster and Walberg is planning to go for 2 cocktail parties filled with corporate donors to beg for money before scurrying back to Michigan. He was shocked yesterday when fellow Republican ex-legislator, Paul DeWeese, endorsed Schauer.

“The people of Mid-Michigan are ready for change, and Mark Schauer is exactly the kind of leader we need right now to make this state more competitive, The 7th district deserves a Congressman who will fight to fix our broken health care system, and Mark is the best man for the job.”

An emergency room physician, DeWeese is painfully aware how devastating the reactionary, anti-family health care policies Walberg is always pushing have been on Michigan families. He’s so disgusted that he actually resigned from the Republican Party.

The first time I spoke with DCCC Chair Chris Van Hollen, he predicted that 2008 was going to be a banner for Democrats in Michigan. I think he had electing Mark Schauer uppermost in his mind. You can donate to Mark’s campaign at the Blue America ActBlue page.

Walberg is also delusional.

. via

Speaker Pelosi– Wrong on Life

St. Augustine

Speaker Pelosi was on Meet the Press this past weekend defending her vicious record on abortion.

REP. PELOSI: I would say that as an ardent, practicing Catholic, this is an issue that I have studied for a long time. And what I know is, over the centuries, the doctors of the church have not been able to make that definition. And Senator–St. Augustine said at three months. We don’t know. The point is, is that it shouldn’t have an impact on the woman’s right to choose.

Of course, this is not true.
St. Augustine (354-430) condemned abortion because it breaks the connection between sex and procreation… In a disciplinary sense, the general agreement at this time was that abortion was a sin requiring penance if it was intended to conceal fornication and adultery.
But, the truth doesn’t matter to Speaker Pelosi.
…Just like voting to approve the gruesome partial birth abortion procedure does not matter to this Catholic in name only.

The Anchoress is all over Pelosi’s inconvenient truths:

If Pelosi wants to quote Augustine’s saying “three months,” as somehow authoritative - even if the church does not - how does she reconcile that with her abortion voting record, which upholds later term abortions, partial birth abortions, embryonic experimentation, etc, etc. She says “I personally think the answer is 16 weeks,”, but that’s just an opinion, like anyone else’s opinion, even mine - and if she believes the answer is 16 weeks, how can she possible vote in favor of, say, partial birth abortion?

Ace and American Papist have more on Pelosi’s efforts to confuse.

Catholic Republican Representativeswrote Pelosi a lettertoday attacking her for mangling Catholic doctrine. They are asking her “to correct the public record and affirm the Church’s actual and historical teaching that defends the sanctity of human life.”

It’s bad enough that the Speaker is rated 0% by the National Right to Life Association for her perfect record of supporting any and all types of abortions.
It’s another thing entierly that she lies about the church’s view on abortion.

. via

This morning DavidNYC at Swing State Project revisited Debbie Wasserman Schultz’ determined campaign to undermine and sabotage the efforts of Miami-Dade Democrats to replace reactionary Republican extremist– and Wasserman Schultz crony– Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, with one of the most outstanding Democratic challengers running in this election cycle, Annette Taddeo, someone the corrupt Wasserman Schultz fears could stand in her way when she seeks higher office.

When Wasserman Schultz, co-chair of the DCCC’s less and less credible “Red to Blue” program, first announced her intention to work against the election of the 3 Democrats running against her right-wing buddies– Ros-Lehtinen plus the Diaz-Balart Brothers– in South Florida, she suckered and bribed a more respectable south Florida Democrat, Kendrick Meek, into her scheme. Since then, pressure from the Democratic Party and from the grassroots has forced Wasserman Schultz to distance herself from the unspeakable Diaz-Balarts– she has now allowed their opponents, Joe Garcia and Raul Martinez, into the Red to Blue program and has even given token donations to their campaigns from her PAC– and she has been abandoned in her indefensible position by Meek who has endorsed all three candidates and donated to each as well.

