(thanks to Lena & Princeton for the image)

Dixville Notch, NH just voted: Obama for 15, McCain 6. It’s the first time they’ve voted for the Democratic nominee for president since 1968.

Hart’s Location, NH, voted too: 17 for Obama, 10 for McCain, and 2 write-in votes for Ron Paul.

& So it begins, with Obama getting 2x the votes McCain is getting. Let’s hope that trend keeps on for the rest of us.

I am nearly in physical pain this year about this election.

She was a paid organizer! She was a paid organizer!! & Ted Stevens is guilty!

(Do you hear that sound? It’s Palin, getting ready for 2012.)

Oh, this is too lovely.

This image is, I think, the reason Barack Obama raised $150 million for the month of September. We’ve already voted, with our wallets; we’re tired of being embarrassed to be American, when we really are a great nation that has acted shamefully these past few years.

& We thought we loved Betty White before!

Those books Palin was asking about having removed? Books about gays for children. Why am I not surprised?

Interviews with LGBT Alaskans in Wasilla, who talk about how Palin was very much involved with churches who made anti-gay sentiment a political stand, and who condone ex-gay therapies. Very, very important viewing, especially after Palin let it slide in the debate that she is for same-sex marriage rights (even if she doesn’t call it marriage).

A bunch of graphic artists have gotten together to post “30 Reasons” to vote this year. There’ll be one image a day for the 30 days leading up to the election, which means there are a few up already. You can sign up to get them via email, too.

(h/t to Betty for this one)

Cindy McCain has said she wants Barack Obama to trade shoes/places with her, so that he would know what it’s like to have a child serving in the US military.

Wow would she be surprised at what it’s like to be black in America.

I think Obama won, & I spent the debate tweeting. You?

It turns out the word maverick came from an actual person named Maverick who didn’t brand his cattle. His family is still around and has included civil rights lawyers, accused communists, & a member emeritus of the San Antonio ACLU. That is, not people who are voting for John McCain, but they also object to him calling himself one.

Ms. Terrelitta Maverick, now 82, says, about John McCain: “He’s a Republican,” she said. “He’s branded.”

Found this quote on Feministing:

For many Gen X women like myself (and Palin is Gen X) the primary sexist experience is: “Those men gave the job to that clueless chick instead of me, because the boss thinks she’s hot and/or will be a yes-man with no ideas of her own.”

& While the whole Boomer / Gen X feminist difference is interesting to me, what really struck me was that I DIDN’T KNOW ANYONE ELSE FELT THIS WAY! Really. It is my chief experience with feminism, at least in terms of employment, & it really blew my mind to see it summarized so neatly and talked about as an ur-experience for women in my age bracket.

Or, as I might put it, it’s guys hiring with their dicks. I just heard from an old friend who says he loves her verve. I’ll try hard to still respect him in the morning.

& In the meantime, a wicked Rolling Stone article about Palin that nearly convinced me to forgive them for putting sleazy, non-musician women on their covers for the past 40 years.

& Now, off to the debate! Get your bingo cards ready.

This pro-Obama speech by current CIO president Richard Trumka is beyond inspiring - it’s history, and the present, and the future.

Richard Trumka on race, unions, & Obama

It’s the kind of speech that came out of the era when Unions were King.

Sometimes I hear stuff like this and I think they still are.

Dorothy Samuels wrote a great Op-Ed for The NYT on the whole issue of Wasilla charging rape victims the cost of their rape kits and forensic exams.

In the absence of answers, speculation is bubbling in the blogosphere that Wasilla’s policy of billing rape victims may have something to do with Ms. Palin’s extreme opposition to abortion, even in cases of rape. Sexual-assault victims are typically offered an emergency contraception pill, which some people in the anti-choice camp wrongly equate with abortion.

My hunch is that it was the result of outmoded attitudes and boneheaded budget cutting.

Mine too, but that’s still not an excuse, and we deserve an explanation. As Tony Knowles said:

“We would never bill the victim of a burglary for fingerprinting and photographing the crime scene, or for the cost of gathering other evidence,” said Alaska’s then-governor, Tony Knowles. “Nor should we bill rape victims just because the crime scene happens to be their bodies.”

