And, by those definitions, the turkeys were flying fast and thick last week. First up was the decision to let Senator Joe Lieberman (CT - Ego Party) remain as chairman of the Homeland Security Committee in the Senate (see definition (a), above). Only 13 Democratic senators voted against Joe, who blackmailed the party by saying if they didn't give him his chairmanship back he would not only bolt to the Republican Party but also vote against Democratic proposals every chance he got. Way to demean your vote, Joe! Nothing like selling your vote in order to prop up your own ego!

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Basing my reasoning on absolutely no hard facts (which I fully admit up front), here's the scenario that keeps suggesting itself to my addled brain (and which, to my surprise, doesn't seem to have suggested itself to anyone else): during the discussions between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama (which took place between the end of the primary season and when she began campaigning for him), Hillary gets Barack to agree to this sideshow if he gets elected. She will be "offered" Secretary of State, which she will then decline "because there's so much to do in the Senate." But -- and here's the crux of my thinking -- she will gain by this situation by improving her prestige in the Senate and attaining more power than she normally would have (due to her low seniority status).

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Bush's meeting is going to last six hours. And nobody expects it to come up with anything even close to the same magnitude of what happened in Bretton Woods. Nobody sane, that is. So please, media types, don't call it what it's not. Let's have some truth in advertising here. Call it "Desperate Bush Lame-Duck Photo-Op With World Leaders Who Would Really Rather Be Talking To Obama," if you have to slap a label on it. Because that's a lot closer to what it's going to be.

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First, though, I got tired of endlessly downloading various "election results" webpages, in the hopes of getting some final results. And I also got tired of waiting for the mainstream media to do its job and inform the public what is going on with the remaining states, whose election results have not yet been reported. So I called up the state election officials myself, and thought I would share with you what I found.

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Of course, the big question on everyone's mind right now is: What is going on up in Minnesota? Al Franken is tantalizingly close to taking a lead in his Senate race, but very few details are available in the media (with the exception of this report from the Huffington Post) to let us know exactly what is going on. So I went to the source, and contacted the Franken campaign for some details.

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But the most exciting news is that Al Franken will win a very tight race in Minnesota. Senator Al Franken will take over from Senator Hillary Clinton as the biggest annoyance to Republican peace of mind across the country. Just the fact that Franken will now be in the United States Senate is going to drive some right-wingers clear around the bend (that's my prediction, anyway).

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While the news from Election Night is going to be all about losers and winners from various parts of the country, I think that the news from Election Day is going to be similar across a large number of states. I'm talking about what the news story will be before the returns actually start [...]

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But strategically, it started falling apart almost immediately. After marveling at the crowd size for a few days, something became painfully obvious -- Palin was merely repeating her convention speech over and over again, with very few changes. Sure, it had been a great speech (if you're a Republican, that is) at the convention, but after a week or so it was wearing a little thin. And if John McCain had shut the door on the media regarding his interviews; when it came to keeping Palin away from the media, he not only shut the door, he barred it, locked the keep, lowered the portcullis, raised the drawbridge, released the moat monster, and started boiling oil on the parapets.

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But still, what would have been said if this was at an Obama rally? I bet this doesn't even make the national news tonight. And that is one honking big double standard.

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While 2008 is guaranteed to be an election "like no other" in American politics for many other reasons, it will also be the first election where the voters themselves may wind up doing the best job of policing the election process itself. The Public Broadcasting System (PBS) and YouTube have teamed up to offer [...]

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