In leaving Wasserman Schultz to steam in her own bile, Meek throws in with former Florida Governor and Senator Bob Graham, who sent an e-mail to every Democrat in FL-18 telling them that he’s “confident that Annette Taddeo represents exactly the kind of change that our country needs” and calling her “a tough, independent-minded Democrat who will fight for the American dream. She’ll also stand up for American values, like health care for children of working families.” He pointed out that Wasserman Schultz’ Republican candidate, Ros-Lehtinen “voted five times against expanding KidCare in Florida. That’s five votes that Ros-Lehtinen cast with President Bush– and against expanding health care for children, even though Florida is last in the country for children with health care coverage, and there are 250,000 uninsured children in South Florida alone.” One can only hope Wasserman Schultz got one of Gov. Graham’s e-mails as well. If she hasn’t, you can let her know what he and other Florida Democrats think by calling her office at 202-741-7154 or 202-225-7931 and telling her to come back to the Democratic Party– or at least resign from the DCCC Red to Blue program. 

If Wasserman Schultz backs away from her support of the extreme right (and extremely corrupt– like DWS herself– Ros-Lehtinen, she will be getting on board with Emily’s List, United Teachers Dade, the AFL-CIO, American Federation of Government Employees, International Union of Painters and Allied Tradesman, Ironworkers Political Action League, Communications Workers of Americans, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Democracy for America, the two biggest netroots PACs (Blue America and Orange to Blue), as well as Democratic congressmembers who may be a little skeptical about DWS and his motives, nemesis Charlie Rangel and a growing posse of congressional Democrats sick to their stomachs over her corruption and worried that she will drag the Democratic Party down the same path that Tom DeLay dragged the GOP. Besides Meek and Senator Russ Feingold, solid progressives like Lucille Roybal-Allard, Xavier Becerra and close Pelosi ally Hilda Solis have endorsed Annette Taddeo and contributed to her campaign. Shamefully, most members of Congress will not contribute to Democrats who haven’t been endorsed by the Red to Blue program and Wasserman Schultz plans to keep Annette off that until it is too late to make a difference– the same way she managed to keep her off the stage at the Democratic National Convention today. Wasserman Schultz is on the verge of a nervous breakdown over her pigheaded unwillingness to back away from her support of Ros-Lehtinen.

. via

Jayant and Rajat Agarwalla, the Calcutta-based developers of the Facebook application Scrabulous, have lashed out at Facebook for worldwide removal of their popular creation. With over half a million users, Scrabulous is likely the most popular online version of Scrabble (Hasbro’s own Facebook version of Scrabble, which was released in July, has a little over 9,000 users). The Agarwalla brothers have a point: Why did Facebook yield to bullying by Mattel in the absence of a court order?

The Indian brothers are not alone in their criticism. Prof. Peter Fader, co-director of the Wharton Interactive Media Initiative, told the Knowledge@Wharton online business journal that Hasbro’s move was an “incredibly bad business decision.” Scrabulous “has been such a fabulously good thing for the Scrabble franchise [that] Hasbro should have been celebrating. ” The Wharton online article notes that Scrabulous in 2007 had about 1.3 million monthly users and had 600,000 players each day. Not only is Hasbro making a big PR blunder by alienating and angering Scrabulous’s fans, but it’s also missing a great opportunity to harness the online game’s popularity, Prof. Fader added.

The Wharton article goes on to note that many companies are too quick to pursue infringers – especially in today’s Web 2.0 world where viral expansion can greatly help, not hurt, a brand. Hasbro clearly didn’t like another outfit capitalizing on the household name it spent years building. But nowadays having such enormous popularity associated with your brand – even if it’s not technically authorized — might not be such a bad thing after all.

Facebook decision to take down Scrabulous does have consequences for its own future. If Mark Zuckerburg does not learn to fight off challenges like the Hasbro/Mattel challenge, Facebook will have to pay a price in terms of stunted growth of what Forbes describes as the Facebook economy.

The Scrabulous fight is just another manifestation of the traditional media and entertainment companies’ inability to understand and exploit the new opportunities presented by rapidly growing online consumers of content including music, videos, games, etc. In this particular instance, for example, Hasbro instead could have formed a partnership with the Agarwalla brothers or bought the game from them.

As the battle of Scarbulous rages on, the India-based brothers are not standing still. They have developed another online spelling game that’s gaining traction.