And in case you’re wondering if there was any Federal effort to keep states from charging the victims, here you go:

That’s why when Senator Joseph Biden, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, drafted the 1994 Violence Against Women Act, he included provisions to make states ineligible for federal grant money if they charged rape victims for exams and the kits containing the medical supplies needed to conduct them. (Senator John McCain, Ms. Palin’s running mate, voted against Mr. Biden’s initiative, and his name has not been among the long list of co-sponsors each time the act has been renewed.)

This is probably the best example of why having a woman in office means almost nothing if her policy is blind to the needs of women.

Michelle Bachman is on Larry King Live tonight. What a weird lady. Aside from the fact that she is just spitting out GOP talking points, with no rebuttals or even referrals to what others are saying, she has this weird “I just took E” grin on the whole time, too.

She’s the kind of lady who gives my gender a bad name.

A remarkable, short column by Wick Allison, a former Editor of The National Review and current Editor in Chief of D Magazine, where this piece appears.

This sentence, especially, stood out:

It gives me comfort just to think that after eight years of George W. Bush we will have a president who has actually read the Federalist Papers.

Do read the comments and reactions; it’s a very interesting set of opinions, all pretty articulate.

& He can sing, too!

Wow. John McCain has lost his mind. Today he blamed the Washington insiders and lobbyists for the economic woes of the country, which may or may not be the case. But THEN he pointed out that it’s Obama’s judgment was bad as a Senator.

Goddamn does that take balls. Balls or outright delusion. I wonder if he sleeps at all these days, but for one of the Keating Five to get up & say that shit - well, wow. He’s sunk to a whole new level.

For those of you who don’t know, the Keating Five was the group of senators who were accused of less-than-ethical practices when it came to the Savings and Loan bailout of the 1980s. (McCain has been called “the most reprehensible” of the five.)

Wow. What a piece of work. First Obama’s not in the Senate long enough to have enough experience to be President, and now he’s personally responsible to a global economic crisis. There’s actually this famous scandal pinpointing McCain’s ability to be swayed by lobbyists, and no such dirt on Obama, and he’s getting up there & righteously pointing the finger at Obama.

Wow.

Katha Pollitt’s recent column in The Nation, “Lipstick on a Wing Nut,” proposes that we skip all the Sarah Palin family saga & simply ask her a dozen questions instead:

1. Suppose your 14-year-old daughter Willow is brutally raped in her bedroom by an intruder. She becomes pregnant and wants an abortion. Could you tell the parents of America why you think your child and their children should be forced by law to have their rapists’ babies?
2. You say you don’t believe global warming is man-made. Could you tell us what scientists you’ve spoken with or read who have led you to that conclusion? What do you think the 2,500 scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are getting wrong?
3. If you didn’t try to fire Wasilla librarian Mary Ellen Baker over her refusal to consider censoring books, why did you try to fire her?
4. What is the European Union, and how does it function?
5. Forty-seven million Americans lack health insurance. John Goodman, who has advised McCain on healthcare, has proposed redefining them as covered because, he says, anyone can get care at an ER. Do you agree with him?
6. What is the function of the Federal Reserve?
7. Cindy and John McCain say you have experience in foreign affairs because Alaska is next to Russia. When did you last speak with Prime Minister Putin, and what did you talk about?
8. Approximately how old is the earth? Five thousand years? 10,000? 5 billion?
9. You are a big fan of President Bush, so why didn’t you mention him even once in your convention speech?
10. McCain says cutting earmarks and waste will make up for revenues lost by making the tax cuts permanent. Experts say that won’t wash. Balancing the Bush tax cuts plus new ones proposed by McCain would most likely mean cutting Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security. Which would you cut?
11. You’re suing the federal government to have polar bears removed from the endangered species list, even as Alaska’s northern coastal ice is melting and falling into the sea. Can you explain the science behind your decision?
12. You’ve suggested that God approves of the Iraq War and the Alaska pipeline. How do you know?

I’d really like to hear her answer these.

Gloria Steinem on Sarah Palin in The LA Times.

And if you feel the need: www.womenagainstsarahpalin.blogspot.com

While we’re gone, I’ll be putting up some links to various articles even if I don’t have a chance to post about them.

To start, Bob Herbert’s column on liberals in the NYT.