. via

Today Florida had its congressional primaries and with about 93% of the vote counted it’s looking like Donna Edwards may soon have a strong progressive with a reform-minded agenda working with her in Congress. (Oh, there’s still the general election in November… but Keller barely managed to hold onto his party’s nomination against Todd Long who’s getting 47% of the Republican vote.) AP has called the race for Grayson but says it’s too close to call on the GOP side. (UPDATE: Keller was finally declared the winner late last night. But he is now seen a really damaged goods.)

Alan Grayson… 48.4%
Charlie Stuart… 27.5%
Mike Smith… 17.3%
Quoc Ba Van… 3.7%
Alexander Fry… 3.1%

Which ad do you think will be most effective in the general election?

or this?

And, think about donating to Alan’s general election fund at our Blue America ActBlue page so he can keep running the ads. This is what red-to-blue is really about, not some more Inside the Beltway Stalinism.

. via

Beyond the speeches, how much do you really know about Barack Obama? Learn about his connection to William Ayers by viewing this video and then reading the referenced link . Also reference prior postsObamba-Ayers Annenberg Challenge Records Available Tuesday& Unrepentant Domestic Terrorist Influence On Barack Obama

TheVideo produced by the American Issue Project
Want to Learn More About Weather Underground?

. via

Christians For Chaos and Gay Anarchists Collide in Denver.

It looks like they baought their signs from the Westboro cult.

Must see video—

The pastor sort of sounded like the white version of G-D AmeriKKKa Jeremiah Wright, huh?

Founding Bloggers has more photos from the confrontation.

. via

Vets For FreedomChairman Pete Hegseth and Vice-Chairman/Founder Dave Bellavia hijacked the anti-”Bush Legacy” bus this morning at the Pepsi Center in Denver, Colorado.

The pro-American, pro-Victory veterans had a few questions for the Soros-funded bua staff who are still peddling that “the war is lost” even with the loads of evidence to the contrary.

Today violence in Iraq is down 90% from last year.
Today 15 of 18 benchmarks in Iraq have been met.
Today Al-Qaeda in Iraq is defeated.
This tremendous progress is undeniable.
Last month only five Americans have died in Iraq from hostile action.

But, the Bush Legacy staffers didn’t want to hear it.

Founding Bloggers have the exclusive and amazing video coming of the pro-Victory veterans slamming the antiwar staff on the bus.

. via

More Hope & Change…
The Obama Camp is threatening television stations for airing an anti-Obama ad that links the Chicago politician to his associate and friend of 20 years, terrorist Bill Ayers.
Here’s the ad:

It’s been viewed over 70,000 times on YouTube so far.
Breitbart and Michlle Malkin reported:

Barack Obama is striking back fiercely and swiftly to stamp out an ad that links him to a 1960s radical, eager to demonstrate a far more aggressive response to attacks than John Kerry did when faced with the 2004 “Swift Boat” campaign.
Obama not only aired a response ad to the spot linking him to William Ayers, but he sought to block stations the commercial by warning station managers and asking the Justice Department to intervene. The campaign also planned to compel advertisers to pressure stations that continue to air the anti-Obama commercial.

It’s the type of going-for-the-jugular approach to politics many Democrats complain that Kerry lacked and that Republicans exploit.

Obama’s target is an ad by the conservative American Issues Project, a nonprofit group that questions Obama’s ties to Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground organization that took credit for a series of bombings, including nonfatal explosions at the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol four decades ago.

The lone financier of the anti-Obama ad, Texas billionaire Harold Simmons, was also one of the main funders of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth who targeted Kerry. Simmons, a McCain fundraiser, contributed nearly $2.9 million to the American Issues Project, according to documents filed by the group with the Federal Election Commission.

It’s pretty sad when your only recourse to a truthful television ad linking your presidential candidate to a non-repentant terrorist is to threaten the stations that air it.

UPDATE: The American Issues Project responded to Obama’s empty threats, via Politico:

“This is a sad ploy to circumvent the First Amendment by a campaign who has no arguments with the merits of our ad. It’s the classic maneuver: If you can’t win on the merits, file a lawsuit.”

True.

. via